No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  ‘See you later,’ announces Shafeek as he slams the door behind him, bulging briefcase in hand.

  So this is an international lawyer. A tingle of pride dances down my spine. From tomorrow, that superb ­species of a man will be under my care, apart from the vital underwear checks.

  Madame shows me the storeroom outside, next to the balcony. Paint on the battered door is lined with long grooves above the handle, like deep scratch marks, perhaps from an animal. It is the door of a grubby outhouse that seems out of place connected to such a plush penthouse. At least I don’t have to sleep in here.

  Inside, sacks of potatoes, sugar, salt, garlic, onions and flour fill the floor-space, while shelves are stacked with tins of tuna fish, sweetcorn and tomatoes. The idea of storing food is curious: there is no room for storing food in Addis. Besides, the Merkato and local shops stock everything we need and are always open. Stored food is never fresh food, and is an open invitation to vermin and insects.

  Within seconds, I notice a small cockroach stretching its legs in Madame’s storeroom, proving that Addis is right, Beirut is wrong.

  ‘Madame, there’s a cockroach,’ I say, pointing at it crawling along the wall.

  ‘I pay fumigator every three months but insect always they return,’ she mutters, smashing her slipper down hard on the insect.

  ‘Maybe he’s escaped from Ethiopia,’ I say. This is a particularly unwise comment.

  Madame looks at me carefully, as if splattering the servant with the same cockroach-soiled slipper is now under consideration.

  ‘I know you not nineteen, Meron . . . I not stupid. Really what age you have? Fifteen? Sixteen?’

  ‘Sixteen, Madame.’

  ‘Mmm, I think this. You still baby. Your head full up with dreams and idiocies.’

  I’m not aware that it is, but I don’t have a problem with dreams and idiocies. They’re as good as anything else for filling up the head. I have to put something in there while I live.

  The morning with Madame rushes past, rounding off with a chicken salad lunch. As I’m slicing onion, a sneeze gathers up inside my nose. Onions always do this.

  ‘Aaa . . . aaa . . .’

  Madame thrusts me across the room with a shoulder barge, the same way they play football in America.

  ‘Aaa . . . choo!’ I splutter wildly towards the floor.

  ‘Next time, spit your germs away from our food . . . we not eating food with your germs, and I hate to throw food in bin.’

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ I say, rubbing my shoulder from the shove.

  Madame makes some phone calls to her office. Bathrooms are left spotless. The balcony sparkles in the sunlight after we’ve sponge-mopped it. Madame points out Beirut’s lighthouse and the famous Raouché Rock, but I can’t see either of them: instead, the view is dominated by concrete roofs, satellite dishes, water cisterns and smog. Madame teaches me how to use the washing machine and the correct way to hang out the damp clothes. Her ironing technique is meticulous with lines as sharp as knives. I watch everything intently, absorbing the rules of the house.

  Family members begin to drift home from mid-­afternoon onwards.

  ‘When Nazia and Shafeek arrive in home, you tell them what food is in fridge and ask if they like anything prepared.’

  ‘What about Mister Abdul?’

  ‘Not worry about him . . . he eat old chocolate and other expired food all day in supermarket. Nuria and Hassan eat rubbish also. I let them eat rubbish,’ she says waving her hand contemptuously.

  Nazia returns home from university, dropping her bag on the floor for me to collect.

  ‘Hello, Nazia!’ I declare picking it up behind her.

  She passes her eyes over me, the way one does over decomposing meat. But, as instructed by Madame, I chase behind her, wittering as we go.

  ‘Do you want to eat food now, Nazia? We have cooked rice, beans . . . and chicken salad . . . er, Mister brought fruit from the supermarket . . . there are grapes . . . red and white . . .’

  Nazia continues into the bathroom without comment, while I gabble on.

  ‘We have yoghurt and hummus from yesterday. Can I make the table for . . .’

  Slam! The bathroom door is thrown shut in my face. I’m not sure what to do.

  ‘Can I make the table ready for you? There’s fresh bread. Maybe you’d like some fruit juice . . .’

  I hear the recognisable sound of trickling pee.

  ‘Madame said there’s also lentil soup left over from Tuesday . . . it should be fine . . . I can heat it up for you . . .’ I go on.

  Still nothing. Just the angry rip of toilet paper. It’s difficult not to titter as I talk to a bathroom door.

  ‘Er, Nazia . . . I’m in the kitchen if you need me,’ I conclude. I hear the slosh of the flush. That was a sort of answer.

  ‘Madame,’ I ask later, ‘what do I do if Shafeek or Nazia don’t respond while I’m speaking?’

  ‘What? They not have to answer to you. Your job is tell them everything . . . if they listening or not.’

  ‘Yes, Madame, but I was talking to a closed door.’

  ‘Not use this word again . . . but! No! Make friends with closed door.’

  Nuria returns around 6.30pm with takeaway fried chicken. Mustafa is being reared on junk food. He smiles at my smile.

  ‘Nuria, where’s your husband?’ asks Madame, reverting to comprehensible Arabic.

  ‘Extra consulting,’ says Nuria with a knowing tone.

  ‘Again? Allah! What’s this man doing to your marriage?’ rages Madame.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Mum . . . really I don’t . . . why’s the servant staring at me?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I hurry. It’s a habit that will never be broken.

  Shafeek is home around 8.30pm. I am to greet Shafeek at the front door each evening as he enters the apartment.

  ‘Good evening, Mister,’ I say, jogging up to him, sucking in his delicious Jean Paul Gaultier aftershave potent enough to sit heavy in my sinuses for the rest of the evening, like my mother’s snorted ginger root.

  He’s frazzled, with his face lined in new and extra­ordinary ways, his clothes hanging from his muscular frame like autumn leaves preparing to fall, the shoes tarnished and dulled, now clods of clay at the end of a weary body. He kicks them off regardless of the consequences. The aftershave is immediately suffocated by Shafeek’s own sorry odour, a full working day in the making, probably nurtured by pacing sternly up and down Beirut’s courtrooms.

  ‘Hello, Meron,’ he says, hurling the bulky briefcase in my direction.

  Rocking back on my feet and almost toppling over, I catch it.‘Run the bath for me and put out my grey tracksuit,’ he says, surging away from me.

  ‘How was your day?’ I ask.

  He stops midstride without turning to look at me.

  ‘Never ask me that again. Just do what I say.’

  ‘Yes, Mister.’

  Like an overheated hippo stomping towards a river, Shafeek requires a clear uninterrupted run at the bathroom, not the stultifying small talk of a lesser being fit only for trampling underfoot. I know my position.

  As he rumbles along, sweat-sodden underwear is tossed into the clothes basket while I try to brief him on the food situation. Madame interrupts me.

  ‘You not leave these things in basket until next washing . . . maybe fermenting. They have to be out and hang to dry before they okay for washing machine.’

  I rush to retrieve them. For at least an hour, I’m kept occupied by Shafeek’s arrival and the related trail of duties. He’s brought in expensive Italian pasta from outside. ­Shafeek doesn’t need to care about calories or money.

  ‘Tell Baba, there’s extra for him,’ he says to me. Shafeek sounds cute when he says ‘Baba’, The Arabic word for ‘Dad’ was probably his very first utterance in this world.<
br />
  ‘Hello, Mister!’ I try as Abdul shuffles past a little later without even a glance. ‘There’s leftover pasta if you want it.’

  ‘Baba,’ I say quietly to fill the void where Abdul should have responded. It is wonderful to say ‘Baba’.

  Hassan is the last home, around 9pm. I see him creeping along the hall towards the kitchen.

  ‘Where’s Madame?’ he whispers to me.

  I point at her bedroom. He gives me a tab of chewing gum which I tuck away in my pocket.

  ‘Hassan? Is that you?’ shouts Madame.

  ‘Allah,’ mutters Hassan.

  ‘Nuria!’ screams Madame. ‘He’s back!’

  By 9.30pm, Madame, Shafeek, Nazia and Abdul are sprawled on the long sofas in the TV lounge watching an Egyptian movie. Nuria and Hassan shout at each other in their quarters. Madame surreptitiously turns down the volume on the television so we can hear the ‘live’ quarrel more clearly. Allowed to sit on my stool near the door, I am happy to listen to family salaciousness, but if I want more than the gist, I will need to improve my Arabic.

  Nazia is agitated. She frowns at me repeatedly but this isn’t solving her problem. Maybe I should be doing something.

  ‘Je ne sais pas . . . I’m not sure if this is healthy, Mum,’ says Nazia, during one of the rare lulls.

  ‘What? Watching an Egyptian movie? Or you mean listen to the other two fighting?’ replies Madame.

  ‘Not that, or that. I mean letting the servant sit in the same room as us. It can’t be healthy.’

  ‘Ah, I agree, we are breathing the same air as her . . . maybe it’s bad to our health.’

  ‘Exactly, African air,’ replies Nazia.

  ‘But I’m not sure about leaving her in the kitchen . . . she has to sit in here, sorry, habibti,’ explains Madame, as though I’m not in the room.

  ‘Or she could go and clean something instead of sitting here and doing nothing . . .’ suggests Nazia.

  ‘Allah! What are you two talking about?’ snaps Shafeek. ‘She breathes the same as us . . . she’s not sick! Leave her alone.’

  Shafeek is racing up my list of favourite Arabs of all time, while Nazia has nowhere left to sink to.

  ‘Of course . . . you would stick up for her!’ says Nazia. ‘If she wasn’t a young woman, I doubt you’d bother speaking. Just like before . . . you’re so transparent.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, Nazia. You can’t judge me. Who are you?’

  ‘Just because you’re a lawyer doesn’t mean you can’t be judged,’ sneers Nazia.

  ‘The servant is in here to serve us, in case we need serving . . . that’s her job, Nazia. Don’t talk nonsense about African air,’ rebuffs Shafeek.

  ‘The rational voice of a lawyer says I’m talking nonsense,’ continues Nazia. ‘Is that how you win your cases? What do you actually know about airborne infections in Ethiopia? Her lungs could be crammed full of deadly viral diseases looking to resettle in new lungs with low immunity. Let’s hope those lungs are yours.’

  I don’t know what Nazia is studying at university, but I’m envious of her intelligence and shocked at her audacity. This girl is completely out of control. In Addis, no woman could ever speak like that to a man. Her father or husband or brother would probably beat her to death.

  And Shafeek is on his feet! We now have live drama in two different rooms! The Egyptian movie is totally irrelevant, Shafeek is ready to fight for me like a protective father. My tongue hangs out in awe. He is my new Baba! A slender memory of paternal security flickers awake inside me.

  ‘Hey, hey . . . you two! Stop it!’ snaps Madame. ‘Sit down, Shafeek! You’re like kids! Don’t worry, I’ll buy a small television for Meron to watch in the small salon . . . then we can relax in here without her air . . .’

  ‘You’re buying a television especially for her?’ exclaims Nazia. ‘Mum! You can buy me one first.’

  ‘Allah!’ exclaims Madame, looking to the heavens. ‘Fine, Nazia. I’ll buy two. Voila! Pas de problème.’

  The answers to difficult questions come fast for rich Muslims. I’m impressed.

  Abdul says nothing. Nibbling away on nuts, or fingernails, or fiddling with worry beads, he seems to be out of it.

  ‘Meron, go to your bed,’ Madame instructs.

  ‘Yes, Madame. Goodnight everybody,’ I sing out.

  Only Shafeek replies: ‘Bonne nuit.’It sounds like French again. Ha! Language number four begins here.

  I’m laughing inside. The day has flashed by so easily. Madame gave me a duties roster for each day: it looks painless enough. I set the new alarm clock for 5am and say a prayer until my eyes water with weariness.

  ‘God, thank you so much for what you’ve done for me . . . even more than David, the King of Israel. I can’t believe what’s happened . . . the great food, the beautiful apartment, a new television for me! It doesn’t matter about Madame and Nazia . . . on every day of this new life, I will thank you. It’s almost too much for me to express myself . . . thank you, God, thank you . . . at last, you have returned me to the world of good living!‘And bonne nuit, Meron!’ I giggle.

  For the second time in my life I have taken a plunge, and once again I can see the deep end should not be feared. I think of the Ghion pool and smile.

  The Deep End

  I was only six years old when Dad funded my first opportunity for an inglorious sinking. It involved a substance loosely related to water, stored in what the Ghion Hotel described as an ‘outdoor swimming pool’. This rectangular body of liquid, where I would take my swimming lessons, was surrounded by verdant tropical plants sprouting gigantic dark green leaves that could fully encase a grown-up. Loaded with extra-strength chemicals, the deep end of the pool was exactly the same colour as the leaves: it lay viscous and still like a rich spinach soup.

  The pool attendants assured us that chlorine was used to keep the water ‘clean’, but this cleanliness came at a high price: after one hour in the pool, normally caramel-tinted skin became a patchwork of blotchiness. Swimmers took on the appearance of burnt eucalyptus trees with rampant peeling bark. The day after my first lesson, I was neither white person nor black. This I found funny, such was my sense of humour in those days.

  For the first two sessions, our young instructor Robel, an athlete with a cavernous hollow where there ought to have been a stomach, allowed us to thrash around in the shallow end in what seemed like good practice for drowning. To be in warm – if skin-melting – water was thrilling for anybody in landlocked Ethiopia where the best of the swimming was usually restricted to Mr Hilton’s flush guests. The Ghion Hotel pool was a distant but considerably cheaper second.

  ‘Let’s go, Meron . . . kick your legs and use your arms . . . same time! Together!’ shouted Robel.

  Down I went. But not very far. Only up to my waist. The shallow end was pleasantly non-threatening and only slightly green: more cabbage than spinach.

  ‘It’s the second week! Your legs are still five minutes behind the rest of you. Focus, Meron!’

  ‘I can’t control them, Robel. They don’t get on with my arms. They want to be different.’

  ‘Next week, it’s the deep end. Tell your legs to get ready or you’ll have to get a new pair that work properly.’

  Robel didn’t have the patience required of a teacher. At six, I knew I was stuck with whatever God had given me: legs and swimming instructor. How could I get a new pair of legs? Tuh! Robel was an idiot.

  In the third week, panic set in as Robel marched us around to the deep end. It was dark enough to obscure the bottom of the pool. There were probably skeletons down there and a family of skulking creatures that sharpened their teeth on little girls like me. My fears barely subsided as Robel boomed out his lesson to us, a row of spindly children with splotchy skin.

  ‘Today, we’ll learn how to dive. Watch me dive into the pool. Watch how
I hold my position through the air.’

  We watched. He flew like a bullet into the green stuff. High on bravado, he repeated it twice. Robel was a great swimmer. We gasped and admired him. Nothing appeared to be dragging him down into the murk and Robel survived the deep end.

  ‘Now, I want you to line up alongside the pool, equally spaced.’

  We did this. Robel wandered down to the end of the line where I was quaking in my costume.

  ‘Focus, Meron! Are you ready?’ he shouted from behind me. He must have been five metres back, preparing himself to run at the water again, which was now becoming tiresome. Yes, Robel, we all know you’re an expert diver. Bravo.

  ‘Yes, ready . . . again!’ I yelled.

  I waited for a second. Nothing happened. Oh come on, Robel, stop wasting our money. Dad will be furious with this ‘instructor’.

  ‘I’m watching!’ I shouted impatiently. Back then, I had confidence.

  Come on, Robel!

  He pushed me hard from behind. Argh! I was in the water before I knew anything, sinking deep into the emerald pond, the water becoming opaque as the sunlight dimmed, and then black as I sank further. For a second, I couldn’t see anything. For a second, I thought maybe I would die.

  Fortunately, my direction changed. Upwards! It seemed to take forever. My head emerging from the surface, I thrashed and flailed, but arms and legs somehow co-ordinated into a recognisable stroke, transporting me to the side of the pool, to the safety of dry land, panting furiously as I reached Robel’s outstretched hands.

  ‘You’re not dead!’ said Robel. ‘You see, the water doesn’t kill you. Be friendly with the water. It’s not your enemy. Now, you can swim!’

  ‘Thank you, Robel.’

  Everyone cheered and clapped. My anger turned to pride. It was a life-changing moment.

  ‘You’d never have done it without a push from behind . . . I know you, and I know your legs.’

  Robel was absolutely right. It would not have happened. But it did and I had amazed myself. I couldn’t wait to sit on Dad’s knee and recount my victory over the green liquid stuff.