We wouldn’t see anything that will make waking up tomorrow easier.
They say they found the body of an elderly woman who worked at the Sporting Beach Club. An Egyptian woman.
I walk away and sit next to my friends on a sidewalk nearby.
The restaurants are dusting themselves off.
All eyes are peeled for the smallest change or update to pass it on to the ones that haven’t seen it yet. We see and tell; we acknowledge what happened in order to grasp it, to grasp the magnitude of the death that was thrown into our laps and that was awakened from the past and is hiding behind tomorrow.
Uff, I’m suffocating.
And everyone else is suffocating, too. When we witness a crisis together, our rhythms unite. And when it’s time to put this behind us, we still return to the location, united as well, and attempt to remove death from the scene.
We tell a joke about ourselves, another about our world, and a third, whispered, about nothing.
We calm down a bit. We exchange expressions of happiness for one another’s safety, then break eye contact when we hear moaning. It’s coming from a mother and her son who are looking for his brother. He was practicing in the Nejmeh soccer field. He’s the star player.
We remain silent.
The mother is sitting on the sidewalk nearby us, her head in her hands and her words swinging back and forth between hope and pain. Her son goes to ask about his brother and comes back without an answer. And the lady, in everyday black, stands on the edge that separates mourning from gratitude.
She won’t give thanks because her son’s safety will not be granted.
But we don’t know that yet. We’re still silent, our tears washing our faces. We don’t know what to do aside from wishing that we were invisible, that the earth would swallow us whole. The lady is crying for her son, and we’re standing like idiots around her.
We haven’t lost anyone, so how can we console a mother who just got hit with the image of her dead son?
We withdraw into ourselves.
We shrink and melt into one body.
If we heard her scream for water, we would rush to her with water.
If we heard her sobbing, we would rush to her with tissues.
If . . .
But she doesn’t want anything we can give her. She just wants her son back.
We withdraw into ourselves even further.
And suddenly:
We hear a voice that generates a feeling inside us like an explosion.
It’s a friend of ours from abroad who’s spending a pleasant summer in Lebanon. He was in the area when he heard the explosion, so he grabbed his camera and came running, looking for something good to film.
He’s a civil engineer, and now, suddenly, a social activist as well, living in Paris.
He addresses us: “Thank God you’re safe!”
Please! We don’t want to hear that expression right now, not while the lady whose son’s safety has not been guaranteed to her stands beside us.
I hug my friend tightly and close my eyes, hoping that maybe my silence will rub off on him. I open my eyes and see him back away with the swiftness of a juggler and lift his camera from his hip to his eye level. The camera that had been hanging from his shoulder is now pressed up against his nose.
What do I do? How can I get him to calm down? But first, how can I get him to back off from his self-styled journalism?
I block his camera lens with my hand. We explain to him exactly what just happened to this woman and how we’re feeling toward the entire situation. He calms down a little. “Ohh,” he says, as if he just made an important discovery. What discovery? That an explosion usually results in casualties, injuries, and having to mourn loved ones?
Why didn’t he expect that? Perhaps because he’s spent a long time abroad and has now become used to only seeing this kind of news through a lens, usually followed by a televised dramatic discussion and finger pointing.
Maybe that’s why his first instinct is to grab the camera, so he can see the disaster through the lens—live—just as he’s used to.
It doesn’t matter anyway, that’s his business. Me, on the other hand, I’m not carrying a camera. I can hardly carry myself.
All of a sudden, I see him point the camera at the woman sitting on the sidewalk.
I explode.
“Don’t!”
He ignores my demand and looks at me with a face that says that he understands my distress, in fact he’s as upset as I am, but the picture needs to go on YouTube or Facebook so the world can see this woman’s pain, or else, who would hear about any of this, or of her?
What? Does it even matter if the world hears of this, or of her? And besides, who said she wants “the world” to hear of her, especially at this moment? Maybe she wants to be left alone right now. Maybe she doesn’t want to become an image or a video, not today, tomorrow, not thirty years from now.
Before I can give this man a piece of my mind, the brother of the missing son returns to tell his mother that he is officially missing. The Nejmeh team members were counted, and his brother wasn’t among them.
Oh God.
When I hear this my heart stops.
What’s this? The camera again?
Before my friends and I can react, the brother yells at the cameraman and tells him to leave him and his mother alone. Then he collapses on the sidewalk, weeping. The fresh-from-Europe guy pounces on his prey, camera in hand, assuming the brother is giving in to the lens and not to shock over losing his brother.
I stand up, then my friends follow suit, and we walk away.
If we can’t do anything to keep this overzealous guy from performing his duty, then we’re not going to be his excuse for a performance.
We retreat.
He asks, “Where are you guys going?”
I hiss at him, “Home.”
We walk toward my apartment, fast. Almost running.
We stop and sneak a look at the amateur photographer, who’s determined to enlighten people as to our plight, to see if he’s following us.
We make sure he’s busy shaping international public opinion.
Then we improvise. We head in the opposite direction.
We walk uphill. Ice cream on the sidewalk. Silence. A little talk, a lot of talk, noise, then silence again. As though noise is a betrayal of the tranquility of the dead and the suffering of the living.
We feel a sudden and great respect for life, and the loss of it.
Silence.
Relapse: Shwikar cries.
Her tears make jokes spill from our mouths, make our hearts race. We won’t have tears of sadness. If one of us falls apart, we all will. And we can’t fall apart after an explosion; we can’t surrender to fear because any car around us could be a bomb.
Yeah. Any car around us could be a bomb.
Every day, I walk by cars that I suspect are bombs and imagine them killing me. I imagine myself in pieces, just like on television. A hand here, a leg there: pieces so disfigured that it becomes difficult to determine which part of my body they are.
I stay away from suspicious-looking cars sometimes, but at other times, I walk right by them to face my fear and guarantee that in case they do explode, I would die instantly. I would die a sudden and complete death.
Vehicle suspects include: a rental with a green license plate, a cab with a red license plate, a registered car, a car with the lights left on, an old broken-down car, a suspiciously ordinary car, a car with an open window, a dusty and abandoned car, a BMW, a Renault, a red, green, or fuchsia car, one with two doors, with four doors, with a religious bumper sticker, a weird looking car, fast, slow, dark, bright . . .
On the evening of the explosion that went off near my building, my friend Georgios told me that, on his way into a café next to the blast, he had noticed a suspicious-looking car. It turned out to be the one that exploded when the minister’s car passed by. What did it look like? Georgios said that it was very old and neglected, and ha
d angry graffiti on it, things teenagers would write, phrases that carried threats and promises.
What does someone write on a car before sending it out to be blown up, to kill?
“If you can read this, you’re dead”?
“Lost your cat? Look under my tires”?
No, not this sort of thing. Georgios said that the sayings on the car were hateful, but that he didn’t remember what they were exactly.
“Die, Christian scum”?
“I’ll feed your eyeballs to my cat and make your teeth into a necklace for my wife”?
Possibly.
That would get the point across.
Oh look, the sun’s down and there’s a car whose owner forgot to turn the headlights off.
“Should I smash the headlight?”
Zeezee laughs.
“I’m serious, Zeezee. I did it before when I was a kid.”
During the civil war, we used to drive my father’s car around the unlit streets of the poorer neighborhoods to recharge its battery, which we used to power the house at night: one neon lightbulb and a small black-and-white television.
One morning back then, on my way to school, I saw a car whose owner had forgotten to turn the headlights off, so I broke them with a rock.
The nun at school got very mad at me because the car was parked at the school gate.
She was going to punish me, so I explained to her my good intentions: “The poor owner! His family wouldn’t have been able to power his house tonight because the battery was run down during the day, so I broke the headlights to keep them from using up the battery! Oui, sister.”
The nun reluctantly let me go after I apologized.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the French say.
I won’t break any headlights today—the civil war is over and its rules no longer apply. Not to me, anyway. The war is over but the memories of it surface, quickly and often, with every explosion. Memories? No, this past is a reality falling upon the present, equal to it, one with it.
On this evening, day has melted into night.
As if the anxious day has turned into an anxious night on sedatives.
Thin white clouds cross the sky. Emptiness fills our minds and makes an echo out of every sound. As if we were given some distance allowing us to run away from our responsibilities in this world. We’re no longer flesh and blood and soul and breath, we no longer carry these responsibilities. We are closer to shadows.
Or an incomplete amoeba, like the ones we read about in our philosophy books. “Do you feel like an amoeba?” I ask Zumurrud.
“Pardon?”
“Zumurrud, do you remember what an amoeba is? We studied it in philosophy class. It’s every substance once it exists but before it takes a clear functional form.”
“Amoeba?!”
Zeezee interrupts: “Amoeba shmeeba.”
I lose my temper because of her joke. I was trying to have a deep philosophical conversation. I clutch my throat trying to choke the defensive scream that’s making its way to my mouth. And like the oppressed, I stay silent.
Here, at the tip of Hamra Street, stands a bar that manages to merge local and international flair. It’s a regular bar, but classy, like a friend who has earned your respect. I like that quality in a bar, now that I’m past my teenage years and the anxiety of my twenties. I no longer need to be greeted by people left and right, or freak out when we see each other, none of this “Oh. My. Gosh!” stuff.
I’m more self-possessed now.
I can greet them without falling out of my chair from excitement. And the waiter can act friendly without helping me into my car later that night and waking up in my bed the next morning.
The bar is spacious and gives off an air of generosity. The tables are spread out nicely, neighboring each other, close, but not touching. Some songs are contemporary and others are reminiscent of the past, but most of the music they play is foreign, American and European, easy on the ears and on the mind. The bartender pours enough alcohol in the glass to reflect Lebanese hospitality (the glass half-full) but the prices remind customers of the importance of self-restraint (half-empty).
I look around and see a few occupied tables, but the place is otherwise empty.
Why? Oh, right. A bomb went off this afternoon.
I draw my attention back to our table; my friends are still teasing me: “What? No yelling? Isn’t there a theory you want to lecture us on?”
“No, I won’t yell or lecture you. Whatever I do won’t make a difference because you’re all incapable of emotions and my lecturing you won’t do any good either because you’re all spineless idiots.”
Zeezee: “Gee!”
Shwikar: “Merci!”
Zumurrud: “Okay, okay. What did you want to say about amoeba? We’re all ears.”
I pout, “Nothing.”
Zeezee: “Are you seriously going to get mad at us over amoeba?”
I relent, “Fine. Do you remember what an amoeba is?”
They nod and stare at me with attention.
“Well, I feel like an amoeba. Good for nothing but capable of anything.”
Shwikar: “Hmmm.”
Me: “Hmmm? I’m going home.”
Zumurrud: “No, no, stay. Come on! Let’s get drunk tonight!”
Me: “You do that. I’m going . . .”
Zeezee, pouting: “You’re going to what?”
Me: “Going to order vodka seven.”
Zeezee, screaming: “The finest 7Up in the house!”
We laugh then chat about various things. A short and sweet conversation about security followed by a quick plan for the weekend, then complaints about lovers. Everyone had their turn and then we had more drinks.
Breaking news: our friend Nahimeh is getting married on Friday, two days from now.
The debate of the evening: should we go?
Finally! A topic I can lecture on.
Listen up people: weddings are big business. In the eighties, my parents used to go to the market and look for a gift to suit the bride and groom or their new house. They would get a dozen crystal glasses for example if they heard that the happy couple hadn’t bought any yet. They would also consider buying a painting from an established artist who they trusted because he was a family member, but then they would change their minds and not buy any of his paintings because they didn’t like his taste.
Then, of course, they would find themselves at a loss. A total loss.
Gossip about the couple receiving the same gifts would spread like wildfire in Beirut.
And my parents would then hear from a trusted source that the guests were wasting their money on things that the couple had no need for. And they would hear talk of the trouble the couple had to go through to exchange the gifts because, when you get right down to it, they’re about to get married, and exchanging gifts is not part of their exciting plans. Yeah, gifts sure can trouble newlyweds when they’re meant to make them happy.
That’s when my great aunt came up with the idea of the gold lira.
The gold lira always has value. If the newlyweds choose to hold onto it as a memento, they could. And if they choose to invest it, it would be easy for them to sell it and buy whatever they want with the money, without frustrating the hell out of the guests with what to get them as a wedding gift.
The gold lira was all the rage in Beirut back then.
This gift has since evolved according to gold’s stock value and to the relationship between the couple and the guests: one gold lira will suffice if the bride is the daughter of a friend, two liras if she’s the daughter of a close friend, three for a paternal or maternal cousin, or more, or less. Bottom line is that one must keep in mind that the value of a gold lira is not stable (and the lira could weigh up to an ounce, be it an Ottoman lira or an English gold coin).
Days passed and times changed bit by bit, and after many complaints about wedding presents and considering that not all guests could afford a gold lira anymore, La Liste de
Mariage (the wedding list) was created.
The couple lists the things they need from a specific furniture store or wherever, and all that guests have to do then is browse these stores one day (one long day) and choose the gift that fits their budget and taste.
It was a nice compromise that preserved the sentimental aspect of the tradition, despite the obvious materialism.
Consumerism, however, came back with a force on a mission to destroy whatever sentiments were left in the Liste de Mariage arrangement. And so, Le Compte de Mariage (the wedding account) was created: So now I am going to give our friend Mona here a hundred dollars to deposit in Hassan and Nahimeh’s shared account under my name. Mona volunteered to go to the bank tomorrow and deposit all our gifts for us.
Quick and easy.
Money in the bank.
Everybody’s happy.
Long live materialism.
Except . . .
When you’ve created a monster, you aren’t guaranteed control over its offspring: La Liste du Bébé (the baby list).
Okay, it is the same concept as the wedding list, which preserves the sentimental side of this arrangement but leads to the question of how many planned life events one has to worry about, and why this lack of interaction with the newlyweds and their children?
And from the baby’s list came Le Compte du Bébé (the baby account) and once again sentiments went out the window.
So, it’s either that people really need all the financial support they can get to get married and have children, or they just can’t seem to find enough occasions to exchange fiduciary gifts.
“Compte du Bébé?”
At that point in my lecture, Georgina arrives, who’s our very chic friend and our own gateway to the richest in the country and their parties. She jumps right into the conversation, declaring that she has new information to chip in:
Georgina was invited to the baby shower of the grandson of a second-rate political leader and a first-class financial supporter in Northern Lebanon. She walked into a palace equipped with the latest fashions; the women were carrying Irma bags priced at ten thousand euros apiece and wearing evening dresses at 6 p.m. while the men were in suits. The room was packed and another political leader’s wife was acting like a diva. Men and women served the guests in utmost elegance, and the guests were, naturally, more elegant than the staff. And all this for just a baby shower. Georgina turned around and saw the buffet: an array of dishes that included any Arab, Western, and international cuisine that a person could have imagined. Everything from canapés to lamb, stuffed grape leaves to sushi, plus a salad bar. The dishes were continually refilled starting at four in the afternoon when the shower officially began.
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