Beirut Blues (3 page)
As Fadila went to enter the hospital, she saw the mountains and valleys descending to the sea and exclaimed out loud to Allah. She clapped a hand over her mouth and looked around her, suddenly scared that someone might have heard her imprecation. All she could see were the nurses hurrying to and fro and she laughed, remembering the day she had brought her mother to the hospital. She’d been heartbroken, and had been nice to her mother all the way there, stroking her hair, asking her to forgive her for putting her in a hospital so far from home. “I would have done anything for you, Mom, but the combination of you and the bombs was more than I could take.”
Then she began teaching her to pray to the Blessed Virgin rather than the Prophet Muhammad or Imam Ali and to invoke the name of Jesus instead of the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful, so that everyone would like her, especially the nurses. Her mother repeated “Blessed Virgin” and “in the name of Jesus” after her in a normal, docile voice, which was so unlike the way she usually spoke
that Fadila began to wonder if she was mad after all. “Perhaps it’s just the war,” she thought.
But as soon as they crossed the threshold into the hospital, her mother refused to go another step, saying that the hens’ wings were beating against her and that she was afraid of treading on the children’s eyes if she went any further. When Fadila forced her to keep going and she found herself right inside the hospital, she gasped in wonder. “O God, bless the Prophet and his family and the pure women of his household,” she cried, pointing to the nuns in their white habits.
I’ve never told you about all that before. It flashed before me and was gone even before I heard the handsome youth saying to me, “Come on. Let me take you to the sisters. They all know me. We changed the wiring in the convent a while back. Come on, get up. I’ll take you. What are you waiting for?”
He wants to be alone with me under the trees. I want to rest my head on his chest. I’m not interested in telling him the story of Fadila’s mother. I want to take hold of his hands and run them over my hair. I answer eagerly, “Let’s go.”
You interrupt, saying that the convent must be closed.
I stood up quickly, almost swaying from the effects of my third glass of arrack, which had settled in my knees and feet. I sensed, despite my third glass, that you were against the idea, but I went all the same, indifferent to your shocked stares. I knew without looking that Jummana was wishing someone else would drag her off to the olive trees by the convent. The cold had spread to the car windshield. Although I was in his arms, I had an image of Fadila’s mother
which I couldn’t get out of my mind. She was resting both hands on the window bars while the nuns stood with their starched butterfly wings on their heads licking their mustaches in silence as they watched the young man enclosing me in his limbs. I wish we could have cleared all the tools out of the back of the car so that we could lie comfortably together, but the alcohol made me forget and focused my senses on one part of me. As I moved faster the butterfly wings on the nuns’ heads moved up inside me, then I seemed to be entering the convent, going further and further in until I found myself in a room where one of the beds was shaking violently, although there was nobody in it.
When I went back to your house, dawn had broken, the gardener was nipping off the tops of the potato plants and piling them up on one side, and the door was open.
Instead of giving us new secrets to discuss as it would have done in the past, my night’s absence increased the gulf between us, which I hadn’t noticed so much while you were staying with me, especially when we went to the beach and the American University. Now it was getting wider again as I listened to you criticizing me for going off with a man so much younger than me, then lowering your voice to tell me confidentially that this behavior wasn’t normal and perhaps I should see a therapist. Just like that, without batting an eyelid, or trying to understand how the pattern of life here has changed. I didn’t take much notice at the time because I was praying that the clashes wouldn’t start up again, since I was responsible for getting you and your luggage safely on the plane to Brussels. As soon as you’d left, I heaved a sigh of relief and went back to my daily routine.
It’s strange how close you are to me now. I feel your voice, your anxious presence. I can picture you dialing my number. You must be worried about me because I’m worried about myself in the current battles. I feel scared even at the very sound of the new weapons they’ve brought in this time.
Our street has begun to shake with the force of the bombardment. Twenty shells a minute. I’d just put olive oil on my hair when Zemzem came into my room. I noticed her voice had a new power and resonance, perhaps because she’d been out to gather the latest news from the neighbors and the shelter, whereas I and my grandmother had stayed in our rooms. “The women are going to hold a demonstration!” she cried, breaking in on my reverie. “They’re going to carry Qur’ans and wear abas!”
“One of the two sides is behind it, because they want a cease-fire,” I answered quickly.
“You’ve always been the same. If you haven’t had a hand in something, it means it’s no good. They’re demonstrating because the Syrian Army’s going to enter Al-Dahiya, seeing as Hizbullah’s winning and Amal’s nowhere.”
Zemzem was letting out all her suppressed resentment. Since the fighting began she’d been trying to make us share her sense of panic. Not at all sorry for the commotion she had caused, she added, “Why should the women need persuading? The boys are killing each other and they’re all Shi’as—members of Imam Ali’s party. Come on! Get up! They’ll be pleased if you march with them. Get dressed! Your mauve caftan. Come on!”
The Syrian Army. Hizbullah. What about Ricardo? Do you remember Ricardo? Yahya. Fadila’s nephew. The moment
you saw him on one of your visits your eyes gleamed in disbelief because you sensed there was something going on between us. He’s on my mind now, even though I’m certain he won’t be involved in the fighting. His aunt wouldn’t have let him out. I’m scared for him, not because of the Syrians, but because of the despair he must be feeling. He’ll discover now that he’s fallen unintentionally into a void. And his comrades in the party? I only feel pleasantly spiteful towards them, towards the Modern Sheikh, and Kazim. Where are they now? Are they fighting? Is it their weapons we can hear, instead of the sound of them arguing and laughing? Kazim, who began coming around a lot and brought his brother and the Modern Sheikh to see me, to kill time but also to convince me of the exemplary nature of Hizbullah and the need for its existence. This was since Ricardo had been caught in two sensitive areas and been suspected of spying on them, for no one would believe that he wanted to join Hizbullah. Eventually Kazim came with him to our house at Ricardo’s request, when his aunt Fadila was out. That was the first time I had seen Ricardo since he went back to Africa after staying ten years in Lebanon. He’d been a child of no more than four years old when he was brought here from Africa at the insistence of Fadila’s father, his grandfather. The old man had somehow heard that his son had had a child by an African woman whom he had then abandoned for a Lebanese. Ricardo couldn’t get used to living in a house mostly full of crazy people, isolated from other children, so he fled to the neighbors from the frosty atmosphere of his grandfather’s house. But he was the son of an unknown African woman, and as soon as he could make
out his country on a map of the world, he left Lebanon and only returned during the war, when he had changed his name to Yahya and believed totally in martyrdom, Paradise, and dark-eyed houris. He came back hoping to fly planes in the skies over Beirut and drop bombs on the politicians who were God’s enemies, for today’s allies are tomorrow’s enemies, depending on where the arms and matériel come from. But religion is above everything. Allies and enemies don’t figure in it. “The leader has to be God, not a human being, because human beings are weak.”
Kazim was listening to what Ricardo said, but he rephrased it in more ideological terms; he said that religious faith was now the solution but that this was a gut reaction after the failure of the other political parties. “We confronted Israel with weapons, nationalism, guerrilla operations. What was the result? If we’d fought them with our religion, we would have overcome them. Look at them. Because they operate on the basis of a single religion, they’re the strong ones. Religion must become the authority.”
The handsome Sheikh Nizar interrupted. He was the one known as the Modern Sheikh: he wore jeans, his beard smelled of perfume, he liked good coffee and admired the Persian carpet in the living room, tracing its design to a particular village in Iran. He praised Ricardo, saying that Islam had spread at the grass roots in black Africa where the people didn’t wear any clothes, and he denied the role of a sheikh there who was supposed to have fueled the enthusiasm of the youth and been the link between the African youth and the events in Lebanon. “One day the whole of America will turn to Islam,” he added. “Gradually it’ll take
over in Russia, which is half Muslim already. God willing, Asmahan with her beautiful hair will return to the faith.”
The earlier mention of demonstration took me back to the ’67 war: the faculty is noisy with demonstrations, but an air of gloom hangs over it. You’re asking me if I like your new eye shadow and you bring your face nearer to me and close your eyes, so that I can see it. At the time, I was thunderstruck by the inappropriateness of your question, but now I acknowledge that you were a seer and we didn’t realize it. A prophet of the modern, looking beyond the coming days with X-ray eyes, predicting from a keen sense of reality what would have to be done. You were reckless and I have to admit that you were concerned with the individual rather than the fate of nations—going to the beach was an acceptable substitute for being involved in demonstrations. You gabbled away in different languages and always looked after your appearance even when it came to your choice of toothbrush. We thought of you as frivolous, uncommitted, although you were outstanding at your studies.
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.