She sighed deeply. She looked at the open suitcases in front of her with her carefully ironed and folded clothes inside them.
“You’ll have to excuse me; I haven’t found time to prepare dinner yet...”
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s go to a restaurant around here.”
“Should we go to a Lebanese place?”
“Doesn’t matter... In Sydney, we’re used to all kinds of cuisines... We should settle the wedding formalities and leave right away. If you could see Sydney, if you could see the harbor, the beauty of the sails. I don’t know how people can bear to live here.”
“You should give it a little time... But wasn’t Beirut worse on your first visit? You came during the height of the war — it was destroyed, dead, soulless.”
“I don’t feel any change. Maybe because I blocked this out. Now, before we marry and leave the country, we should discuss the most important thing: I have two daughters. As you know, their mother left them because she wasn’t able to look after them and I wouldn’t allow them to live with her. Will you agree to have them live with us, or should I have them stay with their mother?”
“Where’s the problem? Of course I want them to live with us.”
“I know you are an understanding and good person.”
“This is how I’ll build my family... I’m still young enough that I might be able to have a couple of children...”
Faced with Lamia’s enthusiasm, Farid started biting his lips. “This is the only point that we really have to discuss. I don’t want more children. I’ve suffered a lot. I can’t stand to have another child in my life.”
Why did he not care about her opinion? Who was she to him? Did he want to withhold the one dream that she still had left? Seeing the face of a child, holding it close to her chest, inhaling its fragrance and kissing its toes, one by one.
Lamia went into the bedroom to change her clothes, with Farid following.
“Lamia, what’s wrong? Can I come in? Your face is pale... What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, my head hurts a bit... Tomorrow we can go to a restaurant... or the day after tomorrow... I have a headache and I want to be alone.”
She took off her clothes, sadly calm. She no longer wanted anything. Now all her dreams have come to nothing: the miniature white sails slipped away with the road and remained suspended in the harbor; the hand of the little boy and his tiny red sweater have disappeared far away, behind her eyes shrouded in tears. He no longer brings her little bunches of flowers or puts paper sailboats in the pool in front of their house.
After he was gone, she opened the window to banish the last traces of Farid’s cologne that still lingered in the room. It would take her some time to get herself together again. She thought she heard the ringing of a telephone, which evoked in her neither the desire to get up, nor the slightest bit of curiosity. No doubt it’s Farid, wanting to check on his bride’s “mood.” She couldn’t picture him as one day being her life partner. “High expectations” are a beautiful thing; she won’t substitute them for a sliver of hope.
She breathed out a great sigh of relief. She would grow old peacefully, without hopes, with quiet despair. The sails set off, never to return, and the honking of car horns returned in the street. She didn’t know how late it was when, half-asleep, she picked up the phone near her bed.
“Hello, Lamia?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
“Lamia, it’s Nazih.”
“Nazih? Did something happen? Is Hyam all right? Are you both okay?”
“Why is your voice shaky? Have you been crying?”
“No, I was sleeping.”
“Are you ill? It’s still early...”
“No, I’m not sick... Have you sorted out your troubles?”
“Lamia, I just wanted to tell you before it’s too late: you are my ultimate love.”
Originally written in Arabic.
About the contributors
Muhammad Abi Samra (b. 1953) is a Lebanese novelist and journalist. He is currently the director of the weekly investigative journalism section of Nahar newspaper, a field he has been working in since 1977. He has published many novels and other collections of writing.
Tarek Abi Samra (b. 1983) is a short-story writer and freelance journalist born and living in Beirut. He writes in both French and Arabic. He holds a BA in clinical psychology and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in the same field.
Najwa Barakat was born in Beirut and has lived in Paris since 1985. She has worked as an independent journalist for various Arabic newspapers and magazines as well as the BBC and RFI. Barakat has written five award-winning novels in Arabic, most of which have been published by Dar al-Adab in Beirut and translated into a number of European languages. She has also written one novel in French, La locataire du Pot de Fer. Since 2005, she has run writing workshops to discover previously unknown talents.
Abbas Beydoun (b. 1945) is a Lebanese poet, novelist, and journalist, born in Tyre, Lebanon. He has published numerous volumes of poetry, which have been widely translated; English translations of his poetry have appeared in Banipal magazine. He has also published six novels, two of which have been translated into English. Beydoun has been cultural editor of the Beirut-based newspaper As-Safir since 1997.
Bana Beydoun (b. 1982) has been writing poetry for ten years. She published her first poetry collection, The Guardian of Illusion, in 2012. She studied cinema at the Jesuit University in Beirut and the Sorbonne in Paris. She has also directed a number of short films, including A Moment Alone (2001), Sanayeh Bath (2004), and Ninar (2004). She currently works as a journalist in Lebanon and is a film critic for the newspaper al-Akhbar.
Leila Eid is a Lebanese novelist and poet born in the Shouf, Lebanon. She lives in Beirut where she works as a journalist for the national news agency. She has published a novel, Pub Number Two, and two collections of poetry, From Where, I Don’t Know and Sometimes I Dance.
Rawi Hage is a writer and a visual artist, born in Beirut and currently residing in Montreal. His first novel, De Niro’s Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, among other major prizes. Cockroach, his second novel, was also a finalist for many prestigious awards. His latest novel, Carnival, is about the beautiful, twisted existence of life in the modern city, told from the perspective of a taxi driver, and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Award and won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.
Michelle Hartman is a literary translator from Arabic and French into English, and associate professor of Arabic literature at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. Her translations include Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib’s Just Like a River (cotranslated with Maher Barakat), Alexandra Chreiteh’s Always Coca-Cola and Ali and His Russian Mother, and Iman Humaydan’s Other Lives and Wild Mulberries, which was runner-up for the Banipal Prize for the best novel translated from Arabic in 2009.