The Beirut waterfront where Chaim lives is neutral territory. Or at least that’s what he calls it when he explains the current situation to me. None of the rival religious or political factions can lay claim to it, not now. The city is still divided spiritually into east and west, though these days you can easily take a taxi downtown or tread the fashionable, refurbished area once known as the Green Line. At the same time there are still boundaries – emotional perhaps, unacknowledged – furrowed deep into the heart of Beirut.
The Corniche is another city in itself. It’s the haunt of the lost, the dislocated, the in-between, the untouchables – prostitutes, hawkers, beggars, tourists, the ultra-rich. Swiss-owned luxury hotels compete for space with hovels made of cardboard and hammered tin. Construction projects pollute the sea air with concrete dust and jackhammers, resorts and high rises, tax breaks begun with the express intention of never being finished. Beiruti high society – French-educated, expansive, cruel in its vulgarity – rubs shoulders with leprous touts; Syrian labourers lounge about eating gelato after a day’s work; women accost tourists in perfect French, whores with university degrees giving everything they have of themselves. Palestinian children selling trinkets and concertina postcards – six views of beautiful Lebanon – hassle backpackers who shade their wide eyes from the sun, striding through the filth with open mouths and wads of greenbacks.
Chaim and I sit in plastic chairs on his tiled balcony, arms akimbo, faces upturned to the sun, absorbing the dust and heat into ourselves in order to become so dusty and so hot it can no longer annoy us and we’re immune, ready to enjoy the last hour before sunset. His hand is on my knee, and I can’t help but think it’s a gesture of ownership. But I let it rest there, and the film of sweat between my skin and his is in some way a confirmation of my conflicting desires.
His balcony is sea-deep, generous. It has room for a wrought-iron table and these various plastic chairs, Julius’s kennel, a summer daybed, broken and sagging in the middle, wet washing strung on a makeshift line. His pots of gardenias, the only flower he cultivates, waxen and shiny with blossoms all year round. He lives in one of the few Frenchera apartment blocks left in the city: neoclassical beauties complete with cornices and architraves in the guise of Roman temples, dizzying ceilings, windows of arched and ribbed glass in the Levantine style.
I’ve slowly succumbed to my need to be closer to Chaim, and to his single-minded desire for me. I want to be with him, near him, drink in his smell and speech and habits. But I feel guilty at wanting this so soon, and in such circumstances – a lover, or a father? Someone to rely on, someone to love. He thinks I don’t care for him. He thinks my hesitation is indifference, when in fact it’s my last-ditch attempt at retaining some final shred of my original purpose in coming to Beirut.
‘Move in with me, it’s cheaper,’ he’d said. ‘I’m hardly ever in Beirut anyway. Julius needs someone to look after him when I’m away. There’s plenty of room. I’d love to have you here.’ And, finally, one night as he raised himself on his elbow in bed and looked into my face: ‘Please, Anoush. I know you don’t care for me the way I do for you.’ He held up his hand to silence my protest. ‘Ssh, listen to me. I can help you out.’
‘Chaim, I do care for you,’ I whispered. ‘More than I want to.’
‘And I—’ he said, coming closer, ‘I think I’m falling in love with you.’
I felt a deep, discordant thrill at his words. At the same time, I couldn’t help but think of Lilit, what she would think of us, he and I, a couple. I cast my mind back to the girl she once was, stoking a fitful fire; then a young mother in Der ez Zor, eating a bite of loukoum before bed; and in Beirut as an old woman mouthing her garbled Christian–Islamic prayers. Then I knew she would approve.
Over the past few weeks I’ve moved in, increment by increment. First it was my herbal shampoo, left behind in the shower recess. I saw him notice and try to hide his smile. Then my nightgown, a matted hairbrush on the dresser next to his. For me, these are testaments of love. For him, they mean only that I need refuge. Well, maybe that’s what love is. A temporary refuge.
I’ve checked out of the Mayflower. I can send the money I save in hotel bills to Siran, for better conditions in the home, extra care from the nuns. My backpack with its entrails of clothes and shoes and paperbacks lies scattered on Chaim’s bedroom floor.
We sit and drink tonic water; it seems to help settle my stomach. Chaim pours a finger of gin into his own glass and gets up to lean over the railing, squinting into the dazzle off the sea. I can hear the cracking sound of the ice in his glass as it bumps against the sides. The sound of a Beirut summer, on these very same balconies with my school friends. Drinking lemonade made with waxy-skinned garden lemons, spring water from the mountains, sugar syrup mixed with rosewater. I’m serenely happy in this brief sunset time to sit on the white plastic chair – buttocks sticking to it with sweat – to drink tonic water, remember and muse on those days when time ceased to matter and life was a little interval, the time it took for the crack of an ice cube against a glass. Chaim speaks softly into the silence, not turning his head to see if I’m listening.
‘Those palm trees – ever seen them in old photographs? From before the war. The ones planted all the way along here?’
‘Only in postcards, the black and white ones they sell down on the Corniche. What about them?’
‘My brother used to bomb them every time he came through here.’
‘And the Beirutis would keep planting them again each time, right?’
‘Right. I don’t think he ever knew they’d become so …’ He pauses, uncertain.
I speak for him, my voice low. ‘I know, Chaim. So symbolic.’
He clears his throat, and I can see on his face that he’s wondering whether to tell me something, or not.
‘I’ve seen the same thing happen back home, in Tel Aviv. Whenever the terrorists bomb a cafe, or a service station, the trees are the first thing to come back: before the foundations, before the rebuilding. We’re all the same. All the same, at heart.’
I know it’s taken a lot for him to say this to me. So often when he speaks of Israel, or his family, we argue. Less these days, though. He’s shown me patience, and a form of peace. I’m starting to learn. He halfturns away from me, looking out over the balcony.
‘Your mother?’ I venture. ‘Is she safe?’
‘Safe as she can be,’ he replies, looking back at me. ‘She stays in her apartment a lot. I worry about her, though. Anytime she goes shopping, or walks down the street, it could happen.’ He shrugs. ‘We’ve learned to live with it, over there. We try not to hate, all the time.’
I beckon him to me and we sit on the sticky plastic chairs again, holding hands over the divide.