I love Beirut and curse the long beautiful years I’ve lived there; they started off brilliantly and ended bloody.
I love Paris and respect the long years I’ve spent here looking for what I want and not finding it.
Although I’m choosing my destiny, I don’t know if there’s really a choice between having to live like this for years, and then die, or dying now, liberated from this life.
Death will be the result either way; I’m only bringing it closer to me—it that has always insisted on living inside me.
I love you. Don’t cry. Goodbye.
. . .
Me: “Allo?”
Zumurrud: “Hello, hello!”
“Where are you?”
“On my way home.”
“Pick me up on your way so we can all meet up at your place? Zeezee and Shwikar are ready.”
“Yeah, but. . . . Okay, I’m coming.”
“Why hesitant? Are you busy? You don’t want us over so you won’t have to offer us any food? Are you cheap now?”
“No, no, of course not. . . . I was just thinking of getting some rest then meeting you guys somewhere public . . . you know, change of scenery.”
“Good idea. Where should we meet?”
“At your house! How does eight o’clock sound?”
“My house is public space now?”
“Ha ha, your house is comfy, and this way I would be hanging out somewhere outside my house.”
“Fine, my place, eight o’clock.”
“Are we going to be discussing something specific?”
“Yeah.”
“What is it?”
“Do you want to know?”
“Sure.”
“Then be at my place at eight.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
I text the time and place to Zeezee and Shwikar: We’re meeting at my place, eight o’clock.
I can imagine the pissed-off look on Zeezee’s face, who’s determined to live her young years in public locations.
I can’t imagine the look on Shwikar’s face. I can’t read her very well sometimes, and I can’t understand what she’s saying sometimes either because she uses her own personal vocabulary when speaking. Like she says “where” when she means when.
I know Zumurrud’s happy with the decision since she’s a homebody and regards time after work as a preface for sleep.
I put my cell phone down and set up my computer for the get-together.
I go to the kitchen and find nothing waiting for me. I call the store and order wine and chips.
Minutes later, the delivery guy comes and everything becomes ready.
I sit on the sofa and drown in my thoughts.
I get nervous; I get up and try to escape my thoughts.
The meeting is in an hour and I don’t want to look nervous.
I’ll read.
I grab a novel that I started reading a month ago and officially stopped reading a week ago after three weeks of avoiding it.
I check the page that I’m on: eight.
Uff . . .
Still, I’ll read it.
“The sun sets, and the color of the horizon is a defeated red, as if the sky’s cheeks are bleeding. I sit under the tall tree with branches spreading like birds everywhere, and listen to history whispering in my ears many tales of me and my distant village. History tells me of this tree that my grandfather planted the day he bought this land and saw in its stems his life forming and the memories of his people spreading and his ancestry growing. This pine tree was born before we were. And it grows with us today to tell our stories even though we don’t spend enough time in our village to feel bonded to it, but still we are. And this tree, every time my grandfather would water it, it would drink his stories. Stories of my grandfather and grandmother . . . stories of us, me the child who . . .”
Ahhhhh this is too painful!
I can feel the pain shooting from my eyeball down to my heart . . .
I surrender to a nap on my living room couch in my new house.
My old house passed away. Its electric system completely collapsed a couple of weeks ago and a bucket under the living room light has become a part of the décor in winter.
I ignored the catastrophe and stayed at Shwikar’s “temporarily” (four to five days a week) while I looked for a reasonably priced house to rent, but found none.
So the bucket became a sight I had to deal with daily.
I remained patient until the C became the least of my fears.
And then I received the fruit of my patience.
I found an apartment on Hamra Street that’s bigger than my old one and the rent is only five hundred dollars a month. My cousin Robin Hood used to live in it before he left to tour Cuba a month ago, which had always been a dream of his. There he fell in love with a charming Cuban girl and decided to marry her and settle in Havana. He called me knowing that I’m looking for an apartment and advised me to rent his. After my quick and happy approval, he called his landlords, a family whose members occupy the rest of the apartments in the building, and asked them to pass his lease down to his cousin (me) instead or until he returns. They did, so I now have a friendly apartment in Hamra.
I know that encroaching on other people’s territory is not an ambition of mine, but my current reality forced me to, so I didn’t fight back. They also promised not to raise my rent despite the crazy increase in prices that’s taken over Beirut this summer. A promise that a landlord usually wouldn’t make a new tenant, but the sectarian reasons outweighed the economic, so they made me that promise. Sectarianism was on my side this time, which made me worry about the future of Lebanon. Yeah, it worried me. I used to believe that only moneymaking trumps sectarianism in Lebanon. But in this case, the opposite happened. Or maybe this lucky family isn’t hurting for cash so they comfortably choose to provide sectarianism with space to grow within their home.
The result: a five-hundred-dollar profit. My job in the public library lets me translate French and English texts into Arabic in my
