Beirut Blues by Hanan al-Shaykh

behind that tiny table in a bare room with a feeble unshaded light and a sofa such as you might find in the stationmaster’s office at a remote railway station, with a faded woolen rug thrown over it, and a tiled floor looking as if it had never been swept or washed since it was laid. Against the wall you’d stood a wooden vegetable crate, full of rusty nails, with a thermos, an electric kettle, a jar of coffee, and a bag of sugar on it. Then books and more books and papers and files were heaped up on a wooden shelf, spilling over onto the floor in a corner of the room.
    Where had I come from, what did I think? My car seemed out of place here, the ribbon in my hair even more so. I glanced around, concealing my embarrassment, and caught sight of an apricot stone in the ashtray. I couldn’t help looking at it again, as it seemed important, the only reminder of life in this dryness. You must have changed, and shed everything but the shirt and trousers you were wearing so that you could become as pure as the tea glass in my hand.However, from where I was sitting I could see the red blooms of the poinsettia through the window and it took me back to the bustle and uproar of Beirut, the day we met in the ’67 war in your big apartment, with its colors, green plants, fish tanks, your striped shirt, the record player and records. I suppose you must have left it behind you to fulfill a notion conjured up to dispel the feeling of despair which came over us all in ’67. Those days came back to me in a rush with such force that I felt a warm blast of air hit me as I sat facing you on the uncomfortable cane chair, looking at your feet in tennis shoes under the table and finding it hard to believe they had any connection with the feet which had played with mine a couple of years before. Meanwhile, you sat there asking how I was; and awkwardly, feeling as if I had my head stuck in the park railings, I tried to explain to you what was going on in my head, and making a mess of it. I tried to say I was out of place in that office, wholly out of place in my white floor-length coat and white leather boots, but you stood up as if you were dismissing what I was saying, and asked, “More tea or coffee?”
    You stood watching the water come to the boil, while I tried unsuccessfully to express something other than my embarrassment. As I drove off I felt that an abyss had opened up behind me.
    But then Beirut was plunged into its own war and I found I was pulled down into the abyss with you from the moment I saw you again, sitting in a newly opened restaurant in a residential street. Because of its position, this restaurant was unlike any other of the city’s multitude of restaurants, and strangely out of keeping with its surroundings: theconcept of war simply vanished from all our minds as soon as we stepped over the threshold. We piled onto the seats near the window, watching the passersby, convinced we were somewhere safe, inviolable, even when the world outside was rocked by explosions. The circumstances of war colored the personality of the regulars, whether they were intellectuals who had stayed on in the country, ex-combatants, or those still actively engaged in the fighting. Powerful relationships were quickly formed in those circumstances, and disintegrated at the same speed, but the curiosity to find out what lay behind new names and faces remained undiminished as social circles in the city became increasingly restricted.
    You rose to your feet as soon as you saw me and reached out your arms to embrace me like a father reunited with his long-lost daughter, but I suspected that the turmoil of this new war had changed you. I could distinguish that special smell, which I must have retained in my memory since the ’67 war, accompanying the kiss which I had planned in advance. I expected some burning emotion to be rekindled between us, but the kiss ended quickly and there was no aftermath.
    Another few years have passed and you knock back