The neighbourhood of Gemmayzeh, just beyond Beirut city centre, was too close to the demarcation line during the war. As a result, for twenty years the area had been left pretty much to its own devices. While the war raged on, its ancient alleyways and traditional houses were abandoned or occupied by cowering people who had nowhere else to go.
For various reasons, the reconstruction that followed the war did not quite reach this quaint quarter either. Some of the old houses were renovated and transformed into expensive villas by an enterprising woman who was keen on both charging rent and preserving what little heritage remained in Gemmayzeh. Apart from that, the area remained untouched. One evening we were invited to the home of some friends who lived in the area overlooking Gemmayzeh. When we arrived we found them sitting in the garden with their guests. It was a lovely October evening, and the air was heavy with the scent of jasmine.
As is often the case when Beirutis get together, the conversation somehow managed to turn to the war years, even though the war ended some fifteen years ago.
‘The other day my daughter asked me if the war had left any scars,’ said a lawyer who had shuffled back and forth between Tripoli and Paris. ‘It seems her teacher had been discussing post-traumatic stress disorders and the problems faced by the lost generation’.
‘What did you tell your daughter?’ asked an attractive artist in her forties.
‘I was taken aback by the question, actually. I didn’t think that I was scarred. But then my daughter asked me a curious question. “What about Teta (grandmother)? Did the war affect her?” Suddenly, I started to weep because when my mother had died during the war I was unable to attend her funeral.’
‘I feel like I wasted my youth,’ said the artist. ‘I still can’t account for those fifteen years of war, or even the years that followed. Many of my friends never married, and in our culture women marry young.’ Then she turned to me. ‘Where were you during the war?’
‘I stayed in Beirut.’
‘Here in Gemmayzeh?’
‘No, I lived in West Beirut. I moved after I got married, but by then the war had ended.’
‘I went to Paris soon after the war started,’ said our hostess. ‘I couldn’t risk staying. My son had just been born and my husband was able to relocate his work. I know it must have been a horrible time to be in Lebanon.’
I thought for a moment. ‘There was much that was terrible, yes, and yet, in an odd way, it was a unique experience. I have never lived as intensely as I did during the war.’
‘Intensely?’
‘Perceptions were heightened, experiences were more vivid. I can’t explain it. I felt I was really alive. I wrote poems mostly, that were compact and intense reactions to what was happening. I looked forward to going to school, to spending time with the kids I taught. There was heightened meaning to our everyday lives. In fact, I haven’t felt that way since the war ended.’
‘I remember the summer of 1989,’ my husband said. ‘I was one of the few people remaining in Beirut. My wife’s family had gone to the US and left me the key to their apartment, on the sixth floor of a building in Zarif. I had offered to feed the cat and water the plants while they were away. My sister and her family had gone to the mountains in the north, and she too had a cat; so she left me the key to her place on the seventh floor of a building about a ten-minute walk from the Zarif apartment. I lived on the eleventh floor of a building in Kraytem, about a half-hour away from both houses. By then the war had been raging for fourteen years, and, although I’m a Maronite, living in West Beirut was the only choice available to me.’
My husband was keen to share his war experience. ‘The shelling that summer ravaged the city. Fuel was scarce, and basic amenities were unavailable, but I soon developed a ritual. Because the electricity was cut most of the time, I had to walk down the eleven flights of stairs before heading to the Sporting Club where I would swim for an hour. The beach was the only place I could have a shower, albeit with brackish water, since there was no running water in any of the flats. Occasionally I played chess with some of the regulars there, but mostly I donned my mask and flippers to go skin-diving, relishing the cool serenity of the Mediterranean,’ he explained to the interested guests.
‘Every afternoon I walked to my sister’s house as there was very little fuel and taxis were a luxury. Once there, I climbed the seven flights of stairs to her apartment, fed the cat, walked down again and headed to Zarif to do the same thing. It was a thirty-minute walk back to my building and, once again, I had to climb up eleven flights of stairs to my apartment. I developed different ways of making the trek up the stairs easier. Sometimes maintaining a steady, slow pace helped preserve energy. Or counting backwards and focusing on how many floors were left rather than how many I had climbed,’ my husband continued.
‘In the evening, I would often meet my neighbour, a gnarled and gruff Sunni, on the landing between our two apartments; it was the safest place to be during heavy bouts of shelling. Like underground garages, these spaces became the community centres of wartime Beirut. People who barely acknowledged each other before the war began to spending long, intimate evenings together, united by their need for preservation and survival,’ he said with a distant look in his eyes.
‘My neighbour and I found we had a lot in common. We had long discussions over bottles of whisky in the dim light of a battery-powered lamp. Confidentially he would tell his friends that he really liked his Maronite neighbour. ‘An excellent young man, were it not for his name!’ The guests in the garden chuckled. My husband’s name literally means ‘the Maronite’.
‘Funny thing about all this is that when the horror of the shelling stopped, and a ceasefire was agreed upon, eventually leading to the end of the war some months later, I was miserable,’ my husband admitted. ‘Many of the people who stayed behind had the same reaction. Instead of feeling relieved or overjoyed, I was upset, lost. People returned from wherever they had taken refuge. Normal life resumed, but I couldn’t take it. My space was suddenly invaded by all the people returning from cities where normal life is taken for granted. They had no idea what every shell hole in the wall or every pothole in the street meant. The pace of life quickened and became banal. People were busy again. It actually made me nauseous.’
Our host shook his head: ‘and here we are fifteen years later still coming to terms with this devastating war’.
The delicate jasmine blossoms shivered in the breeze, wrapping us in their fragrant perfume. The white flowers fell gently in our laps as we sat silently in the fragrant garden, an anachronism in this city of unruly concrete.