“Where would you run to?”
“I don’t know. Every time I imagine a place to run to, I find a new question waiting for me there, and more beating. I’m surrounded by beating.”
“So you stay here because you’re used to my beating?”
“What? This is the first time you beat me up.”
“No, I’ve always beaten you up. Have you forgotten that, too?”
“Yeah.”
“No, you haven’t. Every time I beat you, you come up with a new excuse and pretend that it’s the first time I beat you.”
“You mean you always beat me? For no reason? And I come up with excuses to stay?”
“Yup.”
“Correct?”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind. It’s just something Koko always says.”
“Oh, Koko. I beat her too. But she’s not mine. You’re mine, and they’re mine, and I will keep on beating you until . . .”
[A moment of silence] “Until what? What do you want us to do?”
“Nothing. I want to beat you. Nothing more.”
“But, why?”
“Because I like doing it.”
“That’s a lame excuse. Lamer than the sequence of events thing.”
“Okay, you have a point. It’s an excuse. No one likes to live in darkness and beat people up for sport.”
“Some people do, and they have their reasons to do it. And some people do it because they’re convinced it leads to a solution. And there are those who . . .”
“Are you pro–capital punishment?”
“No.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t you like to see me hanging from a rope?”
“Every time I hear of a hanging or see one in a movie or in real life, my neck hurts. I believe that violence begets violence; it’s not the answer to it. I think that the civil war in Lebanon was like a hanging.”
“Being philosophical, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m quick to use up my options and I like the idea of violence as a form of communication. It’s fast and fundamental, and I don’t like to think quietly. So please, don’t try to go philosophical on me because I’m going to beat you anyway.”
“Thanks for saving me from wasting my time. I do think there’s a similarity between hanging and the Lebanese civil war but I can’t put my finger on the common factor between the two.”
“Fine. Now, tell me, why can’t you remember your name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think hard.”
“But you hate thinking.”
“But I like answers.”
“Okay, I’ll think.”
. . .
. . .
“Enough thinking, what’s the answer?”
“I think I forgot my name because I don’t want it repeated in a story. If I’m nameless, no one will tell stories about me, as if I’ve never existed.”
“But you do exist, and the evidence for that is that I’m beating you.”
“Do you exist? A faceless coarse voice in a room where my eyes can’t adjust to the darkness, you exit without a door and return without a reason, and ask, and demand answers, and beat me up seeking them, and you don’t even have a reason for asking them.”
“Who said that? I have a face, and it’s a good-looking one, too. Your eyes aren’t adjusting to the darkness because they’re blind. I blinded you before the anesthesia wore off. As for the questions that need answering, I’m only the middle man.”
“I’m not blind, I was able to read my name on my phone.”
“What’s your name?”
“Me.”
“And mine?”
Zumurrud asks me when she’s done reading: “What’s this?”
“That’s the ending to my story.”
She clearly looks confused. “But when did you reach the ending? And, who’s this man? And the dialogue, I like it, but it’s so surreal.”
I reply confidently, “I’m writing the ending first before I start writing the novel.”
She asks, hesitantly this time, “Are you sure of this? Why are you writing a novel to begin with?”
“Just for fun.”
“Sure, but, who’s this man?”
“This man, Zumurrud, represents society, or, Lebanon. This man beats us up whenever he wants, and still, we find him an . . .”
She interrupts me angrily, “Ugh, I get that, but I’m still not convinced. What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you write about what we’re living? Why do you resort to obvious allegories and refuse to tell our story?”
I lose my temper and yell at her, “What is there to tell? Where does our story begin and how does it end? Should I make up an ending? Should I kill you all? Or give each of you a great love story, or a failing one? Or maybe you want the story to end with us all skipping happily on the shore, feeling love for our third world country with innocent happiness twinkling in our eyes? Is that what you want to read?”
She comes back stronger than ever, “That’s what you want. Think a little before you talk! What do you want out of this story? For it to heal you and us all of our illnesses and pain and boredom? Aren’t you curious about how our story will end? Maybe I’ll get Alzheimer’s, and you’ll get cured of cancer, and Zeezee will emigrate, and Shwikar will get married and have seventeen children. Do you like this ending? Or do you want a more theatrical one? How about we all become prostitutes and sell our bodies for money and become rich, but we’re all secretly in pain because we can’t find true love? Fun story? Suspenseful enough for you? Or not? Maybe we each go on living our own lives, just as they are, and nothing exciting happens. What if nothing happens, would that bother you? Isn’t it enough that we stay as we are, age in this experiment we’re living and eventually die, each in her own way? Why does Lebanon have to slap you, and your name have to be David Charles Samhoun, and the phoenix have to be reborn, and Hayat have to kill herself because she’s sick of life? What do you want? Maybe you’re just not cut out for writing a novel.”
I answer with equal severity and determination, especially after hearing that last comment, “Yeah, maybe I’m not cut out for . . .”
“You know what? That’s a cowardly response. Please, think before you speak because this story has turned you into a limited person. You’ve become very limited. You claim to have ideas, but you don’t produce them. Think. You have a brain, so use it a little. We all consider each other special kinds of friends, and not friends by chance. You must feel the same. Where did you get all this stupidity from? Huh?”
I’ll reply calmly this time; I do like her reprimanding me: “I try to write this damn story every day and get tired of it, so I try to come up with something, and dig deep because I worry about coming off shallow, so I dive and dive but don’t go deeper than three inches. And I know that this isn’t enough to write a novel. I don’t know. But I’ve really gone stupid. Since I’ve gotten the urge to write, I’ve started seeing everything in unpublishable pieces. I find my life shallow and in need of symbolism to make it deep and more meaningful. Find more meaning . . . blah, butter.”
She says, calmly and jokingly: “Butter will make you fat. I think you need a vacation, to go away somewhere.”
“Where to?”
“Paris.”
I laugh.
She laughs.
The French embassy had refused to give us both the French visa before. Why? Because my bank account did not have the required six thousand euros in it for more than three months, and because her bank account looks a lot like mine, almost twins.
She asks me teasingly: “Samantha Fox?”
“Yeah! Do you remember our friend, Manchette? She used to go to our school. She’s a journalist now. Do you remember how, whenever someone asked her name, she would answer ‘Samantha Fox’? I got it from her.”
She laughs and asks, maliciously this time: “Faten Hamama?”
“Well, I thought about going with Hind Rostom instead, or Nadia Lutfi, or Shadia
, of course. You know that I don’t like most of the damsel-in-distress characters that Faten Hamama played, but I chose her name because it sounds funny when saying it to a man beating me to a pulp. Hamama, ha ha.”
“And David Charles Samhoun?”
“My friend from the library and her brother bring him up in conversation all the time. And every time they say his name I imagine Raafat al-Haggan’s theme song playing in the background. Taraaa, tara ta tara tat a tararaaa. Remember it?”
“Serena Aharoni!”
“Ha ha.”
“And Umm Kulthum?”
“I wanted any excuse to mention her. I just love her so much! The night I wrote that scene, I was smoking a cigarette in front of the television while listening to her sing ‘You Confused My Heart.’ So I got inspired all of a sudden and started writing about her, describing my feelings toward her and my opinions. Owf! But, as Balqis says, ‘The work you do at night is a joke in the morning.’ I laughed so hard when I read what I wrote the next morning.”
“Let me read what you wrote about her. I’ll be gentle in my criticism, not because I’m being nice to you, but because she’s my one true love.”
“Sure! Here. They’re scattered ideas. I was thinking that I would piece them together in the morning. You’re not allowed to poke fun at the ‘depth’ and the ‘obvious symbolism’ in my writing this time. And I would thank you to take notice that everybody loves Umm Kulthum, but some people find gentle meaning in their love for her. I mean that . . .”
“Are you a Sunni and silence a Shiite? You the worm and it the chicken? What’s the secret behind your love for talk and noise and . . .”
“Fine, I’ll keep quiet!”
She reads:
Stoners loved Umm Kulthum. Stoners still love Umm Kulthum.
That was the opening line.
Zumurrud reads it intently then bursts out laughing.
I try to look insulted, but I can’t. I do, however, burst out laughing too. I’m very happy she’s read what I wrote about Umm Kulthum.
I feel relieved.
I like the idea of taking a vacation. I like the idea of traveling somewhere.
. . .
I book a plane ticket to Cairo. I leave Beirut in a week. I’m going to keep away from Beirut for a little bit so that I might come back rejuvenated—and hopefully that will result in a happy ending to my novel.
Days pass and it’s now the day before my flight, so my friends and I decide to meet in the evening on the terrace of the Le Rouge restaurant for a drink on the occasion of my departure.
No matter how short my trips that I take are there’s always a farewell party before I leave. And no matter how close my flight date is they always find time for a party.
And because we hang out almost every night, going out for a special occasion is always a welcome change. It’s a legitimate obligation, which, if we don’t fulfill, means having to provide numerous and extensive apologies to the people involved.
I like this rule, anyway, and I don’t want it to ever change. If it were not for such habits, our nightly routine would be in danger of extinction.
It’s one in the afternoon now.
Knock knock knock.
Ring ring ring.
Door knocking, doorbell ringing.
Am I imagining all this?
Knock knock knock.
Ring ring ring.
What’s going on? An attack?
Oh, it’s Komodo.
But she has a key to my apartment—why would she be knocking? I head toward the door, fuming. I’m going to explode in her face!
I open the door and find her smiling: “Soooo? You still here? What? You don’t go to Egypt no more?”
“Why didn’t you let yourself in?”
“I think maybe you’re home. I walk in on you just like that?”
I suppress my frustration. I thank her for respecting my privacy and lead her inside.
She chats with me before she starts cleaning and before I get a chance to run out of the house.
I thought that Koko’s story had ended already, but apparently it hasn’t yet. I should open the last chapter of her story again. After all, it’s very difficult to end a story.
So, Koko bought a new cell phone, newer than her old one so she can now download music on it.
I don’t ask to listen to any of her music but she quickly shoves her phone in my face and begins to scroll down looking for the right song to grace my ears with, so I feel obligated to listen and pretend to enjoy myself.
She finds the song she’s looking for and sticks her arm out at me with her phone in her hand. I tell her that I feel awkward having to listen to the song with her holding the phone out at my face like that. She makes fun of my limited knowledge: “It’s video clip!” I grab the phone and look at the small screen.
The song begins to play and I recognize it immediately. It’s the same as a Lebanese song with a stolen melody from an Indian song.
She laughs at how appalled I am at the obvious theft of the complete song. She tells me that many Lebanese and Arabic songs were copied from original Indian tracks. She says that the problem is that, here, we don’t listen to Indian songs because we don’t understand their language.
“You speak Indian in Sri Lanka?”
“Of course!”
I turn back to the video upset with Koko, the self-proclaimed know-it-all who thinks that everything she doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing. She’s satisfied with herself as she is. And I suspect that sometimes she answers affirmatively so she won’t have to admit that she doesn’t know something. And if she can’t come up with a response, she makes fun of the question and dodges it, which gets on my nerves—so she returns to the topic, only pretending to listen to me explain the answer because she doesn’t want me to get upset, not because she really wants to know the answer. Grrr. And the worst part is that I have to give her the answer to the question, because if I don’t, she’ll think I’m still upset and she won’t stop talking about it all day.
I bring my thoughts back to where my eyes are, on the video. I see a modern image of a guy and a girl in hip clothing singing a duet, each in a different location. The video is Hollywood-ish, like it’s trying its best to stay away from Bollywood. The scenes resemble the Arab pictures we take here.
But, to my delight, the Indian flair jumps back into the image with one headshake: the pretty girl moves her neck to the right, lifts her chin then lowers it in fast subsequent moves with her mouth slightly open, letting out her high and vibrating Indian voice. I look up, knowing that Koko is watching my every move. I imitate the girl’s dance in the video with less flexibility and skill, but with equal commitment shown in my closed eyes. I hear Koko laughing and laugh with her. She laughs harder and I keep up my imitation. The girl’s voice gets too loud and my head starts to hurt, so I hand the phone back to Koko, congratulate her on her new phone and prepare to leave the room.
Has her husband come back yet? No, not yet. Why? For the same old reasons, reasons she doesn’t want to go into. And instead of offering an explanation, she lets out an incomprehensible sound, speaking her words through her eyes and moving her hands around trying to indicate how things are going. I get overwhelmed with the amount of information she is throwing at me and stand there with my mouth open. She laughs, then says seriously: “If you have dollar, give me, I give you Lebanese money.”
I reach inside my purse and take out my heavy wallet, only to find thirty dollars in it. I take out the money and hand it to Koko. She yells: “No! A hundred, I want a hundred dollars!”
Oh, excuse me! I’m an idiot for not knowing that. But I’m getting ready to travel and need my dollars.
“Excuse me!”
Buzz off! Or yet, I’ll leave.
“Bye! Be careful on the road.”
Where to now?
I call Zeezee. She’s on her laptop in a café next to my apartment in Hamra. She’s working at lightning speed to finish a graphic design project fo
r one of her clients who always gives Zeezee overdue projects to finish, emphasizing that the due date is “yesterday.” And the pay doesn’t include the little time Zeezee has to finish the job. In fact, the client doesn’t reimburse her for the many phone calls she has to make either, and her wrecked nerves, and the almost literal tug-of-war she gets caught in each time. Goddamn freelancing jobs in Lebanon.
I resolve to join her work session when, suddenly, everything changes. One moment changes the course of my life.
I receive a text message from a news service that charges me ten dollars a month to send me news headlines, saying: “The Cairo National Airport closed down due to a two-day sandstorm.”
I quicken my pace toward the café. I snatch the laptop from Zeezee’s hands without an explanation. Zeezee looks worried and nervous. I access the Agence Nationale website and look through its few international news headlines.
I read the article then return the laptop to the still-stunned Zeezee. She asks what’s wrong, but I don’t answer. I take out my cell phone and call the Beirut International Airport. I wait for an agent to answer then ask whether the news is true. It is, so I cancel my flight.
“I’m not going on vacation anymore.”
“Why don’t you push your flight back a little?”
“Because my flight got cancelled and there must be a good reason behind it. I have to stay in Lebanon for a while. I have to stay here. This is a sign. I can feel it. I just know it.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah.”
“Fine. Should we cancel the party?”
“Cancel the party? Isn’t what just happened a legitimate reason to drink?”
“Yeah, your stupidity is a better reason. I’m going to have fun teasing you tonight.” She laughs.
“And a flawed person criticizing me is proof of my perfection.”
“Okay, Kamel al-Sabbah.”
“Television is the best invention ever.”
“No, the remote control is.”
“True.”
So, I’m not traveling anymore.
But why did the course of my life have to change?
It changed because I’m writing the novel, that’s why.
I dived into writing the novel with all the information I’ve gathered in my lifetime.
32 Page 11
