Beirut Blues (18 page)

She dragged me away, saying good-bye to the artist’s mother, who tried to make us stay for a meal.

The artist walked along with us and Juhayna turned off
towards the building on the hill. “Wasn’t that where Abu Ahmad’s house used to be?” I asked Juhayna.

“You’re right. But it’s changed so much,” she said. “They’ve added a warehouse, a factory, and rooms for the workers, and the house is beyond them.”

The artist realized eventually that we were intending to visit the house on the hill and took his leave of us. The girls were still joking with Juhayna: “Walk straight, sexy! Stop swinging your hips. Do you think you’re Madonna, you slut!”

She shrieked and giggled back at them until we were face-to-face with them. They recognized me at once and kissed me. I hadn’t even remembered there were three girls in the family. They begged us to come home with them, tugging at the kaffiyehs wrapped around their faces; Juhayna protested, telling them not to leave their work, then asked them if they had anything cold to drink.

“We should have come to welcome you,” one of them said to me, “but we were up to our eyes in work here.”

We went into a vast room full of women and girls. One of the girls with us opened the lid of a large container, and a blast of cold air rose up from the slabs of ice where water bottles, plastic bags, and an earthenware pitcher were being kept cool.

An old woman came up, kissed me on both cheeks, and asked after my grandmother. Her face was hidden by a white scarf, leaving only her eyes visible. “Have a rest, Mother,” said one of the girls, but her mother insisted on helping us to a drink. Then muttering, “In the name of God, the Compassionate,
the Merciful,” she began to pick up withered bundles of cannabis from a small doorway through which they spilled in profusion. Another woman, sieving the shredded leaves as if she were sprinkling dried mint on a cabbage salad, said abruptly, “The Palestinian woman asked if mothers and daughters are paid at the same rate.”

The older woman, by now intent on her own sieve, didn’t answer for a few moments. “I don’t know,” she said eventually.

My eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness in the warehouse and I could see a boy hanging onto the window bars outside, calling his mother. Then he started to imitate every word the women said. It appeared his mother was one of two women bent over a workbench with a perforated strip running down it. With wooden implements like planes, they ground the plants vigorously into pieces small enough to go through the perforations in the table onto the tiled floor below. The other women gathered it up to sieve it or carry it elsewhere, muttering, “In the name of God.”

They carried the ground cannabis in shovels and sieved it by hand in progressively finer sieves until it was like powdered coffee, colored green. The mother of the three girls went from one table to another, examining its consistency, muttering “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful” under her breath. On each occasion the other women repeated this invocation after her and I felt as if I were in a temple observing some ancient ritual.

Into the dusty shadows and the music playing on the radio came a young girl carrying a crying child. A woman went up to her, her brightly colored dress trailing along the
ground behind her, and seized him from her. “My baby’s here! He’s come to see his mother!” she exclaimed delightedly.

She took her breast out from the opening of her dress, concealing it with the black scarf around her shoulders.

Juhayna flitted from one woman to another, laughing, gesturing, and looking at me from time to time. A man appeared, obviously not from the village, and spoke to the mother of the three girls, mainly communicating by moving his head in one direction or the other.

“Please, Juhayna, take the baby for me,” called the woman feeding the child. “I’m scared he’ll be stung by a scorpion if I put him down. I want to pray the noon prayer.” Then she turned to the girls’ mother. “Come on. Tell the man to go. We must have a break and pray.”

On our way back we saw the man who had been talking to the girls’ mother. Juhayna said,
“Salaam alaykum,”
to him and he returned the greeting. “Does he understand anything else?” I asked.

“He’s beginning to understand everything.”

She told me how he had been the focus of sympathy when he first arrived in the village from Afghanistan, everyone asking him if he missed his family, if he ate enough, if he had enough blankets.

“He’s from Afghanistan! What’s he doing here?”

“What’s so funny about that?” she answered critically. “They come from South America too. They’re the ones who taught us about coca. Nobody knew about it before. And from Nicaragua. They want to trade arms. We’ve got it all. Did you think they were better than us? If you could see
what that Afghani collects! Everything! Even Pepsi bottle tops and big empty cans.”

I fingered the opium flowers which had died and felt like shreds of silk in my pocket. I did not speak until we reached home, when I had to reassure Juhayna, who was starting to blame herself for being late back and not helping Naima with the housework. I heard her recounting the day’s events to my grandfather and remarking I was such a nice person.

“She’s really intelligent,” responded Naima. “If she was a man, nobody would dare to take a scrap of land off her.”

I went to my room and threw myself on the bed. I heard my grandfather’s voice and Juhayna telling him I was tired, then Zemzem’s voice, then Naima’s. Finally the door was pushed open and my grandmother came in. “What is it, my love? Why are you so tired? Do you want them to heat up some water for you so you can have a bath? It’s dark.”

I replied that I wanted to close my eyes for a while. When she went on sitting there, I knew she wanted to say something else. I shut my eyes. She picked up a towel from the end of the bed and covered me with it. I knew for sure the words were fidgeting inside her, but I kept my eyes closed. Clearing her throat, she sat back down on the bed and asked me if I’d gone visiting the grand folk with Juhayna.

“The grand folk?” I repeated scornfully, yet full of sadness. Who was she talking about? Shauqi, the artist’s brother, who told his prayer beads with food stuck between his teeth? Or did she mean the house on the hill and its supervisors, who could be heard everywhere singing out orders and threats, then agreeing docilely on the price of a
load with two men who had ridden up in a huge car, two wheels down in a dip and the other two scraping and bumping along the side of the slope? The two were said to have links with Interpol so they knew about anybody who came to the village intending to spy on the dealers. The grand folk? Musa’s son and his donkey? The fighter and his gun? The kerosene seller with his big can? I closed my eyes again, thinking that my grandmother’s era had withered away like the crops on her land.

“Did you see the trees? Nothing but bare sticks! And opium growing instead of fruit? Everything’s changed.”

I made no comment on this but went on lying there with my eyes closed until suddenly she asked my opinion of Juhayna. Was she an angel or a devil? I opened my eyes and said, feigning innocence, that I didn’t know. I was thinking of putting on one of your records; I would have liked to roll a joint and close the door and withdraw into another world.

I smiled at the thought of you and Ruhiyya, realizing more than ever why you two are similar: you both preach a religion of your own.

My Dear Grandmother,

I know that my grandfather and Juhayna have an understanding. To describe it like that, rather than saying they are lovers, shows there is some confusion. We were used to him falling in love, lying in bed complaining loudly with his hand on his heart; and we were used to you assuring him with a smile that he’d get over it, predicting that before long he’d fall in love with someone else like he always did: for the heart is always on the move, looking for somebody else to love. When his torment persisted, you consoled him as if you were taking a sword to his delicate feelings and cutting them down with a single blow: “Everything changes. That’s the way of the world. The fruit ripens. The branch becomes like a bare stick. The leaves fall off and new ones grow.”

The shocking uncertainty hit us like a thunderbolt, and we could no longer make out what was happening between my grandfather and Juhayna. She was young but accepted
his behavior, while we were used to seeing him chasing women and being turned down by them. What we heard secretly from the twisted tongues of old women was that the unmarried women only turned him down out of respect for you. Marrying a man who already had a wife was not a disaster; on the other hand it couldn’t be regarded as an ideal marriage. This wouldn’t have stopped them: my grandfather’s vast lands, his way of laughing, and the fact that the exploits of his ancestors were engraved on the foreheads of newborn babies gave him untold power.

I remember that I blamed you inwardly for accepting this state of affairs, and when the feeling became too much for me, I asked you about it. I can see you now dissecting the question, going into intricate detail to give substance to your arguments, until I was helpless with laughter. You had a strange view of things; you looked from a particular angle, responded to a random vibration which nobody noticed but you. Your pale face was unmarked except for a few blue veins in your forehead. You said, “Nature, my precious, doesn’t sit there doing nothing. It presides over us, observing, plotting, sniffing out information, and it knows I didn’t have any more seeds after your mother and the child I lost. But it knows your grandfather has oceans of them. Every time he sees a beautiful woman they get busy and desire her and say if only we could get to know her seeds so that we could have fun, instead of being crammed into this dark body among the flesh and fat and blood and sinews. But the problem is that in your grandfather’s body there are also eyes, a mouth, nostrils, and more still in his head. Every time he goes too far with a woman these all send him stern
warnings: ‘What are you doing? Why? Does anyone else in the world have eyes like Sulayma’s, speak like her, smell like her?’ His mind functions separately, detached from him, as if he’s put on a loose shirt which won’t bother him when he gets hot. But it intrudes all the same. ‘It’s no concern of mine. If you want to fall in love with some woman, get an erection, and sleep with her, that’s your business. But I’ve got a special affection for Sulayma.’ So this war between your grandfather’s seeds and his mind, eye, mouth, and nostrils goes on all the time, as you can see. And then don’t forget, my precious, that your grandfather’s in a wretched position. On top of the seeds that sneak out through the window all the time, and attack him from all sides, when he turns his attention to me, unfortunately he doesn’t find even half a seed.”

I listened to you and I wasn’t surprised, as I’ve been used to your particular way of looking at things since I asked you one day when I was nine years old, “Do we come from she-jinns, Granny?”

Then my eyes met Zemzem’s and I added hurriedly, “You and me, I mean.”

You noticed this and rushed at me like a whirlwind, smothering me in your embraces. “Come and listen, everyone,” you called out at the top of your voice. “Asmahan’s asking if we’re descended from jinns.”

Then you put your face close to mine. “How did you know?” you said, so I thought it must be true.

“We’re not like other people,” I replied. I turned to Zemzem. “But Zemzem doesn’t come from she-jinns, does she?”

You burst out laughing. “Come and listen, everybody,” you cried again. “Of course, you’re right. Zemzem’s not descended from the jinns. She’s only learning.”

This seemed to annoy Zemzem. “In God’s name,” she said, getting to her feet. “Really, madam, that’s blasphemy.”

“She thinks we’re not like other people. She doesn’t really mean jinns. God forbid!” you replied in a superior tone. Then you asked me very earnestly, “Why do you think we two are descended from jinns?”

I thought about it for a while: it was difficult to explain to you, for I had never seen another grandmother like you. I found myself saying, “My mother isn’t.”

You held me close so that I could smell the rose water you rubbed on your face and neck and breasts every day. “You’re right. Only me and you,” you whispered.

I thought I had neatly avoided explaining what I meant, but you started pressing me for an answer again. Images flashed through my mind which were too complicated to put into words. I heard your voice accompanying them. “My soul is like smoke and clouds in a chest at the bottom of the sea,” you murmured.

At night I used to see you coming up to my bed in your long white nightdress, your pale oval face framed by curly black hair. You approached on tiptoe, pulled the covers up around my neck, and kissed my face all over. But I couldn’t describe what I felt. When you kept insisting, I answered that I didn’t know another grandmother like you. Then I realized that being a grandmother didn’t mean anything to you, since you were always saying, “Asma’s not my daughter’s daughter, or my own daughter. She’s me when I was young.”

You were still looking at me expectantly, and I wanted to appear extremely intelligent. I reminded you again how you had cured me of an illness by squeezing the juice of an unripe lemon into some broth for me, and rubbing my nose with a clove of garlic.

At the time, I didn’t tell you that while you were roaming restlessly around in the night I was awake as well, tossing and turning in my bed. You were like a character from the historical novels which we both read. I thought of Elissa, founder of Carthage, and Shajarat al-Durr, queen of the Mamluks, because your curly hair sometimes looked like a luxuriant green tree. The long turquoise dress you sometimes wore reminded me of a Persian miniature. You were the Yemeni queen Arwa, who went around the narrow streets of the hill town of Jabala interrogating the stones, with one big difference: you cruised around in a car which had faded crimson upholstery. All the same you never seemed settled there: your true place was in these somewhat shadowy regions of the past.

But I have described your face to you years ago. How it flashed like a jinn in a thunderstorm when I had lice, as if I had announced to you that there was hidden treasure in my hair. Zemzem said, “Maybe you caught them from Hajja Nazr’s daughter. You and she were like sweethearts, perish the thought.”