Jasmine and Fire (35 page)

Maybe this won’t be a crowded summer, the Arab Spring having quashed urges to travel much in these parts, or to get so close to Syria. Or maybe Lebanon’s own brewing problems will keep visitors away: in recent days, some rallies in northern Lebanon showing solidarity
with antiregime protesters in Syria, and others expressing support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, have turned violent. Also now, in early June, anxiety is still humming over what will happen when the UN Special Tribunal releases its conclusions on the Hariri assassination; when one set of results does finally get released weeks later, nothing much happens—for now—except some speeches by the accused Hezbollah party denouncing the credibility of the findings.

But other ominous events have been happening lately, side effects from the Syrian strife or local harbingers of tension and trouble. The other day in Sidon, less than an hour south of Beirut, a bomb went off at the headquarters of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon. I was in a service taxi on my way to dinner at Kamal and Nour’s house in Achrafieh when the news broke.

“Oof, ballashna,”
said my taxi driver. We’ve started, meaning “Here we go again with war.”

“Oh no!” said a middle-aged woman passenger sitting in the backseat next to me.

The driver turned up the volume to hear what happened. The news report said the motive behind the bombing was a mystery. Six Italian officers posted in Sidon had been injured in the explosion, but no reported deaths so far.

“Oh,” said the woman next to me, idly turning a page in her fashion magazine.

Is that boring, six injuries and no deaths? Not quite the drama we’d expected? I’ve noticed that Lebanese, myself included, often talk about political tensions in an animated tone, full of anticipation. I flash back to that comment Josette made to me once, about war being like salt and pepper here. This country has been through
so many bloodbaths, and is so often on the verge of another, that I wonder if too much serenity for too long can seem disorienting or dull or even ominous in its own strange way.

Maybe brewing conflict, scary though it is, also sometimes plays an oddly comforting role here. I wonder if it can put the stagnation of a life in perspective, give a palpable reason for depression, unemployment, a failing marriage, a life stunted or in disarray: there’s a war on, after all. In peacetime, as dysfunctional and stagnant and infuriating as life can be in Lebanon, the excuses aren’t as obvious.

That could be why fireworks go off every day somewhere in Beirut—whenever a child’s birthday or family celebration or store grand-opening seems to call for thunderous booms, the adrenaline bump of an explosion, a familiar soundscape of urgency, fight-or-flight, repurposed for ceremony and heart-thumping thrills. But fireworks still make my nerves jump every time; that sound of shelling is uncannily exact.

Despite the mostly mellow start to this summer, the no-sweat weather and traffic so far, Beirut is closing in on me again. I’ve been spoiled by the country air, the solitude, haven’t missed the interrogating stares on every street corner. The minute I walk back into my beloved Beirut apartment, a place I’ve missed as I would an old friend, I’m ready to bolt out for the countryside again. But I want to let Beirut wash back over me. I want to enjoy being here this summer, really milk my time here, because this is the season when Beirut truly comes alive—or tries to, in the summers when there’s no war, no invasion.

Also because I’m thinking about leaving Lebanon soon. Not yet, not this month. But before the summer is out, I might be back in New York. I’ve been struggling with the question of whether
I can stay in Beirut long-term ever since I got here last August, and much more so lately, as my one-year anniversary approaches. The truth is, I can’t quite decide if I want to stay or go. Beirut drives me nuts, yes, but it’s gotten under my skin this year again, and now I know it’s not going anywhere, whatever becomes of this crazy country. I’m feeling at home here again, finally, and I know I could live here. I could stay on. I’m surprised to feel this way. A year ago I wouldn’t have guessed this is how things would turn out.

Also, I don’t know if I can bear to leave this apartment. The living room balcony looking out over Ras Beirut, the sea in the near distance, the traffic noises from Hamra Street, the smell of man’ouches from the bakery around the corner, the orange sunlight filtering through my bedroom curtains—these spaces and sensations are like extensions of my body. I’ve never felt this about a room or a house or an apartment anywhere else I’ve lived, in Texas or California or New York or any other city or state or country.

And: I love Beirut. I love it desperately. I know that now, and I know it in a deeper way, with more qualifiers but also much more certainty than I did before.

In spite of all the reasons to stay, all the emotions and attachments and arguments that keep cycling through my head as the weeks go by, I’m torn in other ways. For one thing, I’d rather not live on another continent from the person I’m involved with. Beirut will be here forever (well, who knows), but having a relationship that feels this natural, and durable through a slew of challenges, happens too rarely and can’t be willed to happen any old time. It’s happening now, and I’m hoping it will keep on growing if it’s meant to. It’s either an inconvenient obstacle to staying
in Lebanon forever—or a confirmation that I miss my New York life just as much as I feel reconnected here in Lebanon. I’m feeling tugged in both directions, some days stronger toward Beirut and other days more toward New York. I need both cities in my life somehow, need to find a way to bring together the places and people that give my life meaning, wrap my life around them as best I can.

Here is one stab toward a resolution: right now it’s easier for me to live in New York than for Richard to move to Beirut, although I suppose we could continue the long-distance relationship for a while longer. I’ve known plenty of people who’ve had it geographically worse than we do.

I still have some thinking to do, and I haven’t figured out exactly when I’ll return to New York if I do. But as much as Beirut feels jarring to me now, immediately after my blissful Amsheet and Marjeyoun escapes, I want to get my fill of it.

Shireen and I go out one night to see the African American jazz singer China Moses perform her renditions of Dinah Washington songs at the Music Hall. Midway through a soulful cover of “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby,” Shireen whispers to me that we should make a list of places to explore this summer, plan a few memorable Lebanon adventures together. Because after agonizing over the decision of whether to stay or go, she’s decided to move back to the States in a couple of months.

I flash back to what a few people said to me when I landed in Lebanon last summer:
“Beirut is a transitional city. People you meet are always about to leave.”

But don’t many of us also return? Shireen and I both did. We came back—to find Beirut again and our place in it. We’re both surprised by how attached to it we’re feeling now, more than ever,
and how ambivalent we are about moving away. In Shireen’s case, she’s dating a guy who has just moved back to the States after a few years working overseas, and there are more job opportunities for her there. There’s also more space in America, as everyone I know who has lived there notes: physical space, personal space.

My month
in the countryside has made me even more aware of the near-lack of public space in Beirut. But here I am nearly a year into my stay, and I’ve still never been to the Horsh al Sanawbar, the pine forest on the southeast edge of the city, so I tell Shireen we should put it on our Summer Adventures list. As I’d learned at that reading I went to last fall for the launch of the book about the Horsh, most of the park is closed to the public, but we’re curious to see whatever parts we can. We take a service taxi there one morning and get dropped off in front of the fence that encircles the park and separates it from the busy avenue running along one side. We walk along the fence, up and down the avenue, looking for the entrance to the small public part of the park. A guard from the horse-racing stadium across the street waves to us.

“What are you looking for?”

“How can we get into the Horsh?”

“It’s easiest if you go through that gap in the fence you see right there.”

A security guard advising us to climb through a hole in a fence? It’s not clear if there’s a more official entrance or if, as we duck into the gap and climb in, we’ve just breached the private fence. But we seem to be the only ones in the Horsh today. We walk along a paved path, between pine tree groves and landscaped flower beds that look partly neglected. The air feels fresh here, and the sight of endless trees and no people is so un-Beirut and so
calming. If the city had more spaces like this and made them easier to access, it would be so much less claustrophobic. But despite some rallies and efforts here and there to open up the entire Horsh to the public, the government seems to have no plans to anytime soon. We keep walking deeper into the park until we reach a gazebo with a few chairs, under an oasislike cluster of palm trees. An old man is pruning a tree and appears to be the only other person here. He nods at us, and we sit in the gazebo in the shade, look around at the quiet forest, catch a half hour’s complete silence.

For the rest of June, it’s looking like every day and night will be filled with beach plans, music shows, dinners, or drink outings. My mind drifts back to when I first got here last August, and how I spent weeks wondering if I’d ever have a life here, ever get to be part of the whirl instead of looking in on it from the outside. And wondering if my decision to move back here was dumb, doomed. Now, a year later, I feel both surprised and grateful about the life I’ve managed to build here. I have new friends I love, and I’ve grown closer to my childhood friends, cousins, and older relatives, and many of them live so near that I get to see them regularly. My full calendar surprises me still when I look at it now.

I don’t take any of the relationships I’ve created and strengthened this year for granted. I feel lucky to have these people in my life—now and hopefully always. Also, having so many people I care deeply about in Beirut makes me confident that, if I do return to New York this summer, I can come back someday, not just to visit but even to live here again.

I know
there’s one aspect of Beirut life I’ll miss if I leave: how easy and quick it is to get onto a beach. This month is still a little nippy for June, but once it starts getting warm enough for me
to brave the water, I hit the beach as often as I can. Sometimes I walk to the Sporting, a private but casual beach club fifteen minutes from my apartment, near where Hamra Street slopes down to meet the Corniche. Visitors can pay a daily fee instead of the full annual membership to get in. It’s a rocky beach, like most in Beirut. Sprawling on lounge chairs on the stone terrace overlooking the sea, I spot families with kids, groups of friends drinking beers or texting, and sunbathing women untying their tops and lying facedown to get a strapless tan.

One afternoon Shireen and I decide out of curiosity to visit La Plage, a more upscale beach club on the Corniche that attracts a crowd of fit, tan, flirty Beirutis in their twenties and thirties. I covet the white and gold designer bikinis I spy around me, expensive-looking but deliciously glam with their chain straps or 1940s-style tops—and a reminder of the chic bathing suits I used to envy at Beirut beach clubs as a child. We loll around and drink cocktails at the swim-up bar and look out over the Mediterranean, feeling fab and conspiratorial as we eavesdrop on groups gossiping about work and sex and drug-fueled club nights. Another day we go to Atlas, an unpretentious beach club on the sandy shore in Jiyeh, an hour south of Beirut, and I swim in the warm salty waves as Shireen sunbathes, and we devour melted-halloum sandwiches on sesame baguettes for lunch.

In summer, Beirut’s music calendar fills up, and on the solstice night of June 21, known in Paris, Beirut, and other cities around the world (including New York sometimes) as Fête de la Musique, bands play on ad hoc stages all over the city, all night. This year’s Beirut lineup has experimental rock, jazz, hip-hop, Arabic, and all kinds of music, starting in the early evening and going until almost dawn. After a birthday dinner with Hala at a
new Moroccan-French downtown restaurant, I stop by a stage set up nearby and catch a midnight concert by a local punk-metal band, not the greatest I’ve heard but sounding forceful and vital as they thrash around under the stars on a brilliant Beirut night.

Anytime there’s a cultural event happening in Beirut, especially in summer, posters appear all over town, along with a listing in the
Agenda Culturel
, a French-language-only but comprehensive rundown of what’s going on around the city. There’s usually a handful of events on any one night, and Beirut being relatively small, it’s a sure bet you’ll run into people you know wherever you end up, or at least see familiar faces. I know that if and when I leave, I’m going to miss this small-world routine in Beirut, as much as I also often crave the relative anonymity of New York. One night I go to an art opening at a gallery called the Beirut Art Center, to see a photo and film exhibit titled “Image in the Aftermath”; it includes videos from the Nakba Archive, the collection Diana is working on of interviews with Palestinian refugees. I spot a young filmmaker I’d met at Mona and Jia-Ching’s wedding, a friend of theirs named Mary who grew up mostly in Boston but has recently moved back to Beirut. We’d chatted for a while at the wedding, and after the art opening tonight, we go out for drinks and talk for hours, comparing notes on our lives in Beirut and the States. We’d had similar experiences growing up, and I suddenly feel as if I’ve known her for years.

At a film fest in Achrafieh another balmy night, I run into May, the sister of my New York friend Hana, who was a Beirut classmate of mine before our families left Lebanon; happily Hana and I reconnected in New York after college. May lives in Beirut now, and I’d been meaning to get in touch with her. I’m thrilled when I spot her long wavy dark hair and bright eyes in the movie theater,
after last seeing her a decade ago, and we make plans to go out for drinks this month as we laugh about the film we’ve just seen: a silent, subtly funny documentary about Lebanon’s electric-company headquarters, Electricité du Liban. The building’s neon sign never quite lights up properly, its letters flickering or burnt out. Electricité du Liban indeed.