“What… now it’s forbidden to dream, too?!” Malek shouts. “I thought that dreams could change the world, but they always end in dictatorships. We still have to dream, though!”
“What’s important is that we talk about something practical,” Intisar says.
“You want something practical?” Malek asks, “What are we doing to stop killing each other? Please respond. This is an example of a practical question.”
“We must learn to manage our civil wars,” I answer sarcastically. “We need to create a state-run general directorate called the Department of Civil War Management, a department for the public good.”
“Indeed, that would be a department for the public good,” Rima comments.
How much more hopeful can you get? Bloody fighting is a way of life here. It’s a kind of consumption, like alcohol, smoking, pop music and advertising on TV. There’s civil war and then there’s Gemmayzeh… and Downtown, Monot Street, Hamra, Jounieh, Maameltein and Ras Beirut… There’s everything. Things that never meet and that have nothing to do with each other. But although they never meet, they feed off of each other, I think.
I leave the Rawda café and walk toward the hill leading up from the Hammam al-Askari. I leave my friends — the long conversations and shouting and unending disagreements going nowhere — behind me. The sun starts to set slowly into the sea, bidding me farewell as I walk up toward the AUB neighborhood. Motorbikes crisscross the streets, behind me, in front of me, and right near me, roaring like wild animals.
Suddenly one comes up right behind me, flying fast into and then over a stopped car and falling hard to the ground. Its driver lands on top of it. His body falls to the ground and his bike is turned upside down, its motor still running. The driver of a second motorbike starts shouting right in my face, stopping his bike to say that I’m the reason for this accident. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been walking in the middle of the street. He says that the driver tried to avoid crashing into me and so instead crashed into the car stopped in front of him. People gather as the wounded driver stands up and shakes off the dust and dirt from his clothes, paying no attention to the blood streaming from his head. He looks at me as though I’m a criminal who’s gotten off easily, and curses and swears. Much of his cursing is directed at my mother.
I go back to my flat on Makhoul Street at sunset. I know that another day’s passed in God’s world and that this country will see more days live and die. The god who lives on top of the world can no longer hear, so when our screams reach him they’re nothing more than feeble musical notes.
I’m here all alone after the difficult meeting with friends from my past. How can I adapt to this Beirut — the new-old Beirut which hasn’t changed, but which I no longer know? Beirut hasn’t changed, but it has lost its soul.
I fall asleep and then wake feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all. For many years I’ve only been able to sleep for one cycle. They say that a person can’t wake up energized and face the day peacefully if she hasn’t slept for two full cycles, that is to say eight hours. I sleep one cycle. When I wake up, I think that I should go back to sleep but I can’t. My mind is racing with a list of things that I have to do.
My continual exhaustion accompanies me as I start my day. The difference is that now I’m used to these feelings, as if exhaustion is part of me, not something unexpected that I have to get rid of. It’s natural to pass my days with red-rimmed eyes. Sleeping more than four hours a night is unnatural for me. The pain in my legs and feet is part of my exhaustion.
I have come to believe that pain is a condition of existence for certain bodies. To live in our bodies means to experience pain. I’ve also started to believe that feelings are like this too — always mixed with pain, with bodily suffering. But I can’t stay relaxed with the first threads of dawn. I hear the ticking of the clock that hangs on the wall of the furnished apartment I’m renting and which I think of getting rid of every day.
I get out of bed and go to the balcony that faces AUB. In the past, I used to listen to the ringing of the clock on College Hall, before the building was intentionally destroyed by an attack a few years ago. I no longer see the tower between the walls of the buildings in front of me. Almost nothing remains of the memory of the three years I spent at this university. Despite this, my heart remains open.
The light that creeps in from behind the sky doesn’t lift the thin veil of darkness from the face of the earth. Indeed this light makes me more fearful — the muscles of my face and body tense. I try to go back to sleep but I can’t. Faces of everyone I’ve seen since I’ve been back run through my mind. Full lips, youthful faces, tight skin, sleeplessness, drinks, eyes extinguished and desperately sad.
I can’t sleep, but nonetheless I go outside to contemplate the sunrise at dawn. I haven’t witnessed the birth of Beirut’s sun for a long time.
I return to Beirut feeling like I’ve endured my forced exile like I endure hiccups — hiccups that are constantly with me and have become part of my life.
I leave my apartment and head up to Hamra Street. I’m there before the shop owners who haven’t yet started their days. Hamra Street has changed. Even the women walking down it have changed. Their legs are still hidden inside black stockings, though it’s the height of spring. Can they really not feel the weather? Or does death inhabit the women of Beirut, wrapping itself up in black clothes?
In the first part of the yoga class I have to get used to concentrating on my extremities. I begin by concentrating on the tip of my nose, so I close my eyes and start to relax. I can’t relax while concentrating at the same time. I discover that it’s easiest to concentrate on the furthest point of my extremities.
I concentrate on the big toe of my right foot. Without meaning to, I move to my left. I think, I relax, I stop thinking. I breathe air into my lungs and keep it inside as long as possible. I feel the oxygen penetrating my veins with profound difficulty, as though cement walls impede its path. Little twinges grip me whenever the air penetrates more deeply. As though these twinges are the result of the edges of my soul crashing against my body on the inside. I can’t do any more.
I leave the yoga class and walk from Hamra Street to Dr. Adam’s clinic, the doctor who performed my abortion in the fall of 1979. His clinic is closed. I ask about him and they tell me that he was killed during the last years of the war.
I lost my child long ago. I was twenty-one and Georges was about the same age, or rather he was five years older but I never used to feel our age difference. I discovered my body with him and, although he had some experience, he discovered his masculinity with me. We discovered our bodies and our desires completely, once… twice … three times.
A year into our relationship, I found out I was pregnant and that I had to get rid of the pregnancy. He took me to a doctor, who he said was a relative of his. A well-known doctor who had a big private clinic in Ras Beirut. The doctor was handsome, though to me his good looks seemed too perfect and somehow suspicious. Two days later, I returned to the clinic alone and stayed there for a day and a night. I left in the morning, alone, since Georges didn’t come to pick me up.
I left alone, while the cells of my baby, who never became a fact, stayed in a big bin in the operating room. I didn’t ask anything: I never saw the doctor again. But from the moment I left, I decided to keep my distance from the man who had shared the discovery of my body, who shared my pleasure. He didn’t come to the clinic with me and didn’t come to pick me up when I left. At that moment, it was like I was the only one who was guilty. He was simply not there. He didn’t lie down on the cold bed, his arm wasn’t pricked by the needle, and the old spinster nurse didn’t look at him with cold, glassy eyes and ask him, contemptuously and with open hatred, if his family knew about this. This wasn’t his experience; it’s my experience alone. He didn’t share it with me at all, ever. I decided to distance myself from him, but this isn’t exactly what happened. I could only keep him out of my life for a short period. Then I went back to waiting for him and loving him.