I don’t know why the man told me this story. I looked at his face and saw that he was gazing at a point in the distance: maybe he was looking at the boat anchored in the bay, or maybe he was looking at the lights glistening on the sea. His face revealed nothing. (Am I imagining that now? Am I remembering it or imagining it? And how can I tell the difference? Memory’s a massive reservoir, it’s a deep well, it’s got layers upon layers upon layers — what does it bury, and what doesn’t it?)
Najwa never fought in the war. She took part in another training drill — how to plant mines — but she never went to war. When we reminded her later of her combat training, she’d just laugh and say it was madness, a hereditary madness. Was it hereditary? I remember this image, after father struck Ilya on the arm: Ilya standing in the living room at night. The lamp in the room had been turned off, but some light was coming in from the window or from another room, and I saw Ilya’s ghost standing there, the white gauze on his leg visible in the darkness. Was he standing without the cane? I don’t remember. But I remember his leg wrapped in white gauze, and I knew he was looking at the picture on the wall. What was he doing? Talking to the picture? What was he saying?
That was the period when George Sader came and asked for my sister Julia’s hand. He had studied law and had been an intern at the Iddah firm, but he never practiced. He worked at the Fattal Group after abandoning law, and in the darkest days of the war he started his own import-export business and also began trading currency. His mother was related to my mother, and they’d visit our house on special occasions, and my mother, before she fell ill, often took my sisters to go visit their home. My father talked to Julia about it. I remember his words: “It’s your decision. This is your life, and it’s your choice, and I’m your father and I’ll support you either way.”
Ilya said, “There are a lot of men who want to…”
My father silenced him: “I didn’t ask you, Ilya, I asked your sister. The man came and asked for her hand, not yours.”
My sister’s face was serene, and her eyes were unclouded as she looked at my father: “I’ve grown up, father, and I don’t want to wait any longer. He’s a good man, and we’ve become close — why would I say no?”
“Congratulations,” my father replied.
During their engagement, the man came every day at sunset to sit with my sister in the living room. My mother would sit with them a little while, and so would Mary and Najwa, and also Liliane. I’d come in, shake hands with him, and we’d exchange a few words before I went out again. Ilya did the same. The man would sometimes bring a box of baklava with him, and sometimes a cake from Chocolat Nora. One time he brought us a gift from his family (he said it was from his mother) — a sealed glass jar filled with a strangely colored jam. It looked like apricot jam or peach jam, but it smelled different. He said they only make that jam on Mount Lebanon, and that it’s made from pumpkins. It was yellow (the color of lemons), and when you lifted up your fork you could see the fibrous strands. I’ll never forget that evening: as I ate the strange jam, I felt a silent weeping rise from my depths. I was alone in the kitchen, standing at the white sink, and the plate was in the sink. I ate another forkful as the sweet smell (what was that smell?) filled my nose (it filled my head, it filled my heart, I knew that smell, I knew this food, the curious substance melted on my tongue, it melted between my teeth, and a strange dark emotion welled up inside me). I haven’t forgotten how I stood all alone in the kitchen while the light from the lamp fell on the sink’s tiles, illuminating the yellow substance in the glass jar. What was I remembering at that moment?
Years later, as Khalil Sufayr smiled and said what he had to say to me, as the vast living room in his vast house closed in on my body, crushing me with its carpets and paintings and curiosities, its chandeliers still glistening in the light of the vanishing sun, I felt the same food on the roof of my mouth: after we’d eaten cold and flavorless kibbeh from a tray, the servant had brought us some jam.
The first time I had that jam, a river of light burst from my heart. The second time (as I looked at that face clouding over, even as a yellow smile appeared on it), darkness struck my eyes, and I begged to vanish from the world. Certain memories evoke certain other ones — they’re joined by strings invisible yet real.
When the army left West Beirut in the winter of ’84, Najwa came home from her job at the Zahrat al-Ihsan School and told us, as she put her books and papers and quizzes on the dining room table (the table had become her desk), that she wouldn’t be staying in this country. “Every day we say this war needs to end, and every day there’s more destruction — it won’t end.” Six years after she spoke those words, they shelled the presidential palace and attacked East Beirut, and the war ended — but she wasn’t here. She was in Paris. On the phone, she asked me how things were and asked about my father’s health. I heard her distant voice and I remembered how she used to sit with Julia and Julia’s fiancé in the living room: the couple would sit on the sofa beneath the picture with the black ribbon, and Najwa would sit on the sofa, facing the picture. (At night that velvet sofa turned into her bed. She’d put a cotton sheet on it — she was allergic to the velvet, hives appeared all over her skin whenever she slept directly on it — and wrap herself up in a blanket, but she’d never use a pillow, instead she’d just fold her hand beneath her head.) I’d walk past in the hallway on my way out of the house and catch a glimpse of her sitting there, her fingers interlaced on her knees. What was she looking at? Was she looking at Julia and her fiancé, or at my little brother’s picture? I don’t know.
On the phone, while I was listening to her speak a mixture of Arabic, French, and English, I wanted to ask her if she remembered how she used to drag me with her to the gates of the embassies: there was a period in the second half of the ’80s when we (just Najwa
and I) used to wake up at dawn, drink our coffee, and then grab a bottle of water and make the rounds of the embassies. One day we’d go to the French Embassy, and the next day to the Canadian one, and the following day to the Australian. And then to the Swiss Embassy, and to the Dutch, British, and New Zealand embassies. There wasn’t a single embassy whose gate we didn’t sit in front of — and after they’d said a few words to us (or sometimes they wouldn’t even say anything), they’d give us some forms and we’d fill out the forms, hand them in, and then they’d give us imaginary appointments. And sometimes we’d actually get a meeting. Then nothing would happen. They’d take our phone number, or they wouldn’t take it. And nothing would happen. And when the Australian Embassy finally accepted Najwa’s application, she changed her mind. I asked her why we’d been standing in all those lines. Why had we stood there and eaten all that melting chocolate while we waited in the hot sun? And she replied: “Now we know it’s possible to leave.”