No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  I’m standing beside a sprawling Shafeek who’s called me to organise his day’s clothes, though he is deliberating at a pace that might write off the entire Sunday. Only the punctuality required of Beirut’s courts rouse him from bed with any speed from Monday to Saturday. On Sunday, he catches up with paperwork, and sleep. At this moment, 10.22am according to his bedside digital clock, he is fit only for dreaming. I have been standing here since 10.14am awaiting instructions. But sleepy-faced Shafeek has the charm of a dozy puppy: I’m content to ignore Nuria’s request.

  When she shouts again, Shafeek stirs.

  ‘Er, Mister . . . Nuria is calling for me . . .’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I lie.

  ‘Go and see. If it’s something quick, do it and hurry back . . . don’t waste time with that.’

  My duty is to Mister Shafeek, not to ‘that’.

  ‘Meron!’ she bawls again.

  I stomp along to her room. Nuria is half-lying, half-­sitting in bed, with sheets and blankets strewn around haphazardly, pillows slumped on the floor, dirty cups and plates dotted about wherever there’s space, and the occasional soiled nappy, happy to be kicked along the floor. There’s enough dried food maturing away in here to make a meal: it does cross my mind. Nuria’s legs are spread apart on the bed like a couple of lifeless blocks of timber, black hairs hanging off like splinters, reminding me of rough-edged railway sleepers. Her belly remains bulbous. What else is inside? She’s had the baby. Have they left another four behind?

  ‘You’re too slow! I’m feeding her now . . . she couldn’t wait for you to come and change the nappy,’ Nuria grumbles.

  ‘Sorry, Medina,’ I say pointedly to the baby with a generous beam. ‘I was helping your Uncle Shafeek.’

  ‘Of course you were,’ says Nuria bitterly. ‘Ouch!’

  Medina has clamped down hard on Nuria’s left nipple. At the age of one week, Medina is already my best friend.

  ‘Shall I wait?’ I ask.

  Nuria delays her answer. She won’t be pushed into it.

  ‘Mister Shafeek is waiting for me . . .’ I press.

  ‘And what about Medina? The nappy still needs changing. She can’t do it herself.’

  Hoh, Nuria! I take a deep breath.

  ‘You probably don’t have disposable nappies in ­Ethiopia,’ she continues as Medina suckles noisily.

  ‘Our babies eat so little that . . .’ I start, tempted to feed Nuria a fib or two, but I take pity on her and shut up.

  ‘Medina’s been fed so she needs winding,’ orders Nuria finally.

  ‘You want me to do that? Winding the baby?’ I ask, a little puzzled.

  ‘Why do you think I just asked you to do it? Are you completely stupid?’

  ‘No, not completely.’

  Nuria’s face is drawn, her hair lank, breath stale, clothes unwashed. It’s difficult to recognise her as Madame’s first daughter. I try to imagine Madame on her return from the maternity ward with baby Nuria in her arms, so impossibly pure and cute. Some people are probably at their very best in those first few days of life, before an inconceivable catalogue of personality defects and hygiene issues has been cultivated.

  Nuria lifts the baby towards me, her breasts drooping either side of her body, brushing against her arms. Medina cries immediately.

  ‘She’s still hungry,’ sighs Nuria and clamps the baby back onto her left breast. I watch, slightly awed. After a few seconds, Medina splutters.

  ‘Nuria, I know what to do,’ I say bravely. I’ve seen what mothers do in Addis when babies choke a little.

  ‘Here . . .’ Nuria says, more than happy to give her baby away.

  Tapping Medina’s back lightly, I blow steadily on the top of her head, puff, puff, puff and the splutters stop abruptly. Nuria looks on bemused. Madame enters at this moment and gasps with horror.

  ‘Not a bad little trick,’ says Nuria.

  ‘Not do that! Hold baby’s head away from your breath,’ urges Madame. She’s wearing her red gym gear. Madame is always tense before her Sunday morning workouts.

  I try to hold Medina as far from my body as possible but she immediately vomits. I watch helplessly as her regurgitated milk shoots onto the bed clothes. I pass Medina back to a reluctant Nuria for more milk.

  ‘Wait a moment and change the nappy, Meron.’

  ‘Yes, Nuria.’

  ‘You do know how to do that, don’t you? Blowing on her head won’t get you very far with a full nappy.’

  Madame giggles and departs for the gym.

  ‘Yes, Nuria.’

  While I’m changing Medina, Nuria starts to grunt in her sleep. Medina is soon ready to return to her basket. But I can’t let go of her. With the baby close to me, I’m aware of human warmth and a great tranquillity. Another being is responding with love towards me. I cry to myself: the first hug in seven months. It hurts to recognise the vacuum of love in my life. My mother hugged us through every age, dilemma, sickness, mischief and spare waking moment. Without hugs, I’m a shrivelled husk. I can’t put Medina down again.

  ‘Meron, what are you doing?’ Shafeek shouts from his bed. I have completely forgotten him.

  I place Medina back in her Moses basket and caress the marble-white skin of her cheeks.

  ‘I hope my baby is like this,’ I say out loud to myself.

  Medina’s eyes flicker open and shut as she struggles to fight sleep, her lovely black eyes mesmerising me: two beacons of innocence unspoilt by Lebanese bias.

  ‘Argh!’ I yelp as my left ear is grabbed, someone yanking my head away from Medina.

  ‘Why? Are you pregnant?’ Nuria whispers into the pained ear that she is grasping too tightly.

  ‘Meron! Come here!’ demands Shafeek down the hall, becoming rattier by the second.

  ‘Are you pregnant?’ hisses Nuria, using the ear to twist my face around to meet hers. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Argh!’ I gasp again.

  The concern in her fraught face surprises me. Who is this violent Nuria, supposedly exhausted from childbirth but suddenly animated by a few harmless words? I want to step away but her grip is firm. I am forced into the path of oncoming panic.

  ‘Are you pregnant?’ demands Nuria again, but I don’t hear her.

  ‘I can’t think . . . please let go . . .’ I stutter.

  ‘Tell me now!’

  ‘I . . . I . . . don’t know . . .’

  I can see every scarlet capillary snaking around her eyeballs but the answer to her question completely evades me.

  ‘You dismal little idiot. This will finish you! How long have you been pregnant?’

  ‘Come here now, Meron, before I kill you!’ shouts Shafeek from his room.

  Pregnant? Kill me?

  I can’t move, speak or think. Of course he’ll kill me. I feel a sickening drop into a much blacker place: odorous and ominous, overwhelmed by the hum of a million flies. There’s no back door, no window or any way of escape. We’re trapped, inert, finished. The worst of the world has arrived at our doorway.

  Confidence Switches Tracks

  The six hoary old women in their spattered sandals continued to up-end the sacks of muck onto our doorstep, whooping like devilish monkeys, quite obviously enjoying today’s clean-up. They had shovelled up the grim waste from the surrounding tracks with a rare vigour, intent on inflicting a measure of revenge upon my mother for constantly refusing to do her weekly duty with them. They assumed her refusal to assist was rooted in snobbery lugged across the bridge from our ex-life. In reality, she was enduring hard labour to keep the rolls of daily injera on our single platter.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’ asked our next-door neighbour, a sly elderly woman nicknamed ‘Giraffe Tongue’. That surly length of flesh flapping between her teeth had spread hostility since the day we moved in.
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  ‘She’s out,’ I stuttered.

  ‘And she’ll stay out after we’ve dumped all this!’ she cackled. ‘She shouldn’t have left you here, a seven-year-old, looking after the two little brothers . . . and you shouldn’t have opened the door to us.’

  The foul solid contents were slumped against our flimsy iron door. Nobody could get in or out without first ­clambering over a giant mound of muck. I couldn’t run for Mum, or shout at the women, or even move my legs a single pace. My mouth was dry and my hands quivered with panic. For the first time in my life, I was exposed to the vileness of the real world. Maybe we would never have a home again, or we would have to sleep beside this pile for the rest of our lives, and scramble over it every morning. The blockade of human detritus was already attracting a sinister mist of flies, turning the sky a horrible deathly black. We would be rat food at dusk, bare bones by dawn. Tears dribbled down my face. My little brothers looked to me for guidance but I was watching my self-assurance leak away into the open drains. If only Dad was here. The girl who swam lengths in the Ghion was drowning and as I frantically gulped in the pungent air, I realised my mother was all I had and right now she was failing us. Where was she? And where was God?

  We waited and waited. It was overcast and cold. More flies filled the air. Henok grizzled. Nati tried to leap over the filth, but instead his hands became caked in it. We had no water inside to wash them. Giraffe Tongue and the others celebrated with coffee next door. I prayed desperately for Mum’s return, each extra second undermining my self-belief. Nati began to cry when he couldn’t scrape the muck off his hands and it smeared across his face. If Nati was crying, things were desperate.

  ‘Please, God, make Mum come!’ I yelled, my tears adding to the quagmire of despair in our hut.

  Eventually, she arrived, aghast at the scene. The women sniggered as they watched Mum’s face change.

  ‘Whose idea was this?’ she bellowed.

  There was silence.

  ‘Come on . . . be brave . . . who dumped this outside my house?’ she demanded.

  Giraffe Tongue stepped forward. Dressed in a dowdy long skirt, blouse and headscarf, she had just pulled on a smart black jacket to keep warm, the synthetic leather type that all self-respecting but insolvent Addis ladies would rent for a few birr the day before weddings and funerals.

  ‘Me! You think you’re too good for this work. This is what you get for that!’ she screamed, the others hooting encouragingly.

  Mum strode up to her and, without hesitation, grabbed the collar of her rented jacket. She tore it from the shocked woman’s body, buttons popping into the air, stitches audibly ripping and Giraffe Tongue’s arms almost wrenching off with the garment. It took a few seconds to completely separate the screaming creature from her sleeves. Mum’s pent-up frustration spilled over, and there must have been so much of that: her husband’s premature death, the loss of our beloved villa, the prospect of poverty, the desertion of her own sister, the daily degradation of laundry work, the delay in the widow’s pension thanks to Kebebush, and now these terrorising hags. I gazed in admiration at the transformation of a woman: suddenly mad but supremely confident.

  The others looked on, taken aback at my mother’s strength. I am not sure if any man could have done that. Mum tossed the torn jacket onto the garbage the way I had seen rich men throw cigarette butts in the street.

  ‘Here . . . you can use that to clear up this mess. Now!’

  Finally, I moved my legs and collected Dad’s old baseball bat from our junk-filled cupboard. This was the implement he kept handy when travelling at night through Ethiopia’s badlands near the Djibouti border. I tossed the bat to my mother outside. Now, in her hands, she wielded it in the faces of the muted women.

  ‘If anyone has a problem with me, come forward. Come on! Let’s decide this now. Step forward! Come on!’

  I admit to uncertainty over this spirited approach, but the women began clearing up, in a submissive silence. Giraffe Tongue sobbed, but said nothing, the tongue finally stationary. My mother stood watching over them until the ground was clean again.

  ‘Don’t ever do that again,’ she spat as they trundled away miserably with the sacks.

  ‘Werk, Werk, Werk . . . I’m impressed by you.’

  Tadelle dangled in the air like hung washing: it was difficult to see how his two-dimensional frame sustained the standing position for more than a second without crumpling in the light afternoon breeze.

  ‘Don’t be,’ snapped my mother.

  ‘That is the kind of woman I’m looking for . . . and now that you are single . . . what a tantalising thought . . .’

  ‘I don’t have any money, Boiled Egg. So why would you be interested in me? And to be honest, the sight of you fills me with nausea from my feet upwards,’ said Mum.

  ‘What about if I stay Orthodox Christian for a while?’

  ‘Go away, scum.’

  ‘I shall do that. But I might be able to help you first. Let me ask a question . . . why can’t you be a good citizen like these wonderful women with their spades and sacks?’ asked Tadelle.

  ‘I haven’t seen you doing much street cleaning, Boiled Egg . . . don’t lecture me,’ said Mum, walking away from him.

  ‘Werknesh, someone needs to lecture you . . . you’re poor now . . . and now that I work for the kebelle, I’m happy to be your guide.’

  That stopped her.

  ‘Work for the kebelle? You? How did that happen?’ she asked, astonished.

  ‘Come on, Werknesh, think about who you’re speaking to,’ he said, following Mum into our house uninvited.

  ‘I am. Like an unwelcome fly, you buzz around every birth, death and marriage ceremony in the neighbourhood for the free food and whatever else is going. And now in the kebelle! My God, you will defecate on this neighbourhood.’

  ‘Exactly! I’m a known person. I am Boiled Egg . . . what a great name! I cause no real harm. How can I with that nickname? Eggs are trustworthy. People voted for me because they know me. My name is my passport to political glories.’

  ‘We live in a strange country,’ she replied, shaking her head in disgust.

  Tadelle sat himself down on our old sofa. Mum flinched.

  ‘And we have a strange blockage in the courts of this strange country,’ continued Tadelle. ‘Your husband’s divorce certificate . . . we can’t locate it at the moment . . . and you probably need that pension to feed your children. So, as a man who likes to eliminate suffering, in the name of the Lord, I put myself at your disposal for negotiating an arrangement with Kebebush. I think she’d disappear back to the rose bushes of Woliso with that thorny, dubious son if you were to offer some reasonable incentive . . . Werknesh?’

  ‘What can I offer? I’m poor. Look at us! I have nothing, Tadelle. I need the kebelle to help me . . . please find the divorce certificate!’

  ‘Werknesh, you’re a good woman . . . it would be a shame if you couldn’t be reconnected to men in some way . . . you offer so much . . . I would be happy to . . .’

  ‘Impossible! Do your job! Why does everything need a price?’

  ‘Okay, okay, we’ll do our best for you with this peculiarly evasive document, and of course, the kebelle can help with free barley, free sugar, free T-shirts, schoolbooks for the kids . . . all this for twenty birr.’

  ‘I pay twenty birr to get free things from the kebelle? Tadelle! Find the certificate or I’ll break that boiled egg of yours,’ said Mum, waving the baseball bat around like a professional.

  ‘Werknesh, let’s see a little humility in your new-found poverty. Now that you’re one of us, learn the language of peace. Or your family will waste away in horrendous discomfort.’

  ‘What’s happened to this country? And the politicians?’ said Mum, raising the baseball bat high above her head as if to attack Tadelle. He looked up terrified.

  I tried to s
hout at her. Nothing came out but a weak croak as Mum laughed insanely.

  ‘I am this country!’ shouted Tadelle, suddenly dashing for the door, screaming as he went. ‘Twenty birr . . . only twenty birr for free things! I can help you, Werknesh!’

  And he was out. Mum glanced at me with a wide grin. I saw the confidence of Dad in that grin. Thank you, God, at last.

  Shafeek’s smirk emerges from that confident grin. I am looking at Shafeek in Beirut, who is looking at Nuria clutching my ear, and he clearly knows she has crossed the line. He relishes his sisters’ mistakes.

  ‘How long have you been pregnant?’ demands Nuria, unaware of Shafeek behind her.

  Focus, Meron! This is Beirut. This is Nuria, Nuria, asking a question. Just answer it!

  ‘What? Pregnant . . . no! No, Nuria, I’m not pregnant! I was just saying . . . when I have a baby, I hope it’s something like this . . .’

  ‘Leave her, Nuria! You’re wasting my time!’ snaps Shafeek with an air of absolute authority. ‘Let her do the duties she is paid to do, for me, which do not involve you and your family.’

  The lock on my ear is released.

  ‘Yeah, yeah . . . leave Medina alone and just go,’ she says to me flatly, her body lunging back onto the sheets, her face immediately reverting to apathy as though Shafeek is not even in the room.

  I should be grateful for Shafeek. But, I don’t know.

  Hariri and Medina (549 days left)

  Today is Monday. It is St Valentine’s Day, 14th February 2005. Nine months have passed in Beirut. I count every single day but hope to remember none of them. Red roses and a romantic candlelit dinner will not mark this day out, I assure myself as I prepare Abdul’s coffee to a fanfare of Medina’s morning bawling. Nuria and Hassan’s parental responsibilities obviously finished with Medina’s lift home from the maternity ward two months ago, as it is me who services the baby every two hours throughout the night with milk, hugs and nappies. Only the anticipation of Abdul’s coffee and friendly chatter carries me through.