Beirut Blues Read online

  I’m a stranger here. Not because the streets have changed physically, and the signs are no longer illuminated, the lights don’t work, water doesn’t come flowing out of the taps as it used to in ancient memory. Not because the paint is peeling off the cars and their workings are visible, or the seasons have become different from one street to the next, or a forest of trees has risen up where there used to be cement, while in gardens and open spaces there are plastic-bottle trees. Not because stagnant water glistens from the swamps which have formed across main roads, buildings have collapsed and half collapsed, and even those built recently are falling down before they are finished. The façades of shops are not only unfamiliar, but they actually transport me to another country. There are Iranian signs on the shopfronts, on the walls, posters of men of religion, of leaders I don’t know. I no longer understand the language people use. I know it is Arabic but it has become a series of riddles, its letters mysterious symbols, and it’s not the language we learned in childhood and practiced in youth. It has different meanings which are unfamiliar to me. I tried looking in a dictionary but didn’t find equivalents of the words I heard spoken, even though I attempted to observe how they sounded and the contexts in which they were used, so that I could understand a little at least, but it was impossible for me to follow the logic.

  I tried to use a map as the street names and the recognizable landmarks began to change hour by hour, even minute by minute.

  The world is trembling, breaking apart, turning upside down, and the people are being transformed. Instead of my friend’s beautiful face, I see a sheep looking through the iron railings of her balcony. Refugees have come to Beirut, which used to be a dream city, their sentiments have exploded into music and song, and they have put up speakers in the heart of the residential and commercial areas. I walk as if I’m in a big soap bubble, rolling along, not touching anything around me until I meet up with other bubbles and my friends emerge from them. How can I recognize a city which tolerates fanatics who search for blond hair and light eyes to kidnap as if they inhabit a crude fairy-tale world, or allows a date palm which has been there for a hundred years and grown close to the sky to be uprooted to make way for a rocket which can even dissolve dental fillings?

  How can I recognize a city which only lets me hear a faint echo of what it thinks as it dances and fights, fights and dances? I hear the sound of its breathing mingled with Arabic and Western music from the clubs and television screens, with explosions, sirens, and the smell of death. Like your friend, I’ve grown used to the dark and I no longer see shadows or reflections. They blindfold him every time they take him from one place to another, even from his cell to the bathroom. I’ve made friends with the darkness since there’s no escaping it. Sometimes I light candles and sometimes I delude myself that I can draw light from the darkness, which has begun to hide faint wrinkles on my face and some little gray hairs which have found their way onto my head.

  My daily routine is uncomfortable like theirs: do a few exercises, wash my face, brush my teeth, analyze my situation in whispers, eat a little food. The hostages have stopped enjoying food, and my appetite has gone too. Eating requires hands adaptable to the morsels of food, teeth for chewing, a tongue that can taste. I must be suffering from anemia. Whenever I reach out my hand, my wrist muscles go limp. Do I think about taking up a sport? It seems remote. Something that goes with mountains, wide safe roads, and rooms where the sun comes in.

  Part of the daily routine as well as exercises, washing your face, brushing your teeth, analyzing, whispering, is the sensation that time has stood still. A minute passes slowly, stretching itself out for as long as it can before it gives way to the next. This makes me stop believing that I’ll escape from my abductors, and my resolve fails, for I find myself adapting to them, starting to resemble them as a last resort, hoping that perhaps they’ll take it upon themselves to release me, and my city will be restored to me. However, like the hostages, I don’t resemble those around me, nor do I come to depend on my abductor, as kidnap victims usually do after a while. In fact, my relationship with them is based entirely on increasing hatred and revulsion and the conviction that my guards are shoddy, immature characters, who have suddenly found themselves in positions of strength thanks to their wild hair, thick mustaches, and beards, which cover large expanses of their faces, gold chains wound around their necks with spent bullets dangling from them, and unnecessarily loud voices. I recognize the voice of a young lad from a local shop, who used to sell watermelons before the war and spray the sidewalk in front of the shop on hot dusty afternoons. The owner played backgammon with his friends while the boy bobbed between them, obeying orders, adding more embers to their hookahs, and making their coffee.

  Like the hostages, I can’t find any excuses for my jailers, even if some of them are rootless exiles. They change continuously as if there’s a factory producing new versions all the time. They’re like nouns and verbs ungoverned by rules, indeclinable, or arithmetical problems where numbers and logic interweave and every time the teacher and the student think of solving them together their brain cells hit a concrete wall, so they despair and leave them unsolved, for today’s enemies are tomorrow’s allies and vice versa.

  Even though my only solution is to feel resentment towards everyone, like the hostages, I have no alternative but to follow the uncomfortable daily routine. I read, play cards, grow bored with reading, puzzle over chess moves. I play cards alone, seeing a pattern emerge from the numbers, which I both believe and disbelieve.

  Again I shake my head as the hostages do, finding no rhyme or reason in it all. Who kidnapped them? Who’s kidnapping me? Is this a civil war, an international war, or a capitalist war? It’s odd how I grow accustomed to this routine, how they do, how hope remains that times will change and new life return.

  All the same, I’m always thinking about death. It’s there, and sometimes it’s coming towards me. I open my eyes or keep them closed, depending on whether I’m interested in seeing and eating and staying alive or indifferent and without hope. In this game of mine, when my eyes are open I see the crumbling walls of my room, the new windowpane, which is actually a thick plastic bag, and the marks left by the mirror which splintered and scattered on the floor in an earlier round of fighting. So far I haven’t thought of painting over the place where it hung. For now people don’t even renew the façades of their houses. I leave everything as it is. Like the hostages, I don’t think about trying to achieve anything.

  If I wanted to recall exactly how I was kidnapped, I’d have to go back a few years to the time I took cover in the shelter and the shock of realization that hit me as I crouched there. I’d only gone down there for the sake of my friend Hayat, who’d arrived on a visit to be greeted by a flare-up of violence. She was terrified, like a passenger in an aircraft which was about to explode in midair. She hid her head in my lap, and I tried not to think about the stale smell of the shelter. As I huddled there motionless, looking at the rank walls, I knew I wasn’t free. I swore to myself that I would never willingly let this feeling take me over, that I had to confront it.

  Looking back, I think I was kidnapped twice. The second time, I was driving through winding streets, some partly cordoned off to protect an embassy, a hospital, a party headquarters. Among the cars, which were missing paint and headlights, I was queen of the road and I nudged and pushed and kept my hand on the horn until I reached Simon’s building. The trembling in me surged ahead of me as I ran to find him. I was happy. My meetings with Simon gave me a feeling of warmth and excitement, snatching me right out of the city as it surged back and forth between uproar and fragrant calm. For Simon was the noise at the heart of events and at the same time he was, like me, outside them. Our eyes shone and our breathing grew faster whenever we were close to one another. I waited until we lay down naked on the sofa. Then the drugged sensation and the love took over, and the feeling that I wanted to have my pleasure whatever happened. It is only when we got up and dressed that
I knew I didn’t love him.

  I was still indulging in pleasant fantasies of what lay ahead of me when the traffic came to a halt. There was a sound of firing, and people vanished, abandoning their cars so that the street was transformed into a frightening, noisy garage. As I hesitated, trying to decide whether to go back home or keep on to Simon’s, a gang of youths fell on the car and hauled me out, and drove off leaving me alone there, dumbfounded at the sight of my beloved car submitting to someone else’s touch and deserting me. I took refuge in a nearby building, but only when I saw a bomb landing in the distance, and people were calling to me to take cover. I wandered over to the building and was dragged in by a family gathered together in a bare concrete room. My first thought was that they were prisoners, especially the children, who were sprawled in a dejected heap in a corner. Then I wondered if they’d abducted the children from their playgrounds, which were devils’ territory these days. Their faces were corroded with fear.

  I must be like the hostages. I no longer think about life outside the place I am, and I even stick with the other hostages. Despite the regularity of the routine, I can’t concentrate. I keep reliving the shock of my kidnapping and I shall never be free of it even if I’m released. I know I’ll always be like a kidnap victim and the bitter memories will haunt me. I no longer think about life outside. Even the existence of other countries seems like an illusion. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to walk around at night, looking at the stars, hair flying, a muslin shawl draped around my shoulders. The only world that exists is in this room, this house. So I have no aspirations. In fact, I grow more and more used to being lazy and irresponsible and can no longer read newspapers.

  I’ve abandoned myself to the notion that I am not responsible for my fate, and I allow those closest to me—Hayat, my mother, other friends outside Lebanon—to wonder whether I’m alive or dead every time the battles rage. You must know how they feel.

  I admit, Jill Morrell, that I thought more than once of staging my own kidnapping. That was several years ago when I was abroad, and some power must be having its revenge on me now for those thoughts.

  The first time, I was convinced that as soon as Naser and I had been reunited for a few moments and he had held me close, he wouldn’t be able to let me go back to Beirut, and he would abduct me. I smelled him, as I always did when I thought of him, and he embraced me. The warmth settled around us, but I couldn’t see him. I waited for him on the beach in Tunis, burning like a hot coal with the sun and longing. My craving for him made a fool of me, and I kept lying there, deluding myself that he was watching me from a distance, enjoying the sight of me waiting for him, that he would jump out on me any moment and throw sand over me, and I smiled. I went on harboring these illusions for days, just as I did while I was waiting for him in Port Said and Alexandria. Always on beaches, as the tide ebbed and flowed. Anyone listening to me now would think I was a dreamer. Of course, otherwise how can I explain my great love for Naser and Beirut?

  All the same I threw myself at a Spaniard and tried to make him like me enough to kidnap me and keep me at his country estate. The idea of settling there for good had slowly taken hold of me as I stood with a friend of Naser’s and the friend’s wife, Asya, on the edge of a Spanish road, surrounded by almond trees covered in snowy blossom. The sight of the plains stretching to the horizon gave me a feeling of pure contentment and peace. We arrived at a big house with cactus plants bordering the drive, bearing flowers like coral, and I envied whoever lived there.

  The car turned along the drive and stopped at the broad sweep of gravel in front of the double door, which stood wide open. At the noise of the car’s brakes a plump, balding man came out to greet us, distracted temporarily from his solicitous welcome by a huge dog which suddenly appeared from nowhere. Then he led us through his ancient house onto the balcony, where I sighed deeply, hoping he would feel sorry for me.

  The yellow plains, the cultivated terraces, even the cool breezes, all seemed to emanate from the red sun, enveloped now in a pink and violet haze. The sounds of sheep and cattle being driven home from pasture were clearly audible even though they were still far away. I stood at the balcony rail watching them, remembering my village. The shepherd, unconcerned by the barking of his dog, seemed to be rolling a cigarette and lighting up. The Spaniard approached me, holding out a glass of wine. Then he stood next to me, resting his hand on the balcony rail, lord of all he surveyed. I pictured my grandfather dressed like him in a colored shirt and jeans, a cigar in his hand. My grandparents probably thought I would marry a man such as this and stand with him on our balcony, except that instead of the returning flocks we would have been surveying our fruit trees.

  Darkness fell gradually. The noise died away and calm settled over the place. It was as if the whole of nature were reemerging from the mouth of the night. Blackness engulfed the surrounding country, transforming everything into shadowy noiseless shapes. Even the cricket in the wood was taken by surprise at the coming of darkness and poised silently, not moving its wings.

  Footsteps sounded behind us, preventing me from telling the Spaniard that I too was a daughter of the land. They turned out to belong to an old man with a scowl on his face, who muttered a few words and then left. Our host smiled and invited us to go in to dinner. Minutes later a woman called Vera came in and kissed us all and asked which of us had just arrived from Beirut.

  I collapsed onto my seat. Beirut came back to haunt me, paralyzing my hands as I tried to eat, making me forget how relaxed I’d been here, in a country which still existed and was free from the chaos of warfare. I was used to the idea that there were places where people led normal secure lives and, although the reality made me uncertain and jealous, it had helped me forget what I’d seen and heard in the times of violence and siege. Now I wanted them to lower their eyes and listen to me, and I was desperate for the polite details to be done with. The old servant no longer had any excuse to come in and out with the dinner. I retreated into silence, waiting for their questions. They weren’t questions, but statements. The emotion in them was genuine but they were in a hurry to let the trivia take over the evening again. We rose to do a tour of the house. Big rooms. Big spaces. A big past. Then a small chapel. The Virgin Mary wide-eyed. Two small theaters, one with a huge movie screen.

  We paused in an enormous room which was empty except for a large antique bed. The Spaniard picked up a book from the window seat, opened it, and pointed to a photo of the bed. I nodded my head admiringly, not bothering to work out what he meant. I was wondering what effect this bed would have had on me and Naser. Would we have laughed, and thrown ourselves down on it, or taken the mattress off and put it on the floor as we always used to when we were moving around a lot and didn’t like the look of a bed?

  I touched the gold and silver ornamentation on its four posts, which rose like the columns of a ruined building. We wouldn’t have liked its outlandishness, and its mattress was sure to be infested with dampness. We would have fled the empty room, fearing a trap.

  I drifted away from all these people to the rooms where Naser and I used to meet, and relived each room one by one. I met him in an ever-increasing variety of rooms: in beautiful houses with jasmine on their balconies, in buildings swarming with inhabitants, in foul houses which never saw the sunlight and where even the flies didn’t venture. The last room had no electricity, and the room before that was in a hotel where a friend of his lay in the other bed with a high fever, so that periodically he shouted out streams of nonsense, which we found amusing at the time. Sometimes they weren’t bedrooms but luxurious living rooms full of Palestinian artifacts in large empty apartments. Then there were rooms in the houses of his married friends, and I used to be filled with disappointment, because as soon as I heard the noise from inside, I knew I wasn’t going to be alone with him. But this feeling was replaced by a surge of renewed pleasure at the thought that he was drawing me into him, whatever the circumstances, and I watched him playing with the children before he
ate, then noticed them observing him uncertainly as he chewed and swallowed, and when one of the children reached out and touched his Adam’s apple, I had the urge to do the same.

  I tried to guess what the place would be like as soon as he contacted me and gave me the new address. Was it an apartment, an office, a house? Would we be by ourselves? I began to picture the place. The unknown chair waiting for me to sit on it. A room in a hotel which transported me to a seaside town, unaffected by the war. Despite the tension, I blessed this Aladdin’s lamp which whisked me from one world to another, once from dry land to the ocean in the form of an undulating water bed. I sprawled delightedly on its soft dark red cover like a film star and felt faintly nauseous. “You mean we can’t travel by sea?” remarked Naser in a mock-serious voice. Travel? When we are meeting fleetingly in the waves like the ebb and flow of the tide?

  But I knew he used to think about marriage more than those men who led ordinary, normal lives. He needed to. Even when he walked along the street, he was aware of what he was doing, conscious of his feet as they struck the pavement. The idea of marriage removed the uncertainty he felt about his commitment. When sometimes he lost faith in his revolutionary activity, he regained some enthusiasm if he could think that his struggle was also for the sake of protecting his family and creating a better, more stable future for them.

  “I hope you have lots of children, Naser,” Asya had said in Beirut. He had just presented her with a female kitten as a consolation for giving birth to a son instead of the daughter she wanted.

  “Both of you, I mean,” she added, turning to me.

  I was pleased she saw our relationship as serious and liked us meeting in her house while she was away, but he was scornful. “What?” he scoffed. “Do you think I want to drag my children from one house to another like you do? I’m not that crazy!”