BEIRUT, 1995

At the Cafe de Paris, dust motes trace their eternal dance on the table, the customers, the silvery evening air, my ringed hands. I’ve finished my fourth glass of tea. Yet I continue to sit, watching.

It’s my third week in Beirut and I’ve spent most of my time at the tribunal or writing, not living. Walking with my head down, unheeding the pale spring sunset, a lemon sky fading to green. Last time I called the editor of The Globe he asked me where my big story on the Sabra-Shatila survivors was. So far my New Beirut story and one on the sectarian nature of the camps have been well received.

Tonight I need to interview the Palestinian woman in the camp. She told the UNDP worker she’d be available at seven. Flipping through my appointment diary, I check the address. I dread bumping into D’Andrea there, but it’s more from embarrassment now than hostility. It’s late, though; he’d be finished work. The article has to be written, and the woman is ready to talk.

I set off from the cafe thinking about my early days in Boston. I’d felt uneasy, careful not to reveal the underside of my history. Much as I imagine Lilit would have been with her Turkish—what was he anyway, husband, lover, slave-owner? I imagine her circumspect, secretive, not allowing the real, contradictory Armenian girl to be revealed. Her voice in old age was frail, wavering. When she called me in Boston I would picture her sitting at the tiny hall stand by the side door: the shadow of the pomegranate tree on the wall behind trembling, moving, changing; the old-fashioned telephone, so black and heavy, in her tender hands.

As I told her about my uneventful days, I felt the threat of that same obscuring, that effacement, happening to me. The boys I met wanted me to be compliant and happy but only on the surface or in public: sitting down to dinner in a restaurant, dancing at a party, letting them brush a hand across my thigh in a crowd. They knew nothing of my true nature. And I can’t blame them – I was too scared to reveal something I’d regret later.

Lost in thought, I miss my bus. At the Hamra taxi rank, I enter a cab absently and sit in the front seat without glancing at the driver, not taking in anything about him: age, attractiveness, ethnicity. I tell him my destination in English, a reflex. Next thing we’re speeding down an unknown highway. I strain to read the signs that flash past, the huge billboards for Chivas Regal and Calvin Klein jeans, the tattered posters of suicide bombers and beaming mullahs. Ayatollah Khomeini’s waxdoll face. The driver puts his white, hairless hand on my leg, and I slap it away. A hot panic grips me as soon as I realise I’m helpless, at the mercy of this stranger – the car’s going at a hundred; there’s no point even contemplating jumping out. There is an instant, when my vision dims and the light amid the blackness narrows to a pin, where I can see Lilit’s fate in the desert among the Turks, in Syria with Suleiman, hollow with pain in her Beirut bedroom. The taxi stops. Then the man simply shrugs, and I see the dark stains of sweat on his shirt as he leans over me to open the passenger door.

I stand on the kerb, ashamed, as if the whole incident has been my fault. Heart beating crazily, ears stinging with heat. I even paid him for groping me before I banged the car door shut. Threw some notes into his lap, trying to normalise the situation. This did not happen to me. I’m not that sort of person. Forcing myself to remain calm, I bend down to my laptop bag and take out my map.

I have no idea which suburb I’m in; it’s not a suburb I’d ever been to as a child, but the street is shiny and clean, the shops orderly, the people busy and well dressed.

‘Excuse me?’ I begin, hopeful.

No answer. Some passers-by make as if to stop, and I step forward, my features arranged into what I hope is a neutral expression. They offer a false smile and a miming gesture of the hands – I speak no English – and are gone.

I wonder why they won’t help. Of course they speak English. Everyone does here. Do I look so strange? My scruffy jeans and tight T-shirt are too grunge, too cobbled-together, in this enclave. I can’t see any young women or children, only purposeful men in Zegna suits and the occasional old woman, head down, scurrying about her errands in head-to-toe black. The old women don’t even glance up when I speak. In affluent America people understand my sort of dress: ironic, political, self-reflexive. Not so here. They just think I want something from them. I want to try my Arabic but something in me is afraid, as if it might reveal too much. To whom?

I’m being jostled and pushed by a crowd of intense, moustached men. They’re not wearing Zegna. They’re what I imagine fundamentalist Muslims look like. Shias. Fanatics. Suicide bombers. I walk further into the crowd, trying to evade them. There still don’t seem to be any young women or children in the neighbourhood, except for beggar boys who plead and wheedle with me for spare change. They don’t seem affected by my clothes.

There are domes of mulberries at a stall and I’m suddenly parched. I point, smiling. The vendor ignores me as well, tending to the pressing needs of other customers. He pours the berries into an antiquated blender that churns melodiously as it’s filled, and I’m mesmerised by his blackened fingers as he scoops up a handful and crushes them with shards of ice, at the transformed jewel-bright sludge spurting into a glass.

‘Je voudrais un—’

‘Here, allow me.’

A man in khaki stops and points a thick finger on my blowing map to hold it down. For a second I think he’s a soldier, then realise he’s wearing cast-off military clothes with a self-deprecating, slightly humorous air. Under his vest is a black T-shirt with the words Free Palestine in English. His clothes seem incongruous next to his spiky greying hair, the whiter stubble on his chin and cheeks. Creases radiate from his greenish-grey eyes. He tosses a coin to the vendor from one of his many pockets, hands me a glass of juice. Glancing at the liquid as I begin to drink, he hesitates for a moment then reaches out for it.

‘Do you mind? I don’t have change for another.’

I shake my head, non-committal. I don’t want to share with a stranger but it would be rude now to protest. Free Palestine. He must be an old leftist hippie, accustomed to sharing fluids and filth. Now I see he has a dog with him: a huge, black-tufted mastiff that places its paws on the man’s knees and begs in whimpers.

‘Don’t bother looking at those tourist maps,’ the man says in English, his mouth full of ice and berries. ‘You got it from a hotel, didn’t you? Useless.’

He slaps at the dog. ‘Down, Julius. You won’t like it anyway.’

He addresses me again. ‘The streets are known by different names, locally. Where do you want to go?’

I open my mouth to speak.

‘No, no, no,’ he cuts in. ‘Not the number, the building. Nothing’s known by numbers around here.’

‘I know that,’ I say under my breath.

‘Hmmm?’

I look at him but don’t reply. Can I can trust him? Will he follow me there, take my money and passport, rape me? His accent is a hybrid I can’t place: part American, part cultured, part something else. He seems to be in his early fifties, the same generation as my father. The same age Selim would be if he were alive. He’s swallowed now and smiles through his stubble, as if sensing my hesitation. Hands me the half-empty glass.

‘Aren’t you going to finish your juice?’

Something about him looks out of place in the splenetic crowd, something as awkward as the way I feel. I suck at the straw, conscious of the stain of his saliva on the tip, and speak through a mouthful.

‘I’m going to the Sabra-Shatila camp. The driver stopped here because I thought it was somewhere nearby. Well, to tell you the truth, he was overcharging me and making moves and I just wanted to get out of his cab as quickly as I could.’

The man whistles.

‘Why are you going there anyway? Are you crazy? You could still get shot, even nowadays.’

‘I need to meet someone,’ I reply, taken aback. ‘I’m expected.’

‘Friends of yours?’ He pauses. ‘Okay, you don’t need to tell me who they are. I was only joking before, trying to scare you. It’s where all the half-baked journalists go for their taste of the real Lebanon.’

‘Oh, well, I’m a journalist.’

‘Are you now?’

He looks at me keenly, as if wondering whether I’m telling the truth. I feel the need to justify myself to him for some insane reason, and all the while as I’m preparing to speak I inwardly squirm at how naive I’ll seem. I hand back the unfinished glass.

‘Here, the rest is for you. I’ve had enough.’

He accepts it, regards me with his head tilted to one side. I succumb to the need to explain.

‘I’m Lebanese. I mean, Armenian. Just back from the States. On assignment for The Boston Globe—’ He interrupts, throws the empty glass back at the vendor.

‘Still want to go there? Okay. We need to get you another taxi. How can you carry that laptop bag around? You’ll be robbed. Sorry. Here, allow me.’

I hesitate, shrug and gesture to my bag. The man exclaims at its heaviness and hails a cab, whose owner complains about the dog but nevertheless allows us inside.

Back in the hotel bathroom, I turn on the light and scrutinise my eyebrows. They’re more untidy than usual. I think of the man I just met. The way he talked about his lack of family, his engineering degree, without telling me where he was from, the way he finished all the juice between pronouncements. I left him in the taxi, still slurping at the dregs. He leaned out of the window, said I looked agitated, it was getting late, that he’d wait until I was finished. I was annoyed, but glad. I could feel him watching me as I stepped onto the kerb and walked fast toward the camp gates. When I came back twenty minutes later he was dozing, head thrown back, the dog snoring at his feet. I tapped him gently on the arm.

‘They’re not there. The woman and child. Nobody could tell me why.’

‘You probably got the time wrong.’

‘Believe me, I didn’t.’

‘Okay, you didn’t. Who knows, maybe they chickened out.’

‘Or maybe they’re sick, or just running late. I think I should go back, wait at least another fifteen minutes.’

‘I’ll come with you if you like.’

I hesitated. ‘It’s okay. I’ve left a note.’

‘Well, shall we go somewhere else now?’

‘I know a cafe,’ I suggested. ‘In Rue Hamra, the Cafe de—’

He cut me off again. ‘Terrible place. Where all the tourists go.’

Instead he took me to a tiny bar called Che Guevara’s and talked through two local Almaza beers. The dog curled up at his feet, snoring like a man. I only allowed myself one arak, in order to keep some control. He was a stranger, after all.

He told me he’s a minesweeper, pressed his business card into my hand. His job is to clear Israeli mines from the south of Lebanon for a non-profit organisation. He said he wanted to take me out on the town that evening, show me the new Beirut.

I like him. I like him a lot. His T-shirt has something to do with it, the solidity of torso beneath, his sunburnt cheeks and short, short hair. I trust his penetrating expression somehow. I tell myself to stop, not to romanticise him already. I always do this. Sometimes I despise myself for being so open, so ready to love. He has curiously thin brows, like Errol Flynn or Clark Gable.

I take tweezers and yank unruly hairs, one by one, from my own brows, pat down my hair. Put on some lipstick, stand back to look. My tattoo shows in my sleeveless dress, but I get the feeling he will like it. He’s promised to show me a nightclub, stupidly fashionable, prohibitively expensive, rumoured to have been a torture centre run by the Phalangists during the war. I had to suppress a shudder. Surely my father wasn’t involved? It’s one thing to know intellectually the things he did, another to see them, touch them, participate in Beirut’s continual whitewashing of the past.

‘Call me Chris,’ he said in the cab on the way to the hotel, paying the driver in American dollars. ‘Most people can’t pronounce my real name anyway.’

‘I’m sure I could. Try me.’

‘I’ll tell you later. Meet me in the lobby at nine.’

I meet him downstairs and his eyes light up when he sees me.

‘I love a woman in a white cotton dress,’ he says, and I don’t know what to reply.

He takes my hand and instinctively I pull away before submitting. Never sure of the right way to be.

‘Let’s walk,’ he says. ‘It’s a cool evening, for a change.’

The streets are uneven and narrow, shaded by high-rise apartments. Squat villas built in other, saner eras press up against the kerb like fat women craning to get a better view of the spectacle of sleek cars and damaged people. Painted shutters open to fumes and dust, in all their fading shades of lemon and leaf-green and rose. I peer into a bedroom, at its bare light bulb, brown-papered walls. Pages cut out of fashion magazines are pasted to the peeling wallpaper.

‘Hey, don’t be so rude,’ Chris whispers.

I’m beginning to tire already of his familiarity, his arrogance, his opinions on everything. It’s as if I’ve known him for years, already been made to endure all his theories. At the same time this sense of ease gives me comfort among so much that’s unfamiliar in this new, shiny Beirut.

We pass more apartment blocks with open courtyards and broken fountains, baby olive trees planted in blue-painted oil tins. Grey scum on walls, grease on the pavement. We walk, slipping at times, following open sewers that lead us down to the sea. On the Corniche promenade, women stride past in heels and tight jeans, gelled glitter in bouffant hair. I can’t help contrasting their stalking feline grace with my own diffidence, retreating under their gaze. Surely I can’t compete with these beauties. I watch Chris appraising them, one thin eyebrow raised – yet his hand’s on my arm; he’s in step with me, making me laugh. I watch the way my shadow and his – elongated, elegant, long-limbed – walk beside us, like idealised versions of ourselves. Now he’s switched from being fatherly to funny, I can let myself relax. Now he’s looking at me in that appreciative way, a tiny glint in his eye.

I can smell the hot spiciness of his aftershave, the skin of his face and neck gold-stubbled in the last of the light. Waves lap against the sea wall like a lullaby. Above the noise of cars and mopeds and hawkers – all hushed now for this brief moment in the stillness of sunset – Beirut’s waterfront apartments shimmer in the evening mist, telegraphing messages I alone can hear. I pause, looking up at them, and Chris stops in front of me.

‘You all right?’

I shiver, a chill breeze off the sea.

‘I’m—just remembering. Reminded of who I used to be.’

Now I take his hand, naturally, as if we’ve been doing this for years. As we walk, women glance down at my sandals. A quick once-over of the face and legs, then without exception down to my feet. I lean closer and whisper.

‘Why do they keep looking at me?’

‘You’re not wearing a boob tube. And, horror of horrors, you’re wearing flat shoes.’

‘I don’t remember it being like this before.’

‘Before? You were just a kid. Isn’t that what you told me? Image is everything now. Did you know they’re one of the highest users of cosmetic surgery in the world?’

‘I wouldn’t think they’d have the money.’

‘Back-room jobs. My theory is they’re trying to forget the war any way they can.’

‘And the possibility of another war,’ I blurt out.

He’s not looking at me. We pass a fish restaurant, its blackboard announcing ‘Fresh Crab Strait from Sea’, and the tuxedoed tout with his plastic-covered menu takes my arm in a surreptitious scoop. Chris gently steers me away.

‘Well, that’s something no one wants to discuss.’

I whisper again as we pass two young women who slow down and openly stare.

‘They don’t care whether I know they’re staring or not. What’s there to look at?’

‘They’re trying to figure out if you’re poor, in those clothes.’

‘I am poor.’

‘Not compared to them.’

‘Oh, really! How about all the BMWs and Mercs everywhere? The beauty parlours and fake tans?’

‘Families think nothing of going into debt for a luxury car. These same families live in hovels with no running water.’

‘You don’t have a car?’

‘I wouldn’t dare drive in Beirut. I’m not crazy.’

‘So you weren’t born here?’

‘Tel Aviv. And I holidayed in Eilat, in the summers.’

‘I didn’t know you were—’

He interrupts and points.

‘See that man over there? He sits on this corner all day and night. We call him the man who wants words.’

I follow his gaze. An old man sits on the curb with his sparrow legs folded beneath him, arranging and rearranging bits of paper. He seems oblivious to the clattering traffic, the feet of passers-by, the billowing dust and grit blown in from the mountains and out to the sea. In the half-light I can faintly discern that each piece of paper has only one Arabic word written on it, either torn from school notebooks, written on the back of bills, bus tickets, cardboard, or print carefully cut from newspapers.

‘What’s he doing?’

‘He’s Syrian. They’re all mad. He begs for words instead of money.’

As we pass the old man he looks up and smiles at me.

‘He’s crazier than most,’ Chris mutters. ‘A Yezidi.’

‘A what?’

‘A strange religion in these parts. Heretical Muslims. Didn’t your grandmothers ever tell you about them?’

The old man croaks at me in Arabic, putting out his hand in the begging position.

‘Any words to give me, little lady?’

I shake my head and look to Chris for assistance.

‘Look, he’s showing you the words he already has.’

I bend down near him as he spreads out his collection on the asphalt, careful not to make my knees grubby. He smells painfully of unwashed scalp. His white moustache makes two curly worms on his upper lip. Chris translates as the old man lays each piece out, saying the word in Arabic and nodding at me each time he hears the word in English.

‘Exile,’ Chris says. ‘Grapes. Loss. Rage. Fresh eggs. That’s two words; his standards are slipping. Identity. Futility. Denial.’

The old man’s face lights up when I indicate my willingness to give him a word. Chris passes me one of his business cards and I turn it over.

‘Truth,’ I write in English with the beggar’s pen, get up and leave, not sure why I don’t wait to hear Chris translate. I’m afraid of him for a moment, as if he’s exposed something about me I’m not willing to see.

He catches up to me, holds my arm. ‘Hey, are you okay?’

‘I’m fine. Really.’

He shakes his head, disbelieving.

When we arrive at the nightclub, bouncers wave him through, assessing my clothes and hair for a moment then nodding. We descend many steps, into humid darkness shot with green light. Even this early in the night, people fight for space in the large, low-ceilinged room, ambushing the bar, overflowing into the middle of the floor where nobody seems to dance. The music hums and shudders, thudding hard, and people shove against each other in small, ever-diminishing circles, shouting in each other’s ears over the din, swaying, wiggling their hips, while at the same time holding drinks out toward each other, flimsy barriers to intimacy.

I look around again – it looks exactly the dimensions of a torture chamber – and I shudder. ‘Hey,’ I shout. ‘Can we find somewhere quieter?’

‘It’s great. You’ll love it. We’ll find you a secluded spot. What are you drinking?’

‘Same as last time.’

We make for the bar together, with Chris using his elbows to propel us through.

‘So tell me your real name.’

‘My name’s Chaim. But nobody calls me that these days – except my mother.’

‘So you are Jewish.’

‘And? Is that a problem?’

‘No. No, not at all. Why would it be?’

He doesn’t answer, instead takes my hand to pull me through the crowd.

‘Good. Now we can have fun. Let’s dance before we get a drink.’

‘Wait a minute – Chaim.’

He turns to me, his expression changed under the pulsing greenish light.

‘I want to call you Chaim from now on. Your real name. If that’s okay with you.’

He hesitates, then smiles. In that wide smile, I see the little boy he once was, and I warm to him further.

‘Well … thank you,’ he says, stepping closer to me. ‘I’m not sure what else to say. Toda lach.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Thank you, in Hebrew. Toda lach.’

I repeat it. ‘Toda. And you’re welcome – Chaim.’

He chuckles, grabs my hand.

‘Let’s dance.’

‘But there’s nobody else dancing.’

‘All the better, then.’

I tug at his arm. ‘Really, I don’t think I want to—’

He ignores me, making his way through the people, greeting and smiling. I think of the old Syrian beggar and my word for him: Truth.

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Let’s sit down for a minute. Tell me more about the old man.’

We’ve reached the outer row of people storming the bar. Chaim raises his hand over the sea of heads, signals almost miraculously to the barman. He lifts up two fingers and the barman seems to know what he wants. He turns to me, looking straight into my eyes. His pupils are huge and black in the dim light.

‘Tell me,’ I say again.

‘Yezidi. They believe the devil’s been forgiven by God and reinstated as the principal angel. There’s no more hell, not anymore.’

‘There’s hope for us all then.’

‘Don’t laugh. These guys have been persecuted for thousands of years as devil-worshippers. They call him the Peacock Angel and it’s his job now to supervise the running of the world. Quite a job!’

‘He’s not doing it very well.’

‘Could you do any better?’

I can do better, I think – much better. I’ve come back to this place to see if I can make a difference. If anything could be said to make a difference in these days of cynical obsolescence. What a worn-out, bankrupted phrase.

I walk through neighbourhoods of wild children and pyramids of garbage. Nothing has changed in Beirut except multi-million-dollar airbrushes of buildings and downtown districts, the influx of more money for the Christians from the West. I can still see the poverty, the camps, the shantytowns of the displaced, Shia Lebanese and Palestinians, pushed out once again by the Israelis from the south. I feel anxiety in the air of the city: the icy breath of change running like a current beneath early summer’s heat.

The Israelis are still squeezing the south like an orange, with Hezbollah fighting them for the pips. Could these small, brutal wars escalate and spread to the rest of the country? I’m lost in thought, slipping more than once on tyre-tracked streets. A young man brushes past, gazing at my bare arms and short hair with startled, inquisitive eyes. He stops, murmuring something salacious in Arabic, and I want to swing him around and smash his face against a wall. I want to scream. I want to see Chaim again tonight and abuse him for doing this to my people. Doing what to my people? Are they my people? I only lived here for sixteen years. And why should it be his fault anyway? Of the two of us, he’s the one actually making a difference. But the desire to pinpoint somebody else to censure for my own confusion remains. Would the Arabs be like this anyway, even without these skirmishes on their southern and eastern borders, without Israel flexing its muscles each time they utter a sound above a whimper?

Before I left Beirut, Lilit once said: ‘We’re not Arabs, even though we live here. We’re Armenian.’ She sat up straighter in bed, monitoring my expression.

‘Where is Armenia?’ I asked.

Lilit took time over her answer. ‘Armenia doesn’t exist anymore.’ Her voice lowering, as if admitting a crime. ‘Your grandfather was Turkish, but, never mind, you’re really Armenian.’ And she smiled, as if not quite sure of it herself.

I stop at a corner. The sea at the end of the street is obscured by heat haze and car fumes, a white backdrop to chaos. My stomach hurts. It’s too far to walk back to the hotel. I’m lost, anyway. The city of my childhood has rearranged itself into new and confusing configurations. The worn stones at my feet claim no prior memory. I step out to hail a cab, think better of it. Don’t want to be duped again, targeted in yet another reinforcement of my difference. Don’t want another driver thinking I’m an American tourist, a New World Lebanese back for a tour of the old country. Easy pickings.

I pass a phone box. Chaim. Somehow I feel he can answer my questions, absolve himself. But why should he have to absolve himself anyway? He’s done nothing wrong. I know it’s not his fault; it’s not the Israelis, or the Americans, not even the Lebanese themselves. It’s this that makes me feel rage: nobody to blame.

I walk straight past the phone, start toward the direction of the hotel in short, determined strides. My face clotted in self-reproach. Chaim has insinuated himself into my life already; I’ve let him. An Israeli? Of my father’s generation. And what of my life back in Boston? The only friend I want to call is Dilek. And even to her, I don’t know what to say.

I wipe sweat from my forehead with my shirtsleeve, motes of dust float before my eyes. Part of me is pleased I feel so uncomfortable, as if this is in some way a confirmation of my anger. I like Chaim already. More than like. He’s funny, he’s sincere, he already seems like a still point of calm in the midst of all this chaos. Do I like him because he’s the only man paying attention to me here? Am I that superficial?

I pass the American University, on impulse go in. At the gate I’m relieved of my bag by a bored-looking woman in a brown uniform. I walk past palms and manicured gardens, knowing exactly where I’m going now. To the library.

Air-conditioned cold hits me like a door in the face. I walk the length of the room, trailing the broken spines of French and Arabic titles on the shelves with my finger, sit at one of the computer terminals. The woman behind the counter nods, then connects me.

I click onto a search engine, type without thinking. Minesweeping in Lebanon. One hundred and forty-five entries.

I pull Chaim’s card out of my wallet. Chaim Herzberg: Mechanical Technical Advisor. A crude line-drawing of a skull and crossbones on a scarlet background.

I type in the name of the company: Mines Advisory Group. Chaim’s surname. Let’s see what he really does for a living. His name appears among a list of other employees, a description of work being done in the south of the country, the funding they’re hoping to get next year. I click onto the next hit under Herzberg. An article from The Jerusalem Post dated August 1982:

ALON HERZBERG, ONE OF OUR MOST
ESTEEMED FIGHTER PILOTS, RECOUNTS HIS
DAYS AND NIGHTS IN BEIRUT

Mr Herzberg recently joined a protest organisation in Tel Aviv to put a stop to the Begin government’s incursion into Lebanon. He claimed the ‘invasion’ is both brutal and inefficient, entailing many Israeli military deaths as well as the expected Lebanese collateral damage. Yet Herzberg continues to fly his nightly missions into Beirut. ‘I made a pact with my country,’ he said. ‘I can protest from a moral stance, but at the same time I must continue to do my duty.’

I read no further. Could this be Chaim’s brother, an uncle, a cousin? I click on the next entry. It’s an obituary notice, dated September 1982:

ALON HERZBERG, BELOVED SON AND BROTHER, DIED TRAGICALLY IN THE COURSE OF DUTY. MAY THE LIGHT OF ZION CONTINUE TO BURN IN HIM AND IN HIS SORROWING FAMILY. Survived and mourned by his mother Tova and brother Chaim. Memorial in the Great Synagogue, Allenby Street, Tel Aviv, Thursday, 2 pm.

I swallow my apprehension and take a taxi back to the Mayflower Hotel. The trip passes without incident. I grab my room keys from the grinning boy at reception. Merci. Shukran. Never sure which language to use. Which voice.

Another icy air-conditioned room, noise of traffic muted by thick crimson curtains. I switch on my laptop, comforted by its whirring welcome. The screen lights up electric blue. I freeze, hands poised over the keyboard. Am I falling in love with the father I never knew, again, in Chaim? A failed, dirty, doomed love from the beginning.

Downstairs a busker wails. I type. Type anything: the weather outside, the scraping sound of a vacuum cleaner in the room next door, the way my shirt-collar feels hot and sticky on my neck. I stop. I have no opinions. Nothing to say. Nobody to blame.

I’ve heard Lebanese point the finger at their Ottoman heritage for the civil war and for their continued factionalism, a five-hundred-year occupation with its precedents of corruption and tradition of public neglect. I don’t believe it. Others bewail the sense of impotence left by the imperialist experience. The collective stupor of the twenties, or the present-day supremacy of America. I get up from the cramped hotel desk, turn on the sputtering TV. A Benny Hill comedy dubbed into Arabic. I pull off my shirt, loosen my bra. Relief. There’s sweat under my breasts, stinging.

Many Arabs maintain the West still conspires to keep them in second-class status. That they haven’t moved on from the mediaeval glory of their past. Arab culture continues to honour religion over reason, conformity over diversity, rhetoric over truth. Who’s to say the West isn’t doing the same thing? I kick off my sandals, lie on the bed and watch the antics on the screen.