Beirut Blues Read online

  Now I find myself saluting you, acknowledging that when you left this country it was a prophetic act, as if you knew in advance that the war would never end in a matter of days, months, or years, as we believed, that life was too important to spend waiting, for we’d all forgotten why the war had started. Even those who ignited the blaze lost sight of their original aim. They fight, agree to cease-fires, make settlements, fight again, and their war achieves nothing, nor even their peace.

  If I didn’t have this piece of mosaic in front of me, I wouldn’t believe I’d gone where I did to get it. Following your mother’s instructions, I went to a friend of your family’s, an engineer who directed me to a man who sold old mosaic. The same with the aba. If it wasn’t for that bag lying on the marble top, I wouldn’t believe that I’d gone into the back alleys of Al-Dahiya for it. All these errands are simply devised by the mind to inject hope into the body, and energize the spirit that was there in the past.

  First I went to L’Artisanat to buy you an aba, but I couldn’t find a color which would suit you. I knew you would want one that looked ethnic and “original” in Europe, whatever the color. But you know how much I love colors, and then there’s this salesclerk whispering to me in a southern accent that in Al-Dahiya they sell genuine abas just like these, all colors, for half the price. I notice she’s trying to disguise her accent, and her hair’s in the latest style, like her clothes. But she can’t hide the way she talks, or the gold tooth in the front, typical of southern women, even though she puts her hand up to her mouth every time she smiles.

  I went to the address she gave me. I’ve always thought I knew Al-Dahiya well since we’re on its doorstep, but I wandered around aimlessly, asking directions, until I was at the end of my tether. I was disoriented, maybe because I had this sense that I wasn’t in Al-Dahiya at all, but in some noisy alley in downtown Hong Kong on account of the sound of hammering, the whirr of sewing machines, sand sneaking into my shoes, the animal carcasses, the flies, the street vendors selling vegetables and bedding, the stagnant pools of water. Music played. People poured from all sides. Strange buildings sprouted extensions in every direction. Even the flat roofs had been converted into extra rooms, and basements hummed with activity. The streets served as markets to sell sheep, cigarettes, clothes, and gold jewelry. Trucks blocked the entrances to alleyways so that people had to squeeze between the vehicle and the wall to get out. Porters were loaded down with wares produced by factories and workshops, big and small, underground, on rooftops, crammed between rooms. Clothes, mechanical tools, toys, ready to dispatch in boxes marked “Made in Germany,” “Made in Italy,” but never caring to admit that they were made in Lebanon.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d been here, but I always lost my way. I came to the area regularly for a while to help a psychiatrist friend who was doing a study of the effects of the war on Lebanese children. She worked in a school which used to be a stable and I remember how I lifted my feet like a horse every time I went in over the low step and how the smell of horse hit me in the face. Although the animals had been stolen long before, even the children’s drawings smelled of them.

  I really did find an aba in the color I wanted and at half the price. I went straight from Al-Dahiya to the engineer’s, afraid that my laziness might get the better of me. Entering his apartment was an experience. The moment I saw the view from the wide balcony, I knew why he’d stayed in this building in the heart of West Beirut: he was remote from the war—the rockets in the air, the explosions on the ground, had never touched him. Everything looked peaceful from that height; the people were small, the tanks and guns like toys, and the fighters’ weapons no more than big sticks. The war appeared to be an illusion, but so did the beautiful design, the different stone, all throwbacks to the past, which greeted us on his floor.

  The engineer welcomed me. As if he understood the effect of his home on his visitors, he gave me time to look at the big leather sofa next to the piano, the bed, and the table football. The floor was tiled with slabs of stone with fish fossils in them. Then the mosaic. A naked woman is opening out a towel while a hawk, as big as her, is snatching the towel away in its beak. Around them are date palms, birds, and four containers with flowers and vines trailing between them.

  He apologized for not taking me to the mosaic dealer, but explained how to find him. I set off straightaway and to my surprise he was in. His wife opened the door and greeted me as if she’d always known me. Her daughter came in with glasses of lemonade. The smell of gardenia pervaded the house, which was furnished in a mixture of gold Louis Quatorze and marble pillars and statues. The husband appeared shortly and held out his hand to shake mine, impregnating it thoroughly with his cologne. Then he led me to the workshop. If it hadn’t been for his loud voice and his son’s scooter parked there, I could have imagined I was somewhere in Byzantium or Canaan. Despite the damp and cold which hung about the room, the statues imparted a strange warmth. The dealer had guessed I was an amateur; every time I asked him about a statue I liked he pointed out that it was an imitation. He touched a foot made of marble and slapped it playfully as if it were his own or one of his children’s. “For example, this one’s genuine. But it’s sold.”

  We left the workshop only when I asked about the mosaic. As we went out into the garden, a man got to his feet and followed us. The sound of shots rose in the air. We didn’t pay any attention to them, but it made me wonder what would happen to the mosaics if a rocket landed on them. I felt dislike for the man, but his open smile and honest manner made me think I was too hasty. A piece of mosaic was lying at the garden gate. I paused to look at it and he remarked immediately, “They cheated us with that one, damn them.”

  He opened a door into another workshop and I saw pieces of mosaic lying everywhere. My feelings of dislike flared up again as I watched him walk over the fragments scattered on the floor. “What’s the situation with these women?” he asked his assistant, gesturing downward.

  “I really don’t know!” replied the assistant. “We’ve tried to put them back together but it’s very hard, because of the bunches of grapes between them.”

  Then the dealer started to tell me how beautiful this mosaic had been before it was spoiled. I crouched down to look at it. A woman’s face was visible in the middle. Her neck, her hand, a goblet she was holding, part of her breasts. Then she broke into a random assortment of little colored stones where ants and other insects had taken up residence. “Someone must do more work on it. You should get someone from Syria,” I said firmly.

  “It’s the glue they’ve used on the face to pull it out whole,” replied the assistant. “They’ve obviously been trying to economize and they haven’t used enough, or else they’ve used a cheap brand.”

  The dealer grew tired of me squatting there, but I was concerned that the three women would be destroyed, their goblets, faces, breasts, pulverized underfoot after surviving for centuries. Here they were, dying on the dirty ground, walked over by men in sneakers, in a room whose walls were regularly rattled by explosions. Nearby lay a Pepsi bottle, empty except for an inquisitive cockroach, and a picture of a well-known singer which made her look like a monster in a nightmare. I suggested to the man that I could try restoring it myself.

  “It’s difficult. Like sweeping up salt with your eyelashes.”

  I ignored his reply and asked him impatiently if he had a picture of the mosaic. He looked as if he couldn’t take much more of me and had begun to wonder if I was serious. Still hunched over the mosaic, I attempted to justify my request by giving him the impression that I knew someone who could return it to its original state for nothing.

  “Money’s not the problem. But it’s an impossible task, unless you find someone with the patience of Job. And you know, madam, what people are like these days.”

  Then he went over to the table, pulled open a drawer, and took out a bundle of pictures. He leafed quickly through them and handed me one of the three women looking just as I’d imagined them;
their hair was flying out behind them with an ethereal quality, their breasts were small and beautiful, and the bunches of grapes between each one made an almost physical impact. I admit that I had decided not to buy a mosaic at all when I saw them piled up there. I thought that it was a crime for them to adorn strange, foreign walls. From time to time I find myself criticizing everything that Lebanese expatriates do, and you’re one now. In an attempt to escape from the mosaics without buying one, I forced myself to recall an episode which upset both of us.

  Do you remember the pretty mother with her husband and children getting out of a car to choose some ancient stones from the fort at Beit Mary? The children were pointing and shouting. “That one, Mom. No, that one,” as if they were on an Easter egg hunt, while her husband stood there, pleased to see his children enjoying themselves and waiting for his wife to decide so that he could lift the stones in his strong arms, as if they were children’s toys.

  You shouted at them to leave the stones or else, but the woman didn’t look in our direction, even when we rolled some little pebbles down towards them. The husband finished carrying off the stones, deaf to threats. You took the number of their car as they brushed the dust off their hands and drove away, with part of the fifth century in their trunk next to the can of oil and the spare tire.

  I defended you to myself as I remembered the episode, recalling your face with affection. I thought of them selling stalactites like ice cream at the cave of Qadisha. Then I decided that if I bought you a piece of mosaic, it would have been saved from damnation as far as you were concerned and I’d be doing a service to history and art.

  The mosaic and your aba have begun to play games with me. Every time the fighting stops for a while I can look at them in a normal fashion again and imagine Ali taking them out the door, once I’ve packed them and written your name and address on them. But as soon as the fighting starts again, I wonder what those unfamiliar objects are and what they’re doing there. This has been going on for three days, during which time I’ve hardly left my bed and refuse even to hide in the hallway or the neutral seclusion of the storeroom.

  Despite the calm which has descended on me, I confess the explosions have dislodged my head from its moorings. I lie down a lot of the time and begin to postpone everything, even going to the toilet, and am thinking of getting a portable one like Fadila’s uncle. He sold flowers in the street, and didn’t move from his corner in her house all night, insisting it was too cold. At dawn he would hurry down to the entrance to move his flowers out into the street, his improvised chamber pot hidden behind him. “Flowers need sun and they have to breathe,” he would mutter.

  “Your pisspot needs sun and air too,” Fadila would shout after him.

  Lying down eases the ringing in my ears, helps me put up with my grandmother and Zemzem, and makes night blend into day so that time slips by. But it no longer interests me to follow the warring factions and put them into categories. So while I’m in this state, or rather the city is, it’s hard for me to work out my feelings with any degree of clarity. “We might as well be dead. The Syrians are entering Al-Dahiya,” says Zemzem, although her words no longer make much sense to me.

  She looks like a cyclamen. Do you remember those flowers? I was so embarrassed when I called them “hunchbacks,” as we do in the South. I rushed to pick one and crushed it in the palm of my hand, exclaiming as it excreted its yellow juice, “It’s got diarrhea!” You looked quite taken aback at my way of talking. As far as you were concerned, the flower was called a “shepherd’s crook,” and the word “diarrhea” and other words I’ve forgotten now shocked you at first, until you grew accustomed to the fact that there were people who’d been brought up differently from you.

  I wish Zemzem would get an ulcer on her tongue so that I wouldn’t have to listen to her nervy conversations all the time, and maybe some on her feet too, then she couldn’t pace about in that agitated way. I’ve changed my mind: cyclamens are beautiful and Zemzem isn’t. Her eyebrows are thin and constantly twisting into expressions of surprise and fear.

  “Come on. Let’s go down to the shelter across the road,” she shouts.

  “I’m putting oil on my hair,” I reply.

  Dear Jill Morrell,

  The story of the hostages has only started to figure prominently on the news and in people’s thoughts again over the last couple of days. Before that it had been submerged by day-to-day events.

  The violence going on at the minute has prompted local and international radio networks to keep mentioning them because the area called Al-Dahiya where they’re being held is ablaze now: Amal and Hizbullah are pointing the finger at each other; Hizbullah says Amal are traitors for calling them troublemakers, and Amal says that Hizbullah’s turned Al-Dahiya into a no-go area. Our house is near Hirj Beirut, close to Al-Dahiya. We always maintain it’s on the outskirts but actually it’s part of Al-Dahiya these days.

  What scares me is that they’ll be forgotten, and as the kidnappings mount up, people will grow accustomed to the idea. I used to think of you every time his name cropped up, or I saw your picture, or heard you talking on the news, hoping for a glimmer of information about him. I wished I could help you. I thought of you as I went through the backstreets of Al-Dahiya and saw alleyways like mazes, never-ending like a shaggy-dog story, or dark like the inside of a whale, and when I heard rumors that the hostages were in a certain apartment or garage. But what can I do about the forgetting, the acceptance bred of repetition and habit, the thinking which leaps barriers and leads us inevitably back to ourselves?

  I must admit when I first heard the report about your lover McCarthy, I thought of Paul McCartney and the Beatles and wondered what I’d done with their records. I began recalling the covers, especially the one where they’re all leaning against a door, next to a bust of a woman wearing a black cap. I always wondered who owned the cap. John or Ringo? And who thought of putting it on the bust? I remembered the gloom of the loft where my old possessions were stored. Zemzem never dared to throw them away, even though it wouldn’t have made any difference, for once we threw them in there, we forgot all about them. I felt nostalgic for the loft and our old house, where I was born and lived until my father died, and my mother burned all his things and nearly burned the house down. The moment his corpse had been turned to face Mecca and the wailing had begun around him, my mother rushed to gather up the belongings he had accumulated over the years and fed them to the fire. Tongues of flame beat against the walls and ceiling and the wood crackled. The funereal wailing was punctuated by screaming and coughing, as they tried to extinguish the fire, and the clatter of pots, jugs, and Nido milk cans added to the uproar. In their haste the women accidentally drenched each other, then dissolved into laughter. “If the old man came back now and saw us like this, and his things going up in flames, he wouldn’t hang around for long,” remarked my mother.

  Our loft was much frequented because it was like a treasure trove. Jars of oil, fat, and olives were stored there. My mother loved them for a secret reason even though she didn’t cook, and if she ever tried, she burned the food and the cooking pots. Unknown to my father, she sold these jars to her friends and with the money bought anything that was in fashion, especially if it was plastic, a material banned from our house. She also sold her jewelry and swore that she’d lost it or had it stolen. She lived in a world of movie stars like Asmahan and Anwar Wajdi, reliving the dialogues of their films and singing their songs. I would probably have remained in the house where I was born, but when my mother chose to remarry and move to the States, it didn’t occur to her to think about me, or to consult my grandmother about what should happen to me; but everyone knew instinctively that I would live with my grandmother and her maid Zemzem or our maid Isaf, no matter where, in a great variety of houses, playing with the children round about. In our family decisions were not taken; instead things were simply left to take their course.

  I realize that what I’m talking about doesn’t concern you, and th
at includes Paul McCartney even though he’s English. He may not have heard of your friend’s kidnapping and if he has he probably isn’t that interested. But I can’t get the record covers out of my mind, or the rhythm of the Beatles’ songs. I used to imagine that I’d save some money, go to London, and end up marrying John Lennon.

  You see how people revert to thinking about themselves. Even the fact that you’re going through my mind now is a result of my being wrapped up in myself. I feel as if all I possess at this moment is my body and this bed. My mind is no longer my own and if I force myself to think about it, I know that I possess my body but not, even temporarily, the ground I walk on. In short, I’m a hostage just like your friend, lover, fiancé. What does it mean to be kidnapped? Being separated forcibly from your environment, family, friends, home, bed. So in some strange way I can persuade myself I’m worse off than them. They rode in a comfortable car which dropped them off by mistake in a city of horrors, but I was abducted to a city which resembled the one I’d lived in originally with its clear skies, changing clouds, and some small details of life, like thyme and sesame pastries and the black soot which always clings to the outer wall of the baker’s oven. For I’m still in my own place, but separated from it in a painful way: this is my city and I don’t recognize it.