During Peter’s first visit to Beirut, he had enjoyed the quirkiness of the city’s byways, the narrow limits of neighbourhoods that, in the minds of locals, were marked and distinctive. Asking for directions elicited conversation rather than providing the information he sought. Often, he would be told to keep walking straight ahead and ask someone at the next corner, or if he were after something in particular to buy, he would be directed to a completely different shop where, he was assured, he could find a better product.
Once, stopping to ask an old man sitting at the entrance to a building where the nearest pharmacy was located, he was surprised by the response.
—Why do you need the pharmacy? the old man asked.
At first, Peter was too astonished to reply.
—I … I have a cough and I need to get some medication for it, he said in halting Arabic.
The old man looked up at him with rheumy eyes and made a disapproving sound with his tongue.
—Tsk, tsk, tsk. You young people don’t know how to take care of yourselves, do you? Not wearing the right clothes in the cold, going in and out of air-conditioned rooms with hardly anything on. What do you expect? Of course you’re going to get sick.
After which, and to Peter’s great amusement, the old man grudgingly directed him to a nearby pharmacy as well as advised him what medication he should ask for.
Eventually, Peter became aware of an invisible connectedness between people and places here, a kind of map of everyday relationships, of being, that was easy to follow once you knew how and made for a sense of rootedness which he had not encountered anywhere else.
It seems to him that while in Western societies the inner lives of people tend to shape their existence, the oppo-site is true in this part of the world where the external is what dominates lives. Perhaps it is a function of the fact that in the West, there is much about one’s environment that one can take for granted and, therefore, safely ignore. Peter believes that this is the case only in part, that reality is more complicated, that there is a willingness to concede to fortune in this society that helps people cope: not fatalism exactly but a genuine recognition that acceptance is sometimes the best option in circumstances over which one has no control.
—Sometimes, he says out loud, I think I will never be able to shake off the influences of my background.
Maysoun turns to him and, as she does so, he looks on in fascination as the fading sunlight touches her face, her transparent skin, her eyes, sharp and knowing.
—But why would you want to? she asks. Why would you ever want to let go of the one thing that defines you, Peter?
Chapter 6
Hannah’s father lives in the apartment where she and her brother had been brought up, near the sea – though the apartment does not look directly on to it – a neighbourhood which her father says was once the wilderness of Ras Beirut, where jacaranda and lemon trees grew in profusion and, at dusk, the sun swept over vast fields of tall grasses, over the water, in ever-widening arcs of amber reds.
—This, Faisal always tells her in his shaky old voice, was long before you were born, Hannah, when I was a young boy and my brothers and I would come here to play after school despite your grandmother having forbidden it.
She smiles and reaches over to touch his hand.
—Often, we stayed out so late that our father would come looking for us, he continues, calling out to each of us by name in such a beautiful, deep, sing-song voice that we would hide further in the bushes, out of sight, just to listen to it.
—The way you describe it, Baba, Hannah tells him, it’s not difficult for me to imagine what it was like for you, the joy in that freedom.
Faisal pauses before going on.
—This building is located on the same site where your uncles and I used to play but it was not put up until years later. The moment I saw the foundations being dug, I was determined to live in it, although I was still a student at university at the time and couldn’t possibly afford the rent. As soon as I got myself a decent job, I took this apartment and brought your mother here after we were married. Eventually, of course, we were able to buy it and really call it home. He sighs. Life was simpler then, you know. There was more cohesiveness between communities and Beirut seemed much smaller because even when people did not know one another, they were at least familiar with each other’s families.
During her almost daily visits to her father, with every telling of these now familiar stories, Hannah finds herself searching for details that she might have previously missed, for the one element that could change her perception of the whole and bring greater clarity with it. What she seeks is not so much to understand the everyday history of this city that came before, but rather to picture it plainly in her mind’s eye and so commit herself to its past, to make for herself tangible memories of another Lebanon, a country built on hope and expectations of better times to come, a home that lived in the hearts and minds of its people.
She has some clear memories of life in Beirut as a child, before the outbreak of civil war and the family’s consequent escape to Cyprus, memories that are mostly associated with her family, and with her mother especially, young and lovely, her clean scent and dark hair shining. She remembers the way her mother would put out a hand for hers just before they went out, the feel of those soft fingers and, when she looked down, their beautifully manicured nails. As they walked then, Hannah trying desperately to keep up with her mother’s long strides, the streets of Beirut seemed to reflect the buoyancy they both felt, the glowing in their hearts.
Once, accompanying her mother on a visit to the home of friends, Hannah had found herself in an enormous living room, the sea – beyond luminous in the sun – framed by the huge window at one end of it. She saw waves that peaked in white and dipped down again into the blue, light bouncing on water and, in the distance, the long line of horizon glimmering, turning pale as it edged towards the sky so that Hannah felt herself lifted into it as she stood, hands leaning against the glass, her tiny body tilting towards the view, melting into it.
There had been family trips to the mountains where Hannah’s aunt Amal and her family spent their summers in a stone house that on one side overlooked terraces of pistachio trees and on the other abutted a hill covered in brambles. Lunch was eaten around a large table placed beneath the shade in the front garden: salads, stews and vegetables stuffed with rice and nuts, and raw meat pounded until tender, wrapped in mountain bread and dipped in seasoning. Afterwards, Hannah and her two cousins – her brother Sammy was an infant still – would tear squares off cardboard boxes they had found in the kitchen and carry them up the hill to a plateau midway on the mountain, high enough that the house looked no bigger than a matchbox but was visible still, and would sit on the cardboard and slide all the way down again, red dirt flying, arms and hearts thrown asunder.
These images, though vivid, are so fragile, so quick now to escape her even as she tries to recall them, that making of them a complete and satisfying picture seems impossible nowadays. In conversation with her father and other elderly relatives, and during moments of solitary contemplation, she fears that Lebanon, tired and faded as it has become, will never again award her that enchantment, that same, untainted delight.
She gets up to greet her father’s housekeeper in the kitchen and asks her to make tea before returning to the living room with the pot and placing it on the coffee table. Her father is facing the French doors that lead out to the balcony and she, with her back to the light, looks only at him. Although thin and somewhat shrunken with age, Faisal still, Hannah believes, retains the sense of presence he has always had, with his intelligent eyes and the calmness about him that is evident as soon as one comes near, into a welcoming orbit of tranquillity.
They are silent, enjoying the wet, rippling sounds of tea being poured and sipped, comforting noises that are filled with memories for both of them.
Hannah has always loved the stillness she can share with her father, periods of relief that she did not exp
erience with her mother, who was mostly occupied with verbally identifying things that needed to be done and then doing them with equal vigour. Hannah attributes these gaps in conversation to an older generation of Lebanese, pauses that provide them the opportunity to realign themselves with what is at hand, to assess a situation before acting on it. As a girl she distinctly remembers sitting patiently in rooms filled with people when a sudden quiet would prevail and, to her surprise and discomfort, no one but herself would try to fill it. It is a lesson she identifies with patience and love because neither of these two qualities, she now realizes, can exist without the other.
—Hannah, hayati – her father looks searchingly at her – is everything all right?
She is puzzled by his question.
—You seem preoccupied about something, he adds.
—It’s the usual worry, I guess. Just concerned about the state of things. Sometimes I think we’re never going to know what security is in this country. I’m working on a series of articles for a British newspaper and the more I discover about what’s going on in this part of the world, the more despair I feel.
For a long time he does not say anything and she begins to think he might be dropping off in the silence.
—I was seventeen when the war began, Faisal finally says. All hell was breaking loose in Europe, but to us here it seemed a million miles away.
Hannah suddenly realizes that her father is referring to the Second World War.
—Even while millions were dying and the map of the world was being redrawn, he continues, we were lost in our own troubles, trying to fight for this country’s freedom from French control. I joined youth groups and went to meetings and took part in demonstrations calling for independence. Some of these activities were punishable by death at the time, you know. People were accused of sedition and hanged for a lot less by the Mandate authorities.
—The martyrs who fought for our independence, Hannah exclaims. We were taught about them at school.
Her father nods and continues.
—It was all such a long time ago that sometimes I have difficulty recalling exactly the feelings associated with it, the uncertainties and the anticipation. But what I cannot forget is the sense of urgency that surrounded those times, an urgency that made us think this period would never come to an end. We were wrong though.
—About the success of the fight?
—Maybe it’s just that we got older and too cynical to care, he says.
—Not cynical, she tells him. You were just caught up with the vagaries of everyday life.
During our exile to Cyprus while Lebanon’s civil war raged on, Father would come to visit every few weeks, staying just long enough to remind us of himself, so that sometimes it seemed he had been with us only in dreams, so fleeting was his presence, so light the grooves he left on my heart. Although I resented his absence at the time, I later understood that this impression of impermanence had less to do with the time that he spent with us than where he spent it. Father was only half himself when away from Lebanon, not because he had been diminished for want of home but because everything about him that was most true had Lebanon as its anchor.
Hannah wonders for a moment if this is also now true for her, if in leaving Lebanon, she might find it difficult to keep the pieces of herself together. Remaining whole would be impossible. She recalls that when she had first told Faisal of her decision to marry Peter, he asked her if she intended to go to America with him.
—He will remain here to be with us, Baba, Hannah had reassured him. We will be his home.
Her father had smiled and said nothing more.
She gets up and stands behind Faisal’s chair, bending down to wrap her arms around him. A breeze comes in through the French doors and they smell the sea in it as it blows gently on to their faces.
—Thank you, Baba, Hannah whispers into the old man’s ears. Thank you, habibi.
Chapter 7
On the drive back to Beirut, a few days later, Hannah is aware of almost overwhelming tiredness. She has been to numerous encampments, has spoken to dozens of refugees and noted so many disturbing stories that she is not sure where or how she might begin telling them.
Rifling through her bag, she takes out a thick pile of the small, lined notebooks she uses for interviews and attempts to sort through them. Would arranging them by region be best, she wonders, the regions in Syria from where the refugees have come or the areas of Lebanon where they consequently settled? Should she focus on communities, the number of Shia, Sunni, Christian or Druze who have fled, or is it more important that she keep the most horrifying stories uppermost in her mind, the family members killed in bombings, for example, the homes and communities destroyed, the injuries sustained, the accounts of children traumatized by what they have seen and experienced, the beheadings, beatings and barbarism they witnessed, or the anguish felt by their elders at leaving homes and property behind and the harrowing tales of escape?
At moments like these, she recognizes the advantage photojournalists and television reporters have in covering tragedy; pictures say more than words ever could, their impact is immediate, their portrayal of suffering and urgency unequivocal. She suspects that whatever she eventually writes will not manage to express what she knows is true: the unyielding pull of despair, and, despite the odds, the inexorable reality of expecting something better.
She thinks of their eyes especially, questioning, pleading and trusting eyes; she still feels the small hands of children grasping tightly on to hers; she pictures the recognition on the faces of the women and men she met of a shared humanity, of the potential in meeting like this, in chronicling these extraordinary events.
Of all the images that struck her today, the one she cannot stop thinking about is the clothes line that had hung around the outside of one of the tents in the last encampment, the children’s clothes, a neat procession of trousers and shirts, jeans and pyjamas, diminutive and faded, appealing to her in a way she could not explain. Ahead, on either side of the dirt path, stretched two long rows of these makeshift tents, sheets of white tarpaulin with the UNHCR name and logo stamped on to them mounted on to wooden slabs to create a semblance of space, a suggestion of privacy. It would not have occurred to her that the refugees would be so proud of these simple dwellings, the men for having put them up with their own hands, the women for maintaining order in them, but this was exactly what she had sensed as her feet came to an abrupt stop and all she could do was stare at the clothes line in wonder.
The skinny young man with the gelled-back hair who had agreed to show her around the campground when she first arrived stood beside her, quiet though clearly waiting for some sign of willingness on her part to go ahead with the tour. She had felt his presence like a hum on the outlines of her skin, was conscious of his expectation, but still she could not move.
Above, the sky was blue, though she had a momentary impression of it descending gradually towards her in the breeze that touched her hair and blew gestures into the children’s garments, trousers lifting forward as if on a swing, a bright pink top simulating a wave with its sleeve.
It astonished her that she could make out too the scenes that had unfolded behind her as she advanced: the tiny mobile clinic where a heavily bearded young doctor treated minor cuts and bruises and dispensed medications to a queue of refugees waiting outside; the movement of people in and out of the encampment with the sound of traffic from a nearby highway electrifying the air; the stench emanating from the filthy, rubbish-filled stream that ran alongside the camp which, according to the doctor, was the principal reason behind the infestation of parasites in the systems of so many of the children in the camp; the glassed-in café where she and the taxi driver had stopped for refreshment midway through their journey, the sweet, tangy taste of homemade lemonade and the little boy, brown and dirty, who had stood begging at the café entrance and smiled when she bought him a sandwich and a drink; the shopkeeper who had directed them to the encampment, muttering
under his breath something about the plague of refugees who had descended on the area; the checkpoint they had passed earlier that morning on the road leading down to the eastern Bekaa, where young soldiers, one of whom had a cut on his cheek that oozed a thin trickle of blood down his face, waved them on; the trip from Beirut and she turning back to wave to Peter out of the car window, calling out that she would see him later that evening; and, most of all, the sudden indisputable certainty she had gained that in coming here, in being a part of this, however briefly, she was experiencing intervals of peace.
Leaving the village of Bar Elias behind, we make our way back, Saturday-afternoon traffic leading through the town of Chtoura and on to the capital Beirut heavy and slow. In the back of the taxi, my journalist’s paraphernalia is scattered on the seat beside me: pencils and several notepads; copies of UNHCR reports listing refugee numbers, aid disbursement and other statistics; an old map so embarrassingly out of date that it describes Lebanon as a country of merely three million people, the majority of whom being Maronite Christians; and somewhere out of sight, hidden beneath the mess that also includes an empty water bottle and the remains of a packet of biscuits the driver and I shared on our way over this morning, is a disposable camera which I will have developed and give my colleague from England to use for reference when he takes the professional photographs that will accompany this article.
The pictures, I know, will describe events in a way that no words, no matter how eloquent, ever can; will pull at heartstrings without the added encumbrance of intellect and reason. I put my pencil down and stare out at the shifting landscape, feeling remorse for the stories that slip from my fingers every time I attempt to write them down.
Chapter 8
It happens as they make their way back home, discussing the possible outcome of Maysoun’s search for Anas’s family, wondering what else they can do or say to comfort their friend.
Unsafe Haven, An Page 4