Beirut Blues Read online

  I expect to feel pain at the sight of you and the unbelievable changes in you; what I see now as we drive past ruined buildings resembles fragments of crossword puzzles, made out of cement and wood and gaps where the sky shows through, or which people have filled in with plastic bags. Nevertheless, a secret feeling of happiness creeps over me as I catch a glimpse of a tree and picture a bird singing in its branches or flying off into the lovely wide-open sky, and feel convinced that there are still colors and life in the world. The driver stops in one of the lines at a checkpoint and I hear him say to the car drawn up next to him, “I’ve got some jars of honey here for the father of a friend of mine, from his son in England.”

  This normality, even though it gives a skewed picture, brings peace to my heart, making Beirut seem far away. These days the city is awash with colored plastic water containers; the word “dollar” dominates the conversation, drowning out the sound of the generators; money changers follow the price of the dollar, headsets clamped to their ears; Fadila mistook these for Walkmans. “Is that a new model?” she asked one of them. “How much did it cost you?” They even have mobile premises these days: a plastic bag which they carry around with them. People have grown accustomed to seeing the dollar and the picture of George Washington, instead of the blue of the Lebanese hundred-lira note. Even the Gypsy who sells thyme and chicory asked Zemzem to pay for her purchases in dollars. “Why not? Just for you! In dollars it is!” Zemzem replied spitefully.

  She left her sitting on the staircase, her sack in her lap, and came back with a bundle of newspaper clippings. When the Gypsy objected, Zemzem laughed. “I bet you’ve never seen a dollar in your life,” she said.

  Beirut is far away now, like a blazing ember which we dare not approach even in our thoughts, for fear of being burned, but the echo of exploding shells persists inside our heads. We get out of the car by a flourishing orchard to rest from the potholes and the roadblocks, which show no sign of diminishing in frequency as the journey progresses. There are still many hours to go to our village and the driver suggests lunch and begins lighting a fire and taking potatoes, eggs, and chicken from a bag. “Ali’s orders,” he declares.

  My grandmother objects, muttering that we aren’t hungry. “I am,” cries Zemzem. “So’s the driver. We all need to eat.”

  Many other people had already stopped their cars and were scattered in groups around the orchard, some lying on the grass, others chasing after their children. The smell of roasting meat crept into my nostrils and I suddenly felt hungry, and flung myself down on the grass like them. At once my grandmother asked me not to, explaining that I was different from them.

  I sat up, clasping my legs and resting my head on my knees, and my grandmother reprimanded me again. I wandered over to watch the driver, who was still fanning the fire with a newspaper. A group of boys had gathered around him, including one who had lost his hand. He seemed quite lively, even though he still had spots of blood on his shirt. I must have been staring at him, as a woman came up to me and said, “The bastards he worked for did it.” Before I could think what to say, she went on, “He went to work as usual, reached out to pick up a shoe, and there was an explosion which blew his hand off.”

  Could he really be a garbage collector? He looked about ten.

  “Why? What does he do?”

  Her face lit up at the prospect of someone who would take an interest in her troubles. “He goes to the dump and sorts everything into separate bags. Sorry, it’s a bit disgusting. Glass, plastic, empty cans. It’s better than being scared out of his mind, which he would be if he went to look for gold teeth in the graveyard at night, like some of them do.”

  I felt embarrassed at my failure to grasp all the implications of what she was saying. “What does he do with the things he collects?” I asked her.

  She stared, and looked me up and down, becoming convinced in the process that she couldn’t form an opinion about my material status on the basis of my clothes. “He takes it to the scrap dealers.”

  I replied quickly, as if wanting to exonerate his employers, that it wasn’t in their interests to blow his hand off.

  She did not challenge me immediately and say, “Why not? Where have you been?” She just looked me up and down again and nodded her head, assuring herself of my naïveté or the truth of her words: “Why not? Everybody knows about it. When respectable men and women start looking through the rubbish, the dealers get annoyed, as if it was specially reserved for their own people. God will see justice done. Big tough men are losing their dignity. Never mind. We’re going to ask al-Hariri and they’ll make him a new hand.”

  She fidgeted a little and looked down at the ground, then asked me where we were going and whether the driver was my brother or my cousin, and if Zemzem was my mother. Then, pointing to the big truck, she said, “Our neighbor took pity on us. I wanted to go and see my mother and he gave us a lift.”

  Why did I not believe the stories Zemzem told, and yet I believed this woman? Was it because there was always a ring of grim satisfaction to what Zemzem said, a tearful note, a hint of exaggeration? Whenever she told us tales like these, I found myself saying it was the victims’ fault or a feeling of indifference towards them, and I noticed my grandmother did the same. Had Zemzem not told us about explosions in the rubbish dumps which had taken people’s fingers off and we had dismissed the subject, saying these were just rumors designed to spread fear and chaos, so that people like her would get scared?

  “Somebody’s mother sold her wedding ring so that she could make bread salad and meat loaf. Somebody else bought a wedding dress for her daughter off the family of a bride-to-be who’d died before her wedding day. Zakiyya took her son away from school because he wasn’t very bright, so that she could afford to send the rest.”

  It was true every household was feeling the effects of inflation, even ours. My grandmother decided that it would not make us live any longer if we ate qashqawan cheese, so she stopped buying it. Zemzem roasted one chicken at a time instead of two, and white-collar workers and people with average incomes started doing without basics. Our next-door neighbor no longer brought a pot of coffee around in the afternoons when she came to hear our news; instead she would bring mulberry juice from her village.

  We go back to the car and drive off, only to be pulled up at another checkpoint. I’ve become familiar with the variations and am learning how to deal with them. A show of seriousness is required if they are manned by the militias; pleading or looking frightened doesn’t work; it is best to be patient with the Syrians, as their soldiers seem tired, and fed up with being away from home. In the past I had overreacted at checkpoints: they seemed to open my eyes to the plain truth that Lebanon had been divided into statelets and zones, that there were people working to specific agendas and that the present situation had not been anticipated in advance by the fighters.

  We stop. “We’ll have to go back. We’ll take the upper road: the low road is full of bandits. Mr. Ali’s orders.”

  “What’s the world coming to?” sighs my grandmother.

  I understand what she means: Ali has become Mr. Ali. The low road is nearer, easier, but the trees grow so thickly on either side of it that it is overrun with ordinary robbers posing as militiamen, and holding up cars on the pretext of checking drivers’ ID cards. If only the driver would take a risk and go by the low road so that I could see its trees in all their abundance, have a look at the bandits, and relish the sight of Zemzem fearing for her quail.

  Some of the villages were razed to the ground and looked like historical remains or part of the natural scenery, but I was pleased to see washing spread out to dry and smell smoke rising from a valley where they were burning rubbish and dead leaves; I was even glad to hear a donkey braying: it all reminded me of the past and you. But the roadblocks reminded me of the present, and my fears for you.

  We used to visit the village from time to time in the early years of the war. As the country grew more rocky and mountainous, the vi
nes would appear, and the orchards full of gladioli like yellow and white lollipops; the village seemed untouched by the fighting, and the sound of rockets and mortars there was unimaginable, but some buildings had obviously been hit. In peacetime we left the sea, drove over the mountains, and plunged downwards onto the plains until we reached the outskirts of the village. I used to wonder why it was there in that particular spot. The blind shepherd was always the first to hear my grandmother’s car and recognize the sound of its engine; he would hurry towards it, feeling his way over the stones with his stick, and as soon as he came to the asphalt, he would shout at his flock to wait. Ali stopped the car and dismounted to fetch him and lead him up to the window, restraining him from hitting it so vigorously with his stick. When the shepherd heard my grandmother’s voice, he kissed his palm and put it to his forehead in a gesture of gratitude. She opened her black handbag and took out a bundle of lira notes, folded them in two, and placed them in his hand. When she closed the bag again, it always made a loud, self-important click.

  On this occasion we were not greeted by my grandfather’s orchards as we had been in the past, but by a sign for Samira, Coiffeuse. “A hairdressing salon here!” I exclaimed. “Incredible!”

  I could not imagine any of the women in the village having their hair done except Ruhiyya. I smiled at the thought of Ruhiyya with a cigarette in her hand and a cup of coffee on her lap.

  “A chocolate factory! A bank! A chicken farm. A family restaurant. The Nabaa Café—Three Floors. Villas. Is this really our village? A bank. Another bank.”

  “Do you put cotton wool in your ears?” answered Zemzem impatiently. “I told you before that a hairdresser’s had opened in the village, and when Kawakib went to get her hair done, the first time the hairdresser told her that there wasn’t any hot water, the second time she was making stuffed vine leaves, and the third time she said she was tired and couldn’t do it. And I told you that Hamad Jaafar got his money out of Kuwait and came and opened a factory, and his brother opened a restaurant, and they couldn’t believe their luck!”

  I had heard it all before, but I couldn’t picture it: tables with cloths and a waiter with a pencil and paper, instead of one of the estate workers on the little patch of desert where we used to buy cucumbers, and melons which were still green.

  “Half a kilo,” we used to shout, and he would put down his hoe and come over to us carrying a cucumber wrapped in newspaper or in a scrap torn from his bag of earth. I think I can still hear the flies buzzing, but it might be the hum of the machinery in the chocolate factory.

  My grandmother clears her throat more and more frequently. She can’t look at her orchards for any length of time, while I can’t tear my eyes away from them. The trees have mostly died and the wildflowers no longer grow in such profusion. The color of the earth seems to dominate the other colors, then our house appears, and I hear the sound of the water cistern. I feel as if I have never left this place. Everything is as it always was. Naima runs out, followed by another girl, and my grandfather. The unknown girl examines us, then rushes off in the opposite direction and disappears. Everybody kisses us, my grandfather clasps me to his chest, lets me go, and kisses my grandmother’s hand, then holds me tightly again, and behind him I see the line of washing dancing in the breeze. The pine trees are as they were, the pear tree right beside the water tank. I free myself from his embrace and stretch up until I can see the tent on the roof, where one of his relations used to take his siestas and compose poetry, so we nicknamed him Abu Tammam.

  The windows still appear to have no function and stand permanently open. I always used to compare them to the city windows, which were closed when it was cold or wet, and could never remember it raining in the village. Nobody ever looked out of these windows with their intricate wrought-iron bars. When a car horn sounded or tires crunched over the sand and gravel, we would rush to the wide-open door.

  My grandfather puts his strong arms around me again. “You had me worried. You could have contacted me. Why didn’t you leave right at the beginning?”

  Of course Zemzem seizes this opportunity for revenge and tells him that although she went on and on at us croaking like a frog, it had not done any good, and when a rocket landed in the house, we had actually started to laugh and talked about hollowing it out and stuffing it with rice.

  Now my grandfather is pulling me by the hand out beyond the house. The sun has set on your orchards. I hear voices and laughter coming from them and my heart gives a jolt of surprise. I breathe faster. In the middle of the orchard is a small stone building with a zinc roof. My grandfather points. “See the poison planted there.”

  But I can see nothing except some unidentifiable plants, motionless in the darkness.

  “See what they’ve planted. Poison and filth.”

  “Even if they’ve planted apes and monkeys, who cares? They’ll soon be gone,” I say consolingly.

  Then he starts cursing loudly, and when I implore him to be quiet, it seems to fuel his agitation. “Why should I be quiet?” he shouts. “So they’ll think I’m afraid? All I’ve got left is a voice. I just want to make them hear. What can they do? Kidnap me? They’ve already tried.”

  When they hear him shouting, Naima and my grandmother come up to us and, without saying anything, try to drag him inside. He refuses to go and Naima gives vent to her feelings. “He’s like this every day. Morning, noon, and night. As if he has fits. I’m glad you’ve come to see with your own eyes what the old wretch is like, and how much we have to put up with from him.”

  The porch gathers us in once more. All that is visible are the stars and the chain of high mountains. My grandfather sits down heavily, for he carries you on his back and in his heart. Then he looks about him and asks where Juhayna is. “Juhayna! Juhayna!” he calls. He turns to me and, as if I’m a little girl, promises that she will be a pretty and intelligent companion for me. “Where have you gone, Juhayna?” he calls again. Then he mutters to himself, “She’s vanished like a jinn, God save us.”

  When he was a boy he wanted to learn to read and write, even though his father and other members of his family had banded together to try to dissuade him. “Your family has everything and you want to sit down in front of a teacher who’ll order you about and tell you what to learn? The ‘a’ has nothing on it and the ‘b’ has a dot underneath it. Get servants who can read and write for you. Why go to all that trouble?”

  But he insisted on having an education: the Ottomans and the French read newspapers and wrote with pens. He had seen them as they relaxed after hunting parties.

  He began going on horseback to the sheikh’s school in the nearby town and his mother and aunt recited charms to protect him on the way. But when the time came for him to leave you and go to college in Beirut, he couldn’t do it. The little sparrows and the big birds of prey were the first to call him to you, and eventually my grandfather became an expert hunter like his father; but unlike him, he did not ride around as if he were lord of all he surveyed, ordering the horsemen and the beaters and their dogs to follow him. He didn’t prevent others in his party from shooting so that the local people would talk about the number of birds hanging from the master’s saddle, as they had done in his father’s day. He began instead to share this hobby of his with the men and youths of the village and anyone from round about who liked to hunt. He went on hunting parties with the Ottomans and the French, until gradually he became aware that he was bound to you heart and soul. He drew life from you and expressed his concern for you with every breath, and came to discover that you, and not reading and writing, were the constant; you would stand firm in the face of disasters and crises, and the solutions to them would be in your hands. The villagers found themselves drawn to you. Their importance came from belonging to the person who owned you. You refused or accepted; roared in anger or gave your blessing, and you accepted my grandfather and allowed his roots to extend deep inside you.

  You knew it was your duty to find him a bride, and you fou
nd her for him one day when he had gone for a long ride on horseback. My grandmother had cried until her father agreed to let her and her mother go out of the house with him, swathed in black from head to toe. He had waited until sunset so that no one would see him, and had chosen a remote spot where my grandmother sat on a rock talking silently to the departing sun, demanding to know why her father was so harsh and autocratic. She was a prisoner in the house; nobody heard her speak, not even the walls; nobody saw her except the women who came to bring her and her mother news of what was going on in the world and the neighboring villages. In the end she became famous as some kind of demon princess, invisible to all but her father and heaven. Time and time again she asked her father why he didn’t allow her to go to the female sheikh to learn to read and write, and he would reply that he didn’t want a living soul to catch a glimpse of her, for besides being a girl she was his daughter. So she asked him why in that case he didn’t allow the sheikha to come to the house to teach her, as their family’s name was associated with religion in people’s minds, because it had dispatched its sons to learn the basics of Islamic law. To avoid being beaten conclusively by his daughter, he said he hadn’t known that the sheikha could read and write and thought she recited the Qur’an from memory, and in any case she only left her house for religious ceremonies. When his answers failed to achieve the desired effect, he finally admitted the truth: “I’m afraid you might read novels and stories, and learn to write letters.”