Between Beirut and the Moon

by A. Naji Bakhti

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said my sister, leaping into the air as if offended by my mother’s sudden bout of piety.

  She stomped her feet and I anticipated another Dabke, but she appeared not to have the energy for it, and so she slipped back into my mother’s arms. My mother said that she would make us a halloumi sandwich each.

  ‘When?’ asked my sister.

  The absence of natural light into the bathroom blended the days and nights into one. After a heated exchange of gunfire, the city would take a deep breath and hold it in for an hour. My mother cracked the bathroom door open to let the light in.

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘I need to go,’ I said.

  ‘Go where?’ my mother asked, placing her hand on my moist neck.

  ‘There,’ I said, pointing to the toilet seat.

  ‘Not this again,’ my father grimaced.

  One hand held his chin in position and the other was tucked under his armpit.

  Silence again. Then we heard a scream, it echoed in our ears.

  My mother told us about the time when she hid under the bed in her parents’ house during the civil war. This was the civil war of the seventies and eighties, which included the Israeli invasion of eighty-two, and which followed on from the prelude back in the fifties, and preceded the month-long one with Israel in the mid-noughties and the internal armed conflict between Hezbollah and some other militias in the late noughties. My mother told us about the four militiamen who tried to break down the front door, only for Deddi Nabil to open it for them.

  ‘Your grandfather explained that his home is their home,’ said my mother, getting up to light another candle. ‘He was a charming man, your grandfather, his hair always parted to the right, and that well-groomed, gleaming moustache, and his jawline alone. He never took his suit off except to go to bed.’

  My sister edged her small head across the gap left by my mother’s warm body and she rested her mane on my lap.

  ‘Your Teta tucked me under the bed and told me not to breathe whatever happens,’ continued my mother, ‘she had the largest eyes that will ever see you.’

  So large were they that you could swim in them, or swim halfway across them and then float on your back out of exhaustion.

  Deddi Nabil asked Teta Marry to make the gentlemen some Turkish coffee, which she did. And he asked them if they would like some biscuits, which they did. And they laid their guns aside and they sat down and they had their first cup of coffee, and their second. They asked to use the toilet and my grandfather showed them where it was. Then they asked to search the bedrooms and my grandfather obliged. They opened all the drawers and threw the underwear and socks in the air and flipped the mattresses and removed all the clothes from the closet and cast them onto the floor and stepped on them and emptied the dustbins over them.

  ‘Couldn’t find anything,’ said the youngest, who must have been about fourteen.

  ‘No Palestinian flags, keychains, kufiyahs? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  That was when they heard the scream. It was Yvonne’s hollow scream; the elderly disabled woman who had lived across from my grandparents’ house and lost her teeth to age, and her children to war. That night she lost her life too.

  ‘May she rest in peace,’ said Deddi Nabil, crossing himself.

  The eldest militiaman, a bearded man with thick black eyebrows and a cut above his upper lip, produced a rotten tomato from his coat pocket and showed it to my grandfather.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked, holding it centimetres away from my grandfather’s nose.

  ‘Banadura,’ said Deddi Nabil.

  ‘Banadura’ means tomato.

  ‘You’re not Palestinian then?’

  ‘No, sir. Lebanese. From Tripoli. So was my father and his father before him.’

  Had Deddi Nabil opted to say ‘Bandura’ instead, he would likely have been shot where he stood. And so would my grandmother and so would my mother, eventually.

  ‘Did you check under the bed?’ asked the eldest.

  ‘No,’ said the youngest.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is it because you’re an idiot?’

  Under the bed hid a wooden chest adorned with fragments of seashells, right beside my then fourteen-year-old mother’s nimble body. It contained official ownership documents with King George’s seal stamped upon them, indicating Deddi Nabil’s right to his father’s house in Haifa. It contained kufiyahs, a flag, several keychains and the keys to the house which he and my grandmother had vacated all those years ago. Also in that seashell-adorned chest was a bottle of Palestinian sand. My grandfather had managed to procure it from some Lebanese merchant in the south. Teta was unsure whether or not the sand was Palestinian, just as she was, sometimes, unsure whether or not she would return home.

  The boy looked at the chest then at my mother, who must have been about his age at the time. She told him with her eyes that there was no chest, that he could not live with himself if there was, that it did not contain flags and documents and keychains and kufiyahs, that he was a good guest and good guests do not kill their hosts. Then, without breathing, she took off her gold cross and slipped it to him.

  ‘Nothing,’ said the young boy, as he climbed out from under the bed, ‘there is nothing under the bed, I swear on the Virgin Mary.’

  Silence again. Then some more gunfire. It was louder this time, like the militiamen were standing behind us. They were not aiming at anyone in particular. They were firing in the air, at the birds or the clouds or God; not their god, the other god.

  Silence. Gunshots. More silence.

  My father announced that he would like a Cadbury. The Fruit and Nut Dairy Milk Cadbury bar.

  He told us about Grandfather Adam, how he did not see him often but when he did, he would always have a Cadbury Fruit and Nut in his coat pocket. He hated the raisins to begin with but he got used to them and began to appreciate their value when he could afford his own chocolate.

  ‘It isn’t worth the effort it takes to chew on it without the raisins,’ he said, scratching his chin.

  Then my father told us about the time Grandfather Adam took him and his brothers to Ramlet ElBayda for the day. It was a hot summer’s day in June, and the shelling had ceased for several days. Grandfather Adam wore his white flannel shirt, blue swimming trunks and fake Ray-Ban sunglasses. He had not yet won the lottery. He placed his faded green towel on the sand and lay on his back looking sideways at the occasional bikini. A young woman in a white bikini bottom and black top sat on his towel, had some of his Almaza and talked with him until the sun had almost set. Then my father, who had been carrying Uncle Gamal on his shoulders the whole day, dropped him on his head. My grandfather slapped my father so hard that he flew into both his brothers and knocked them over.

  On the way back, Grandfather Adam gave my father a Cadbury Fruit and Nut from his pocket. It was melted and hot, but my father lowered Uncle Gamal onto the ground, leaned against the railings by the promenade and savoured the Cadbury while gazing across the sea. Grandfather Adam lit a cigarette, and leaned against the railings next to my father.

  ‘One day the war will end,’ he said, ‘and then we’ll be able to go to the beach every day in the summer.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ said my father, looking down at his own flip-flops and wiggling his toes.

  ‘The Don tells me you’re pretty good at this writing nonsense.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Just as long as you remember that no matter how good a writer you become, you’ll always be the son of an illiterate mother, and semi-literate father.’

  ‘I’ll remember.’

  Grandfather Adam paused for breath. He looked around at his younger sons, playing hide and seek along the promenade. One leaned against a palm tree and counted until ten and the other hid behind another palm tree. He looked at the thin golden line. He looked at the spent waves of the Mediterranean, and he heard them too, and he smelled the fis
h and the rotten towel hanging over his round rock of a shoulder. He ran his hand through his thick black hair. He picked up the faded green towel from his shoulder and swung it around my father’s neck.

  ‘If something were to ever happen to me,’ he said, lowering his voice and the cigarette from his lips, ‘you would take care of your brothers and sisters, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said my father, licking the chocolate off the wrapper.

  ‘And your mother.’

  My father nodded.

  ‘Good man,’ said my grandfather.

  ‘Why? Are you planning on having something happen to you?’

  ‘I’ve never planned for anything in my entire life, son,’ said Grandfather Adam, ‘I think that’s part of the problem.’

  My father nodded again.

  ‘Are you leaving?’

  ‘No,’ said Grandfather Adam, ‘but if I were to win the lottery for instance, in the future, I might have to leave for a little while.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s how it works.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him, said, that’s who,’ said Grandfather Adam, before flicking his cigarette butt into the sea.

  ‘Who was that woman?’

  ‘A lifeguard.’

  ‘What was she doing sitting on your towel and sipping your Almaza?’ asked my father.

  ‘Ask another question and I’ll slap the chocolate out of your mouth.’

  My grandfather took a deep breath. He had so much hair gel on his head that the salty water of the Mediterranean stood no chance. The otherwise curly hair remained permanently gelled backwards.

  ‘You’re a big boy now,’ he continued, ‘you understand, don’t you? Money doesn’t just fall from trees. You’re not given money. You take it.’

  ‘I think so,’ said my father.

  Then he spat out the raisins and the nuts, and lifted Uncle Gamal onto his shoulders again.

  We heard gunshots. And one big explosion some way away.

  Silence.

  The electricity flickered on. Then the electricity flickered back off. More gunshots.

  My mother told us where she had hid the jewellery, this was in case the RPG rocket landed on her but not us. She told us not to tell anyone. She told us about the bank accounts she and my father had set up. She made me repeat the name of the bank and recite the account number.

  ‘Why are you making him memorise the bank number?’ asked my sister. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Australia, Fara,’ said my father, tugging at one of her ponytails.

  A loud bang made my mother leap up into the air. It was not an RPG rocket, it was the slam of a door, possibly Madame Hafez’s. After the initial fright, we all realised this and began to take up our previous stances. Except for my sister, who remained huddled in a foetal position with her cheek pressed hard against the cold floor.

  My father’s voice echoed still and the flame from the candle wavered. It might have been the way the light moved, or her proximity to the candle, but my mother’s eyes narrowed and she fixed them on my father with such ferocity that I was sure she was not above pouring the hot melted wax onto his back.

  That was the last year my sister would sport her trademark ponytails. One night, she appeared in front of the old TV set with the vinyl wood varnish while we sat there watching Basmet ElWatan. She held her ponytails in one hand and scissors in the other. My parents stopped asking her to get up and change the channel after that.

  My father crouched down to my sister’s eye level and shaped to say, ‘Nowhere, Fara’, but he did not.

  ‘Repeat it, again,’ said my mother, standing up and crossing her arms.

  ‘It’s not the first time,’ said my father, resting his hand on one side of my sister’s face.

  ‘My name is Adam Najjar. I am underage. My parents left a bank account in my name, here,’ I said automatically, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Why left?’ asked my sister. ‘You said you were not going anywhere.’

  It was not the sound of bullets or RPG rockets or bombs going off far, far away that frightened me. It was when I could not hear the stories flow from the lips of my mother and father.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said my mother, ‘in a few years, this will be one of those stories which you can tell your children.’

  ‘Then don’t make him recite the bank number,’ said my sister, eyes held shut.

  She refused to be prepared for any other possibility, as if being prepared was itself an invitation.

  Silence.

  My mother told us the story of Yvonne. Yvonne would sit on the balcony and smoke every day, from morning until late in the afternoon. Then she would take a short nap and resume smoking until late into the night. Most of the time there was no electricity during the war and Yvonne did not have a generator or candles. She had her lighter and her Viceroys and whatever else happened that evening, you could count on that light from Yvonne’s cigarette to shine through the night.

  ‘With all those militiamen around, she was asking to be shot,’ said my mother, who had resumed her position by the bathtub in between my sister and me.

  My father stood cross-armed once again. He looked up. Nothing happened. He was losing his touch.

  ‘Yvonne had a famous blue nylon bag with that raw potato inside,’ said my mother, biting her lips.

  She was out of cigarettes.

  The blue nylon bag was attached to a rope which the elderly woman would lower from her balcony. The function of the raw potato was to prevent the wind from blowing the bag away. She would not shout or call for anyone. Passersby would toss their change into the nylon bag on their way to somewhere else.

  Abou Abbas, the grocer around the corner, knew exactly what she wanted and when he spotted the bag. He would take the money he required and replace it with a box of cigarettes and a bottle of Sohat water and a can of tomato soup, which she would often return.

  ‘I didn’t ask for this, Abou Abbas,’ she would shout.

  ‘You didn’t ask for anything, Set Yvonne,’ Abou Abbas would say.

  She would regularly throw the tin can of tomato soup out the balcony and Abou Abbas would laugh and say to whoever crossed his path, as he mopped the floor, that he had tried his best. Once, she did not say a word and when Abou Abbas showed up with a mop he did not find tomato soup on the floor.

  ‘How was the tomato soup, Set Yvonne?’ shouted Abou Abbas.

  ‘I flushed it down the toilet,’ she said, in her coarse voice.

  ‘There is no running water, Set Yvonne,’ he said, his hands shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked up. ‘How did you manage that?’

  The next day Abou Abbas put another can of tomato soup in the blue nylon bag alongside the Viceroys and the bottle of Sohat and the potato and so it went on until one day he replaced the tomato soup with hot dogs.

  ‘I don’t have teeth, Abou Abbas.’

  ‘I don’t have any more tomato soup, Set Yvonne,’ he said.

  The next day when Yvonne lowered her blue nylon bag, she felt that it was heavier and she struggled to pull it back up. Passers-by would drop a pot of yoghurt, or tomato soup, or labneh and some would even drop a Cadbury or a Ras El Abed or zucchinis.

  ‘Yvonne would never have survived as long as she did in today’s Beirut,’ said my mother. ‘They were better times.’

  Gunshots. Silence. Gunshots again.

  My sister then told us the story of Wahid, a boy in her class who would regularly piss in his pants.

  ‘Is it because he laughs too hard that he can’t control his bladder?’ asked my mother.

  ‘No,’ said my sister.

  ‘Is it because he is scared too easily and can’t control his bladder?’ asked my father.

  ‘No,’ said my sister.

  ‘Is it because he is too lazy to walk all the way to the toilet?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said my sister.

  ‘Why then?’ asked my fa
ther, impatiently.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What kind of story is this, Fara?’ asked my father, as my mother lit another candle and placed it by the bathroom mirror.

  ‘It’s a story about a boy who pees in his pants.’

  ‘Where is the beginning, the middle and the end?’

  ‘He pees in his pants,’ she said.

  Silence.

  My mother told us the story of how she and my father eloped. My father stared uncomfortably at the ceiling.

  ‘How could you do that to Teta Mary?’ asked my sister, whose voice was so far removed from my late grandmother’s that it appeared to have gone full circle and taken on her distinctly Palestinian intonation.

  As she spoke, my sister rose as if the question itself required the gravitas which only a standing child could accord.

  My mother said that it was a different time and stole a glance at her Casio wristwatch to make sure.

  She omitted the contents of the ‘heat-of-the-moment’ letter by my grandfather Nabil. She also neglected to mention the reason as to why she decided to defy my grandfather, to stay on that Cypriot plane heading back to Beirut.

  She did admit that she would watch my father drop food in Yvonne’s nylon bag from her bedroom window. She looked coyly up at my father as she retold the story as if she had not shared this minor detail with him many, many times before. She said that was why she had not rebuffed him when he first approached her by Abu Abbas’s old corner shop. She said it was his generosity, then she shook her head. That and his thin legs, so thin she was worried that they might crack under the weight of his pot belly. That was a new detail. Every time she told us the story there would be a new detail. My father tore his eyes away from the ceiling and attempted a smile in the direction of my mother, who gave him an exaggerated wink and a wolf whistle which set my sister giggling and scratching at her throat.

  An RPG rocket landed on someone else’s family. Someone else’s home. My father looked up again.

  ‘I know it was you who smashed the Captain’s windows that night,’ said my father, without looking at me.

  His hair was as grey as it was black now, especially around the sides, and he had begun to dye his hair brown following in the footsteps of my grandfather Adam. There were permanent bags under his eyes and his eyebrows, once thick and imposing, had thinned and lost their striking charm.