‘Excuse me! That’s enough! Where did you learn such language?’ asks the Habesha girl visibly shocked.
‘From her!’ I declare, pointing accusingly at Madame.
‘How many years have you been here?’ asks the Habesha girl.
‘Fifteen months.’
‘But your Arabic is so good.’
‘You see!’ declares Madame. ‘Too intelligent to be a maid. I can’t handle her.’
‘The only choice you have is to send her back with your money or continue with the contract for another year, but with some reassurances . . .’
‘She can pay for the flight. Where’s my money, Meron? L’argent!’ demands Madame, putting her hands into my pockets and finding nothing but damp paper tissues from recent weeping episodes.
‘The contract probably says you have to pay salary and airfare if you decide to break it,’ the Habesha girl says to Madame, finally offering me something helpful.
‘Show me the contract,’ demands Madame.
The Habesha girl reluctantly rises to find the contract, revealing a bottom like the head of a huge mushroom, swaying in the wind.
‘I not losing money over you . . . you staying, Meron,’ whispers Madame aggressively. ‘If you demand to go home, Shafeek will get you in courts and we put you in prison for theft. And same if you say any more about dead maid. You not see your family for years and years, maybe never. We do anything we like to you. Anything.’
I nod without looking at her. There’s no reason to doubt her.
The Habesha girl returns with the contract. I see my photo from fifteen months earlier stapled to the top of the page. My face was so fat!
‘Look at me. Look what they’ve done to me!’ I gasp.
‘Meron!’ hisses Madame.
‘I’ll stay here but I want better conditions . . .’ I stutter.
‘But where’s my money?’ asks Madame.
‘Give back the money,’ says the Habesha girl.
Madame has been richly humiliated by a servant girl with a hairpin in her own bedroom. I don’t have any more tricks to progress this bid for freedom.
‘I’ll get it out. Where’s the toilet?’
The toilets are authentic re-creations of Addis lavatories. I rip open the knickers and my hard-earned dollars are back in the wrong hands.
Madame agrees to better treatment for me: eating what they are eating, getting enough rest, no more beatings, working only for Madame and not the entire family. Madame agrees to check the problem with post from Addis, now remembering she forgot to mention the new postbox address and ‘very sorry for that’. She signs a document to say so. I promise not to steal again, or to escape, or to lie, or to moan. It’s all there in black ink: reasonable words, but words without power as soon as we’re back in that apartment again.
The Habesha girl in front of us buckles under the strain of it all. The time is now 5.45pm. The Consulate is empty. A question pops into my head.
‘So who cleans this place? Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Philippines? They all clean for Arabs in Beirut, and we’re at the very bottom . . . so who cleans for the Ethiopians in Beirut? Who’s lower life than us?’
‘Nobody. We have to clean it,’ she replies resentfully.
That makes sense.
As we walk outside, the Ethiopian flag flutters proudly above us at the end of another ineffectual day of helping not a single Ethiopian in need in Beirut. Five minutes later, the same flag waves at me when I arrive ‘home’ again. I shrug back at it and turn away bitterly, not an iota of hope in my own state.
For a few months, Madame and the others treat me with a degree of respect and try to smile a lot. It’s painful, especially for Nazia. But Madame lets me use flour to make my breakfast genfo, just like Mum does.
‘Allah! Where’s flour gone to? Strong wind take it like sheet on Wednesdays? You use one month of flour in two weeks. You not doing that again.’
And we instantly revert to the pre-escape state, exactly where we were a few months ago when I took succour from remembering Kidist’s hopeful escape bid. That failed too.
Kidist’s Bid – Part Two
Kidist’s mind was trampolining with the possibilities of leaving Desalegn. This suave driver had already demonstrated more appeal than Desalegn had managed in five years.
‘I’m Kidist . . . what’s your name?’ she repeated through the wire mesh.
‘Don’t worry,’ he replied a little offhandedly.
Don’t worry? Kidist expected an elaboration, but nothing was forthcoming. She glanced outside. Bole Road was empty, and they were moving fast. She hesitated in re-initiating the small talk. Perhaps he had lost his wife. He might be lonely, shy, looking for a new partner. Kidist’s mind picked up speed. This is fate! Or maybe he didn’t want to talk any more.
As they rolled into Meskel Square, he suddenly veered hard over to the right and pressed down on the accelerator, heading up towards the Hilton.
‘Excuse me, sir, we need Mexico Square . . . we should have gone straight on,’ said Kidist. Perhaps he was tired, not thinking straight, this poor guy with five kids, or was it six?
No answer. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel as they sped up the long hill.
‘Excuse me!’ shouted Kidist.
He flicked down the central locking, securing the passengers in the back. Kidist tried to open the door, pointlessly. The windows lacked winding handles: they were resolutely closed. The chicken wire partition was firm as they tugged at it, both now sensing danger.
‘What do you want?’ Kidist shouted.
Nothing. No response. The women were quickly becoming petrified. Adi grappled with her mobile, desperately prodding the numbers. Her husband wasn’t answering. Again and again, she tried.
‘You can take our money, Mister!’ yelled Kidist.
‘We’re not rich, but you can have what we’ve got . . . please, Mister!’ whimpered Adi.
‘We have families, children, husbands . . . just leave us here!’ continued Kidist.
Adi started screaming. Kidist sobbed. The guy concentrated on driving fast, reacting to nothing inside the car. Kidist used the modest heel of her shoe to try smashing the window, to no avail. They shrieked at the occasional pedestrian, but it was a Monday night: only business girls and the homeless were out now. Shouting was futile.
Adi’s husband finally answered his mobile, but she couldn’t accurately describe where they were: somewhere beyond the shops of Kasanchis, but dark, unrecognisable lanes without landmarks. She gabbled, almost hysterically. The husband might not have understood her. Kidist’s mobile wasn’t working at this time: she had let the battery run down to stop Desalegn harassing her at work.
The car entered through a high gateway and rumbled into the drive of a medium-sized villa within its own compound. If this was his house, he certainly had money, but was not within the elite of Addis. A younger man closed the gate behind them and dashed across to the front door of the house, inside a veranda. He was standing to attention like a willowy soldier on the parade ground, shoulders bending in towards a chest area where no chest existed. His face was keen and bony. Kidist didn’t like the look of him: she thought he was concealing something in his right hand, maybe a blade.
Their chauffeur unlocked the car doors. He turned to face the two shaking ladies in the back.
‘We’re here, my home,’ he said comfortingly. Kidist drew no comfort.
‘I’m not young, sir . . . I’m a mother of two . . . in the name of God, look at me, I’m too old for you, my breasts are wilting, my skin has stretch marks. Under these clothes I’m a tiger . . . I mean, I look like a tiger—’
‘Don’t take her!’ interrupted Adi. ‘She’s right! You want a younger woman. I beg you . . . she’s too old . . . her heart’s weak, maybe she’ll die . . . do you want the death of an old woman on your
hands?’
‘You’d hate to see my body . . . it would make you sick to the stomach. Let me go and I promise not a word to anyone,’ pleaded Kidist, beginning to unbutton her blouse. One glimpse of her drooping breasts would be enough to buy her freedom, she decided.
‘I’ll give you a good time, a really good time, but let her go, for mercy’s sake,’ cried Adi.
‘Look at me . . . I’ve fed two babies with these,’ implored Kidist, her breasts appearing to slop out of their bra cups without assistance. ‘You were a baby once, you grew up on these! In the name of your mother, let me go . . .’
‘I don’t have a mother,’ he muttered.
‘In the name of your sister!’
‘I don’t have a sister. I don’t have any family!’
‘In the name of God! And Maryam! In the name . . .’
‘Shut up, both of you!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t want sex with you. Don’t be so crude. What do you see on my veranda?’
The women peered through the dark towards the house.
‘A young man?’ said Kidist, unsure of what she was looking at. ‘He wants . . . you know . . . the sex?’
‘No! He’s my servant. Behind him.’
‘Ah! Broom, mop, buckets . . . er . . . a pile of clothes?’
‘You will clean my house tonight and wash all my clothes by hand. And you will make a good job of it, or I will have sex with you. Do you understand?’
Kidist stared incredulously.
‘You picked us up to do your housework?’
‘Yes, I do it once a month. My servant isn’t much good at it, so we use this free system. Get out of the car!’
‘We’ll do it! We’ll do it!’ cried Kidist, the relief visible on her face. Adi hugged her tightly. Extra housework, not robbery, not rape and not murder! They were joyous.
Adi’s mobile was ringing. The servant grabbed it roughly from her hand.
‘Get going! You’ve got all night if you want. I’ll be here, just watching,’ said the master of the house.
Kidist and Adi started on their tasks, sweeping and mopping a three-bedroom house crawling with a month of dirt, dust and bugs. Kidist’s housework speed defied her plumpness: all that energy stored up within the corpulence was unleashed on the captor’s grime. Meanwhile, he drank coffee, smoked, watched some television and inspected their work. The servant retired to bed after an hour, apparently a little weary. All he had done was open and close the front gate, nothing else. Kidist couldn’t help wondering what kind of servant that was.
After three hours, they commenced the laundry, all by hand. There wasn’t a single female or child’s garment: only the clothing of two males, one a moderately rich businessman, the other a standard scraggy Addis lad. This was not a family home, thought Kidist. Without family, this man had become a dangerous freak: family protected society from being overrun by this type of warped individual. Family protected society from itself. This was the beginning of Kidist’s enlightenment, as she squeezed the guy’s fetid underwear between her powerful chubby fingers.
‘We’ve finished . . . can we go? Please?’ begged Kidist after two more hours.
‘Good work! You must be hungry.’
‘Well, yes . . .’ she began. They were both famished and shattered.
‘Me too! Cook us some wat, and then we’ll have some more coffee,’ he ordered.
The women plodded into the kitchen and cooked dinner.
‘Mmm, that was pretty good,’ he declared an hour later, having gorged on good food with his female companions. ‘Maybe next time, we’ll have doro wat . . .’
‘What? Next time?’ squeaked Kidist, her face crumbling in dismay.
‘Only joking, though if I see you in Bole Road, I might just stop for you and invite you over again. It’s been a good one. Now then, what time do you start work today?’ he asked, the light of the new day peeping through the windows.
‘One o’clock,’ said Adi, meaning 7am international time, her eyes puffed up and bloodshot.
‘Good timing. I’ll run you down there to make sure you’re punctual.’‘Thank you,’ gasped Kidist.
What a daft thing to say, she said to herself.
‘By the way, big lady, you’ve got a good friend there,’ he said, glancing at Adi. ‘She really loves you. You two are great together, like close sisters. Actually, I am going to look for you again. The two sisters!’
Kidist felt a spear of guilt lancing through her heart. Adi wasn’t her sister. She already had a sister, who loved her far more than Adi. Her real sister, Werknesh, three years spurned by Kidist and here was God’s punishment, a night in this freak house. Kidist felt desperately sick at herself. Werknesh would have given her body and her life to protect her younger sister.
Family protected society. What did family really mean to Kidist? Everything or nothing? She had to go to Werknesh and attempt to repair everything. Her sister needed her. Kidist sensed this very strongly. Almost as though this freak had been sent to find her, to rescue the relationship: God had a reason for everything and everyone.
The kidnapper covered their eyes with scarves and drove them down Bole Road to work. Kidist and Adi struggled through a full day of work before returning to Adi’s home in the evening. Exhausted and unable to face her husband yet, Kidist spent the night there, convalescing. The next day, Desalegn refused to believe her story and hit her around the head with his fist. Kidist’s kidnapping experience lasted a single night, yet marriage to Desalegn would continue her captivity in a different guise for as long as she, or he, lived. They had had a full Orthodox Christian church wedding: divorce was therefore impossible.
That evening, the evening of orange peel entertainment in our home, Kidist trudged over to see us, her face swollen, her pride swallowed. After unsuccessfully beseeching my mother to forgive her, God made an appearance, via the moonlight, the sisters were reunited and everything changed for the better, for us.
Auntie Kidist is probably still with the ogre today. The ‘freak’ is probably still using his free housework system. I spin it around in my head and wring it dry for meaning, especially the way good can emanate from bad. Kidist’s story and the positive consequences confirm my suspicion that events lead to events lead to events and this unbroken chain is overseen by God to ensure the world is a better place: at least indirectly, incrementally and eventually.
He doesn’t always intervene in the most dramatic of ways – sadly – but there is a grand plan, much too intricate for mortals to understand. And my Beirut predicament is in there somewhere, presumably just sitting below the ‘Urgent Action’ list, about to slip into the latter any day now . . .
I have to smile. My bouncy ball of optimism must have its own protective skull, buried deep within this battered old Hammerhead of mine. However punctured, please let it keep on bouncing back, again and again, sustaining me through Beirut’s torrid minutes, hours, days, weeks, months . . .
Death Impending (42 days left)
Only six weeks from freedom! Six weeks! It’s really nothing. I’m laughing at Lebanon. Beirut is beaten. No need for escape! No need for faint optimism! No need for divine interventions! I sing as I work. Look at me now, Auntie. Your story and the other memories from Addis have inspired me through to the end. And don’t worry, Auntie, I remain untouched!
Madame makes an observation.
‘Look at you . . . happy. Maybe because almost white now . . . because you stay with us for so long and you wash every day . . . true?’
Taken in by the certainty in her voice, I check myself in the bathroom mirror. I really scrutinise myself hard. No change. My skin remains the same insipid milky coffee as when I saw myself in Table Lady’s mirror so long ago. Is Madame not aware of Jeremiah 13:23? ‘Can the Ethiopian change the colour of his skin or the leopard change its spots?’
‘Maybe with extra year, you get like Michael J
ackson,’ she quips.
‘Extra year? But I’m on a two-year contract.’
‘We buy extra year,’ she says smugly.
‘But I was expecting to see my Mum in six weeks . . . Madame, please!’
‘Oh! You remember to call me Madame again . . . when you need something. That is you, Meron . . . manipulator. But I not pay airfare for another one like you, so you stay. Anyway, what is difference at your age? Another year, and so what? Time not have value for you . . . and you make more money if stay.’
This is bleak, bitter news. Madame has persuaded the agency to extend my contract. I have no say in the matter. I sob secretly for two days and nights: during prayer times, I yearn to wail across the Beirut skyline, dovetailing my moans with the chants of multiple Imams rising out of the concrete. Howling at the sky is all I can do. I have hit the buffers again. I make the adjustment: from 42 days remaining to 407 days, from bright star of hope to deep-space black.
Nazia’s graduation ceremony was difficult for the princess. Madame went with Shafeek, but without Abdul.
‘Sorry, habibti,’ she began afterwards. ‘I couldn’t go to your big event with your father . . . people would have seen me . . . Baba is an embarrassment . . . he looks like a refugee camp person.’
Nazia hasn’t spoken to Madame for three days. Abdul is also effusing a silent fury: I hate to see him like this.
‘Mister . . . maybe I can help you with, er, your clothes . . . make you look even better,’ I suggest one morning.
‘No! I wear the clothes I feel comfortable in . . . from my era . . . from the time when I met a beautiful young woman with no professional qualifications who said she loved me, in these same clothes . . . and then accepted marriage with me and accepted my help with tuition and my money to get her through the bankers’ exams . . . happy to live off the supermarket profits and raise a family. All that time, I was still wearing the same clothes . . . until one day, she makes it to the top of the tree and her salary outstrips mine by several noughts . . . my clothes aren’t good enough any more. I compromise at home and wear those clown pyjamas . . . just so I can share a bed with her . . . sharmuta . . . apart from forty years of life and the clown uniform, I’m completely unchanged in every way . . . the man she originally adored . . . but she . . . sharmuta! Why am I telling you all this?’
No Lipstick in Lebanon Page 24