No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  ‘How are you, Mister?’ I say in Arabic, now impressively fluent but still unacknowledged by my unwitting teachers.

  ‘Be careful of love . . . it can cost you your life.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s killed me.’

  ‘In what sense, Mister?’

  ‘In every sense. She’s taken what she wants. I’m the coffee grounds, good for nothing . . . except fertiliser on the plants.’

  ‘Oh! Mister, can I have fresh coffee today?’ I ask, sensing my chance.

  ‘Yeah, okay, but if Nazia or Rahima come, forget it.’

  And I need the coffee more than ever. My period is coming and back pain is the usual forerunner. They have been getting more painful by the month, if they come at all. I’m not resting or eating as I used to in Addis. I have no Panadol and Madame hates wasting it on me. I don’t like asking her, or I am instantly converted into the leper of Lebanon.

  Shafeek has a huge carton of Panadols in his bathroom: he munches them like crisps. I love crisps. Noise food! I could steal one but he might notice and batter my arms again.

  ‘Do you have any Panadol, Mister?’ I ask Abdul.

  ‘What? Aarrgh!’

  He’s dabbing the olive oil again.

  ‘Why are you doing that, Mister?’

  ‘It’s sore and dry from the cold. When you get to my age, you’ll understand . . . Aarrgh!’

  I doubt that.

  ‘Why do you have to do it in the kitchen?’

  ‘Aarrgh! What? The olive oil’s here, in the kitchen.’

  That same jar of olive oil is constantly used by all members of the family, usually on bread or salads or hummus rather than genitalia.

  ‘Ah, I see, Mister.’

  ‘Aarrgh! Mulu, what did you say you need?’

  ‘I’m not Mulu. I’m Meron. Who’s Mulu?’

  ‘Previous maid . . . I’m confused . . . old age,’ he says, shaking his head.

  At last, we have a name.

  ‘What happened to Mulu, Mister?’

  He stares at me, forgetting for a second the serious ­business of olive oil application.

  ‘My girl, what did you say you needed?’ he asks steadily.

  ‘I need Panadol, Mister,’ I say carefully back into his ravine-grooved face.

  ‘Mmm . . . why?’

  ‘Back pain from my period.’

  ‘Ah . . . okay . . . I see . . . I thought . . . Aaarrrgh!’ he says, resuming the dabbing.

  ‘Thought what, Mister?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. Dabbing isn’t enough . . . it needs pickling during these winter months. Yes, I’ll give you some Panadol if it shuts you up.’

  I slurp the fresh coffee while Abdul rifles through Shafeek’s cabinet of pills. He gives me a row of ten sealed tablets. I swallow one for now.

  ‘How do I compare with the previous maid, Mister?’ I try.

  ‘Now . . . shut up,’ he growls at the floor. ‘Forget about the last maid. It is not the will of Allah that I ever speak of this matter . . . it is done, it is in the past and must stay in the past.’

  ‘Thank you, Mister. And sorry for asking about Mulu . . .’ I offer, but he’s away.

  I conceal the tablets in a golden sugar bowl living three shelves above my sleeping spot in the small salon. Nobody ever touches these trinkets. When I polish the bowl once a week, there’s not a single fingerprint on the gleaming veneer: it is seen every day but handled never.

  Mid-morning, everybody is out, except Medina who is still screaming. Panadol can’t help her. A four-month-old baby doesn’t understand the common cold: she’s trying to breathe through a stubborn bung of mucus blocking up her little nose, oblivious to the joys of an open, ­oxygen-swallowing mouth. Understandably, she’s upset when air doesn’t arrive in her lungs. ‘Crying is good for loosening the blockage,’ said Nuria on her way out. She is a rubbish mother. I can do better than that.

  In Addis, I have seen mothers suck out the nostril jam with their own mouths and spit it away. I’ll do that for Medina and give everybody some peace. She’s not even my daughter.

  I hold her head steady, and one, two, three . . . slurp! And spit!

  One hour later, Medina is rested and content. I’m an unsung hero.

  Like young mothers in Addis, the only way to combine cleaning and baby-caring duties is by wearing Medina on my back inside a large shawl: she burbles happily as I jig about, singing traditional Ethiopian music and allowing rhythmic shoulder jerks to shake us around the kitchen, my favourite dance partner clinging to my skinny frame. For an hour or two each day, I feel like a real Habesha mother.

  A sudden boom sounds in the distance. It might be an accident, perhaps. I think nothing of it and continue with the chores. We have another two hours before Madame returns for lunch. I’m frying fish left over from Friday. A drop of my saliva rolls onto the silver scales. Two hours is a long time to salivate over fish which I cannot hope to eat.

  Two hours. That leaves time to bathe and change Medina, to bottle-feed her and then put her down for a sleep. With luck, I will steal a few minutes watching the Fashion Channel on television, always in Madame’s bedroom, lolling on her lake of a bed, remembering to change the channel back to CNN or she will stumble upon my secret. I have already sneaked five minutes this morning.

  Bathing Medina is generally a moment of fun. Today is no different. She’s still kicking her legs and remembering those not-so-distant days as a permanently submerged foetus doing lengths inside Nuria’s vast interior. I smile at the thought. For the first time, though, I use bubble bath. This is even more entertaining than usual, until I lift her from the enamel bath. Just for a second, I remember the moment when Nuria grabbed my ear and quizzed me about being pregnant: the urgency in her tone, the Addis flashback and the horrors of childhood entrapment still haunt me.

  I am holding Medina safely away from my breath, but she sneezes violently and my mind is not focused on this baby. I feel her soapy body slipping from my grasp. No! No!

  Smack!

  That’s her head hitting the side of the bath, the sound walloping into my stomach. Medina lets off such a raucous scream that all my mental faculties are disabled. Grabbing Medina out from the bath, I clutch her tightly to my bosom and within seconds my own tears are dripping onto her forehead. Is she all right? Is she hurt? I don’t know! I’m not a doctor, I’m a domestic. All I can see is a baby’s bright red tonsils rattling with the pitch of a thousand dying cats.

  I see no blood anywhere, but blood clots on the brain are not usually visible. If she dies, I die. This is the direction of my thoughts: the window ledge is already beckoning me, without even the precursor of sexual assault. In this household, accidentally killing Medina would definitely be enough to send me over.

  No!

  Wrapping Medina in blankets, I carry her quickly to the bedroom: put her in the cot and see what happens. She immediately falls silent and closes her eyes. At least screaming means living. But silence? Dead people are silent.

  ‘Medina! Medina! Medina!’ I try. No reaction. God, help us! Should I be whacking her on the chest as hard as possible? Or inflating her like a party balloon? I don’t know!

  I hear the front door fly open. No! Not Shafeek surely! His time has passed. I nervously shout out: ‘Forgot your papers, Mister?’

  No reply. Someone’s bashing around in the hallway. Perhaps it’s Nazia. She won’t acknowledge me. I leap into the hallway to check. It’s Madame.

  She stares back at me, her wilting body a dying tree, her face whiter than the moon, her mouth and eyes wearing the fright of a hunted creature cowering in the shadows. She carries the aura of death. How could she know? It was only a minute ago that I dropped the baby.

  ‘Hariri is dead!’ she wails.

  This means absolutely nothing to me. Some person has died. Probably n
ot a good moment to mention Medina’s little accident.

  ‘Sorry, Madame. Er, Medina is asleep in bed.’

  ‘A bomb! Killed him in cold blood!’ she despairs, hands clasping the side of her head.

  ‘Terrible,’ I say as dramatically as possible, shaking my head, not wishing to admit to total ignorance.

  ‘Suicide bombers . . . but why? Why?’

  I remain silent, unsure how to proceed without incriminating myself in some way.

  ‘Help me!’ Madame cries as she drops all her belongings on the floor and staggers into her bedroom, collapsing onto the bed with unrestrained sobbing. This is not one of her acts. She grabs the TV remote control. The Fashion Channel flashes onto the screen. Oops.

  ‘Me-ron! You watching this again, on my television?’ she snuffles.

  ‘Sometimes, Madame, I press the buttons on the control by mistake while I’m cleaning. Sorry, Madame. By the way, Medina is a bit quiet this morning,’ I blather, but Madame is hardly listening. CNN is on the screen. It shows smoking carnage ‘Live from Beirut’.

  Rafik Hariri, the revered ex-Prime Minister of Lebanon, has been assassinated by a massive roadside bomb, leaving twenty others dead. He was a national hero adored by Sunni Muslims for his reconstruction projects in Beirut and for his stance against Syria – whose forces still occupy Lebanon – while reviled in equal measure by the hard-line Shia Muslim movement Hezbollah. I hear that much.

  ‘Syria did it! They jealous . . . we have money, we have tourists . . . now, nothing!’ she shouts at the television with real venom.

  ‘Do you need anything, Madame?’ I ask timidly.

  ‘Yes, I need so much . . . I need safe, free, prosperous Lebanon without Assad and the Syrian dogs feeding off us.’

  I chew my bottom lip. I am probably the last person on Earth who can provide such a thing for Madame.

  ‘Can I check on Medina?’

  But Shafeek comes charging through the front door, his head like an overripe boil.

  ‘Mum!’ he shouts as he enters Madame’s bedroom. ‘It’s Hezbollah!’

  Madame gazes at him in horror before embracing him and crying hard into his shoulder.

  ‘No, my son! Syria! We all know that . . . CNN says so!’ she blurts as Shafeek pats her on the back soothingly.

  ‘No, Mum, Hezbollah . . . it has to be. Meron! Come here!’ Shafeek storms out without waiting for Madame to reply. I follow him to the television in the small salon. He punches the remote control repeatedly until he finds Al-Jazeera News.

  ‘Do you need anything, Mister? There’s hummus in the fridge from yesterday, or baba ghanoush . . . fried fish for lunch . . . Mister?’

  ‘Yes, find the killers and hang them up by their balls with piano wire.’

  It feels appropriate to remain silent again. I can respond to requests for food, drink, clothes or bathroom accessories, but not to missions best left to the Lebanese Armed Forces. I shrug at Shafeek. Maybe he is also a killer and should be hung up with piano wire. Has he considered that?

  ‘Our self-determination begins today, but you don’t care about Lebanon. Why would you?’ he asks, puzzled at his own question. ‘If this happened in Ethiopia, I wouldn’t give a shit. I really wouldn’t.’

  ‘Thank you, Mister. Oh! Medina is sleeping a lot this morning . . . maybe too much.’

  I feel compelled to draw someone’s attention to ­Medina’s possible plight. Perhaps it’s not too late.

  ‘Fantastic! You’ve made a baby go to sleep . . . you want an Olympic medal? Just shut up about her. Hariri is dead! Al-Jazeera says Israel . . . Mossad . . . to destabilise us and drive out Syria. Could be right. Tell Mum . . . now!’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Allah! I’m not repeating it!’ he spits in my face. Shafeek throws the remote control at me. Fortunately, it misses and clatters into the wall, probably broken.

  ‘Erm, okay, Mister.’

  I trot along to Madame.

  ‘Mister Shafeek says it’s Israel or Moss . . . Syria . . . or Hez-Jazeera or I don’t know. Medina . . .’

  ‘What? No! Tell him definitely Syria . . . I’m on BBC now. Jumblatt talking.’

  I dart back to Shafeek.

  ‘She’s on the BBC now. I think she said Syria . . . according to Jumblatt?’

  ‘What? That jerk? Are you crazy?’ he blows up at me frantically trying to stick the remote control back together.

  I hear the front door open again.

  Abdul is home, extremely early: he seems disoriented within his own home and unsure on his feet. He sees me gaping.

  ‘Mulu . . . I need help,’ he falters.

  Yes, but so does Medina. Anxiously, I run to help him. Maybe this is it. Three down inside the hour: Hariri, Medina and now Abdul. And then four, when I am given the quick shove.

  He slumps onto the sofa in the TV lounge.

  ‘Oh . . . so pleased you’re here . . . are you feeling better with the Panadol?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. What is it, Mister?’ I ask urgently.

  ‘I need you to put on the television and find a news channel that knows what it’s talking about, preferably a Lebanese channel.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ I say, a little deflated. He’s lost the ability to turn on the television.

  I flick through the channels for him. They are all full of the same thing. We settle with LBC News. The Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation should be Lebanese enough.

  ‘It was Hezbollah, you know, the Shias. They’re jealous! Hariri was a great man . . . he made Beirut what it is today . . .’ Abdul moans.

  His face is suddenly twitching and ready to burst: hands go to his eyes, crying seems a distinct possibility. No man ever cries in front of a woman in Addis. It’s almost illegal. I place a comforting hand on his shoulder. He retains his composure.

  ‘What does Shafeek say?’ he gurgles.

  ‘Jumblatt’s a jerk . . . and I think he said Israel did it, but I’m not sure.’

  ‘Tell him it’s Hezbollah,’ he says as though this is ­absolute fact.

  I am returning to Shafeek, but Nuria and Hassan enter the apartment. I can’t believe it. Hassan is still grinning. How will he react if his daughter is declared a vegetable?

  ‘Hello, Meron, how are you? Good, good? Clean your . . .’

  ‘Meron, where’s Medina?’ interrupts Nuria.

  ‘Very asleep . . . I wouldn’t bother her for a few hours.’

  ‘Oh, fine,’ replies Nuria.

  ‘You cleaned your teeth today?’ asks Hassan, slurping a can of Pepsi.

  ‘Yes, Mister . . .’

  ‘Why are your teeth so white?’ he asks.

  ‘Ah, well, in Addis, we use mafaqiya, a natural toothbrush carved from wooden twigs to make teeth gleam,’ I explain patiently as Nuria disappears into her bedroom.

  ‘Really? What about your, er, gum colour? Why are your gums bluey-green?’

  ‘They were tattooed when I was a baby . . . again, to enhance the gleam of the teeth,’ I answer affably. Why are we talking about gum tattoos right now?

  ‘Now that’s what I call cheap cosmetic dentistry, but I won’t be offering it to my customers,’ laughs Hassan.

  ‘Sorry, Mister, I have to go . . . Hariri’s dead!’

  ‘Yes, of course!’ he retorts, snapping into instant ­seriousness. He passes me a lump of chocolate. Hassan is not of the same world as other Lebanese: there’s a defective gene on the loose, but it’s an agreeable one.

  I swallow the chocolate hard before rushing back to Shafeek. He’s still standing in front of the television, hands stuck to the back of his head.

  ‘Mister! Mister Abdul says it’s Hezbollah. Do you want to check on Medina?’

  Hairline cracks on a baby’s skull would be compelling courtroom evidence. He’s an international lawyer. It’s his arena, n
ot mine. Do something useful, Shafeek.

  ‘Mister? Can you check Medina?’ I repeat.

  ‘Allah! No, I can’t! Hammerhead, why would I do that? It’s Nuria’s . . . Hezbollah? No, no way . . . who says that?’

  ‘Er, Mister Abdul . . .’

  Shafeek hurls the broken remote control at the floor, sending shards of plastic across the floor, ensuring it has switched to its last ever channel.

  ‘It’s broken! I can’t change the channel, Meron,’ he whines at me pathetically.

  There is no point in trying to respond.

  ‘What does the BBC say?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I don’t care. I’ll be smashed into shards too if Medina has gone. Just like Mulu.

  ‘Meron!’ yells Madame.

  ‘Coming!’

  She’s holding a tissue to her eyes.

  ‘Get more tissues from cupboard. What say Abdul?’

  ‘I think he said . . . er, I don’t know. I’ll ask him again. Medina’s really quiet.’

  ‘Ah! Medina . . . the future of Lebanon . . . for her generation we will find Hariri’s murderers . . . country must be perfect for her.’

  ‘And for the other four million people, Madame . . . she’s just one person.’

  Not listening, Madame nods sagely.

  ‘Meron!’ yells Abdul.

  I jog back to him in the lounge.

  ‘How do I find Al-Jazeera on here?’

  ‘Sorry, Mister, I’m—’

  ‘Meron!’ shouts Shafeek from my right.

  I drop the remote on Abdul’s lap and sprint back to Shafeek down the hallway. I remember the avid table football games in the Addis streets played by Nati, Henok and so many young men, whacking the little plastic ball from one end to the other. In this apartment, I am the ball.

  At this moment, Nazia returns.

  ‘Morning, Nazia . . . there’s hummus and grapes and bread and . . .’ I manage, skidding to a halt in front of her.

  Ignoring me, she throws herself onto her bed and switches on the television immediately. No tears from the Lammergeyer.

  ‘Coke with ice,’ she replies finally, without looking at me.

  She begins tapping into her new mobile phone: Nazia is more preoccupied with Valentine texts to her unofficial boyfriend than some national emergency.