Jasmine and Fire

by Salma Abdelnour

  Back at home, I water the wheat-seed plant I’m growing in my window before I climb into bed. My plant is looking healthy now. It’s three inches tall, a miniature meadow of wheatgrass blades, sturdy and still growing. This kind of plant actually has a name, Adonis, after an ancient Greek tradition of planting wheat seeds to celebrate the festival of Adonis.

  As I sprinkle water on my little Adonis, I realize that I know nothing about Saint Barbara, who inspired the December holiday in Lebanon for which this homegrown shrub is also a symbol. I wonder, is the California city of Santa Barbara named after the same saint? I do a little online research before bed and learn that the California city is indeed named after her, and that Saint Barbara is the patron saint of military engineers, artillerymen, and miners—in other words, according to a Wikipedia entry, “those who work with explosives.”

  Big surprise Saint Barbara has her own holiday in Lebanon. Growing this little wheat-seed plant is, it turns out, a symbolic two-for-one: the artillery god Saint Barbara and the debauchery god Adonis rolled into one. The quintessential Beirut shrub.

  In the two weeks of December before Christmas, the social plans keep whirling. One Saturday night I go to my cousin Shireen’s birthday party, which starts with a dinner of grilled steaks and Malbec wine at a dark, noisy Argentinean restaurant in Gemmayzeh, and ends with hours of dancing to a hip-hop deejay at a bar. Another night Karim and Hala invite me over for kibbeh bi’sayniye, a dish I love, a labor-intensive Lebanese classic. It’s like a giant savory pie: the crust is made from ground lamb and bulgur shaped into a big circle, instead of the meatball shapes of the hors-d’oeuvre-style kibbeh, and stuffed with a layer of spiced ground beef, fried pine nuts, and strips of caramelized onion. Then it’s baked until crunchy on top and served with mint-spiked yogurt to spoon over the slices, cut in triangles just like pie. The dinner gathering is small and relaxed, and the other guests there are Karim’s friend Parag, an author who’s in Beirut this week to give a talk at a conference; and Nicholas, a Beirut expat writer from New York who owns a bar in the Mar Mikhael neighborhood near Gemmayzeh. After dinner, we sit in the living room over more glasses of wine, and the subject turns to whether Lebanon is likely to have another war soon—Beirut’s version of cocktail party small talk. The feeling is, probably not right now, but eventually yes.

  The postdinner lounging session ends on a lighter note, as we talk about holiday plans, and I leave with a little more optimism that bombs will stay at bay for now. But as I walk outside, I notice the skies look ominous. After a long drought, it’s raining like mad here tonight, and the wet weather is making the high-forties temperature feel colder. On my five-minute walk home from Karim and Hala’s, I’m drenched waist to toe, my umbrella twisted and wrecked within seconds. But I’m glad to see this rain. Lebanon is parched and needs it. An epidemic of forest fires has ravaged parts of Lebanon and Israel over the past weeks. The thunder tonight is explosive and relentless, some of the loudest I’ve heard in my life.

  When Mona and Jia-Ching land in Beirut later in the week to get ready for their wedding, their plane touches down in the middle of another deafening thunderstorm. I take them out to dinner the night after, for a quiet catch-up session. The last time I saw Mona was in California more than a year ago, and I’ve been missing her vivaciousness and sunny warmth. We go to an Armenian restaurant near Gemmazyeh and proceed to overorder like crazy—my weakness, always—feasting on small kibbehs stuffed with eggplant, and kebabs with a sour cherry sauce, and the tiny Armenian dumplings called manti, twisty-shaped, filled with minced beef, and topped with yogurt sauce. For dessert we sample delicate morsels of the restaurant’s sweet-and-savory confections: candied eggplant, sugary walnuts, glazed chickpeas, and dollops of rose jam. Over dinner, we talk about plans for the coming week: a bachelorette party for Mona, a prewedding luncheon for relatives and family friends at a swank hotel, then a small vows ceremony for immediate family, followed by a huge party. Three days’ worth of festivities, and lots to plan still. As we eat, Mona’s cell phone lights up every few seconds.

  Ilham, a cousin who lives in Boston, has also just arrived in Beirut. We grew up almost like sisters during the war; she and her brother, Kamal, lived directly upstairs, on the fifth floor of this building, with their mother, Nouhad, after their dad, my maternal uncle, died young of a heart attack. Ilham and I have continued our close friendship through the years with long-distance phone calls and e-mails. When we’re both on the East Coast, we jump on the bus to visit each other a few times a year.

  During her holiday break in Beirut this week, she’s staying upstairs, in the fifth-floor apartment with Nouhad. Having Ilham in the building again is a joyous flashback, and when I stop by to welcome her back the morning after she arrives, I’m instantly comforted to see her face, her creamy complexion and honey-brown hair glowing as always. Ilham is an accomplished, well-spoken academic in her professional life, but when we’re together, we quickly get silly, giggling and making funny faces at each other. We reminisce about the Disney Disco record we used to dance to in my bedroom—despite the pleas of our disco-hating older cousins—and about all the storage rooms and nooks we discovered in the building during our hide-and-seek games, before our families fled the war.

  Today is a weekday, but Ilham and I are headed to brunch together at Umayma’s: since it’s the Muslim holiday of Ashura, it’s a day off in Lebanon. Umayma has invited Nouhad—they’re old friends from the neighborhood—along with Ilham, me, and a few other guests. The holiday honors the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Ali and is mostly commemorated by Shiites, but Lebanese Sunnis often consider it either an optional fasting day or a time to get together with family and friends. Bushra and Ziad are there when we arrive, and also my great-uncle Cecil, who is visiting from London and has known Umayma for decades, since she’s a childhood friend of my mom’s. It’s a typically laid-back and festive Ras Beirut reunion, old friends and family across generations and sects. Umayma and Nasser have put together a beautiful meze and set out a pot of ful mudammas—broad beans stewed in garlic, cilantro, and olive oil—which they serve with a tomatoey hot sauce on the side. We all relax and nurse cups of Arabic coffee for a couple of hours after lunch, lounging in the toasty living room, the temperature outside wintry and wet again, store awnings flapping in the wind.

  The following Friday is Mona’s bachelorette party, and I’m one of the crew in charge of organizing the event. Mona insisted she didn’t want a debauched night at a raucous Gemmayzeh club. She’d prefer something more original and ideally involving food. Since Mona loves to cook, I suggest doing a group cooking class followed by dinner at Tawlet, the Lebanese restaurant. I call to book the party, and with the help of a few of Mona’s friends, we choose in advance a menu of dishes we want to make. A group of fifteen of us convene in front of the restaurant’s open kitchen on the evening of the party, and a cooking instructor named Ahlam leads us into a fast-paced, hands-on class covering ten dishes, including makanek—spicy finger-size lamb sausages—and sayyadiyeh, fried fish resting on rice that’s been cooked in a rich sauce of fish-head stock and meltingly sweet onions.

  During the entire two-hour class, everyone is rushing around, trying to watch Ahlam and chat with each other at the same time, laughing, distracted, doing more socializing than cooking. Mona’s friends have traveled from the States, Europe, and Dubai to be here, and they’re dying to catch up. To cook, too, and to eat, but it’s been months or years since some of them have seen one another. I’m excited to see Mona so happy, her bright blue eyes sparkling, and to feel so much energy in the room. I do manage to concentrate long enough to come away with a few techniques for making better baba ghanoush, and I also learn how to make shish barak, small doughy pockets stuffed with lamb and floating in warm garlic-and-mint-spiked yogurt.

  Afterward we sit down to eat, and thankfully Ahlam has finished the dishes that we all only partly contributed to in our frenzied talking and socializing. The sayyadiyeh in particu
lar is one of the best I’ve had, and though Ahlam has pulled together a gorgeous platter of it out of our not-terribly-helpful contributions, we destroy it in minutes, going back for multiple servings.

  The Sunday night right before I leave for Christmas is the main event: Mona’s wedding and the big party afterward. Earlier that day was the katb al kitab, the Muslim ceremony where a couple exchanges vows in front of their immediate family. Jia-Ching’s parents flew in from Taiwan to be here for it. After the lavish prewedding luncheon I’d attended the day before for relatives and family friends, tonight I’m looking forward to the blowout party, planned mostly for the younger set, the cousins and friends of the couple. I spend the day doing my last bits of Christmas shopping and deciding what to wear to the party, a chic affair at the family home of Beirut chef Hussein Hadid, a nephew of the Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, in the hilly Moussaitbeh neighborhood. I decide to do it up: I wear a sleeveless blue silk dress, gold heels, and a dark-gold layered necklace I found, long neglected, in my mother’s closet in Houston on my last visit and “borrowed” with her blessing.

  Ilham and I take a taxi together and still manage to get lost on the way, and at last we walk into the party to find Karim and Hala and a few other cousins mingling in the candlelit living room, decorated with antiques and contemporary art from all over Lebanon and the Middle East. In the back of the house, in the open kitchen and dining room, Hadid has spread out an eye-boggling feast of meats, including platters piled high with delicately arranged skewers of shish taouk and spiced-lamb kafta, along with bowls filled with all kinds of salads, artfully plated meze classics, and inventive crostinis, the best topped with goat-cheese labneh and sliced figs. For dessert there are shot glasses filled with various sweets, like the cinnamon-spiked rice custard called mighli, capped with a shower of walnuts, pine nuts, and shredded coconut. We all fill our plates at the buffet and our glasses with drinks, then eventually make our way to the living room to listen to the toasts. Mona’s dad gives a touching, emotional speech thanking his daughter for following in her grandmother’s footsteps and bringing yet another culture into our family: Taiwanese this time.

  I go to bed late after the night of feasting, toasting, and dancing, and I fly to New York the next morning to spend a few days with Richard before heading to Houston for Christmas. I land at JFK in the early evening and take a taxi through the snowy Queens and Brooklyn streets. Back at his apartment, Richard is waiting for me and making us dinner. I find the door to his building open and let myself in without buzzing up, leave my bags in the lobby, and walk up the stairs to knock on his door. He lets out a “Whaaaat?!” when he sees me standing there, surprised because he’d been listening for the buzzer. He rushes up and hugs me. The bucatini are boiling, and he’s finishing up the tomato sauce he’s making, thickened with minced anchovy—one of my favorite pasta sauces. We pour red wine, hug some more, and kiss as the pasta pot nearly boils over.

  Brooklyn feels cozy tonight in the snow. I always hear myself telling people I hate snow in the city; mostly I hate knowing we’re still deep in winter. It rarely snows in Beirut, which is phenomenally great if I’m going to be there long-term; there’s lots of snow up in the Lebanese mountains, but in the city it falls about once a decade. Tonight the white blanket outside is comforting somehow. Maybe it’s just being back in New York, listening to the sounds of Flatbush Avenue, booming and relentless, the Brooklynese and the Dominican Spanish and the Haitian Creole and the Arabic on the sidewalk below as evening sinks down. New York is rolling over me in waves again, and being with Richard feels … right. My skin is tingling, a feeling I try to memorize in my cells, record forever, whenever it happens.

  On Christmas Day in Houston, my parents, my brother, Samir, my sister-in-law Laila, and I go for dinner at my uncle Kamal and aunt Diane’s house. My cousin Edward is in town from London with his wife, Mariah, and their kids. I’m the godmother to all three of them, and I rush up to interrupt them with kisses and hugs as soon as I spot them busily playing with their newly acquired Christmas loot with my cousin Rich and his wife Erin’s two toddlers.

  After Christmas dinner, when we’re all sitting around the living room, Edward asks me where I’m staying in New York when I visit, since my Manhattan apartment is sublet. I think for a half-second then decide—here we go—and answer, straight up: “With my boyfriend.”

  A moment of silence. Edward gets an intrigued, twinkly look in his eyes. “Anything else you want to tell us?” Uncle Kamal looks over with a half-smile, a hint of paternal anxiety in his face, and asks: “So, this is serious?”

  My aunt Diane jumps in. “The girl is happy. Leave her alone!”

  Thank you, Auntie Diane. Thank you.

  Uncle Kamal, an increasingly worried expression creeping over him, can’t help himself: “I mean, have you two talked about a timetable or anything?”

  I try to smile confidently, shake off this question somehow without any words, but an answer stumbles out: “Er, we’re seeing how it goes. Um, I guess we don’t have a timetable or anything.” I pause awkwardly, then call out to my goddaughter, “Hey, Gigi, bring that doll over and let’s braid her hair!”

  Later that night as I’m trying to fall asleep, my uncle’s question, a predictable nudge from one of my lovingly nosy older relatives, is running through my head. I start thinking, would it be wise or dumb to bring up the big questions to Richard now: Do you think we have a future? Can you imagine us staying together? Maybe even having kids eventually?

  But the truth is, I still don’t know where I’ll wind up after my year in Beirut ends, or if Richard would even want to move there if we stay together. And I still don’t know if I want to have kids. My feelings for Richard do make me consider things I didn’t think I wanted—plus I’m thirty-eight, so if I eventually want children, there aren’t exactly years and years left to ponder the question. But we can’t seem to even bring up the issue of where our relationship is headed, if anywhere, let alone talk about anything more momentous. I’m afraid to scare him with big questions now, especially since I haven’t figured things out for myself yet. Staying close with Richard while I’m in Beirut has been feeling right to me so far, but I still can’t see the endgame from here. So what do I accomplish, and what do I lose, by pressuring him to answer questions about our future and ambushing him with a clock that’s supposedly ticking?

  As of now, I’m feeling attached to my life in Beirut, and back in the rhythm of the city, and it’s hard now to think of leaving it all behind, harder than I thought it would be in those rough early weeks. Even so, there’s no obvious answer to the home question yet. Will I end up deciding Beirut is home and wanting to stay there? Will I try to convince Richard to move there if I do? Or will I by chance meet someone else in Lebanon? Tough to imagine right now, but who knows what will happen to our relationship as we try to navigate the coming months?

  Still, despite a rocky start, I—and we—have made it through my nearly half-year in Lebanon. Will we survive the months ahead? Will Lebanon?

  JANUARY

  The international media can’t get enough of Lebanon. Journalists covering the country, foreigners most of the time, usually write about it in one of two ways:

  “Tanks are rolling through Beirut’s streets! Again! Bloodshed and destruction everywhere! Stay tuned as we describe just what the F is wrong with Lebanon this time.”

  Let’s call that Category A.

  Or:

  “Ah, this glittering seaside city, this jewel of the Mediterranean, this Paris of the Middle East. After decades of war and conflict, Beirut is back: thumping nightlife, beautiful women, stylish nightclubs overlooking bombed-out ruins. The Lebanese sure know how to party!”

  We’ll call that Category B.

  If you guessed I might be responsible for some of those articles, you would be right. But just one or two. Small ones. Category B. The paltriness of my oeuvre wasn’t from lack of trying. For years I pitched travel editors every story angle I could thin
k of about Beirut: its dynamic food scene and nightlife, its insider hangouts, avant-garde style, and ancient heritage. And I pitched stories about Lebanese villages with fascinating histories and unusual foods or wines. But I was shot down at nearly every turn. Editors seemed happy to send me to Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean, to destinations dreamy or daring. But not to Lebanon. Those assignments, for some reason, mostly seemed to go to expats or travelers discovering the country for the first time.

  So over the years I’ve resigned myself to reading article after article, in magazine after magazine, newspaper after newspaper, about Beirut as that delightfully paradoxical contrast of ruins and glossy modernity, feeling annoyed because it’s such a goddamned predictable angle, and no one has anything newer or more insightful to say. But mostly feeling jealous because I can’t get a Lebanon assignment to save my life.

  I’ve been contenting myself with writing about my Beirut adventures on my blog—not quite the same thing, but at least I get to write exactly what I want, and how I want, and take up as much space as I want. I’ve also been idly wondering how many more times in the future of mankind journalists will find a way to recycle the “Beirut emerges from conflict to party again!” story.

  In mid-January, I get my answer: at least one more time.

  On January 12, soon after I return to Beirut from the States, the Lebanese government collapses. I realize a government collapse sounds like a crisis, a potentially terrifying emergency situation, but here in Lebanon it’s just another eye-rolling day in the country’s chronically dysfunctional political life. It’s certainly not the first time the Lebanese government has collapsed, although to be fair I should point out that it’s the first time in the entire past two calendar years. What’s happened this time: Hezbollah has pulled all its parliament members from the government and cajoled some members of other parties into dropping out, too, in protest over Lebanese-government funding of the UN tribunal. Hezbollah is calling the tribunal corrupt and is still threatening to cause bigger trouble if some of its members are named in the Hariri killing. The “Lebanon Collapses!” news hits the headlines worldwide. E-mails and calls pour in from my concerned friends in the States and elsewhere: “Are you okay? What’s happening there?!”