Beirut Blues Read online

  “The garden?”

  The Spaniard didn’t appear to be as enthusiastic as Asya.

  “Oh, Asmahan, you’re going to be wild about it,” she whispered to me.

  If she knew where I am and what I’m thinking of. I don’t want to hear any voice but Naser’s, sit anywhere but beside him. Nothing I see interests me. In fact, I scarcely see anything, and I don’t notice what I am eating. I follow them to the iron gate, kicking stones like a petulant child, wondering how I’m going to get through the rest of the evening.

  I went a few steps along a narrow path. There were a lot of trees surrounding a lake. I was thinking how Asya exaggerated, but then I caught my breath in wonder. It was paradise, as described in holy books or pictured in flights of the imagination. Underground rivers, cataracts, waterfalls, willow trees, and other trees I’d never seen before either in reality or in books. Their branches reached out, intertwining. Only a sliver of moon was visible, or perhaps it was the sun.

  “How beautiful!” Naser’s friend cleared his throat as he spoke, and the sleeping birds stirred a little, then settled down again. The tree roots had emerged from underground, curious to see how their daughter trees were growing, what shape their branches were, what color their leaves; roots like Tarzan’s ropes, some descending into the water which tumbled among the rocks. A round clearing in the sky between the treetops left us silent, awestruck. The Spaniard rushed to pick up flat stones and skimmed them across the water. The music rippled out into the silent night. The birds ruffled their wings again, and only settled down as they grew accustomed to the sound, and calm returned to the trees. When we began to be able to see each other, we realized that a portion of the moon had appeared in the round clearing in the sky to light up this paradise.

  To my right was a sort of natural staircase of ascending rocks and I went up it onto a narrow pathway.

  “Where are you going?” asked the Spaniard.

  “Up into the sky,” I answered, embarrassed.

  I realized that by answering like this I wanted to appear different from how I was, coquettish. He walked along beside me, telling me that this was a dead end, smiling at me. His concern was real, as the path narrowed suddenly and we were on a spur of land overlooking a sheer drop down to the tree-covered black paradise. He took my hand as if to protect me from danger, and to my surprise I came to like this plump warm hand around mine, forgetting that it was attached to a face whose features I couldn’t recall and a person I didn’t know. I walked along with him, and with each step I was thinking about this castle-house, this paradise-garden, Beirut, and my life in general. I was thoroughly confused about where I should live and whether I should go back. It wasn’t the touch of his hand awakening these thoughts in me, but the silence, and the fact that I was a stranger to everything. This place was neutral, and the language, the people, and their secret thoughts and desires were all alien to me. As far as I was concerned, it was the beginning of the world and all I had to do was take the empty glass and enjoy the illusory potion. The idea of staying there loomed larger in my mind with every step down the rocky staircase.

  In a place like this I won’t be expected—or even expect myself—to keep a hold of the thread of the past which has made me and try to weave it into my present. It will break automatically when I isolate myself here without my things. I have a brief, radiant vision of myself picking up the letters which the morose-looking old man has brought me on a gold tray as I lie on the antique bed, unable to stop slithering around on its silk sheets. The letters touch my heart and so I have another brief glimpse of myself showing the paradise to my friends and embracing Naser there. I stop at this image. It doesn’t fit with my sense of estrangement in this house, nor with the life I’m supposed to have left behind.

  But I’ll transform it into a house that’s half Arab. I’ll go back in time, have children, and call them old Arab names: Belqis, Tarik, Layla, Ziyad.

  I looked hard at the Spaniard, and from his smile I guessed he knew his house was bait for the houris, but there was no sign that he had any inkling of what I was after.

  I claimed I’d had too much to drink and my head was hurting. For the first time I found myself thinking that if Naser called and nobody was at home to answer him, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. The Spaniard brought me some Alka-Seltzer and suggested that I lie down somewhere. Vera, a plump blonde with slightly bulging eyes, tried to be concerned, but she didn’t manage to hide her annoyance, as I had monopolized the attention of her friend all evening, talking about Beirut during the siege and occupation, describing how I’d left it and how it used to be before the war. Meanwhile, I could feel Asya watching me, unable to believe that I was the sad, abstracted woman she’d invited to wait in her house in case her lover contacted her there. Every time the caller was somebody other than Naser, I would say the same thing: “He’s forgotten all about me … or perhaps nobody gave him my message.”

  And here I was trying to win the Spaniard’s favors. I kicked off my shoes and laughed loudly. “I’m drunk,” I said, and lay back on the sofa.

  As I dozed off to the sound of the guests taking their leave, I felt a hand on my forehead, then on my hair. I sat up, pretending to be alarmed. Acting as if I was reassured once I knew it was him, I closed my eyes again. All he did was wrap a blanket around me, then bend over me, breathing heavily and reaching out to touch my face. I opened my eyes and smiled at him and let him put his lips on mine. The only sensation I got was the smell of wine and cigar, but I submitted to his lips and kissed him back and let him put his tongue in my mouth, although I’d already decided I wouldn’t let him go any further. But all he did was put his hand on the blanket where my breast was, then he heaved a deep sigh, stroked my hair, and said good night.

  Morning in the castle-house was even more beautiful than night. From a distance came the sound of cocks crowing, animal bells jingling, voices talking in Spanish. It was just like dawn in our village when the farm laborers rose to start work. Day arrived concealing the damp scents of the night. I wondered if the bush they called queen of the night had stopped giving off its intoxicating perfume of the night before. The sounds came drifting up to me again, and I pictured myself rising in the morning once I had become mistress of this place.

  I rose and went strolling through the vast high-ceilinged rooms and noticed that now instead of swallowing me up they seemed to draw me in. I wished I could speak Spanish so that I could ask the way to the paradise-garden. The voices exchanged banter and it was like being at home. The laborers greeted me. They must have been used to the sight of women of different ages and races in this house at all times of day and night. But they didn’t know I was different: I didn’t want to throw parties, acquire money or jewels, but just to exist in the midst of this beauty, start a new life.

  But the Spaniard was in a hurry. He was a lawyer. He picked up a leather briefcase like any man going to work, and the illusion that whoever entered this castle-house severed any connection with the outside world vanished. But it didn’t matter. It was all the better for me. Most of the time I’d be alone in this paradise.

  In the car I learned that not only would I never be alone there, I’d probably never see it again. The man offered me lunch in an apartment he owned in town, because Vera had started to have doubts. I knew I’d been thrown out of paradise and Vera had him in her clutches. I’d never been as sad as that day. It was worse than when I was waiting for Naser to call day after day. I’d been happy to bargain with my body and emotions for the sake of that house and a new life, and still I’d been refused.

  I can feel you growing impatient, Jill Morrell, but that’s what hostages are like. Reliving the past. Conducting a constant dialogue with it. We should return to the question of the kidnappers and their victims. You want comfort and rapid information, but perhaps I’ve opened your eyes to something you hadn’t taken into account before. Now I’ll tell you how senseless kidnappings have become a commonplace of this war. There are no rules. T
he war is changed by a shift in accents and uniforms. Sad things have become laughable, funny things sad, kidnapping a legitimate practice.

  A relation of Hayat’s who was held for a few months woke up one morning to be told, “Congratulations. We’re going to let you go today.”

  He was terrified that they were going to kill him. He was taken blindfold to a car and driven to some other building, but before they dumped him they removed the blindfold. As he struggled to get used to the light, the din of voices, the screech of cars, the strident call from the muezzin, he thought how someone in his situation focuses entirely on himself and his five senses. He pushed open the door and heard his first sentence on the outside: “Good to see you. Come on in. Your family’s expecting you.”

  The speaker shook his hand. He was a youth dressed in ordinary street clothes. The released man was still in a state of shock. The room was packed with young men, all in ordinary outdoor clothes. One of them picked up a water pitcher and drank from it, while he stood there open-mouthed. Then he began to cry as someone handed him his trousers and he put them on over the striped flannel pajamas which they’d given him the day after he was kidnapped, even though he’d always worn silk pajamas before.

  Where were his kidnappers? Had his wife paid the ransom?

  The affair didn’t end with the return of the hostage. His kidnappers turned up on his doorstep a few days later.

  They walked in and greeted him like an old friend. “We missed you!”

  They chatted easily for a few minutes, intimating that a close bond had been forged between them and their prisoner. One of them remarked to his wife, “Really, madam, we thought about you all the time. Your husband’s a fussy man. This was too salty. He didn’t like that. This wasn’t properly cooked. We used to say, ‘How does his wife put up with him, God help her!’ ”

  Then they got down to business. They complained they had incurred losses which they hadn’t foreseen when they kidnapped him. They’d spent lavishly on his food, bought indigestion tablets and medicine for his stomach, bribed people living nearby to keep quiet, and even the good woman who’d cooked for him had asked more than they could afford. They’d barely finished their complaint and drunk their coffee when Munir disappeared and came back with an envelope containing money, which he handed to them, begging them not to forget the cook. He used to hear her asking the guard if the Christian gentleman had liked his food. She cooked whatever he wanted and she was a good cook, even though she added a lot of garlic and coriander, which made him drowsy. He’d been surprised at the care she took over his food and her concern that he should enjoy it, despite his circumstances. Then he asked them how they were free, as someone had informed him that they had been disciplined by the party for kidnapping him. It turned out that they had consulted a sheikh, who had issued a fatwa pronouncing him a legitimate target because of his American connections, and so the party had been forced to release them. As he digested this thunderbolt, he assumed an air of indifference, but he was shaking with anger and fear. His wife wanted to throw what was left of the hot coffee over their heads, snatch the money back, and scream that they weren’t her fellow countrymen. The same night the couple decided to emigrate.

  Don’t worry, Jill Morrell. Your boyfriend won’t come to any harm in these battles. Things will change. The current deranged bombardment of the city will stop, they’ll gather up the bodies, the Red Cross or the Red Crescent will take the wounded to the hospital, and they’ll announce a cease-fire, temporary or long-term.

  This is the problem. That things go back to being exactly as they were, and all they’ve done is added a great deal of salt to the wound. What’s going on now has no connection with anyone but the fighters. Who’s going to take a war of the streets and alleys seriously, and care about its outcome?

  I don’t believe I’ll think about anything beyond the confines of my room. But I have to stop myself sneaking a glance through a gap in the garden wall at a house which is said to be occupied by party members. The night was calm, and everyone was asleep. I saw the fighters sleeping with their families. I could almost hear them snoring. I lowered my head and wondered if I had really been kidnapped. Perhaps I was still having a bad dream. People sleeping peacefully couldn’t be kidnappers. Then I reminded myself that evil sleeps too.

  My Dear Naser,

  You’re on my mind again, and if I hadn’t been distracted by the tank parked outside, I’d have been worrying that you were going to fall ill or die. Something always seems to happen to the people I have strong thoughts or dreams about and I hear of it sooner or later. I know these ideas have been ingrained in me since childhood by the women around me, and if I really believed them, nobody I knew would still be alive. I’ve often tried to curb my premonitions, but then I think that they might sometimes turn out to be for the good.

  My mother not only dismissed such beliefs but made them a subject of ridicule in the cassettes she regularly sent to Fadila: first, her gentle voice sings a verse of a folk song, then there are some gasps of laughter, then she says, “What a miserable life it is here! Everything’s so proper, we’ve even stopped being superstitious!” After that she tells the story of her brother-in-law who runs a hotel laundry and washes the sheets as the guests depart; so far none of them has fallen out of an airplane or met his or her end under the wheels of fast-moving vehicles on the way home.

  I’ve told myself it’s just the circumstances making you surface in my thoughts again, although I was crossing my fingers or knocking on wood at the same time. My head’s like a book whose characters fade and disappear from one chapter to the next, then reemerge in all their clarity to inhabit the pages again. Except that in the really bad times and when I fear for my sanity, I tend to think about things that are remote from events around me. For example, when the battles were in full swing and the girl next door came around in the hope of some moral support, I asked her why she didn’t knit me a shawl, then I fetched the brass pestle and mortar so we could grind chickpeas and make something nice to eat. She was amazed by my suggestions and panicked every time she heard an explosion, but once I’d convinced her the shelter was deadly and staying in the house could be pleasant, she settled down, despite Zemzem’s constant shouting: “They’re all crazy! Thugs! Savages! Hell, we’re going to die.”

  I’d even begun to find the sound of Zemzem’s footsteps intolerable, so to relieve my feelings I tried to annoy her: “Hell’s a lovely word,” I teased. “You can imagine devils or bad angels prodding people with big forks, their eyes blazing, their faces yellow and thin.”

  I’m used to Zemzem being confused or uncertain, but I couldn’t stand her wailing, beating her chest, shrieking, and turning around in circles like a dog chasing its tail. Since the battles had started up again she had been imploring us constantly to leave the city not for the village, but for Egypt or Syria.

  “Do you want people to feel sorry for us,” my grandmother would remark, “and say how dreadful, they’ve abandoned their houses and are wandering here and there like vagrants?”

  “Listen to her! You think people would pity you if you went abroad? They’d be jealous.”

  Gunfire shook the house. We were each in our separate rooms. Zemzem’s wailing preceded her as she came into my room; when she saw a book in my hands, she backed away as if I were pointing a deadly weapon at her: “In the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful!” she exclaimed.

  She hurried to my grandmother, who was reading a prayer book by candlelight, and asked her if there was a special prayer to stop the fighting. My grandmother was suddenly tired of Zemzem and told her to find a family who’d take her abroad with them.

  Zemzem quivered as if she’d touched a live socket. “You mean you can do without me,” she said tremulously, “now that you’ve drained all my strength? When I first came to you, I was as fresh as a head of basil.”

  I began to feel sorry for her. “My grandmother’s talking like that because she’s upset,” I called. “She’s scared yo
u’ll go away and leave her.”

  Suddenly I see Zemzem as a stranded fish on a dried-up riverbed trying to find a little pool of water among the weeds and pebbles. Her backbone has begun to curve and she’s crying out for oxygen. Without my grandmother and our way of life Zemzem couldn’t survive. But perhaps I am wrong, for the days have long gone when Zemzem was proud just to sit next to my grandmother in the car, or at home when she was receiving guests.

  We heard the door rattle as she slammed it violently shut behind her. “If only we had taught her to cry, ‘No Amal! No Hizbullah! Imam Ali is God’s chosen one!’ ” said my grandmother. Then she began to repeat softly to herself, “No Amal and no Hizbullah. Imam Ali is God’s chosen one.”

  A demonstration! Was it possible? Even the word had an alien ring, for it was a reminder of more normal times. Was Zemzem taking part in a demonstration wearing her house slippers and caftan? I heard my grandmother coughing a little in her room. How weak she has become. She’s no longer a djinn. Perhaps it’s because she’s stopped wearing her big flowing white dresses and white silk kerchiefs as if she’s just returned from the pilgrimage to Mecca, and these days she doesn’t powder her pale face in the theatrical way she used to.

  For the previous three days we hadn’t moved from our rooms; then we heard a dreadful explosion. We all screamed and rushed out calling to each other. When the three of us almost collided in the landing, we burst out laughing. Flames were coming from the storeroom and I raced my grandmother to the door. A metal object lay innocently on the floor there in the midst of the destruction. It resembled a thick, dry branch. “Come on, let’s cook it,” I said to my grandmother.

  Laughing, she said fondly that I had my mother’s sense of humor so I felt obliged to tell her that it was plagiarized from a book of poems I’d been reading:

  My mother decided recently