No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  NO LIPSTICK IN LEBANON

  Paul Timblick with Fasika Sorssa

  Dear Reader,

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  Contents

  Dedication

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

  About the Author

  Subscribers

  Copyright

  Dedicated to every migrant worker who has suffered in Lebanon, the Middle East and beyond – this book is for you.

  Inspired by our Loved Ones: Soliana, Hermella, Werkitu Delesa, Yohannes and Dejene.

  An Afternoon Stroll

  ‘We don’t have injera today . . . bread instead,’ states my mother in mid-sweep, her back leaning hard into the broom at an angle that usually hints at antagonism.

  ‘Why not injera?’ I retort in only bra and knickers from our cracked mirror.

  This bitter-tasting pancake made of the staple grain teff that we all gobble so frantically every day is undoubtedly a national addiction. A roll of injera has the appearance and comfort of a soft roll of beige towelling: Ethiopian hands cannot resist it. I see no rationale for substituting it with bread, not even for a single day.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asks in answer to my ­question.

  ‘As usual, Mum,’ I shrug.

  ‘Wasting time in Bole Road . . .’

  ‘Discussing this with you is a waste of time . . . why no injera today?’

  She stops at the door, leans on the broom and sighs deeply.

  ‘Bread today. Go to Shoa Dabu bakery and buy four rolls, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Do you remember when you were young and I threatened to send you abroad if you didn’t eat all your injera?’ she chuckles.

  ‘Er, no, but it’s an interesting idea . . . if I stop eating injera, will you get me a visa for America? I could work in movies, get rich and buy all the things I don’t need.’

  Mum glares at me for a second, unsure if I’m joking or not, which frustrates her even more than the sabotage of pleasant nostalgia. Her face is frame-worthy, until she assumes it’s one of my little jokes and the muscles around her eyes loosen again.

  ‘Meron, these days you never refuse injera. You’re as addicted as the rest of us.’

  ‘So feed my addiction. Why bread today?’

  ‘For a change. We need change.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I slip on a pair of nondescript blue jeans and step into unremarkable pink flip-flops. I pull a baggy black T-shirt over my untended hair, leaving only scrawny arms hanging at my side like two thin table legs of polished chestnut. The table would be complete if I wore shorts, but exposed legs do not invite anonymity in Addis Ababa.

  My large playful eyes, poutable mouth and perfectly formed nose will get no enhancement with make-up: let the beauty go disguised as simple plainness, perceptible only to the most astute. It will face towards the dirt ground, two strides ahead, as I nip through my neighbourhood, catching the attention of nobody. Nobody will see anything in me that is worthy of comment. I’m a miskin, a humble poor person.‘Bye, Mum.’

  I wish I had the confidence to strut around Addis like a supermodel with swinging hips and scarlet lips. Fashion intrigues me but invisibility is safer: I prefer to merge into the background of corrugated iron that forms a continuous battered corridor through the local slums. If I were a ­chameleon, my colours would be a permanent patchwork of grey and rust. There are absolutely no other colours in our neighbourhood, apart from the dark green door.

  I have no idea why our door should be dark green, but it is, like a one-in-a-million freak of nature. As it slams shut behind me, the noisy clatter sounds no different to all the other sheets of metal parading as doors. But it instantly creaks open again.

  ‘Meron!’ shouts Mum, craning after me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t forget the bread rolls.’

  ‘I’m not stupid.’

  From my dark green door to Meskel Square, it takes about ten minutes of quick walking. I suck in our passageway’s thin air streaked with aromas of roasted coffee, smouldering incense, freshly baked injera and human ­detritus. I switch my countenance from carefree to careful, with tilted head and resolute eyes, my facial armoury set for the usual daily assailants. These include murky puddles that never dry up, persistent street kids that never give up, eye-stinging gusts of dust, throat-choking plumes of exhaust fumes, random herds of stinking goats, roaming dogs of imperceptible breed, and redundant packs of men continuously staring at and startling passing girls. They are the biggest problem in Addis, not the dirt, not the traffic, not the pollution, not the flies and not the rats. It’s the staring, startling men.

  Addis swarms with men sitting or milling around outside, usually a little high from masticating their chat leaves, a mild drug consumed mainly in the Horn of Africa. My mid-afternoon jaunt to Bole Road invariably coincides with the ‘reggae timers’ stumbling back into the streets ­after a couple of hours’ manic jaw activity, always commencing with the ‘Reggae Time’ hour on the radio, straight after lunch. Like injera, chat-eating is also a national habit, but not spreading much beyond the idle fifty per cent.

  For the majority of men, though, life’s chief pleasure lies in the observation and ridicule of passing pedestrians, with unchecked jibes and jeers freely issued to those least likely to fight back, which inevitably means us, the women. We mostly lead demanding but meaningful lives supporting families, earning wages and maintaining the semblance of society. We tend to rely on our religion – Orthodox Christianity or Islam – for guidance and strength. The men tend to rely on their tongues for ‘chat’ and chatter: without tongues, they would instantly lose the will to live.

  ‘Hey you! Break your neck? Your head is always down!’

  This is directed at me from a cactus-hairstyled stump of a man who always tries to catch my attention at the ­he
ctic junction where at least one unfortunate is struck down every week, each one probably distracted by this same chat-eating idler.

  ‘Hey you, Broken Neck!’ he yells.

  ‘Broken Neck!’ laugh his companions, my new nickname cemented by their shared joke, which could endure for days or weeks or forever. But I keep my head low and my concentration deep, before the nickname becomes a doctor’s verdict.

  ‘Hey, Broken Neck, you’ve lost weight . . . must be HIV . . .’ he tries again.

  How can I have HIV? There has been no sexual relationship of any kind, ever. Who is this idiot? I twist around to confront him and . . . I suddenly have the bonnet of a blue and white Lada taxi careering towards my waist, the jarring car horn actually causing greater petrification than the fast-approaching machine. I’m completely stationary. I’m completely dead!

  The taxi stops in time. The driver pounds his car horn again and again until I feel my flimsy legs recommence their march. All passers-by gape at me for a second and quickly move on. Near-death is normal in Addis, but I’d prefer it without the attention.

  Yes, I am losing weight. It’s due to lack of sleep, not HIV. I spend the nights worrying about my fragile life and how it might be squandered with men like him. My slumber is not the easy drop of childhood: on some nights the subconscious is barely scraped as I puzzle over the possible routes to personal wealth and eternal bliss, without stooping towards a nightmare marriage where simple incompatibility is the least of our problems. How, God, how?

  At last, I meet with Tsehay, my old school friend, at our nation’s epicentre. Meskel Square is an ugly dusty place without the shade of a single tree. It is one half of a broad amphitheatre looking out over a ten-lane stage of stop-start traffic which pedestrians can only cross by outrunning ­motorised vehicles. Many of the square’s gangly masses can do this: Meskel’s terraces are where budding athletes come to train in the morning.

  Remaining on the terraced side of the square, Tsehay and I exchange greetings in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. I kiss her on both gaunt cheeks: the cheekbones go high, her eyebrows even higher. Too skinny for curves, Tsehay’s legs look ready to snap off from her body at any moment. Tsehay wears brighter colours than me – orange today – and subtle sweeps of make-up, suggesting she wants attention, and I am happy for her to take it. I am here for the free show; to watch it, not be part of it.

  ‘Some guy shouted a new nickname at me . . . Broken Neck.’

  Tsehay studies me for a second and frowns.

  ‘Not bad. Better than mine . . . Stirring Stick.’

  ‘I don’t know . . . stirring sticks are more useful than broken necks,’ I chirp.

  We set off up the Bole (‘Bo-lay’) Road incline, with offices, shopping centres and cafés on either side of us, as well as tiny stores inside untidy shacks doing their tenacious best to maintain a toehold on Africa’s most important driveway.

  A truckload of around twenty soldiers in cobalt-shaded uniforms empties in front of us and immediately begins to redirect traffic off the Bole asphalt into inconspicuous side streets. After a few minutes, pedestrians are prevented from crossing Bole Road by these mean-faced troops lining the entire three kilometres from Bole Airport to the African Union headquarters. In the distance, we see the headlights of a fast-approaching motorcade.

  ‘Which mad man is it to be today? Mugabe? Gaddafi?’ I muse out loud.

  ‘Shut up, Meron, or they’ll hear you,’ whispers Tsehay.

  When the continent’s presidents and diplomats attend AU meetings, they zoom along Bole Road in black limousines surrounded by police outriders carrying guns. The equally spaced soldiers in front of us are ready to batter any onlooker who might hurl a rock or themselves at the convoy.

  As the vehicles flash past, we all strain to glimpse an unhinged dictator through the impenetrable, tinted windows. We are allowed to tut quietly at the inconvenience to our insignificant lives but anything more invites a rapid baton-whack to the midriff.

  ‘Madness always afflicts the men,’ I announce loudly.

  ‘Meron, shut up!’

  A brooding creature with a slender cane gripped in his right hand looks me up and down with desire or disdain: I am not sure which, but I would love to deflect those ­devouring eyes at the Stirring Stick next to me.

  Typically, we manage to spot nobody of any significance, and resume our daily wander along Bole Road as it quickly refills with humdrum congestion, including on the pavement, where familiar faces veer in front of us like the flies.

  ‘Isn’t that Grave Boy?’ I ask, noticing a young man in an Adidas tracksuit striding with great intent.

  ‘Yeah, it’s him . . . still dreaming of dying outside ­Ethiopia because the graves here aren’t restful enough,’ replies Tsehay, shaking her head. ‘That is madness.’

  ‘At least he has a purpose.’

  Grave Boy stops abruptly to say hello. But no social exchange in Addis can be permitted to begin and finish so efficiently: there are at least a dozen obligatory warm-up questions before the meat of conversations can be consumed. ‘How are you?’ is reworded into ‘What’s up?’, ‘Everything good?’, ‘Where have you been?’, ‘How’s work?’ and ‘How’s the family?’, followed by the same for all family members. It can take a full ten minutes before anything other than polite enquiry is broached. By then, what really needs to be said has been forgotten, and often there is nothing to say anyway, but we have enjoyed a full and reassuringly long conversation. This etiquette provides a very reasonable explanation for the swift passage of time in Addis: a few sociable chats in the street and the sun is down for another day.

  ‘Anyway, I can’t stop,’ says Grave Boy belatedly, ‘I’m planning my escape into Sudan . . . more peaceful there . . . for the afterlife.’

  And he is back on track, dedicating his life to the achievement of a foreign death. We chuckle at him.

  Every day there are different stories, incidents and characters, all marching along like a permanent installation, filling us with shock, sorrow and elation in equal measure. If only we could see through the tinted windows of the black limos to mock the presidential mad men, on the same Bole podium as us.

  ‘Who’s this coming? Meron! Look, a new character!’

  I can’t believe it.

  ‘It’s not a new character . . . it’s Selam! Hi, how are you?’ I blabber as she approaches.

  It’s been more than two years. Last time, Selam looked just like me: standard backstreet Addis, too modest for a smear of lipstick and shoes too flat to avoid the squelchy silt of puddles oozing between the toes. But I remember she knew change was afoot: money was about to land with a reassuring thud in her life and it was her big secret.

  Last time, she gave me twenty birr to go to the cinema. . Made in Ethiopia, the movie was about a love triangle and the acting was memorably terrible. But I do also recall Selam’s generosity.

  ‘Selam!’ I try again.

  It’s definitely her. A swirl of bright blue and glinting gold breezes past us with only the outline of a vibrant crimson heart visible through the perfumed mist of faultless female form. I cannot take it all in.

  But via the vibrant crimson heart of lipstick comes half a smile, maybe less, flashed in my direction. Only a corner of her mouth actually moves, so to say half a smile is an exaggeration. It could be a frown or a mouth ulcer or a lump of mutton gristle jammed between the teeth. And certainly no words pour out. Once, we had a daily connection.

  ‘Selam, Selam!’ I gasp inaudibly. She’s passed now and left me in awe. All I see is her back and the gawping of others: men and women alike.

  She has the requisite beauty and style, and a body of absolute perfection, but what opens my mouth into a gaping Bole drain hole is something beyond visual splendour. Confidence is to blame. And I need that. It comes from money. Any Addis girl would crave the money and confidence to strut
along Bole Road as though she were the Queen of Sheba. Selam has reached the pinnacle, the highest of the high, the eighth wonder of the world, the Ark of the Covenant, the absence of poverty, the ­Sheraton wedding, the American visa . . .

  Tsehay is spluttering with laughter at my fawning.

  ‘You can laugh, but look at us,’ I snap. ‘Can’t you see what’s happened to us . . . the spectators?’

  ‘Why? What? We’re enjoying the free show.’

  ‘We are the free show! We prance along here every day and now we’ve got nicknames . . . we’re as regular as the others . . . we’re ploughing the same cesspit as the chat-eating men.’

  ‘What?’ exclaims Tsehay, unable to comprehend my sudden gravity.

  ‘Selam has turned up after two years and look at her . . . she’s something . . . she’s above the nicknames, the jeering and the gossip. She’s on that higher plane where she can choose what to do, what to be, what to wear, what to marry, whatever she likes . . . and what have we done in those two years? We’ve gone nowhere. Every single day, we kill time . . . we murder the minutes of our lives . . . we’re murdering ourselves!’

  ‘Tragedy today in Addis as countless innocent minutes are lost forever . . . it’s deeply moving,’ replies Tsehay melodramatically like a newsreader.

  ‘Tsehay, that’s deeply unhelpful. What’s the exact time?’

  ‘No idea. Reggae Time plus some more.’

  ‘Uh?’

  I check the time on a foreigner’s watch: it is three ­thirty-five (international time) outside the Dembel Shopping Centre. I jog for a few seconds and follow Selam across Olimpia’s traffic lights, past the Purple Café. She skips across filthy rippling lakes of stagnant rainwater and around the screaming youths of the public taxis trying to lure in passengers with ‘Bol-lay! Bol-lay! Bol-lay!’

  She darts into Shoa Dabu, the bakery. Bread is warm and fresh at this time of day; customers fight to pay the cashier. I linger beside a man selling fried flour biscuits outside. With rolls in hand, Selam is quickly out again, jumping into one of the jam-packed minibus taxis. There, the trail finishes but it’s enough. I race home oblivious to traffic, dogs, people and men.