Leaving Beirut

by Ghoussoub, Mai;

  What tortures me now is the haunting question of how I would have behaved if I were still in the demonic grip of the killing and cruelty that had possessed my country. Would I have been able to keep on shutting my eyes and evading the absurdity of it all by disappearing into my body and reducing myself to it? Would my reason have been swept entirely away by this whirlpool of barbarism and savagery?

  Why is the West so enraged by one kidnapped man, when in our country we all live like prisoners in a war zone? If I had stayed, would I have said terrible things like that? Maybe I was afraid of speaking to you because I was afraid of what I might have turned into if I had stayed in Beirut. Maybe if I heard you talk I would not have felt free to condemn all the cruelty that I see and observe from a distance? Maybe I am just afraid of sharing the responsibility.

  That night she went to sleep without her usual fear of the night and its nightmares. And that night she dreamt of Mme Nomy.

  Madame Nomy’s Lesson

  I must have been about 12 years old. Madame Nomy looked old to me then. I suppose she must have been in her early thirties. She was a short lady, fair-haired, and she always dressed in a dignified sober suit. She taught us French at the Lycée Français de Jeunes Filles. This meant that she was the most important teacher, for the French teacher also taught French history, French geography and science. Mme Nomy was what we called une maîtresse sévère and I took her very seriously. I actually wanted to impress her. I still wonder whether Mme Nomy took me equally seriously on that day when she told me to come and stand next to her desk, and handed me my essay, for which she had given me a grade of 10 (out of 20). I was one of her best students, and this was the first time I had received anything under 14 for an essay. Standing there, facing her, with my profile to the other 25 or so students, I felt both vulnerable and angry. I thought I had done an essay that was very good, one that had been aimed specifically at pleasing and impressing our diminutive but imposing teacher. I recall very well the topic that she had given us the previous week: ‘Describe in four pages an event that has deeply affected you in your life.’

  We were given an hour to write it, and it never occurred to me to write the truth. All I wanted was to do well, very well. I prepared myself to use the most sophisticated vocabulary I could manage, the best composition of text I could construct, and to get as close as possible to a particular poem by Victor Hugo – ‘La Conscience’ – that Mme Nomy seemed to like so much. I asked myself what was the gist of the poem. A wide-open eye followed Cain wherever he went. However deep his hiding place, the eye was there, staring at him. Cain was not to go unpunished after killing his brother. Even if no other human being or authority was calling for his punishment, his own conscience demanded revenge. He would not get away with his crime. The eye of blame was always there, following him to the darkest and most unreachable of places. In the end he dug a tomb in which he hoped to bury himself and escape the eye. But ‘the eye was in the tomb watching Cain.’

  That was it. The theme of my essay would be the power of revenge, and its merits. So I concocted a pretty stupid little story which, at the time, seemed marvellous to me. I should repeat it here, for the sake of what will follow. I wrote a little ‘confession’ about ‘last summer’ when five of my playmates played a nasty trick on me. They had organized a walk, in the late evening, to the little forest where we used to play every afternoon next to our summer house in the mountains. Once inside the forest, we started playing hide-and-seek, and suddenly they all disappeared. I looked around and found myself alone. I waited for what seemed to me an eternity, becoming more and more anxious as the sky got darker and the sound of the rustling leaves and shivering branches sharper. I was starting to shiver and cry when suddenly five ghosts, all dressed in white, came and surrounded me, shouting ‘Whoo-Whoo’ as they flapped their white sheets in my face.

  I remember that in my story I had written about falling to the ground, hiding my face and crying my heart out. That was when my playmates took off the white sheets that covered them from head to toe and began laughing at my fear, my misery and my shame. It was at that point that I intended to use the Hugo poem that my teacher loved. I thought my vocabulary would impress her. I wrote: ‘I looked at the other children with a regard foudroyant, staring deeply with all the intensity of my choleric frustration at the dark sky and its sparkling stars, and pledged to the stars and planets that soon, very soon, I would take my REVENGE. The insult I had suffered would be paid for dearly, and JUSTICE WOULD BE DONE.’

  I was expecting a 16 or even the very rare grade of 18, for I had used all the themes that had seemed to be important to Mme Nomy during the final weeks of that academic year. Even her insistence that the cosmos was made of many planets had found a place in my four pages. But here was Mme Nomy, with her eyes looking even smaller than usual, holding my dissertation and telling me in an accusing tone ‘Je vous ai donné 10 sur 20, bien plus que vous ne méritez.’ She used the same tone to tell me how disgusting it was to harbour bitter feelings towards one’s friends. And that even if their joke had been a bit malicious I should have had a bigger heart and been more generous towards my fellow human beings. Revenge, she said, was the meanest of human sentiments, the most cowardly way one could behave. Even if my vocabulary had been rich, she said, it was despicable, because it described base sentiments. ‘That is why you deserve far less than the grade I gave you, but I am a teacher and I cannot give you a grade that will affect your general average. The composition of the text is technically competent and there are hardly any spelling mistakes. Go back to your seat. I am disappointed in you.’

  It took me a very long time to get to sleep that night. I was confused and puzzled. I had constructed a story that suited the vocabulary I intended to display, and I had borrowed an idea from a great poet whom my teacher admired. I might have gone to Mme Nomy and disclosed these facts, but then she might have accused me of plagiarism and insincerity. At the same time, I found that I agreed with her. I admired her so much that I kept repeating the words she had said. I wanted to go straight back to her, to assure her that I had no place for revenge in my heart and that I would always enlarge my soul to make space for generosity in it. In the end I fell asleep, and when I went into class the following day Mme Nomy went about her routine as if nothing had happened. I understood that I was expected to do the same.

  Did Mme Nomy realise the immeasurable effect that her little speech had had on me? I don’t mean just then, but still even now. Most probably not. Children have a tendency to inflate the little remarks that adults make, even when they’re said without thinking. A few years later, in 1967, there was no more Mme Nomy to be seen, walking with her fast little steps through the school courtyard. We believed what some of the older students were whispering: that Mme Nomy had run away to Israel, that she was Jewish, and that she didn’t feel safe here any more.

  It had somehow occurred to me at the time that Mme Nomy was not just speaking lightly to one of her jeunes filles when she had castigated me for my vengeful intentions. Mme Nomy was speaking as an adult who knew exactly what she meant. She was trying to help us understand people’s complex reactions to survival, and the difficulties of salvaging kindness in the harsh reality of this Middle East where people both live and condemn each other to exile. She had chosen the way of forgiveness, and was trying to teach it to her students.

  An Uneasy Peace

  Wherever you are today, Mme Nomy, I wish you could hear me now. I want to thank you for the lasting influence that you have exercised over us, your jeunes filles of so many years ago. Most of all, I wish you could have been with me in Beirut last month, when I returned after a long time spent out of the city because of the civil war.

  Beirut is living its peace now. Like all the others who are returning here, and those who still live here, I wanted to believe in this peace. I wanted to enjoy it to the full, to scream enthusiastically at the sight of a new restaurant, a new shop window, ‘You see!’. The Beirutis who stayed (there is a
postwar Lebanese vocabulary that divides those who left from those who stayed; I imagine it must be similar in all cities that have known disasters and big waves of emigration) would say ‘We have very fancy things now. Have you seen that beautiful new restaurant they’ve just opened in Verdun Street?’ They leave the second part of their sentence unuttered: ‘It easily matches your best restaurants in Europe.’ And I, like a happy parrot, would make a big thing of this new restaurant, as the proof, the absolute confirmation, that the war had ended.

  But whenever I had a minute to myself I felt a strange malaise taking hold of me. My initial solution was never to be alone, never to give myself time to face my thoughts. Run for your peace of mind – keep running to other people, and stay with them. Until one cool afternoon when, for some inexplicable reason, I suddenly stopped running. The sun was shy but friendly. I was standing on my parents’ balcony – a situation that I had often dreamt of in London, when the sky had been low and grey and the rain slow and steady. Maybe because I was tired, or maybe because the view from the balcony had not changed since my childhood, I just stood still. I didn’t do anything. I knew I had to face this nagging malaise. Why on earth couldn’t I just go and enjoy this paix retrouvée without feeling guilty and uneasy about it?

  Wasn’t it bliss, that suddenly nobody seemed to retain a real grudge against ‘the others’ – those same others who two years previously had been the enemy ready to annihilate us? Nobody was calling for inquiries into this or that massacre. Wouldn’t you have approved of this attitude, Mme Nomy? ‘Revenge is the meanest of sentiments.’ Do you remember telling me that in front of all my classmates? Even people who had lost a son, a brother or a wife were not expressing blame towards the perpetrators. It was a conscious effort to start all over again – as if everything that had happened had been a terrible nightmare, and now that we were awake we should be trying to forget the ugly images of the night in order to step into a bright new day. Even the black humour of war gave way to talk about the crazy prices – ‘Everything is so expensive’ – or to packed vaudeville shows at the theatre.

  I used to join in with the cynical remarks of friends playing at looking smart and sophisticated and half mocking the Lebanese people’s own description of themselves: ‘The Lebanese, they are tough survivors … They appreciate good living … They dress elegantly as they extract themselves from wars and misery.’ Survivors? I guess that this survival was not a matter of choice for them or for anyone else. But as far as good living is concerned, yes, maybe there is some Mediterranean truth in that, and it is admirable in its way. But why this malaise? Why do I wish I could have Mme Nomy next to me again, and ask her one more time to repeat the words ‘forgive’ and ‘forget’ until they become as reassuring and relaxing as the words of a hypnotist? Otherwise, how am I going to deal with the feelings of vulnerability that creep in every time I stop running? Can one forget and learn lessons for the future? Is there a way to forget – to live, laugh, make love, bring up new babies and create – without once having to ask: ‘And why would it not start all over again?’

  Remember, we live on the shores of the Mediterranean. Honour, revenge and vendetta are virtues that our menfolk are supposed to have defended throughout their history. Have fifteen years of civil war had more influence than centuries of memory? Did the civil war do what our society has a habit of doing each time it faces a crisis: veil its women a little more and make it easier for its men to take risks? Or is it that there has been so much cruelty and madness that it makes no sense trying to extract lessons from it? When you’ve been in Europe and seen the TV and newspaper images of young people smiling and raising their arms in the fascist salute, after you’ve seen the bodies of victims of racist attacks and the shocked faces of their relatives, what can you say?

  Tell me, Mme Nomy, are the people in the country that you and I left behind wiser when they choose to opt for a touch of amnesia? Are they looking forward towards life and its future, or are they being shallow and irresponsible? Does anyone have a clear-cut answer to this? I recently read an article by the Lebanese novelist Hassan Daoud, entitled ‘He is one of those who stayed’. The article was commenting on a French TV programme made in 1993, on life in Beirut after the war. He wrote:

  We looked as if we Lebanese had exchanged war for tarab, the sensual pleasure of music. In this programme they showed us preparing the material for our tarab, in the same way as we had previously prepared the materials necessary for the pursuit of war. The public watching the concerts is always an intrinsic part of the festival, for anarchy is the order of the day: some sit, some stand, some dance between the tables and the seats … the audience does not differentiate between one singer and the next … it is as if the artist is just a mouthpiece for the songs that are stored inside the audience.

  Hassan recalls the crazy parties and singing sessions that were often held inside homes during the war: ‘It was as if our fun at night could match the intensity of the violence that was occurring during the day.’

  His words whisper back to me that there is more to the touch of amnesia that the Lebanese are cultivating so assiduously. Perhaps this fun after such a terrible war – in which nobody was a winner and in which everyone lost dearly and deeply – means that people are trying to push their lives ahead, to speed up the good moments, as if they are afraid to lose it all.

  ‘This war follows us in our peace. Perhaps the French will say, as they watch us singing and dancing like this, that we look like a people going into war, not emerging from it.’ Hassan concludes with these words: ‘You don’t see lone passers-by on the streets of Beirut at night, you don’t see late-nighters on their own.’

  The terrible thing about wars is that they turn individuals into mere members of groups, be they nations, gangs, militias, or some other kind of tribe. This may be why, when justice is done, it often looks absurd, for the criteria applied are those of a normal modern society, in which individuals are deemed responsible for their own actions. This is why, in an epoch where one’s sense of justice abhors the tribal approach in which all are punishable as one and for one, no decent person can claim to be right in the punishments they are calling for. This was the dilemma of Hannah Arendt who, after pressure and passionate pleas from various quarters, agreed to edit and cut her courageous reporting of Eichmann’s trial. This was also the genius of Ismail Kadare in writings such as Broken April, where he has us share the feelings and dilemmas of the individual whose emotions are in collision but are also inextricable from the demands of his society. His Broken April is a fresco of the sad fate of one human who is obliged to take revenge for his group even though he has no personal grudge against the person he is about to murder. This is perhaps why we sense a frustration seeping through the words of Hassan Daoud, when he sees people still acting as groups and making as much loud, anarchic noise as did the bullets and artillery of the fighters in times of war.

  Here I am, standing silently on my Beirut balcony, puzzled and confused by my memories. And the unease remains. It is definitely not easy just to walk away and forget. Images of violence haunt me like the eye that haunted Cain. I identify with Cain. Like him, we were compelled to move from one country to another. Like the unwanted children of a happier humanity.

  Masrah Farouk

  My city had always been inclined to excess. Respectable people liked to refer to it as ‘BBB’ – brothels, banks and brawls. For myself, I felt secure amid these busy bees, always preferred to walk on busy ‘indecent’ pavements rather than through streets that were ‘respectable’ and deserted. In those days Beirut, rich or poor, muddy or lavishly paved, knew how to celebrate its nights. I loved walking through its late-night streets, I enjoyed both its flamboyant kitsch and its ritzy elegance. When its advertising hoardings still flashed, profligate in their use of electricity, and its drivers communicated with eager car-horns, you might have forgotten that the poor were still wretched after all. In those days Beirut exuded optimism and the most disadvantaged believed
in its promises. In this bright, sparkling city, the poor had their little Edens. I once followed them in there. Masrah Farouk was the name of the place. A downtown, down-market little heaven.

  How I happened to go there is a long story which I shall try to make short. I was flying back from a summer holiday in Paris. I was not yet nineteen. On the plane were the glamorous members of the French Théâtre de la Comédie Française, coming to perform in what was then the famous Baalbeck International Festival. One of the actors wanted to visit authentic local cabarets. He had heard tell of Masrah Farouk, of its lost glamour and its decline. His girlfriend, a tall beauty with green, catlike eyes, also wanted to see the ‘exotic sights’ of Lebanon.