She laughs.
‘Okay, I’ll tell you. You look like I did a few years ago after I broke up with my husband. And broke is the word. He broke me. Physically and mentally. After three years with this guy, I looked like you.’
‘My God, I must look terrible!’
‘You do, sister, you do. Working as a maid in Beirut?’
‘Yes . . . and it was three years. But I’m not broken.’
‘Mmm. Let’s get you into the Ladies’ toilet and tidy your hair up . . . what do you think?’
‘Yes, Madame . . . sorry, yes . . . yes, my sister.’
Blen is a successful Habesha businesswoman in her thirties. On the Addis flight, she sits next to me and soothes me with jokes about Habesha men. She has seen everything the Habesha man can throw at a woman and channelled the negativity into fierce motivation and drive. Blen has definitely got the confidence. Within half an hour of meeting her, she is my hero.
But the anxiety is building inside me. Every mention of Addis churns my stomach. I can’t eat on the flight.
‘I need that,’ I say to her.
‘Need what?’
‘Your confidence . . . it’s a good confidence. I thought I had it all back, until today in the airport. When my Madame walked away it just seemed to drain out of me again.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you looking good and then it’ll surge into you. Trust me.’
‘I trust you, Blen.’
I already trust this woman like my mother. My mother!
We arrive in Addis two hours later. My hands are trembling as we march into the arrivals lounge. Instinctively, I fall to my knees and kiss the floor of the airport. People around us laugh: they’re happy for me. As my lips brush the shiny floor, I see dust. I expect to hear Madame’s voice in my ears: ‘Why haven’t you cleaned this floor, Me-ron? Why haven’t you cleaned the entire airport? Afterwards, you can sweep the runway . . . white sock day . . . Me-ron!’
As I kneel there, my backside in the air, the emotion pours out of me, tears splashing onto the Addis dust, my legs refusing to raise me from the floor. Blen rushes to help me up before I attract too much attention.
As we approach the exit, I see numerous little black balls in the distance, bobbing around as if they have a life of their own. And of course, they do: they are people’s heads waiting at the barrier. I stare at them and gasp. So many black people! Blen grabs my hand and drags me outside like my mother.
Overlooking the car park, I feel the Ethiopian sun embrace me. The Beirut sun was a harsh glow with stabbing dagger-rays: in Addis, it is perfectly warming and bright, with welcoming beams like tender caresses. It has the touch of God.
‘You and me, sister . . . we’ll stay one night in the Wanza Hotel so you can get yourself together. In the morning, we go to Merkato and buy you some clothes, then the beauty salon. By dinner time, you’ll be ready to meet your family. How about it?’
‘Why don’t you have any children, Blen? You’d be a great mother.’
‘I’ll take that as a yes.’
Her smile is born of the Addis sun. I can feel it. A day with Blen would be a pleasure. I’m not ready to meet my family. After three years of no contact, I want it to be a successful ‘return’, not a pitiful creeping into the house like a sorry prodigal daughter hauling a worthless bag of tat behind her. My pride is intact. No need to inflict more shock on my mother than is necessary. Let her see prosperity, joy and occasion, not hair like a wild thorn bush: I’ve jetted in from glamorous Beirut, not tramped in from war-torn Mogadishu.
Next day, Blen fulfils her promise. In Merkato, we buy a large suitcase and a pile of new clothes for my family. Let them believe I lugged these trendy togs all the way from Lebanon. In the beauty salon, the hair is finally beaten back and pummelled into a recognisable style. It makes sense to have the full treatment while I’m here: face, nails, more face, and back to the hair for another beating. I invite Blen for injera and kitfo. The berbere spice converts the uncooked beef into hot coals inside my mouth: desensitisation begins here! At last, I feel Habesha again, from scalded stomach outwards.
I wait with Blen until 9.30pm, or half past three back on Habesha time. I can’t return to my house during the day. Neighbours would surround me and shower me with shameless requests involving ‘gifts for old friends’: I might not even recognise the genuine claimants. They would count the suitcases and make their claims according to the perceived booty. It could take hours to throw them off. I don’t have the patience and they have no concept of what I have been through. Any conversation would be wasted and vacuous.
I arrive by taxi in the road outside our neighbourhood.
‘Blen, thank you so much,’ I say. She has held my hand all day, and now I’m ready to rejoin the human race.
‘It was a rare pleasure. If I ever have a daughter, I hope she’s a bit like you.’
As I step onto the potholed street, young men shout at me, something about my haircut. Ah! How I have not missed the chat-eating idlers of Addis, unabashed and ubiquitous, at once both threatening and pitiable – I choose to ignore you.
An opportunistic young lad runs out to offer a hand with my new suitcase. Where’s Abush? Maybe this boy is the new Abush of our block. I gladly accept.
The track to my house seems impossible to walk along at night in the virtual pitch black. The stones are designed to trip us up: I have forgotten the trick of navigating them. Finally, I arrive at the strip of corrugated iron that I believe is a dark green door in the daylight. But in the darkness I am only half sure that it is my old home. I shout out, ‘Peace on this house!’ and I give the boy two birr. There’s no answer.
I push on the metal until it creaks open. A single stride across our yard finds the front door, half-open, as if waiting for me. I pound on the door as I enter, my heart banging away in tandem. It’s the same doorway that was so horribly obstructed by muck all those years ago.
Entering the house, I’m struck by the scale of everything and the appearance: it’s a cramped, dark, shabby hole of a slum. Jesus Christ, son of God. Who could live here?
But it is familiar. Nothing has changed since the day I left for Lebanon. My foot brushes a metal bowl, upturned and empty, Henok’s bowl. Two seated women in white robes gape at me, open-mouthed. Mum and Kidist.
‘It’s me.’
No words, no actions, no outside world. Crippling disbelief, in these long moments: moments of absolute astonishment, in a place where seconds are not counted. Time has stopped. We are off the clock. Time is irrelevant. All that matters is my mother sitting here in front of me, alive. I am in her company again. Time moved before this and time will move after this, but right now, it’s postponed until normal emotions can be resumed. I can’t even imagine normal emotions.
Kidist’s face shifts from disbelief to jubilation. She hurls herself at me and grips me tightly.
‘Meron! You’re alive!’
Kidist’s clinch is crushing my chest.
Mum can’t take it in, her demeanour tormented, grief-filled, pain-soaked. I kiss her on the cheek but she’s quite motionless, unable to understand my presence, incapable of speech.
‘Three years? You didn’t call . . . we thought you were dead,’ says Kidist, now fully tearful.
I can’t speak either. Tears trickle down my face. Completely overcome, I bury my head in Mum’s lap. She strokes my hair but still says nothing. After prolonged silent weeping, she eases my head out of the way to stand up.
‘I’m going to church,’ she mumbles.
‘But Mum, it’s so late . . . nobody’s there! It’s closed . . . don’t go!’
‘I can’t stay in this house . . . I have to speak to my God.’
‘And not to Tadelle?’ I ask anxiously.
‘Tadelle? He’s dead . . . another cesspit drowning,’ she winces.
‘Every day, yo
ur mum cries . . . because of you,’ says Kidist. ‘Every day!’
‘But I sent letter after letter. What happened to them? Madame never let me phone you. I’m sorry!’
‘But three years . . . it’s too much, Meron!’ continues Kidist, the same aunt who abandoned us for three years.
Enough of this.‘Remember your single night of captivity with the housework freak?’ I ask her.
‘Yes, of course,’ says Kidist.
‘Multiply that by a thousand and you have my experience in Beirut.’
She is silenced. Mum stumbles outside. Two young men enter. They look familiar. In fact, they are two of the idlers shouting at me outside. We all gaze at each other. They are my brothers. Nobody knew anybody in the semi-darkness of the street and now I’m clasping two handsome young men: the wispy vapour trails of adolescence are fading fast, barely reminding me of the way they were and the way they went. But who are they today?
‘So what was the score?’ I ask.
‘What? What score?’ they both reply, pleasingly confused.
‘That game you were playing when I left for the airport three years ago . . . obviously a really important game.’
I have them dismayed, their memories jabbing away at their consciences.
‘Five–four,’ retorts Nati boldly. ‘I scored a hat-trick.’
‘I know that’s a lie . . . but don’t worry, I forgive you.’
They laugh nervously. Actually, I don’t forgive them, but what can I do? They are my brothers.
I see the welling up of a tear in Henok’s eye, but bending over to remove his trainers for the metal bowl routine, he casually wipes it away before Nati notices.
‘I’m going home. See you tomorrow, my long-lost niece!’ announces Kidist.
‘Still with Desalegn?’ I ask.
‘Is Ethiopia still joined to Eritrea?’ she replies with a tone of resignation.
After a while, Mum is back, having prayed outside the church: probably the most grateful prayer of her life. At last, a smile breaks through. Mum prepares shiro wat and injera. I dribble at its deliciousness. My brothers feed me generous handfuls direct to my mouth, the Habesha sharing ethic in full flow. I try to feed Mum in the same way.
‘I still don’t accept food from the hand of another,’ she says. ‘Remember? It’s been like that since your father died. He was the last person to put food in my mouth, and always will be.’
I suck my fingers clean, just as I learnt to do in Beirut.
‘Why are you eating like a Muslim?’ Mum snaps. Licking fingers after food is unwelcome in an Orthodox Christian household. ‘Are you Muslim now?’
There’s anxiety in her tone.
‘No, Mum . . . now, I’m Buddhist . . .’
‘Buddhist?’ she chokes, almost falling off the stool.
My brothers can see it’s a joke. They start laughing. Mum is a few seconds behind. The very idea that I had changed religion!
‘I managed to smuggle a gift out of my Madame’s bedroom, for you, Mum . . . a pair of virgin white socks . . . now you can see how clean I left their floor.’
‘Immaculate and untouched . . . delivered to me . . . like my daughter . . . thank you, God.’
‘You can wear them for church in the mornings in the freezing cold.’
‘Yes, on my hands!’
As she tucks the socks away under her bed, I imagine Madame incensed, scouring her apartment for them. It is a splendid thought.
‘And here she is,’ I say, holding out the photo of Madame with dyed blonde hair tumbling over her corrected features.
‘She’s so beautiful,’ comments Mum, my brothers murmuring agreement.
‘Mmm . . . kind of,’ I manage.
One day soon, Shafeek and Nazia will leave her: my sad Madame will have nobody around her, left alone with her luxuries, while in the slums of Addis, my mother will never be abandoned. I will not allow it. Her old age must be a pleasure. She will not be left to eat kale and to thump her chest like Mama.
‘Like everyone, she has her imperfections,’ I add.
How could I ever have compared Madame with Mum? What kind of fool was Meron Lemma over three years ago? She was the type who did not appreciate the immense force of goodness and intelligence lying beside her in bed with that ever-comforting hand nuzzled in the bend of her waist bringing on heavy blankets of sleep. As far as I can remember, her hand was there all night, every night, and like everything else, I took it for granted. I deserted her for three years, just like Kidist. Both of us had to be incarcerated before we could recognise Mum’s ever-loving, ever-lasting glow.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ I say into my mother’s tired eyes.
‘Eh? What for?’
‘Well, I made a big mistake and I can’t really begin to explain . . .’
‘So, is it amazingly rich there?’ interrupts Nati.
‘Oh God, yes . . . money lies around on the pavement. If you need it, you just have to bend over and pick it up. Mobile phones are made from solid gold and the litter bins are encrusted in diamonds and fried chicken is provided . . . all free for everyone.’
Nati and Henok stare at me agog.
‘You haven’t lost your imagination then,’ says Mum.
‘Just a joke. No, it’s not fantastic there. A higher standard of living, yes, and more material things, yes, but happier? No way! Miserable people! Money is not the answer in Beirut.’
‘So the secret is to make money there, return to Addis with the money and be happy with your mother and brothers . . . the best of both worlds,’ says Nati.
‘The secret is to look for happiness in whatever situation you find yourself in,’ corrects Mum.
‘Happiness isn’t always on hand to be enjoyed, Mum . . . I had some difficult times in Beirut—’
‘But God was with you,’ she interrupts.
‘Well, yes . . . but . . .’
‘And here you are . . . eventually. He delivered you.’
‘Well, true.’
‘You see, He’s always there for His disciples . . . but only . . . only if you believe in Him.’
‘So that explains it . . . though sometimes His interventions seemed to be stuck on Ethiopian Time.’
‘Of course they were . . . I was praying for you from here . . . in Ethiopia.’
We talk all night like this. I tell much about Madame and the others, concentrating on the more cheerful aspects: learning Arabic, the delectable Lebanese cooking and the experience of living within another culture. As dawn arrives, Mum wanders off to church again. Her routine remains unbroken. I go to sleep in Mum’s bed, our bed, until breakfast and coffee ceremony at three o’clock (9am). We’re back on the old schedule, time recommenced and it feels so good. Who cares if the days slip away in the shelter of this shack with the woman I love? I never want to leave her again.
Over the next few days, I spend a sizeable chunk of my earnings. Everything is changed: new rug, two comfortable sofas, new bed for Mum and myself, a bunk bed for Nati and Henok, cutlery, plates, DVD player, CD player, cooking equipment, modern clothes for everyone and a new mirror that I hope reflects back the new Meron. Dollars stretch a long way in Addis. The front door is opened wide to the neighbourhood: we put grass on the floor, cook doro wat and hold coffee ceremonies several times every day. The house is warm and alive again. We all breathe a collective sigh of relief. I’m a successful returner. A third life begins here.
I’m wearing an off-the-shoulder, off-the-thigh, completely off-the-scale clingy purple and white dress decorated with psychedelic squares, complemented by mauve heels so high and sharp not a ripple remains as I hop through Bole’s puddles. That’s right. It’s daylight and I’m out in that. My head is up, my neck unbroken, lips glossed, eyes lined. I have the confidence. Babies burble, drains gurgle, women ogle, men jeer, taxis swerve, dogs leap, buses bum
p, Bole rumbles, but now I can handle myself.
‘Lemma, you’re better than Beyoncé now! What happened? You get an Arab?’
‘Abush?’
‘Who do you expect? Abush won’t die. You miss me, Lemma?’
‘Miss you?’ I splutter, unable to contain my laughter.
I have missed the barrage of crude drivel from this prematurely street-aged face wearing multiple scars from flung rocks and hurled fists, with a nose smudged across both its cheeks. Perhaps he hasn’t washed since I last saw him.
‘I missed you, Lemma.’
‘Really?’
‘At one birr a day, for three years, that makes a lot of birr, maybe a thousand birr that I missed you . . . a thousand of your birr. Good to see you again, Lemma. Here . . . go spoil yourself.’
He gives me one birr. It is the dirtiest one birr note I have ever seen or smelt. I imagine it’s had its uses beyond money.
‘You see, Abush looks after his chickens . . .’
I throw it back at him, my fingers stained and rancid from the paper rag.
‘No thanks. I don’t want to catch anything.’
I have never thrown money back before.
‘Lemma, this is Addis. Of course, you’ll catch something! Better to catch it from me! Your boyfriend!’
He’s still funny despite the demands of a street life, though these days his means of survival may be less ethical than raking through the garbage of others. I hand him a crisp green hundred birr note. I now know the brutality and exhaustion of a day-to-day, hand-to-mouth, scared-to-death existence, constantly balanced on a precipice the width of this hundred birr note, surviving only through the Habesha spirit.
‘Yes!’ he cheers. ‘Yes! Lemma! Yes!’
‘Take a day off from the street, Abush . . . please take a wash and eat some proper food. Buy it first.’
Half an hour later, walking past the Dembel Centre, I see a bedraggled ambling young woman, shockingly familiar. It’s Tsehay, my old school friend. But what happened to the ‘Indian’ manager at Elephant Walk? That was nearly four years ago.
No Lipstick in Lebanon Page 32