No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  ‘He get old . . . not hear me or not want to hear me. He have own supermarket.’

  I’m desperate to know how old, but too timid for such a bold question. Nobody ever looks as old as this in Addis: everyone dies first. If I had a camera, I would take Abdul’s photograph to show people at home.

  Abdul shuffles past the doorway again, oblivious to his wife. He nurtures very white hair: a wispy cloud seems to have plopped onto his head, which wouldn’t be surprising on this, the thirteenth floor. Tiny black eyes peep through gaps in craggy facial features. The size of Nazia’s sharp beak owes much to Abdul’s wilting bill, though the latter has a softer, rounder sweep: it droops benignly rather than points threateningly. We hear the front door slam shut behind him. I feel so relieved to see the master of the house hobbling very slowly: he will not be leaping astride me every time the weather warms up.

  ‘How many people live here, Madame?’ I ask quietly.

  ‘Seven people live here. And you, of course. Me, ­Shafeek, Nazia, Abdul, Nuria my oldest daughter, her ­husband Hassan and son Mustafa. Nuria expecting another in three months. Eleven rooms plus roof garden to busy you.’

  ‘I understand, Madame.’

  Actually, I don’t. Madame is rich enough to employ a team of professional cleaners but she chooses to hire a single Habesha maid to run through eleven rooms every day with a mop. I have a ‘Gurage’ madame. The Gurage people of Ethiopia are renowned for their miserliness.

  There are three taps in the kitchen: two cold and one hot. I turn on a cold one but nothing appears. The other cold tap offers running water which I drink with my hand, as I do in Addis. The water tastes salty and revolting.

  ‘Me-ron! Not drink that! Only for washing clothes and clean floor. Other provide drinking water for you, and cooking water for us. Come every three days . . . that when you fill up old plastic bottles. For us, family, we drink bottle water from Abdul’s supermarket. You serve that but you not drink that. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  ‘And other rules . . . after lunchtime, I not want to see you in salons or bedrooms . . . clean them in morning . . . in afternoon, your place right here in kitchen, or outside on roof. Evenings, maybe you watch TV with us, if we invite.’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  ‘Finally . . . yes, your eyes are big and beautiful, but you keep them down, you understand? We want maid service, not staring service . . . like you doing right now.’

  ‘Yes, Madame . . . sorry,’ I hurry.

  Down go the eyes, but they instantly spring back into their natural ogling position. Like my countrymen, I stare: I can’t help it.

  ‘Seem to be Ethiopia thing . . . dangerous.’

  ‘Can I write a letter to my mother now?’

  ‘Ah, you are educated . . . not sure I like this. Yes, write letter.’

  I write a brief note for my mother, kiss it and hand it to Madame with the Addis address. No other form of communication is available to me. It says: ‘Hi Mum, everything is fine in Beirut, the house is good but big, family is kind, I think. Today, I saw the sea. Maybe tomorrow I will swim in the sea. Don’t be sad. Ethiopian Consulate is very close to protect me. The flight was great. Free food but no injera! I feel happy to be here, but already miss you so much. Love, Meron.’

  With luck, she might receive this note in around three weeks. There are computers in every bedroom, but I have never used one of these intelligent hunks of plastic and wires. They represent objects for dusting, not for communicating.

  I meet the other daughter, the oldest of Madame’s progeny: a pregnant Nuria and her husband Hassan, hospital administrator and cosmetic dentist respectively. Nuria’s six-month bump suits her. She’s stocky and dark, with a blatant line of hair resting above her upper lip. Black curls shoot out from her head, wilfully untamed. Her eyes are full of sleep and apathy, her mouth hasn’t the appetite for a smile. The clothes – disagreeable dungarees – suggest she works underneath car engines. The bump is her one redeeming feature, albeit a different person.

  ‘Hello, Madame Nuria,’ I offer. My hand is outstretched.

  ‘Call me Nuria, not Madame Nuria.’

  A flabby hand is raised but not forwarded to meet mine. It looks scared of me. Doesn’t it realise I’ve been purified?

  Conversely, Hassan is smooth, smart and reassuringly tubby. Like Nuria, he’s in his thirties. Unlike his wife, he’s maintained personal standards in the face of marriage and offspring. Hassan’s smile exposes glittering white cubes, his mouth resembling the entrance to a well-endowed salt mine. His playful eyes effuse energy and acumen, while the air around him smells of dried apricots.

  Shaking my hand enthusiastically, he says: ‘Nice to meet you, Meron.’ This person I like.

  I see their three-year-old son, Mustafa, asleep. Only Madame’s solid hand on my shoulder prevents me from kissing his angelic features. In Addis, it is normal to kiss random strangers’ babies and toddlers in the street. It would be odd not to.

  As they continue into their two bedrooms, I notice Hassan’s head. From the front, it’s a polished shaven head, but the back view reveals a deep natural gash where the skull ends and the neck begins. This line both intrigues and frightens me. The groomed head of a Bole boy is usually a ball of loveliness to admire and stroke, but on Hassan it’s a hairless knuckle with a disturbing slash at the join, like an extra grinning mouth. Hassan has two faces and one of them scares me.

  ‘You only eat what we give you, Meron,’ Madame states, as I’m passed a delicious spread of pita bread and hummus. ‘You not take food when you want it. That is thieves’ thing . . . we punish thieves.’

  No problem. With food like this, I’ll be the new Beti, occupying two seats on my return to Addis. Mum won’t recognise the balloon floating through her door in a couple of years’ time. I will be the envy of Addis.

  ‘By the way, you are fat girl.’

  ‘Really, Madame?’ I reply with a smile. It’s a compliment, I’m sure, though also an exaggeration: I would describe my shape as ‘comfortable’.

  Madame busies herself around the kitchen.

  ‘Before you serve food or drink, you wash and dry your hands always . . . every time. This important,’ she continues. ‘I check your fingernail too, every day.’

  ‘Ishee, Mum.’

  ‘Not start “ishee” thing! No Amharic! And I not your mum!’ barks Madame.

  I blush at the mistake. She turns my hands palm-upwards for a visual check. I pass.

  ‘Okay, Meron, tomorrow I take day off work to teach you everything for your job. After this, I expect service. My standards are high, very high. You understand me?’

  ‘Ish . . . yes, Madame.’

  ‘Any question?’

  ‘No, Mum . . . Madame. Sorry, I’m tired.’

  But she is my mum now.

  ‘Okay, go to bed,’ she instructs. ‘In small salon between display cabinet and sofa . . . you and mattress go in there.’

  Madame is clever: if a burglar managed to break into her apartment at night, they would have to step on me first before they could raid the golden ornaments. As a human alarm, I would probably squeal very loudly indeed.

  It’s around 9.30pm, Universal Time, not Habesha time any more. Tonight, I sleep in a luxury apartment and it is a different universe. I am so many light years from Ethiopia, where our ramshackle home sits inconceivably beneath the same moon. Is Nati staring at it right now?

  Falling onto my mattress, I say a prayer: ‘Thank you, Lord, for delivering me to this extraordinary place . . . tell Mum I am okay . . . much more than okay . . .’

  I want to spend more time awake, thinking of Mum, Addis, Ethiopia.

  Second Day in Lebanon (819 days left)

  The creak of an opening window wakes me. Madame is letting in some early morning air and breathing outwards with evident relief at the sa
me moment.

  ‘I not breathing your stale air,’ she mutters to herself.

  ‘Mum . . . Madame?’

  ‘Meron, this is time you get up every day.’

  ‘Ishee . . . that’s fine, Madame.’

  ‘I give you very very loud alarm clock tomorrow.’

  We drink tea enlivened with freshly squeezed lemon juice. Madame sits on a high stool in the kitchen in tight blue shorts and white T-shirt revealing the contours of her breasts. She looks amazing at 5.30am. I wear my new uniform which shows off the contours of a servant. As foolish as the baggy uniform looks, I feel proud. I’m a professional.

  Madame is the professional. The way she sweeps, dusts, mops, wipes, scrubs, polishes and irons suggests Madame is wasting her time in the banking sector. It all looks so easy as she glides around the apartment, blonde hair flowing behind her, cleaning materials dispatched with precision and technique at such speed I have no time to think.

  ‘Dusting is in circle . . . look!’ she shows me, stroking her cloth across a salon side table in an artistic sweeping motion.

  Yes, easy, I encourage myself. I’m probably a third of her age.

  ‘I hate dust . . . dust is us,’ she sputters.

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  ‘It’s dead skin . . . floating around,’ she explains with her hands feeling through the air dramatically. ‘We breathe it into lungs, we breathe other people’s dead skin. Common dust is . . . yuk!’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  ‘And in penthouse like this, we have dust from all Beirut. What means this? Means we get dead skin from all city . . . not only my family dead skin, but every man, woman, animal . . . their skin comes in here, on my furniture, on my food, on my lungs. Living things are disgusting.’

  That sets my mind racing with worry. I could be ­creating dust as we speak. With luck, my dust will mingle unrecognisably with the rest, except that it’s almost black and everyone else is white. Somehow, I must hang onto my skin for the next two years, though it’s not obvious how I might do this.

  ‘I have special checking system for dust, Meron.’

  ‘Yes, Madame?’

  ‘Oh yes, Madame. Some days, and I not tell you what days, but some days I wear white socks to walk around my apartment. I go all corners, all rooms, walking, walking . . . when finish, I look at bottom of white socks . . . must be same colour as my husband hairs. If socks not white, you have problem . . . I need service from you, not problem.’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  Abdul is hobbling quickly away from the bathroom.

  ‘You clean this bathroom every time he use it, Meron. I mean every time. I not go in there until you finish. Remember, I share same bathroom . . . I depend on you to clean it.’

  ‘Yes, Madame. It’s no trouble.’

  ‘Okay, we see about that . . . not normal cleaning . . .’

  Madame shoves me into the bathroom with a mop and bucket and waits outside. It’s foul to all my senses. Breathing only through my mouth, I’m forced into skilful footwork. It would be too easy to slip up on the plops of sewage sprayed around without care or pattern. Either the lavatory’s flush has an explosive tendency or Abdul is pirouetting through his morning motions. The latter is unlikely on a lame leg. But I see Madame’s point: living creatures are disgusting. Half an hour of frantic scrubbing later, I emerge unscathed to find Madame chatting with Nazia. I have completed my first cleaning assignment and deserve a hero’s reception.

  ‘Good morning, Nazia,’ I try cheerfully.

  ‘Wash hands now . . . use Dettol,’ says Madame earnestly.

  Nazia ignores me. She’s wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt as red as bright new blood. Her make-up is immaculate, the lipstick exactly matching the T-shirt. The nose glistens, more intimidating in the morning sunlight.

  ‘Don’t let her touch my clothes,’ Nazia says to Madame in English.

  ‘Pas de problème, habibti, I teach her everything today. She better than one before.’

  ‘How can she be?’

  ‘Give her chance, habibti.’

  ‘Chances have to be earned,’ says Nazia.

  I wait for Madame in the kitchen. Abdul is in here, swishing around in loose-fitting blue silk pyjamas. The car accident left one leg longer than the other, noticeably longer. His shorter right leg has excess trouser: every four or five strides, he sighs loudly and stops abruptly as the silk unfurls from the waist downwards and flaps along the floor, requiring him to constantly gather up the extra material and tuck it back into the waist band. Nobody has ever thought to shorten the right trouser leg for him. Nobody cares enough.

  ‘Can I help you with anything, Mister Abdul?’ I offer in broken Arabic. I could sew up the trouser leg.

  ‘Help? You think I need help? Yes, you can help me . . . keep out of the way in my kitchen, in my apartment, in my country . . . you shouldn’t be coming here,’ he gurgles in Arabic, or at least this is the gist I manage to extract.

  Abdul’s words fight their way out of a phlegmy whirlpool, while he tries to juggle boiling coffee and a flapping pyjama leg. He seems determined to shield the preparation of Turkish coffee from me with his hunched body, but my eyes are too fast for Abdul.

  Having filled up a long-handled silver pot with cold water, he adds a heap of sugar and two mounds of finely ground coffee from a packet that says ‘Najjar’. Abdul then holds the pot over a gas flame, concentrating like a surgeon as the coffee begins to bubble. As soon as the foam rises up, he pulls the pot off the flame and let’s it settle for a moment before stirring the coffee methodically with a spoon. He replaces the pot on the flame and repeats the procedure twice until eventually pouring the brown silty contents into a white demitasse cup. Coffee is in my blood, bones and soul: I have to witness this, even if I am not to drink the black nectar.

  Madame gives me pita bread and cheese before we continue with the cleaning tasks. Nuria and Hassan soon emerge from their two adjoining rooms, holding little Mustafa’s hands between them. As Mustafa smiles at me, Madame peppers his head with kisses, repeating the word ‘Habibi!’ more than eight times. A final smothering cuddle that threatens to asphyxiate him makes the point emphatically. The moment Madame lets go, Mustafa runs towards me. Instinctively, I bend over and kiss him on the forehead, copying Madame but without the melodrama. Madame flinches.

  ‘Not kiss her, Mustafa, or you be black too,’ declares Madame.

  Mustafa defies her and kisses me on the cheek: I hope this does not cause any upset for Madame or Nuria. Absurdly cute, Mustafa looks like a miniature version of Shafeek, but with a face held in constant surprise, the way life should be at that age. These Arab boys definitely have something.

  Nuria is indifferent: she’s not interested in who kisses who at 8.50am. This morning her dungarees are blue verging on black. I think of car engines: how would her bump fit underneath?

  ‘How are you today, Meron?’ asks Hassan, white enamel glimmering proudly. His suit is cheap and dreary but with teeth like that nobody will see it.

  ‘I’m fine, Mister, thank you . . . and you?’ I smile.

  ‘Hassan! We’re going!’ snaps Nuria.

  Her words snatch Hassan away from me, but he glances back.

  ‘That’s good, that’s good . . .’ he says, his rear grin ­reinforcing the sentiment.

  Ten minutes later, Shafeek appears in black button-up trunks, his hair tousled and face rugged from hard sleeping. I drink in the view of his great body. But the foot fungus is awake. Without that, he is a perfect man.

  ‘I need my things . . . Allah, where are my things?’ he mutters in our direction.

  We go to Madame’s bedroom. Inside a wardrobe sits Shafeek’s underwear collection, mainly black briefs and black socks.

  ‘Every morning, you help Mister Shafeek be ready for work. He is number one in this apartment. If he need you, you go to
him.’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  ‘Always I check his underwear . . . but you take to him, after I check it.’

  ‘Er, okay, Madame.’

  ‘I buy his clothes. He finish with socks and pants faster than other people . . . I check them every day for hole, smell, elastic breaking . . .’

  I want to laugh.

  ‘And you warm-iron his underpants every day. This really important.’

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ I snigger.

  ‘Not funny, Meron . . . he is international lawyer!’

  Shafeek stumbles around in the kitchen, scrambling eggs for breakfast and glugging orange juice from the carton. He doesn’t seem very sociable.

  ‘Shafeek, can I eat some of your egg?’ asks Madame in Arabic.

  ‘Not enough to share,’ he says grumpily.

  What’s his problem? You wake up in a palace like this and you still hate the world? I’ve always thought that wealth must bring with it a daily elation: that the rich leapt like shooting stars from their king-sized beds every morning and then spent their easy days rollicking around in knee-deep Persian rugs unable to contain their joy for this world. But some people seem a little dejected around here: perhaps Shafeek wants even more wealth.

  Madame shows me how to lay out work clothes neatly on his bed, everything flawlessly ironed. His shiny pointed black shoes require no polishing, but I am to do it anyway, just in case a spot of dust has soiled them.

  ‘In Beirut, how you look is everything,’ Madame says. ‘But not in Ethiopia . . . everyone look the same, yes?’

  ‘Er . . . well, it . . .’ I start, unsure of myself. She’s not expecting an answer so I stop myself. It is everything.

  Shafeek is leaving rapidly. He’s wearing a dark blue ­double-breasted silk suit. I want to stroke my cheek on it. The red-striped tie is also silken. Gold cufflinks flash at me. Real gold? This man exudes quality and his face has settled down. The hair is gelled and neat. I can’t imagine him committing murder now. He looks good and smells great. The polished shoes lock in his single odorous feature and reflect light like small black puddles attached to his feet. Nobody wears shoes like that in Addis. Instead, we stand in small black puddles.