Five: This is Lebanon. Anything can happen at any moment. And nothing could happen at all.
Against this background we were sitting around a wooden table in a little house in the mountains looking at a pink tomato resting on the middle of a little white plate. The tomato had such character it seemed like it was staring up at the handsome, middle-aged man who sat among us and who was leaning over the table with a fruit knife in hand. He says, “Now let’s see what happens next.” In that moment he wasn’t referring to the fate of Lebanon or the plight of the Assad regime. But as he slowly sliced the tomato the seeds of the Middle East emerged, and they were blood red. Light from the setting sun streamed through tree branches and played on Amira’s hair and then Maryam’s and then Lilla’s, painting the strands red. And then the unexpected happened. Nothing we had been through that morning could have prepared us for it.
*
When the four blond bodyguards and the stocky man built like a wrestler came out of the Café Orient and walked over to the dock we thought the game was up. The expression on the captain’s face spelled out the words, ‘the end’. As the boat glided up to a stop a second group of men emerged from the café. They had dark skin and were well-dressed. They walked up to the fat man. He fell silent. They were his men. They positioned themselves on the shore at the point where the boat would dock. As the boat touched the marina there was a brief exchange between our man and the Russians. It lasted no more than a few seconds. Turning back to the boat, our man was smiling again as if nothing was wrong.
“Welcome, Samira!”
Before we had stepped foot on solid ground, the four Russians were already up on the boat. There was no sign of the captain and his cabin boy. The expression on the face of our friend said, ‘you should smile, too, just make like everything’s normal and hurry up.’ Lilla seemed to get the drift. With a startling quickness she hopped off the boat.
The moment she hit the ground our man, went crazy with joy and threw his arms around her, hugging her so tightly you’d think he might break her bones, “Samira! Dear sister!”
We were hardly startled to hear Madam Lilla’s Beirut name. I couldn’t take my hand out of my pocket. I was clasping the cyanide for fear that revealing the little bottle would turn out to be more significant than our getting caught with cocaine. Along the esplanade the trendy young Beirut ladies full of botox and with silicone breasts draped to either side, sprawled out on armchairs lined up on the wave breakers, were now and then puffing on a nargile or sipping from a glass of wine. The fully tanned gents beside them had gel in their hair and sported enormous watches on their wrists. The ladies had their hair blown out and wore full make-up, tight pants, low tops and condescending gazes that were directed at us. A wave of disappointment ran through them after seeing a scruffy bunch like us come out of such an enormous yacht.
Like water we slipped through the Café Orient and onto the street. In Kornis three black jeeps were lined up along the pavement. Our man directed us to the Hummer in the middle, waving his arms. He’d either had a lot to drink, or a lot of something else, his eyes were bloodshot. But then again he had such a pudgy face you could hardly see his eyes. Leading us over to the Hummer, he must have grabbed Lilla’s arm too tightly because she cried out, “Enough already. Pierre! You’re going to break my arm!”
Pierre Efendi kept his grip on her arm but Lilla swiftly captured his hand and brought the display of affection down to the level of holding hands. Then Maryam grabbed his other hand and said, “Hello Pierre! I’m Maryam. Are we safe?” And she nodded in the direction of the Russian Mafia.
Though Pierre Efendi’s face was gripped with joy, as with almost every Lebanese
man there was something deeper at play in his eyes. In answer to Maryam’s question, it said something like, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve handled it.’
Madam Lilla asked, “What’s going on?” It was the first time we heard something like that from her. But thanks to Pierre’s flood of emotion she didn’t expect an answer nor did she ask after her bags. In any case we had already made the jump into another scene. Pierre quickly scrutinized all our faces. I noticed how Maryam thanked him for rescuing us. In Beirut dialect. For the first time. Interesting.
As Pierre hurried us into the Hummer, he seemed cheerful – not because we had just escaped the Russian mob but as if we were setting out on a picnic.
“I let the driver go, Samira. So I will be your chauffeur today. Ha ha ha!”
After we shut the back door and Lilla hopped in the front, she turned and whispered. “Pierre is completely bonkers! It’s all because of the hotel.”
I was the only one who narrowed my eyes when Lilla added superciliously, “But how could you not know?”
“Saint George my dear! Because they closed Saint George down!”
Amira and Maryam were watching a new world pass by the windows. I pretended to know where we were but I was lost. The only thing I remembered from my previous visit to the city was that the famous Saint George Hotel was shut down and left to ruin when the city centre fell to privatization.
“Meet my young friends, Pierre,” said Madam happily. “Young,” laughed Pierre, “we are the young ones, Samira. They are still children!”
As we drove along the coast road in the direction of the Christian neighbourhood Jemayzi, Pierre turned to us, “Ladies, I don’t believe that any of you are of the ripe old age to remember the bar at Saint George?”
All three of us pretended to laugh even though we were mainly worried about getting away from the cocaine as fast as we could. Looking at us in the rear-view mirror, Pierre was waiting for an answer. He went on, “Anyone who has seen Saint George isn’t young!” He squeezed Lilla’s arm, “You haven’t changed at all, Samira!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Lilla, trying not to smile; and without turning around, she introduced us to Pierre. “Our friend here was the last manager of the Saint George Hotel. We spent so many days together…” She paused to make it amply clear she didn’t want Pierre to know the whole story before she went on, “He knows Jezim Anwar quite well.”
“Ah, Jezim! What a wonderful scoundrel! Ladies, till this day Samira was the only one who ever brought that bastard to his knees! You know that, don’t you, Samira! Ha ha ha! Since you the Don Juan has never been back up on his feet!”
In the back seat we looked at each other. Lilla’s head was so still that we understood we were supposed to stay silent. We were not to ask any questions. She was making it clear that Pierre wasn’t going to be privy to her plan. The ensuing conversation made that clear, “Samira, why are you all of a sudden thinking of seeing Jezim? What brought him to mind? Or is the mademoiselle out to visit all the hearts she’s broken? Ha ha ha…”
It was all too clear that Pierre didn’t know the story we knew. He must have been the sort of man who drowned out everything he knew and everything he wasn’t supposed to know in laughter. Now he was laughing vigorously to ignore the danger signals coming from Maryam and Madam Lilla’s nervous energy. His clucking laughter sounded like elevator music.
“Jezim is still in the same house in Tripoli, isn’t he?” asked Lilla. “Yes,” Pierre sputtered through his laughter. “But he’s not the same man! Oh he’s aged, Samira. He’s not like us. He’s got a wife and his life is a living hell.”
Lilla didn’t answer. There was no need because Pierre had just slammed on the brakes, bringing the jeep to a sudden halt in front of the Saint George Hotel.
“Look Samira! Just take a look!”
The abandoned building, once the Saint George Hotel, looked like an enormous frigate that by the stroke of some ill-omen was frozen as it was being lowered into the sea. Outside a “Stop Solidere” sign flapped mournfully in the wind like a flag announcing a cholera epidemic. Out of the corner of her eye Lilla looked at the place. She wasn’t indifferent, it was just that she was afraid of turning into stone if she looked for too long. No part of her plan entailed stopping in front of the St George and
getting emotional about the past. Clearly this was why she had wanted to go straight to Tripoli before coming to Beirut. Now her face wore the expression of a woman at the funeral of a man she had failed to kill by her own hand.
“What days those were, eh? Samira. We’d still be young if those Solidere bastards hadn’t stopped restoration because they couldn’t buy our beautiful hotel. Huh, what you think,” said Pierre.
Lilla cut him off. “Where are we going to stay, Pierre?” For the first time he stopped the incessant giggling and looked at her. He gave her such a look…
It was years and years ago. Lilla had come to the Hotel Saint George. Either she was singing or dancing or shuttling secrets from one country to the next. No doubt she wore gloves. Those gloves must have been made of pale lilac silk. No doubt her hair was in the style of Farah Diba. She came with her valises, her make-up bag and her shoulder bag filled with powders and pearls and pressed handkerchiefs. The tips of her stiletto heels echoed off the marble floors in the lobby.
Jezim Anwar was already giving her the eye but she didn’t notice. Constantly clicking open the flame of his golden lighter, he went to speak with Pierre at reception. “Who’s the wild cat?” he said. Pierre understood the scoundrel’s intention but he also knew there was no way to stop two lonely panthers from finding each other. His patent leather shoes squeaked on the marble floor. “So that’s Samira then,” he said, “ she lives up to all the talk!” His eyes shimmered and Pierre could see him constructing the trap for a queen who would never be his lover.
From then on Pierre kept a close eye on them. He watched Anwar’s every move, how he scaled her walls before the castle fell and how she lay in wait for him, all the while blind to his presence… Pierre was always invisible to her eyes.
Now he looked at her the way he looked at her back then. He saw that nothing had changed at all, and that no matter how much they had aged they would never change, and that Samira was still a young woman. And so he reluctantly imitated his own laughter and merely answered the question.
“My dear Samira, you said that you had to stay in Hamra so I booked in the Hotel Cavelier. And as for dinner…”
As they began arguing over dinner arrangements – we’ll have dinner, no we won’t, oh yes we will, oh no we won’t – Maryam kept throwing glances over her shoulder and finally said, “we need to find this friend of yours.”
I responded, “Why do you keep looking back? Are we being followed?” And she only pouted to say that she had no idea. I looked at Amira, who was trying to piece together Lilla and Pierre’s shared past. Maryam took out her phone and handed it to me. I still knew the number of my friend, Fawaz, from my time in Beirut. This was the only city where I’d memorized numbers, just to be on the safe side. I sent a message.
After squeezing through heavy traffic and arriving at the Hotel Cavelier in Hamra, Fawaz was already waiting for us. Pierre left us at reception and as soon as he stepped out of the hotel Maryam called for a taxi – again in Beirut dialect! Fifteen minutes later we were making our way into the mountains north of Beirut. The moment Lilla heard talk of mountains she didn’t even ask exactly where it was that we were going. For the first time she had surrendered to us on the road. She was wearing the same broad-brimmed hat she had on when she had come back from the cemetery in Alexandria. There was clearly something she wanted to forget.
Nobody wanted to know where we were going but I felt the need to explain, “Fawaz is my best friend here. He’s an academic but he’s also an old warhorse. Out of the left wing movement. But now…”
More interested in the logistics, Maryam said, “Madam, are we going to Tripoli tomorrow?”
Why the rush? Weren’t we going to try and discourage Lilla from going? Weren’t we going to stop her from killing a man? Amira must have felt the same way because she furrowed her brow and shot Maryam a quizzical look. Maryam didn’t look at us.
Lilla said, “Yes. We need to be there by evening. So when night falls…” and then clearly altering the original ending of her sentence she said, “We can go back to Beirut. And then…”
I was the only one who knew the way she really wanted to end that sentence because I had the cyanide. But now wasn’t the time to tell Maryam or Amira.
Maryam said, “Good, then our driver friend here can pick us up in the morning and take us to Tripoli.”
I took Maryam’s hand. I whispered, “What’s going on?” Placing my hand back in my lap, she closed her eyes at me as if to say, ‘It’s OK. There’s no need to worry.’ She negotiated the ride with the driver in flawless Beirut Arabic, telling him to come pick us up at noon, and that was that.
“It’s here,” I said. Fawaz was waiting for us among the fruit trees with open arms. How was I going to introduce Lilla? Amira and Maryam were easy. I decided to go with Samira, which seemed to be her known name in Beirut.
Fawaz had the large body of a middle-aged man but when he walked over it seemed his footsteps hardly hit the ground and time began flowing. His eyes were smiling. A witty remark was playing on his lips but before he came out with it you were already ready to laugh. His hands were open as if ready to gesture warmly. He had prepared a dinner which he began joyously describing in detail and told us how he had fired up the barbeque with a hair dryer.
As he led us into the garden, Lilla clasped her hands and whispered to me, “What a handsome man!”
I let out a laugh. Fawaz turned and said, “What’s up?”
I quickly cobbled together an answer, “It’s just that it’s been some time since we sat down to eat with a gentleman and we are all in a good mood.”
And so we sat down at the garden table. Before the table was even set and before anyone even had a sip of water and before all the social niceties were made, we were deep in politics and hardly breathing at all. I have no idea how we got started. Apart from Lilla we were all waving our arms about in the air – that’s all I can remember. Fire and coal crackled in the grill and maybe the fire was going out but we weren’t even watching it. We were talking about the Middle East. I asked about Beirut, or one of us surely did. We got drunk on all the talk. Maybe for half an hour, an hour. This was something like drinking the Beirut water, breathing Beirut air. Even up in the mountains it felt like we really couldn’t start breathing until we had got all this out. We spoke without stopping until Fawaz slammed his hands down on the table and said, “Let’s go.”
And we took a deep breath. He brought out marinated meat and arak. I brought out plates from the kitchen. Amira brought out thin pita bread. Maryam gathered up spices from the kitchen table. Fawaz put out fresh zahter and romaine lettuce, slowly sliced mild cream cheese and drizzled olive oil on top. He added green olives and soon the entire table was shimmering with food soaked in olive oil. It was a rundown, old table covered with a perfectly delicious display. We set that table like it was a beautiful, free verse poem.
Madam silently watched, as silent as she has never been. She must have still felt frustrated with having ended up in Beirut. She seemed to be holding her breath. We were still riding the choppy waves of the conversation with fitful starts. “But in Syria…” “and then there’s Iran… ” “But the gulf Arabs…” “But in Turkey, America, Israel…” In every sentence we calculated death tolls. Roughly, till water mingled with arak. Water poured into that carafe and magical white clouds swirled like cigarette smoke and everyone fell silent. In that moment it seemed we were witnessing the process for the first time – I suppose it’s like that every time – and silently we watched. It is a chemistry that silences the Middle East.
“But the most important thing,” said Fawaz. We assumed he had something to add to the political discussion but he went inside and came back with a pink tomato on a large white porcelain plate.
“The most important thing is this beauty which is your destiny. I have been keeping it since yesterday and now that you’re here let’s cut it in your honour.”
“What’s this, Fawaz?” I said, as we all le
aned over the tomato.
“Tomato with arak. A pink, mountain tomato. When you make a little hole here at the top and let it steep for a day in arak it becomes the world’s greatest arak aperitif. Let’s slice it and see…”
Slowly leaning over the tomato as if it might be startled and try to escape, he went on, “…or so they say. The Middle East is a place where human life isn’t valued, or so they think. It’s not true. The Middle East is a place where some are overvalued and some are not valued at all. And the thing that keeps this system in place is…”
The pink juice of the tomato spread over the plate.
“Air… that’s what keeps it moving. There’s nothing you have to do in Beirut. Because something’s always happening. Life is in full swing even when you’re doing nothing. You get dragged right into it and…”
As tomato slices fell a cloud of arak swilled onto the plate.
“And this presents you with an enchanted life. There is always something holy you can sacrifice yourself for. What a comfort! There’s no longer any need to search for meaning because there’s already so much of it on open display. There is already so much blood. And when there is blood there is always meaning. To believe this…”
The slices fell heavily onto the plate.
“It’s easier to believe in this than to believe in God. A whole generation will be swept away like this. Then another. In any event they won’t forget and they will find a cause for blood. When they find it there’s no need to find any other. There is no need for you to know anything in the Middle East.”
Slices lay on the plate and the smell of arak was in the air.
“And so it’s done,” said Fawaz, “let’s see how it turned out.”
He didn’t speak of the Middle East and nothing about the war that was closing in on his country. He only spoke of a tomato that lay in the centre of the centre of all this. Now let’s see how it turned out?
There was nothing left of the cocaine or the boat or anything about what was to come. For a moment that tomato was the centre of the world. For a moment. And the moment would have grown but Fawaz asked, “And why are you ladies here? And in the middle of a war!”
Women Who Blow on Knots Page 41
