Jasmine and Fire

by Salma Abdelnour

  Claire and I spend the day of the party running around my neighborhood to buy mini-man’ouches, fatayer, and bottles of wine. I mix a drink of sparkling water with basil, grapefruit juice, and honey, while Claire arranges the pastries on platters and sets out glassware. I program a playlist (Soap Kills, Coltrane, The Roots) and set out scratch paper and pens in the living room.

  Sana arrives first, looking hip in her gamine-short hair and army-green pants, and after I introduce her to Claire, she tells us about her recent adventures poking around Europe and North Africa to find talented young jewelry designers. As we chat, and Claire and I double-check that the living room looks presentable, Sana shows us some pieces of jewelry she discovered—sparkly brooches that evoke the 1920s and 1940s, stackable cocktail rings with unusual stones, ropy leather bracelets, eye-catching stuff. Outside it’s pouring buckets, and I’m guessing some people will flake out because of the weather, but within half an hour everyone is here, dripping wet but in high spirits.

  I greet my cousin Shireen and my friends Mirna and Diana and show them to the drinks table. Also here tonight are Hala, and Zeina’s friend Maria (Zeina couldn’t make it today), a smart and warmly friendly Ph.D. student in history who splits her time between Massachusetts and Beirut. Another guest is a distant cousin named Sumaya, a sharp-witted editor and mother of two who moved back to Beirut from Bahrain recently.

  Sana is soft-spoken and intellectual but has a smart business sense, too, and tonight she’s prepared what she wants to say and how she’d like to introduce her new jewelry shop to the group. I help quiet everyone down so we can get started. She starts off by explaining that she’s looking for a name that will sound edgy but approachable, and potentially unisex in case she introduces a men’s line—a name that says the line is stylish but original, personal, and wearable. Also, the name needs to be short.

  That’s a lot of ideas to communicate in just a word or two, but judging from the enthusiasm in the room, the guests feel up to the challenge. There’s a lull for a while, a lot of sipping of wine and munching of man’ouches and quiet jotting down of ideas on scratch paper. Five minutes later names are flying around the room: Take, Sweet, Yours, Daydream, Shuffle. Lots of one-word ideas, a jumble of verbs, nouns, adjectives, images.

  Then someone calls out, “How about Loot?”

  Sana pauses for a second.

  “I like Loot. I really like that.”

  “Loot!” “Loot?” “Looooot!” Everyone is saying the name at the same time, rolling it around.

  “Does everyone like Loot?”

  “Yes!” shout seven people.

  “But wait,” a voice pipes up. “Doesn’t lootie mean ‘gay man’ in Lebanon?”

  In this still sadly homophobic culture, that brand name may not work so well after all. Two hours and dozens more ideas and joking-around breaks later, we have some strong contenders but haven’t quite nailed the perfect name. Still, I’m feeling good about all this. I look around the room and think, I’m lucky to know these women, to have them in my life.

  Most of us here tonight have at least two if not more national or ethnic identities. Some of us are at a major crossroads in a relationship or career or other significant life issue. But we’re all trying to make a life that feels grounded and authentic, no matter where or how we’re living. Being with these people, admiring their warmth and humor and strength, makes me realize once again that I wasn’t completely crazy to return to Beirut. Without consciously knowing it, the chance to experience this exact feeling is a big part of what drew me back, that elusive sense of being so comfortably in my element, woven into the fabric of a group whose lives and personalities resonate so strongly with me.

  Who knows where half of us will be next year? But this feels like home for me, right in this moment. Here in this room, none of us is 100 percent Lebanese, whatever that means, or 100 percent from any one place. We all have complicated lives and are trying to merge all the divergent strands. But here in this room, I’m feeling 100 percent normal. Okay, 87 percent—let’s not push it. But wow, that’s a strange new feeling.

  On a Saturday night a couple of days before Claire flies back to New York, I take her to a show at the Music Hall downtown. On weekends the cabaret-style theater hosts an eclectic series of bands who each get fifteen minutes to play, and the shows tend to last late into the night. Reservations are a must, but I don’t end up calling until the last minute, and it turns out there are no seats left in the theater—but one stool is still available in the bar area. The reservationist tells me we’re welcome to reserve and share it. Sounds like a tight squeeze, but we book the one stool and arrive at ten thirty, just as the show is starting. A host shows us to the bar and points at two side-by-side stools, and Claire and I high-five each other that we’ve lucked into two whole seats instead of having to split one. We settle in and order drinks, and a hilariously terrible Pink Floyd cover band comes on for its short set, playing an overwrought version of “Comfortably Numb.” Next up is an African American female singer impersonating Prince and doing a spitting-image version of “Kiss.” Our tickets come with a half-dozen free drinks each, and we decide to take full advantage, especially since we’re sitting right at the bar and don’t have to wait for table service. We order another round.

  A young Lebanese couple soon appears right in front of us, and the host apologizes and tells us they, too, had booked only one stool. It’s time to give up one of our seats. Damn. But by that point, a classical Arabic band is on stage, and the crowd is up and dancing to old Lebanese songs everyone recognizes. Several more Arabic bands follow, playing their quarter-hour sets, and Claire and I are both dancing, drinks in hand. We donate our lone bar stool to the couple, too, so the poor chivalrous guy next to us can sit down and not have to keep leaning on his date’s seat back all night. We end up staying until the show winds down around four, six drinks into the night, and as we walk out of the theater, we realize we’re pretty drunk. We stop by an all-night café on Bliss Street to eat halloum sandwiches, and both wake up completely hungover around noon the next day.

  We’re not fit for any ambitious plans as we pound down cup after cup of coffee in the kitchen, and eat up all the bread and cheese in the fridge and the leftover pastries from the focus group party, in an attempt to recover from our Music Hall binge. But in the afternoon, we manage to venture out to visit my mom’s cousin Afaf Zurayk. Since she’s an artist who has worked in both Beirut and the States, and Claire had expressed an interest in chatting with her, I wanted to make sure the two of them could meet. Afaf’s Hamra apartment is soaked in sunlight when we walk in. She makes us a pot of mint tea, and we all sit around for an hour, discussing the art scenes in Beirut, D.C., New York, and cities around the world; I mostly listen. Afaf has been working as an artist most of her life and has interesting comments about the evolution of art in the Middle East, and the conversation seems to snap Claire instantly out of the stupor we both feel from last night. It’s as if the two have known each other for months. I mostly content myself with gazing, bleary-eyed, at Afaf’s hauntingly beautiful abstract paintings on the walls, and wishing Claire lived here, too.

  Claire is eager to go to the northern city of Tripoli the next day, her last full day in Lebanon before she leaves on a late-night flight. She’d read about an unfinished pavilion there built by the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer that had been abandoned in 1975 when the civil war broke out. She sometimes writes about architecture, and Niemeyer is one of her design icons, known for his fluid, often space-age-looking buildings, and also for having created Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.

  The day we’re planning to go also happens to be March 14, the anniversary of the Cedar Revolution in 2005 and the namesake of the March 14 political party. I’m wondering if mayhem might break out while we’re in Tripoli. For one thing, it’s where Lebanon’s controversial new prime minister, Najib Miqati, comes from, and sometimes politicians’ home bases ignite during tense times; for another thing,
in the past few years Tripoli has had a number of shelling incidents. A great idea to go up there on the anniversary of the March 14 revolution? I’m not so sure.

  I take a small poll. Umayma says, “Go. Tripoli is worth seeing, and it would be a good adventure to take Claire on while she’s here. I seriously doubt there’s anything to worry about tomorrow.”

  Minutes later Josette calls just to say hi, check in, see if I need anything; her twice-weekly call, so sweet and thoughtful, and so reassuring for her since, like much of our family including myself, she’s a chronic worrier. I mention our Tripoli idea.

  “No, absolutely not. Don’t go. Not on March fourteenth. I don’t think it’s safe. Well, ask your dad anyway if you really want to go.”

  Well, I’m not twelve—and anyway Umayma said it’s okay. So I figure: Let’s just go.

  Claire doesn’t seem anxious at all, and I’d feel slightly ashamed chickening out, especially since I’m the supposedly jaded local in our twosome. Claire tells me I shouldn’t feel I have to come along, if I need to get some work done or have any hesitation about the trip. I think of sending her off on her own, so she can have a solo adventure and so I can finish up my Beirut article. But the truth is I want to see Tripoli, too. Many Beirutis, especially Christians, tend to be snotty about Tripoli, considered a much more Arab, much more majority-Muslim city than Beirut. It’s the second biggest city in Lebanon, but it’s too far north for Beirut-centric locals who have no specific business or family up there. So far I’ve been guilty of that laziness, too. And I even have an ancestor from there, my paternal great-grandfather Jiryus, who lived in Tripoli until he moved to Beirut in 1905 to teach at AUB.

  Also, if Claire goes to Tripoli and gets lost or doesn’t make it back to Beirut before dark, I’m going to have to dash up there, worried sick, to find her. We’re both adults and well traveled, but I’m the local. So I decide, khalas, that’s it. We’re both going.

  We take a public bus the next morning from Charles Helou station in Achrafieh for the hour-and-a-half ride. It’s a smooth, mostly scenic ride up along the coastal road, past Nahr al-Kalb, a river by the highway where successive conquerors of this land over the centuries have left commemorative plaques celebrating their invasions, from the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar to Ramses II, the Roman emperor Caracalla, Napoleon III, and the French Mandate era’s General Henri Gouraud. We pass by the sixteenth-century Mousayliha castle, on the side of the road, mostly in ruins but an attraction for tourists who drive by and get out of the car to climb it. When we arrive in Tripoli, the bus drops us off within walking distance of the old souk, but we quickly realize it’s not obvious how to get to the souk from where we’re standing. I ask for directions in Arabic, and Claire asks if we can stop somewhere and use the restroom first.

  We walk into what looks like a spacious old café and turns out to be a roomful of men sitting at tables playing backgammon and smoking argilehs. Not a woman in sight. Every one of the men stops and stares at us as we walk in. The man behind the counter rushes up to ask us in Arabic what we’re looking for, and I wonder for a second if I should say “Nothing!” so we can dash out immediately. But I tell him we’re looking for a restroom, and he says, “Just a minute.” He disappears behind a wall, then comes back to say, “You’re welcome to use this one.” Claire looks at me. I shrug. “Go in and see. I’ll wait right here.” Five seconds later she’s back. She silently mouths “no,” and we leave. Turns out there was just a urinal hole built into the floor, and it smelled vile. The guy working there had graciously offered it to us even though it’s obviously meant for the male clientele, but maybe he should’ve just sent us on our way.

  “What was that place?” Claire asks.

  “Just one of the typical all-male hangouts of the Arab world. You don’t find this kind of thing in Beirut anymore much, but it’s still alive and well all over the region.”

  “I feel weird that we walked in on them like that.”

  “I’m glad we jolted them a little. I guess I should respect their privacy, but it’s about time they got used to seeing a woman in the doorway.”

  On the way to the souk, we pass by a famous pastry shop called Abdel Rahman Hallab and stop in for Arabic coffee and some morning dessert: osmalliyeh, a tangle of vermicelli noodles fried until they’re crunchy, and topped with a creamy, soft white cheese and a drizzle of the sugar syrup called ater.

  We find a busy weekday hustle-bustle at the souk, when we arrive on foot a few minutes later. We wind through the mazelike alleyways, past vendors selling fresh fish splayed out on ice beds, butcher stands with whole sheep hanging from hooks, rotisseries with rows of roasting chickens, and women shopping for vegetables with their kids in tow, haggling over prices. In one corner of the souk is one of Tripoli’s old hammams, public baths. We open the door to peek in the entrance, and a man dispensing towels up front asks in Arabic if we need help. I tell him we’d like to visit an old hammam. He says this one is for men only. “Is there one nearby for women?” I ask.

  “No, but you’re welcome to come in if you just want a tour. Hold on.”

  He disappears inside and comes back a few minutes later.

  “Ok, it’s ready. Come this way.”

  We follow him into the main hammam area, room after room of tiled baths and saunas. A few men wearing towels step out of the way and nod as we walk by. I guess he told them to cover up; there’s company coming. We emerge into a salon area, a square-shaped room lined with rug-covered banquettes for lounging. He offers us tea. We politely decline, and I ask if I can buy a few bars of soap from the stacks on shelves against the wall. It turns out they aren’t for sale, only for use in the baths. But he gives me a price if I want to buy some, fifty cents each, and I take two—at least some contribution, albeit a feeble one, for his time and hospitality.

  One end of the souk leads through a series of twisting alleyways into the city’s old soap factory, Khan el Saboun, now mostly a string of shops selling soap and surrounding a big tiled bath, which looks as if it hasn’t been used in a century. We buy some soap made from olive oil and keep walking through the alleys and past more meat and fish and produce vendors. At a bakery on the edge of the souk, we pick up a snack of the sesame bread called kaak filled with melted Picon cheese—the blandly creamy processed cheese I grew up with and used to make fun of with my school friends. Somehow the cheese has also become a ubiquitous filling for kaak, but when served warm and slathered on the inside of the ring-shaped loaf, it becomes hypnotically good, its slight saltiness melding with the tastes of sesame and toasted bread.

  It’s nearing lunchtime, so we hop a service taxi to the port area to walk along the waterfront and make our way to a seafood spot. So far we’ve encountered only Arabic speakers in Tripoli.

  “I know I said you didn’t need to come if you didn’t feel like it,” Claire tells me in the cab, “but I don’t think I could’ve ever found my way around if it was just me.”

  “You would’ve figured it out,” I reply. “But it may have taken a few hours longer. I have the worst sense of direction, but at least I can help with the Arabic!”

  I’m glad I decided to join Claire on this trip. I’m loving the adventure of exploring a new city and feeling like a tourist in my own country again. We stop for lunch at a restaurant I’d heard about called Silver Shore near the harbor—today it’s filled with a business-lunch crowd of mostly men in suits—and we order a platter of fresh fried Sultan Ibrahim fish piled high. We voraciously attack the plate and smile at each other, happy and full.

  A digestive walk along the waterfront after lunch, and a half hour sunning our faces on the rocks along the beach, and we’re ready to investigate the Oscar Niemeyer pavilion, also known as the Tripoli International Fair. We take a service taxi there and arrive to find what looks like an enormous landscaped park surrounded by a gate. There’s hardly anyone inside. Reminds me of the day Richard and I ambled around with those college kids looking for the Hippodrome in Tyre and found th
e area deserted.

  The guard at the gate asks us where we’re from—the compulsive Lebanese question—and I say, “Beirut and New York.” He waves us in. Ahead are a half dozen futuristic-looking concrete structures of various shapes and sizes, seemingly abandoned and part rusted. There’s a huge St. Louis–like arch, and a hollow dome, and two other structures that look like life-size spaceships. We climb up one of the concrete spaceships on a rickety rusted metal stairway and look down onto the city. Only a couple of other people are in the park today. We spot a skateboarder on one of the Niemeyer-built ramps—all the curvy surfaces in this park must be heaven for daredevil skaters—and a group of three blond tourist-looking types walking around. There’s a woman in a tracksuit taking what appears to be a brisk cardio walk. Other than that, silence—just these wild, surreal-looking buildings.

  We walk around, take pictures of each other, then venture into the dome and find an echo chamber inside, and a shallow pool of black-looking water surrounded by a small empty amphitheater. I’m having Blair Witch Project flashbacks. I hurry back out. The peaceful green park is a restful break from the noise of the souk, and we’re too entranced to leave the pavilion right away, so we stroll around for a while and eventually head back to the gate. I ask the guard in front if anyone ever uses this pavilion, and he says yes, they have a book fair coming up next month, and they use the grounds sometimes for car shows and other exhibits. But the main building, an exhibition hall space that reminds me of the Javits Center in Manhattan, seems to have been deserted for years; we see only shattered glass inside when we peek in.