Beirut Blues (37 page)

Jawad began asking why the embassy was taking so long, and looking for their phone number. The fact that he was thinking of calling them meant he no longer understood the mentality he had left behind him. But this discovery didn’t make me halt the game of wishing for the opposite of what I really wanted, which they had taught us in childhood. I had disliked Jawad and here I was in love with him; I hadn’t wanted to leave with him and yet I was waiting impatiently for my passport. I heard a car horn, the voices of Fadila and Musa, and Fadila’s heels clicking along the path.

“Here’s your passport, Asma.”

Fadila announced this with pride, as if to say that Musa could do anything. “You need him from now on. He’ll keep an eye on you. Ali doesn’t have the time these days.”

Ruhiyya trilled for joy and was about to burst into song, but then she rushed to examine Jawad’s passport again to reassure herself that it was really there. Musa interrupted us all to tell us how interested they had been in Jawad’s passport at the embassy, how the official had decided to give me a visa within an hour of him going there, and claimed that even the president wouldn’t expect such good treatment from foreign embassies in the current situation. I reflected that times had changed; it was those living abroad who had the power to influences things now.

Jawad thanked Musa, who was eager to get to the point. “Mr. Jawad, will you do me a few letters for emergencies? And we’ll photocopy your passport in case Fadila or her niece wants to leave.”

I examined the French visa stamped in my passport, seeing it as a return to a normal life, where we would have valid passports, obtain visas without trouble, and travel by air whenever we wished. I turn over the pages of my passport: visas for Egypt, Spain, Tunisia, Jordan, all placed I’d gone to because of Naser. The French visa stood out beside them, bright and new. Is this one for my sake or Jawad’s, or for both of us?

Fadila was right to think that I’d be in debt to Musa. He accompanied me to the bank, to say good-bye to a friend, to L’Artisanat to buy olive-oil soap and to the airline company, since I had given up being patient and wanted to leave quickly, terrified that the airport would suddenly be closed. Such hasty preparation for a journey was unnatural, but rather than being on edge, I found myself saying, “It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving everything behind.”

I want to hurry up and go before anything happens tome, for in my mind’s eye I can see newspaper headlines: “Stray Bullet Kills Woman as She Prepares to Leave the Country.”

I try to keep my head down in the car, and walk close in to the walls. I jump in beside Musa and drive swerving from side to side, so that any bullet coming in my direction will miss its target.

I rush into the house and kiss Ruhiyya. “Jawad’s not here,” she says.

My hand goes up to my heart and I see more newspaper headlines: “French Author of Lebanese Origin Struck by Stray Bullet.”

“Did he go out alone?” I ask desperately.

“I wish he had. Fadila took him to see a relation of the
artist Unsi. When he heard that they were selling off his work, he was nuts about buying some.”

I stood in the garden, opening the gate and looking along the street from time to time, or going back into the house, my anxiety growing by the minute. Then I decided to call my grandmother, however long it took, and dialed the chocolate factory in the village. I asked to speak to Zemzem or Naima but the line went dead while I was waiting. When I phoned back a quarter of an hour later, Zemzem answered and I told her I was going away. She sounded apprehensive and I tried to reassure her, promising her I wouldn’t be gone long, telling her to send my love to my grandmother and assure her I wasn’t going to America. “Ruhiyya will shut up the house and give the key to Fadila and she’ll give it to Ali. The house is lovely and clean and tidy, and the garden’s looking beautiful,” I finished lamely, lying through my teeth of course, to Ruhiyya’s amusement.

I didn’t begin packing my suitcase until Jawad returned. I picked out a lot of clothes, then put half of them back, feeling completely confused, and consulted Ruhiyya and Fadila, who wanted me to take letters for my mother and Ricardo. Jawad preferred locally made traditional clothes, caftans, my grandmother’s old clothes. About modern clothes he would say, “That’s not in fashion anymore,” or “The color’s not nice,” or “That’s like something from a sale of synthetics.”

Mountains of clothes accumulated around me; some leapt out at me, compelling me to take them, but all of them carried such powerful associations that I didn’t want to leave
any behind. I looked around me in confusion: I was really going away, leaving this, taking that, and going. I wished I could change my mind. I loved everything I could see and if I couldn’t keep things as they were, I wanted to take all the clothes I owned, even the ones I’d put away in plastic bags and never wore.

It wasn’t only the clothes; there were numerous other objects I desperately wanted to have with me: an ashtray, a picture, some of my grandmother’s old things. When I thought about it, I wanted my grandmother with me. I went frantically around the room like a dog chasing its tail, touching one thing after another. These inanimate objects took me back to my mother and father, Isaf the maid, and my childhood; I had a vision of an aircraft, a scrawl of orange writing on the blue sky, gone in a minute. How could all this fit in my suitcase? How could I leave it behind? I was like a cat in the fish market, disoriented by the overpowering smell. I didn’t know where to begin. How could I pack the cracks in the ceiling whose changing shapes I had watched for hours?

When I thought I was all ready to go, I found myself magnifying the hitches I’d encountered on the way and envisaging others. Jawad would be kidnapped next day because he had a French passport; hadn’t they interrogated him on the road to Beirut? When I told him of my apprehensions, he drew me close and put his arms around me reassuringly. “How could you live here all these years and not be afraid?” he asked, as if I were a small child who wouldn’t take in his question because she was surrounded by distractions on all sides.

“I used to think I was part of the war. Like a fighter at a checkpoint unafraid of the bullets flying around him. But now I feel as if I’m running away to save my skin.”

Suddenly more somber, Jawad began to tell me what had happened to him on the road. He said he prayed that his few hours as a hostage were a sort of welcome, as his interrogator had put it, an acknowledgment of his literary talent and the name he had made for himself in Europe and the rest of the world. He wanted to draw Jawad’s attention to the lengths Syria had gone to on Lebanon’s behalf, and to the way the Lebanese were prejudiced against them. It was Damascus that was getting the hostages released, and was intent on restoring Lebanese sovereignty. The Syrians had entered West Beirut to stop the bloodshed between the political parties, because the devil had been in charge there. People hadn’t dared stick their heads out of their windows or over their balconies, and now even foreigners were coming out of their hiding places in broad daylight, and still the Lebanese wouldn’t admit the truth: that Syria had given them back the fresh air of freedom.

“In other words, they wanted me to tell this to the world.”

“You mean they wanted you on their side?”

“Exactly. I said to him, so everything you’re doing is for their sake, for the Lebanese, because you love them so much? What about local and international politics?”

I was at a loss to know how to answer him and made no comment. He leaned forward to kiss me on the lips, while I wondered whether we would be leaving the next day after all. The last thing I wanted was for him to kiss me; I would
have liked to hear Ali responding to the message I’d left and promising to take us to the airport, for I wasn’t sure how much influence Musa and his friends had there. I fidgeted, trying to breathe, like a whale looking for the little airholes in a sea of ice.

“My mind’s somewhere else,” I whispered.

“So’s mine,” he replied, but he put his hand on my breasts and bent his head, looking down inside my blouse almost furtively. He said I had nice breasts, then added in a low voice that my nipples reminded him of the nipples of the women in his family, large and pink.

“Did you look at them secretly?” I asked. “How did you know?”

He told him his mother breastfed him for five years because he was greedy enough to call her when she was sitting in the house with the other women.

We remained silent for a while, preoccupied with our own thoughts. The room grew steadily darker, then all of a sudden it brightened again. The darkness in the daytime must have brought on this drowsy, reflective feeling; the dark of night etched its thoughts into the mind and the soul so fiercely it almost dissolved them. He seemed to have fallen asleep and I could hear the sound of his light, regular breathing. I slipped quietly out of my grandmother’s room. Ruhiyya was lying on the sofa smoking, and as soon as she heard me she called, “Haven’t you had enough of each other? I swear what you’re doing is wrong. If he wants you, he should go and ask your grandparents now, before you leave. Watch he doesn’t suck all the goodness out of you, then spit you out.”

I smiled: even though she was more progressive than the other women in the village and many in the heart of the city, she was still Ruhiyya, who lived her life in the belief that men were not to be trusted. She came with me to the neighbors’ house, having urged me to try to contact Ali again; she was reluctant to believe that Musa would have any dependable acquaintances in the airport, and wanted to make sure Jawad was safe until his plane had taken off and she could watch it in the air as it left the skies of the city far behind. I picked up the key and a jasmine in a pot and we left the house quietly and went and knocked on the neighbors’ door.

“Who’s there?” called a voice.

“Your honest neighbor coming to tell you your house is on fire,” whispered Ruhiyya sarcastically.

“Asmahan from next door,” I called back.

The door opened at once and the whole family stood ranged in the doorway. I put the jasmine down for them to look after till my grandmother came back, and felt a pang of nostalgia as I looked around the half-familiar room. Through the window I could see part of our wall and one of the trees in our garden. The young children observed me boldly, with affection in their eyes.

At a certain period my existence had been important to them, as I used to help them procure fuel, water, bread, doctors, even transport, and yet they never connected me with any particular side. The husband and sons returned to the dark balcony. I could hear the boys shouting across to friends in the building opposite, arranging to swap bullets and pieces of shrapnel, just like we used to swap stamps and silkworms. Their father was giving advice to a rebellious
young man, evidently a relation, mentioning various members of the family and their situations. “The family is the most important thing. Don’t let anyone tell you different. If you think about your own situation and what’s going on out there, you’ve had it. You’ll only make matters worse for yourself and others.”

“Ali. What about Ali?” said Ruhiyya, afraid I might have forgotten why we’d come.

“Can I use your telephone?” I asked the wife.

“Of course, my dear.” She went towards it and we followed dutifully behind her, as if the telephone were a person we owed respect to. It was surprising that it still worked, and to my astonishment Ali answered.

“Of course I already knew,” he said.

He was the one who had pulled strings to get the French visa, he’d get his own back on Fadila very soon, and Musa didn’t deserve a penny from me.

I was delighted influence could still be wielded from the inside, and also pleased that I hadn’t yet paid Musa. But then I told myself how mean and ungrateful I was being and felt ashamed and sorry for Musa, who was only trying to better himself and make life more interesting.

We returned home, where Jawad had woken up, and was stretching and yawning. “Tomorrow at this time we’ll be in Paris,” he said. “It’ll probably be raining. I remember before I came to Lebanon this time I thought tomorrow night I’ll be sleeping in the village at Ruhiyya’s, but I didn’t really believe it was happening until I got bitten by a mosquito.”

I wasn’t thinking of the next day, or he next night and where I’d be. I felt as if I were inside a car engine with noisy
parts moving frantically all around me yet failing to start the car. Paris was far away and didn’t concern me. Jawad attempted to interpret my silence in another way.

“Are you wondering whether we’ll be together like this tomorrow night? It could be difficult.”

“Not at all,” I answered hurriedly.

I realized with sudden clarity that we were never going to spend the night together, and to my surprise this didn’t bother me. I thought perhaps I don’t love him, but he’s my means of escape.

“I don’t want to shock her the first night,” he went on in a whisper.

It was his voice, rather than what he said, which made me dismiss the idea that I no longer loved him. I didn’t sleep, or perhaps I slept with my eyes open like a wild rabbit, and I dreamed I was in the university café with Jawad sitting opposite me. There were people I used to see around, who must have left Beirut a long time before: a photographer; the owner of a record shop; a barber; a lecturer in the university; the pharmacist who used to sell me eye cream and the breast-firming cream he made up especially for a friend of mine; Wafa, who was always around the campus when we were students—in the cafés, under the trees, waiting outside the exam halls—although we found out later she was never registered as a student. All of us were weeping and hugging each other. Although this dream scared me, I didn’t keep going over it in my head as I would have done normally, for I was rapidly becoming drawn into the last-minute rush. I was woken by my own heartbeats, and the moment the light banged against my eyelids I was up and into the bathroom,
quickly dressing and doing my hair, while Jawad took his time. The voices of Ruhiyya and Fadila distracted me and I hunted unsuccessfully for my passport, ticket, phone numbers, bag. I went around the house leaving behind things I needed, as if Zemzem were going to clean up after me and send things on. I noticed my toothbrush on the table where I must have put it for a moment while I opened the door with my arms full of other things, and decided I must focus all my energies on packing my bag. Time was running out and I would soon be leaving this house far behind.