Beirut Noir

by Iman Humaydan

  “My mother keeps forbidding me to put the hourglass away. She says that she needs to have it there on the mantelpiece to remember my father. I still see him, sitting on his armchair. Just as the sand flowed through it, his head nodded from side to side. The problem is measurement. The neighbor’s screams are also a measurement. And then his head fell, soft like death. But life is also soft. I want to be so steep that nothing can move across me. Not your eyes, not your thoughts. I want to be steeper than time. This morning I passed by the hourglass and felt nothing for the first time. Do you know why? Because I discovered that time doesn’t exist. I should have thought about this earlier. I am my own free will. Only I, and I alone, can put an end to everything. God, time, eternity. I crush them. Like insects. It is enough just to think about it. Time doesn’t exist. Exit, time. Exit. Pshhht.”

  “So what did you write down today other than that time doesn’t exist? After all, today is the 20th of January.”

  “Nothing. Didn’t feel like it.” Then she corrects herself: “Oh yes, I wrote down that Kalthoum Sarrai died.”

  “Don’t know her.”

  “She played the part of Super Nanny in the French version of a show by that same name. She died of cancer. Like me. I died of that too.”

  Her shrink frowns. He doesn’t like it when she starts using the past tense to speak about the future. He is quick to follow up: “What do you know about your own death?”

  “Everything.”

  “What do you mean, everything?”

  “Just that.”

  “And what about joy? Won’t you ever list that?”

  “Joy is flat.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. Flat. As flat as the Beqaa Valley.” She pantomimes a flat surface with her hands.

  “But at the end of the day, all you mark down on your list are disasters, dictatorships, epidemics, and cancers. History has also known happy occasions . . . And friends? Don’t you have any that bring you joy?”

  “Sure I do, but they’re all flat too.”

  When her responses become incomprehensible, he knows it’s pointless to press on. But he always tries nonetheless. He wants to understand why Hanane persists in never listing events before 1992, the year her father died. Every time he has pursued this question with her, she has retreated into herself. Her retreat starts with her eyes. Her ability to talk follows, it becomes confused and then she’s silent. He tries in vain to tell her that she can’t mourn for so many years, but she absolutely refuses to touch the 20th of Januaries before the ones already on her list. Yet it’s his responsibility. Before the end of each session, he always mentions it. This time he grasps at a straw.

  “But if time doesn’t exist, you could add the nonexistence of events before 1992 to your list.”

  “It isn’t necessary to predict everything,” she answers tersely. Ever since she first deciphered his methods of diversion, she’s found it ludicrous to sidle up to madness.

  The young woman’s closed expression makes him understand that a locked world has descended upon her. Her sense of urgency from the beginning of the session is now nothing but a memory. She doesn’t even take her crumpled list out of her pocket, as she always does when she wants to drown the silence with frantic movements. She will freeze, stand up, and, for the first time since she’s been coming to him, approach his desk. She doesn’t tell him that she finds him cowardly. Instead, she stares at him and with a sharp motion, thrusts out her hand to him.

  Hanane has never yet shown any desire for physical contact whatsoever. Disconcerted, he holds his hand out to her in return. Her eyes focus on him, but she doesn’t make any another movement. Nervously, he leans slightly toward her. When their fingers touch, Hanane’s hand is as cold as a cadaver’s.

  * * *

  The next Wednesday Hanane doesn’t come, though she hadn’t canceled her appointment. Opening his office door, the shrink finds Hanane’s mother sitting in her daughter’s usual place. He motions for her to enter. The mother shakes her head and hands him a piece of paper. He immediately recognizes Hanane’s list of her life’s 20th of Januaries. This scrap of paper no longer looks like anything. He smoothes it out. A single date has been added to the list. A date before 1992. A January 20th in the year 1985. Next to the year he can read:

  Strange body penetrated my body. This isn’t about time, God, or eternity. It is about my father’s dick. When his penis entered my body, time left. That hurt, and then nothing. “A trickle of blood doesn’t matter,” my father said. When I saw victims of the war on TV, that also didn’t matter. Pain is immobile. So are we. Chronos isn’t time. Time isn’t time. Where I am, time is. I kill myself because metastasis is imminent. Cancer is lucidity. Everything hates us. The past. The future. They hate each other. Chronology is nothing but an illusion. We are victims of the compression of nothingness into a notion called time . . . it’s pain that makes eternity, not time.

  Her mother found the scrap of paper next to her daughter’s lifeless body on the day after January 20, 2011. Next to her in bloodred was written: Time doesn’t exist. I cut off its head.

  Originally written in French.

  PART II

  Panorama of the Soul

  Beirut Apples

  by Leila Eid

  Bourj Hammoud

  October 10. The tenth day of the tenth month. Hah, oh my God.

  10/10 . . . it’s my birthday . . . What if they came back? Just like that, and walked through this door right now at their real, young ages. Amer, my father; Farah, my mother (I used to joke and tease her when she’d get angry at me and cry, reminding her that her name meant joy); Amir, Rustum, and Zeina, my siblings—they are bringing me little gifts and a big birthday cake. Would they know me now that I’m older than them? I’d perhaps be a more appropriate father to them now than a brother, even though I was the eldest child. As for Amer and Farah, I’m nearly their age and we’ve become close friends. Who knows, perhaps we’d sit together and reminisce about our childhood and adolescence.

  But how would they know my address? And if they knew it, would I even see them? Can the dead come back to life? What if they hadn’t died, and I’d merely imagined this—what if they were alive and remembering me? Do I really want to see them? Do I really want to see anyone? Me—who’s walking terrified, pressed up against every wall on the ship, as if I were a shadow, trying to hide from the apparition of a human, cat, or even a mouse, seeking shelter in the closest container or near a broken lamppost. I wait, trembling and shivering like someone touched by madness.

  I didn’t sleep after I heard Amer saying that night, “Farah, Farah, we can’t stay here much longer . . . Listen to me . . . we’ve become nothing but live offerings, ready victims, even if they haven’t announced it openly . . . As soon as one person is killed or kidnapped in the capital, we’ll be the first revenge, the surrogate for unknown blood spilled in a dark and unjust dispute. They killed Samer that night. No one could protect him . . . They said that five masked men abducted him from his house after they raped his wife in front of him. They showed mercy to his children when they shoved them into the bathroom, threatening to pour cold water on them if they so much as made a single sound. His eldest son was not so lucky, his arm was broken—his siblings heard it crack—when he attempted to scream, calling for help, trying to defend his parents. They were stricken by what seemed like a mute stupor . . . They executed Samer right there behind the olive press. Jihad, Rameh, and I saw a wet explosion, red splattered on the wall . . .

  “When Nael and his fiancée suddenly disappeared, everyone said they left to elope, they ran off to get married far away because Nael is the neighborhood strongman and the handsome fellow didn’t have the means to pay for the wedding. That’s how he presented Nawal’s parents with a fait accompli. Some people snickered, saying that it all happened with Nawal’s father’s agreement, because he was known for his extreme stinginess—this way he’d be able to escape from the financial burdens of a wedding and
the related hospitality . . . Then the village—though I can no longer say the whole village—was stunned, because it became clear to me and everyone else that the people being killed were all the same kind of people, when the corpses of the couple who’d eloped were found on the way out of Tell al-Qasa‘yin, where no son of Adam—and not even the jackals—dared to pass because of the savageness of the place, its thick, wild plant growth and the poisonous snakes. Then, when Fares was found dead in his orchard under the walnut tree, a labneh sandwich in one hand and a flask of village ‘araq in the other, they said he killed himself, the growing season is sparse this year. Fares couldn’t bear the brunt of his debt and all this loss so he killed himself . . . His pruning clamp was leaning cold and sad against the tree trunk, wishing it could utter a testimony of truth for its old friend . . . It was also said that Hani drowned in the lake, he wasn’t good at swimming, he’s been afraid of water since his childhood. He used to get a beating and then he’d go take a bath, according to what his mother said . . . His comrades weren’t able to rescue him, the boat was getting farther away and then gave out when they tried to return to help him . . . Who can utter a tale different from all the others, which rationalizes the tragic departure of these souls?

  “What secret word, my Farah, is being spread through the alleys, houses, gardens, pools of water, and winds, preventing everyone from having funerals, reporting, and making complaints? Need I spell things out for you, telling you more stories of their mysterious disappearance? Their disappearance drenched with the mercilessness of a forcible death, their torture and execution, only because they belong to a particular sect, to a sect and its presumed thought, a kind of classification as it becomes a strange new identity, no longer having the right to exist here among a different majority group. How do they appoint themselves the gods of the new era, controlling the destiny of innocent people and ending their lives in this way, tearing them up by their roots and throwing them away like the weeds that grow around the edges of ancient balconies? By what right . . . by what right . . . ? Should I tell you more? Should I recite to you the mythical conversation I had with the ghosts of these corpses? How they visit me in dreams when I’m sleeping and then I can’t sleep anymore . . . We have to leave, I can’t tolerate the thought of any kind of harm coming to you and the children, I can’t stand the thought of our family ending like this . . . We must leave as soon as possible. Tomorrow is better than later . . . Tomorrow we’ll leave for Beirut . . .”

  “Oh Amer, the war is at its fiercest over there. That’s what we see and hear on the news every evening. It shows guns, bombs, destruction, and murder everywhere,” I heard Farah saying in a low voice.

  But Amer cut her off before she could continue: “If we die over there they’ll know us, give us a funeral, and bury us—not throw our corpses to the monsters without even saying a prayer.”

  “What harms the sheep after it’s flayed? Isn’t that what you said once . . . ? If we die we’re dead. Isn’t that true, Dad?” But of course Amer didn’t hear me.

  W-e w-i-l-l l-e-a-v-e for B-e-i-r-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-t . . . We will leave for Beirut . . . W-e w-i-l-l l-e-a-v-e . . . B-e-i-r-u-t . . . The sentence rang in my ears and my head like the loud, irritating howl of a car horn . . . Exactly like the horn of Bahjat’s car, he’s the most famous show-off in our village. We will leave for Beirut. How, when I am a son of the plains and natural springs? I am a child of the hills and the little valley, I truly delight in being a shepherd, taking care of goats, cows, and sheep. To whom will I leave the sky here, as I’m the guardian of the dust-covered mountain, whose color is that of our newly born foal? In my heart, I carry the secrets of the clouds and the melting snow on the peaks. I entrusted to the river a song that would make every grain of wheat—and every pomegranate and fig tree—grow, a song for the orphaned walnut tree on the roof of our house and for the grapevines.

  Where are you taking us, Dad? To Beirut, what is this Beirut . . . where is it located? Is it frightening? Why did Harut burst into tears when his father told him, “We are going back to Beirut”? Is there enough space over there for me to travel with my kite that I handle like a helmsman, all of whose dreams are contained on his ship? Will there be a mukhtar there whom I will force to buy a new tarboush every week because I stole his and hid it in the cellar where I had a dozen or more, into which I crammed my childhood treasures: the biggest egg, the biggest turtle, the biggest heart-shaped stone, the biggest fossilized shell, Miss Noura’s glasses, my friend Rendala’s hairband, my colored marbles, the first lira you gave me, and a beautiful picture of you between my grandfather and grandmother . . . Will they call us over there to help shovel the snow from the roof of the school? We’ll rush over, running like soldiers to the most important battle. Our heads will swivel around, ultrasurprised and buoyant, when we arrive and see our classrooms converted into a warm shelter for bobwhites, owls, and some stray cats and dogs, even jackals. The cold made them all forget their antipathy toward each other and they shared our school’s roofs with mutual empathy.

  Oh Dad, what else can I say? I have a lot of questions, the most important is how can I pack up, right now in one night, all of my things and memories, what place can contain them . . . can Beirut contain them?

  * * *

  We were stuffed into Amer’s Honda with all the bags we could find and the things Farah considered necessary . . . I didn’t know where my siblings got the song they kept repeating throughout the journey, “Toot toot, to Beirut . . . Daddy take us on a trip . . .” It compelled my father to shout, ordering them to calm down the first time, and to yell, “Silence!” the second . . . But then he smiled at Zeina, looking at me in the mirror when she asked him, “Daddy, can we pick olives and grapes there like Rustom and Amir said, or only red apples like Majd told me?”

  Did Beirut appear, in the way I saw it from the windows of the car, high? That is to say, in ecstasy? (This is a word that I hadn’t heard before and that I’m not good at using. Remembering it now, it seems really appropriate, after learning its meaning and having experienced it when I smoked hashish for the first time with Harut and our friends.) Lying back innocently, permitting her beautiful naked body to be torn apart by guests, visitors, and her own people, Beirut—accustomed to many invasions, of foreigners, greedy people, earthquakes, and tremors—always came back even more beautiful and glorious than before, that’s what we learned in our history books. What does it feel today when its people are dividing up its meat and leaving only the bones? Do cities go mad due to their excess beauty, and unable to stand their own perfection, consume themselves? Will they come back again more beautiful than before? Will their splendor be further restored? Who will inform them that one day they may be disfigured?

  Getting together with Abu Harut and his family was warm and intimate. They received us with love and friendship. Umm Harut didn’t stop talking, explaining, describing, kissing and hugging me on one side while hugging and kissing my siblings on the other, until we felt safe and at home. With the same impulse, she didn’t hesitate to push us off her lap if she heard bullets whizzing by or the thundering of a faraway explosion. She would rush over to the window, pointing with her hand, saying loudly in her heavy Armenian accent: “Aman, my Lord Aman, how can he say one day there is a cease-fire? . . . Aman, this radio lies and the television does too, anyway . . . far . . . far, let’s go, Umm Majd, come up to the kitchen with me. I am making lahmajoun for you all, the boy must be hungry . . .”

  Not long after that day, it became clear how relationships would be in the future: my father + Abu Harut, my mother + Umm Harut, these people would be our only relatives. Harut and I took over a corner of the living room and started talking like old friends, monitoring our parents with wide smiles and watching how our siblings played together in harmony. I had seen his little brother Kevork before, but for a while I couldn’t stop looking at Tamara’s face. Tamara is his sister, about whom I almost called out to my father the very first moment I saw her, “This is the ga
zelle, it’s her. Why don’t you believe me when I tell you that I saw her jumping in front of me, soft, redheaded, and luminous, in Marjat al-Zaarour? She stopped for a moment once and stared right into my eyes before disappearing in a fog like a thick cloud of incense.”

  I remember very well the day I saw Harut for the first time in our village, together with his father who used to come to our farm regularly—sometimes for work and other times to drink a glass of ‘araq with my father. Because of his work, Abu Harut used to know the livestock traders in our area as well as the owners of the farms. That day, Harut told me that they owned a butcher’s shop in Bourj Hammoud and were among the most famous makers of basterma—a traditional Armenian dish of cured meat with a mix of spices—which I hadn’t heard of before. It later became one of my favorite dishes, along with patsha, sujouk, and other delicious Armenian foods that my mother began cooking as a consequence. Harut didn’t inform me at the time that I would see my gazelle again many years later at their house.

  I don’t know why Abu Harut preferred always dealing with my father, since he owned such a small herd. He remained a loyal friend, visiting us whenever the opportunity arose, sometimes bringing Harut with him, even after my father had to sell his little herd to Abu Jawwad, who devoured everything and everybody, totally destroying the livelihoods of the smallholders.

  My father didn’t belong to a party and I’d never felt that he paid attention to politics or anything other than fulfilling our requests, preserving the stability of our family life, and securing everything we needed. We were the world to him, our mother and us. I contemplated his face while he was drinking coffee with Abu Harut, neither of them pausing their conversation at all except to drink what was in their cups. At the time, a naive hunch made me guess that my father didn’t want to either blend in on the East Side of the city, or to melt into the West Side (that’s what the two halves of divided Beirut were called at that time). It was perhaps for this reason that he rang his Armenian friend asking for help.