He walks down May Ziadeh Street. He’d fallen in love with the name of the street even before he was convinced to buy his apartment. It is near the hospital and close to his heart as well. It’s important to him to fall in love with the places where he lives and rests. He’s had enough of the sufferings of the hospital, the smells of disease and death. Thus, it’s important that his apartment be comfortable, that he can find the life in it that he’s been losing in the hospital.
He walks under the jasmine plants that extend over the walls of the Asseily Building. Gibran Khalil Gibran Street intersects with the street named for that other Lebanese literary figure, May Ziadeh. May and Gibran never met in real life. They only met on paper, in letters they exchanged. Gibran’s attempts to meet May weren’t good enough. They never met. His desire to meet her didn’t equal her desire to meet him. But the two streets meet. There are jasmine plants on Gibran Street too. Dr. Rashid loves jasmine; he often boasts that he lives in the only jasmine zone left in Beirut. It is also a security zone, as they have started to call closed streets around the houses of political leaders who fear for their lives. These zones strangle the people of the country a thousand times a day. They’ve transformed the movement of cars in the city into a trap out of hell, or one long nightmare. He remembers that he was reading about battles on the nearby street named for Michel Chiha, the writer and intellectual. His leftist cousin was killed there by a bullet to his abdomen. He was walking between Michel Chiha, May Ziadeh, and Gibran Khalil Gibran.
He walks and tries to analyze the reasons for his strange transformation, rationally and scientifically. He’s unable to produce a logical analysis. Was that the dream? He keeps walking, keeps thinking, saying hello to the leader’s guards and the army troops who protect the area, the militarized zone.
Everyone here knows him. “Hello, doctor,” “Greetings, doctor.” He always returns these greetings.
It has only been four days since he changed, since the young woman arrived at the hospital.
He will be late meeting Nevine. He’s no longer enthusiastic about their passion for each other. He had once nearly gone mad wanting to be near her. After he separated from his wife, he spent two years without thinking about throwing himself into another relationship. He was very cautious, fearing a drift toward another cycle of blame and reproach because of his continual absences. His time was not his own. He gave his life to time. He didn’t fight it, wasn’t able to fight it or laugh at it, because his profession was saving the lives of his patients and he wouldn’t give up on the promises he made to them.
He forgets himself between the hospitals. He faces death boldly — this he fights, courageously holding onto his sick patients’ bodies to keep them alive. He takes dangerous risks and triumphs. He gambles and wins. When he loses, he’s expended all of his efforts. He would have fought until the end and surrendered nobly. Now when he looks at his body in the mirror, he stares at his face, searching for some kind of change. He asks: What has changed? Where did this fear come from? Who injected me with this horror? He starts to be scared of confrontation, scared to confront death.
He decides to amble around on the nearby streets. He doesn’t answer Nevine’s call. The ringing continues but he doesn’t hear it. He’s lost in his footsteps. He walks forcefully, drowning in his movement. Sinking. He was in the emergency ward the night they brought the young woman in. He saw his entire life in her face. He saw the secret of life in it. From the moment he beheld it, her face never left him. There were contusions and wounds above her left eye. He knew the face but didn’t know where or when he’d seen it. It was as if he knew it well, as if he were a part of it. Her body was clinging onto the thread of life. She hadn’t died yet. He froze his movements. Of course he didn’t want her to die. But the reason was personal and not merely humane, this wasn’t related to his professional duties alone. He wanted her to live for him. He wanted her.
She was wounded by gunfire from the war in a “mixed” alleyway whose residents belonged to different sects and different parties. A battle of flags was taking place in the alleyway. Which party would raise its flags? You can’t take a battle of flags lightly in a potentially explosive neighborhood. They set off wars and bury young bodies and dreams. That night, the young woman had gone out to her car. At that very moment, bullets rumbled and blood streamed out of a vehicle near hers, quickly mixing with the autumn rain. Bullets penetrated the roof of the car next to hers and the reply came quickly. In shock because of what was happening, the young woman stayed in her car, covered her head with her hands, and bent over the steering wheel. But the gunshot pursued her. It didn’t settle in her lung, though she couldn’t escape either. She sank into a bent position and then into the calmness of the moment. Everything stopped, even the bullets. Her movements stopped. Her tranquil body stopped fighting against the gunfire crossing from one side to the other. They brought her to the hospital. They brought her to him.
He walks and listens to the sound of thunder. It’s not yet raining. It doesn’t rain gently here, even the rain has become violent. He walks, her face with him. If she woke up from her coma, he’d tell her his life. He’d tell her that he was born to see her.
He smells the calming scent of jasmine and descends toward the most beautiful of all Beirut’s alleyways. Yet he’s still battling a strange sensation of fear. He pushes away a lingering feeling that the leader’s ferocious dogs, the guard dogs, are chasing him. He tells himself that he can feel their panting and that they are silently pursuing him. Then he tells himself: There are no dogs here. The dogs are sleeping in their mansions. He walks cautiously, aware of the crazy traffic, frolicking cars driven in the absence of any laws regulating the flow of traffic and protecting pedestrians from gratuitous death. How many lives have been lost in his hands before he could save them?
Why does he dream of her? Since he first saw her, he has dreamed of her every night. He feels that he has known her since birth, that her soul is like his.
He won’t go back home now. Nevine will call him. Perhaps she’ll decide to visit him or propose dinner together. He won’t answer if she calls him again. She’ll think he’s at the hospital.
He turns left toward Bliss Street. Every time he passes by here he reads the writing on the wall of the medical gate entrance to the American University of Beirut’s campus. They’re all words that rhapsodize about old Beirut, the Beirut that has lost its architectural identity. He once read on one of the walls the expression, Beirut Is not Dubai. He also glimpses love stories written inside giant hearts sketched on the wall and the names of dead singers under drawings of their likenesses. As he approaches the wall, he glances at the top of the Gardenia Building, where Kamal — who once was his professor and now is his friend — lives. Dr. Kamal sleeps on the sixth floor but mostly lives in his clinic on the first floor. His age is now so advanced that practicing his profession has become almost dangerous, both for him and his patients. Dr. Rashid worries about him and finds it hard to convince his friend to retire. How can he ask him to retire from his most precious identity?