Beirut Blues (6 page)

I drifted away from all these people to the rooms where Naser and I used to meet, and relived each room one by one. I met him in an ever-increasing variety of rooms: in beautiful houses with jasmine on their balconies, in buildings swarming with inhabitants, in foul houses which never saw the sunlight and where even the flies didn’t venture. The last room had no electricity, and the room before that was in a hotel where a friend of his lay in the other bed with a high fever, so that periodically he shouted out streams of nonsense, which we found amusing at the time. Sometimes they weren’t bedrooms but luxurious living rooms full of Palestinian artifacts in large empty apartments. Then there were rooms in the houses of his married friends, and I used to be filled with disappointment, because as soon as I heard the noise from inside, I knew I wasn’t going to be alone with him. But this feeling was replaced by a surge of renewed
pleasure at the thought that he was drawing me into him, whatever the circumstances, and I watched him playing with the children before he ate, then noticed them observing him uncertainly as he chewed and swallowed, and when one of the children reached out and touched his Adam’s apple, I had the urge to do the same.

I tried to guess what the place would be like as soon as he contacted me and gave me the new address. Was it an apartment, an office, a house? Would we be by ourselves? I began to picture the place. The unknown chair waiting for me to sit on it. A room in a hotel which transported me to a seaside town, unaffected by the war. Despite the tension, I blessed this Aladdin’s lamp which whisked me from one world to another, once from dry land to the ocean in the form of an undulating water bed. I sprawled delightedly on its soft dark red cover like a film star and felt faintly nauseous. “You mean we can’t travel by sea?” remarked Naser in a mock-serious voice. Travel? When we are meeting fleetingly in the waves like the ebb and flow of the tide?

But I knew he used to think about marriage more than those men who led ordinary, normal lives. He needed to. Even when he walked along the street, he was aware of what he was doing, conscious of his feet as they struck the pavement. The idea of marriage removed the uncertainty he felt about his commitment. When sometimes he lost faith in his revolutionary activity, he regained some enthusiasm if he could think that his struggle was also for the sake of protecting his family and creating a better, more stable future for them.

“I hope you have lots of children, Naser,” Asya had said
in Beirut. He had just presented her with a female kitten as a consolation for giving birth to a son instead of the daughter she wanted.

“Both of you, I mean,” she added, turning to me.

I was pleased she saw our relationship as serious and liked us meeting in her house while she was away, but he was scornful. “What?” he scoffed. “Do you think I want to drag my children from one house to another like you do? I’m not that crazy!”

“The garden?”

The Spaniard didn’t appear to be as enthusiastic as Asya.

“Oh, Asmahan, you’re going to be wild about it,” she whispered to me.

If she knew where I am and what I’m thinking of. I don’t want to hear any voice but Naser’s, sit anywhere but beside him. Nothing I see interests me. In fact, I scarcely see anything, and I don’t notice what I am eating. I follow them to the iron gate, kicking stones like a petulant child, wondering how I’m going to get through the rest of the evening.

I went a few steps along a narrow path. There were a lot of trees surrounding a lake. I was thinking how Asya exaggerated, but then I caught my breath in wonder. It was paradise, as described in holy books or pictured in flights of the imagination. Underground rivers, cataracts, waterfalls, willow trees, and other trees I’d never seen before either in reality or in books. Their branches reached out, intertwining. Only a sliver of moon was visible, or perhaps it was the sun.

“How beautiful!” Naser’s friend cleared his throat as he spoke, and the sleeping birds stirred a little, then settled down again. The tree roots had emerged from underground,
curious to see how their daughter trees were growing, what shape their branches were, what color their leaves; roots like Tarzan’s ropes, some descending into the water which tumbled among the rocks. A round clearing in the sky between the treetops left us silent, awestruck. The Spaniard rushed to pick up flat stones and skimmed them across the water. The music rippled out into the silent night. The birds ruffled their wings again, and only settled down as they grew accustomed to the sound, and calm returned to the trees. When we began to be able to see each other, we realized that a portion of the moon had appeared in the round clearing in the sky to light up this paradise.

To my right was a sort of natural staircase of ascending rocks and I went up it onto a narrow pathway.

“Where are you going?” asked the Spaniard.

“Up into the sky,” I answered, embarrassed.

I realized that by answering like this I wanted to appear different from how I was, coquettish. He walked along beside me, telling me that this was a dead end, smiling at me. His concern was real, as the path narrowed suddenly and we were on a spur of land overlooking a sheer drop down to the tree-covered black paradise. He took my hand as if to protect me from danger, and to my surprise I came to like this plump warm hand around mine, forgetting that it was attached to a face whose features I couldn’t recall and a person I didn’t know. I walked along with him, and with each step I was thinking about this castle-house, this paradise-garden, Beirut, and my life in general. I was thoroughly confused about where I should live and whether I should go back. It wasn’t the touch of his hand awakening these thoughts in me, but
the silence, and the fact that I was a stranger to everything. This place was neutral, and the language, the people, and their secret thoughts and desires were all alien to me. As far as I was concerned, it was the beginning of the world and all I had to do was take the empty glass and enjoy the illusory potion. The idea of staying there loomed larger in my mind with every step down the rocky staircase.

In a place like this I won’t be expected—or even expect myself—to keep a hold of the thread of the past which has made me and try to weave it into my present. It will break automatically when I isolate myself here without my things. I have a brief, radiant vision of myself picking up the letters which the morose-looking old man has brought me on a gold tray as I lie on the antique bed, unable to stop slithering around on its silk sheets. The letters touch my heart and so I have another brief glimpse of myself showing the paradise to my friends and embracing Naser there. I stop at this image. It doesn’t fit with my sense of estrangement in this house, nor with the life I’m supposed to have left behind.

But I’ll transform it into a house that’s half Arab. I’ll go back in time, have children, and call them old Arab names: Belqis, Tarik, Layla, Ziyad.

I looked hard at the Spaniard, and from his smile I guessed he knew his house was bait for the houris, but there was no sign that he had any inkling of what I was after.

I claimed I’d had too much to drink and my head was hurting. For the first time I found myself thinking that if Naser called and nobody was at home to answer him, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. The Spaniard brought me some Alka-Seltzer and suggested that I lie down somewhere.
Vera, a plump blonde with slightly bulging eyes, tried to be concerned, but she didn’t manage to hide her annoyance, as I had monopolized the attention of her friend all evening, talking about Beirut during the siege and occupation, describing how I’d left it and how it used to be before the war. Meanwhile, I could feel Asya watching me, unable to believe that I was the sad, abstracted woman she’d invited to wait in her house in case her lover contacted her there. Every time the caller was somebody other than Naser, I would say the same thing: “He’s forgotten all about me … or perhaps nobody gave him my message.”

And here I was trying to win the Spaniard’s favors. I kicked off my shoes and laughed loudly. “I’m drunk,” I said, and lay back on the sofa.

As I dozed off to the sound of the guests taking their leave, I felt a hand on my forehead, then on my hair. I sat up, pretending to be alarmed. Acting as if I was reassured once I knew it was him, I closed my eyes again. All he did was wrap a blanket around me, then bend over me, breathing heavily and reaching out to touch my face. I opened my eyes and smiled at him and let him put his lips on mine. The only sensation I got was the smell of wine and cigar, but I submitted to his lips and kissed him back and let him put his tongue in my mouth, although I’d already decided I wouldn’t let him go any further. But all he did was put his hand on the blanket where my breast was, then he heaved a deep sigh, stroked my hair, and said good night.

Morning in the castle-house was even more beautiful than night. From a distance came the sound of cocks crowing, animal bells jingling, voices talking in Spanish. It was
just like dawn in our village when the farm laborers rose to start work. Day arrived concealing the damp scents of the night. I wondered if the bush they called queen of the night had stopped giving off its intoxicating perfume of the night before. The sounds came drifting up to me again, and I pictured myself rising in the morning once I had become mistress of this place.

I rose and went strolling through the vast high-ceilinged rooms and noticed that now instead of swallowing me up they seemed to draw me in. I wished I could speak Spanish so that I could ask the way to the paradise-garden. The voices exchanged banter and it was like being at home. The laborers greeted me. They must have been used to the sight of women of different ages and races in this house at all times of day and night. But they didn’t know I was different: I didn’t want to throw parties, acquire money or jewels, but just to exist in the midst of this beauty, start a new life.

But the Spaniard was in a hurry. He was a lawyer. He picked up a leather briefcase like any man going to work, and the illusion that whoever entered this castle-house severed any connection with the outside world vanished. But it didn’t matter. It was all the better for me. Most of the time I’d be alone in this paradise.

In the car I learned that not only would I never be alone there, I’d probably never see it again. The man offered me lunch in an apartment he owned in town, because Vera had started to have doubts. I knew I’d been thrown out of paradise and Vera had him in her clutches. I’d never been as sad as that day. It was worse than when I was waiting for Naser to call day after day. I’d been happy to bargain with my body
and emotions for the sake of that house and a new life, and still I’d been refused.

I can feel you growing impatient, Jill Morrell, but that’s what hostages are like. Reliving the past. Conducting a constant dialogue with it. We should return to the question of the kidnappers and their victims. You want comfort and rapid information, but perhaps I’ve opened your eyes to something you hadn’t taken into account before. Now I’ll tell you how senseless kidnappings have become a commonplace of this war. There are no rules. The war is changed by a shift in accents and uniforms. Sad things have become laughable, funny things sad, kidnapping a legitimate practice.

A relation of Hayat’s who was held for a few months woke up one morning to be told, “Congratulations. We’re going to let you go today.”

He was terrified that they were going to kill him. He was taken blindfold to a car and driven to some other building, but before they dumped him they removed the blindfold. As he struggled to get used to the light, the din of voices, the screech of cars, the strident call from the muezzin, he thought how someone in his situation focuses entirely on himself and his five senses. He pushed open the door and heard his first sentence on the outside: “Good to see you. Come on in. Your family’s expecting you.”

The speaker shook his hand. He was a youth dressed in ordinary street clothes. The released man was still in a state of shock. The room was packed with young men, all in ordinary outdoor clothes. One of them picked up a water pitcher and drank from it, while he stood there open-mouthed. Then he began to cry as someone handed him his
trousers and he put them on over the striped flannel pajamas which they’d given him the day after he was kidnapped, even though he’d always worn silk pajamas before.

Where were his kidnappers? Had his wife paid the ransom?

The affair didn’t end with the return of the hostage. His kidnappers turned up on his doorstep a few days later.

They walked in and greeted him like an old friend. “We missed you!”

They chatted easily for a few minutes, intimating that a close bond had been forged between them and their prisoner. One of them remarked to his wife, “Really, madam, we thought about you all the time. Your husband’s a fussy man. This was too salty. He didn’t like that. This wasn’t properly cooked. We used to say, ‘How does his wife put up with him, God help her!’ ”

Then they got down to business. They complained they had incurred losses which they hadn’t foreseen when they kidnapped him. They’d spent lavishly on his food, bought indigestion tablets and medicine for his stomach, bribed people living nearby to keep quiet, and even the good woman who’d cooked for him had asked more than they could afford. They’d barely finished their complaint and drunk their coffee when Munir disappeared and came back with an envelope containing money, which he handed to them, begging them not to forget the cook. He used to hear her asking the guard if the Christian gentleman had liked his food. She cooked whatever he wanted and she was a good cook, even though she added a lot of garlic and coriander, which made
him drowsy. He’d been surprised at the care she took over his food and her concern that he should enjoy it, despite his circumstances. Then he asked them how they were free, as someone had informed him that they had been disciplined by the party for kidnapping him. It turned out that they had consulted a sheikh, who had issued a
fatwa
pronouncing him a legitimate target because of his American connections, and so the party had been forced to release them. As he digested this thunderbolt, he assumed an air of indifference, but he was shaking with anger and fear. His wife wanted to throw what was left of the hot coffee over their heads, snatch the money back, and scream that they weren’t her fellow countrymen. The same night the couple decided to emigrate.