I should have slipped them a copy of Giovanni’s Room or, had they been more intelligent, Corydon.
Fadia worked on him for two years before he understood that he was supposed to propose, and propose he did, asking for her hand officially from her father. Their marriage worked in its way. In time she lost her infatuation with Egyptian films, but he never did. He was kind to his family and supported them. He was amiable to me, for which I was grateful. He passed away with no one who could say a bad thing about him. At the same time, he passed away with no one outside his immediate family who could remember much about him. Most people weren’t able to recognize him from one sighting to the next; he had to constantly reintroduce himself. And then he died.
I myself can’t recall what his face looked like — the metaphorical cataracts, once more.
He was a dutiful husband who never cheated on Fadia or strayed. She, of course, did, as I had expected. What I hadn’t expected, and neither did Fadia, was the choice of whom she strayed with. She encountered Abdallah at some gathering, and apparently, as a married woman, she found his interest in her more intriguing. She claimed he seduced her while sitting next to his wife; he removed the red rose in his boutonniere, plucked it, and ever so inconspicuously allowed the petals to drop from his hand along her path as she passed him. She was his faithful mistress for twenty-three years. They were somewhat discreet in order not to hurt their families, but the whole city knew of their affair — knew of it discreetly, of course. I heard her talk about him regularly to Joumana and Marie-Thérèse up there on the landing. It is noteworthy that only Fadia’s eldest child takes after her husband. The rest of them do not take after Abdallah, but they certainly don’t look like their father, whatever he looked like.
Had it not been for Abdallah’s untimely death by sudden cardiac arrest while in an unsober condition, the lovers would probably still be together. She mourned him more than anyone in his family; she mourned him more than she did her husband, of course. After her lover’s death, she discreetly accepted condolences. She was considerate enough not to attend his funeral. However, she was inordinately pleased to hear that at the obsequies an old lady made the egregious blunder of addressing her lover’s wife as Fadia.
She was certainly pretty all those years ago, and as she shoos my mother, half brother, and sister-in-law out of the apartment, I can still see who she once was, how she was. Framed by the light crossing the threshold, Fadia’s old face seems to be dismantling, and the face I remember breaks through like a newborn chick out of its shell. I sometimes see her as impervious to time.
“Out, out!” Fadia says, even though my interloping relatives have already left the apartment. Fadia wants them out of her building. “Don’t make me call the gendarmes,” she says as they slowly lead my mother down the stairs. “I never want to see you here again. I don’t like you.”
My feet feel as if they’re swelling in their slippers, my knees unable to bear my weight. My robe hangs heavily upon my shoulders. I wonder if I can simply lock the door against Fadia, but Joumana is still in the foyer, joined now by Marie-Thérèse, both regarding me quizzically, wanting to know, looking like characters out of a bad Lebanese soap opera.
“I must sit,” I announce as I take slow steps, tread softly across the worn kilim, and retreat to my reading room. “I must sit.” As I fall back into my trusty fauteuil, I realize it’s a mistake, a grievous error. My throat constricts. I shut my eyes. I haven’t allowed anyone in this room in decades.
My breath shudders within my body’s unyielding limits, my heart seems to be walking about inside.
Joumana and Marie-Thérèse, my neighbors above and below, follow me into my sanctuary. Joumana crouches before the chair. She wants to know if I’m all right. That must have been traumatic. Am I okay? Is there anything they can do? Joumana has a strong face, with features more Slavic than Semitic, more Israeli than Lebanese, slightly rough but not unattractive, broad brow above shrewd eyes that make me uncomfortable. Do I know why my mother screamed?
No, it felt like an aberration. I can’t tell what scared my mother. I’ll never know. What was it that was unleashed from the chambers of her memory? How can I know?
Delicately and discreetly, Joumana examines my hair, then shakes her head. Does that mean she doesn’t think the blue dye is what caused the screaming? I say nothing.
A mistake, a lapse. They shouldn’t be in the room. I try to catch my breath, try to concentrate on the vase of hothouse flowers on the stand next to me: red dahlias, white delphiniums, glass vase, sweetish smell. Perishable flowers, they cost more money than I can afford, but once I saw them in the shop, I couldn’t return home without them.
Like most Lebanese, Joumana speaks rapidly, one sentence dovetailing into another, producing guttural words and phrases as if gargling with mouthwash. I prefer slow conversations where words are counted like pearls, conversations with many pauses, pauses replacing words. I prefer my visitors elsewhere. She’s looking slightly above my chair. Her eyes, the color of quince jam, reinforce her easy demeanor, her loquacity.
“I need to rest,” I say. “The air feels humid.” Pause. “I might be getting a headache.”
Joumana’s eyes suddenly dart from one side to the other, gathering information at high speed. The crow’s feet around them tighten. I shut mine in despair. “Oh my Lord,” exclaims Joumana, “what is all this?” She twirls unhurriedly in place, looking up and down. Her face lights up and glows. “What have you been hiding in here?”
“It’s only books,” I say. “Only books.”
I imagine looking at the room through a stranger’s eyes. Books everywhere, stacks and stacks, shelves and bookcases, stacks atop each shelf, I in the creaky chair that hasn’t been reupholstered since I bought it in the early sixties. I have been its only occupant; years ago its foam molded into the shape of my posterior. The accompanying ottoman holds two stacks of books that haven’t been disturbed in years, except for semiweekly dusting. How many hours have I moved around this room, from nook to nook, making sure that everything is in its proper place, every book in its proper pile, every dust mote annihilated? An unframed circular mirror — when did I put that up and why had I kept it? — hangs by a nail on the door. I’d completely forgotten about it. Every surface in the room shines with dedicated cleanliness except for the mirror, of course. I’ve trained my eyes to avoid my reflection so admirably that I forgot it was there. Helen Garner is right. The vegetable-dyed Kazakh rug with noticeable rips was once a boisterous pomegranate, but the vacuum cleaner, after hundreds of passes, has sucked the fresh life out of it. I found the tortoiseshell floor lamp during the war, lonely and abandoned, outside a building that had just been looted — the pilferers had no use for a reading lamp. I spent an entire week restoring its luster. From one of its elegant metal loops, I hang a pair of reading glasses for easy access. The vase sits on seven books, liver-spotted paperbacks of the Muallaqat; each contains one of the poems with its annotations and essays. My favorite poems, four versions of them scattered, though not haphazardly, around the room.