Muhammad Abi Samra - Beirut Noir

I heard the report about the woman again. The broadcast said that she was found murdered on the steps of a building, her features unidentifiable, and there were bullet holes in her belly and neck.

From the backseat of the taxi I glimpsed my reflection in the rearview mirror. My features seemed indistinguishable. I wound my fingers around each other and crossed my legs because I had to go to the bathroom; whenever I’m scared I have to go to the bathroom. I fell silent. In the beginning the news didn’t arouse anyone’s curiosity.

The woman was talking about how expensive things are; she said, “Plastic flip-flops cost fifteen lira!”

Someone else sitting in the car interrupted her, saying, “Now it’s the women’s turn. They’ve finished everything else and now they’ve started in on the women.”

Silence reigned. Then another man’s voice followed: “Good man, women are like cats, they have nine lives, nothing harms them. So many men have died, there are lots of women in the country. However many are lost, there will still be more women than men.”

The woman who was sitting in the backseat with us said, “Every time a woman is killed, there is a good reason behind her death. God punishes she who sins. The fate of the sinner is death.”

“Yes indeed,” they all replied.

I remained silent and backed farther into the corner.

I remembered my friend’s story. She told me that when she was a girl, a man entered their house asking for her father’s protection. This man had killed his mentally challenged sister. Her family had sent her to someone’s house to work there. The owner of the house assaulted her. When her belly grew big, without her knowing why, her brother shot her and took refuge in my friend’s father’s house, asking for his protection. My friend was upset when she told me about this, saying, “What makes me sad is that my mother was praising the guy, God bless your hands, you noble man! ”

For a moment, I thought that the news of the woman on the radio was the same person who my friend had told me about. I had almost forgotten about that incident from so many years ago. But I remembered that for the woman who was found killed, there was no mention of an investigation into a possible rape or assault. They found not a baby, but bullets in her belly.

But where did they find these women to kill? Though the man said that there were so many women in the country, they aren’t here anymore.

My friend says they are floating apparitions, resembling gray tents from head to toe. My grandmother used to tell me that women haven’t been present since the time of her grandfather’s grandfather who killed her in infancy because he didn’t want anyone to be disgraced like that woman.

I believed my grandmother was telling me a bedtime story on that distant day. In my dreams I saw the neighbors’ daughter entering a white room where I lay stretched out on a bed. The neighbors’ daughter was wearing a beautiful long white dress as if she were a bride. I only knew her from having seen her on the balcony. In the dream, she gave me a sad look, then waved her hand. She left through the door and locked it behind her. With this sound of the door closing, I woke up to gunfire. I got up quickly and went to the balcony. I saw the girl’s corpse lying out in front of her house, the women and men of the street gathering around her. Her brother had shot her. They said that she was having a relationship with someone, her brother saw her with him. His mother’s voice rang out through the street: “Run away, get out of here before the police come!”

That day I told my mother about the dream. She said that the white dress symbolizes death. “My daughter, your dream frightens me.”

The words of the woman in the car and her enthusiasm about the crime against the dead woman reminded me of that girl’s mother’s voice. For an instant, I thought that she was her mother, especially when the broadcast said that the woman was wearing a white dress.

My grandmother says that age is a lie. The coming days are an echo of the past and its shadow.

The past is truth and the truth is the infant girl murdered at birth centuries ago. But I don’t believe the news. Is it possible that the scent of blood can remain on the body for centuries?

The scent of my body has remained for centuries.

The scent of my body rose and filled the car. The people in it started coughing. I coughed too, and the dust of my breath reached the driver’s mirror. He pulled his head back and turned toward me in anger.

I knew he couldn’t understand my features. They had lived through centuries. Today they have the city’s scent. Everyone coughed again. I coughed too, and my heart stopped beating before I reached the place where the incident happened. My body had become unidentifiable.

Everyone was scared and filled with shame. They started exchanging glances with each other. When we got to the scene of the crime, the man sitting next to me opened the door and threw me out on the ground. The car took off quickly.

I stretched out on the ground, and before closing my eyes and passing out, I realized that I was the woman who was found murdered. My grandmother’s voice was ringing in my ears and my scent covered the whole place.

The scent of the city covered my outstretched body.

Originally written in Arabic.

Sin el Fil

She went up the stairs, careful as usual not to stumble on the broken steps. It’s a long walk up to the sixth floor. She put the bags she was carrying on the landing to rest a little. She leaned against the edge of the big wrought-iron window that’s cracked in more than one place. Electricity lines hung suspended and sagging between the buildings. A drab flock of pigeons flew near the cypress tree that soared up above the buildings. Desiccation had begun to grip it from the top and some of its branches were dead. Will this affect all of its branches or will it endure in the same condition it has been in for the past few years? Why had she never noticed this before? She felt a sudden fatigue; she had to hurry up and prepare dinner.

It was a worthy occasion. She was going to talk to Farid about everything. (She liked to pronounce his new name, not what he called himself as a child but what he did now after coming back from Australia: Freddy. This was nicer, it made her feel that he’d become a new person.) She was going to talk to him about their life together, and she would try to come closer to his world because the few memories that she’s preserved of him have become cloudy. All that she can recall is his beaming smile, which bewitched all the young women, and his huge, round, black eyes that added magic to it. She also remembered how he came back happy after watching a scary film in which the heroine, who he said resembled her, had been hanged. She asked him why he was happy about her death projected onto the big-screen heroine — did he hate her that much? He didn’t reply. She also didn’t forget his lightning-quick visit through Beirut, his insistence on seeing her, and how she couldn’t be bothered. She was completely absorbed in another world, a severely blind one. She then learned that he’d married a foreign woman soon after he’d come back, and they’d divorced four years later.

She opened the door. She headed into the kitchen to put the bags on the counter, then went back into the living room. White sheets covered the sofas, like it was wartime or summer vacation. After her father died, her siblings emigrated and her mother moved to the mountains, so the house was left to her free-ranging loneliness. She threw herself on the sofa. She felt dizzy, so she got up to open the window and take in a bit of air.