Beirut Blues Read online

  I returned to the table. His warmth brought me back, his eyes saying to me, “Let me take you under the olive trees and kiss you.”

  I no longer looked him in the eye. I began to feel embarrassed every time he opened his mouth to recite a verse, even though the females in his poems were always in the plural.

  The newlyweds have gone tonight and left me with the pearls

  My heart beats faster, but I tell it to be still.

  You could have had those pearls

  And now they’re lost to you forever.

  I wished I could cling to him under the trees, rest my head on his chest, and say to him, “My heart’s beating too. If you hold my hands, I’ll faint. Has it been a long time? Yes, ages since anyone stared at me and flirted with me like this. And even longer since anybody invited me to the movies or a restaurant by the sea to walk and talk and be frivolous. Here there are movie theaters and restaurants on the seafront, but tomorrow I have to cross back into the west, or if not tomorrow the day after, or in a week at the most. To tell you the truth, I don’t feel as if I’m in my own country. I’m a tourist. It’s too late. But I didn’t always think like this. There were times before when I used to say the war had given some meaning to my life. Now I realize that it’s too late. I can’t open my heart to you. Just for one night? It’s not because you’re a Christian, but because tomorrow we’ll be separated, and you won’t be in a hurry to visit the western sector. Perhaps you’ve convinced yourself that I’m from here, because you’ve been drinking and I’m a friend of Hayat’s, and probably like me and Hayat, you don’t think of yourself as being from the east or the west. But I’ve grown full of suspicions. People are changing before my eyes. People I used to know when they were students have become professors and gone backwards a hundred years. They’ve taken sides. The time may come when I do the same! Who knows? Perhaps then I’ll be happy. Belonging to some faction, however extreme or outlandish, might be preferable to this. If you make a commitment, however hard the consequences turn out to be, you can relax. The fanatic meets a lot of others like him, people he can operate with. Where I come from, they hate everyone from your sector, even the men at the checkpoint. But I always want to have a chat with them, make them laugh and flirt with me. I seem to need reassurance and affection from your people. I want things to be like they were years ago. But now I’m drunk. All I want now is to rest my head on your chest.”

  His eyes bored into me, but thinking about what I would say in response to them made me miserable for a few moments, then I felt the warmth in his voice again, and admired his teeth which were revealed each time he laughed and joked with Yvette: “I’d give anything to hold your hand, to kiss you on the mouth. No, on second thoughts, maybe you’ve got no teeth. Okay, on the cheek.”

  “If you feel like it, you can have a nice whiff of meat,” she replied. “Come on! I’ve been pounding meat for kibbeh since early morning.”

  Everyone burst out laughing at her reply and the boy was encouraged to take this humorous flirtation further, so he asked her to have another drink with him. He held a full glass to her lips but she pushed it away. “My teeth are hurting me and my throat’s burning.”

  He plucked a piece of ice from the glass, but she moved her face out of reach, still laughing. “For Saint Maroun’s sake, please, my throat’s burning!”

  “Look, Saint Maroun’s asleep now,” he answered. “See, he’s got his eyes shut. So would you if you had to stand up all the time.”

  Saint Maroun? I realized the illuminated statue down below us, which I had always thought was Christ, must be their Saint Maroun.

  “Saint Maroun!” You drew in your breath, remembering. “I was so afraid of him! My grandmother, Umm George, used to threaten me with stories of what he’d do to me if I didn’t drink up all my milk!”

  Suddenly I felt a longing for the old Hayat, but I was distracted by the sight of a building which looked like a white silkworm at the statue’s feet. “Is that the hospital attached to Saint Maroun’s convent?” I asked eagerly.

  When someone told me it was, my heart sank. “Poor Fadila,” I whispered.

  It must have come out louder than I thought, for Hayat’s mother asked, “Poor who?”

  Enthusiastically, as if I’d been waiting for the opportunity to express my silent thoughts, I burst out, “Fadila’s mother’s in Saint Maroun’s Hospital.” I had already guessed what was going on in the others’ minds: “Fadila. That’s an old-fashioned peasant name. Muslim.”

  Yvette asked curiously, “And her family’s there in West Beirut with you?”

  “They’re always crossing over and visiting her here,” I said.

  Inevitably Fadila cut straight through the noise and the handsome youth’s disturbing glances and was there with me.

  I had an image of her in her high-heeled gold sandals, with her pale complexion and the black aba thrown around her shoulders, begging me to let her come with me to the east, punctuating her words with movements of her plump hands and cracking the chewing gum between her teeth. I don’t know how she manages to appear in front of me every time I decide to visit my friends on the other side, urging me to take her with me so that she can see her mother. I refuse, and this only makes her more insistent. I offer excuses and she doesn’t listen, only groans and beats her breast, reproaching herself for not visiting her mother enough. She can no longer control the fear and agitation she feels when she travels alone in the eastern sector. Once she told us how, on a previous visit, she had opened a box of baklava and offered one to the taxi driver in an attempt to stop herself feeling scared, but he refused, saying, “Merci. No thanks.”

  She searched for the pack of cigarettes she’d bought especially for the trip to make her look like a woman with power, and began blowing out smoke and coughing furiously. Then instead of cursing the devil as she normally did when she coughed, she began cursing Amal and Hizbullah, the Party of God, trying to involve the taxi driver. “I ask you, have you ever heard of anyone but us starting up a political party for the Lord?”

  When the taxi driver didn’t reply, she set about opening up a plastic bag, checking to see that her black aba was still stuffed in at the bottom, and took out a box of chocolates, which she offered, only to be refused again. She told herself that he must think they were poisoned, and he was right to be wary, because the two of them belonged to opposite sides of a divided city, which meant they were enemies and at war with each other, and stories of spies operating between the two sides were on the increase. She was nervous and uncertain how to behave. She held out the pack of cigarettes, and when he reached out a hand to take one, she relaxed a little, but her fear returned when she suddenly realized that she could no longer hear the sound of car horns and that there was no other car in sight on the bumpy road. So she began describing the suffering which the people in the western sector were encountering in their daily lives, nearly weeping with fright, and because the driver’s only response was a brief shake of the head, she began telling him again how much she liked and trusted the Christians, how she’d refused to put her mother anywhere but Saint Maroun’s Hospital, regardless of the cost, which had risen to thirty dollars a day, or the distance, or the difficulty of crossing from the west into the east. “The hospitals in the western sector are chaos. They’re all crazy there!”

  The driver put his foot down and she was convinced he was about to kill her. He would tear her limb from limb and throw the pieces into a ditch. She’d rather he raped her if that was what he wanted. She’d let him do whatever he liked with her, but not kill her. To break the silence and try to calm her fears, she said imploringly, “If only I lived here. I’d be respected and properly treated. This is how life should be. Not like it is with us.”

  To her horror, the driver suddenly struck the steering wheel with all his force, threw his cigarette out of the window, heaved a great sigh, and almost swerved off the road. “Give me a break!” he shouted. “Life’s shit there and it’s shit here.”


  All the same, Fadila didn’t relax completely until she recognized the hotel where the beauty queens used to stay, which was near the hospital. She thanked him for being so kind and helpful before she got out of the car, and again offered him a piece of baklava, a chocolate, a cigarette. “At least you’ve still got Samadi’s patisseries over there,” he said.

  “Give me your address,” she replied, bursting with affection. “Next time, I’ll bring your wife the biggest box of baklava they’ve got, though nothing would be enough to repay your kindness, and your people are protecting my mother and guarding her as if she was one of your own.”

  As Fadila went to enter the hospital, she saw the mountains and valleys descending to the sea and exclaimed out loud to Allah. She clapped a hand over her mouth and looked around her, suddenly scared that someone might have heard her imprecation. All she could see were the nurses hurrying to and fro and she laughed, remembering the day she had brought her mother to the hospital. She’d been heartbroken, and had been nice to her mother all the way there, stroking her hair, asking her to forgive her for putting her in a hospital so far from home. “I would have done anything for you, Mom, but the combination of you and the bombs was more than I could take.”

  Then she began teaching her to pray to the Blessed Virgin rather than the Prophet Muhammad or Imam Ali and to invoke the name of Jesus instead of the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful, so that everyone would like her, especially the nurses. Her mother repeated “Blessed Virgin” and “in the name of Jesus” after her in a normal, docile voice, which was so unlike the way she usually spoke that Fadila began to wonder if she was mad after all. “Perhaps it’s just the war,” she thought.

  But as soon as they crossed the threshold into the hospital, her mother refused to go another step, saying that the hens’ wings were beating against her and that she was afraid of treading on the children’s eyes if she went any further. When Fadila forced her to keep going and she found herself right inside the hospital, she gasped in wonder. “O God, bless the Prophet and his family and the pure women of his household,” she cried, pointing to the nuns in their white habits.

  I’ve never told you about all that before. It flashed before me and was gone even before I heard the handsome youth saying to me, “Come on. Let me take you to the sisters. They all know me. We changed the wiring in the convent a while back. Come on, get up. I’ll take you. What are you waiting for?”

  He wants to be alone with me under the trees. I want to rest my head on his chest. I’m not interested in telling him the story of Fadila’s mother. I want to take hold of his hands and run them over my hair. I answer eagerly, “Let’s go.”

  You interrupt, saying that the convent must be closed.

  I stood up quickly, almost swaying from the effects of my third glass of arrack, which had settled in my knees and feet. I sensed, despite my third glass, that you were against the idea, but I went all the same, indifferent to your shocked stares. I knew without looking that Jummana was wishing someone else would drag her off to the olive trees by the convent. The cold had spread to the car windshield. Although I was in his arms, I had an image of Fadila’s mother which I couldn’t get out of my mind. She was resting both hands on the window bars while the nuns stood with their starched butterfly wings on their heads licking their mustaches in silence as they watched the young man enclosing me in his limbs. I wish we could have cleared all the tools out of the back of the car so that we could lie comfortably together, but the alcohol made me forget and focused my senses on one part of me. As I moved faster the butterfly wings on the nuns’ heads moved up inside me, then I seemed to be entering the convent, going further and further in until I found myself in a room where one of the beds was shaking violently, although there was nobody in it.

  When I went back to your house, dawn had broken, the gardener was nipping off the tops of the potato plants and piling them up on one side, and the door was open.

  Instead of giving us new secrets to discuss as it would have done in the past, my night’s absence increased the gulf between us, which I hadn’t noticed so much while you were staying with me, especially when we went to the beach and the American University. Now it was getting wider again as I listened to you criticizing me for going off with a man so much younger than me, then lowering your voice to tell me confidentially that this behavior wasn’t normal and perhaps I should see a therapist. Just like that, without batting an eyelid, or trying to understand how the pattern of life here has changed. I didn’t take much notice at the time because I was praying that the clashes wouldn’t start up again, since I was responsible for getting you and your luggage safely on the plane to Brussels. As soon as you’d left, I heaved a sigh of relief and went back to my daily routine.

  It’s strange how close you are to me now. I feel your voice, your anxious presence. I can picture you dialing my number. You must be worried about me because I’m worried about myself in the current battles. I feel scared even at the very sound of the new weapons they’ve brought in this time.

  Our street has begun to shake with the force of the bombardment. Twenty shells a minute. I’d just put olive oil on my hair when Zemzem came into my room. I noticed her voice had a new power and resonance, perhaps because she’d been out to gather the latest news from the neighbors and the shelter, whereas I and my grandmother had stayed in our rooms. “The women are going to hold a demonstration!” she cried, breaking in on my reverie. “They’re going to carry Qur’ans and wear abas!”

  “One of the two sides is behind it, because they want a cease-fire,” I answered quickly.

  “You’ve always been the same. If you haven’t had a hand in something, it means it’s no good. They’re demonstrating because the Syrian Army’s going to enter Al-Dahiya, seeing as Hizbullah’s winning and Amal’s nowhere.”

  Zemzem was letting out all her suppressed resentment. Since the fighting began she’d been trying to make us share her sense of panic. Not at all sorry for the commotion she had caused, she added, “Why should the women need persuading? The boys are killing each other and they’re all Shi’as—members of Imam Ali’s party. Come on! Get up! They’ll be pleased if you march with them. Get dressed! Your mauve caftan. Come on!”

  The Syrian Army. Hizbullah. What about Ricardo? Do you remember Ricardo? Yahya. Fadila’s nephew. The moment you saw him on one of your visits your eyes gleamed in disbelief because you sensed there was something going on between us. He’s on my mind now, even though I’m certain he won’t be involved in the fighting. His aunt wouldn’t have let him out. I’m scared for him, not because of the Syrians, but because of the despair he must be feeling. He’ll discover now that he’s fallen unintentionally into a void. And his comrades in the party? I only feel pleasantly spiteful towards them, towards the Modern Sheikh, and Kazim. Where are they now? Are they fighting? Is it their weapons we can hear, instead of the sound of them arguing and laughing? Kazim, who began coming around a lot and brought his brother and the Modern Sheikh to see me, to kill time but also to convince me of the exemplary nature of Hizbullah and the need for its existence. This was since Ricardo had been caught in two sensitive areas and been suspected of spying on them, for no one would believe that he wanted to join Hizbullah. Eventually Kazim came with him to our house at Ricardo’s request, when his aunt Fadila was out. That was the first time I had seen Ricardo since he went back to Africa after staying ten years in Lebanon. He’d been a child of no more than four years old when he was brought here from Africa at the insistence of Fadila’s father, his grandfather. The old man had somehow heard that his son had had a child by an African woman whom he had then abandoned for a Lebanese. Ricardo couldn’t get used to living in a house mostly full of crazy people, isolated from other children, so he fled to the neighbors from the frosty atmosphere of his grandfather’s house. But he was the son of an unknown African woman, and as soon as he could make out his country on a map of the world, he left Lebanon and only returned during the war, when he had
changed his name to Yahya and believed totally in martyrdom, Paradise, and dark-eyed houris. He came back hoping to fly planes in the skies over Beirut and drop bombs on the politicians who were God’s enemies, for today’s allies are tomorrow’s enemies, depending on where the arms and matériel come from. But religion is above everything. Allies and enemies don’t figure in it. “The leader has to be God, not a human being, because human beings are weak.”

  Kazim was listening to what Ricardo said, but he rephrased it in more ideological terms; he said that religious faith was now the solution but that this was a gut reaction after the failure of the other political parties. “We confronted Israel with weapons, nationalism, guerrilla operations. What was the result? If we’d fought them with our religion, we would have overcome them. Look at them. Because they operate on the basis of a single religion, they’re the strong ones. Religion must become the authority.”

  The handsome Sheikh Nizar interrupted. He was the one known as the Modern Sheikh: he wore jeans, his beard smelled of perfume, he liked good coffee and admired the Persian carpet in the living room, tracing its design to a particular village in Iran. He praised Ricardo, saying that Islam had spread at the grass roots in black Africa where the people didn’t wear any clothes, and he denied the role of a sheikh there who was supposed to have fueled the enthusiasm of the youth and been the link between the African youth and the events in Lebanon. “One day the whole of America will turn to Islam,” he added. “Gradually it’ll take over in Russia, which is half Muslim already. God willing, Asmahan with her beautiful hair will return to the faith.”

  The earlier mention of demonstration took me back to the ’67 war: the faculty is noisy with demonstrations, but an air of gloom hangs over it. You’re asking me if I like your new eye shadow and you bring your face nearer to me and close your eyes, so that I can see it. At the time, I was thunderstruck by the inappropriateness of your question, but now I acknowledge that you were a seer and we didn’t realize it. A prophet of the modern, looking beyond the coming days with X-ray eyes, predicting from a keen sense of reality what would have to be done. You were reckless and I have to admit that you were concerned with the individual rather than the fate of nations—going to the beach was an acceptable substitute for being involved in demonstrations. You gabbled away in different languages and always looked after your appearance even when it came to your choice of toothbrush. We thought of you as frivolous, uncommitted, although you were outstanding at your studies.