Beirut Noir

by Iman Humaydan

  They announce the number of deaths on the news but they won’t say how many were killed between one silence and another. Strange how in this specific moment she felt as though she really belonged to this country. Even stranger how Khalid’s leaving coincided with the beginning of the outbreak of the war. She slept that night wishing that the world would end and she woke the next morning and the world really was being destroyed. Since then she’d felt a strange guilt, as though she were making these things happen.

  * * *

  “Pssssssssssssssssst.” She’d arrived at the midway point on the way down to Abu Wadih’s bar when she heard a voice that she recognized right away. She was surprised—could it be the same man again?

  “Psssssssssssssssssssst.” The second “pssst” left no doubt in her mind that this was the “pssst” she knew so well and was determined never to answer. But this one time only, she turned her head to confirm her doubts. Yes, it was the same man, the one who liked to flash her. He was always hidden in the same spot, behind some car, halfway down to Abu Wadih’s bar, waiting for any young woman to walk by so he could call out to her, “Psssssssssssssssssssst,” and as soon as she turned, he’d pull down his pants.

  She turned back around quickly and kept walking, drowning in laughter. She didn’t expect to see him that evening, but it seemed that even war could not prevent this man from continuing his incomprehensible habit of showing his penis to passersby.

  She remembered Myriam’s hysterical reaction when she was with her and the man “pssstpssst”-ed the two of them, exposing himself as usual. She didn’t know why this guy didn’t frighten but, rather, amused her. Perhaps madness is a more appropriate reaction to life; rational people are the ones who frighten her the most, like Khalid with his well-mannered upbringing. She’d never seen him do anything wrong or behave in an improper way; even when he was drinking, he’d stay completely in control of his social consciousness. Honestly, only when he was drunk was he like her when she was fully alert.

  She arrived at Abu Wadih’s and the place was empty except for the bartender, Alaa, and one other customer, a hunchbacked man sitting at the side of the bar. For some reason this customer made her feel really nosy—she wasn’t able to tell if he was actually hunchbacked or if it was just how he was sitting. He seemed very heavy in his body, as if at any second he might fall on the table or into his glass. She remembered the strange conversation that she and Khalid once had about Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the very first time they met, and how he burst out laughing when she told him her interpretation of the stations of people’s sadness and their meanings, according to the law of gravity. There’s no doubt that gravity affects some people more than others, and because of this they continually experience feelings of heaviness that they associate with sadness and grief, while gravity weighs lighter on others and then they are lighter, and therefore happier, than the rest. The two of them had this conversation sitting at the table she’d passed by a moment ago. She ran her hand slowly over the wooden table as if to confirm it was still sturdy. Often when pain accosted her she liked to touch the things around her. For a while, whenever she woke up in the morning and was seized by the bitter awareness that Khalid had left, she’d place her hand against the cold wall and leave it there for a while. For some reason this reassured her.

  She ordered an Almaza beer and went to sit by herself at a small table at the end of the room. She didn’t recall ever sitting at this table with Khalid. She didn’t usually like to sit in the corner; she hated looking at the wall. But since Khalid had gone, she felt that her relationship with walls had improved.

  The day before she’d had a strange dream. Its protagonist was a sofa. The sofa was inside a house, she didn’t know where. She saw a gray sofa at the end of a living room and believed that it was the same one in pictures of her old childhood home. She rushed into the sitting room, searching for a mirror to examine herself in, and the gray sofa took her back to the distant past before her parents separated, when her father moved with her brother to another city. After they left, her mother bought a new sofa because her father had taken the gray one with him to his new house.

  In the logic of the dream, finding the sofa meant that she’d returned to her childhood. But she didn’t find a mirror in the sitting room. She was disappointed; she’d really longed to see her face as a girl. She went back to the living room again and couldn’t find the gray sofa either. In its place, there was a black leather sofa. She recognized it right away and was overcome by annoyance. This sofa was from Khalid’s old living room. She walked over to it cautiously, touched it, and her hand felt something damp, like sweat. She tried to pull her hand away but it was stuck on the leather. She started wriggling it around to separate her skin from the leather, but it was no use and she started screaming.

  She woke up, her neck wet with sweat, her hair stuck to it, and felt the same irritation she’d felt in her dream when touching the sofa. While recalling the dream, she wondered why her father chose to take the gray sofa but nothing else. The only time she cried after her parents separated was the day when she woke up in the morning, went into the living room, and didn’t find the sofa there. She sat on the ground in the empty spot where it had been, leaned her head into her hands, and burst into tears. When her mother saw her, she didn’t ask why she was crying, but simply sat down next to her, tears flowing from her eyes too. They didn’t talk about it, but the following morning her mother bought a new sofa with all of the colors known to the world—and those unknown up until then too. Visitors gave them strange looks when they glimpsed their unusual sofa. But she and her mother were really happy with their beautiful, colorful sofa, which didn’t remind them of anything at all. It was just completely amazing.

  * * *

  She finished her beer and went over to the bar to order a whiskey. This time, when she looked at the hunchbacked man sitting at the bar, she felt that his face was familiar, but she wasn’t really able to tell if she actually knew him. He smiled at her and that’s when she was sure she’d seen him before, but somewhere other than at Abu Wadih’s bar. It was hard to forget a person who looked so peculiar: two small round eyes that she couldn’t read any clear expression in—she saw in them right away familiarity mixed with a bit of dullness, which seemed somewhat deliberate, perhaps seeking out the kindness of others or concealing something else—a strangely deformed nose, and teeth that were no less curvy. In short, it was as though a hurricane had struck his face. Despite this, it was difficult to describe him as ugly . . . not because he was handsome, but because he was so completely out of the ordinary, as if he were created by a powerful and turbulent imagination. She smiled at him guardedly as she went back to her seat, but he turned around and seemed to stare at her. She concentrated her gaze on the wall in front of her in order to ignore him.

  She looked at the large clock hanging on the wall behind the bar; it had just turned nine o’clock and the bar was starting to fill up as usual with new arrivals. She had never bought a watch in her whole life and all the watches that people had given her over the years in their lame attempts to force her to commit to her appointments with them were useless. The strange thing was that the watches themselves would sometimes stop working on their own once she put them on her wrist. She always rationalized this as time itself refusing to be known by her. Surely that was the sole logical explanation for this strange phenomenon.

  She was about to light a cigarette when she saw Walid walking toward her. This surprised her because they hadn’t talked in a long while, other than saying hello in passing from time to time. Walid approached her and smiled slowly as he always did.

  Walid: Hey there, how’re you?

  Maya: Good, you?

  Walid: I’m gonna order a drink and come back. What do you want, your usual whiskey?

  Maya: I haven’t finished my first one yet.

  He didn’t respond and went toward the bar. She thought it strange that he would say your usual, as though three
years hadn’t passed since they’d been together. She remembered one time she was here with Khalid, and Walid was sitting at the table across from them with his English girlfriend. Though she hadn’t even said hi to him, Khalid asked her right away if they’d had a relationship in the past. She was weirded out how Khalid could have surmised that on his own. He told her that he knew immediately from the way Walid had looked at her.

  Maya: What do you mean, how he looks at me?

  Khalid: He looks at you like you’re his.

  Maya: But so much time has passed and now he has a partner, I don’t think he even remembers—

  Khalid: That doesn’t matter. You don’t know how men think. You know . . . if a man has seen a woman naked once, every time he sees her he imagines her like that. That’s it . . . the picture never leaves his head.

  At the time she puzzled over whether all men were really like that, or if it was just Khalid’s jealousy that pushed him to these kinds of fantasies, even though he always said that her previous relationships with other men in no way bothered him. And it seemed clear at that moment that he didn’t really accept the idea that a man other than him could ever have seen her naked. But perhaps she was also wrong . . . He’d proven to her many times that he’d been able to understand her previous lovers better than she could.

  Walid handed her another whiskey and sat across from her at the table.

  Walid: So it seems you’re alone?

  Maya: Yeah, you too.

  She resorted to that inexplicable sarcasm she took refuge in when she couldn’t find what she wanted to say. They both laughed together for no clear reason. After this, she understood that Walid’s girlfriend had gone to England and he was getting ready to follow her there. Walid hadn’t really had a deep impact on her life and she didn’t remember suffering all that much when they broke up . . . his entering and then leaving her life happened with a strange calm. She wished that things could go like that with Khalid too.

  Suddenly she found herself grateful to Walid for not staying too long in her life. Their relationship had not lasted more than two months when it ended with a stupid misunderstanding that neither one of them could be bothered to fix. Those relationships that finish before they’ve really started feel painful in the moment, like an abortion. But with time it becomes clear that this is the only kind of relationship that can preserve its beauty, like a movie star who commits suicide at the height of her brilliance. Despite the fact that it doesn’t mean a lot to us, it’s the only thing we can remember without real pain, as if it isn’t really ours, but stolen from someone else’s memory.

  She remembered Khalid’s words . . . is Walid imagining her naked right now? This thought amused her, but in any case, even if he were not visualizing her naked at that very moment, from the way he was talking, it seemed clear that he was determined to see her that way again.

  Walid: So what are you doing later?

  Maya: Going home. Why?

  Walid: Do you wanna come over to my place?

  His question surprised her, a clear and direct offer, with no preamble. Things had definitely changed since she was single and living alone in the city—that is to say, three years ago when she’d met Khalid. Normally it would take more than a drink and ten minutes of passing chitchat for two people to reach this stage. Or perhaps he believed he was within his bounds to proposition her with no preamble because the two of them had already been together. But that was a long time ago and she didn’t feel any real connection between the man who she’d known and the one who was sitting beside her now. In fact, she hadn’t found a way to deal with the past yet, except to completely repudiate it. She didn’t have true feelings, either about her life now or about the years that had led up to now. Every morning she would wake up and think that she’d just been born all of a sudden, but she never really had that refreshing sense of rebirth. In reality, every morning she feels like she’s worse off than the day before. She felt like all the time that had passed—twenty-five years—had been spent trying to be reborn as a being who wouldn’t ever be complete; that’s just her.

  * * *

  His voice roused her.

  Walid: It’s really crowded here, let’s go have a drink on the veranda and listen to some good music, what do you say? Afterward, my place is close by.

  She smiled at him as though congratulating him for the effort he expended trying to convince her.

  Maya: I dunno.

  Walid: Okay, I’m getting another drink and coming back.

  She observed him carefully while he was moving away. He had a funny walk that was sort of like a caveman. He thrust his legs out and held his shoulders back in such an exaggerated way it seemed artificial, as if to display his virility to the whole world. She remembered the first time she had sex with him; she was sitting on his lap and suddenly he carried her from the living room into the bedroom and threw her on the bed. From that moment on, she started secretly calling him Caveman. But in what followed, it became clear that Caveman was totally preoccupied with his health, to an obsessive-compulsive degree. He was perpetually afraid of a potential heart attack. After they’d made love the first time and were lying together on the bed, he took her hand and put it on his heart.

  Walid: It’s beating really fast, isn’t it?

  Maya: No, it’s normal.

  Walid: If I died right now, what would you do?

  She didn’t know what to answer at that moment, but as usual when she couldn’t find the appropriate response; her answer was harshly sarcastic without her meaning it to be.

  Maya: I’d get out of there, of course, in case they suspected me of something.

  * * *

  She glanced at the bar and found the hunchbacked man staring at her. He smiled at her again and then she turned away, perhaps flinching a little. There was something strange about this man. She took her pack of cigarettes and went out to smoke and get some air. Walid was also there talking on the phone to his English girlfriend. She was far away but she could still hear some of what he was saying since he was talking in a loud voice. It seemed that the English girlfriend was checking on her plants and her cat; he was reassuring her that he was watering the plants and giving the cat her medicine every day . . . that the cat was still suffering from diarrhea but had improved a little bit. She imagined Caveman watering the plants and wiping up cat shit so she wasn’t able to keep herself from bursting out laughing when he walked over to her.

  Walid: What’s up?

  Maya: Nothing—I saw something that made me laugh.

  Clearly he didn’t understand, but he smiled at her anyway. As they started to go back inside, her cell phone rang. She looked at the screen and it was a number from outside Lebanon—Khalid, of course—so she quickly moved away from Walid and answered.

  Khalid: Hey, what’s up? Sounds like it’s noisy where you are—you out?

  Maya: Yeah, I’m at Abu Wadih’s.

  Khalid: I just got back home. I’m frozen, the temperature was -5 when I was coming back.

  Maya: Whoa. Warm yourself up, habibi.

  Khalid: Yeah, I will, I’m sitting under a blanket now, I can’t move it’s so cold. Are you going to stay out late? I can wait up so we can talk on Skype.

  Maya: No, not late. I’ll leave in a bit. But if you’re tired, sleep, habibi, no problem.

  Khalid: Who are you hanging out with?

  Maya: Miriam and Lina.

  Khalid: Listen, habibti, take a taxi if you want to go back home by yourself—don’t take a servees.

  Maya: Okay, fine, habibi, yellah, bye.

  She hung up the phone, surprised at Khalid’s insistence that she take a taxi home. She really wanted to believe that this was a sign that he cared about her, but this kind of care for her safety and security had only appeared after he left the country. When they were together in Lebanon he didn’t care about things like that. Many times when she’d left his house alone at night he wouldn’t offer to go with her. Why was he so worried about her now? Isn’t he the on
e who’d left her alone here?

  She went back inside and noticed that the hunchbacked man was no longer staring at her. For a second she thought she’d figured out who he was, but she bumped into someone passing by and the thought escaped her. She wanted to get back to the table and gather her stuff fast, since after Khalid’s phone call she felt that something was constricting her breathing—she needed to leave . . . and quickly. She didn’t find Walid. She sighed deeply, grabbed her purse, and rushed outside.

  No doubt she’d been walking aimlessly for ten minutes or more before stopping. As soon as she did, her breathing started to even out. She felt cold and realized that she’d forgotten her coat at Abu Wadih’s. But she had absolutely no desire to go back there this evening. She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and observed the Hbeish guard station in front of her. Strange that her legs had brought her right here. She felt her phone vibrating in her bag; she’d gotten a new message. She thought that it would be from Khalid but when she looked at it, it was from Walid: What happened? Where’d you disappear to?

  She considered responding, You’d better get up and go home and water your plants, it’s the right thing to do. Of course she didn’t do that, but she thought it was strange that he still had her number. She wondered what would happen if she decided to change her number without telling Khalid. What if she completely disappeared? Would he come search for her, or would he stay over there in Canada waiting for her on Skype? Probably the latter. She already feels it’s another woman Khalid is waiting for on Skype, a ghost woman coming home every night to repeat the same electronic expressions so he could be reassured that everything was under control in the virtual love nest he built for her after he left her. What if she programmed Skype to speak to Khalid instead of her, would he even notice the difference?