Nothing in Beirut is moving but me, and the trees are happy with the present days of spring.
I hear no horns. It’s like walking in a dream.
My head turns slowly, searching for a sign of life, and finds life without the living.
Beirut is sleeping.
I see construction workers lying at their sites, still asleep.
I see the homeless pull the cardboard closer to their bodies, still asleep.
I see closed windows and closed curtains; the sleepers haven’t woken yet.
I see all store doors closed, and the products behind them eyeing me, angry at the laziness of human kind, for its owners aren’t ready to buy and sell, its owners are still asleep.
I see empty balconies, a dove landing on the rail of a balcony and the birds chirping to breach the silence, to remind it of sound and what it can do.
People are asleep; no one has awakened them.
And who would?
I place my hand on a storefront to feel the cold, to make sure I’m awake.
I relax and push hesitantly. I fall. I’m whole.
I feel the urge to scream take over me and disappear quickly and suddenly. No sound comes out of my throat. How can I break the silence when I crave it every morning?
I smile. I’m bewildered. I must do something; I must wake a friend.
I have the key to Shwikar’s apartment; I’m her guest after all.
I take the elevator and knock on her door; maybe she’ll wake up. My knock is acknowledged by the meowing of her two cats. The cats are awake at least.
I open the door and find them smiling at me. I open a can of tuna for them to eat instead of the fish-flavored cereal they usually have, as a present on this glorious day, and then head to the bedroom.
“Shwikar. Shwikar. Shwikar. Shwikar.”
No answer.
I shake her by the shoulders. I pull the cover off her. I slap her gently on the shoulder.
No answer.
My God! Will I be trapped forever on the planet of the asleep?
I think. There must be a solution.
What annoys Shwikar the most? What knocks out of her any desire for sleep, rest, and peace?
Hunger.
But she’s asleep!
Questions.
But she’s asleep!
She can still hear them though, and she would wake up. Besides, she despises the “why” questions, so I’ll start with that:
“Why are you asleep? Why aren’t you up yet? Why haven’t you washed your face? Why haven’t you showered? Why aren’t you dressed? Why is your hair blond? Why are your eyes blue? Why are you pretty? Why did you get so upset at the pub the night of the fight? There’s nothing upsetting about men fighting. A fight can even be sexy. Don’t you think? Why? I mean, why did you react that way, because they were assaulting people? But they weren’t assaulting all people, they were assaulting each other. Is it an assault on your right as a citizen? A citizen of what? And what rights? Do you have any rights at all to begin with? Then why would they give you this right, then? Aren’t you overreacting a bit? Can’t you see that your anger over fighting is the same as the anger of the two fighters? Why all this violence? Is it because we live in Lebanon and not Sweden? Why don’t you live in Vienna? Ah, “The Nights of Love in Vienna”! And why do you get so angry driving? Don’t you think you shouldn’t be driving at all? Don’t you think it strange that all drivers around you are wrong and you’re right? That no one has driving etiquette but you? That nobody pays attention to traffic lights anymore, but you’re the only good driver left who does? Don’t you drive in the wrong direction sometimes? Don’t you bypass other cars? Don’t you speed? Don’t you . . .”
And I hear a scream tearing its way out of her throat and see her flat body become vertical. She raises her hand like a robot and slaps me across the cheek.
Ay!
“Is this the thanks I get you little . . .”
I stop mid-sentence and cover my face with my hands—what I was about to say would’ve made another question.
She shakes off her mood then looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time.
“What happened?”
“Nothing, Shwikar. Calm down. Do you want some water?”
“Coffee, please.”
How elegant: “please”? And the slap she just handed me less than a minute ago?
I make her coffee and explain the situation to her.
“Woohoo!”
She jumps for joy and rushes to wash up and put on clothes that are loud, tight all over, and reveal a body that invites embraces and exudes magic. No one she knows would be out this early and she doesn’t care if strangers see her in that outfit.
“How did you switch gears so quickly?”
“It’s a gift,” she replies. “And we must accept it.”
So this is our tuna reward? But what if this silence lasts forever? We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Seeing Shwikar carrying on like this, her cup half-full, you wouldn’t have guessed that sometimes she sits holding her cup half- empty, closing the doors of possibilities around her, and looking away.
But, why nag? I want to join her happy parade instead.
Let’s play! Who should we wake up first?
She runs outside to test the air, as if the quiet weren’t enough.
“Didn’t you notice that you can’t hear your neighbor, Sitt Maryam, from the opposite building yelling at her children from the second floor all the way down to the street, like she’s in Mexico and her kids are down in a well somewhere? Where did her voice go? To sleep! And where did her son go? To sleep.”
“Mirnaaaaaa!”
“Yeaaaaah?”
“Get the phone from your brother Mohammaaaaad!”
“Whyyyyyy?”
“So you can talk to your sister Majidaaaaaa!”
“Whyyyyy?”
“To ask if her brother-in-law is still in surgeryyyyy!”
“Okaaaayy!”
This is a sampling of grown-up conversations that pass through cement walls. So, you can imagine the nature of the conversations between grown-ups and kids and among kids themselves. The building is like a big family made up of twenty-five smaller families. The boundaries of each family are unclear, but they still get annoyed once those boundaries are crossed, as one can tell from the constant fighting and accusations echoing in every alley in the neighborhood.
The neighbor’s son would bang his spoon against his plate, making a noise that Shwikar could hear from her building across from theirs. Whether she’s in bed or at her desk, whether she’s eating, showering, feeding her cats, watching TV, drawing, meeting with her fellow illustrators, negotiating with the writer of the children’s story about the number of words to write on her drawings, laughing with her mother over the phone, fighting with me—whatever Shwikar is doing while the boy bangs his spoon against his plate will get shot to hell. And because his mother has ears, like most humans, it’s only natural for her to get annoyed by the sound of the spoon. And as soon as the boy annoys his mother, the symphony of “if you bang that spoon against the plate one more time, I’m going to shove it down your throoooat!” begins. And the impartial ear despairs and becomes at times homicidal.
But right now, there is no noise.
“Can you hear any sound coming from there Shwikaaaaaaar?”
“Nope.”
Freedom!
Shwikar walks in the middle of the street—a desire every citizen fulfills on a Sunday morning or on a curfew. No cars. She jumps giddy, trilling, “la, la, la, la.” We automatically head to Zumurrud’s place nearby. We all live in the same area by the sea. We didn’t grow up next to the sea, but we met thirty-two years later near it, and it became our lifestyle.
Knock knock knock.
“No one’s answering.”
“How will we get in?”
“With a key.”
“Where can we get a key?”
“From Ali.�
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“Where’s Ali?”
“At his place.”
“Let’s go.”
Ali lives in a house with a patio that used to overlook the sea of Beirut. A skyscraper, probably owned by a businessman from the Arab Gulf, rose up in front of his house one day and turned its back to him. So, part of the view from his patio became that of kitchens, laundry rooms, and clotheslines, a view that can’t compete with that of the sea. What view can, anyway? But hang on, why can’t it? Be positive and think for a second: this part of the building is where the housekeepers live, and not the “residents.” Seeing a person struggle to make a living, or a foreign lady go about her daily chores, encourages a person to be productive and motivates him to work. And Ali is a productive person; he would love to share his working hours with neighbors who don’t interfere with his privacy or ask anything of him but a smile bonjour.
But what’s heartbreaking about this story, I suppose, is that his house, which once overlooked the sea, now overlooks darkness. The new building is harsh in its height, luxury, and marble veneer of various shades, so no simple, sensitive people are going to be living in it. There might be some nice and respectful people living there, but I’m sure that many of them are the kind of low-quality, unfair people who mistreat others, imprison them, cut the workers’ vacation time, skimp on their benefits, connect their work days with their work nights, and bitch as their mode of speech. I’m also sure that the percentage of these shitty kinds of people is higher than that of the good kind. I’m sorry I always expect the worst and might be making stereotypical preconceived judgments, but come on! The building is ugly. And it looks down its nose at the buildings around it. In fact, it’s even taller than the hill next to it. And it’s covered with so much marble upon marble that a person could make a fortune just from selling the marble. Then there are the prison-like bars that cover it from the back where the housekeepers live. There were big palm trees that had covered both sides of its front gate by the time the underpaid construction workers were done building it. But then the trees died, because palm trees don’t flourish in construction sites. Maybe they had planted the trees early so the investors would see them when they came to check the site they’re investing in. But after the trees had died, they replaced them with new trees that looked exactly like the old ones. They will die soon, I’m sure of it, and new trees that look exactly like them will replace them. As if nothing had happened. Who would miss them, anyway? Who would bond with them? They appear and disappear; they aren’t built up slowly, so no relationships are formed with them. They appear and disappear, as if they’ve never been.
It’s been years since the building was built and I still haven’t bonded with it. In fact, I can’t stand it; it’s like its cement was poured over my chest.
But Ali’s apartment still overlooks the sea, from the corner. And if we forget the view it once had, this one wouldn’t be so bad. His house is still charming.
Shwikar and I climb up to the roof of Ali’s house and jump down onto his terrace. I open the door of his porch, go into his bedroom, and think of ways to wake him.
Shwikar is still with me. She’s thinking, too.
What to do?
We think.
She thinks. I think. We think.
But, why?
Why all this thinking?
Can’t I just leap all of a sudden and end up with Shwikar, Zumurrud, Zeezee, Balqis, Ali, Remi, Georgios, Mona, Tony, Hassan, Sofia, François, Matthias, and all my friends? All of us together in the street while Beirut sleeps.
Actually, I can. I do . . .
We’re all there now, in Hamra Street. Zeezee wants to go to Monot Street, Ali wants to go for a swim in the sea, Shwikar wants ice cream, Zumurrud is up for anything, and I want to sit back and watch.
We go to Monot, we roam Beirut, we look at it as if we’re seeing it for the first time, we swim at the Sporting Beach Club without paying the fifteen-dollar entrance fee. (It was just twelve last year!) We each swim in a corner with hardly any clothes on. We would undress completely considering that we’re the only ones at the beach, but the water’s visibly polluted, so we decide not to risk it. We swim here, and there, then go back to Hamra.
We’re left refreshed and a bit tired: should we break into a restaurant for food?
No, we’re not that desperate. We’ll cook something and eat on Georgios’s porch. He lives in a ground-floor apartment.
We open a bottle of Arak and grill some steaks.
Where did we find the steaks?
We just found them!
At this point, reality interrupts my imagination. I see a nice get-together: calm happiness, friends, food, drinks, smoke, and more. This scene is a reality I’ve experienced many times, and it’s one I love. It puts me at ease. I love many things that make up my reality; even if I were given the opportunity to imagine another life, I would choose reality. In reality I’m a doer and have always made of my life what I want it—with the goal of having fun.
I relax on the couch.
I think to myself, what would I change now that the city’s asleep?
I imagine walls without portraits of leaders, without political or religious slogans. Not because I’m a lover of peace, but because I’m a lover of sight. I imagine a change in the prices of clothes and food and everything else—it all becomes cheaper.
The owner of a store called Milki off Hamra complained to me once that people have changed. He used to sell buttons. Ladies would go to the tailor to sew their clothes and come to him to pick out their buttons. He used to go all the way to Italy to buy buttons, and to France and London too. I was a child back then and didn’t have the privilege of picking out my own clothes. Although that past is not as remote as the time of the Pharaohs, it now seems just as impossible because the era of specializing in buttons is over. I wish I could intervene and change that reality now that everyone’s asleep. They would all wake up and find themselves passionate about buttons, and choice would not be dead.
Also, sleeping on the street is unacceptable. Society should not be okay with having people live on the streets. It’s every person’s right to sleep in a bed when tired, be treated when sick, eat when hungry, get an education if wanted, privacy if desired, and clothes to wear if cold or simply wanting to look decent.
Now that I’m dreaming, I also imagine a society where people don’t insult domestic workers but take them into their lives as they do into their homes. And I imagine homosexuals living a full life, both its sweet and bitter days, with no one having power over their lives but themselves, and nobody daring to insult or control them, or to physically hurt them to feel better about themselves or to shield themselves from their own thoughts.
In the society that I’m imagining, people would have to agree to set limits on everything. There would be limits on hatred and its results, on authority and its oppressive power, on claims of total knowledge, on ignorance that can have so much control, on physical desires, on—
Ugh, when did I start complaining? I was walking peacefully down the street, unnoticed by anyone, undisturbed by any car honks or expensive prices. I’m the one to blame; even at the height of my happiness I find a way to bring myself down. I intentionally bring unhappiness onto myself.
I should leave the house.
But I have no energy to get off my couch.
I start texting my friends looking for a reason to go out.
And I find it:
BOOM.
An explosion.
A car bomb?
Who is it? Who’s the target? Who?
Panic.
Cell phone. I dial.
“Allo, Mom? I’m fine, what happened? What do you mean nothing! There was an explosion in the Bain Militaire area! Watch the news. But you guys are okay? Yeah, me too.”
I hang up then dial and dial again.
Nothing goes through. It disconnects the moment I dial.
The network is completely helpless now that I need it the most.
In my heart, perhaps?
Do they want to assassinate me? Not likely.
I’m rushing off. . . . Where am I rushing off to?
The television.
Nothing.
They mention an explosion in the Rawshe area.
No kidding, I heard it. I want more information. Should I leave?
And go where?
My window is blocked by a garage, and the door . . . the door, okay, I’ll open the door.
I slowly open the front door and see broken glass in the hallway of the building and people. My neighbors.
I fit in with them. I commiserate with them and comfort them even though I don’t know how to comfort anyone.
How can people protect themselves from an explosion that has already gone off, and the possibility of another that might follow?
Who died?
Who got assassinated?
How many casualties?
They’re saying that a minister in the Lebanese Parliament was targeted.
I go down to the street and see Zumurrud, Zeezee, Shwikar, and many other friends.
They came from all over.
All over? They were all here when it happened.
Zeezee was at an outdoor café next to where the explosion went off.
Zumurrud ran from her house toward the source of the sound like many others did. She came down from the top of the hill where she lives to the bottom where I live.
And Shwikar was getting money from the ATM at the entrance of the Bain Militaire beach, close to where the explosion happened.
They’re saying the minister was assassinated.
They’re saying his son was with him.
They’re also saying that some players from Nejmeh, the professional soccer team, were killed during practice.
Their soccer field is next to the café.
It’s also across from the theme park.
Fire trucks, EMTs, police cars, army jeeps, news vans (some taping and others broadcasting) and civilians amid it all.
Attaaack!
The crowd surrounds the site of the explosion, separating us from it.
Why would we get any closer anyway? To see the dead. To see what a human body looks like torn to pieces. To see the destruction. To see what, exactly?
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