No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  Robel leant over to whisper in my ear.

  ‘But by the way, Meron, don’t drink the water . . . that can kill you.’

  Third Day in Lebanon (818 days to go)

  I am sitting on God’s knee. Or is it Dad’s knee? Resolute as volcanic rock beneath me, I feel sure God and Dad have exactly the same kind of muscular thigh, both utterly secure. Falling from this safe ledge would be impossible. I look downwards at thousands of glowing Habesha faces, many framed in white chiffon hoods: they all smile up at me, every pair of eyes effusing joyfulness at my privileged position. This must be the lap of God. I absorb the warmth of their love and begin to swivel my head upwards to see the Lord’s face, to thank Him in person for de­­­livering me to Beirut and the good life. Meeting God at last! This will be glorious! Except for an ugly repetitive sound, growing more and more intense by the second.

  The new digital alarm clock looks good, but at five o’clock on Sunday morning the high-pitched beeps plough deep destructive furrows across delicately balanced dreams. Nobody likes to begin the day with an unfinished dream: it affords disappointment from the opening second of wakefulness. And what could be more disappointing than having the face of God offered up and snatched away within the same final second of sleep? An incredible ­spiritual moment trashed by a cheap plastic timepiece. But if I can just close my eyes again, give me an extra second on His knee . . . please!

  Reluctantly, as the Muslim call to prayer commences across the city, I get dressed. Breakfast is sweet tea and Hassan’s chewing gum, ‘fresh mint’ flavour. I wait quietly for Madame.

  I wait three hours.

  Time elapses pleasantly and peacefully in Beirut, early Sunday morning. A slight saltiness in the air carries into my corner. I can almost hear the gentle sea stroking the beach, imperceptibly easing its way up the brown sand, the water warm and giving, my body relaxing into its soft supple hands. Take me, Mediterranean, take me to float on your great body of blue heaven. But where shall I drift to on my day off?

  On Sundays in Beirut, Habesha maids attend an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian service outside a small convent church next to the Military Hospital, close to Badaro Street. Beti told me this on the plane. Afterwards, they eat injera and drink coffee. It should be a day for spiritual revitalisation, a day to rest and recover in good company. Combined with a swim in the sea, that will be perfect.

  When she rises at 8am, Madame ambles bleary-eyed onto the balcony where I’m sitting in the sun, part-dozing, part-planning the start of my new exercise regime. I wonder how far it is to the beach. Maybe I will jog there, swim in the sea, and jog back to sup fresh orange juice in the sun.

  ‘Meron? What you doing?’

  ‘Waiting for you, Madame,’ I reply dreamily. I feel a prickle of doubt as I speak. Something is not quite right.

  ‘What you doing since you get up at five o’clock?’

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  Madame is torn between laughter and rage.

  ‘Allah! You wait for me all this time? You joking . . .’

  ‘No . . . Madame,’ I reply slowly.

  Disbelief lands with a juddering thump at this time of day.

  ‘Three hours, sitting here? What? You waste time! You not wait for me. I not paid to clean this apartment . . . you are! This not holiday resort for Ethiopia! Your work start at five, prompt! On time! Cleaning bathrooms. Not three hours later! Allah!’

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ I gulp.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ hisses Nazia who has picked up on the scent of a fraught conversation. ‘You’re here to work. She’s totally useless, Mum . . . we’re stuck with an imbecile.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I mutter wretchedly.

  ‘Well, move it!’ fires Madame. ‘Guests coming! I pay you to get up early and work, not sit like Queen of Sheba . . .’

  Guests are coming!

  ‘Madame, can I have breakfast? I’m really hungry.’

  She leans towards me.

  ‘You chewing gum?’

  Oh God. I forgot about that. I’m chomping away like an excited horse with a fresh bale of hay. No clever lying can extract me from this.

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  ‘Where you get that from?’ she asks, now annoyed.

  ‘I found it . . . er, stuck to the bottom of a chair . . .’

  ‘You do this in Ethiopia . . . eat old gum when you find it?’

  ‘Yes, Madame . . . they leave it in a public place for someone else to enjoy . . . we like to share our food in Ethiopia, it’s a cultural tradition . . . or traditional culture.’

  Madame is taken aback, as am I. It’s only the third day and my first convoluted story has spilled out without warning. Madame believes it.

  ‘She’s lying, Mum,’ chirps Nazia.

  ‘Of course she lie . . . they always do.’

  Madame allows me a meagre breakfast of reheated two-day-old manoushe, Lebanese pizza sprinkled with a blend of thyme, sumac and sesame seeds called zaatar. Madame meanders back to her bedroom.

  ‘Madame?’ I whisper through her door.

  ‘Allah . . . What you want? They come in six hour . . . apartment must be very very clean. Get on with it,’ she replies from under her silk sheets.

  My third day in Lebanon should be a little like my second day. I’m doing all the same things in the same apartment with the same utensils. But there’s a vital difference: what Madame explained and demonstrated so succinctly and professionally yesterday was an optical illusion of minimal effort; a soapy sleight of hand no less. I have been tricked.

  By midday, I’ve achieved exactly one third of yesterday’s midday workload. The rooms are now three times larger, the dirt three layers deeper. My diminutive hands are barely moving, while the long hands of the kitchen clock are lithe, swift and inevitable. I’ve been pumping limbs continuously for four hours. The filth of this family is beating me. Time renders me empty with hunger. There’s nothing left. Already.

  A stunning bunch of bright yellow bananas is draped provocatively across a plate in the living room. Surely a single banana would not be missed. Abdul took two to work this morning. What about me? I’m slogging more than him. Just one will be enough. Off with the skin and it’s gone.

  I trudge to the balcony for more sweeping. Minutes later, Madame is at my side again.

  ‘Who eating bananas today?’ she demands.

  ‘Mister Abdul took three this morning . . . I saw him,’ I lie again, the words released involuntarily before I can censor them. Blinking is easier to stop than lying.

  ‘Mmm . . . not sure about that.’

  When Abdul returns half an hour later, Madame confronts and quizzes him immediately at the front door.

  ‘Ab-di! Are you taking all the bananas again? Three are missing,’ she says in Arabic.

  Flustered by his wife’s accusation, he tries to dodge past her, but the elderly Mister is too slow and unwieldy. Madame sticks her face into his.

  ‘One . . . I took one!’ he lies.

  ‘Meron saw you take three,’ asserts Madame, pointing me out on the sidelines.

  Wonderful. He now hates me even more.

  ‘Rahima! Who do you believe . . . your husband or a new servant straight off the boat from Africa?’ rants Abdul.

  During the rainy season, the drains in Bole Road gargle the way Abdul speaks.

  ‘Exactly, she’s new! She’s not a thief only two days after arriving. Abdul, come on . . . tell me the truth.’

  ‘Who cares about the bananas? If we got the bananas from my shop, they’d be free.’

  ‘And black and useless,’ Madame interrupts.

  ‘We shouldn’t have lost the last one,’ says Abdul, limping away at last. ‘Not like that!’

  I’m confused. Bananas or maids?

  ‘Ab-di! It happened!’ Madame shouts after him. ‘Allah! Don’t
keep on sulking about the past. And please take other fruit . . . like grapes, oranges, plums . . . not only bananas. You need variety, Ab-di.’

  ‘Sharmuta . . .’ utters Abdul from a safe distance, barely audible.

  I know this means ‘bitch’. I can’t believe he said it, the strongest word in our language.

  ‘Ab-di! What you say?’

  Madame is shouting at empty space. She glances at me, unsure if I understand their Arabic. Me too: did he actually say ‘sharmuta’?

  At 1pm, Madame is preparing Lebanese dishes in the kitchen. Shafeek goes for a run. On his return, he sits on the balcony in only his dark blue Nike shorts, reading legal papers. I can’t help loitering on the balcony. No words pass between us. Within a few metres of him, I can detect both body and foot odour. They are different. I already know his natural perfumes. Does he know mine? Can he detect my fascination? If I stand here long enough in his presence, will he eventually desire me? What would happen if I kissed him on the mouth, right now? Would I shortcut my way to wealth, or to death?

  Shafeek’s green eyes settle upon me. For a moment, I have his focus. What can I do with this? Wink? Grin? Lick my lips? Sit on his knee as though he’s my Baba? No, none of these: I lack the confidence to unlock the treasure. He’s too good for me. I jerk my gaze away.

  We are immediately distracted. A truculent Nazia is shouting at Madame in a fracas over Abdul: he wasn’t told of the party and has already left for his brother’s house. Madame ‘forgot’ to tell him. Nazia slams the front door behind her. Excellent.

  Shafeek stands and wanders away, completely unconcerned. Loose, dark blue shorts on gleaming, bronzed, strutting body: those colours work. Those body lines work. My eyes work.

  By early afternoon, half a dozen middle-aged cohorts are arriving at the apartment, all clutching wrapped biscuits, sweets and flowers. I’m wiping surfaces clean in the kitchen after Madame’s intense bout of cooking and I am clinging to an assumption of imminent afternoon release. Well-deserved, I’ll be given the Sunday afternoon off. If Abdul and Nazia can go, it has to be a certainty for me. I’ll visit the other girls at the Orthodox Christian service and speak with my God.

  ‘Madame . . .’ I start, unsure how to proceed with my request, as she tells Shafeek to prepare the sheesha pipe for a guest.

  ‘What you want, Meron? Go and get more nuts from storeroom,’ she snaps irritably.

  ‘No, wait,’ interrupts Shafeek, looking fabulous in a high-collared white shirt with silver buttons and cuffs. ‘Get the charcoal from the storeroom while you’re there.’

  ‘But . . .’ I start.

  ‘But’ is a banned word, and anyway nobody is listening.

  Shafeek lounges decadently in the best chair of the salon, as if upon a throne surrounded by minions. He has a clear conception, encouraged by Madame, that he is the king of the house. Perhaps that means he is. The guests drink fruit juice and two of them puff on the sheesha pipe. The smoke is like sickly sweet strawberry. Madame gushes over a broad range of phenomena without discrimination. They speak in fast Arabic and I barely understand a syllable. Besides, I am embarking on one of the human race’s great physical challenges: the long march of the Lebanese luncheon service. There will be no spare energy for the analysis of Arabic syllables. I am the only minion here.

  ‘Here’s our maid, Meron from Ethiopia . . . a bit slow, but she folded the napkins . . . good technique, very nice,’ says Madame at one point.

  They glance at me for a second: one solitary second. On a good day in Addis, in pleasant company, I might tell an amusing anecdote, or sing a hymn, or perform a traditional dance, but here in Beirut, my single second of acknowledgement scuttles past like a cockroach on a wooden floor: I can’t be sure that I’ve seen it.

  For the lunch itself, the guests move onto the long sofa in the television lounge. This isn’t just food I’m serving. A varied mezze of hummus, baba ghanoush (aubergine dip), warab enab bi-zayt (stuffed vine leaves), tabbouleh (parsley salad), labineh (thick yoghurt with garlic), fattoush (mixed salad topped with squares of flatbread), olives and different breads attacks my central nervous system, goading my senses from kitchen to salon; from toenails to fingertips, muscles twitching as if electrocution has gripped my body.

  To eat the tiniest crumb of this mezze would be to confer sight on a blind man for a single moment: to taunt him with the briefest glimpse of visual ecstasy so that he sees exactly what he is missing in this world.

  The main course will be fried fish or lamb kebab with roasted peppers and grilled halloumi cheese, followed by dessert of baklava and fruit plates of apples, grapes, apricots, dates, figs and pomegranates, concluding with Turkish coffee. There is enough rapture on these plates to satisfy the most repressed of appetites. As I lay newspaper across the table in advance of fish bones, I try to force my mind to shut down, or I shall never survive this impossible temptation. The Ethiopian hyena is a capricious beast and cannot be trusted. Perhaps it stirs inside me: my brother certainly accommodates it. Nati would not survive a single minute in this job.

  To distract my famished hyena, I track Shafeek’s right hand while awaiting Madame’s instructions. The hand is buried inside the front of his trousers. What is he doing? Touching, scratching, feeling, checking his vital machinery, unworried about the views of others, this is what he is doing. And suddenly the hand is outside! Grabbing at kibbeh, using these meaty snacks to scoop up dollops of yoghurt, the latter plopping onto the fingers of the same well-travelled hand, which now aims for its final destination between Shafeek’s upper lip and tongue, each finger and thumb sucked clean with a greedy relish. Shafeek’s face seeps shameless sweat and pleasure. Other male hands follow similar unimaginable paths. Men are hyenas!

  Madame offers me none of the food that I’m serving. There will be leftovers, but my dignity will not allow it. Instead, a plate of rice and dry flatbread awaits me, suggesting that, despite first impressions, my Madame is odious. The dry flatbread looks like peeling mottled paint, and tastes marginally better. The rice is a dispiriting grey rubber that might be better employed as the grip on a cut-price training shoe. I’m finally learning the real meaning of hunger: I had to leave Ethiopia to experience this.

  Recalling Proverbs 27:7, ‘He who is sated loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet,’ I have to disagree, Mum. Ethiopian honey is never loathed by anyone, and the bread and rice awaiting me in the kitchen are as sweet as a freshly mined slab of Afar salt. Can’t the Bible offer me more than this?

  ‘Me-ron! Stop staring . . . I told you about that before,’ barks Madame. ‘Come here!’

  As the guests jabber away, I trudge through a spitting rain of olive oil, garlic, lemon and herbs – the four pillars of Lebanese cuisine – towards my Madame, while beneath my aching feet a resounding crunch of dry nuts and their kernels – pistachios, cashews, pine, almonds and peanuts – all crack away at me, each reconfirming the dreary cleaning duties to come. My Sunday is dissipating into unrefined drudgery. The spatter of guests’ zeal upon my cheeks is the closest I’ll get to swimming today.

  ‘Me-ron! For fruit plates, we moving onto balcony . . . you serve us outside then clean this room. You doing so very well . . . excellent maid, really so excellent. I so happy with you . . .’ continues Madame with encouraging sounds, the sounds one might whisper into the ear of a work-horse on its last legs, while oiling the shotgun behind its back.

  Most infuriating are her suspended kisses of gratitude, hanging a full inch shy of my cheeks. I try to smile for the audience but it’s a definite scowl. I am not the actress here.

  Back in the kitchen, my hands full of soft fruit, I am confronted by a different madame.

  ‘Me-ron, tidy your face!’ shouts Madame sharply.

  ‘What do you mean, Madame?’

  ‘Wipe away angry eyes . . . we have company!’

  ‘Madame, I’m sorry but I�
��m really tired . . . I have to rest . . .’

  ‘Eh? Black people never get tired,’ Madame begins. ‘This important party. Your first party and we have so many more. Yes, I know it hard for you, but . . . why I am saying this? Get on with it!’

  ‘I wanted a rest today, Madame . . . to go to church . . . it’s Sunday!’

  Her face reddens. Grapes are grabbed from me and tossed onto a tray. Her head comes at me, puts itself within a nose-length of mine, eye-to-eye, pupil-on-pupil. One hand clasps my hair from underneath the scarf and holds my head clamp-like in a painful tilt.

  ‘Ow!’ I peep.

  ‘Meron, I had enough of this . . . change your attitude now or I deal with you,’ she whispers with sufficient aggression to blast a gust of garlic into the roof of my gaping mouth.

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ I croak.

  Mouth dry, eyes watering, my weary legs are going to buckle at any moment. Please give me space, I’m going down! My low blood pressure! Where’s God’s knee to sit on now?

  But I am held steady, unwittingly by Madame, as she releases my hair and grasps my hands to check for dirt. I try to stop them from shaking but she must be able to feel the fresh sweat oozing from my palms.

  ‘Fine. Do fruit plates.’

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ I manage, breathing outwards with relief as she stomps back to the guests.

  Grim hours pass. Go away, people, please. Every additional minute they delay on the balcony is an extra minute on my legs: I doubt my legs will ever function properly again. I’ll return to Addis in a wheelchair, hardly the long distance running legend of my imagination.

  ‘Me-ron . . . now, we moving back into salon for coffee . . . you clean it already, yes?’

  ‘Yes, Madame . . .’

  And it will need cleaning again if you move back in there. God! Can’t these people stop speaking, spitting, dripping, dropping, dirtying, partying, peeling, breathing? Can’t you see what you are? You are not people: you are vacuum cleaners, garbage trucks, sewer ducts, cesspit suction pipes, all operating in reverse.