No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  The guests are still here as a weakening sun finally suggests evening. Why has it taken so long today? In Addis, the sun used to charge headlong at dusk like a furious bull; in Beirut, it dawdles along like a listless grazing cow, lingering almost defiantly, hardly interested in sinking towards the ground within the usual daylight hours. This is not the sun I knew. The long march of the Lebanese luncheon service will finish me, if not today then a coming-soon tomorrow under this loathsome Beirut sun.

  Maybe it has something to do with Shafeek: at last, these ever-shedding individuals eventually begin to leave. Publicly, he’s lively and funny, yet by late afternoon, when he loosens his damp shoes a little, the atmosphere is instantly noxious from the foot fungus. Guests make their excuses for departure and I thank you, God, that there is a reason for everything.

  Finally I rest, almost dead, slightly alive and certainly asleep.

  Shafeek kicks my feet. It must be the middle of the night. What’s he doing?

  ‘Er, are you okay, Mister? Do you want any food prepared?’

  ‘No, it’s OK. Just checking you . . . or rather, checking on you.’

  A whiff of alcohol and cigar breath blows into my face as he burps unashamedly. It revolts me. Public burping in Addis is taboo.

  ‘Thank you, Mister,’ I reply.

  ‘So, how are you settling in?’ he asks casually. ‘I mean, are you comfortable?’

  How I would love to tell him my body is in tatters after a single day of work, I feel fit to expire on each feeble beat of my heart and my mind is liquefying butter, melting even faster in his presence. How I would love him to hug me so tightly that I instantly dissolve into his warm protective mass and all fatigue is immediately irrelevant.

  ‘I’m fine, Mister.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be a good worker . . . great eyes . . .’ he slurs loudly.

  ‘Thank . . .’

  ‘Going to be sick now . . . clean up the bathroom afterwards, before Mum . . . Madame . . . whatever . . .’

  He hurries away towards the bathroom. I immediately hear animal sounds, like a cow enduring a difficult labour. He repels and attracts at an intensity that exceeds all other men.

  ‘Meron, it’s ready!’ he calls out proudly when the barfing stops.

  Ready? Like a meal? Does he want me to set the table and call the others? Is this the final course of the Lebanese luncheon service?

  It is difficult to believe, but within a single day, I have fallen from God’s knee and landed in a pool of vomit, Shafeek’s vomit no less. My father’s words return to me: ‘A life can change within a day.’ If only I could remember what he told us to do, to make it change back.

  A Repellent Visitor

  My father was born with eyes intense enough to bore holes into the eyes of others. This forbidding pair of black drill bits assaulted strangers at great distances, long before gazes could be averted. But for people who knew my father, the initial pain of looking directly at him was quickly overwhelmed by the delight of his generosity, his evident enjoyment of company and his hunger for all that life had to offer. The eyes belied his words and actions, providing only a minor and temporary barrier to a city of friendships for the happiest angriest-looking man in the world.

  Dad’s clutch on happiness owed everything to his job as a train driver on the country’s only railway service. Those ferociously focused eyes were invaluable for coaxing reluctant carriages along rickety moonlit lines eastwards from Addis Ababa to Djibouti, and back. Ethiopia depends on the small nation of Djibouti for its de facto port, the railway thus lugging freight and passengers of international significance.

  Dad’s post carried privilege, reverence and a ­spacious villa, which in Addis meant a single-floored three-­bedroomed house within its own compound, closed to the outside by a high white metal gate. The villa came with a short podgy maid – Almaze from Awasa – and a modest lawn with unkempt borders. When we scattered morsels of food in the garden, it became filled with shiny blue starlings that pushed and pecked so entertainingly I sometimes sacrificed my own dinner for the performance. By Addis standards, we were definitely rich and Dad made no effort to disguise this.

  Conveniently for Dad’s ever-expanding empire of companions, our residence lay just a few metres from the glorious La Gare terminus. This is where the Djibouti-bound train began its working day with my father at the helm. French-designed, this was less public railway station, more fairytale castle in its visual impression: eleven golden arches announced the entrance and this facade climbed ever upwards towards a double-decker red tin roof. Had it not been for the national flag waving from the upper ridge, I would have said the roof touched the top of the sky.

  Inside La Gare, the platform boasted a straight line of sturdy wrought iron palisades supporting a window-paned awning tilting upwards to allow a full view of symmetrical rails zigzagging into the horizon towards the distant Gulf of Aden. Not only was there shimmering symmetry and a glass roof, for a child La Gare was a playground populated by bands of jaded passengers, solemn whistle-blowing uniforms drunk on officiousness, piles of lost luggage – or soon would be – and silent carriages in sidings providing shade for resident goats munching on official ‘Chemin de Fer’ grass. Thank you, God, we had it all in La Gare.

  I hardly noticed the slack trains. They moved too in­­frequently and sluggishly to offer any inherent danger to a scampering six-year-old who knew La Gare like a second home. Some days, the trains didn’t move at all, or only very imperceptibly, from one siding to another. A ­happily endless cycle of mechanical failures helped to ensure permanent employment for many of my father’s friends; some of them moving even less discernibly than the trains. We were part of a cosseted extended family of railway elite upon which the nation depended. I was nestled in contentment and I knew nothing else.

  The iron knocker clanged against the white gate, as it did so often. Dad glanced downwards at me, cross-legged, playing the ‘five stones’ game with great skill and speed. His smile relieved the intensity of his usual glare. Mum sighed as she weaved dried grass into a colourful mesob for storing injera. Half a minute later, Almaze the maid clumped into the room.

  ‘Tadelle to see Master,’ she announced with a squeak.‘Yes, invite him in,’ answered Dad without pause.

  ‘Yes, Master,’ replied Almaze and returned to the gate.

  ‘Yet another one. Who’s Tadelle?’ asked Mum, sighing again.

  ‘He’s a fellow human, Werki-ye.’

  ‘But which one?’

  ‘The one who I’ve obviously forgotten, but will remember very, very soon.’

  Mum began to shake her head. When Tadelle entered the room, her shaking became more violent. But Dad refused to see it. Instead, he stood to greet the visitor with a generous grin. Slightly curious, I stood too, watching only my father’s face.

  ‘Ah, Tadelle! How are you?’

  ‘Lemma! So sorry not to come sooner . . . it’s been far too long . . . I’ve really missed you!’

  Dad switched his eyes onto full beam for intense examination of this guest. My mother and I saw no spark of recognition. Mum sighed with sufficient force to signal the very last of the sighs.

  ‘Yes, far too long . . . you should have come sooner,’ said Dad as sincerely as possible.

  I dared to stare at Tadelle. Argh! Somebody help me! The initial fright of his countenance caused my knees to buckle. I slumped dramatically onto the floor.

  ‘Meron? What are you doing?’ asked Dad, looking down with an apparent glower.

  He could see the fear in my face and smiled. In his eyes I saw an affection that would never diminish. Dad lifted me onto his knee and from this safe perch I was ready to regard Tadelle’s full ghastliness.

  He was wiry, stringy and knotty enough for my father to have employed him as a coupling link on his trains. Mum would have applauded this. On that first visit to our house
, the lean face immediately told her everything she needed to know. Shining away like a worn table tennis ball in his left cheek was a convex protrusion indicating the position of his chat cavity. This was the place in Tadelle’s mouth where he rammed in as much of the toxic flora as he could manage: it retained its bulbous shape even when devoid of chat leaves. That day’s mulch had left an emerald lipstick playing around the rim of his chew hole, while jumbled teeth wore an olive veneer that placed them within the skull of a thousand-year-old skeleton.

  ‘Werki-ye, offer Tadelle some injera and wat,’ ordered Dad.

  ‘Eh? He’s just a scrounger off the street . . . he doesn’t know you and you don’t know him . . . why would I offer this stranger our food?’ replied Mum.

  ‘The railways! We’re old comrades on the railways!’ declared Tadelle.

  ‘There’s only one railway in Ethiopia,’ corrected Mum.

  ‘It doesn’t matter where, when, which, who . . . he’s a guest in my house and we are all guests in God’s kingdom. Let’s share His banquet and share His love,’ said Dad with absolute sincerity.

  ‘I can see you are a good Christian,’ said Tadelle.

  ‘I can see you are a goat in man’s clothing,’ said Mum, referring to his leaf-chewing habit.

  ‘Enough, my wife . . . fetch fresh injera for this man . . . a blessed living being, breathing like us . . .’

  ‘Yes, that’s a pity,’ interjected Mum.

  ‘Sit down, Tadelle,’ insisted Dad.

  ‘Oh! I shall, I shall!’

  Mum flinched as Tadelle rested his mucky rags on our most comfortable easy chair. Even to me, at the age of six, there was a clear difference between Tadelle’s wardrobe and ours. We usually dressed in the trendiest jeans, trainers and T-shirts in town: modern attire for kids that nobody else in our road could yet acquire, while Dad wore striking flares that hugged his thighs and crotch. Honed muscles strained on the stitching of his huge-collared shirts: he offered the same soft bulges as our well-upholstered sofa. Dad picked up cheap imports from the Djibouti markets and brought them home as contraband. By the time the goods reached the Addis masses, we had moved onto the next fashion. Every man and child envied us. It was a sweet place to be. Compared with us, Tadelle was hardly in any place at all and quite possibly homeless.

  ‘Why are you wasting our fresh injera on him?’ argued Mum.

  ‘Look at this poor man . . . he needs our injera more than we do. Tomorrow, it could be us knocking on his door for help—’

  ‘He probably doesn’t have a door. He’s just some chat-eater off the street who heard you’re rich . . . he’s obviously here to rob us,’ interrupted Mum.

  ‘Wealth is a temporary illusion, my wife. Appreciate what we have today and share it . . . within a single day, you can lose it all.’

  ‘Ah, within a day!’ agreed Tadelle, nodding eagerly.

  ‘He wouldn’t need a day, he’d do it within an hour,’ said Mum, rising to her feet at last to oblige the demands for food.

  Mum’s wardrobe became evident to Tadelle. Unlike us, she was allowed only the outfits of the traditional Habesha woman: long dresses that stopped just above the feet. Dad had bought a beautiful embroidered garment for her a week earlier, but with a slightly short fitting that unintentionally revealed her shapely calves to the world. It was this dress that Tadelle noticed as she left the room to fetch his injera. He made no effort to conceal his gaze. Dad caught it instantly but did not react.

  Tadelle was a restless guest, unable to stay seated for more than a minute. He began to creep around on our floorboards in his dirty ten birr trainers, unashamedly checking the possessions dotted about our room, stroking Mum’s garish plastic flowers with his green-smudged fingers, weighing Dad’s leather-bound Bible in the same gnarled hand, sniffing my worn white stones as though they carried an unlikely sea-salted fragrance, and insistently poking his stick-like index digit into our living room wall, surprised at its firmness. Tadelle’s age was unclear, though with only scraps of hair and a spaghetti dish of wrinkles carved out by the same repetitive jaw action, he seemed incomplete without walking stick and stoop. But there was a stoop. Towards me, perched on my father’s knee.

  ‘Hello, little one! You’re a beauty . . .’ he gushed, trying to touch my face with his green fingertips.

  ‘I can swim!’ I chirped as a form of defence.

  I had spent the last two weeks reminding the world of my great achievement. For a landlocked nation without a public swimming pool, this was worth mentioning again and again. My confidence was soaring after Robel had performed his miracle shove.

  ‘Well done, Meron!’ Tadelle cheered, his green leaf ball clicking on the ‘r’ of my name.

  He attempted to raise me from Dad’s knee. Feeble bony hands grasped my ribcage, his arms like sodden cardboard flopping with the slightest pressure. He was so weak that my legs remained astride the lap of my father, who had the strength to lift up all three of his children in a single muscular swoop.

  ‘You’re very weak, Mister,’ I observed as he gave up trying to lift me.

  Tadelle laughed loudly and falsely, letting me flop back onto Dad’s knee.

  ‘I’m not used to picking up such a plump healthy child . . . and I’m so weak from hunger . . . and . . .’

  Mum returned with wat, injera and water. Tadelle stared at her legs again with an unmistakable leer. He devoured our food with the hand-speed of a hardened cotton-picker. It was all over within four minutes.

  ‘Thank you, Lemma, your hospitality . . . and that of your lovely wife . . . is like a river of love spilling across the driest of Somali deserts, a glorious sight stretching into the horizon and never drying up . . . and . . .’

  ‘What do you need, Tadelle?’ asked Dad.

  ‘Would a ten birr note float on that glorious river of love . . . for a fellow man?’

  Without hesitation, Dad handed him the brown note. Mum was horrified but stayed quiet. With chat-money secured, Tadelle was quick to leave. Only his fusty musk lingered in the room.

  ‘Lemma!’ Mum started, gathering herself up for a clash.

  ‘No! You listen to me,’ fired Dad. ‘I’m going to burn that dress straight away . . . it’s disgusting. Poor Tadelle had to look at your legs while he was eating.’

  Mum was his and not for the gratification of others. Conversely, that did not mean he was hers and off-limits to others. Lemma had his share of weaknesses. Mum loved him too much to dwell on these.

  ‘Ishee,’ she said indignantly.

  ‘Your Mum doesn’t understand life things,’ he said to me, still balanced on his knee.

  And, Dad, nor do I. Why didn’t you write it all down for us? Now, ten years later, it is Mum who guides us through the ‘life things’. But she is in Addis.

  Now and the Foreseeable Future

  5am, sixth day in Lebanon. New career as a downtrodden maid continues unabated. Only 815 days to go. No word from my mother yet. It feels like a year since I saw her.

  This is the exact hour my mother rises. I think of her every morning as we awake together. Now, we share the hour but not the bed.

  My mother is a vigorous riser. After washing and dressing, she crosses herself three times before covering her head with a white netela, made from the same linen as the constant white robe, the kemis. Common to all good Orthodox Christian women, Mum’s concealed hair sees as much of the church’s interior as her forever-hidden calves. Not a glug of water or morsel of bread is consumed before morning worship.

  At that hour in Addis, the lighter grey tones of night’s great black cloak are probably snagged on the Horn of Africa. As my mother hastens to the local Kirkos church, her vision is hampered by the drifting mist in unlit, unevenly cobbled streets, and also by her poor eyesight. The coldness bites at her nose and fingers like a lively snake. Birds chirp hopefully, not entirely sure if they’ve mistim
ed the dawn. Once inside this church vibrant with huge doe-eyed murals of Christ and Maryam, my mother prays, chants, sings and performs prostrations, for four hours on an empty belly.

  I wish she was here with me, comforting, cuddling, or, at the very least, the residual warmth of her body and the smell of her skin lingering long inside our bed after she’s risen, leaving me another four hours to slumber contentedly in her loving glow. Instead, I roll off my mattress and drag it outside to the balcony, to be aired in the crisp dawn, always loudly announced by the echoing minarets buried but not hushed amongst the high-rise concrete hulks of Beirut. While my mother performs prostrations on an empty stomach in Kirkos church, I similarly endure hard physical labour without nourishment. In the early morning blur, we share discomfort but not the cause. We’ve both made our choices and mine is a particularly questionable one.

  Mum’s remembered words move my body towards the bathroom: ‘Be a good worker, show them your Habesha spirit . . .’ Yes, Mum, I’m trying but this is not easy. Two hours of pre-breakfast mopping await me.

  7am, I breakfast at the same time as Abdul. For me: a small pita bread, a lump of old cheese and a cup of tea, which sustain me through no more than five minutes. The moment I stand, I hear more echoes: from my stomach not from the minarets. Mum’s breakfast genfo could blow me out for an entire day. Upon hearing an echo, she would stir up a second helping of the spicy buttery porridge, and another, until absolute silence came from within.

  Occasionally, Nazia is in the kitchen before us, preparing the Turkish coffee for Abdul.

  ‘Baba! Here! I made this coffee especially for you, with my own hands!’ she proclaims.

  I am intrigued by this statement. What does it mean? The coffee looks the same as always.

  ‘Oh Nazia! With your beautiful hands? Thank you, my daughter. How delicious!’ gurgles Abdul, grabbing Nazia by the neck and kissing her passionately on the forehead.