I ask Koko: “Why is all your news so major?”
“What do you mean?”
“I bought mom a house, I sponsored my aunt, I paid Prasanna twenty-five hundred dollars, etc. Why don’t you ever tell me a piece of news that doesn’t exceed a hundred dollars? Like, that you bought a pair of jeans, or blood pressure medicine . . .”
She interrupts me with that voice of hers: “It’s not my fault! It’s just the kind of thing that happens to me, isn’t it?”
Right away, I agree: “True.”
I ask her about kids and if she’s planning to have any when her husband gets here.
“Sure,” she answers me. I ask her if she has looked into any daycares, and she says that daycares are available here but that she’s considering taking the baby with her to her freelancing jobs. “No problem with that! Correct?”
“Right.”
I really like the idea of her having her baby here in Lebanon. It’s unusual.
I ask her what she would do about school later. Are there any schools in Lebanon that teach Sri Lankan?
She says that as far as she knows there are no schools here that teach her mother tongue: “Teach English, teach French, no Arabic. What good is that? Correct?”
“Right.”
“He can talk like me. People understand enough. Correct?”
“Yeah, but will you teach him Sri Lankan?”
“Of course.”
When her kid’s old enough to go to school, she’s thinking of going with her husband and child back to Sri Lanka because “it’s not right for son to go to school without mom and dad next to him, correct?” I didn’t respond (which is rare). I considered her question for a minute instead (also rare!) and she said that five years from now, when her baby—who hasn’t been conceived yet—is old enough to go to school, she would’ve saved up enough money to go back to Sri Lanka.
She goes quiet for a minute, then says: “Yeah, I save dollars and buy bus!”
“A bus?!”
“Yeah, what? A bus! I work on road and keep money! For work, I mean. You no heard of bus before? You don’t know what bus means? Poor girl!”
I laugh. She gets upset. I laugh harder. She gets more upset. She tries to figure out why I’m laughing and I tell her that I thought she was planning on buying a bus here in Lebanon. She laughs in return and says that a Lebanese can’t afford to buy a bus in Lebanon, so how can she? I agree with her and tell her of the Lebanese guy who died from a gunshot last year when two bus drivers from two rival companies opened fire on each other. So, Koko’s going to buy a bus in Sri Lanka, or maybe open her own restaurant? I remind her of the plan she had of opening her own restaurant. She resentfully tells me that the restaurant is her husband’s idea but the bus is hers. I don’t answer and instead watch the growing concern on her face.
“Koko, why do I feel that you’re worried about Prasanna coming here?”
“No! Me scared? Why? He scary? No! I am clear to him, I make everything clear to him, and he is free and I am free. I mean I am comfortable like this. He no need to come here. Why he come here? Because he is man and I am woman. I am comfortable like this. I live alone, like you, and you know what’s nice? I got used to here. I like here. But he is man, so if I don’t go to him and he no come to me . . .” She makes a strange noise that sounds something like “bkhffshhh,” then she raises her hands in earnest and aims each at the different end of the room indicating a separation or break up. Then she goes back to using words. “There are many girls there, why he wait for me? I am comfortable like this, I swear. But that’s fine, he come, he really wants to come, yeah, but I agree with him: he is free and I am free. He no tell me where I go and what I do. I am comfortable like this.”
“Is he going to move into the apartment you’re living in now?”
“My landlord wants no man with me. I will talk to him, if he say no, fine then, no. No problem, I will look for another apartment. Any problem?”
“No problem.”
“Yeah, no problem. Correct?”
Koko is very authoritative. She only lived with her husband for a month, and it was full of interruptions. They never spent much time together during that month because they were busy planning for the wedding and had parties to go to and clothes to pick out, pictures to pose for and dinners to attend. So they would meet, then separate. So, will their relationship survive the wave of divorce sweeping all societies? Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. What’s important is to give the relationship a shot.
Koko is too strict, and here she is interrupting my train of thought.
She gives me a hard time for not cleaning my apartment and says that she does most of the cleaning herself. I tell her that I don’t get paid to clean, while she does. I escape as she’s thinking of another reason to yell at me; I pack up my laptop and leave.
Uff . . .
This woman has an exceptional relationship with yelling. If asked to sum her up, I would sketch a mouth letting out a scream into space.
I notice that the sketch would resemble the map of Sri Lanka, an island in the shape of a tear in the middle of the ocean.
Sri Lanka’s map is pretty.
. . .
Koko’s moving to Achrafieh in a month from now. She’s going to move into an apartment all for
