Beirut Blues (27 page)

“Come on, let’s slip away from the village without anyone noticing,” urged Ruhiyya.

My grandmother consulted her prayer beads to find out the best thing to do, just as she used to in the past when she wanted to see if I could go to the movies with Zemzem in spite of my cough, or if she should make the trip to the village in the rain. Ali was the most realistic of us all. “They may be lying in wait at this moment. We must think of a secret route.”

My grandmother observed that perhaps we should stay to find out who they were, but Ruhiyya objected with a shriek and insisted that we go to Beirut and put Jawad on a plane.

In the midst of the general commotion surrounding the preparations for our departure, a woman appeared. I didn’t recognize her even when she came right up to the porch. She looked deranged and was shouting, “Are you really going to Beirut?”

Her scarf had fallen down onto her shoulders, uncovering her white hair, but she paid no attention to it. “Please. Who’s going? My grandsons are in the fighting and they say one of them’s been wounded. Can I get a lift?”

Ali took command of the situation. “No. What would you do in Beirut? Leave it to me.”

He promised her he’d look for her grandsons and contact the village that night.

I noticed Jawad whispering something in Zemzem’s ear.
Then he asked the newcomer, “Is it you, Qut al-Qulub? You used to do a lot of damage in your time. What’s happened to you?”

The woman looked at him, uncomprehending. She had grown old and was hard of hearing. Everyone else understood. This woman had acted as a kind of bank, especially to women on their own; she used to make the first few interest payments on the money they deposited with her, then deny all knowledge of it.

He didn’t want to let the opportunity pass. “Is it true you’ve got a belt stuffed with gold?” he teased.

She shook her head. “God be with you, love,” she said.

Ali took his “devils’ route” over the plains, through the hashish, twisting around apple and cherry trees. Jawad marveled at the colors of the rocks, which were different from anything he’d remembered. Ruhiyya was touchy and nervous, and tried to silence him, appalled at what she saw as his cold-bloodedness. To me he seemed completely serene, absorbed in his surroundings. I had seen many people with their features jumbled and their senses thrown into confusion as a result of the fear you imposed upon them: the mouth which saw, the eyes which screamed aloud, the veins which smelled panic. I understood this in Zemzem and the mothers clutching their children as they waited for the school bus, but I felt only contempt for those who lost their sense of proportion and tried to wipe out what they had believed in for years the moment they faced danger, swallowing tranquilizers and tearing up personal papers and photographs.

Ali announced to our surprise that we were about to meet his wife, and we realized that the devils’ route which he had chosen went by her village. My eyes met Ruhiyya’s and we exchanged smiles. “Is it true your wife’s a bedouin?” Ruhiyya asked him.

“What are you getting at? Yes, she’s a bedouin. Not a Gypsy.”

Jawad asked him about her in his serious way.

“Her family came to work on the plains,” answered Ali shortly. “They’re still cheaper and better than the Pakistanis, Afghanis, Palestinians, Kurds, you name it. And they’re given a roof over their heads and a wage they can survive on.”

As we penetrated the calm of the small back roads, the rocks in their varying colors and formations rapidly buried all traces of you. The roads appeared as if nothing would disturb their tranquillity except the rutted asphalt and sharp bends, and an overwhelming sense of reassurance filled the car; I felt like a child being rocked gently to sleep. I smiled to myself because I was no longer dominated by Jawad; I had begun to think again, to be pleased or annoyed by things as if he didn’t exist. Seeing the plain, so vast that it seemed to fill the world, obscured the episode of Jawad and the militiamen, its changing colors blotting out the unwelcome novelty and violence. Driving along, it was difficult to be aware of anything but the colors of the plain flanked by the bare mountains whose foothills were dotted with greenhouses for growing flowers and vegetables. Women bent over the cannabis plants in their gaily colored clothes, their heads covered by kaffiyehs and scarves.

Catching sight of a blackened mountainside, I decided I was right not to address you as “my dear,” for you are destruction and your atmosphere has imposed itself upon me, deluding me into believing that you exude an intimacy where relationships can flourish freely and that there is an enchantment in you which works on souls and bodies so that nobody feels alone, but it is a lying magic, aware only of the moment: a drug.

But then I feel happy again, even loving, because I see trees which have escaped you. Tall trees with green, spreading branches where crickets chirp, they stand in clumps on the verdant mountainsides like hermits who have tired of the clamor of life and wrapped themselves in cloaks which change color with the changing light.

Ali took a fork in the road and we almost came to a halt. I don’t believe it was a public road; nevertheless, we carried on and it was as if we had boarded an elevator which carried us into the sky. When we climbed out in space, the plain looked like a knitted patchwork blanket, red, yellow, and green, and the road like a long zip on a dress with no checkpoints or obstructions, long expanses of road seemingly empty of people. You disappeared, no longer even a specter in the memory, and it was as if stability had not ceased to be a concept and the dark winds of misery had never stirred. The moment the car came to a halt we heard the noise of children and saw them running from the only breeze-block building still standing. Young women surrounded Ali, disregarding us; our presence did not stop him replying to their jokes. Jawad was the only one to be delighted by all this, his face beaming with pleasure at what was going on around
him, while Ruhiyya and I felt distinctly restless, knowing the coffee would be bitter, the cups dirty, the bread unappetizing.

Ali showed us into the living room, then returned a few moments later and introduced his wife; she was strikingly beautiful and I was amazed how young she was, as I knew she had been married before to a cousin who had died and left her with two children.

The room, bare except for mattresses on the floor, was frighteningly hot and the heat was exacerbated by their rough fabric, which rubbed against my skin through my skirt when I sat down and made me feel as if I were being bitten by insects. Ali’s wife drew back the curtains and opened the windows. “It’s too much,” she declared. “Ali won’t let us open a thing.”

“Someone as beautiful as you should be hidden away in a trunk,” commented Jawad. “I see what Ali means.”

She laughed, covering her mouth with her hand, and the color rose in her cheeks. “It’s a pity. We used to be beautiful once. Now hard work has ruined us.”

When Jawad stood up apologetically and went outside, I could have kicked myself: I had ignored the heat rising like a wave of fever and breaking over me because he was sitting opposite me. I wanted to follow him out, but Ali’s wife continued to heap kindness on me, repeating that I was like a daughter to her, because of Ali. This delighted me, of course, as she was younger than me, and I forced myself to relax, and slumped down on the mattress. I must have overdone it, as she asked me what was wrong and I answered untruthfully that I always felt sick in a car because I had low blood pressure. She rose and went to the window and shouted at
the top of her voice, “A glass of water for Miss Asmahan,” then asked me if I wanted an aspirin.

“She’ll be right as rain in a couple of minutes,” interrupted Ruhiyya.

When the glass of water didn’t appear, Ali’s wife went in search of it and Ruhiyya turned to me and said reprovingly, “Come on. Pull yourself together. Who’s going to entertain me if you don’t? There’s nothing here but these flies buzzing in my ears as if they’re screwing nonstop.”

I laughed. “I will. Don’t worry. Do you still remember how you mourned Ali’s sister? Whatever was her name?”

“Safiyya, God rest her. Are you planning to entertain me by raking up stories of people who’ve died?”

“Can’t you remember what you did? Ali is annoyed about it to this day.”

“Why would I forget? It’s all written here,” pointing to her head. “As God is my witness.”

“Good. Tell me about it.”

“Here? They think I’m cursed. They’ll say I bring bad luck. Don’t you see how much Ali hates me? Do you want him to strangle me?”

She closed her eyes, then opened them again and whispered, “I don’t know why he misunderstood. I swear the trees and the rocks wept when I sang a lament for her.”

She shut her eyes again and sang softly:

“My beloved, your eyes will never blink again

My beloved, these lips will never drink again

My beloved, you’ll never eat again and thank God for the food he has given

My beloved, keep your hands outside the sheets

Because they’re coming to bury you in the ground.”

Then without warning her mood changed and she sang in a different voice:

“O Asma, Asmahan, your name is always on my tongue

I love you blindly

I see you before me in a sky-blue dress.”

“I don’t like blue,” I interrupted. “And why the sudden change?”

“Sorrow and joy are two sides of the same coin, Miss Know-It-All. There are things to make you laugh and things to make you cry in this world and the next.”

We stood up simultaneously to leave the oven-like room, and found Ali’s wife waiting in the dusty yard for someone to bring lemons for my stomach. I looked around for Jawad but there was no sign of him. Ali’s car had disappeared and I assumed the two of them had gone off to buy roast chickens in the nearby town, as I’d heard Ali and his wife discussing it when we first arrived.

She said her husband would soon be back and I wished I had the courage to ask about Jawad, but then a cry rose from a nearby building.

“The gentleman’s taking pictures in the factory and they all think he’s a magician,” she remarked, gesturing towards
the building, which was white with brown-painted windows and a tin roof propped up by a tree trunk and some rocks.

“Let’s go in and have a look,” I said to Ruhiyya.

Ali’s wife intervened. “If you’re still feeling unwell, don’t go in the factory. The smell in there at the moment is enough to kill you.”

“Smell of what?”

“They’re making cannabis resin today.”

“I’m fine now. I don’t feel sick anymore. Please don’t bother with the lemons.”

Jawad was taking pictures with his Polaroid of Ali’s mother-in-law, who looked my age, and a lot of other women and some children. When he saw us, he asked them for some of the photos back. “Just for a moment, so I can show them to Asmahan.”

He approached me eagerly, clutching photos in both hands. “Have a look! See the modern light switch there, and then their clothes!”

The sound of shouting, coughing, and talking filled the large room, which was crammed with women of all ages with only their eyes showing. Some rubbed black balls of hashish in their hands, others stirred it as it simmered over the fire. There were those who weighed it and inspected it for color and consistency while the dust was scattered over the metal containers and the pumps, which worked away noisily.

Jawad’s smile revealed teeth which looked as though they had never had to chew food, as if they existed to smile. The women laughed delightedly at him. “What else do you want to take a picture of, dear?” said one. “You’ve got nearly
everything except me, and I’m too old. If you like, you can have one of my granddaughter.”

A tractor drew up outside the building overflowing with cannabis plants piled on top of one another under transparent plastic sheeting. Next to the driver was another man almost sitting on the wheel. A car stopped behind the tractor and three men climbed out, bristling with arms, obviously guarding the tractor’s cargo. The men from the tractor unloaded it and put it in the corner of a small enclosure. The cries of the children announcing Ali’s arrival, the sight of these men in their motley outfits with cigarettes dangling from their smiling mouths, made me convinced that what had taken place in Ruhiyya’s house the evening before was a bad dream. The men around here spent most of their time laughing together, drinking arrack, and showing off their fast cars, while the arms they displayed so prominently seemed more like a fad, like the craze for growing one fingernail long. They were supposed to belong to different parties and carry weapons to wipe each other out or dominate one another. But on this plain they aimed their guns to protect one another: here each party, each sect, needed the other. Who would distribute these sacks of hashish apart from the Christians with their connections with the outside world? Who would plant the cannabis, irrigate it, and harvest it, other than the Shiites? Who would handle the cocaine if the Druzes didn’t?

“Don’t be fooled, Ali,” remarked Jawad. “Money, not national unity, is what binds people together, from the informers, to the militias, to Israel in the skies.”

Ali’s wife entered slowly carrying a glass of lemon juice,
despite my earlier protests, and warning everyone not to jog her. I rushed up and took it from her thanking her, and then drank it without enthusiasm as the salt which had been added to it overpowered even the acidity of the lemons.

We went back into the stiflingly hot room and still managed to demolish the roast chickens Ali had brought, dipping our portions into a bowl of garlic. Ali’s wife urged everyone she saw surreptitiously glancing at us through the window, especially the children, to come in and join us. Nobody dared take up the offer except her son. “I’m not surprised. They’re probably scared we’ll eat them,” said Ruhiyya. “Look! We’ve stripped the carcasses bare.”

We all laughed and I started to smell garlic everywhere, even in the water I was drinking. Jawad spread the photographs before us as he tried to choose which to keep for himself and which to distribute to their subjects. Looking at them from a distance as they were handed around, Ali asked Jawad to take one of him with his wife. When it was ready, he seized it, gazing at it admiringly and remarking on her beauty. As we left she promised to visit me when she joined Ali in Beirut at the end of the season.