Muhammad Abi Samra - Beirut Noir

This is Salma’s favorite line. She works hard to make the shelling die down. That time the Russian Grad missiles all but destroyed the entire neighborhood, the balconies of the building facing ours fell off and she said, “Don’t worry, it’s far away.”

Lamia missed Salma so much since she’d moved to Sydney. In any case, one of the good things about the trip she has planned with Farid is that she’ll get to see Salma, her friend for life. Lamia didn’t know why, but when thinking about Salma, she would remember her feet more than any other feature: her childlike feet clambering through fields and up trees, her two legs plowing through streets, wandering sidewalks, penetrating alleys, going up stairs, climbing up dirt berms as though they were small hills. Her feet were balanced, like a boat between the shores of a city totally given over to its madness; they rose up tearing apart roads and checkpoints, and they pumped blood through its severed arteries. Her old feet were there on the asphalt, deaf to everything that might startle the ear and heart, pursuing the traces of the one she loved so as to touch his shadow. It was as if this young woman was soaring in an earthly flight that could never weaken. But once her feet suddenly betrayed her in the middle of the street, forsaking her, making her unable to take even a single step ahead. That time, she and Hyam were forced to pick Salma up and put her in the car as though she were actually paralyzed. She started screaming, saying that she didn’t want to go home and that she couldn’t bear to see her husband all devoted to his pigeons, or escaping into the garage, claiming to be absorbed in his drawing while all he was doing was smoking and drinking beer.

“He even pushed me to argue with our next-door neighbor, saying that she was a lying, gossiping woman, after she told me that she saw him going into my house with that whore of a woman during the summer holiday. If only I hadn’t listened to what he said and fought with the neighbor, I would’ve been able to find out more details.”

“More than what you know? What’s the point? Then you’d be destroyed!”

“And let this destroy me ? I will destroy his comfort and that whore’s as well...”

She declared with total impudence that before marriage she’d wanted to establish a relationship with a man with experience.

“And your husband, what about him...?”

“As usual, he told me that jealousy would blind my heart. Before marriage, we’d agreed on an open relationship with no conditions. But what kind of free love can you have with kids? Lamia, please rub my knees for me, I can no longer feel them... And my head hurts, give me a scarf to wrap around it... Why doesn’t he love me anymore?”

“Haven’t you had enough of this question? Salma, be as strong as you always have been. You’ve survived worse.”

“This man is displacing me in my own house, he’s made me unable to stand up. They imagine me, Salma, to be debilitated and disjointed, only able to ask one question.” She lowered her aching head like a woman bereaved, then added, “But why doesn’t he still love me? Does that trivial woman understand love better than I do? She’s certainly no Claudia Cardinale... I’ve brought women who are much more beautiful than her to my husband so he could film their bodies.”

“Then think of her as one of the young women who you brought to him and forget the whole thing.”

“She left her fiancé for him... Who does she think he is? I’ve only just agreed to marry him.”

“It’s good that he’s no longer entitled to anything. Why did you want to know about his affairs in the first place?”

“Tonight I’m going to meet that filmmaker who liked my movie — and I think he also likes me.”

“But you’re half-paralyzed, you can hardly stand up.”

“I’ll stay at your place, Lamia — and tell the filmmaker to bring me back there. You have to take me to pick up my daughter from the nursery... You know, Lamia, I’m losing my strength. I’m sad when I think about how much I’ve chased love. All of this effort, in vain. He doesn’t even ask how I’m doing! My failure is massive. I’ve forgotten how to laugh. I’ve lost the joy of living, the pleasure of feeling the ground underneath my feet. I imagine him with his whole body curved around her, staring at her mad with love, with me sitting in front of them. This is terrorism, this is a direct assault on my being.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing... You, Salma, who are so—”

“Sometimes I think about calling the two of you — you and Hyam — asking you to send me flowers or candy or fruit so I can feel some kind of warmth. Lamia, you want the truth? I think your failure means nothing compared to mine. Every day I feel the same way you did that evening when it became clear that everything would end between you and Philippe.”

“You still remember that evening?”

“Now even more than ever. Your only concern was preparing Philippe’s pizza. You didn’t pay much attention when I told you about my kidnapping by the party’s ‘comrades.’ We didn’t know that on that very evening we would do brave and fearless deeds in battle with members of the Other Party! Yes, we swept away passion and weapons in one fell swoop that night, and we were careless.”

Despite her pain, Salma burst out laughing and said, “By day, the machine gun was waiting for me and by evening you were waiting for Philippe while your mad admirer Samir was waiting for him with his gun. A group of armed fighters surrounded Philippe at the entrance to the building. You started pacing around like a madwoman, asking me, Why is he late? I don’t know what inspired me to go out and see what was happening on the street. I found Samir in front of the building in a military uniform. He turned toward me and said, Tell your girlfriend I won’t let him enter this building and he won’t be able to cross this street, no matter how quick he is. I told him that were he to return it would be his last stand. I instructed my guys to follow him home and watch his every move. Then he added, Tell your girlfriend that it is she alone who is able to keep this bad seed away from all of us. Tell her that my situation in life has improved and that I’ve been in love with her since high school. He doesn’t love her. I responded, Why don’t you come yourself, Samir, and let her know all these things? But he didn’t dare climb the stairs to our place, despite all the influence he claimed to have.”

“Yes, calls and threats were enough for Philippe to be humiliated like this in front of my house... and the man with bullets and influence to meddle in my life...”

“I cannot forget your face or how you looked on that night, your back hunched over all of a sudden. We tried to intercede with someone in the party who had more influence than Samir... We went to him in the morning and we felt reassured when we saw him, because he was an older man. But he started to scoff at everything that you were saying. My girl, you are pursuing an already lost cause. He’s not for you. My God, he started admonishing us so we’d understand that we were all under close surveillance. And we went back the way we came, like this, defeated. I knew that the season of your sadness would begin when the ‘joy’ of Philippe’s marriage to someone else became a reality.”

“Come on, let’s stop worrying about this and live our lives.”

“Lamia, I’m living a failure like yours right now, but I’m thinking about getting out of it, whereas you didn’t want to leave it behind. You needed a house, not university, not friends, not family; you found a thousand pretexts to not see anyone. How stupid you were!”

In any case, pretty soon she won’t be stupid anymore. She’ll marry Farid and turn a new page in her life.