We make sure he’s busy shaping international public opinion.
Then we improvise. We head in the opposite direction.
We walk uphill. Ice cream on the sidewalk. Silence. A little talk, a lot of talk, noise, then silence again. As though noise is a betrayal of the tranquility of the dead and the suffering of the living.
We feel a sudden and great respect for life, and the loss of it.
Silence.
Relapse: Shwikar cries.
Her tears make jokes spill from our mouths, make our hearts race. We won’t have tears of sadness. If one of us falls apart, we all will. And we can’t fall apart after an explosion; we can’t surrender to fear because any car around us could be a bomb.
Yeah. Any car around us could be a bomb.
Every day, I walk by cars that I suspect are bombs and imagine them killing me. I imagine myself in pieces, just like on television. A hand here, a leg there: pieces so disfigured that it becomes difficult to determine which part of my body they are.
I stay away from suspicious-looking cars sometimes, but at other times, I walk right by them to face my fear and guarantee that in case they do explode, I would die instantly. I would die a sudden and complete death.
Vehicle suspects include: a rental with a green license plate, a cab with a red license plate, a registered car, a car with the lights left on, an old broken-down car, a suspiciously ordinary car, a car with an open window, a dusty and abandoned car, a BMW, a Renault, a red, green, or fuchsia car, one with two doors, with four doors, with a religious bumper sticker, a weird looking car, fast, slow, dark, bright . . .
On the evening of the explosion that went off near my building, my friend Georgios told me that, on his way into a café next to the blast, he had noticed a suspicious-looking car. It turned out to be the one that exploded when the minister’s car passed by. What did it look like? Georgios said that it was very old and neglected, and had angry graffiti on it, things teenagers would write, phrases that carried threats and promises.
What does someone write on a car before sending it out to be blown up, to kill?
“If you can read this, you’re dead”?
“Lost your cat? Look under my tires”?
No, not this sort of thing. Georgios said that the sayings on the car were hateful, but that he didn’t remember what they were exactly.
“Die, Christian scum”?
“I’ll feed your eyeballs to my cat and make your teeth into a necklace for my wife”?
Possibly.
That would get the point across.
Oh look, the sun’s down and there’s a car whose owner forgot to turn the headlights off.
“Should I smash the headlight?”
Zeezee laughs.
“I’m serious, Zeezee. I did it before when I was a kid.”
During the civil war, we used to drive my father’s car around the unlit streets of the poorer neighborhoods to recharge its battery, which we used to power the house at night: one neon lightbulb and a small black-and-white television.
One morning back then, on my way to school, I saw a car whose owner had forgotten to turn the headlights off, so I broke them with a rock.
The nun at school got very mad at me because the car was parked at the school gate.
She was going to punish me, so I explained to her my good intentions: “The poor owner! His family wouldn’t have been able to power his house tonight because the battery was run down during the day, so I broke the headlights to keep them from using up the battery! Oui, sister.”
The nun reluctantly let me go after I apologized.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the French say.
I won’t break any headlights today—the civil war is over and its rules no longer apply. Not to me, anyway. The war is over but the memories of it surface, quickly and often, with every explosion. Memories? No, this past is a reality falling upon the present, equal to it, one with it.
On this evening, day has melted into night.
As if the anxious day has turned into an anxious night on sedatives.
Thin white clouds cross the sky. Emptiness fills our minds and makes an echo out of every sound. As if we were given some distance allowing us to run away from our responsibilities in this world. We’re no longer flesh and blood and soul and breath, we no longer carry these responsibilities. We are closer to shadows.
Or an incomplete amoeba, like the ones we read about in our philosophy books. “Do you feel like an amoeba?” I ask Zumurrud.
“Pardon?”
“Zumurrud, do you remember what an amoeba is? We studied it in philosophy class. It’s every substance once it exists but before it takes a clear functional form.”
“Amoeba?!”
Zeezee interrupts: “Amoeba shmeeba.”
I lose my temper because of her joke. I was trying to have a deep philosophical conversation. I clutch my throat trying to choke the defensive scream that’s making its way to my mouth. And like the oppressed, I stay silent.
Here, at the tip of Hamra Street, stands a bar that manages to merge local and international flair. It’s a regular bar, but classy, like a friend who has earned your respect. I like that quality in a bar, now that I’m past my teenage years and the anxiety of my twenties. I no longer need to be greeted by people left and right, or freak out when we see each other, none of this “Oh. My. Gosh!” stuff.
I’m more self-possessed now.
I can greet them without falling out of my chair from excitement. And the waiter can act friendly without helping me into my car later that night and waking up in my bed the next morning.
The bar is spacious and gives off an air of generosity. The tables are spread out nicely, neighboring each other, close, but
