No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  Half an hour later, guests are seated, dinner is served. The chicken breasts are dished out by Madame. I’m called to the table.

  ‘One chicken missing. Where is it, Meron?’ Madame enquires, in front of seven Lebanese diners, their faces fixed expectantly on me as though I am the evening performance.

  ‘I ate it, Madame.’

  Slight gasps are audible. Madame is smiling falsely. Her stretched face is no longer designed for this. Her grin suggests the blind fear of a woman facing down a charging elephant. The surgery is straining at the seams, threatening to unravel. This is a nightmare for Madame.

  ‘What I say? Eat chicken or cook chicken?’ she tries, in a sarcastic tone, which sparks off giggles amongst the women.

  I stay silent.

  ‘Meron, you forget . . . you have to eat rice because you fat, not chicken,’ she continues, still playing to the audience. Again, there is muted laughter, but definitely muted. She’s fatter than me now.

  I remain silent. I have already told her the truth. There’s nothing more to say.

  ‘So, Meron, where is other chicken? Shafeek waiting for his chicken,’ Madame says forcefully, now irritated. She thinks I have stored it away for later consumption.

  ‘It’s in my stomach.’

  ‘No, not true . . . you not do that to us! This servant is mad!’

  I shrug my shoulders. What can I do? The chicken is gone.

  ‘I’ve still got the bone . . . if he wants . . .’ I mumble.

  ‘Meron, if you not give me chicken right now . . .’

  ‘What, Madame? You’ll kill me, like the previous maid?’

  This interjection creates a room-full of astonishment. What have I said? This isn’t God intervening: it’s me intervening with all the madness I can gather.

  ‘Meron, you make horrible mistake . . . Mulu died from cleaning accident . . . slipping from the balcony, trying to clean windows . . . this type of accident. Very sad for everyone, especially me.’

  Madame looks set to sob, while the others nod solemnly to confirm what she said.

  Shafeek leaps up and flies into the kitchen, his stony courtroom face serious enough for the grimmest of murder cases. For ten minutes, he silently and rigorously ransacks every drawer, cupboard, container, box and sack populating my work area. He finds no chicken, not even the bone. Surely there is insufficient evidence to sentence me, except that I admitted it.

  ‘Actually, I will kill you,’ declares Shafeek in front of the others. They murmur in his support.

  Dinner is resumed, the atmosphere a little hushed now. I return to my stool and eat rice. So, what happens now?

  After only two hours, the guests leave in a subdued mood. I stand awaiting cleaning instructions in the kitchen. ­Shafeek comes at me like a tiger. He grabs my neck and tosses me to the ground. I think he might ravage me.

  ‘Meron, what do you want?’ he shouts down at me.

  ‘I’m a person . . . I want to eat normal food,’ I sob into the plastic floor. ‘All I’ve had today is rice.’

  ‘What? Not again!’

  He marches into Madame’s room. I can hear him: ‘Why aren’t you feeding her? Of course she steals food if you’re going to starve her . . . and today it was my chicken. Are you mad?’

  ‘Allah! She is servant! Nothing more!’

  ‘Mum, you have to give her proper food!’

  ‘After today? She ruin my party. She talk about dead maid. She steal your chicken. I give her punishment, not food.’

  ‘Everyone has to eat! If servants don’t eat, they get sick, you lose money . . . be sensible!’

  They shout for a good five minutes, a really good five minutes. Shafeek is doing this for me! I am revived, but I fear Madame may do something violent in the night. A humiliated Madame can’t be trusted during sleeping hours.

  ‘Me-ron, boil up the water!’ she demands from her bedroom as Shafeek stomps down the hall.

  I am reluctant to boil up the water. Some maids are painfully scalded, permanently scarred: it’s a known punishment. Beti mentioned it on that very first day: ‘Never go near boiling water after a row with your Madame.’

  ‘Meron, water!’

  I run to her.

  ‘Madame . . . can I prepare you a snack, or a drink . . . or maybe you would like me to clean the bathroom again . . .’

  Anything but boiling water.

  ‘Boil the water, Meron!’ she screams at me from her bed, her piercing tongue appearing to stab quickly at the air, new wrinkles instantly blossoming around her eyes. The way she looks now, the cosmetic surgery fees were utterly wasted.

  ‘But Madame . . .’

  ‘No but . . . just do what I tell you . . . you have to learn . . . you are servant!’

  I stumble back to the kitchen to boil up some water, as instructed. Maybe I should lock myself outside on the balcony? Maybe. But the kitchen floor is suddenly beneath me again, for the second time in ten minutes. I am crouching with my head tucked into my abdomen, nose pressed up against my kneecaps, arms wrapped around my head as if under attack from Mum’s orange peel.

  ‘Me-ron! What you doing?’ shouts Madame down the hall.

  She’s coming! I wrap myself tighter into an unassailable human ball.

  ‘Mum!’

  Shafeek is speaking to Madame outside the kitchen door.

  ‘Take these, Mum, and relax for the night . . . please . . .’

  ‘Yes, okay, habibi . . . you’re right, I need sleep.’

  Shafeek’s sweet sleeping tablets!

  Half an hour later, I’m still here, on the kitchen floor, keeping my head down. Madame’s snoring is perfectly audible. I avoided the fury, thanks to Shafeek.

  ‘Meron, come here . . . check the water for me!’ Shafeek shouts from the bathroom. He’s filling the bath tub, unable to determine whether the temperature of the water is correct. Not the remit of an international lawyer. After his support tonight, I am happy to indulge his ego.

  I reach the door of the bathroom. He’s standing naked before me, arms folded. His face has an arrogant intensity, hardened by a sly smile saying ‘Behold me in all my glory’. I stare at his penis, throbbing ominously towards the stars. Perhaps he wants to take me there. My eyes smart and fill with water. Madame’s deep snoring provides background noise. Shafeek has me completely to himself.

  ‘Meron, come here, check the water,’ he repeats, the water only a short stretch from where he’s standing. ‘You stole my chicken, so you can do me this favour, in return.’

  I edge forward slowly, unsure if the water really wants checking or not. Perhaps it does? I really hope it does. I remember Kidist and Mum, reunited. God intervened! He intervenes at moments like this. That’s what He does, unless there’s some sort of oblique reasoning that nobody will see in their lifetime, which is the type of intervention I hate.

  ‘Can’t you check the water, Mister? My back strain has suddenly returned,’ I try, flinching unconvincingly.

  ‘Come here and check the water . . . you can at least do that for me,’ he says slowly and clearly.

  He’s right. The back strain does not warrant a second of delay. In fact, there is no back strain. My body is moving closer without any conscious effort, as if reaching for the golden fizzling chicken breast, as if running instinctively towards my father’s open arms. My protective hug awaits me. I am within an arm’s length of him. The whiff of his feet hits my nostrils. He points at the water. Is it cold or hot? I’ll need to bend over the bath tub with my backside high in the air. The water needs checking. I would do anything for my father. My Baba.

  But I pause. This is not right. Focus, Meron!

  Shafeek is not my father: I am not touching that water. Where’s God? Where’s the intervention? It’s not coming.

  ‘I’ve got an idea for your feet!’ I shout into his rough stub
ble.

  ‘Eh? What?’

  ‘Your feet . . . they smell bad.’

  ‘What did you say?’ he stutters, unable to believe it, eyes bulging, arms dropping to his sides.

  ‘Everyone can smell them, all the time. You have a problem, Mister, a really bad problem, like my brother . . . but I can help you with this.’

  Shafeek attempts to focus on me. He’s been thrown off-course by a verbal bullet. His thoughts recover and collect themselves up fast: the agile mind of a lawyer, reckoning, reasoning, rationalising, racing through the options to present an eloquent intellectual solution.

  He wallops me hard in the face with his fist. It sends me flying to the floor.

  I let out a wail that a woman would only reveal in childbirth, or a child’s death. Tears spring from my eyes immediately.

  ‘Do you know who you’re speaking to? I could do anything to you . . . kill you, rape you . . . torture you. How dare you talk about my feet!’ he blabbers, nursing his hitting hand.

  I sob and scream. Like a newborn foal, I try to get to my feet. Shafeek pushes me back down with a sharp thrust and kicks me hard in the stomach. Ooof! I’m pawing at the floor pathetically below him.

  I cry at the top of my voice from the bathroom floor. Come on! Somebody must hear me. Even a shambling, shuffling Abdul would be a welcome sight. Alas, nobody’s here except Madame, who’s comatose on sleeping tablets. I’m wasting my efforts.

  Shafeek just stares at me. As the seconds pass and I continue to howl, his penis withers. It points at his rank feet, accusingly.

  ‘What’s the idea?’ he says finally.

  ‘Scrub lemon juice onto your feet every day . . . it works for my brother,’ I snuffle.

  ‘Get out.’

  I grip the side of the bath to clamber to my feet and dip my hand into the water dutifully.

  ‘The water’s cold, Mister.’

  Locking myself outside on the balcony and crying myself hoarse, it’s a long night ahead but sleep and sunlight eventually come, if only in quick succession.

  The following day, I bear a black eye. Shafeek avoids eye contact with me. Nobody mentions it.

  It’s a normal day, until evening when Shafeek comes home late and stands near my mattress.

  ‘Meron,’ he whispers, my stomach suddenly tight with tension.

  ‘Yes, Mister?’

  ‘Next time . . .’ and he wanders away, a little unsteadily, to vomit in the bathroom.

  Two days later, Nazia and Madame are loafing on the sofa, about to eat. Shafeek wanders in bare-footed, his feet aromatically silent from where I’m perched on the plastic stool. The others notice something amiss, but are not sure what. Madame’s nose is raised in the air, readied for any suggestion of the usual pungency. None is forthcoming.

  ‘We need to buy more lemons,’ pronounces Shafeek. ‘They’re good for the health.’

  Yes, mine.

  Kidist’s Bid – Part One

  Mum related the story to me when I was fourteen: the story of Kidist’s disappearance before the reunion with my mother on that life-changing night of oranges and moonlight. Now in Beirut, three years later, I take comfort from the story: the idea that escape can suddenly present itself, with only the nerve of an opportunist needed to make it happen. Kidist needed escape from Desalegn: I need it now from Shafeek. While I await God’s helping hand, I will take any inspiration you can offer me, Auntie.

  Kidist and her colleague, Adi, usually finished work at eleven o’clock (5pm) and caught the free bus service for company workers, heading up Bole Road. On this occasion, they worked four hours’ overtime and missed the bus. Unperturbed, Adi and Kidist started walking along Bole Road, hoping to catch a public minibus. They were all full. Instead of squandering money on a private taxi, the women drank tea together until the rush-hour eased. It was close to 10pm when they sauntered past the ­conspicuous London Café, with its protruding fuselage of a real airliner. Adi was chatting interminably about her ‘great’ brother studying at Addis Ababa University. Kidist had known Adi for two years and never connected with her: Kidist loved the titillation of gossip, not the open competition of boasting. She had little to boast about and had run out of gossip half an hour earlier. All office scandal had been dissected beyond the point of fun.

  In her late twenties, Adi was ten years younger than Kidist, and with a slender waif-like body, her waist had the circumference of her neck. Adi must have weighed the same as one of Kidist’s legs, without the shoe.

  A smart black car stopped abruptly beside them, possibly a Mercedes Benz, but probably not. Kidist was unable to identify car makes.

  ‘Hey, ladies, need a lift?’ enquired a beaming gentleman in his mid-thirties, leaning from the driver’s window. His eyebrows were untamed bushes, forming a hanging garden of hair above his eyes. Every wrinkle, twinkle and hairy strand suggested a kindness that Kidist craved in a decent Habesha man. Look at this guy with his open face and untended features: he put other people before his own preening. He was evidently successful but selfless. How had she got it so wrong with Desalegn?

  This happened frequently in Addis. Complete strangers offering lifts to other strangers. Kidist and Adi exchanged shrugs. Why not? Neither would usually have accepted a lift from a stranger, but what could possibly go wrong? The car was respectable and expensive enough: the driver obviously had money and seemed unlikely to commit ­violent robbery or something similarly malicious.

  ‘There are no more buses . . . which way are you going, ladies?’ he said with a smile.

  His clothes suggested office worker, maybe bank or insurance. This fellow with his affable unfussy countenance was difficult to fault.

  Kidist thought of Desalegn, increasingly fraught as the minutes of her lateness ticked by. He could eat out for once, let him be fractious, let him stew in his own juices. Or maybe she would never see him again. Temptation was tripping over itself as Kidist’s imagination quickened into a gallop.

  ‘Near Mexico Square,’ said Kidist, at last.

  ‘Perhaps not . . .’ began Adi, suddenly coy.

  ‘You and me together . . . we’re fine,’ replied Kidist, now very keen to converse with the kind gentleman.

  He skipped out and opened the back door for them, like a professional chauffeur. This pleased Kidist. With her figure, she didn’t expect too much attention, but Adi was younger and more attractive: in the back seat, both could relax without the risk of wandering hands. It was like travelling in a VIP taxi, but free!

  ‘Mmm, okay,’ said Adi, slipping into the back with Kidist.

  Inside the car, it felt like a taxi. A wire mesh separated front seats from back. Perhaps formerly an upmarket taxi of some description for diplomats or presidents, mused Kidist: one of those black limousines blazing along Bole Road to and from the African Union, but only after other road-users had been swept aside like street rubbish. It added to her sense of ease in this pleasant stranger’s car.

  ‘Work at the airport, ladies?’

  ‘No, nearby, but we missed the service bus. So thank you very much for this . . . our families are probably worried because it’s getting late now,’ said Kidist, happy to mention the ‘families’. She didn’t want the chauffeur, however benign, forming a misunder-standing of the current situation. Presumably, if he wanted a business girl, he would cruise Chichinya Street. Quite obviously, Kidist and Adi were not business girls, in their work blouses, knee-length skirts and flat black shoes. Kidist relaxed a little more.

  ‘Ah! You have families. Wonderful!’ he said. ‘I love kids. I have five children, oldest seventeen and youngest four. Of course, we have our problems sometimes, but the house is always lively, two girls, four boys. How many do you have?’

  ‘I’ve got two, one of each, and Adi has just one boy so far,’ said Kidist.

  ‘Did you say you have five children . . . two girls and four
boys?’ asked Adi, checking the figures. She was studying accountancy in evening classes.

  ‘Yes, we lost one.’

  ‘Ah! Sorry. Really sorry,’ they both replied in tones of sincerity.

  ‘Thanks. She died of a complication.’

  ‘A complication? How terrible,’ said Kidist as compassionately as possible.

  ‘So, you must find it hard to balance work and home lives with your jobs?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, really difficult sometimes,’ replied Kidist, warming to him by the second.

  ‘How do you find time for all the cleaning and washing and cooking?’

  ‘You just have to get on with it, as fast as possible . . . with time and practice you get better and better at it.’

  ‘I really admire you . . . all housewives should be celebrated, given medals of honour.’

  Kidist liked that. This gentleman was commending her efforts in the home. No man had ever done that before. In Addis, it was amazing to hear such words.

  ‘Thank you so much!’

  ‘Perhaps you even enjoy it?’ he continued.

  ‘Not really, but we do it for our families.’

  ‘Of course, of course . . . wonderful.’

  The pleasure of speaking to a charming wealthy gentleman forced Kidist to look hard at her own beast of a husband. He could never replicate this man’s genuineness. There had to be a way to divorce the undivorceable, decided Kidist: a legitimate escape from the captor masquerading as husband. It was time she probed a little into this fellow’s married life. What if there are cracks? Her heart beat a little faster.

  ‘Does your wife work?’ asked Kidist.

  ‘Not really,’ he replied abruptly.

  ‘Oh . . . but I am sure she’s a really happy wife with a husband as appreciative as you,’ said Kidist, sensing a way into this potential new partner.

  ‘No, she isn’t.’

  ‘Oh! Sorry to hear that . . . you deserve better . . . me too . . . I’m Kidist, by the way . . . er, what’s your name? Can we meet up again?’ she gabbled excitedly, the idea of escape now embedded within every living cell liberally coating every heavy bone.