Beirut Blues

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  “The people of Beirut are hemmed in. They don’t have anywhere to go but the sea.”

  This must have been provoked by the five boys leaning on the seawall, staring despondently at the waves. I don’t believe they could see them in the darkness, but it was as if they were turning their backs on the reality which awaited them.

  “Do you know those people from the golf club?”

  I had taken him to the summit of contradiction in the city: to the golf club, the place—after the American University—where a person finds it hardest to believe where he is: from the distance it looks like a green dot on a brown manila envelope. There were birds twittering everywhere, hopping from tree to tree, plate to plate, ground to table, in pursuit of crumbs, asserting their miraculous freedom. The trees there were green, the sky a deeper blue. Even though from time to time we heard gunfire close by, the atmosphere was only disturbed briefly by the mothers jumping up to fuss over their children and the golfers coming in with their bags to sit in the café until all was quiet again. People sheltered in the corridors inside the clubhouse until life gradually returned to the fairways and swimming pool. When the birds went back, everybody followed, including the Syrian soldiers, who watched the players with a disparaging air.

  We got back into the car and went looking for a shop selling wine. In a narrow street, where the sidewalks were eaten away and overshadowed by rubbish and irregular broken stumps of trees, we found ourselves alone except for our desire for one another and embraced fiercely, trying to reach each other’s soul, as if squeezing harder and inflicting more pain proved the strength of the emotion.

  We only stopped when we heard a car engine behind us and I switched on the ignition, wishing I didn’t have to steer and could let the car take us where it wanted. I don’t know how we reached home without crashing into any shadowy streetlamps or piles of rubbish, since our fingers were firmly intertwined.

  We went into the garden, and when I saw the row of containers standing there, I knew Ali must have brought water for us and I let out a cry of delight. As I poured water over myself in the bathroom, I longed to be with Jawad naked.

  I heard his voice in the hall where the bookshelves were and felt pleased because he would see me with only a towel wrapped around me. I rushed past him into my room, wondering if he was waiting for me or was genuinely interested in the books.

  “Aren’t you going to give me your books?” I called from my room.

  “It’s difficult to know with you. You might not like them.”

  “There’s a young man asking for you,” called Ruhiyya.

  Had Kazim been released? I didn’t really care who it was and put on a caftan while drops of water ran down off my hair. I spun around in a circle elatedly, watching myself in the mirror, went right up to it, mouthed a word, then stepped back and studied myself. I held my hair up and sighed, imagining Jawad watching me through a hidden lens.

  Kazim’s brother, who had become a nurse to some wealthy old people, was waiting for me. Before he could say anything, I asked him about Kazim.

  “The Syrians released him a few days ago. Would you expect them to pay for feeding and guarding him for more than a month?” he said.

  He’d come to ask for my help. He wanted my friend Hayat to send him fifty chicks. I laughed, trying to understand the joke or the hidden meaning behind his request. But Kazim’s brother was entirely serious: he flashed a magazine in front of me, European or even American, and I looked through it and saw an odd-looking, garishly colored assortment of roosters and chickens worthy of the martyrs’ portrait painter.

  Kazim’s brother took my apparent interest in these strange birds, coupled with Ruhiyya’s enthusiastic declaration that she would buy some of them too, as meaning that I agreed to help him. “I knew you’d do it,” he said happily. “The eggs have begun to break when you pick them up. The shells are like cigarette paper. You don’t know what might hatch out of them!”

  I didn’t laugh, not wanting to fall into his trap. Summoning up my courage, I said dismissively, “I don’t know when Hayat’s coming, and anyway it’s not reasonable to ask her to bring chicks with her.” Then the whole thing struck me as ridiculous and I gave a shout of laughter. “Have you gone mad? You really want me to make her carry a load of chicks in her luggage?”

  When he saw that I had determined not to help, he didn’t pursue it. “I’m not mad yet, but the guy who brought fifty chickens on the plane nearly went crazy with the noise. All the way from London to Beirut. The passengers thought it was the aircraft’s screws working loose. And on top of that, there was turbulence. Some of the chicks died on the journey.”

  What a lot of time I used to spend sitting in this kitchen, enjoying the conversations interspersed with shouting, laughter, and outbursts of anger. Here it was, familiar but diminished, with its walls cracked and spirit gone: it no longer wrapped me in its arms as tenderly as Isaf or my grandmother; now it was there from necessity, somewhere to prepare food and a cause of trouble, starting with the tap which whistled emptily instead of producing a kindly flow of water. Once the tap had stopped fulfilling its function, it began to look like an ugly rooster’s crest rather than a king with a crown. The big gas stove, the pride of the kitchen, which Zemzem had insisted on buying to be like the Beirut neighbors’ daughter who baked cakes in an assortment of pans, stood silently waiting for the gas supply to return. If we switched it on, there was a high-pitched grating whine, and it looked increasingly dirty, as Zemzem had stopped buying the special expensive powder for cleaning it. Meanwhile we had left the hole in a corner of the room made by a missile and replaced a broken windowpane with plastic sheeting after we’d repaired it once too often. The kitchen was no longer a spacious room with a generous expanse of tiled floor and high walls, against which bundles of green mouloukhiyya were piled, never reaching more than halfway up, however much there was. Everyone except my grandmother would sit stripping the leaves off the twigs and piling them up on a pale green sheet. Our kitchen no longer caught the sun in the winter as we sat on low chairs, eyeing the strips of orange peel which Zemzem always hung to dry from the window bars to burn in the stove with the coal. Although the fridge had taken over from the pantry as a place to store food before the war, the pantry had now resumed its previous role. I wished I could go back to being as I was in the past, and listened to Ruhiyya and Fadila talking, hoping their lively voices would reassure me, while the smell of kibbeh filled my nostrils and spread throughout the house.

  “Your hair’s wet. Don’t get in a draft,” Ruhiyya’s voice interrupts my reverie. “Where does Madam Zemzem hide the oil?”

  I rushed to the pantry, still dominated by my desire for Jawad and my need to act nonchalantly. As if I were on a difficult assignment, I flung myself down on my knees to open the bottom door of the pantry and found only an empty bottle of oil. I began taking out bags and jars so that I could see better, not knowing that I was revealing a secret: Fadila, who was telling Jawad about her husband the sheikh, let out a shriek and fell upon the things I had just taken out. “Zemzem’s a liar. She swore blind she hadn’t taken any handouts from the Iranis.”

  “Perhaps she was scared of my grandmother.”

  “Why should she be? Is Iran that bad?”

  “Worse than anything you can imagine.”

  “Why do you say that, my dear?” exploded Fadila. “We got a maternity hospital from them. Beautiful! So clean you could eat off the floor. And they had women doctors. Not any old male doctor coming and scrabbling about inside you.”

  “Is that what happens, Fadila? The doctors come and scrabble about inside you?”

  We all laughed at Jawad’s comment, and I pretended to find it immensely funny, although I was really picturing what it would be like to be pregnant by him and have him taking me to the doctor.

  “It’s not fair to the Iranis,” persists Fadila. “They haven’t done us any harm.”

  “Really? Have you forgotten what they did to Ricardo?”
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  “What did they do to Ricardo? He got what he wanted. To become a pilot and join Hizbullah. It’s the opposite, Hizbullah’s on the side of learning. They’ve opened schools and they’re educating people.”

  “Great schools! They give the children notebooks with a picture of Khomeini on the front.”

  “Why not? The government hasn’t come up with anyone better.”

  “God help the government. Do you still call them that?” interjects Jawad.

  “I swear, the boys from Iran asked me if I wanted money for my mother. I said no thanks, but they paid part of the school fees for the boy next door. And they do house repairs too.”

  Ruhiyya ignored our conversation. She was engrossed in kneading the faraka, tasting it from time to time on the tip of her tongue. “Not enough marjoram and basil.”

  “If only they’d given me the key,” observed Fadila petulantly, “I would have watered the pots with clean boiled water.”

  Scorn appeared on Ruhiyya’s face, making her wrinkles more pronounced. “You mean we’d be eating faraka with scabby seawater in it?”

  Fadila sighed. “Why don’t you put cream on your face, Ruhiyya? Your forehead’s gone like a lizard’s skin, like my skin was before. Ask Asma what it used to be like and how it changed after I started using cream. It was like the Sacred Night—God forgive me!—it worked magic on it and all the wrinkles vanished.”

  Jawad laughed. He had become like an extension of Fadila and Ruhiyya in spite of his European clothes, discovering in Fadila the type of creature he had been searching for, and taking great delight in her conversations. Fadila moved on from face creams and talked about her brother envying his mother in the hospital because she was given French bread and butter and jam to eat.

  Then she told us about the Syrian soldier who fell in love with her, even though he was so much younger, and had to be transferred as a result.

  “He loved you for your stuffed zucchini in yogurt,” interrupted Ruhiyya.

  “That’s rubbish. The zucchini was for all of them manning the checkpoint. Anyway, what time are we going out tonight?”

  Fadila was scared her evening would be spoiled when I suggested Ali come with us and, as I’d anticipated, Ruhiyya wanted Jawad to take us because he’d pay for us all, since visitors don’t count their cash. I tried unsuccessfully to convince Ruhiyya that we’d feel more at ease if Ali came with us, while Fadila despaired of me and directed her conversation to Jawad: “Nighttime in Beirut is out of this world. You stroll down the street, taking in the sights, and dance and enjoy yourself any way you like.”

  Jawad looked at me as if seeking my advice. “Don’t look at Asma,” objected Fadila. “She’s the last person you should ask. She’s against going out. If you go by what she thinks, you’ll be in your room all evening. Come on. We’ll take Musa with us. He’s easygoing.”

  “Musa? The one you were in love with?” interrupted Ruhiyya.

  Fadila didn’t reply, but took out a jar of cream from a plastic bag and put it down in front of Ruhiyya. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” she declared pompously. “Five dollars to you.”

  Then she danced around in a circle, ending up in front of Jawad and pinching his cheeks enthusiastically. “You kill me! I adore this face and body. Tonight I want to dance and sing for you.”

  “She’s crazy, poor thing,” remarked Ruhiyya, as soon as Fadila left. “It looks as if she’s going the same way as her mother, and her mother took after the grandmother.”

  “And her brother’s well on the way,” I added.

  “And her brother’s well on the way,” muttered Ruhiyya to herself.

  Fadila was supposed to come back once she had changed her clothes so that we could all go touring the clubs together. When it started to get late, Jawad suggested we go to her place. She received us with everything jingling and clanking: the gilt chains around her neck, which hung down to her waist and knocked against her belt, and her long earrings, which almost reached the whole length of her short neck. It was as if she’d been expecting us, in spite of the rollers which bounced on her forehead, for she said nothing about being late, but welcomed us, especially Jawad, and called out to her brother Hasoun to go and buy 7-Up. His voice came back to us: “You just want to get me out of the house so you can all go off and leave me here.”

  Fadila cursed him, then raising her voice, she assured him that she was sending him out for Jawad’s benefit: Jawad loved 7-Up and would take him back to France with him and find him a French wife.

  Jawad suggested we take him with us tonight, before he came back to France with him, and even Fadila spluttered with laughter, although she was plainly horrified at Jawad’s idea: “We can’t possibly take him.”

  Her brother’s aggrieved voice came from the other room. “What do you mean, you can’t possibly take me? Are you afraid people would talk?”

  We were waiting for Musa: Fadila described him as her son and he treated her like a mother.

  Fadila ignored Hasoun’s insistent pleas, then disappeared into her room and came out with a photo of herself and Ronald Reagan, which she stowed away inside her handbag with her passport; her bag and her winter coat go with her everywhere when the fighting starts. Conspiratorially, she told Jawad how she had her photo taken alongside one of Reagan when she was visiting my mother in the States some years before, and how she was afraid the Syrians or Hizbullah would see it and think it was a real photo and accuse her of spying. Jawad asked her why she hung on to it if she was worried. “I show it to people for fun and they believe me and say talk to your friend Reagan for us about getting a visa.”

  Fadila’s house was different; the tiled floors, sofas, low tables, and wooden pillars were still there, but the pictures of movie stars had gone from under the glass on the tables. It was empty without her mother and mine, and the rise and fall of their laughter, the smell of coffee, and the avid gossip about the men they knew who looked like movie stars.

  Musa came in, a big man with a thick mustache. When he stood by Fadila, she scarcely came up to his waist. If she had embraced him like a mother, she would have heard the squeaking of his stomach instead of the beating of his heart. He shook hands all around and asked her if there was anything he could do. “Aren’t you coming with us?” she exclaimed. “Who’s going to take us? Why aren’t you coming?”

  He offered to take us to where we wanted to go and come back for us at the end of the evening, but Fadila and Jawad both insisted that he come with us. It didn’t take him long to have us feeling that he really was Fadila’s son, and since she was like my mother, that I was his sister.

  “Excuse me for saying so, Asmahan,” he said to me, “you’re dearer to me than a sister, but are you really going out for the evening in that dress? People will think you’re a bedouin.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I laughed.

  Jawad asked him why he’d adopted Fadila as a mother.

  “It’s amazing, we’re very close. Just as if we’re related.”

  I was secretly grateful to Fadila for thinking of sending for Musa, as he knew all the places and who their singers and dancers were and how much they charged for dinner, starting with the hotel on the seafront, which was pathetically empty in spite of the band wearing sombreros.

  We were told the place filled up after one, but when Musa wanted reassurances, the manager looked at his powerful frame and lost his nerve. “You’d be better to come back on Saturday night,” he said.

  So on we went to another club, which we found bolted and barred, and a third, which had been booked by a family related to a warlord. These clubs were far apart and Jawad offered to pay Musa for the gas. “It’s all paid for,” he said to an uncomprehending Jawad.

  Musa’s job must have been to protect the rich and famous from the rats of the night, not the ones which bounded off the garbage heaps every time they heard a car, but those loafing around the club entrances and street corners.

  He had ambitions to be like Ali, bo
dyguard and protector of important personalities, not so he could eat and drink well, but in order to become more powerful. These conditions suited people who knew their way around. Being an escort meant that doors opened up for you; with your car and gun you could cut through the confusion and delays. You were the one in charge, even more important than the person you were protecting, as he became the ring on your finger, his fate dependent on your strength and intelligence. Through your position you got to know who had their hands on the purse strings, who were the key players, the warlords, the owners of the wealth. Once you had this knowledge, you began to have access to easy money, and as things progressed you came to occupy a powerful position and attract a retinue of followers, some of whom might even act as your bodyguards in time. Such a chance for profit had to be seized with both hands. Musa’s aim was to be an important strongman, not somebody employed by a rich, anonymous emigrant to frighten off thieves. It was clear that Fadila had exaggerated the status of the people I knew, but Musa must have thought that if he got access to Ali through me, then Ali would pass on the jobs which he didn’t have time for and gradually Musa would rise to Ali’s level and overtake him.

  We went into the fourth nightclub, where there was a lot of noise and Franco-Arab music playing, women singing along and men swaying in their seats. It was only minutes before our table was heaving with noise, dance, and song like the others, Fadila, Musa, and Ruhiyya swaying in time to the beat of the songs, while Jawad and I sat, overwhelmed by what we saw. Who would think that the world was turned upside down and people were frightened?

  Musa pointed out a man dancing and said he was a nobody before the rise in the dollar. The people at the tables ate, danced, and sang along with the young performers, whose names showed that they came from villages in the south. The city’s legendary nightlife was being undermined. The man with paper bags stuffed full of dollars danced, shaking his stomach in the direction of his veiled wife, whose gold earrings swayed to the music. She moved the wineglasses out of range as soon as the photographer came to take pictures at their table, while Fadila sat happily next to Musa, tugging at her glittering silver scarf every time it slipped back off her head, looking with envy and admiration at a female customer climbing up and dancing on a table where the dishes and glasses had been pushed to one side.