Jasmine and Fire

by Salma Abdelnour

  That said, the downsides of life in Lebanon are not trivial. Life here can be a constant grind. The government seems in no hurry to meet the basic needs of civilians, for instance by fixing the electricity and other infrastructural problems, instead of just making windy pronouncements about plans to repair them. The constant blackouts and water-supply problems, and the unreliable Internet, bring daily headaches.

  The bigger picture gets depressing, too—the fact that the political situation never seems to fully stabilize, and there’s always a looming threat of strife, if not all-out war. Some people are braver about it than others; I’m not one of the most blasé, in case that’s not obvious by now. The ever-present possibility of violence here keeps reminding me of when I lived in Berkeley and realized I wasn’t quite cut out for heavy-earthquake zones, as many Californians seem to be. I wonder if the fault lines of Lebanon’s sectarian political system, and all the bigotry they reinforce, will ever fade away. Maybe things will very slowly, glacially, start to change soon, now that there have been more vocal movements for reform.

  One July afternoon on a walk through downtown, I notice a roped-off area near the parliament building and the statue of Riad el Solh, the first prime minister of Lebanon after independence. A poster for the antisectarian movement, hanging near the statue, marks off the empty space near the Solh monument as “Midan al-Taghyir,” meaning Change Square. In Arabic, the name rhymes with Midan al-Tahrir, the now-famous Liberty Square in Cairo. There’s no one at Midan al-Taghyir when I walk by except two young guys sitting on a blanket next to the poster—in their solitude looking like caricatures of just how far Lebanon still is from bringing down the sectarian system. Could this change happen in our lifetimes? I want to be optimistic, but …

  More than ever, I love Lebanon, dearly. And it breaks my heart.

  It’s going to hurt to leave Beirut, but now I think I’m ready. I’ve decided to move back to New York, at least for the time being. I’m also going to make frequent visits to Beirut, to keep my life here going as best I can, because who knows where I’ll end up living in the future?

  For now I’m going to try, once again, to love Lebanon from afar. A long-distance relationship. I’ve learned it can work—for two people anyway—against the odds. Maybe it will work for Beirut and me—and keep us close, somehow, through the seasons and the years.

  EPILOGUE

  It’s early August and I’m back in New York. Crossing the tangled Flatbush and Atlantic intersection in downtown Brooklyn to get to the subway station, I could be in Hamra, navigating my way through the nonstop rivers of cars. For a second I’m confused about which city I’m in. The sensation lasts just for a moment, but long enough for me to notice: I like this feeling. New York. Beirut. Mad, maddening, magnificent cities. This is home. These are home. My homes, plural.

  I have another home now, too: Richard’s apartment, which I’ve just moved into in Brooklyn. We’re four roommates in this giant loft: Richard, plus his friends Dan and Brien, plus me. I’m hoping this arrangement will feel like home for now. Neither Richard nor I, at this advanced point in our thirties, has ever lived with a boyfriend or girlfriend before. It’s about time. And it’s a little scary. But all the late-night e-mails of the past year, all the anxiety about whether we’ll make it through my Beirut year, whether we’re even supposed to make it, have been worth it so far. Shopping with him at the crowded, neon-lit Target store in Brooklyn for shelving units to hold all my stuff feels oddly romantic.

  Living in this apartment with Richard and our roommates keeps reminding me of Beirut, of my building where relatives live upstairs and nearby, and always did when I was growing up. This past year was like this, too, with Shireen living down the block and various family members living in the building or just minutes away. In July, my aunt Maya came from North Carolina for her annual Beirut visit and stayed in her seventh-floor apartment with her longtime housekeeper Hanneh, who used to make the best French fries in the world when we all lived in Lebanon during the war. There’s always someone around the building to chat with, someone to help lift the mood. I would’ve flinched at the thought of sharing a New York apartment with three other people at this point in my life. I like my privacy, and I’m also not the chitchattiest person in the world. But this setup has felt easy, and also familiar deep down. It’s going to be temporary—Richard and I are planning to move out into our own place soon—but so far it’s made for a soft landing.

  I understand now that it took going back to Beirut, finding my place there again, to feel more at peace in New York. Is it like those people who, when they meet The One, have to bust loose and sow their oats for a while to make sure they’re ready to go full speed ahead into their future, with the person they sense deep down is right for them? The analogy isn’t perfect. Cities aren’t people, except in some ways. When it comes to cities, I realize now that I can’t commit to New York or to Beirut fully. I need to keep a life going in both places somehow, even if most of my day-to-day life is in New York. They’re both home, and I can’t give up either.

  My mother said to me on the phone the other day that she doesn’t know of any people who talk as endlessly about their country as the Lebanese do: Lebanon this, Lebanon that. Oh, that beautiful country of ours, so warmly welcoming, such a rich culture, a close-knit family life, wonderful food, cosmopolitan people—don’t get us started. Lebanese living abroad never seem to let go of Lebanon, don’t shed their past quite as smoothly as some other immigrants do. So they keep going back to visit, once a year, every other year, twice a year. Often. And every time they go, what happens? Right—they can’t wait to leave.

  This doesn’t apply to everyone, of course. I did get through a year in Beirut and could’ve stayed longer. Others I know have done the same, even moved back to Lebanon full-time after living in the States or elsewhere for years. But no doubt it can be an exhausting place—physically, emotionally.

  Still, the tug is always there. In both directions.

  Navigating my year in Beirut, easing my way from anxious to at-home in a challenging, feisty city, has put my New York life in perspective, too. In New York now, I’m less bothered by certain tiresome interactions, or annoyances like a subway-service disruption, or an Internet outage for an hour or two. Things are always worse somewhere else (in Beirut, for instance) and I can always escape to a happy place (well, Beirut again) even if just in daydreams or memories. Escaping the present moment, putting it in context, remembering that this minute and this square inch of space don’t have to mean the world, helps, even if it’s just a fleeting thought. It keeps me afloat in difficult places, tough times. And those will always come along, anywhere.

  I remembered that over coffee one afternoon in Beirut last fall, my mom’s cousin Afaf told me about her decision to return to Lebanon, after having moved to Washington, D.C., in her thirties, and spent three decades there. She still spends summers in D.C. teaching university art classes, as she does during the academic year in Beirut. She’d said to me, “The tabkha, the home-cooked dish, of life in Beirut plus life in the States is a good one—both places mixed in, a little of each.”

  I’m also remembering how in my first couple of months in Beirut last summer and fall, I felt very much like the new kid, the stranger, the foreigner in social settings even though I’m Lebanese. When you feel that way, it’s hard to come across as intelligent, confident, in-the-know, the way you might on more familiar turf. Whatever confidence I thought I had gained in my New York life felt shaky in those early weeks, and I sensed all my shyness and self-consciousness bubbling back up, felt myself speeding back almost to square one. That feeling of being on unsure ground, having to find my footing all over again.

  My New York friend Dave told me recently that he feels sorry for his co-worker’s Italian husband, who was a tough and respected journalist back in Italy but, at social gatherings in New York, just seems “happy and simple.” Dave doesn’t speak Italian and can’t interact with him on the same linguistic turf
; nor can many New Yorkers the guy meets. The Italian stumbles along in broken English at parties his wife drags him to, in an environment he isn’t yet used to. Instead of seeing the guy as the sharp, jaded journalist his friends and colleagues back home know him to be, Dave experiences him as a foreigner who doesn’t speak English well, always seems out of his element, and is trying to project a positive attitude around his wife’s New York friends, hence the “happy and simple” impression. At least Dave is self-aware enough to realize he’s seeing the Italian in this surely deceptive way. But it’s still hard for him to access the confident adult, the seasoned journalist behind the smiley, linguistically shut-out husband.

  Switching from one setting to another, it takes a while to realign your insides with your outside, and sometimes it doesn’t happen, or not for too long, and then it’s time to leave. I was lucky that eventually it did happen for me in Beirut again—I had a hunch it might if I stuck it out—all these years after I’d had to adjust from my Beirut self to my new reality in the States.

  I knew all along that I still loved Beirut. I just didn’t know if I could live with it again.

  Is it too simple to say home is love? Not necessarily romantic love. It could be love of a house or street or neighborhood, or self-love, or another kind—just a deep feeling of contentment and ease. For me, for years, New York has been the place where I’ve felt that the most, even when part of me always yearned for Beirut. Over the years, the Beirut of my imagination has been its own kind of home. But I learned that the real Beirut could be home, too: not just because it used to be home long ago, but because my feelings for it haven’t died, and because Beirut, in all its craziness, is the type of city I like. I sense myself there, the way I felt when I first visited New York and still feel. New York and Beirut are, as I’ve discovered and rediscovered, my kind of cities: densely packed, mixed-up, crammed with nooks and crannies and, truth be told, some amount of chaos and unpredictability.

  I guess home is where you are—not just physically. It’s where you feel most yourself. I think to be really at home means having a relationship with that place, a relationship that isn’t necessarily dependent on who else happens to be living there. But romantic love can make a place seem like home, at least for a time. Even more, friends can. Or one person, a handful of people, can start to build the foundations of home, if they welcome you in and help you ground yourself: the friendly and easygoing neighbor, the warm and smiling grocer, the funny and tough-love teacher.

  I remember an unpleasant interaction with a snotty store clerk in Beirut one day not long after I’d arrived last summer, her frosty tone sending me into a low mood and sharpening my sense of awkwardness and alienation. I jotted this note to myself later:

  In the world there are people who will ease your way and others who won’t. And you’ll ease the way for some and not for others. You’ll eventually forget about the ones who froze you out, and they’ll forget you. The world is for you and for the ones who roll out the carpet, even if it’s tattered. They’re scattered all over. And if you look carefully, they can help you find your way home, wherever you are.

  That sounds too much like a self-help pep talk. Hide it from anyone peering over your shoulder. But I admit I’ve gone back to read this note: in Beirut, in New York, in other places, whenever I’ve needed to. Always secretly, as I’ve wound my way through the city, alone or uncertain. And on my way home.

  Recipes

  ZINGOL

  TANGY CHICKPEA AND BULGUR SOUP

  Zingol is one of those dishes you’re unlikely to encounter in Lebanese restaurants or even in most homes; it turns up now and then in certain villages, and I still daydream about the fragrant, soul-warming bowl I tasted in the town of Hammana (actually it was two bowls, since the woman who cooked it insisted, in typical Lebanese fashion, that I have another). The presentation is especially appealing—the small chickpeas and bulgur spheres floating together in a lemony broth—although as with kibbeh balls, I had to practice rolling the bulgur mix into uniform, tight little marbles. But even if some balls fall apart into the broth, nothing is lost.

  1 cup whole wheat flour

  1 cup coarse bulgur

  2 small onions, minced and divided

  1 teaspoon dried marjoram

  1 teaspoon dried mint

  1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  4 or 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped

  1 cup boiled chickpeas (canned is fine; rinsed and drained)

  juice of one lemon, plus 2 quartered lemons for serving

  ½ teaspoon sumac, or more to taste

  1. Combine flour, bulgur, 1 minced onion, marjoram, mint, 1 teaspoon salt, and ½ cup water in a mixing bowl until well blended. Using palms, form mixture into small balls the size of grapes.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat and sauté the remaining onion until soft and translucent, then add the garlic. After 1 minute, add the chickpeas, then the bulgur balls. Add water to cover, and let boil until broth thickens. If some of the balls dissolve, that’s fine; it will give the soup a more porridge-like texture. Stir in lemon juice, season with additional salt to taste, and sprinkle with sumac. Serve with lemon quarters on the side.

  Serves 4

  HRISSEH

  CINNAMONY LAMB SOUP

  Hrisseh is often served for the Feast of the Assumption on August 15, commemorating the day when, according to the Eastern Orthodox church, the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven. It would be a shame if this lusciously meaty, rich soup were saved for just one annual holiday, and luckily some of my relatives like to indulge in it year-round. The exquisitely talented, dearly departed Fahimeh, who cooked for my mother’s cousin Sami and his wife, Najwa, discovered I love hrisseh dearly, and so I’d be invited over when she made it. Prepare this on a day when you have lots of work to do at home, since the soup needs to simmer for several hours until the lamb falls apart into tender shreds.

  6½ pounds cubed lamb meat from shoulder, plus 5 to 10

  pieces of chopped lamb bone (3 or 4 inches long each)

  1½ cups barley, cleaned and rinsed

  5 sticks cinnamon

  1 tablespoon olive oil

  3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

  salt and pepper to taste

  plain yogurt for serving

  1. Place meat in a large pot with 5 quarts of water, and add as many bones as you can fit. Turn heat to medium-high, and when the water boils, skim greasy residue off the top, pour water out, and rinse meat and bones in cold water in a colander.

  2. Set meat aside (preferably in the fridge), and put bones back in pot. Add 6 quarts water, and add additional bones if you have space. Bring to a boil, skim surface again, keep on medium heat for another 15 to 20 minutes, then add the barley and cinnamon sticks.

  3. Raise the heat to high and boil for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to medium, and stir occasionally for another 15 minutes or so, until barley is puffy and soft.

  4. Meanwhile, heat olive oil on medium heat and sauté garlic for 1 minute, being careful not to burn. Take pan off heat and set aside, leaving the olive oil in the pan with the garlic.

  5. Add lamb meat back to the pot, along with the garlic and its oil, and raise heat until boiling; let boil for around 3 minutes. Then turn heat to low and simmer until the lamb meat falls apart into shreds and the barley has virtually disintegrated, creating a texture resembling a porridge; this will take approximately four hours. Add salt and pepper to taste and stir, leaving on low heat for another 10 minutes or so.

  6. Take out bones, and ladle the remaining soup into bowls. Serve hot, and top each serving with a dollop of yogurt if you like.

  Serves 6

  FATTOUSH

  TART TOMATO, MINT, AND BREAD SALAD

  As much as I like tabbouleh, to me fattoush has more zing—plus it’s less time-consuming to make and more adaptable. Here’s one version of fattoush you’ll encounter all over Lebanon, but in any home or resta
urant you’ll notice slight variations, depending on the season or the cook’s palate. You can either deep-fry or toast the pita croutons that give the salad its special character; the fried bread will taste better, but toasted is, obviously, healthier. When tomatoes are out of season, I like to substitute cherry or grape tomatoes since they’re likely to be juicier and more flavorful. If you can find purslane, use it (a cup or two, chopped); it adds authenticity and a nice peppery bite.

  3 small pita breads

  ½ cup vegetable oil for frying (optional)

  2 tomatoes, diced (or 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved)

  1 large or two small cucumbers, diced

  1 cup scallions, chopped

  1 cup green bell pepper, diced

  3 radishes, thinly sliced in semicircles

  1 romaine lettuce head, torn into small pieces

  ¾ cup parsley, chopped

  1½ cups olive oil

  1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

  6 cloves garlic, crushed

  ½ cup sumac

  1 cup fresh mint, chopped

  salt and pepper to taste

  1. Tear the bread into pieces (roughly 1-inch-square). Heat the vegetable oil over medium heat, and fry the bread bits until nicely browned and crisp, then set aside to drain on a plate lined with paper towels; or you can toast the pita instead of frying.

  2. Combine vegetables, lettuce, parsley, and bread pieces in a large bowl, and toss well.

  3. Whisk olive oil and lemon juice, and mix in garlic, sumac, mint, and salt and pepper to taste.