No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  Eighteen months after our trip to see Mama in Woliso, his thundering voice thumped its way into my head.

  ‘It’s almost midnight!’ Desalegn started, as I put the phone to my ear. ‘So she must be with another man. I’ll kill her when I see her . . . without even listening to her lies . . . this is what happens when you let the wife take a job . . . she gets a new boss . . . the boss is a man, men need things . . . she forgets her boss is here, in the house! I need my dinner!’

  ‘Wait . . .’ I said, passing the neighbour’s phone to Mum, just behind me. ‘An animal needs feeding . . .’

  ‘Hello? We don’t know where Kidist is. Leave us alone.’

  ‘You liar, you’re cruel. How’s my young son to sleep on an empty stomach?’

  ‘Cook him some food.’

  ‘Eh? I should kill you too. And I will, if you don’t find her.’

  He hung up.

  ‘Poor kid . . . gets a beating every night, but tonight on an empty stomach. What kind of man will he be?’ said Mum.

  As we all lay in bed that night, unable to sleep, un­­certain if Desalegn would storm into the house at any second, Kidist’s disappearance was unmentioned. We hadn’t seen her for three years and anyway, who would blame her for deserting that ogre? My mother still had a scar where once she had come between Desalegn’s belt buckle and his son. This perhaps explained why Mum had just deposited a machete under her pillow.

  Two days later, on my ninth birthday, there had been no word from Desalegn, and the machete lay undisturbed.

  To celebrate my birthday, Mum bought five gorgeous oranges and nothing more. These were the dark days when she washed laundry by day and ran a very minor cotton-spinning industry by night. The workers were us, her three children, sat cross-legged beside Mum’s feet on the floor of the poorly lit room, eagerly plucking at the freshly picked clumps of cotton to remove stones, insects and dirt. We used our fingers like combs to flatten and straighten the cotton bolls for Mum’s spindle, where it was skilfully spun into a continuous yarn. Mum sold the yarn to keep us clothed and fed.

  It was three years after my father had died. Mum still donned the attire of a heart-broken mourner and assumed the demeanour of a battle-weary soldier. The court had reached no decision on her disputed pension. Our home was completely unchanged. Nobody visited us for coffee. Even worse, we had no television. Mum devised her own entertainment. The five gorgeous oranges.

  ‘Please, Mum, no!’ I squealed as she tore off the peel and hurled it hard at my head. ‘Ow!’

  My brothers and I learnt to instinctively duck and shield our faces whenever the aroma of fresh orange smacked our young nostrils. How a lump of orange peel could hurt so much amazed me. But the secret lay in Mum’s arm action: she whipped the peel at us the way stones would be flung at a marauding pack of stray dogs. We tried to take shelter under bed clothes, but she ripped them off the bed and bombarded us with hard peel, laughing manically as she did it. Orange peel was her fun time.

  ‘Happy Birthday, Meron!’ she shrieked as a clump hit me squarely on the forehead.

  ‘No, Mum, no!’

  ‘Orange peel never killed anyone,’ she declared. But nobody had ever thrown orange peel like she had.

  Yet, oranges were better than sweetcorn, her other diversion. My mother always bought five cobs of sweetcorn, a habit rooted in the days of my father. But there were only four of us now. When we had finished chewing off the toasted kernels from our cobs, Mum announced the fifth cob would be eaten by whoever was strongest in a fighting contest. We threw ourselves into a wrestling ruckus on the hard floor while Mum rocked back and forth chortling so hard it distracted us from the strangle holds, karate kicks and arm twists. Nati or I always won: never Henok. He stayed close to Mum, occasionally daring to prod one of us in the back with his gnawed cob before scurrying to the safety of Mum’s lap. It didn’t occur to us that she might be insane: a very reasonable way to cope with a prolonged and painful mourning.

  ‘Who wants another orange?’ she asked as we tried to find the scattered bits of peel inside the beds. The lost lumps usually appeared as a maddening tickle in the middle of the night.

  ‘Me! Me! Me!’ we all chanted.

  ‘Well, we’ll fight for it,’ she declared.

  ‘No, Mum! Not the oranges as well!’

  Why couldn’t she tear the orange into equal segments for sharing? Oranges were surely designed for easy sharing. Nonetheless, we were throwing ourselves forward into battle, when a sudden clatter at the door startled us. Kidist crashed into the room. After a three-year desertion, she was amongst us. We looked at her, then at Mum, back at her, back at Mum. What were we to do now? Carry on fighting for an orange?

  ‘What do you want?’ mumbled Mum.

  ‘Werknesh, my sister, big big sorry . . .’ she began quietly, baubles of sweat clustered upon her forehead threatening to trickle down her misshapen face.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked my mother, perplexed.

  ‘Help me, Werknesh! I think Desalegn’s going to kill me!’

  My mother shrugged indifferently, unaffected by the urgency in her sister’s pitch.

  ‘Your husband is your problem—’ she started.

  ‘I know but he’s out of control!’

  ‘Three years?’ Mum said as though not hearing Kidist.

  ‘Werknesh . . . I’ve really missed you.’

  ‘Get out, Kidist.’

  ‘He said he’d kill me—’

  ‘Yes, we know. He called us two days ago and sounded upset about your absence . . . angry about your job as a secretary in Bole . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He thinks the job comes with . . . requirements. Does it?’

  ‘Werknesh, I’ve got no qualifications, I’m not a trained secretary . . . of course there are requirements. But that’s not the reason I was away for two days—’

  ‘Just leave my house.’

  ‘What?’ gasped Kidist. It surprised me too. I thought Mum would be pleased to welcome her sister back. I would be, if I had a sister.

  Kidist fell to the floor in front of my mother and kissed her feet frantically.

  ‘Please, Werknesh! He stopped me from coming! All these years, I really wanted to see you and the children . . . please, my sister . . . my sister . . . I love you!’

  ‘Get up!’ snapped my mother, yanking back her feet as quickly as possible. ‘Stop it!’

  Kidist had forgotten that her sister hated having her feet touched.

  ‘Leave us alone, Kidist!’ shouted Nati, asserting himself as the man of the house at the age of seven.

  Kidist glanced around in the half-light.

  ‘Who’s that? Nati? Is that you? And Henok? Meron? Look at you all!’

  Real tears splashed down Kidist’s cheeks. She tried to hug all of us, but Nati pulled away fast. I had missed her. Kidist, Henok and I cried in a tight huddle, our grip passionate and firm.

  Nati went outside. Mum sat with her head bowed, unable to look at us. Eventually, she raised her eyes from the ground.

  ‘So . . . is he coming after you?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Yes and I’m really sorry to involve you . . . the last forty-eight hours have been horrific beyond your imagination . . . but I did realise how much you mean to me. Please believe me!’ said Kidist, wiping her damp cheeks.

  ‘I can’t . . .’ began Mum, shaking her head. ‘You walked out on us, abandoned us . . . we’ve been through Hell since then . . . we’re still fighting Kebebush for Lemma’s pension . . . the final court decision is next week . . . that’s three years of surviving on what I can scrape together from cotton spinning and laundry work. Look at us, Kidist . . . look!’

  Kidist hardly dared. Only two things had changed in those three years: the height of us children and the weight of worry bloating the bags beneath my mother’s eyes. Ev
erything else was identical: black, shabby and broken. Kidist drew breath.

  ‘Oh God! Werknesh, please forgive me. God forgive me. I did a terrible thing. I can see that! Oh dear Lord . . .’

  Kidist was on her knees again, praying. Nati had left the door open, allowing a shaft of moonlight into the room. It fell precisely where my aunt knelt and said a spontaneous prayer of forgiveness, the moonlight illuminating her with a soft silvery glow. For a few intense seconds, I was enraptured. Despite her age, Kidist had the appearance of a sweet young girl oblivious to all sin: almost cherubic. I wondered if it was a glimpse of God, or at the very least, something to do with His work. Even if it was only a trick of the light, I was still impressed. The light from the moon came from the reflected light of the sun, and the sun must have come from somewhere. I know mankind did not make the sun. This inexplicable beauty had to be the work of God. At last, He was in our house!

  ‘Where’s my wife?’ came Desalegn’s gruff voice from outside, just a few metres from where Kidist prayed, piercing the silence with the brutality of a gunshot.

  Kidist leapt into the air, petrified. I admit to also leaving the ground for a second. Kidist held a hand to her mouth to prevent involuntary screaming.

  ‘Not here!’ shouted Nati, still outside.

  ‘Sharmuta!’

  Mum crept over to the bed to pick up something. The machete! Gleaming in her firm hand, it had until this moment only been used for the slaying of animals, mainly sheep and goats. Now I understood the logic: Desalegn was an animal and I didn’t doubt Mum’s capacity to use it.

  Seeing the machete, Kidist gripped her mouth even harder. Enhanced by the moonlight, I watched her eyes enlarging until they appeared to completely fill the top half of her head.

  ‘Have you seen her?’ Desalegn was asking Nati.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Three years ago . . . we all hate her. We hate you too.’

  Desalegn grunted.

  ‘You’re a pig,’ said Nati.

  Smack! Smack!

  Flesh-on-flesh sounds were audible: somebody slapping somebody else. But no shouting or crying. Instead, Nati was guffawing, an aggressive mocking sound, followed by the quick footsteps of Desalegn chasing Nati.

  That seemed to do it. Desalegn disappeared back into the night. Kidist looked at my mother.

  ‘My sister, sorry . . . I want us to be real sisters again.’

  Nothing came back from my mother, sitting down again, resolutely staring at the floor. Wisely, Kidist stayed silent. We all did, waiting for Mum to speak. Something had to come out, one way or the other. A long minute passed. I tried to guess what Mum was thinking. Her face told me nothing. How do you hastily sew up a broken heart? Cotton yarn can’t do it. Kidist wanted instant reconciliation. I didn’t think my mother could manage it.

  Instinctively, I put my hand over her mouth.

  ‘Don’t speak, Mum, it’s too difficult for you,’ I ­whispered, easing the machete out of her hand.

  She kissed the palm of my hand and looked at the ceiling.

  ‘Thank you, Lord, for delivering my sister safely back into our arms . . . we’ve missed her so much . . . this is a gift from the Lord Himself . . . I see that,’ she said finally, standing, opening her arms, inviting Kidist into her embrace. Uncharacteristically, Mum sobbed vociferously and violently for a solid ten minutes. Kidist supported her, as my mother weakened at the knees, three years’ worth of bottled-up emotion spewing out.

  Eventually, out of boredom, Henok and I went outside to find Nati. In doing so, we missed Kidist’s story: where had she been for two days? But that would come later.

  Nati told us how he laughed right into Desalegn’s face after being struck twice by the pig. To Nati, that was funny.

  As birthdays go, it was a memorable one, but I don’t remember who got the fifth orange. Ah! It must have been Nati. That’s why he went outside: for the love of God’s spectacular ball of juice.

  A week after Kidist’s angelic moment in the moonlight, the court finally recognised my mother’s legal right to her late husband’s pension. After three years, the judge lost patience with Tadelle’s kebelle for misplacing the divorce certificate: he threatened to send in the police and arrest anyone they didn’t like, which ruled out nobody. This put Tadelle in such jeopardy that he disappeared as successfully as the divorce certificate. The ‘lost’ divorce certificate was located behind a filing cabinet within a swift thirty minutes and Tadelle was later fired for absenteeism.

  Kebebush’s fraudulent claim was demolished, despite a last-ditch attempt to sway the court by presenting her dubious son, in person. With an inability to look anyone straight in the eye and the sullenness of a lame bull, he held not a single Lemma quality and was duly herded out of the courtroom. Bizarrely, some months later, a teenage daughter, the physical double of Henok, emerged from the Kebebush camp. Ethiopia’s rural backwaters were characterised by their shambling education system and Kebebush was a product of this: we shall always be thankful for such a system.

  So God intervenes. That is obviously what He does. I am quite certain He will offer me an escape plan. It’s definitely coming. It is.

  One Chicken Short (388 days left)

  Nuria, Hassan, Mustafa and Medina moved out of the apartment a week ago. I will miss the children and Hassan. The lumps of chocolate, the morning greetings and the fixed smiles on both sides of his head: Hassan’s absence leaves tiny but sweet gaps in my day. Lucky man, he escaped. Can’t I just disappear too?

  Madame returns home after having expensive cosmetic surgery on her face. In tackling the forces of nature, she is trying to control every aspect of her life, but this particular tactic happily restricts her movements for a few days. While she recuperates, I am temporarily entrusted with the family cooking. Madame’s Arabic cookery book is where I begin: she sends out orders from her bed – ‘Page fifty-four, Me-ron!’ – but I can’t read Arabic. Even the pictures are difficult to understand. Maybe I don’t want to understand them. Maybe if I am incompetent, Madame will send me home early and escape will be simply achieved.

  Today, something about rice, but page fifty-four to my eyes is potato. When she expects fish, I deliver chicken. Cooked vegetables prompt salad. Requests for dinner plates yield soup bowls. Portions specified as ‘large’ come ‘petite’. Delicately flavoured is overspiced. Daily variety turns weekly. The pleasure of the palate becomes painful.

  ‘This is ridiculous . . . you deciding what we eat!’ Madame declares disbelievingly after a fortnight of my nonsense.

  ‘The Arabic recipes are so difficult to understand, Madame . . . I’m doing what I can.’

  ‘I give you one last chance. My best friends coming for dinner tomorrow to celebrate my new face. You cook chicken breasts, I know you can . . . one per guest . . . only enough for one breast each person so not mess it up, Meron.’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  Abdul and Nazia are away, Shafeek very much present. Chicken breasts are in the oven, Madame and I are fussing over other dishes. She should be in bed relaxing her face, before the strains of false delight tug on her newly sutured tucks. Instead, she’s been at my side all day, scooping fingers thick with yoghurt, snacking on random salads, pinching and patting her paunch every hour with the words ‘You’re next’.

  ‘I getting changed, Meron. Get chicken breasts out to cool in five minutes. We serving dinner in one hour. Lay table and do usual artistic thing with napkins. Eat anything and I murder you.’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  At last, she’s gone. A dollop of hummus whets my ­appetite. Nobody will miss that.

  I ease the chicken breasts out of the oven: they ignite my senses. I remember crafty Tadelle’s face that day he thought a chicken was juddering away under Henok’s metal bowl. Fervent and predatory, like me, now . . . my right hand is stretching towards a
golden fizzling fist of breast. I have no control!

  Madame’s shadow is at the doorway and I pull back my hand.

  ‘Meron, do table . . . chicken has to cool.’

  She’s right. How would I eat a breast straight from the oven? In ten minutes, one of the breasts will be mine, and I already know which one. It’s slightly deformed and should be removed before the anomaly upsets the guests.

  I sprint into the dining room, fiddle with napkins, lay mats, count out cutlery and puff on dusty glasses. I think only of a cooling cooked bird. Back into the kitchen . . .

  Shafeek is here with the same idea: I can see him thinking about it, his hand ready to snatch.

  ‘Mister!’ I exclaim.

  Shafeek stares at me indignantly.

  ‘There’s only one . . . only one chicken per person,’ I declare.

  ‘You don’t tell me what to do,’ he snaps.

  But Shafeek is not about to jeopardise Madame’s cooking. He slouches out of the kitchen.

  Before I realise what’s happening, I am eating the breast! White succulence is dervishing between tongue and teeth, saliva blending with oozing fleshy juice, mouth gobbling and gulping, all within a handful of heavenly seconds. She can catch me in the act, but it’s too late. We are officially one breast down.

  I sling the bone underneath the oven. I might come back for that later.

  Madame returns to the kitchen, glowing with the occasion: her new face emitting rare warmth and humanity. This is her night to be youthful again. The surgeon did a good job, pulling taut the lines of dread. I toy with the idea that each wrinkle represented a moment of meanness in her life, but there were not enough lines to validate that theory. Now, she has an open, pure face. Her eyes have a generous sparkle. Her cheeks shine. It is difficult to imagine an atom of nastiness sticking to her. I hope the surgeon’s cut went soul-deep.

  ‘When we eat, you sit in the kitchen, keep quiet and eat your rice. Come when I shout,’ she instructs, helping me to carry the dishes.