No Lipstick in Lebanon

by Paul Timblick

  This astonishes me, my eyes filling up with tears in a second. It’s like another gulp of Pepsi. He may not be the master of the house but those few words mean more than anything that anyone else has said. Calling me the wrong name is immaterial. I have stopped correcting him.

  ‘Thank you, Mister, that’s so kind of you. Can’t you move back here, Mister? Just for a few weeks while Madame is gone?’

  ‘This windy fortress? Allah! How can I? I’m too old for such a bleak place. My friends are in Hamra and Ras at ground level . . . same as Nuria and Hassan and the supermarket. I’ll be in Heaven soon enough without having to live up here in the miserable suburbs.’

  ‘But I’m worried about things while Madame is away . . .’

  ‘Shafeek’s here.’

  ‘Yes, Mister, and I’m very scared.’ I pause, hoping to elicit some unease within Abdul.

  ‘You may be scared, child, but it comes to everyone . . .’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Old age . . . it cannot be avoided except by the tragic young ones.’

  ‘And I don’t want to be one of them, Mister . . . ­especially here, in the next two weeks, with Shafeek,’ I try again. How plain do I have to be?

  ‘So, keep your body healthy . . . eat plenty of garlic, lentils, onions, carrots . . .’

  Why am I left with this old man as my only hope? Why, God?

  ‘How old are you, Mister?’

  He grins at my impudence. But that’s as far as it goes.

  My theory on elderly people who won’t disclose their age is quite simple. They’re frightened to say their age: God might hear them and realise He’s forgotten to remove the battery from these particular individuals. It’s best to keep quiet, hoping God doesn’t notice the oversight. I will not press Abdul into an answer. Better to let him run down of his own accord, and without lumbering him with my problems.

  With a swift twist of his wrist, Abdul knocks back his Lebanese coffee and limps away into the safety of a fantastical ground-level world where there is nowhere to fall to.

  *

  Nazia is more uptight than usual.

  ‘If you even think about wearing my clothes when I’m away, I’ll finish you,’ she says to me as I wipe around the bathroom basin. ‘And I’ll know if you do.’

  ‘It’s okay, Nazia, your style is not really to my taste.’

  ‘No, but my Mum’s is,’ she snarls. ‘I’ve seen you.’

  Nazia slips out of the bathroom. I feel compelled to track her through the apartment. An alarm bell is ringing inside me. She disappears into Madame’s bedroom suite and closes the door. I push my ear as far as possible into the door’s crack. Madame’s shrill pitch easily penetrates the wooden door.

  ‘Quel problème, habibti?’ she says.

  ‘We can’t leave Shafeek with the servant . . . it’ll be a disaster.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Haven’t you noticed them . . . the eye contact . . . and smiles . . . the touches . . . I’m sick of it,’ continues Nazia.

  ‘You’re right! That night . . . remember? When I caught them sharing a Pepsi,’ adds Madame.

  ‘Mum, we’re looking at a repeat of last time. I’m convinced.’

  ‘Allah! No! Not that! We’re not going through that again.’

  ‘I’m worried about Shafeek . . . that girl will leech off him if she gets a chance.’

  ‘Who, Meron? She’s never had a relationship,’ says Madame contemptuously.

  ‘Mum, I know her. She’s changed so much. There’s nothing innocent about her. Look at the way she flaunts around, trying to catch his eye. Around him, she’s like a snake.’

  Hoh, Nazia! Me like a snake?

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t go, Mum?’ she says hopefully.

  Madame is quiet for a while. The subtext involves Nazia and her unsuitable boyfriend. This could save me.

  ‘Oh habibti, yes, she has changed. Too confident and cheeky. Shafeek needs protection from himself. So, what are we doing? Taking Meron to France with us?’

  ‘Allah no, Mum! She’ll come back having learnt French . . . why should she have that for free?’

  ‘Mmm . . . what then? Maybe get Nuria over here for two weeks . . . she can enjoy the food with the kids . . . help them save money.’

  Nuria? That would be awful.

  ‘Yes, Mum, that’s it,’ accepts Nazia with false enthusiasm.

  Shafeek is furious, though he manages to act his way through the conversation with Madame before returning to his bedroom to punch a computer screen while shouting: ‘Allah! Why am I living with these imbeciles?’ It is the first time he has used his computer for anything useful.

  On the day of Madame and Nazia’s departure, Nuria is back with her squat body forever lost to flab and dungarees, and a face long enough to fit underneath a truck. Hassan has stayed at home with Mustafa, while the toddler Medina accompanies her mother. I want to hug Medina tightly: I have missed her so much.

  ‘Don’t touch her!’ shouts Nuria.

  Unsure who she is addressing, Medina and I look round at Nuria, both of us accustomed to simplistic commands thickened with needless impatience. Regardless, Medina toddles towards me, unhindered, unaffected. I plop a kiss upon her raven hair. Nuria grabs Medina away before I can squeeze her with affection. Nuria glances up and down at me.

  ‘You’ve changed.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I reply.

  Within two hours of Madame leaving for France, Nuria and Shafeek are at war.

  ‘I need her for toilet-training Medina,’ says Nuria, referring to me.

  ‘No, you can’t. Meron works for me, not you. Why ­haven’t you toilet-trained the baby yet? It’s too late.’

  I want to chuckle. Shafeek lecturing about babies!

  ‘Medina is not a baby. What do you know about that, Shafeek? What do you know about anything in the real world? You haven’t even got married yet. Mum is tired of you hanging around. Your time is up. Nazia is waiting for you to go . . . there’s a serious boyfriend.’

  Shafeek blushes. Embarrassment or fury, I don’t know, but Nuria has hit a raw nerve. Shafeek is not good with raw nerves.

  ‘I’ve got a career. I don’t have time for wives. I work, Nuria, work! I don’t lie on my bed all day and fart like a warm corpse, bloated on cake, dressed like a kibbutz muck-raker . . . what happened to you, Nuria? You were a beautiful sister. Now look at yourself, you’ve lost it all. You epitomise shame and failure. Even Mum says that.’

  I’m taken aback. Nuria is unable to speak. She marches out. The front door slams behind her. The humiliation is a hundred times worse because I’m standing here ogling like a keen spectator.

  I look at Shafeek. He throws his hands towards the ceiling in despair. Sibling disappointment seems a major issue. I hope never to confront it.

  Nuria raps on the front door urgently. I open it. She has forgotten her daughter. She pushes past me to get the toddler, who has wandered through to the TV lounge and found one of Shafeek’s moccasins. She is now lifting it to her nose in front of us.

  ‘No, Medina! Yuk! Don’t touch that!’ screams Nuria, racing at Medina to pull the shoe from her face.

  I can hardly control my laughter. Medina waves at me as Nuria hauls her out of the apartment. I wave back enthusiastically. The ramifications of this hasty and highly enjoyable exit are slow to hit me.

  Shafeek is livid. His head looks poached.

  ‘Meron, I’m going to the gym to work off some aggression. What have I done to deserve a sister like that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I reply. He’s obviously done something.

  I have about two hours to decide how I will survive the next two weeks without being raped, losing my virginity, getting pregnant, committing murder, being murdered or whatever else might befall me, or us. All scenarios lead to the same high ledge, Mulu�
��s ledge. Whatever I do, I lose. If only we had listened to Kidist. Mum!

  There are no more memories from Addis to sustain me. The bank is empty: I have to use what I’ve got here, now, every last snippet of wisdom, every buoyant word of prayer and every inflated puff of Habesha spirit.

  Deliver Me (176 days left)

  I bow my head and say the Lord’s Prayer with the pieces of my ripped Maryam postcard cupped in my hands: ‘ . . . but deliver us from evil . . .’

  I frantically try to call Beti. We haven’t spoken for at least a year. I need help. A strange female voice answers the phone. I carefully replace the receiver on the telephone to hang up.

  I sit in the kitchen and fiddle with my knife. Is there a ‘safe’ way to stab a person? I’m not a trained surgeon or a knife-fighter, I’m a maid. Preventing Shafeek is the aim, not killing him.

  I begin to cry. What choice is there? I have to let him do the deed as painlessly as possible. I hope that like Arabic writing, his sperm swims and squiggles in the wrong direction. It doesn’t have to be violent. We could just make love nicely, without all the unnecessary right hooks, left jabs and upper cuts. The words ‘making love’ have a positive tone. Why am I visualising a vicious affray? Can I not simply reason with him to be gentle? I might enjoy it! We might be a loving couple. We might be husband and wife! He might use a condom.

  Gentle? Enjoy? Loving? Couple? Condom? Listen to myself! I’m deluded. He will do what he’s programmed to do. My words will be nothing but flurries of drifting dandelion snow in halting nature’s stampede towards sweet release. Nazia will spot the bump after three months, Madame soon afterwards. Or they might not. If they do, Mum will have the grim rectangular box within four months, maybe two months before I am due back in my living state. Mum will then have an additional three years of mourning, six years in total. It will kill her. And who will get my wages?

  Mum . . . and Tadelle? No! Mum’s missing wedding ring, Tadelle, in lurking leeching courtship with Mum: by now, probably married! Urgh, no! Mum! What a revolting thought to have in these last few moments of purity.

  The key turns in the front door. My time is out. I swallow hard and wipe my eyes. Time to accept my fate as a condemned Habesha maid in Beirut.

  ‘Hi, Mister!’ I shout dutifully from the kitchen.

  In this second, I know what I have to do. I hurl my knife back into the kitchen drawer.

  ‘Mister?’ I try again and rush into the hall to confront my master.

  He’s sitting on a chair by the door, his scarlet face dotted with new plops of perspiration. The towel in his hand is wet with the stuff. He mops his head again, ignoring me.

  ‘Mister . . . can I wash your things for you? Would you like some baba ghanoush and flatbread?’ I whisper nervously, trying to weigh up the risk of pregnancy as I speak.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, not hungry, get me Panadol . . . my head’s on the point of exploding. Too hot for gyms.’

  I rifle through his medicine box, but no Panadol. And no condoms either. I have never seen a condom in ­Lebanon. A pregnant maid is a dead maid: if only I had a contraceptive injection inside me.

  ‘There’s none left, Mister.’

  ‘So give me the tablets Baba took for you . . . those were mine!’

  ‘You want my Panadol?’ I ask, a little nonplussed at losing the precious pills Abdul had given me on the day of Hariri’s death.

  ‘They’re mine! Just get the tablets, Hammerhead, I don’t have the energy for it.’

  The golden sugar bowl gleams at me. It has served me well. I open the lid and find the two sets of tablets: six remaining Panadols encased in their plastic tray and eight loose mystery pills. An interesting proposition sweeps into view. The Panadols will stop Shafeek’s headache, allowing him to do unspeakable things to me which could lead to my own demise. But the mystery pills? They will have unknown effects on Shafeek that only Madame would know about. For a few seconds, I juggle with the notion. Ha! Poisoned by his own mother, via my hand! These little powdery tablets could offer swift, single-handed justice for everything. Maybe, this is God’s will. He is guiding me towards finishing Shafeek: retaliation for Mulu’s murder, for Madame’s tablets and for all other suffering endured in this upper-class penitentiary. At last! Maybe I am to be the angel of death.

  ‘Mercy not murder . . .’ go the imagined words of my mother. ‘We all have our vital moments of decision . . . mine was the forgiveness of Kidist and caring for Tadelle . . . I showed mercy for their mistakes . . . your decision is now . . . as an Orthodox Christian, you’ll be judged by this decision . . . especially by God and by your future self.’

  But Mum, does Shafeek deserve mercy for what he’s done, or is about to do? You and Dad were too good! Where does it get us?

  ‘Meron!’ he booms suddenly. ‘Move it with the Panadol!’

  I sigh and push out a pair of Panadol caplets through the silver film. This is the will of God.

  No, it isn’t. Shafeek, you’re the test dog. Let’s see what happens. Just the one tablet, I promise. Okay, two, to slow him down a little. I wrap them in a paper tissue to maintain the illusion of hygiene. Returning to Shafeek, he swallows one with a glass of water and keeps the other wrapped up for later.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ he grunts, and trudges down the hall to his bedroom.

  I am safe for today. You see, Mum, there is a middle path.

  I gorge on lamb that Madame left in the fridge for Shafeek, and I retire to bed early, unsure of tomorrow. Thirteen days until Madame and Nazia return from Paris.

  Next day, Shafeek is due to get up for work. Nothing happens. I check on him at around 11am. He’s already extremely late and not responding to phone calls: the phone seems to be ringing itself into a frenzy today.

  ‘Mister?’

  He rolls over and gazes at me, his face drawn and wretched.

  ‘I feel like . . . some . . . thing.’

  He’s surprisingly inarticulate. I give him water.

  ‘Do you want breakfast?’

  ‘Yeah, no . . . I don’t . . . no. Bread, tea.’

  ‘More Panadol?’

  ‘No, already taken it.’

  I prepare his breakfast and return to some gentle dusting. There will be no back-breaking chores with Madame gone, though I will at least appear to be doing something should Shafeek appear.

  An hour later, I glimpse Shafeek staggering back to his room.

  ‘Can I help you, Mister?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  I doze my way through the afternoon after a tuna salad lunch. I’m eating well but my stomach is tight with tension. I wish the phone would go to sleep. Around 5pm, as I come out of the bathroom, there’s Shafeek again, still in his pyjamas, looking as though he has gained about fifty years. In fact, I see Abdul in Shafeek at this moment: an incomprehensibly old man.

  ‘Mister, how do you feel?’

  ‘Eoorgh . . .’

  ‘Can I get you another Panadol?’

  ‘No. Took six already.’

  ‘Six?’

  ‘I took four more of yours . . . still not working.’

  My body goes limp. My legs might buckle. Cold sweat breaks out on my upper lip.

  I wait a couple of seconds while Shafeek continues into his bedroom and slams the door shut.

  My heartbeat drums in my ears. I race over to the golden sugar bowl. Oh God, what’s he done? Inside are six sealed Panadols and two loose mystery pills. Six mystery pills down! Shafeek is possibly, probably, killing himself. But how did he know about the stash? I swivel my head around and see the surveillance camera. Shafeek, you idiot! He watched me doing that ridiculous Haifa Wehbe dancing and caught me hiding the mystery tablet only seconds earlier, thinking it was a Panadol.

  By now, I’m sweating profusely. Now what? If Shafeek dies, I am definitely dead. This was not the plan.

 
I remove the two mystery pills from the pot and empty them into the toilet. It takes two flushes to drown them. But what are they?

  It occurs to me. If Shafeek has to be rushed to hospital, they might need the pills for analysis, diagnosis, whatever they do with sick people. And now the pills are swilling around in the Beirut sewers. Well done, you Hammerhead! You are completely stupid. I look down hopefully into the toilet bowl. Nothing. For once, I’m devastated to see the bowl sparkling clean.

  I run into Shafeek’s bedroom. He has collapsed onto the bed.

  ‘Mister! Are you okay?’ I squeal.

  His head jerks up, annoyed.

  ‘I told you . . . I’m a sick man. If I need you, I’ll shout . . . Go!’

  ‘I’ll give you another Panadol,’ I mumble.

  ‘Don’t want . . . don’t work. Call a doctor,’ he mutters.

  ‘Yes, Mister,’ I say calmly.

  A doctor would declare me a murderer, of a murderer. I’m not calling a doctor.

  Shafeek falls asleep quickly. I have to nurse him back to life: this is what I must do. I sit with him while he sleeps, watching in case there’s a change for the worse. The doctor’s phone number lies next to me as a last resort. I pour trickles of cold water into Shafeek’s mouth. I can’t touch his head for too long: it is like a desert boulder absorbing the heat of the midday sun. Bed sheets are drenched. I drape wet flannels on his forehead. He murmurs back at me deliriously. Keep on murmuring, Shafeek, keep on murmuring. But he gets hotter. Random words are thrown out. Food is thrown up. His breathing is long, deep, loud: like a dying dog trying to bark again and again. I remember Dad in his last few days. I’m becoming scared. The doctor’s phone number screams at me. The telephone continues to ring as though alarmed at unfolding events. Shafeek is almost silent now. Please wake up!

  I make one last effort. The ripped pieces of the Maryam postcard are scattered onto his heaving frame. I pray to God while bits of card rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall, with his huge gulps of air.

  ‘Come on, God, help him! I made a big mistake. I didn’t mean to meddle with life and death . . . sorry.’