My sister was as beautiful as the white rose on her bed. But I remain full of shame. My mother told me that the news report said that the woman was found dead with her limbs cut off. The security forces’ said that the corpse was unidentified. The incident was believed to have taken place elsewhere. I told her, “Strange. Are you sure?”
She said that the news reported it. With a curious expression, she added, “If the girl hadn’t done anything, no one would have killed her.” Then she continued, “What’s wrong? You don’t look right. You look ashamed.”
I didn’t answer. I turned my face from her and peered out the window, once again feeling ashamed.
The scent kept filling my nose; I thought that it was coming from my mother.
My mother’s scent was like that of Beirut today, neither that of the village nor of the city. I remember that my grandmother’s scent was different — perhaps it was the scent of the village. I used to be able to distinguish the scent of her house from that of all other houses. I remember when I was young, the beautiful scent would fill my nose upon merely entering her house. I used to search through her little room to try to figure out the secret of her scent, but I never could. I thought about this a lot. I asked her about the secret to her house’s scent, and she would smile and lift the scarf up off her face and her red cheeks, a trace of beauty and a halo of light and goodness bringing fragrance from between her eyes.
Today I see many women covering their heads like my grandmother did, but I don’t smell her scent on them when they pass me. I don’t smell the scent of love that used to waft from my grandmother’s face. I smell a scent of hatred.
Her face was as open as her heart and the scent of her house was a boundless scent of serenity. I didn’t know the secret in the beginning, or its explanations weren’t clear to me. Now I realize that it was the scent of eighty years in the house. A delicious scent that radiated from her face and the yellow calicotome flowers in her hands. The scent of her generous eyes. I still know that scent even now.
The scent is a secret.
The secret is that I smelled the scent of a woman one day, crossing Hamra Street. More than two years had elapsed since my grandmother had passed away, and for a flash of a second I thought she was still alive.
I followed the scent and I followed the woman. She grew afraid and quickened her footsteps. I walked faster too but I still couldn’t glimpse her face. Her scent filled the street. I kept getting closer to her, she was rushing and I was rushing, then she started to run. I forgot everything and ran after her, but then she disappeared among the passersby. Her scent remained in the street though. I was really sad because I’d lost her. When I told my friend about it, she advised me to visit the doctor right away. Then I was even sadder, because she didn’t understand me.
I was even sadder yet when I left the street in the heavy rain. The storm twisted around Beirut and made the scent of trash rise in the street. The trash scent was strong in the evenings, when my friends and I would careen all around the city in a car, laughing. The refuse of one street is different from that of every other street. My friend said that nature was also found in the scent of garbage. The scent in this street seemed profound. The wind stirred up leftover bits of food into the air, then we moved to another street where groups of people who are always fighting each other live.
My friend observed, “These two groups of people are only united by the scent of garbage.” When we crossed into a posher area, he said, “This is the scent of bourgeois trash.” We laughed until we almost died... either of laughter or of that scent.
I felt sick when I saw the mounds of rubbish rising up out of pools of water and I crossed the street. It didn’t feel like morning. The morning meant that a new opportunity — washed and clean — would augur another day.
The morning was dead in my eyes.
The street wasn’t how I once knew it. For a long time now, the morning has been overshadowed.
Years ago, I used to sit in the Wimpy coffee shop in Hamra in the morning and look out the window at the people on the street. I felt that Beirut was waking up from its slumber little by little, movement crept along little by little, and noise crawled by little by little. The sight of the workers was beautiful, when they were rushing to their jobs. Now there aren’t any workers left in the city, nor does the city wake up to the sound of their shoes. Armed fighters have taken over everything. Workers are now clothing vendors or fighters on the many front lines. Whenever more battle lines are drawn, more workers disappear. The city wakes up today without mornings to indicate the start of work. At least the scent of morning is no longer present, so people don’t wash the traces of the day before off their faces; they continue to live yesterday.
I don’t like yesterday.
Yesterday’s scent was on my body, on Beirut’s body, and the scent of the news of the crime against that woman was in my chest. The scent of people’s eyes resembled each other, though the eyes of faces were alone and sad and closed like those iron gates placed in front of the doors of houses.
People feel that they are isolated from one other. Bodies move. As if they are beings with no relationship to each other, though they say that people group into different types of clusters. I don’t believe this, and faced with this feeling I almost hope that my eyes will be dead.
But the scent of death emanating from the passersby unites them. Before, the street used to take on the scent of people along with the scent of the buildings.
I used to walk on the sidewalk, even though there wasn’t really a sidewalk anymore. Just as inhabitants of the houses in Beirut changed, the sidewalks changed. The houses in the city disappeared and the sidewalks disappeared. The sound of shoes on the sidewalk couldn’t be heard anymore, only the sound of selling. Every vendor takes a share of the sidewalk, sitting there with his wares. Clothes hang on Beirut’s sidewalks and walls and from balconies. It seemed to me that the city had changed a lot, or perhaps had disappeared. They say that time is more powerful than anything else. Things change but people only yearn for the past. They only believe their memory.
The past is the origin and the origins are lost.
A sense of loss pervaded everything, and I almost got lost. Where was I going? I forgot that I am also a worker. The sound of my shoes didn’t rise up anymore, only the voice of a taxi driver. He screamed at me and I walked over to him. I approached the car as if I wanted to flee from my exhausted head, the exhausting street, and the exhausting city — the closed faces like the locked iron gates in front of the houses.
For a long time, the doors to houses weren’t locked. I remember that our neighbor didn’t lock her house out of embarrassment, so it wouldn’t seem like she was in a conflict with my mother. My mother also used to do that. The two houses were always open except when there was a fight between the two families. Now all doors are locked. Perhaps anger blinds people’s hearts, or perhaps fear. But the city is locked up on itself, people are locked up on themselves, each sect on itself, each face on its features.
Metal doors are heavy. I shut the metal door to the car, sliding into the backseat.
I told the driver, “Good morning.”
He smiled, saying, “Good morning.”
After the taxi had driven for a while, a woman got in. Her body was wrapped up in gray and her face was covered in a gray cloth hung around her ears on both sides. She said loudly, “Salaamu alaykum.” The driver answered, “Salaamu alaykum.” Then he glanced at me in the rearview mirror, reminding me that I hadn’t said Salaamu alaykum. He suddenly got mad at me, his face turning angry. “Where’s the salaam, the peace?”