Unsafe Haven, An

by Awar Jarrar, Nada

  But coming back had not been as easy as we thought it would be. Beirut had changed almost beyond recognition, not just in terms of the physical destruction everywhere but in the attitude of the people too, those who had stayed behind and harboured resentment against others who were lucky enough to escape the worst of the fighting. The friends I had hoped to meet again had either left for good or were reluctant to renew their relationships with returnees like myself.

  When I began attending classes at the American University of Beirut, I felt like an outsider; the bonds I thought I had with my country, its culture and history were tenuous at best, non-existent for the most part. What I remembered of home had been irreparably destroyed by present reality, seemed only to have survived as sentiment in the minds of exiles. Eventually, my brother Sammy decided he could not live with all these changes and left for America where he studied and eventually settled down with a family of his own.

  My career in journalism began soon after I graduated when I went to work for an international news agency, first as a fixer for the foreign journalists who came to Beirut to cover stories on the region, and then as a reporter. It was not long after Mother fell ill and died that I met and married Peter and, in growing older, began to believe I had gained some wisdom.

  Since the war in Syria began nearly five years ago, it seems there is no end to the misery it can cause. Those who flee it and seek refuge in Lebanon bring their heartache with them, and for nearly four years now, Beirut’s street corners have been manned by insistent beggars by day, and at night, in shop doorways, under bridges, in abandoned buildings and anywhere a nook can be found, there are sleeping figures, whole families, wrapped in whatever they can find to shield their eyes from the light. Many others have fled to Turkey and Jordan, countries that also have borders with Syria. Most recently, hundreds of thousands of refugees have been making the perilous journey to Greece and France, to Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia, and on to Austria and Germany and still further north, in search of safety and welcome.

  Things are not as they should be. There is pain where there should be strength, hesitation instead of resolve, and in the places where imagination once had free rein, the Arab people are tied to the foundations of their fears.

  By the time they arrive at the gallery, Anas has told Hannah about the problems he and Brigitte have been having and she has voiced the necessary commiserations: I didn’t know; I’m so sorry; maybe it’s not as bad as you think; and, finally, what can I do to help? She eventually realizes that it is not solutions he is asking for but the simple relief that telling her affords him.

  The gallery is smaller than she imagined it would be but there is plenty of light and the carpets and other surfaces are immaculately clean. Some paintings have already been hung while others remain on the floor, propped up against the walls; and sculptures, mostly small to medium-sized pieces, many of which are still swathed in bubble wrap, have been put on stands that are placed at intervals in the centre of the room.

  —Do you like it? Anas asks.

  —Yes, it’s lovely and welcoming.

  —That’s exactly the feel I wanted for this exhibition. I wanted it to feel intimate.

  —Is it OK if I take a look around? she asks.

  —Yes, of course. I’ll have to get to work on the lighting, anyway.

  Hannah watches him walk into the office at one corner of the gallery and turns to explore on her own.

  She has always loved Anas’s work, the suggestion that it offers more than the eye can see about the circumstances in which it was conceived and executed. The pieces are mostly sombre, the colours he uses muted and unassuming, yet there is something about the square-headed figures he depicts, their limbs out of proportion to their torsos, their features fragmented and eyes usually closed, that moves her. They do not inspire joy, she thinks, but rather compel her to think about the politics of a country that has lived under dictatorship for decades and, in trying to break free, has now lost its way.

  She takes a closer look at the pieces within reach and realizes that what fascinates her most in contemplating artistic works is the process itself, the ideas and people that inspire creativity, the phase during which a piece is brought into being by its creator and that moment when the artist instinctively knows that a piece has achieved completeness.

  Among these objects of poignant beauty, she also experiences a sense of release, an interval of peace that dispels her misgivings and allows her, momentarily, to dream.

  Chapter 4

  In the Baghdad of her childhood, in the dazzling summer heat, Maysoun would run out to the back garden, her feet kicking dust in the yellowing grass, and play in the shade of her mother’s beloved naranj trees, fragrant and laden with fruit. The exact nature of the games she played now eludes her but she recalls their joys with unwavering clarity: the embrace of silence in those seemingly undying hours and a conviction in her young heart that life was unchanging, that love would always be to hand.

  She remembers other moments too: her father’s voice calling to her to come in out of the sun; the welcome feel of cold water splashing on to her burning face; and, early in the evening, climbing up to the roof with her mother to unfurl the mattresses on which the family would sleep to escape the stifling heat trapped indoors, the marvel of darkness descending, the anticipation.

  Later, lying with the dark sky above and familiar, still bodies breathing beside her, Maysoun would listen again for confirmation of that earlier happiness and receive it in the clamouring abundance of stars or in the whispers of neighbours carried across rooftops by the night breeze: memories of Baghdad that would last forever.

  An only child, she was born to older parents who had until then settled themselves into the relative comfort of childlessness but who nonetheless welcomed the disruption to their lives that followed her coming. They had loved her with something like indecisiveness at first, but with time and growing confidence in their own roles their affection for her had become more sure so that instead of freeing her as she grew, they tethered her further to the notions of childhood and dependence that she had hoped to leave behind, the idea that in the realization of need is borne the willingness to love and to give.

  In adolescence, at a private school for girls, Maysoun discovered the kind of freedom others enjoyed, classmates with European mothers from countries of which she had never heard and which she imagined more exotic than her own – Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, Norway and Denmark – tall, attractive girls who dressed daringly and expressed contempt for their elders with ease. In admiring and eventually emulating them, she was nonetheless aware of the necessary impermanence of these friendships, for she was conscious of her differentness, of the essential truth that while these young women rebelled with a view to their futures outside Iraq, she would forever remain rooted to the country of her birth and tied to the notion that whatever had come before was preferable to an uncertain present.

  The First Gulf War and her father’s death soon after she left school brought profound changes to Maysoun’s life in Baghdad, bestowing on her the role of her mother’s companion and widening her horizons to the many ways in which things could suddenly go wrong, not only for herself but for an entire country and its people. After the allied campaign led to the killing of thousands of retreating Iraqi troops and as many innocent civilians, the crippling effects of international sanctions introduced by the West began to make themselves felt. Maysoun saw herself carried along by a wave of events that she could neither control nor avoid: the first inkling of the harsh lessons that lay ahead. When she thinks now of what was to follow, of her own feeble attempts at struggle against an inexorable deluge, she feels a certain regret; she wishes that things could have turned out differently although she harbours a strong belief that God’s will always prevails, that she might have grown stronger for the experience, might have been something other than this undefined, absent self.

  She has the colouring of her father’s Kurdish ancestry somewhere in the
family’s still unknown past, a great-grandfather, perhaps, or one even further back – no one has ever managed to find out. Her fair hair and hazel eyes and skin that is clear and smooth afford her a fragile loveliness uncommon in this part of the world, though it is beauty that with age has softened, become less startling, less of an encumbrance to her daily life. Thinking of her one great love, she is satisfied with the recollection of the myriad ways in which he had looked at her, the wonder and mystery in his eyes and the desire that died with him all those years ago, youth and vision left behind.

  In Beirut, getting up and dressing for work in the morning, Maysoun hesitates for a moment before reluctantly opening the bedroom shutters to the noises of the street below. Her second-floor apartment in a popular Ras Beirut neighbourhood makes lasting isolation difficult; it lets in the good and the bad, the brilliant sunlight and the hum of people, the dust and diesel fuel that cause her debilitating allergies, and an inkling that she is part of something animate, breathing, even if she does not wish to be. Sometimes, on the rare occasions when she miraculously wakes to acceptance, the certainty that she is enveloped by God’s grace and is worn and defenceless no longer propels her into action.

  Since settling here some years ago, she has fashioned for herself an existence that infuses her dreams with calmness but which, in the stark light of day, gives her only reluctant refuge. Often, awakened by the reality of her situation, she cringes at this bustling brawling city and sinks into forgetfulness, imagining the world that might have been, a history uninterrupted by violence and circumstance.

  She tells herself that staying on in Baghdad would have been impossible after all that had happened to her there, that despite her attachment to her mother and to memories of home, she had done well to seek a life elsewhere, in a city that, though not ideal, was still in the region and did not have hell and torment in it.

  Insidiously, the present always manages to cut short her reveries. In her work in Beirut with refugees from Iraq and now Syria also, in her efforts to survive the ignominy of being and feeling herself displaced, in the relationships she has formed with people, sometimes despite herself, and everywhere her body takes her, through motions and ministrations, the weight of misgivings exhaust her physically as well as in spirit.

  And yet, and yet, there are small pleasures that greet her at the beginning of each day. The rhythm of her walk to the office, up a gentle hill and then down again, and the gratifying familiarity of it; the first cup of coffee of the day which she buys from a place near work, milky and sweet just as she’s always liked it; the quiet, reciprocated greetings she receives from her colleagues when she arrives at the office; and that moment when, finally sitting at her desk to deal with the tasks at hand one by one, she is aware of a beginning and an end to things and is inordinately comforted by that thought.

  Chapter 5

  Maysoun is still at work when Peter drops by to see her on his way home.

  —I thought I would be too late to catch you, he tells her as they embrace.

  —You would have been in another ten minutes. She smiles. It’s good to see you, Peter. How are you? How is Hannah? It’s been too long since we last saw one another.

  —All is well, alhamdulillah, he replies. And you?

  She smiles.

  —I like it when you speak Arabic. It becomes you.

  —Even though I’ve got a long way to go before I begin to speak like a native? He laughs.

  —Sit down, Peter. She gestures towards a chair opposite her desk.

  —I won’t keep you too long. I just wondered if you could do me a favour.

  —Yes, of course. Tell me what you need.

  Peter had liked Maysoun from their first meeting at a conference on Iraqi refugees who were being processed through Lebanon and on to destinations further away. There was a simplicity, an honesty about her, that immediately attracted him, as did her gentle beauty. He had introduced himself and invited her to dinner at home with Hannah. He had sensed, also, the solitude that surrounded her, though she clearly did not suffer from loneliness, her reserve lending her an air of self-sufficiency that was strangely calming to him. Hannah had also liked her, for the same reasons he had, and it was not long before the friendship was perceived, on both sides, as a particular privilege.

  Maysoun’s story moved them once they heard it, though after its disclosure and the initial impact it made, it was not referred to among them again. This was less a function of his and Hannah’s discretion, than because, Peter thought, Maysoun herself had employed no drama in the telling of it so that the greatest impression left on them was that of deep sadness, of a gradual but inexorable weakening of the threads that hold the self together. When he and Hannah had occasion later to speak about it, it was with the realization that their respect for Maysoun, for her resilience in the face of so many challenges, could only grow with time.

  She listens patiently to the details Peter gives her of Anas’s story and his concern about the whereabouts of his family before commenting on it.

  —Yes, we have the means to trace them, she says. Why don’t you tell him to come here to put in an official request whenever he’s ready?

  —Thanks for that, Maysoun. I’ll tell Anas to get in touch with you. But I don’t want to keep you here any longer. Shall we walk together?

  —Yes, Maysoun says. That would be nice.

  In just the past year, Beirut has changed in many ways that are sometimes difficult for him to pinpoint but which once they occur seem immediately familiar. The many beggars in the street who grow increasingly insistent, even at times aggressive; the obvious weariness in people’s eyes as they go past; half-empty restaurants; a pall, a greyness that depresses him; a disconnection that instead of feeling like release, brings on disquiet.

  He remembers his childhood in Detroit so clearly, he thinks now, because it is a past that contrasts dramatically with his present. He recalls an almost antiseptic quality to those days, an absence of discord and tension that his parents, white, middle-class and liberal, only served to confirm.

  Growing older, he had found himself being drawn to the children of immigrants, people whose lives seemed coloured by a chaos and passion unfamiliar to him. Many of his friends were Arab; one in particular became a constant companion, a Lebanese boy whose older sisters were blessed with an exotic beauty that drew Peter even then: the same dark, deep eyes of his future wife, the same impenetrable reserve, hair and skin contrasting like shadow and light, and an almost imperceptible trembling beneath the surface that suggested heightened awareness.

  It was not long before mixing, eating and living with families whose lives were prescribed by the customs they had brought with them from far-off places made Peter feel he was acquiring a new identity, one that fell somewhere between bland and overspilling, but which nonetheless did not fit in places. But he only grew more confused about his identity with time; he left school believing he would find it, not in the direction in which his past was bound to lead him, but in the unforeseen future, where experience would lend him the clarity and skill to realize his true self.

  At medical school, his days ruled by exams, exhaustion and unrelenting illness, he had finally found the direction he needed, had worked hard to fill the gaps created by a wandering mind, discovered purpose where he had once known only ambiguity.

  Perhaps it was inevitable that when he met Hannah while on a visit to Beirut with his Lebanese friend one summer, Peter had been immediately drawn to the unfamiliar in her; sensed also, as they spent more time together, the same inquisitiveness that had propelled him when he was younger, though in Hannah curiosity was hardly a quiet pursuit. Before long, he had recognized an attachment to her that he knew would not fade once he returned to America to complete his studies. There was much at stake for him by then: a job at a prestigious teaching hospital on the East Coast where he would specialize in paediatrics; yet beyond that there was the pull of a woman and her beloved city that would dictate the trajectory of lif
e to come.

  When he returned to Beirut two years later, Hannah was waiting as he had known she would be, and since civil marriage is not legal in Lebanon – Hannah and Peter were born into different faiths – they decided to fly to Cyprus and marry there. With time, Peter discovered that while his love for his wife grew steadily, he was less able to articulate it, as though its increasing depth made it more mysterious and inaccessible to him, as though it had expanded to embrace much more than either of them could put into words.

  More and more, though, as conflict spreads throughout the region and Lebanon trembles in the midst of it, he senses resistance in himself to the uncertainty of it all, finds it increasingly difficult to separate place from people, to disconnect his love for Hannah from the country to which she belongs.

  —Perhaps it’s me, he finds himself saying out loud.

  —Peter?

  —I’m just thinking, is it that I’m feeling despair or is it just that I seem to be surrounded by it these days?

  Maysoun smiles.

  —Probably something of both, she says.

  They walk up Sadat Street and turn right in the direction of the sea and towards Maysoun’s building.