I take her to the carpenters’ market, to the shoemakers’ market, to the perfumers’ market. I take her to the castle on the sea and to the Khan al-Afranj.
We sit in a café overlooking the sea, divided from it by the highway. I say, “We used to call it ‘the holiday sea’; now it has become ‘the waterfront.’” She doesn’t catch what I mean to say, and I don’t explain.
Maryam said that Hasan was right. “He told me, ‘Old Sidon is a sequence of light and shadow. The lane will be dark because it’s narrow and there are houses and shops on both sides, with arches above and bridges that also might have houses suspended on them, but before you get used to the shadow you’re surprised by a long, sunny open space. Because we were kids we didn’t walk but rather flew, so we would move in the blink of an eye from the light to the dark and from the dark to the light, as if we were playing with the sun and it was playing with us. And not only the lanes but the houses too: you step into a dark place where you nearly trip, because you can’t see where you step, or because the ghoul is lurking there, waiting for you. Then suddenly you’re on stairs flaming with daylight. You jump up the steps and stop a moment to lean over a tin basin planted with mint or jasmine, or you find yourself in front of the sea, lit up as if there were a fire under it.’”
“Hasan wrote me that in his letter. But he didn’t tell me anything about the poverty, the run-down houses, and the tired faces.”
It’s strange; Maryam didn’t buy sweets as visitors usually do, nor the bars of soap for which the city is famous. From the carpenters’ market she bought a small chest and a sieve and a pair of clogs. I said, “As long as you want the clogs for decoration, let’s look for some Syrian ones, inlaid with shell.” Then laughing, “You’ve become like the foreigners, Maryam — you hang the sieve on the wall and put the clogs on the living room table. Souvenirs from life in the old days. I hope you don’t ask me for an embroidered peasant dress so you can hang it on the wall of your apartment in France!”
She said, laughing hard, “‘You wrong me, Sir!’ As for the chest, I’ll put your picture in it, and my father’s picture, and the love letters that will definitely come to me some day! I’ll close the chest and keep it in my dresser.”
“And the sieve?”
“I’ll put it next to my bed so I don’t forget to sift my thoughts and feelings every night before I go to sleep.”
I laughed. “And the clogs?”
“Here we have the main thing. I’ll be sure to use them every day, if only for an hour. I’ll stomp on the ground with them and hear the sound, and it will reassure me that I’m here, here and then some!”
“What an imagination you have, Maryam!”
“Mama, sometimes we keep things without being able to sum up their value in one meaning. Do you remember the marble that the boy in Shatila gave me?”
“What marble, what boy?”
“The one the boy bought from Mustafa Umda’s shop.”
“Who’s Mustafa Umda?”
She reminded me of the story, and then said, “I still have it. Not because I think it will bring luck or it’s an amulet or a charm, but just for some reason. A small glass marble for kids to play with. When I get it out of the place where I keep it, I put it in the palm of my hand and stare at it, and recall moments and places and faces. I see the boy who gave it to me; he was very handsome, astonishing. I was five; can a child of five fall in love? I wonder where he is now, if he left the camp and life took him to a new exile, or if he stayed there, and has been buried under the rubble since the fall of ’82. I look into his marble and see things, I see myself and maybe the past and the future. I close my hand around it carefully and put it away again.”
In the house we sit together, or we stand in the kitchen, sharing in preparing a meal or a cup of coffee to have on the balcony. We talk, endlessly. We laugh. She tells me things and I tell her. We barely see Abed, who leaves the house early and rarely comes back for lunch, though we usually have supper together. He’s preparing to file suit in the Belgian courts. Why Belgium, Abed? He gives a lengthy, involved answer about binding international laws and regulations, the Treaty of Rome and the decisions that followed it, and the European countries that had adopted it. At the end of the detailed talk comes the specific answer: “Because Belgium is the one country in the world that allows individuals to file suits of this kind. They present their complaint to the investigating magistrate, and if the basis of the claim is present then he is required to look into it. This is the first reason; second, because immunity is not considered an impediment in the criminal courts in Belgium. Third, because the Belgian courts accept the principle of trying the accused in absentia, meaning that someone accused of torture or war crimes or crimes against humanity can be tried even if he is not present, or not a Belgian citizen, or not living in the country. Two weeks ago a group of my colleagues filed a suit in the name of twenty-three plaintiffs against Ariel Sharon, Amos Yaron, and other Israelis and Lebanese, for the massacre in Sabra and Shatila. They presented the documents to the investigating magistrate in the Belgian criminal court; now we’re preparing other suits, about the Sidon elementary school and the Jad Building.”
“Abed, where is the Jad Building?”
“It was destroyed. I’ll take you to the site; why do you ask?”
“Every time Hasan called, he asked, ‘Where is the building you live in from the Jad Building? How do you get there from the Jad Building?’”
“Don’t you know the story of the Jad Building?”
“I know, it was shelled at the beginning of the invasion and everyone who was in the shelter was killed.”
“And Hasan?”
“What about Hasan?”
“I mean Hasan’s story, didn’t he tell you?”
“About …?”
Abed changed the subject; I found it strange.
Maryam is the one who told me, when Abed went out. She said, “Hasan was in love with a girl who lived in that building. He had loved her since he was in middle school, and he kept going back to Sidon to see her when you moved to Beirut. Abed told me that when Hasan came to Beirut in ’82 he sneaked into Sidon to check on her. He went to Sidon two days before he left Lebanon.”
“And so …?”
“So, nothing. He knew what had happed to the Jad Building, but he was still hoping. The girl died, with her mother and father and grandfather and sisters and brothers and neighbors and everyone who came from elsewhere to take shelter in the basement of the building.”
I found nothing to say. That night I asked Abed, “Did you see the girl Hasan was in love with?”
“Yes, I saw her.”
“What was her name?”
“Mira.”
“Describe her for me.”
“She was small. Her hair was very black, and her eyes too. She was short and a little plump and had two braids, and dimples in her cheeks. Her face was usually bright and smiling.”
“Was she much younger than he was?”
“No, I’m describing her to you the way I remember her from our time in Sidon. She was the same age as Hasan, or a year younger. Maybe she was thirteen or fourteen. I didn’t see her after we moved to Beirut. By the time of the invasion she had finished school and was working.”
“Why didn’t Hasan ask to marry her after he graduated?”
“I think she was trying to convince her family to let her marry him.”
Hasan had named his daughter after her, years after she died. He never told me about her. His brothers and sister knew, why didn’t he tell me? I recall the details: Hasan’s constant visits to Sidon, his sudden appearance in Lebanon during the invasion, his sudden departure. One morning he said, “I’m going back to Cairo today, Mother.”