No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  It’s all quite fabulous to my fresh Habesha eyes more accustomed to stumbling through mud, puddles and rubbish in streets where a single high-rise building would be regarded as a national landmark. Especially heartening is the lack of Habesha girls plummeting towards those hard pavements: Beirut looks harmless enough.

  But the avenues are not a-flutter with banknotes dancing in the sea breeze. The streets are bone dry: they’re not silted up with liquid-gold sludge gurgling from the drains. Money is not standing on the kerbside flagging a lift. Did I really expect to see a ticker-tape parade of free cash tumbling from the concrete towers? Many of my countrymen would. I think of Nati and smile.

  ‘Meron,’ starts Madame.

  ‘Yes, Madame?’

  ‘Maybe you want to know my job. Well, I am director of Lebanese bank. Name of bank not for you. But, important thing . . . me, I’m so, so busy and I have large luxury home. That’s why you come here.’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  ‘We live floor thirteen. And here we are!’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  The block looks a little grubby.

  ‘These marks you see on side of building . . . they from gunfire and mortar shells. We live on Green Line during Lebanese Civil War . . . they catch us between two sides . . . but this mean nothing to you, no?’

  ‘No, Madame.’

  She’s right. My tourist notes on Lebanon are light on matters of heavy bombardment.

  With the Mercedes safely resting in a basement car park, we enter through a door and I see the back of a black man. No, he can’t be!

  ‘Habesha!’ I gasp excitedly.

  He spins around to greet us. But he’s Sudanese. Urgh! My heart sinks. Manning the door, Sudan stands to attention for Madame and laughs disingenuously at something Shafeek says in Arabic. He’s like the Sudanese I’ve seen in Addis. He glances at me without a flicker of interest. We’re from the same continent, neighbours no less. This seems to count for nothing: African doorman meets African domestic with a welcome of such violent indifference I immediately despise him.

  We shuffle into an antiquated lift that hauls us to the top floor. Shafeek is carrying my unappealing suitcase in his left hand. My mother beat left-handedness out of us as kids, and I have always been wary of left-handers since then.

  ‘It goes down faster than it goes up,’ says Shafeek.

  ‘Be quiet, Shafeek,’ says Madame.

  ‘Elevators like gravity . . . maybe too much sometimes,’ he cackles.

  I’m not sure how to answer that, so don’t. I’m content to stare at the scuffed floor as though it’s the finest artwork in the Middle East.

  ‘Just remember to use the elevator if you go outside . . . there is a quicker route but you might not like it,’ he continues.

  ‘Shafeek, that not funny . . . shut up!’ snaps Madame as the door finally opens.

  Madame’s penthouse occupies the floor’s entirety. The corridor from elevator to front door is decked in marble. The front door is wooden but grandiose. Sacks of money must be lying around within. I am certain now: I’ve been chosen for an extravagant royal paradise.

  Madame’s younger daughter answers the door. She is bearing a forced smile that reveals a fence of metallic braces clamped onto her upper teeth. This barely diverts my attention from her nose. It’s gargantuan and completely dominates her head. With brutal hook and keen overhang, it’s a beak designed for diving at small mammals and ripping them apart. I remember the lammergeyers effortlessly floating around on thermal jet streams above Addis, seeking out live prey and ready carrion.

  ‘I’m Nazia,’ she announces.

  Unable to conceal my shock at her nose, my tongue is hanging out like a strip of flaccid injera. This is one of my less valuable traits. Seconds pass as I try unsuccessfully to haul it back inside.

  ‘Hi, I’m Meron . . . nice to meet you,’ I stammer.

  ‘How old are you?’ asks Nazia, allowing the forced smile to wane without the slightest effort at sustaining it.

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘Right. I’m twenty-one and I tell people I’m twenty-one . . . you look about nine . . . we don’t need liars here,’ she says pointedly and in frighteningly fluent English. My God, she’s already ripping me apart. I am today’s small mammal.

  ‘Yes, Nazia,’ I reply.

  Had she been born Habesha, her mother would have massaged the nose into a faultless nasal passage from bridge to tip when she was yelling her way through the first few weeks of existence. My mother smoothed my nose every day with liquid butter to iron out the imperfections. It worked. Unfortunately, social status is not determined by nose profile. I am to serve this Lebanese lammergeyer unquestioningly.

  ‘Mum, I assume soap and water will be making an appearance in the very near future,’ says Nazia, waving a hand under her nose exaggeratedly.

  ‘Of course, habibti.’As Madame leads me through the hall, I flick a glimpse back at Nazia. I envy the long black hair spilling down the spine towards neat buttocks. She has a body like a coil of silk but breasts as flat as place mats. She might be angry about that. I would be.

  I’m shown through the plush living quarters like a prospective buyer, Madame flaunting and flourishing as we hurry along, the apartment overwhelming me with its luxuries.

  There are two spacious salons. In the first and largest salon, we are met by five burly white sofas implacably assembled around the room, all sporting lavish gold trim and attempting to mimic regal thrones where a king or queen might sit and spread out. They alternate with matching side tables, each offering a gold ashtray, family photo, quality cigarette lighter set in grey stone and a bone china plate for sweet wrappers. My feet sink into thick Arabian rugs as they would into the loamy muck of Ethiopia’s rainy season. Ostentatious chandeliers hang teasingly above us, their glistening crystals threatening to pour down in torrents upon my spinning crown. I barely notice the dark velvet curtains brooding in the background: like the storm clouds over Addis and the Entoto Mountains, these curtains are dense enough to block out every chink of sunlight.

  A second smaller salon is dominated by a mahogany cabinet with row upon row of displayed golden trinkets sparkling like diffused sun beams. They seem to pinpoint their glows at the magnificent vases dotted around the room containing myriad dried flowers. I try not to focus too keenly on the burnished golden hoard: I feel guilty merely looking at it. Again, I see grand thrones where other people might put sofas. They look dangerously comfortable and try to lure my weary body towards them. But Madame is leading me through the apartment at a busy pace.

  A third salon is not a salon, Madame insists. The ‘TV lounge’ is dominated by a low-slung auburn Arab sofa clinging to three walls out of four. The sofa drips with blood-red cushions, encircling small polished wooden tables that crouch in the middle of the room like terrified kittens surrounded by hungry wolves. But the wolves are probably more interested in the TV screen large enough to enliven the entire fourth wall.

  ‘We use tables for eating,’ says Madame, ‘while we watching television . . . is place we relax, like family.’

  Madame’s bedroom leaves me gasping with envy. She has two huge cupboards dedicated entirely to her shoes, and two walk-in wardrobes packed with hanging clothes. My fingers itch to lift them from their hangers. Breathtakingly high-altitude high heels point scornfully at my orange sea-level trainers. Long mirrors await my first appearance in Beirut. In Addis, these wardrobes would house families and I would happily live in one, provided the contents came too.

  Dominating the room, Madame’s double bed is an inviting lake of glistening silk, almost the size and azure of Lake Tana, Ethiopia’s source of the Blue Nile. Imagine floating through that silk every night! Overlooking the lake is a bedside table bearing bottles of every conceivable hue and shape: brands of the world’s leading perfumeries proliferate, the most exquisite fragrances
on this planet only a single stride and squirt away.

  We march through a modest but modern kitchen with plastic work surfaces and all the conveniences I’d expect in a developed country. I think of Piazza’s fruit market in Addis, my vision consumed by oranges, bananas, grapes, onions and custard apples, while my nostrils inflate with the sensuousness of sweet garlic.

  There are three bathrooms, four other bedrooms and a glorious balconied roof garden bustling with bushes and shrubs. The view from the balcony, across the crowded Beirut skyline towards a distant blue sea, is confirmation that the lucky residents in this penthouse occupy a position superior to all. And there’s the Ethiopian flag waving at me only a single block away. My Consulate right on our doorstep: I can pop in for a natter in Amharic with my fellow Habesha nationals any time I please!

  ‘You look like you’ve just won a TV game show,’ chuckles Shafeek, watching me enraptured in wide-eyed wonder. I scarcely hear him.

  In these few fleeting minutes, I glimpse a divine existence never previously imagined. I’m intoxicated on comfort, space, light and luxury: so unconfined and ­liberating. This Heaven-bound palace offers total relief from every snag and stress of our world. How could anyone ever be unhappy in here? A future of fine living is unfolding before me: a gift from God! If I am a great maid, perhaps Madame will consider adopting me? I hope to live here forever.

  Arriving at a drab outside storeroom with a rolled-up mattress and a couple of hooks, Madame glances around for me.

  ‘These things all for you, Meron,’ she says, to nobody.

  It’s all been too much. The twinkle in her friendly eyes suddenly dulls as she finds me slumped on a particularly welcoming couch, my mind skimming and spinning down a silken cascade into a pool of bliss, my body curling into an unborn baby, slumbering contentedly, my um­­bilical cord in rapid repair. Am I unborn, born or reborn? Ah! New life!

  As I lie in my bed, I snuggle into the warm gap left by my mother. I hear chanting from an assortment of churches, a radio discussing English football, a rat scuttling across the roof, tuneless music blaring, Nati snoring, birds chirping, fists hammering on neighbours’ doors, feet shuffling along the track outside, and inside, my mother bellowing into my ear . . .

  ‘Me-ron! Me-ron!’

  But that is not my mother’s voice.

  ‘Me-ron! What you doing?’ shouts Madame sharply into my left ear. I jump perceptibly. Where am I? Ah, yes, the Kingdom of Heaven, somewhere in Beirut.

  ‘Get off the couch! You not princess here! You not sit on that . . . you over there,’ says Madame, pointing at a red plastic stool the height of a molehill. ‘You sit on stool in any room only if we invite you.’

  ‘But . . . thank you, Madame.’

  An unforgiving plastic stool is slumming it even in Addis, where our handsomely carved wooden stools are planed down to offer two generous concave curves, adequate for most bony rear ends in Ethiopia. The plastic stool is good only for doorstops and performing dogs. There are not many of them in Addis.

  ‘Where are the other servants, Madame?’

  To service this palace, there has to be an army.

  ‘Allah! Other? There are no others. Tu! You! You are the maid!’ she proclaims.

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Your English is great, but this word you delete it now.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Yes! This one, it not helpful. Okay . . . open your suitcase on roof . . . all your clothes out! They have to go,’ orders Madame.

  ‘No!’ I cry.

  ‘And this word. Delete it. Don’t worry, we put everything in big plastic bag until you return to Ethiopia.’

  ‘But . . .’

  Madame sighs loudly, garlic breath hitting my nose.

  A black bin liner is held open for me to scoop in the contents of my suitcase, including my bag of kolo. It will have to wait two and a quarter years. Urgh! Madame ties up the bin liner as though trapping a rabid dog. The suitcase gets its own bin liner. This is not the Lebanese hospitality I expected. Of my original possessions, only a postcard and an Orthodox Christian prayer book survive. Madame seems to understand these two items are as important as my own limbs. The monochrome postcard shows a cherubic Maryam holding a crowned baby Jesus with the angels Gabriel and Mikael looking on. I could pray to Maryam’s soft kind face forever.

  ‘You keep this picture . . . like Mona Lisa . . . but not speak about Christian things in this apartment, or they out. Delete them,’ says Madame. ‘Okay, into bathroom and you strip.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Strip!’

  What?

  The bathroom door is closed behind us. Madame folds her arms and waits for me, coolly pushing the blonde hair off her face.

  ‘Everything, Madame?’

  ‘Everything, Madame!’ comes the reply.

  Oh God. What’s this all about? I’ve just arrived. I still smell of Ethiopian Airlines. The ink is moist on my entry stamp. I’ve yet to use a Lebanese toilet.

  I hurry into the shower and pull across the plastic curtain to obscure her view. I’m sure that will protect me. Madame immediately tugs it open.

  ‘Not there, Meron. You don’t use shower . . . for shower, you use bowl like in Ethiopia. The shower is for the family, not for you, the maid.’

  I hadn’t noticed a large plastic bowl of hot water. I am to sit on the toilet seat, apply soap to my body and sluice myself down with a large jug, the dirty water washing away in the floor’s drain.

  She leans her backside on the marble sink and watches me while I paw myself tentatively with soap. I want to look as unsexy as possible, but my breasts are annoyingly pert. I don’t want to go near them in case it looks provocative. I dab the soap randomly. After a minute of dabbing, Madame sighs, rolls up her sleeves and marches towards me.

  Please, God, no! It’s my first day! This is not how I imagined my first sexual experience.Madame grabs the soap and a rough flannel: she works up a heavy lather before grinding it into every corner of my body.

  ‘Not want extra passengers from Ethiopia,’ she explains as she invades my personal interiors.

  It’s a businesslike incursion, rather than for pleasure. So that’s okay, I reason to myself. I’ve been here less than twenty minutes out of two years: pointless negativity is not useful at this stage.

  ‘We have soap . . . and water . . . in Addis . . . Madame!’ I yelp.

  ‘Congratulations. Ethiopian people must be so happy now. But they know how to use the soap? Look at your colour . . .’

  ‘What, Madame?’

  ‘Your colour . . . almost black.’

  Madame works the flannel over me for ten long ­minutes like a professional. I feel like a well-sanded wooden stool from Ethiopia, publicly displayed.

  ‘And that thing must to go . . . no adornments,’ insists Madame, pointing at the black cotton maheteb around my neck.

  ‘Madame, I’m Orthodox Christian . . . if I die in Beirut, I’ll be flown back to Addis and buried in the grounds of my church if I’m wearing this . . . please, it’s only a harmless thread of black cotton, Madame.’

  Madame isn’t listening. She sprays an acidic substance onto my head, followed by ferocious hair-brushing in case my tangle of frizz provides free accommodation for rogue insects. While I’m squealing, Madame snips off the maheteb from my neck.

  ‘So, Meron, now you must avoid dying.’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  ‘It not so difficult.’

  ‘Can I call my mother to say I’m okay?’ I ask, nursing my burnt scalp, as she tosses a large white towel at me.

  ‘Absolument pas! Non! Very expensive to call Ethiopia. Later, you write letter. You not touching telephone. Allah!’

  Madame hands me a pair of baggy white-and-pink-striped cotton trousers and a matching buttoned smock. I grin at their ugliness. Maybe they�
��re pyjamas. That’s okay.

  ‘You wear this maid uniform every day for next two years . . . What you thinking is funny?’ asks Madame.

  ‘Nothing, Madame. I’m really happy.’

  The flesh of my legs has to be banished from sight at all times. My hair must be covered with a white scarf: the knot is secured at the front, not the back because that might be misconstrued as attractive. I cannot wear knickers with a visible panty line: they have to be shapeless, voluminous and impossible to detect with the naked human eye. A bra is to be worn at all times, including at night in case I have to cook for anyone returning home late. Bra and knickers can be removed, however, for showers which must not be taken in the shower. There will be no miniskirts, heels, cleavages and lipstick for the domestic staff. Madame wants the domestic staff nullified into a nodding nobody, twenty-four hours a day. In my new uniform, I am to be ageless, sexless and stripped of all individuality, bar my name.

  ‘Me-ron! Into kitchen now!’ says Madame, yanking me away before I can glimpse my new persona in a mirror. She knows what she’s doing. Madame corrals me along with her hands, now able to touch me, for I am cleansed.

  As she prepares food, an elderly man limps past the door. Now at the level of toddler on my new plastic stool I look up at him.

  ‘That Mister Abdul, my husband. He has bad walk because he crash car two years before. His fault . . . refuse to wear glasses . . . silly man,’ says Madame bitterly.

  I stand ready to meet the master of the house, but there’s no introduction. Maybe she’s embarrassed about the implausible age difference between them.

  ‘Ab-di!’ she shouts, with further instructions in Arabic.

  No answer.

  ‘Ab-di . . .! Ab-di . . .!’

  It’s piercing but melodic. Madame holds onto the top notes and really sustains them. Abdul has to be deaf as well as blind if he can’t hear this. Madame is irritated by his failure to respond.