No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  ‘It’s okay,’ I hasten, ‘I’m reducing the workload so I don’t get too weak. Really, I’m very happy to fast during the day with you . . . it’s a privil . . .’

  ‘C’est fou! She can’t do that! We need her strong to prepare the meals, not to eat the meals!’

  ‘Er, Madame . . . please let me pretend to be a Muslim, please!’ I beg to Madame.

  Shafeek is on the balcony. I smile at him hoping for more of that refreshing Ramadan benevolence.

  ‘We don’t like that . . . pretending . . . you either are or you aren’t. Allah can see you are not a Muslim,’ states ­Shafeek categorically. Madame, slumped on a sun-lounger, is hardly listening. This encourages me to speak more than usual. It might impress Shafeek.

  ‘I know an Ethiopian guy called Tadelle, nicknamed Boiled Egg . . . yes, his name is a different story . . . anyway, he switched between religions, depending on the times of year and the festivals. He’s now working for the government and prospering. I know it’s not an ideal situation, but if he can do it, so can I . . . Mister.’

  Ah! It feels great to banter away at last. I look up at Shafeek. He’s gazing at me as though I have just set fire to his crinkled underwear.

  ‘When Ramadan has finished, I’ll hit you so hard,’ he says weakly.

  I start laughing. Surely he’s joking? You don’t threaten people during Ramadan, do you? I tap his arm playfully and giggle. I feel able to do this for the first time. He’s so different and relaxed today. But Shafeek lets out a shout.

  ‘Meron! Don’t touch me! You’ve broken my wudu . . . I’ve got to do it all again! Get away from me!’

  Starvation is not, after all, a recipe for making Shafeek pleasant.‘Sorry, Mister . . . I don’t know about wudu.’

  ‘Hammerhead, you don’t know about anything.’

  I later learn that wudu is the pre-prayer washing of face, hands and feet and that it can be invalidated in ­various ways.

  The evening iftar is Heaven for them, and another place far removed for me. The idea of concentrated fasting for a month every year has great appeal: Orthodox Christians do it twice a week and during the build-up to Easter. But the way this family devours in the evening obliterates the privations of the day. I seem to be doing the Ramadan suffering for an entire family. They have subcontracted the pain to me. For two hours, I stand unfed outside the lounge, next to the half-open door, awaiting orders, listening to their gorging, sprinting to their service, wondering why my life has diverted into this particular dead end of Hell.

  ‘We all have to work as usual, Meron . . . all day,’ says Madame between spoonfuls of lentil soup, as I start to flag on serving the third course.

  Work as usual? Right. She sits at a desk all day. No danger of her feet swelling up like a pair of dirty ripe yams. She’s home at 3pm. I finish around 11pm. She takes snacks during the day: ‘I’ll make it up after Ramadan,’ she says, whereas I have no chance of delaying my pain for another day. She has me to wait on her. I have me too, but ‘me’ is too busy to manage even the basic necessities of her own life: I forget to pee for ten hours at a time, water only passes my lips in the wrong direction, my bowels shift twice a week if I’m lucky. In the kitchen, she snacks contentedly as she prepares delicious Middle Eastern dishes, while I become dwarfed by used plates stacking up faster than I can wash up: not just everyday plates, they are ‘Ramadan Mubarak’ (Happy Ramadan) plates, bought specially for the occasion with elegant patterns and requiring extra care in my unhappy Ramadan hands.

  Plates, bowls, date stones, forks, blood, nutshells, mint, lather, tap water and tears, all sluice and slither around ten worn digits in the metal kitchen sink. The sink is my husband, the crockery and cutlery our children. The endless cycle of washing up perfectly encapsulates grinding ­eternity, in full grating practice. Is this marriage? I don’t want a husband. The plates are pointless. The cutlery cuts me. Children will kill me. Oh God, I envy the dead.

  Madame cocks her nose across the freshly washed bowls in search of a misplaced hint of Habesha, or other miscreant.

  ‘Not good enough . . . do this pile again, Meron. This is Ramadan!’

  And it’s only the first day. From now until the final feast of Eid al-Fitr I am run ragged. There is barely time to rinse the sweat from my uniform. I stink like a menopausal donkey. Leftovers come my way so late at night I can barely see the food for the falling eyelids. My head wants a pillow, my legs a level plane. Neither head nor legs care about the groaning emptiness between them. That can wait till tomorrow. Tomorrow is a blur lost to a congealed lump of yesterdays, a lump best left to rot in a sealed plastic bag deep in the ground. That’s where I’ll be: Ramadan will put me there.

  But times passes. Hard time. Hungry time. Grudging time. Rough time. Ramadan time.

  ‘I wish Ramadan was the whole year round . . . the fasting, the giving to the poor, the prayers, the parties, the purification of the soul . . .’ says Nazia on the last night.

  ‘Oooh yes!’ enthuses Madame.

  I now understand that her largest gushes are saved for the greatest insincerities. From my records, I note that Madame has a full seventeen days of Ramadan to make up after her numerous fast-breaking indiscretions. Madame can’t resist a handful of dates before the others get home. I’ve seen the stones in the garbage.

  ‘It definitely makes us better people . . . you hear that, Meron? Watch and learn,’ says Shafeek, stupidly seriously.

  Excuse me! I appear to be starving to death: why not give food and money to me? My weight has dropped three kilos in the last four weeks. My body is a saggy bag of fatigue; my mind a fuzzy mush of anguish.

  ‘Meron! Can you hear me?’ shouts Shafeek.

  I’m behind the door, awaiting instructions. But a sudden white light buzzes into my head. I think I’m going down. It’s the low blood pressure again, scything away at my legs . . . I can’t stay up, I’m toppling . . . thump!

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ I hear from Madame.

  ‘I think she’s having a fit,’ says someone. Probably Nuria. She thinks she’s a doctor just because she works in a hospital.

  ‘If she’s playing around . . .’ says Shafeek, becoming outraged.

  He’s standing over me, pressing his oily hand to my forehead. Garlic rockets up my nostrils. Don’t worry yourselves, I’m not dead. My head is full of flash bulbs, but I hear everything.

  ‘I think she’s fainted,’ says Shafeek. ‘This one is awful.’

  ‘She could have waited till after Ramadan to start the dramatics . . .’ starts Nuria.

  ‘Let’s just get rid of her,’ suggests Shafeek.

  ‘My son? No! Not this one as well. What are you saying?’ says Abdul with a perturbed tone.

  Not this one! I remember Nazia’s urgent words during that first beating. The connotations are accumulating. But I can’t believe Shafeek is capable of anything more than hot-tempered bluster and playground-punching. I don’t want to believe it. He is essentially a good man: a handsome high-flying professional man, with occasional dips.

  Shafeek pours water onto my head for no obvious reason. Hey, while you’re there, shampoo and conditioner, please.

  ‘Baba, maids are like cars . . . good for convenience but if the brakes fail and the passengers are endangered, you’re not going to keep it . . . it has to go . . . and quickly,’ states Shafeek.

  I am not aware that my brakes have failed. I can definitely stop if I want to, and I want to stop all the time in this place. Trying to open my eyes, I murmur a little.

  ‘Meron! Wake up! Are you okay?’ shouts Shafeek, revealing false concern.

  ‘If she fainted, leave her on the floor,’ orders Madame. ‘Gets blood back into the head . . . better down there . . . pull her away from the door so we can get to the kitchen without jumping over her like horses.’

  Shafeek drags me a couple of metres along the flo
or.

  They leave me outside in a heap for an hour.

  ‘Meron! Come and do washing up!’ shouts Madame eventually, as though nothing has happened. Ah! The familiar call of Ramadan! And the last for this year.

  After six more days of fasting in Shawwal, the month that follows Ramadan, I’m confronted by Madame and Nazia as they eat lunch on the balcony. They make an intimidating pair.

  ‘We send you back to Ethiopia . . . you not good enough,’ says Madame, Nazia nodding violently in agreement.

  ‘But . . . why, Madame?’

  ‘Too many problem. You quick, but you not have stamina . . . we not wanting servant fainting during Ramadan . . . not healthy.’

  ‘You spend too much time just watching us,’ adds Nazia, ‘especially when Nuria and Hassan are fighting . . . that’s not your business. You stand and ogle as though it’s a TV show.’

  ‘Shafeek think you not have respect and common sense . . . and my white socks still not white,’ continues Madame.

  This is devastating. After only four months, I have failed. I have earned almost nothing. And I thought Shafeek and I had a connection.

  Argh! The ignominy of returning to Addis so soon, and having lost all my mother’s savings. No!

  ‘Please, Madame, let me work harder. I won’t faint again, I promise. I’ll be the best servant in Beirut . . . please!’

  ‘Go back to your poor country. When you learn how to work properly, you can try to return to Beirut, but with another family,’ says Nazia.

  ‘No, please! I’ll do everything twice as hard . . . please, let me prove myself . . . one more chance, Madame . . .’ I sob, falling to my knees.

  They let me cry for at least two minutes in front of them. Madame sighs.

  ‘I probably regret this . . . okay, one final chance. You got one month to show me you good maid,’ says Madame.

  ‘Thank you, Madame, thank you!’ I yell, kissing her hand.

  Nazia rapidly sits on her hands to pre-empt a similar fate. But why am I begging to clean this woman’s dirt for the next two years? I have thrown myself into a black hole.

  Where’s Kidist?

  I am beginning to understand how my mother felt at the outset of a long bereavement that would run into years. Now that every shaft of light in my life is closed off by a single solid curtain without hem, edge or end, I see only black.

  I love black in clothes and men. But black is a night sky with invisible stars. Hopeful distant lights of the future are the stars imperceptible to eyes and telescopes: they are sitting out there somewhere, but overwhelmed by such blackness, they may as well be non-existent. If there is no light visible, they do not exist, although they do. That is the effect of black: blotting out all hope, when really it is there, indefinably somewhere.

  ‘Mummy, why are you crying all the time?’ I asked four months after we had moved from the villa. It was becoming a massive irritation: why couldn’t this woman control herself?

  ‘I miss your dad so much.’

  ‘Can’t we get a new one? Maybe with a big house . . . like before?’

  ‘No, there won’t be a new one, my baby,’ she said bleakly. ‘But one day, we’ll get a new house, I’m sure of that.’

  ‘Like Auntie Kidist’s?’

  ‘Auntie Kidist’s house, yes, but I don’t want a husband like hers.’

  ‘When’s Auntie Kidist coming to visit us?’

  Kidist had shown her face on the day of moving and maybe three times since then but cameo performances only, each time a fraught second at the front door as if passing coincidentally. Conspicuously, suspiciously absent, she lived only minutes away on foot, with her husband, in a villa.

  Kidist used to visit our old house several times each week, as one might expect of my mother’s sister, and she never once refused a snack from our brimming larder. Kidist would potter around with my mother in the kitchen, unapologetically nibbling away, adding curves to her curves, never too keen to return home. She was almost a second mother, but younger and more inclined to chase us around the garden screaming playfully.

  ‘Why don’t you phone her? I miss her, Mummy.’

  ‘We don’t have a phone. I miss her too,’ replied my mother.

  ‘Can’t we visit her house? It’s more fun there,’ I implored.

  ‘No, we can’t. Her husband is . . . difficult to understand . . . different from nice people.’

  ‘Like a pig?’

  My mother smiled at last. Well done, Meron! But this was common knowledge. I was only six and I knew that. We don’t eat pigs in Addis. We don’t like pigs in Addis. The Bible treats them with disgust. Kidist’s husband, Desalegn, deserved such disgust. We felt dirty and soiled simply discussing him.

  Another two weeks passed. Finally, she came to us and entered our home.

  ‘Hi, Werknesh, Meron, Nati, Henok . . . how are you all?’ Kidist said, perspiring lightly.

  ‘Hello, Kidist, how are you? Where have you been?’ beamed my mother.

  ‘I’m fine, I’ve been working,’ replied Kidist, smiling nervously. Kidist didn’t work at this time. ‘I just want to see if you’re settled all right . . .’

  If Kidist really looked at my mother, as I had, she would see new wrinkles etched into her tear-stained skin.

  ‘Is that it?’ doubted Mum. ‘Why haven’t you come before?’

  ‘Busy with things.’

  ‘What things? Kidist, you don’t work . . .’

  ‘Family things.’

  ‘We are your family, aren’t we?’

  Kidist giggled. She looked around at our home, peering anxiously, nodding appreciatively, trying to maintain a face of casual interest rather than betraying her true feelings of fear, pity, horror and superiority.

  What she saw was a cramped shack unsuitable for more than two portly people at any one time. It was meant for the manual railway workers: the men who laid the lines, repaired damaged rails, dug drainage ditches, shovelled coal, shifted sleepers, sweated and slogged so intensely that large body shapes were never an issue inside windowless living rooms the size of a coal shed.

  Kidist saw that we had run into the buffers. There would be no domestic help, no garden, no bathroom, no privacy and, while Kebebush contested the marriage in the courts, no income. My brothers shared one bed, my mother and I the other. Our neighbourhood lay along a distant siding, well hidden from the prestige and pride of our French colonial palace, La Gare. From where I played in grubby puddles under crisscrossing lines of washing, not even the whine of the station’s siren could be heard decreeing the beginning and ending of La Gare’s work shifts.

  Instead of the station’s whines, whistles, clinks and clunks, other people’s private conversations and quarrels provided a continuous loop of background noise, unavoidable in our quarters. Keen for entertainment, we peeped through the cracks in the sleepers that comprised our walls, watching our neighbours watching their television, our excited whispers quickly prompting them to block up the cracks with old chewing gum. We also heard loud rants and crashes from fights a few doors down, at which point neighbours raced in to separate husbands and wives before any real harm was done: domestic violence was summarily broken up without invitation to enter their home. Wives quickly learnt how to scream: this was the alarm system. Conversely, nagging and cuckolding was an eternal source of amusement for fellow residents while the sound of kids bawling was routine white noise, so ignored. Privacy and serenity had no place to put their feet up and relax in this block.

  Our outside shower was a cold bucket of water over the head. I hated this and sympathised with cats.

  ‘When will I take a normal hot shower, Mum?’

  ‘You’re not lucky. You’re poor. A hot shower is not normal for you now. Nothing good is normal for you now.’

  Fifty metres away, a row of four stinking toilets with rusty metal doors we
re raised above a gigantic cesspit on loose planks of wood where residents squatted. These provided relief for our neighbourhood: men, women and children alike. The cesspit was emptied every two months, more often if there was a public holiday. Public holidays always signified vast quantities of richly spiced meat wats, followed by buttock-clenching queues at the toilets the next day, women clutching jugs of water for cleaning themselves, men more usually with folded newspapers under their arms. The toilets were opened for three hours in the morning and four hours in the evening. Outside these times, we had to wander off and find a tree. A tree was forever preferable: once, a young woman fell through the cesspit planks and drowned.

  Once a week, the neighbourhood women cleaned the tracks around our houses: garbage, sludge and excrement quickly accumulated, especially in the stagnant open drains running beside each path. Nobody else would do it. These women had a reasonable desire to avoid plagues of rats, legions of flies and a living environment that no self-respecting human would tolerate. The men were always ‘working’ when the weekly cleaning took place. It meant several hours of scooping muck into dirty sacks with small ineffective spades, a task that Mum had declined.

  ‘I’m not doing such demeaning work. Three kids and no husband . . . I have to work all the time,’ she had said to the neighbours.

  ‘You must do it. The kebelle says everyone’s responsible . . . to avoid disease,’ came the increasingly agitated reply each week.

  But Mum had a point: our bellies would not be filled by voluntary sludge-shovelling tasks. Instead, she kept us alive by washing clothes for other families. The shame of such low-paid, menial work was too great for my mother to offer her services in the immediate vicinity: her customers were at least half an hour’s walk away, the distance large enough for word not to get back that she scrubbed other people’s rags for a living. Off she trudged each day, hoping to travel incognito, but as the embittered lady in permanent black, she was not invisible to our fellow residents.

  At that age, I had no idea how long one should mourn for, or even what it meant. I didn’t realise it yet, but for the next three years, my mother would sob daily, shave her head twice a week, wear the same black dress and netela, and assume a dour exterior designed to expel all traces of incoming friendliness. She had the same constancy as Tigray’s sternest hermits living alone among the rock-hewn churches in the north. Indeed, she might have taken that path if it were not for us.