History repeats itself. Is this because of the nature of the place? Is it because of the terraces that are peculiar to the land here? Our history comes like our land… cut off, broken, incomplete, re-making itself in repetitive rows. Is this because our cities die and can’t find anyone to bury them? Why here, in this particular spot in the world, is violence reborn hundreds of times?
Here, in the midst of friends, conversations, shouting, then silence, I imagine that I’m playing out my losses. This is all I have in Beirut.
Rima, who’s getting ready to open a restaurant downtown, starts talking to Intisar, saying that the war’s over. I pay little attention. Words derive their credibility from the person who utters them; they have no power outside this. They become merely voices, like wind echoing in the forest. A relative of Rima’s who’s come back from the Gulf rented a recently renovated old building in order to open a chain of restaurants and has put Rima in charge of managing one of them. Wonderful! Intisar pronounces.
Everything happens here as though life is normal, though there are still roadblocks and checkpoints in many places. People in Beirut do whatever they please, but in order to stomach this, they eat nostalgia with a fork and knife and then broadcast the leftovers through the media. Old Beirut is transforming into rubble with skyscrapers on top of it, with restaurants, amusement parks and religious buildings. Wafaa bends toward me as though she wants to share some kind of secret, saying that she — like me — doesn’t understand what’s going on. “I keep trying to understand what’s going on, and it’s torture,” she says.
“Checkpoints are still all over the place, nothing’s right. It still isn’t calm but — they say the war’s over! I don’t understand, that’s why I’m doing yoga,” Wafaa says, bitterly sarcastic. When I say I’d like to try a yoga class with her, we arrange to go together in the coming week.
“Don’t try to understand, concentrate on your yoga lessons, dear, that’s better!” Unfortunately, Intisar has overheard her and chimes in passive-aggressively. She goes on, “You too?! As if it’s not bad enough with Myriam! But Myriam’s been out of the country… You, what’s your excuse for not understanding? You can’t link two things together… roadblocks and sandbags are still there… what does this mean? Do you want to say that things haven’t calmed down yet, but the war’s over? OK. Just accept that this is what happens here: the war stops, tourists come back, and the sandbags are still there at the checkpoints!”
Intisar raises her voice, then calms back down, “Maybe it’s better to see every event independently from the one before it. One event has nothing to do with the next. Then we can deal better with what’s happening. It’s easier, less painful.”
“Yellah, my wife’s scene is over,” Malek says theatrically, announcing the end of Intisar’s speech. “Yes, the scene’s over, but I haven’t finished yet!” Intisar answers, directing her statement at me. Despite their differences, when Intisar speaks she reminds me of Seetajeet, my psychotherapist in Mombasa. Maybe because they’re similar in their confidence that what they’re saying is the absolute truth: a truth which, for me, is never stable or at all self-evident.
The war’s stopped and there are still piles of sandbags. I must accept this; I must stop trying to understand. I’ll learn how, I tell myself. There’s no doubt that it would be very hard to follow the progression of events from the outside, from far away, seeing each event as independent and having no past, no relationship to what came before. But it’s not impossible. It’s inconsistent with the concept of history, but it’s good to try, even if only once in my whole life! “We don’t have choices here. We only have one thing, that’s it, forgetting!” Wafaa says as I put out my last cigarette in the already full ashtray.
But what about those people who fought the war… who killed and kidnapped and mutilated bodies… Where are they? And where are their victims?
The waiter comes with a pot of tea and plates filled with manaqeesh, labneh and vegetables. Instisar calls out to him to come back and asks for “country-style” olive oil, as she calls it. “Country-style olive oil, please, from the Koura… Yes!” Then she turns to me saying, “The difference between you and us dear is that we lived devastation daily. It’s over … we’ve gotten used to it. Soon you’ll get used to everything, believe me.” She says this while cutting pieces from the big tomato and distributing them to everyone seated around the table. Then she turns toward Wafaa and asks her about her husband’s health, because she’d hinted at a setback he suffered after emergency heart surgery.
“Are you back in Lebanon for good?” Wafaa asks me. Her question takes me by surprise and I don’t know how to answer. I shake my head left and right, to indicate I don’t know yet. Afterward I remain silent. She follows up, “Look for somewhere else, you won’t be able to live here. Life here is disgusting, as you can see. The country’s divided between killers and killers. We’re only hostages, it’s just disgusting!”
As Wafaa says these final words, she tilts her head toward Intisar, indicating a secret link between Intisar’s words and what’s disgusting. Or perhaps simply between what’s disgusting and Intisar herself. There was always tension between Intisar and Wafaa, from our university days until now. Perhaps this can be traced back to the secret, short-lived relationship between Intisar and Wafaa’s married brother. When Wafaa found out, it was a major catastrophe. Once Wafaa had invited Intisar home. By chance, she’d introduced her to her brother and what happened, happened. Intisar started skipping meetings and appointments with her girl friends. For Wafaa this was tantamount to treason.
Malek is still exactly how he always was. He talks about big dreams, as distant as a rainbow, as Intisar says. He confuses me. I never know when he’s joking and when he’s serious. He’s always sitting on the fence: he defends the resistance and at the same time says Lebanon must remain a unique country within the larger Arab region.
In the past, he used to sometimes say that the Palestinians destroyed the country. But he also says that they’re the last resistance movement in the world and we must support their revolution. He likes to talk about his hope that we can fix the country, get rid of sectarianism, and other big dreams that won’t work for a country like Lebanon. We start talking about the importance of the role of the Shi‘a as an avant-garde sect to create an alternative culture in the country.
“Stick to your dreams and you’ll change the world for sure!” Intisar says without looking at him, as though he were incurable, a hopeless case.