Our forks hung in the air. There was nothing to say. If Lilla really had come to a war to find a man she once loved the situation was really no different for us. We had gone to the centre of war for one another and without anyone else.
While I was thinking that no one would say a thing and that one of us would certainly come up with a lie and that Madam would certainly create a story, Maryam replied “There’s a commune in Dar el-Amar set up by old Philippine maids. Do you know it? We’re going there.”
Maryam’s face was lit with the clarity of having made a very important decision. As if she hadn’t even heard Maryam, Lilla responded to something Fawaz had said earlier, “In the Middle East … the most important thing … is to know which lives are precious. This you must decide before you take one.”
Fawaz flashed me a look that said, who’s this crazy?
“This tomato,” I said, “is superb! Do you think you could do this with normal tomatoes?”
33
Amira placed Anwar’s golden lighter on the brown Formica table in the Abou Hassan Meyhane. She put it there as a question. There was no need to say more. Ignoring Amira and Maryam, Madam Lilla turned to me.
“But the most important of all…”
She blew smoke into my face.
“Yes … the most important is to keep your Madam Lilla alive. Instead of the soul of a scoundrel… Yes, mademoiselle, that’s what I’m asking you…”
She blew another puff of smoke in my face.
“A hero in a novel must deserve to be a hero, don’t you think? This is more important than the life of some wretch like Jezim Anwar. What will become of me if I don’t kill him? An old woman. Who doesn’t even deserve to be written about in her own book? Isn’t that so madam author? Only if I kill him…”
“Madam Lilla!” cried Maryam, interrupting. And just like the women in old black and white movies, Lilla snuffed out her half-finished cigarette.
“That’s what I’m saying, I need to stay Madam Lilla!”
When she reached out for the lighter her hands were trembling and Maryam leapt up and grabbed the golden curse.
“Listen to me!” she said. She paused and repeated herself as if she wasn’t convinced by her voice. “Everyone is going to listen.”
Maryam held Jezim Anwar’s lighter in the same way she held the slingshot in Alexandria. It looked like she could bring down a regime with a lighter. We had been drinking since afternoon and into the night and our eyes were bloodshot. Inspired by the drink when we left Fawaz’s house, we decided to keep going and so we went to Abou Hassan’s tavern. Oum Kalthoum had been playing at the tavern for years on repeat. We had only been there two hours and we’d already heard the musical Inta Omri twice. Amira, Maryam and Madam Lilla looked as beautiful as the song.
*
As we left Fawaz’s mountain home and got into the taxi before heading down to the centre of Beirut, he took me by the arm and whispered, “What business do you have with these people? It’s like you don’t really know where you’re going.”
This was like saying to someone in the middle of a dream, indeed just when she is being swept away in the spirit of the dream, ‘you’re having a dream.’ And I answered him the way you would answer someone in a dream, laughing, “Well, no one is waiting for me. And seeing as no one is telling me to stay I’m going with the ones who are telling me to come.”
“Where are you going? Alright, to Dar el-Amar. But after that?”
That’s when I realized I didn’t know about after that. I would go wherever the actors go after all the filming is done. The hollow silence made Fawaz really worried. “You should go back to Istanbul. Back home. When you called and told me you were coming I called Nuray in Istanbul. They’re all worried about you.”
I smiled, “Me, too.” I said. “Sometimes I really do worry about myself. Fawaz, I suppose I…”
Lilla and the girls were all in the car looking at us in the darkening sky. I finished quickly. “I am going where the story ends. Wherever that is. You understand? I don’t have any hope for that country any more. I guess I don’t have the struggle in me.”
Fawaz was someone who had seen many friends off to war, to death, to the unknown. He knew the only thing a real friend could do in such a situation was to give them a warm hug and say ‘call me’. And that’s what he did.
The moment I got into the car I turned to Maryam cheerfully, playing up my good mood to stall any questions about me and Fawaz, and I said, “You speak such good Beirut Arabic, azizi. How so?”
But before she could answer Amira butted in with the more direct question, “So what’s the deal with this commune in Tripoli set up by Philippine women, Mademoiselle Maryam?”
The taxi drove on.
Since we had arrived in Beirut Lilla had gone almost completely silent and seemed hardly interested in anything we said. She must have set out on the journey before any of us. Her gun wasn’t actually in hand but perhaps she had Jezim Anwar in her sights, her finger on the trigger. And just like our first dinner together we were merely extras mumbling through our lines.
The car wound its way down through the mountains to Beirut, with no one stopping us at checkpoints. Like a dream the road unravelled perfectly. Making funny faces, Maryam held my hand and Amira’s. Then she placed our hands on her knees. Clearly something bright and cheerful was running through her mind.
Her light-hearted sisterly gestures made me feel more and more like a traitor. One hand still in my pocket, I was clutching the bottle of cyanide. I felt awful not because I had stolen something but because I had plundered Lilla’s stuff so I could write a story. To write fiction I’d become a life thief…. The bottle of cyanide was like a talisman. I had the power to write the end of the story as long as it stayed with me. But I was outside this story as it unfolded in real life.
I pulled out the bottle and I showed it to them. Madam’s spirit was somewhere so very far away that she didn’t even notice. Maryam and Amira looked at me as if to say, ‘so what?’ I nodded at Lilla. They got it. Maryam looked angrily out the window and Amira nervously bit her lower lip. Nothing was said but now we all knew that Lilla wasn’t just out to kill someone: she had set out on this trip with the intention of taking her own life. We were her pall bearers.
“Let’s go somewhere and drink!”
Maryam looked at me and Amira as if to say, ‘now get on board with me right this instant.’ Then it came to me. Leaning over to the driver, I said, “Good sir! Do you know Abou Hassan? It’s on the left as you go down to Karakas from Hamra.”
As if he had just heard a password the driver chuckled and merrily shifted gears and Maryam’s mood brightened. “Ole!”
Lilla was right: the yellow lights of Beirut were shimmering in a way that foretold that this story wasn’t going to end the way I’d wanted to write it. At least now I felt good in my heart. With the peace of mind that comes with choosing life over the written word, I put the bottle of cyanide back in my pocket.
From the outside Abou Hassan looked like a miserable little fast food kiosk. With the dark blue and white awning and white fluorescent lights it looked about as appealing as a roadside rest stop. But when you went inside … the same tape was playing from so many years ago. ‘İnta Omri’ by Oum Kalthoum… You are my life! It was an extraordinary improvisational intro. We climbed up a narrow stairwell to the top floor. My favourite brown Formica table right next to the window was free. Cheerfully the waiter asked his well-worn lines.
“Halk Rakı?
“Of course!”
We were surrounded by familiarity, banter and music. We sat down across from each other at the table… it created that warm feeling from way back in the 1970s when you are asleep on a night journey in a minibus warmed by the shared breath of the passengers huddled together and listening to Orhan Gencebay. Though that was my memory, they all had others of their own, of familiarity and time passing. For a moment we were just at ease.
The appetizers were already on t
he table: fresh meatballs, liver sliced paper-thin, leaves of mint, mild cheese drizzled with olive oil, hummus with ground beef, fattoush salad, fried lamb, boiled artichoke hearts with garlic, Lebanese sausages and tabouli… and just when I was about to ask, the waiter beat me to it.
“Shall I bring some chicken wings?”
Keeping up with the tradition I answered, “A little later…”
But we never managed to get to the wings…
Maryam began the conversation. “So, Madam Lilla, do tell us. What’s the plan? How are we going to do it?”
Lilla was still in that far away place. Dreamy and slightly drunk, she looked at Maryam.
Maryam continued, “I mean this man… What was his name again? Jezim Anwar … just how are we supposed to bump him off? Do you have a plan?”
Madam must have sensed that slight softness in Maryam’s voice, which signalled to her that Amira and I were now on board, and with an eyebrow raised she asked, “Why do you ask? Are we doing it together?”
“Come again?” said Maryam, opening her arms. And then, full of confidence, she added, “can you do it on your own?”
Lilla looked at us with something close to contempt.
“So you have doubts!”
“We want to know how this ends?”
Leaning over the table, Amira repeated the question with her eyes. Maryam came right out and underlined the point because she was all too familiar with Lilla’s talent for wiggling out from under these kinds of questions.
“What happens after that, Madam Lilla? Have you made a plan for what comes next?”
Lilla ran her eyes over the three of us, as if sensing we had made a secret pact. The eyes stopped on me. Immediately she went for divide and conquer. Speaking in Beirut Arabic, she looked at Maryam and said slyly, “But of course, sweetheart!” She paused then continued “Now tell me mademoiselle. Why do you speak such good Beirut Arabic? And Amira’s right. What’s all this about a Philippine women’s commune in Dar el-Amar? The ladies here want to know. Isn’t that right?”
Lilla looked at me and Amira, expecting support for the move she had made against Maryam. But Maryam was already pushing forward.
“We know about the cyanide…”
Lilla looked at me one more time. She understood that I was the one down below getting the bags ready before we left the boat so I must have been the one who found the cyanide. But she didn’t even blink. She raised an eyebrow slowly and she casually adjusted her hair.
“You don’t have to do anything. I have thought it all through.”
“You’ve arranged your own funeral in other words!” said Amira, angrily.
Lilla put her hand on Amira’s and lightly tapped it and said as if consoling her, “As I’ve already said, my dear Amira, you don’t have to do a thing. And you in particular shouldn’t worry. As I promised, when you go back to Tunisia your dance school will be ready. Eyüp Bey is setting it up. And it seems the matter with the hamam has been settled, too.”
Amira angrily pulled her hand away and pushed aside the matter of the hamam and her dance school.
“Is that what I’m asking you! Is that what I’m asking? For the love of God, Madam? Without you…”
“Yes? Without me?”
Amira pulled out Anwar’s golden lighter. And started clicking. Her eyes fixed on Lilla. She was staring right back at her. It was a silent face-off. Amira was a young girl already betrayed once by her mother. So was Lilla another mother who would not be there when life beat her down again? Or was she not going to let this mother leave her? Would she say, “You aren’t going anywhere because you have to protect me?”
Maryam was looking at the two of them. She knew there was nothing else she could do now. It was one of those moments when Amira’s eyes turned to stone. In those moments she was stronger than all of us, stronger than the three of us combined. Lilla did not want to have to bear too much of the increasingly oppressive silence. And so she batted away the tragic moment. Pulling a cigarette out of Maryam’s pack and popping it into her mouth, she looked at Amira. She looked at her. She looked at her as if to say, ‘Light my cigarette and trust me. Just give me a light and I’ll tell you something. Something you are going to want to hear.’
“It doesn’t work,” said Amira and she put Anwar’s lighter down on the table; there was no need to say any more. Lilla took Maryam’s lighter and lit her cigarette. Turning to me, she said, “More important than anything else…”
Then blowing smoke at me, “Yes … the most important is to keep your Madam Lilla alive. Instead of a scoundrel… Yes, mademoiselle, I am telling you…”
Maryam cut her off in the middle of her pronouncement,
“Listen to me!” she said.
We heard someone coming up the stairs and then a voice, “Aaaaa!” that cut right through the gloom that had settled over our table. We all looked up to see who it was, this young woman who was looking right at me. I cried out as if I was reaching for a lifesaver: “Çağıl!”
The woman came running over to me. Her voice rang out like crystal as she took hold of me. Hugging we swayed from side to side. Locked together we were like two women rocking a baby. We asked each other the same question at the same time, “What are you doing here?”
And we both laughed. But the heavy mood still hung over the table. Nevertheless I introduced Çağıl to our group as if we were just having a casual night out and chatting.
“This is my daughter!”
Çağıl shook everybody’s hand and nodded, her cheeks turning rosy when she smiled. “Come sit down,” I said and she squeezed in next to Maryam. Çağıl was a little tipsy and a little nervous and there was a fresh scar on her face. Before I could ask her about it she was already explaining why I had called her my daughter.
“You see, I was deported from England because I didn’t have all my papers in order. So I came to Beirut with nothing.” She turned to me with tears in her eyes. “She told me ‘Hey! Pull yourself together!’ and taught me all about journalism. Now I’m at the BBC in London.”
Everyone nodded. Apart from me no one was completely free of the suspense that had come from the showdown with Anwar’s lighter.
Çağıl turned to me, “I trained up to be a war correspondent. Now I’m going to Syria. Are you coming? Are you writing?”
Touching her hair, I said, “No. I’m doing something else now.”
She waited for me to go on. So I had to come up with something, “It’s not clear yet. So tell me then, young lady, what are you up to? What happened to your face?”
She touched the scar and with something close to joy she said, “Oh, this? Nothing serious. On the way through Istanbul I said why not check out a protest march, and I got hit with a gas canister. The bastards fired at short range. So the scar. It’ll be gone in a week or two.”
She ran her hand over the scar like it was a medal of honour, and she almost looked proud. Then turning to the others at the table, she said, “She even gave me her lucky pen. When I was doing my first scoop in Beirut! ‘Everything will be fine,’ she said, and it was.”
Now everyone was smiling. Not at what Çağıl was saying. They were smiling at this young woman because she was some kind of meteor from the planet of optimism that had just crashed into our table.
“So you’re going into Syria?” I asked.
And like a primary school child breathlessly reciting a poem she had learned by heart for her teacher, she explained, “I guess I’ll join up with one of these human aid groups. Though I might not tell them I’m a journalist. I tried crossing the border in Antakya but no chance. But there’s a guy I know here from some time back who’s in one of the villages on the border. I’m going to meet with him. I mean we were going to meet here but…”
She looked around to see if there was anyone else in the tavern.
“Aren’t you scared?” Amira asked Çağıl.
“Oh you bet,” she replied, as my hand involuntarily went to her hair, like I was her older
sister. She went on, “But it really is very exciting!”
Everyone at the table laughed.
“Now, there’s my daughter,” I said, pride welling up inside me.
Then turning to the table, I said, “This woman is not just a war correspondent, she’s also a fine flamenco dancer!”
As praise rose up from the table Çağıl blushed a deeper shade of pink. She was beaming. Then her phone rang. In a flash she was no longer a shy little girl but a tough war correspondent rattling off fluent Beirut Arabic, “And so where are you? I’m here… Where? Next to Barbar? OK, OK, I’m coming … OK that’s it then!”
Turning to me, she said, “The idiot! The guy doesn’t want to come here because it’s a Shiite tavern … well, fine then … hmmm … I need to go. How long are staying?”
Turning back to the table, I looked at Lilla. They were all silent. I said to Çağıl, “We don’t know. When you get back try the Hotel Cavalier. If I’m still around that’s where I’ll be.”
“OK,” she said and with another flush to the cheeks she nodded respectfully at everyone and hurried out. As if letting out a deep sigh I sunk back down in my seat. I could feel the extent of my smile from the tension in my cheeks but I couldn’t close my mouth.
Rubbing my back, Maryam said, “‘My daughter!’ Huh!”
“That’s just how it is…” I said, embarrassed.
“She’s really sweet,” said Amira. Apart from Madam Lilla everyone let out a sigh. The silence reminded us where we were. But we continued in more relaxed tones. Çağıl had left behind the subtle taste of good tidings, intimating good things to come. A sea breeze that reminded me I had a life somewhere and that I was more than just a thief in other people’s lives. That warm feeling you get hours after eating when a fig seed slips out from between your teeth and then crunch … the good cheer of a younger woman had pulled us together. With a feeling of responsibility we couldn’t articulate, we had rallied our spirits. Everyone was a little stronger, we were all a little more … grown-up. Mature.
Women Who Blow on Knots Page 42