The truth is that people from this country also don’t know much about these foreigners, who come here from a number of different countries. The few things that they do know keep them far away from the gates of the big houses. They do know, however, a lot about nature — its changes and fluctuations. They fear nature less than they fear us, the foreigners in their country. They know the ocean’s movements, the speed of the wind and the changing weather. They know the times of the high and low tides. They choose six hours when the water is low, far from the coast, and then send their goods down on quickly made ropes that are tied to short poles haphazardly planted in the white sand. There they hang their brightly dyed cloth and small wooden crafts, which are both simple and harsh, like their lives. Some of them stand, holding the colored cloth and soft handmade straw and leather shoes they’re selling. They set out displays of suitcases and hats. Rarely do they ask for money in exchange for these things. Instead they prefer gym shoes and T-shirts with advertising slogans for soft drinks printed on them. They trade their handcrafts for things made in China with pictures of Coca-Cola and Pepsi cans, or of people smiling while devouring Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s. Sometimes they ask for alcohol and tobacco.
In Kenya, I spend my time filling my head with things I’ve received from Lebanon: recently published novels and poetry collections and magazines and short stories and newspapers and studies about the war and the post-war and the Ta’if Agreement and the devastation of 1982 and the Sabra and Shatila trials and the Oslo Accords and the Iran — Iraq War and the siege of Iraq. I don’t leave Mombasa much — from time to time I fly to Nairobi just to pick up parcels and packages from Lebanon. In the beginning, I waited in Mombasa for them, for my things to be flown from Nairobi to Mombasa. But things would go missing, especially things like araq and rose water and some of the cassette tapes with Arabic songs and music, or other things Olga sent me.
In Kenya I live every day as if there were no tomorrow, or as if the future right in front of me is still waiting on something from the past. I remember all this now, Olga’s question stuck in my mind, the one she repeats on the phone, “What’s new? Have you found happiness or are you remembering it, or are you waiting for it… or are you living it?” She asks this knowing full well that happiness is something we only remember and never live: it’s pointless to ask someone whether she’s happy.
Trees die in Kenya. No, they don’t die. People die long before them. The average lifespan here is 40. As soon as I arrived I should have tried to get used to this place, to free myself of the clinging feeling of being a tourist. I carry a transistor radio around with me and go out into the garden in the early hours of morning. At this time of day, I can listen to news from Lebanon on the medium-wave broadcasts. I walk on the damp sand, carrying my radio with me. The news of the war in Lebanon reaches me as if it were a daily destiny. I listen to the news from Beirut as if it could put happiness on pause, like a stop sign. One news report after another with happiness hanging between them… the news of misery that I know too well and from which I have yet to emerge. Misery clings to my skin and my soul, inescapable and viscous. The water recedes far out into the depths of the ocean. The sudden distance of the water frightens me as much as it excites me. An ocean without water is frightening; it’s like a desert, stars in the sky lighting up its sands. I see myself, a barefoot woman, hands empty except for a small battery-powered box that brings me news from Lebanon. I walk on the white sand while the water is still out deep in the ocean. My naked feet sink into the moist sand. A warm dampness spreads from my feet to my lower back and I shudder. I’m afraid of myself and my deep desire to enter the labyrinth of the desert and the sea. But I carry on walking. I walk far from the depths of the ocean that appears as white as a face that’s deathly ill, or a guest preparing to leave. But all of a sudden the water returns, surprising me. Without warning, I discover that I’m far from the shore and I find myself right in the water, my wet nightgown clinging to my shivering body, my small radio emitting unintelligible signals.
Thus I’m returning to Beirut to sell the building and then return to Mombasa. I have spent more than eleven years traveling between Australia and Kenya, almost as long as I’ve been married to Chris. Chris was my father’s GP. He left his clinic in Australia for Kenya two months after our wedding to direct a British research association that’s working to develop a vaccine against malaria, the virus that kills so many people across this vast, poor country. I began my second immigration — from Australia to Kenya — to follow Chris.
I don’t refuse Nour’s invitation to share a taxi from the Beirut airport. “I left my little notebook on the plane!” I shriek while getting into the taxi. Nour steps back from the taxi door, saying that he’ll go back into the airport to ask about it. “Forget about it… Just forget it!” I say hopelessly, waving in his direction, gesturing at him to get into the car. As though what I’ve written in this notebook is no longer important. As though I’ve started to accept loss as natural, something I can never change. But then I remember that this notebook of observations contains everything about Joe — the last time we met, our break-up and my return to Beirut. I’ve written there about my desire for children and my perpetual failure to get pregnant. I’ve written about the boredom that almost pains me when Chris and I go to bed together. I persevered and wrote everything in Arabic. I find Arabic letters and words exciting in a strange city like Mombasa. Particularly because then I don’t worry about Chris finding my notebook some day and reading what I’ve written.
When I arrive in Beirut, I don’t go straight to the building where we used to live before we emigrated to Australia. This is the building that I’ve come back to reclaim after receiving a letter from Olga saying that the Ministry of the Displaced was offering financial compensation to internally displaced families to vacate houses they occupied during the war. I pass nearby the house in Zuqaq al-Blat but I don’t want to get closer. I tell Nour that I miss the intensity of my relationship to my house as it was. And it’s changed. Instead of visiting our two-story house that’s still occupied by displaced people, I ask the driver to take me to my grandmother Nahil’s house in the mountains. On my way up the mountain, the view of rocks and rough terrain — a land rich with images and colors — is repeated over and over. People think that this area has no vegetation. But it produces many-colored rocks and their outgrowths, fertile rocks with little, tough trees growing from them whose leaves stay green all year round.
Nahil doesn’t recognize me when she first sees me. She greets me coldly and with a whisper asks Olga about me, while covering her face with a cloth that she lifts over her lips while she asks Olga who I am. “It’s Myriam!” says Olga, who has lived with my grandmother Nahil since childhood. She embraces me and directs seemingly pointless words at Nahil, “What’s the matter with you? Did you forget your granddaughter Myriam? She’s your son Salama’s daughter!” Nahil’s face lights up when she hears my name. She lifts her head toward me and straightens herself up so that she can reach out and touch my hair. Her thin hand brushes over my hair, down my neck, and she kisses me. “Dark-skinned with big, beautiful eyes!” she says to me in a weak, broken voice. Then she smiles and repeats as she always used to that I’m still beautiful like her, even if I am built like my mother and not slender. I know that some things about me have changed. I’ve dyed my hair a deep aubergine color, I weigh seven kilos more than I did, I am fifteen years older than the last time she saw me. I’ve crossed the threshold of forty; I’ve started putting on make-up before leaving the house. But despite all this, I think that I haven’t changed that much and that everyone will still recognize me. I’m sure they’ll recognize me by my big, black eyes… that’s what I think, but perhaps I’m wrong. Does my face truly betray me? It’s true, I haven’t endured what others have… does my long absence betray me? Do I seem so strange because I don’t share this collective memory? A memory that should show in my movements, the way I walk, and my speech. Did the intensification of violence during my absence distance me this much from the people I love? Did it deprive me of all intimacy and collective memory? Does absence not merely erase the memory of the absent person, but also the memory of the person waiting for her?