Muhammad Abi Samra - Beirut Noir

Maya startled awake from her inner monologue to a pair of black eyes staring at her and she screamed in fear, jumping back. The young man with the black eyes didn’t move but looked at her with clear discomfort for a short time, then turned and walked on. It took her a moment to get herself together and continue on her stoll. It wasn’t the first time this had happened to her; she was used to daydreaming and getting lost in her thoughts while walking. Sometimes people passing by would inadvertently bump into her and she’d jump with fright. It would then take her some time to recover, as if she needed to plant herself again in the geographic space where she was.

She continued on her way, daydreaming and pondering the mechanics of daydreaming itself — how the body can continue moving on its own as if completely detached from its owner. In bars, she would sometimes be jolted from a waking dream by some man sitting across the table smiling at her, thinking that she was looking at him. She was definitely better at seduction while daydreaming than when awake. This thought amused her, and she smiled and bent down to pick one of the purple flowers growing around the sidewalk next to Sanayeh Park, which she always walked alongside on her way to Abu Wadih’s bar in Hamra, where she’d gotten used to spending her evenings recently.

The purple flowers seemed dark gray that evening in the shadow of darkness that covered Beirut after Israeli jets, as usual, had bombed the Électricité du Liban power plant. She remembered that time, during the last Israeli attack on Lebanon before this one, when she was forced to crouch alone in the darkness for the whole night. At the time, she was only fourteen years old and couldn’t close her eyes until morning came, until she could see all of her body parts and be sure that they were all there... There in the dark she gradually lost all feeling in her extremities. Every so often, she patted herself to be sure that everything was in its usual place, but with only her two hands it was impossible to touch every part of her body. Even when she curled up into a ball there was always some extremity escaping from her to roam around in the darkness and slowly transform into a strange shape. Her hand suddenly became a snail, another time it stretched out like a ruler, then floated down like soft cotton. It wasn’t just the sounds of bombs continuing all night long that made her anxious, but the thought of death while still imprisoned in the body of darkness, before the light could come to separate their two bodies, her body and the body of darkness. Light had always been her best friend, ever since childhood. Silent and warm, for some reason she always felt it loved her, still loves her, and that it alone could see what lives in her. She set the purple flower free, like always, and carried on walking; she didn’t know why it was so difficult for her to hold on to things.

Had she forgotten about the flower in her hand, she knew it would slowly be strangled there, gnawing at her extremities, squeezed and crushed until it completely lost its color. She’d do this unintentionally, preoccupied by some idea in her head, then suddenly realize what she’d done and get sad like a small child. This situation wasn’t limited to flowers but to almost everything, no matter if it was trivial or important. After this digression, she remembered the ring that Khalid had given her before his trip. She examined her finger, looking for the ring but not finding it there. She must have forgotten it at home on the sink again, though she didn’t really have to keep taking it off since it was gold, and soap and water wouldn’t damage it, as her girlfriend had informed her. She kept doing it, however, because she kept imagining that there was something stuck to it. She didn’t want this ring to get lost — like the other gifts people had given her over the years — even Khalid didn’t know the effort she expended every day to hold on to this gift, which she sometimes felt was a trust or heavy burden. Khalid wasn’t like her, he held on to everything, even the smallest, most insignificant thing. His house was a strange museum, a collection of memories of every person who had passed through his life. One day she opened a small drawer next to his bed and found things that were hers, things that even she had forgotten about — a small red hair band, a soft leather bracelet, a flyer for a play she directed a long time ago, and small pieces of paper with some of her scribbles and incomprehensible words written on them. She really didn’t understand why he kept all of these things, and when she asked him, his answer only increased her bewilderment:

Maya: Khalid, what’s all this stuff?

Khalid: It’s all yours, the hair band you forgot in the wash the first time you slept over at my place, the poster from the first time we met, you were hanging it on a wall in Hamra and I helped you, remember?

Maya: Yeah. The poster, yeah... the hair band, no. I thought it was the second time, when I came over to fight with you.

Khalid: You know... I’ve saved all our Facebook chats in a special file on my computer, along with all our phone messages from the time we met until now.

Maya: Why?

Khalid: I’m scared of my phone being lost or stolen, I don’t know...

She remembered that she’d felt happy at the time. But she was also embarrassed that she couldn’t recall all these details and wondered if this meant that she didn’t love him enough. Her happiness didn’t last long, however, because a few days later she opened another drawer by chance and in it she found that he’d kept mementos of his old girlfriend, Nisrine, arranged with the same enthusiasm and care as her things.

She stopped for a moment to try to listen to the sounds from Sanayeh Park, inside the white tents put up by the internally displaced people, fleeing Israeli bombings in the south and southern suburbs. She remembered her friend Majd, who’d said jokingly that morning that Xanax and condoms topped the IDPs’ wish list. She didn’t know why she didn’t find this funny, but hurtful. It reminded her of a recurrent nightmare in which she found herself in the middle of the street wearing her pajamas, or the one where she’s jolted awake among a bunch of strangers in her bedroom — that terrifying feeling that your private life has become public. She responded to Majd by asking him if he’d stopped having sex since the beginning of the war. He seemed embarrassed by her question, and replied in the negative.

One night, when she was still studying for her baccalaureate, she snuck over the park’s walls with her friend Rami. She remembered how happy she’d felt to stretch out on the damp lawn, and how much happier she would have been if Rami, who she didn’t like all that much, had not tried to hit on her the whole time. She wasn’t attracted to him, she’d only gone with him for the thrill of sneaking in. It occurred to her that she should sneak into the garden now, go into a random tent, and lie down there. Anywhere would be better than going back home, where she wouldn’t find Khalid. She didn’t know why she always felt peace of mind everywhere but her own house. Perhaps all the problems in her relationship with Khalid started when he moved into her house. She didn’t stop him; she was always living as though she were a guest in her own house anyway. Why did he do that to her? He planted himself in all the little details of her life and distanced her from everything related to his. He gave up his life to live her life, and then he gave up both her life and his and left to have a different one.

Throughout that time he’d had a dream that he’d just leave everything and travel abroad aimlessly. She didn’t know why she didn’t understand this dream of his — perhaps it was because her feeling of belonging didn’t weigh on her the same way it did on him. Perhaps because she was fundamentally lost; this is likely why she was able to explore the same places again and again without getting exhausted or bored. She remembered that she’d read somewhere that fish lose their memory every five minutes, and that’s why they can swim happily around a little pond. They forget where they are every five minutes and go back to swimming around in circles to discover the same place anew. Until now she hadn’t found a better theory to explain her tremendous love for moving around in the same empty circles.