Why did I come back? I ask, blaming myself and cursing the employee. Why am I here? I could’ve assigned my power of attorney to Olga or someone else. But they’d asked for my father to come in person because someone wants to buy the building and tear it down to build a big new one in its place. This building will overlook Beirut’s downtown, destroyed by the war, which a private company is now undertaking to rebuild. My father is lost in his insanity, however, and it took days to prepare him for our visit to the notary in Adelaide where he could sign over his power of attorney to me so I could take care of this.
When I first arrived in Beirut, I didn’t see anyone. There were only Nour’s visits, which have increased until they’re pretty much every day. The apartment I’ve rented is small, lost at the end of a corridor on the second floor of a neglected building near the American university. When there’s a knock on the door, I can’t imagine who would visit me today. It’s Nour. He hugs me as though he’s known me for a long time. I’m happy that I’ve met him, it’s as if he’d been waiting for me here. This man comes as a surprise to me. His visits are what I needed to connect to Beirut — meeting a man who has also come back to search for a lost connection.
We leave my apartment and walk toward the sea; the autumn chill is mild. Nour draws close to me and puts his arm around my shoulder for a quick moment, then pulls away. It’s as though he wants to say something but has changed his mind, or perhaps suddenly feels that he’s hurrying something by showing his emotions. I feel at once anxious and slightly hopeful. I want him to leave his hand on my shoulder and tell me, without thinking, what he’s feeling.
Autumn in Beirut is strange. The day begins with promising sunshine, a sky that makes your eyes tear up because it’s so clear and blue. Clouds spread out around the edges of the sky like a picture frame; it’s strange how Beirut’s autumn changes its colors so quickly. The sky’s frame widens and slowly sweeps away what was inside it. Then clouds cover the sky; without notice they change from white to translucent gray, accumulating and growing darker. The wind picks up suddenly as though it had been concealed beneath the roots of the city’s few remaining trees. It starts from the earth and rushes upward. Docile Sunday Beirut. Someone who’s seen this wouldn’t believe that sleeping Beirut could wake up each morning and produce such violence from within its walls. Every day, it spreads out its violence in the broad daylight, like women laying out an entire season’s clothes under the sun’s rays. Sunday is Beirut’s day off. It’s as if violence has a day off too, as if its buildings are taking a break from the voices that breach their yellowing walls. Sunday mornings are silent except for the distant sounds of soulless church bells, turned on with the push of a button. These sounds are met, not too far away, by the prayers of muezzins. The city is sleeping today and so is the sea. I’m reconciling with Beirut today. Beirut has changed. It’s another city. I only feel intimate with it on Sundays. That’s when my city returns to being itself.
On Monday, Nour comes to take me out to dinner. He makes me laugh when he tells me that he’s missed me since yesterday, that I’ve become his only connection to Beirut. I imagine that Beirut would be lonely for someone like him who doesn’t have old friends or family here. Our dinner changes from an ordinary event into an interview. He tells me that he’s writing about Lebanese who’ve returned after the war and wants to interview me. I can’t find anything to tell him. It’s as if I’ve lost the ability to speak, especially after he comments on my silence and I see him taking out his notebook to transcribe some of the words I’ve used to describe my return to Beirut.
Nour and I have to see each other every day so that he can finish what he was telling me. Most of the time we meet in his little rented office, near where he lives in Ras al-Nabaa. He rents it from a dentist who gave up his practice and went to the Gulf. Last time he asked me to help him interview people who don’t know English. It doesn’t frustrate me to spend these long periods of time with him. We’ve even started working late at night. As soon as I enter the office, he pulls a leather chair over next to his, and makes tea. He’s started telling me about his private life, intimate things — I’ve never heard such intimate things about a man before. I’ve never heard such things because other men haven’t meant anything to me; words can’t be separated from their owners.
He sits next to me, only a small space between us. I think about Ines, the young woman who sometimes comes to his office to transcribe his voice recordings. She says that she’s bored, that the atmosphere in her workplace, a press office, doesn’t suit her temperament. She complains, gets up and opens the window to the left of his desk. Then she shuts it, concocting an excuse to come into his room while he brings her a chair like the one he brought me. I see her coming in as I’m going out. Like a teenage girl I wonder… how will he greet her? Will he greet her like he greets me? Will he be confused about where to look, his eyes the color of sea and sky, or let himself gaze at my face? I turn away as though I have all these questions for only a moment. A hidden power will lift me from my chair, pushing me towards him. It propels me to narrow the vast divide between us, the divide that’s not even one meter wide.
I call him at the time of our usual morning rendezvous to say we should meet somewhere near the sea instead of working in the office, because the winter sun is brilliant and beautiful today. At the café on the seaside, he takes a sip of caffe latte then suddenly spits it out. He says that he can’t drink it, it’s made from powdered milk and he wants fresh milk. The waiter doesn’t understand what Nour means. “But really, madame, it is fresh, I just mixed it with the water right now!” the waiter says over and over again, directing his words at me and shaking his head like someone unjustly accused, with no hope that I can rescue him.
We then go back to the office and stay there until evening, translating and printing the interviews. He offers to take me home; first we have to walk in the direction of his apartment so that he can get his car. It’s raining a little and we go down the long, dark staircase together under his umbrella. I’m struck by a desire to touch him, to smell his scent, but I savor this feeling from a distance. We pass by his ground-floor flat and he wants to show me his garden. A dim light shines through one of the windows facing the garden. I wonder if this light is coming from his bedroom and what his bed is like. I want to go in and look around but I just wait in front of his flat while he brings the car around.
He starts the car and I get in beside him. It begins to rain heavily. I can’t hear what he’s saying because I’m observing the way his hands move on the steering wheel and am thinking about how little space there is between our bodies. He takes the Corniche road around to Ayn Mreisseh before dropping me off at my place on Makhoul Street. The rain hits the windshield even harder and waves from the sea beat against the asphalt of the Corniche. A moment passes before he turns off the car, opens the door and gets out. He walks around the car and opens the door on my side. I thought that I said I wanted to stay here in the car and meditate on the waves, but I didn’t say anything and he couldn’t hear what I didn’t say. So I get out and look at him. He waves at me and gets back into the car. I walk around to the entrance of my building, my eyes damp with the power of an anxious desire.
Today I should present new documents to the Ministry of the Displaced. I have no desire to go so I call Nour and go out to meet him at his office. I walk a long way on foot before finding a taxi, so I arrive late. It isn’t easy to find a servees taxi to take me from Bliss Street to Ras al-Nabaa. I have to get out at Bishara al-Khoury Street and walk. He’s buried in work at his computer. I ask him if we can go out because I’ve started to feel suffocated. He leaves everything and goes with me, leaving his computer on. Before locking the door, he asks me if it’s cold outside. I tell him that he’s wearing more than enough clothes. He replies, I wonder if I should bring a scarf. I tell him that I once heard him say that he doesn’t like the cold, and so he should bring it. He smiles and brings it with him. I like his simplicity. I like his spontaneity. We walk to his car. He once again talks about his work, his interviews, his family, his feeling of exile and uprootedness, his house that he carries on his back like a turtle. The weather is cold and the wind pushes us forward. I enjoy the cold. He gets out of the car near the lighthouse and I suggest that we walk a little here then go and drink tea or coffee at Rawda café. I’ve always liked that café. Before I left Beirut, I spent a whole winter there in the glassed-in room writing something about the life of others, which is my life. I write and only Olga reads my writing.