The ticktock tattooing of the march of time.
The ticktock of the tiny object full of gears suffocating all existence, wringing life out of life.
After that wonderful discovery, the clock’s hands still turned in the same direction — it’s called clockwise, for all you youngsters — time still marched forward, but miraculously, its heartbeat, its ominous announcement, was reduced to a meek buzz.
Hannah was being truthful when she told her sister-in-law that there was no need for forgiveness. She didn’t hold the incident against her. It was inconsequential, Hannah believed, a minor faux pas. It wasn’t as if the insult was intended. Maryam felt so guilty that she tried to appease Hannah. As a matter of fact, the two women lived harmoniously in the same household until Hannah died, and to this day Maryam is the one who brings fresh flowers to Hannah’s gravesite every week, placing them exactly two hands’ width in front of the tombstone.
The writing in the journals changed, though. For a while after the incident the sentences shrank. The entries grew terse and irritated — jerky, jittery jottings, even when she wrote about the meals she had.
Toward the second half of 1944, with her nascent and hopeful nation living through its first year of independence, Hannah decided that she would not remain at home all the time.
What could a young middle-class woman of her day do? One who was educated, fluent in two languages, Arabic and French, and “how do you do?” familiar with a third, English? One who had loved and excelled in philosophy in high school?
Not much.
To begin with, her father, as was to be expected, was opposed to his daughter working, opposed to her generating any kind of income. He was a good man. She adored him. His obstructionism was of its time.
She talked to him, pleaded and persuaded, until he relented on his first objection but not on his second. He gave her permission to work, but not to generate income. No girl of his was going to be allowed to ruin her reputation. She could help him at his grocery store. Hannah was ecstatic.
She began on a Monday morning and for three days she wrote of how much she enjoyed working. She did everything, from stacking to cleaning to helping customers to handling money. Her diary entries were longer, more florid, more detailed, and joyous. Her father was doubly ecstatic, for not only was he able to make his beloved daughter happy, but he began to notice that the women of the neighborhood were staying longer in the store and buying more. His daughter wasn’t the most talkative of people, but women certainly talked to her more than they did to him or to his two sons who shared the work. Hannah was beginning to shed her shy skin. For a brief time she was the belle of the grocery store.
Three days, the perfection lasted three days. On Wednesday evening, at dinner, listening to her husband laud Hannah’s salutary presence at the grocery store, Hannah’s mother wondered if she too could help. After all, her children were grown, her household duties had long ago shrunk. Why not? All thought it was a grand idea, even the sons, and it most certainly was.
Father, mother, and child opened the store on Thursday morning. They worked together happily, and the business did well. It was a small store, though, and there wasn’t enough work to go around. They shared, and since the income wasn’t divided any differently, they managed. Everyone seemed content, though the situation was not as perfect as it had been in the first three days since she had less to do.
But as Hannah, a devout Muslim if there ever was one, always said, “God does provide.”
One day about two weeks into her foray at the store, Hannah was standing around with nothing to do when a customer suggested that she volunteer her time where she would be most needed, the local hospital. Hannah thought it was a grand idea, her mother thought it was a grand idea, her father consented. For the next two months, until the day she met the lieutenant, Hannah was a hospital volunteer who never took any time off and worked as many hours as she was allowed.
Where would a hospital place a young middle-class woman who was educated, who was fluent in two languages and familiar with a third, who had loved and excelled in philosophy at school?
In the cafeteria, of course, serving food. Would you like a gloomy Wittgenstein with your rice, or a bitter Schopenhauer? A cup of Hegelian metaphors, perhaps?
Wearing a yellow front-buttoned uniform, a hairnet, a white bobby-pinned paper cap, beige tights, and low white patent leather heels, she waited for the doctors, nurses, and visitors to decide which of the stews they wished to eat that day before she ladled the choice onto a plate. Potato stew, plop, gone, next, cauliflower stew, plop, gone, next, lima beans, plop, gone, next, three hours a day. No one paid any attention to her.
She loved it.
Although by then her childish hunger had been somewhat sated, she also still loved to eat. She didn’t write about it in her diary, but I can guarantee you that she partook more than just a little from every course she served. There we had an eater at an eatery.
She was happy, her mother was happy, her father was happy.
In the morning she put on her uniform — a uniform radiant with a supernatural cleanliness — went to work, and returned home after lunch still in that yellow getup.
How did she get to and from work? Therein lies the story.
Beirut at the time had a modest tram system, which of course disappeared when the city decided to modernize itself in the sixties and seventies. One line used to stop only two buildings away from her hospital. Unfortunately for Hannah, the line didn’t reach her house. She would have had to walk for ten minutes to reach the tram stop, something she wouldn’t do because she was much too self-conscious of her limp.
Beirut has another system for transporting its residents, a nonpublic one that has been around as long as the automobile. Beirutis call it a service (pronounced as in French, not English). It is an organic jitney system. Customers stand at the side of the road, service cars slow down as they approach, the customer tells the driver where he wishes to go, and the driver decides whether to pick him up. For one cheap fare, you can go anywhere in the city as long as it’s along the driver’s route. Most cars can fit five passengers, two in front next to the driver, three in back.
In 1944 anyone with a car could pick up passengers, but sometime in the fifties you had to get a special license plate, a red one, to be able to do so.
In 1944 no respectable woman used a service. You had no idea who would share the car with you, or, worse, whether the driver would say something inappropriate. A respectable woman avoided a service. Hannah didn’t.
The choice between being seen walking or being seen taking a service was a straightforward one. She always chose the latter, but she paid a double fare so she wouldn’t have to sit next to a stranger. She wouldn’t sit in front next to the driver. She sat in back and bought two places so that only one person could share the seat with her and would sit at the other window. She considered this a chaste and appropriate solution.
Her system worked. For two months she didn’t have a single problem, not one. She girded herself against snide or salacious remarks from one of the drivers or passengers, but none was forthcoming. Beirutis, it seemed, were gentlemen, at least around her. She thought the crisp yellow hospital uniform and particularly the paper cap had a lot to do with the respect she received. Every morning she left home and waited briefly on the curb for the appropriate service. She wouldn’t take a car that had more than one passenger in back. She arrived at the hospital not twenty minutes later. It was easy.