. . .
I book a plane ticket to Cairo. I leave Beirut in a week. I’m going to keep away from Beirut for a little bit so that I might come back rejuvenated—and hopefully that will result in a happy ending to my novel.
Days pass and it’s now the day before my flight, so my friends and I decide to meet in the evening on the terrace of the Le Rouge restaurant for a drink on the occasion of my departure.
No matter how short my trips that I take are there’s always a farewell party before I leave. And no matter how close my flight date is they always find time for a party.
And because we hang out almost every night, going out for a special occasion is always a welcome change. It’s a legitimate obligation, which, if we don’t fulfill, means having to provide numerous and extensive apologies to the people involved.
I like this rule, anyway, and I don’t want it to ever change. If it were not for such habits, our nightly routine would be in danger of extinction.
It’s one in the afternoon now.
Knock knock knock.
Ring ring ring.
Door knocking, doorbell ringing.
Am I imagining all this?
Knock knock knock.
Ring ring ring.
What’s going on? An attack?
Oh, it’s Komodo.
But she has a key to my apartment—why would she be knocking? I head toward the door, fuming. I’m going to explode in her face!
I open the door and find her smiling: “Soooo? You still here? What? You don’t go to Egypt no more?”
“Why didn’t you let yourself in?”
“I think maybe you’re home. I walk in on you just like that?”
I suppress my frustration. I thank her for respecting my privacy and lead her inside.
She chats with me before she starts cleaning and before I get a chance to run out of the house.
I thought that Koko’s story had ended already, but apparently it hasn’t yet. I should open the last chapter of her story again. After all, it’s very difficult to end a story.
So, Koko bought a new cell phone, newer than her old one so she can now download music on it.
I don’t ask to listen to any of her music but she quickly shoves her phone in my face and begins to scroll down looking for the right song to grace my ears with, so I feel obligated to listen and pretend to enjoy myself.
She finds the song she’s looking for and sticks her arm out at me with her phone in her hand. I tell her that I feel awkward having to listen to the song with her holding the phone out at my face like that. She makes fun of my limited knowledge: “It’s video clip!” I grab the phone and look at the small screen.
The song begins to play and I recognize it immediately. It’s the same as a Lebanese song with a stolen melody from an Indian song.
She laughs at how appalled I am at the obvious theft of the complete song. She tells me that many Lebanese and Arabic songs were copied from original Indian tracks. She says that the problem is that, here, we don’t listen to Indian songs because we don’t understand their language.
“You speak Indian in Sri Lanka?”
“Of course!”
I turn back to the video upset with Koko, the self-proclaimed know-it-all who thinks that everything she doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing. She’s satisfied with herself as she is. And I suspect that sometimes she answers affirmatively so she won’t have to admit that she doesn’t know something. And if she can’t come up with a response, she makes fun of the question and dodges it, which gets on my nerves—so she returns to the topic, only pretending to listen to me explain the answer because she doesn’t want me to get upset, not because she really wants to know the answer. Grrr. And the worst part is that I have to give her the answer to the question, because if I don’t, she’ll think I’m still upset and she won’t stop talking about it all day.
I bring my thoughts back to where my eyes are, on the video. I see a modern image of a guy and a girl in hip clothing singing a duet, each in a different location. The video is Hollywood-ish, like it’s trying its best to stay away from Bollywood. The scenes resemble the Arab pictures we take here.
But, to my delight, the Indian flair jumps back into the image with one headshake: the pretty girl moves her neck to the right, lifts her chin then lowers it in fast subsequent moves with her mouth slightly open, letting out her high and vibrating Indian voice. I look up, knowing that Koko is watching my every move. I imitate the girl’s dance in the video with less flexibility and skill, but with equal commitment shown in my closed eyes. I hear Koko laughing and laugh with her. She laughs harder and I keep up my imitation. The girl’s voice gets too loud and my head starts to hurt, so I hand the phone back to Koko, congratulate her on her new phone and prepare to leave the room.
Has her husband come back yet? No, not yet. Why? For the same old reasons, reasons she doesn’t want to go into. And instead of offering an explanation, she lets out an incomprehensible sound, speaking her words through her eyes and moving her hands around trying to indicate how things are going. I get overwhelmed with the amount of information she is throwing at me and stand there with my mouth open. She laughs, then says seriously: “If you have dollar, give me, I give you Lebanese money.”
I reach inside my purse and take out my heavy wallet, only to find thirty dollars in it. I take out the money and hand it to Koko. She yells: “No! A hundred, I want a hundred dollars!”
Oh, excuse me! I’m an idiot for not knowing that. But I’m getting ready to travel and
