No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  Kidist saw that the mourning permeated everything inside the new home, especially in the guise of neglect. In the villa, there had always been weary bodies hanging around on seats, settees, stools, and anything supporting the railway worker’s rear: this dilapidated furniture now provided the only features of our new home. My mother refused to change the broken bed that she and my father had shared: now she and I endured it together. True horizontality became a distant memory.

  Mum managed to feed us, but the quality was no higher than ‘filler’: the thin type of shiro wat made without oil and injera comprising rice and barley in place of teff. If the plastic plates fell apart in our hands, lunch would be lost to the dirt-carpeted floor. Nobody else came to our house. You couldn’t expect them to. To enter would have been to step into a cave of gloom, without television, strong light or comfort.

  Kidist’s eyes filled with tears as she took it in: her own sister in a place like this. The come-down was a vertiginous plummet through the social strata of Addis without a well-sprung horizontal bed conveniently placed at the bottom.

  My mother brought out the best cure for Kidist’s tears: fresh injera and shiro wat. We gathered as usual around the large plate, grabbing our strips of injera and scooping the wat into our mouths.

  ‘Come on, Kidist, eat with us,’ encouraged my mother.

  Guests are always offered food if it is freshly cooked, and they are expected to eat it. Not to eat it, without robust excuse, is to invite war.

  ‘No, no, it’s okay, thanks.’

  She loitered behind us, not joining in with the meal.

  ‘Kidist, come here, don’t be like an Eritrean . . . sit down with us, eat some injera, please!’ insisted my mother.

  ‘It’s better than usual,’ I tried. ‘It’s got butter!’

  Mum frowned at me.

  ‘I’m full,’ said Kidist uncharacteristically.

  ‘It’s early, you can’t have eaten yet, Kidist . . . please eat!’

  Kidist duly pushed a mouthful of injera and wat onto her tongue. She grimaced. It wasn’t the quality of old.

  ‘I need to go,’ she said.

  ‘What can I say? You’re obviously not happy here,’ my mother blurted, now annoyed. ‘You hardly ever come, and when you do, one foot remains planted outside, ready to hurry you away as quickly as possible.’

  ‘I’m going, Werknesh, thank you . . .’

  My mother looked up at her incredulously.

  ‘I have hardly seen you for four months! And you look at my injera as though it is made from sand. What is wrong with you?’ she asked fiercely.

  ‘Sorry, my sister . . . it’s . . . it’s just a big shock for me . . . to see you like this. I can’t take it in . . . you’ve let everything go. Desalegn said I shouldn’t come any more . . . maybe he’s right . . . you need more time . . .’

  ‘Of course we look poor! We’re waiting for Lemma’s pension to come through . . . there’s no problem! The court’s waiting for the kebelle to find the divorce certificate. Of course, they’ll find it . . . his ex-wife is claiming a son by Lemma . . . she’s claiming the pension for herself . . . but it’s farcical! Just a matter of time!’ gabbled Mum, with a worrying sense of overconfidence.

  ‘I’m sorry, Werknesh . . . I’ll let you eat without me . . . but I do want to help you, sister . . . can I give you some birr?’

  My mother remained seated. She lowered her head and mumbled into her chest.

  ‘Just go, just go,’ were the words I heard.

  ‘But Mummy, she’s got birr for us,’ I chirped, thinking she was being a little bit churlish to turn down money so offhandedly. ‘Birr, Mummy, birrrr! What’s wrong with you? Mummy?’

  My mother raised her head to look hard at Kidist.

  ‘I don’t want her birr . . . I didn’t ask for her help. I want the love of a sister!’ she boomed at Kidist.

  Urgh! Mum! This wouldn’t happen if Dad were here. But Kidist was gone: properly, selfishly, unequivocally gone, before our dirt could stick to her shoes, before our blackness could engulf her. Kidist’s departure confirmed our isolation as definite: such a slide into destitution thrust us into a solitary confinement without locks or bars, floating midpoint between living neighbours who looked through us and a dead father who looked over us. There was no certainty over which way God would nudge us.

  Just a White Sheet? (618 days left)

  Today is Wednesday, bed linen day. Garments flap and thrash on the balcony washing lines as the cold November winds swirl around me. And immediately, right in front of my face, viciously tugged from its pegs, a single white sheet is snatched up by the wind. Too fast for my panicking hands, it is driven away by nature’s invisible blows.

  Madame’s finest linen is going over, and maybe I will have to pay for that. I watch hopelessly as the fluttering sheet tries to fight the belligerent gusts like a fragile young woman clinging gamely to the balcony’s chrome railings, delaying by sheer seconds what we all know to be inevitable. The sheet plummets towards Earth and I see, for an instant, a Habesha girl swathed in a white shawl, with matching petrified eyes quickly enlarging as her slender body speeds to a sudden fatal shattering on hard Lebanese cement.

  My mouth drops open. What am I seeing, and what exactly am I believing?

  I spot the sheet thirteen floors below, flailing on the ground as if in agony. It is definitely the sheet but . . . what was her name? Was she flown back to Addis in a box? Did she fall in love? Was that her mistake? Was it Shafeek? Did she take unborn life with her? Am I going the same way?

  Like my family in our time of destitution, I am in a danger zone, lodged between life and death: there is no certainty over which way God, or my employers, will nudge me. Or is my imagination now running free and wild across windswept rooftops? Isn’t this just a troublesome bed sheet?

  Occasionally, I have noticed a woman below, sweeping the ground floor patio and watering flowers, always wearing a black body-length tunic, white head scarf and niqab revealing only her eyes. She’s what I assume to be a ‘strict’ Muslim.

  ‘Madame, I need to get the sheet from downstairs . . . the wind blew it down. I’ll knock on the door of the apartment.’

  ‘You not pegging it correct . . . too busy waving at servants in other apartments. I know you, Meron.’

  ‘But I never do that, Madame.’

  ‘Okay, but be fast, I watching you.’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  She pulls the door key from her handbag to release me outside.

  Stepping beyond the front door for the first time in nearly six months stuns me. I can’t believe I’m outside the apartment, outside the prison. I walk as slowly as I can, savouring every short stride along the corridor to the lift. I inhale the stale air of the elevator as if inside a florist on St Valentine’s Day. The notion of escape occurs to me: if I could somehow get through the main entrance, I’d finally arrive in Beirut! But escaping into the mid-winter cold without money, passport, shelter or friend is hardly intelligent.

  The wooden front door to the apartment thirteen floors below us is plain and unremarkable. A few seconds after a sharp electric buzz, the door swings open. A kind-faced middle-aged woman is standing before me, quickly securing her white headscarf, though without veil. I glimpse a strand of grey hair. Her ample body is clothed in her usual long black tunic.

  ‘Hello, I live upstairs . . . how are you?’ I start in hesitant Arabic.

  ‘What do you want? What do you want?’ she flusters.

  ‘A bed sheet from upstairs flew down . . . onto your patio,’ I fumble, and revert quickly to English. I’m afflicted by nerves, my confidence in shreds now that I am outside.

  ‘No speak,’ she replies bluntly.

  I use body language to communicate the flight of a bed sheet, but possibly the lady thinks a sleeping pilot has crashed an aeroplane into her patio. Slig
htly alarmed, she beckons me to come in. I start to remove my shoes, but she shakes her head.

  Through her apartment into the patio and I quickly find the lifeless sheet. Her face softening, the lady holds my hands in hers, squinting at the open sores around my fingers and knuckles. It hurts me to clench my fist now. The daily bare-handed scrubbing with Odex cleaning products is taking its toll. Her grimace tells me as much and the only way to deflect from the pain is to offer me a cup of tea. I would take a cup of Odex bleach from this woman. Her manner is genuine and her concern heartfelt.

  The lady sits me down at her kitchen table. It’s the largest table I have ever seen. Together we gaze out across the back of a handsomely carved timber monster. The apartment block must have been built around it: nobody could have squeezed this vast slab of varnished wood through her front door.

  I glance around the room. There are no other occupants. No photos or signs of other human activity exist. There is a lady, a table, a prayer mat and a pot of tea. While the tea infuses inside a metal pot, ‘Table Lady’ – as I have already nicknamed her – coats my hands with Vaseline and encourages me to spread a finger-full across my chapped lips. She fetches a chipped but full-length mirror from another room and waves me over to it while she supports it in her hands. I am not sure if this is a good idea.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I gasp.

  It’s a shock to see a sad scrawny waif blinking back at me in horror. What’s happened? I’m suddenly an Addis street girl: a tatty old sack with feet. Table Lady is startled at my own shock. Madame’s mirror has never revealed this: maybe some mirrors are better at telling the truth than others.

  ‘Things very difficult for me . . .’ I try in English. ‘Do you know about another girl . . . er, falling?’

  Table Lady is confused, pointing repeatedly at the sheet tucked under my arm.

  ‘No, not this sheet . . . a servant girl . . .’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Not me . . . a person, a girl, like me landing on your patio? Please understand,’ I implore.

  ‘Another servant come now?’

  Once more, I have to try my Arabic.

  ‘Was a girl killed . . . here . . . yes? From upstairs? Do you remember?’ I ask, pointing upwards.

  Table Lady is careful not to react. I can see that. It’s an unnatural response. Her gentle face is gripped by some unspecified fear. Or she has no idea what I am saying.

  ‘Muslims always kind, helping people, do everything good,’ she tries, somehow stringing English words together.

  ‘But they’re Muslims upstairs . . . my Madame is Muslim.’

  ‘Yes, she Muslim.’

  I know little of Islam but can see a world of difference between the woman in front of me and my Madame a tower block above us. I have never seen my Madame pray, except during Ramadan, and during Ramadan she was hardly . . . My Madame! I have completely forgotten her.

  ‘I have to go!’

  ‘Wait, wait!’

  ‘What?’ I ask expectantly.

  Table Lady hastily wraps up a slice of sponge cake in a tissue. I feel like crying in the face of her kindness. Whatever ‘type’ of Muslim she is, it doesn’t matter. This woman is essentially good, if cautious. In her, I see my mother.

  I hide the cake inside the folded sheet retrieved from her patio and rush back. Madame answers the door. I trot in as nonchalantly as possible but there’s a lift in my stride. I can’t hold it down. I try to adjust my expression to the normal downtrodden indifference.

  ‘Me-ron, where were you?’ asks Madame.

  ‘She was praying, Madame. I had to wait for her to finish, sorry.’

  ‘But I watch you get the sheet . . . what happen . . . why you late?’

  ‘Ah! The lift was busy . . . I had to wait.’

  ‘Not busy . . . was silent . . . nobody using it.’

  ‘It was busy, Madame!’

  ‘Liar! Always some excuse. I know that woman . . . she have no child, she barren . . . not friendly woman. Always lie when she speak.’

  ‘She didn’t speak, Madame.’

  ‘So why you look happy?’

  I grip the folded napkin tight inside the sheet. My face will not settle. I have cake!

  ‘I’m not happy!’ I declare as angrily as I can manage.

  ‘Give to me,’ says Madame wrenching the rogue sheet from my hands, cake included.

  ‘I can wash it by hand, Madame . . . no need to waste water,’ I try.

  ‘Wash by hand? Like Ethiopia? That not cleaning it . . . no washing machine in poor country?’

  ‘We do it outside, Madame . . . we do all washing outside . . . us and clothes.’

  ‘Oh. Not have bathrooms in Ethiopia?’ she asks, genuinely interested.

  ‘No, Madame.’

  ‘Yuk, no bathrooms . . . that not surprise me,’ she spits, suddenly walking away.

  But my cake!

  The cake is lost. I am lost. And judging from her tone, so is Ethiopia.

  I make Turkish coffee for Abdul. Bubbled up and stirred three times, the coffee is a perfectly dense muddy slug of dark caffeine, thick enough to chew. I am proud of this.

  ‘Merhaba, Mister! Here’s your Turkish coffee . . . made by my own hands,’ I rejoice, as he enters at 7am, overlong pyjama leg jumping and jerking along the floor like an elephant’s trunk vacuuming for insects.

  Abdul is taken aback. That’s what I wanted. Shock. Shock him into being nice. Shock him into saying things he shouldn’t. I have to know what happened.

  ‘Turkish coffee made by my own hands,’ I repeat. It’s a winning line.

  He focuses his tired eyes on me and raises both hands to the sky.

  ‘Allah! It’s not Turkish coffee . . . it’s Lebanese coffee . . . we add cardamom for extra spice,’ he says, grabbing ­several cardamom seeds for grinding.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. Thank you. Make some for yourself.’

  ‘Wow!’ I cry. Those words caress my ears: someone has thanked me. And he is offering me real coffee! It’s time to be friendly, and curious.

  ‘Mister . . . er . . . how do I compare to . . .’

  I can’t concentrate: Abdul is standing behind the kitchen counter pouring olive oil from a jar into his hand.

  ‘Aarrgh!’ he pants. ‘Aarrgh! Aarrgh!’

  What the hell? It’s the same pained outburst as when he burns his mouth with boiling coffee, which he does when late for work. I can’t see what he’s doing below the waist, but it’s obvious where his hands are applying the oil. He is dabbing it on his penis.

  What am I supposed to do? Does he need assistance? Or is this a preface to something malevolent? No! Not Abdul? Just because I made him some coffee? Should I scream hysterically?

  I hold the packet of coffee and act as if reading it. I can’t read Arabic. Nazia comes into the room. I’m truly pleased to see her. She pretends not to notice Abdul’s odd procedure.

  ‘Bonjour, Papa!’

  ‘Bonjour, Nazia,’ I reply, on his behalf.

  Without a word of explanation, Abdul packs himself away and plonks the jar of olive oil back on the rack with the other condiments. I start making my own Lebanese coffee. Nazia’s glacial stares ricochet off Abdul and me.

  ‘Meron,’ starts Abdul, now under duress, ‘use the old grounds in the pot . . . you are not to use the new coffee . . . do you hear? I didn’t give you permission to take that.’

  ‘Yes, Mister.’

  It is impossible to understand who runs things in this apartment. It should be Abdul, but he’s barely hovering above me in the hierarchy. Nazia, Madame and Shafeek all have their moments of power but where’s the consistency? To understand this family is like attempting to reconstruct one of the many collapsed cobwebs I find each day. There is an absence of regular, logical pattern. It is damaged beyond repair.
And what happened to the previous Habesha ant entrapped within this confusing web?

  *

  Nuria returns from the hospital with her new baby, Medina. The apartment is warm with baby clamour and frantic cooing. Electrified by the arrival, Madame sashays around with her first granddaughter, clasping the baby as if she’s a delicate golden egg.

  Countless guests come and go with baby clothes and assorted baby gifts. Nuria sleeps and feeds: Medina is more animated than her mother. Hassan is hailed as a hero, providing brief respite from his status as a pillaging dog. This is a temporary ‘umbrella’ from Madame’s constant drip of consternation.

  As she grapples with the baby, Nazia openly smiles for a few minutes, her metal braces causing instant screaming in Medina. I empathise with that baby. I want to wail like that too, all of the time, especially at Nazia’s face. Meanwhile, Abdul’s excited gurgling sets a high standard for Medina to follow. Shafeek barely acknowledges her: I’ll assume he is not a lover of babies.

  I feel as though we have entered a new era. These people cannot be murderers. Look at them drool over Medina: they’re full of love. I love the baby too. She’s a delight to hold in my arms. As soon as I see, smell, hear, feel her, I yearn for motherhood. Who will give me a baby? An Arab baby would be welcome.

  ‘Meron! Nappy change! Come here . . . now!’ shouts Nuria the following week. She has found her voice.

  Before the birth, Nuria was surly but quiet, vast but mobile, lazy but capable. After the birth, permanently anchored to her bed, she soaks up food, depression, anger, sloth, boredom and neglect like a hungry frumpy sponge. I miss the old denim dungarees. At least they suggested an impetus towards physical activity, or, at the very least, a spot of car maintenance.

  ‘Meron! Come here!’ Nuria shouts again from her state of repose. Medina’s yell is building up in intensity.