Beirut Blues by Hanan al-Shaykh Page B

with stones of baked clay” as if we were Ethiopians threatening Mecca in the Qur’an?
    The sidewalk was riddled with holes, big and small, but it was still a Beirut sidewalk. People still walk in the streets of Beirut; their eyes register the wrecked buildings, the broken glass, the burned trees. The toy shop has become a roast chicken take-out. The barbershop is closed forever, boarded up with sheets of metal. But do they want Beirut to disintegrate completely?
    At this point I stopped thinking, still watching the fire with you as it died down and the papers turned to ashes. Among them lay the hopes and wishes which had accompanied the words; the days and nights which were no longer any use for encouraging the spread of logic and faith and conducting internal debates; the arteries which blocked any attempt to inject new life into them, or even to restore life to how it used to be in the past. You see your friend shutting his door in your face, apologizing for being unable to give you a roof for the night in case the building becomes a target, because he knows you’re on the run. This shocks you because your friendship wasn’t based on talking and going to the movies together, but on a shared vision of the future which you were committed to realizing together. And you must have noticed in my eyes the pressure I anticipated from your continuing presence in Beirut. Is it possible that you could become a burden to me and the city, as if you were not Naser who has been my consuming passion for so long? I need your heartbeat to keep me alive. I have to be so close toyou that our limbs intertwine and our breath mingles and forms a single protective layer against an unknown terror. You must remember that night, three or four days before you left? You sighed and said, “I’ve got a craving for ice, a lot of ice, with my whiskey.”
    We walked out of the Commodore Hotel, swaying slightly from the whiskey and red and white wine we’d drunk, trying to work out whose apartment you had arranged to spend the night in. Then you asked me to get back into the car and drive us to the clinic. I drove as if I were in a dream and parked and got out, still half dreaming, for the city was dark and peaceful, despite sporadic bursts of shelling. We entered a room where the nurses were playing cards with doctors and a few patients. We exchanged jokes with them, then you asked for some ice for your whiskey. It was reserved for cooling their instruments, but they sliced a bit off the slab for you. We didn’t bother looking for the apartment where you were meant to stay. Instead we went to visit an artist friend. The door of his house was open, as if he knew he would have a lot of visitors. We walked into the living room, which was overflowing with young people, especially girls sitting in untidy groups on the floor with their belongings scattered around them, making it look like a school common room. You sat sipping the iced whiskey you’d brought with you, while I talked to someone who said it was suffocating in there and why didn’t we go out on the balcony? It was as if our arrival had reignited dying embers, for the music blared out again and the girls got up to dance to it and some of them gyrated where they sat on the floor. The very moment that the youth reached out a hand to feelmy breast through the opening of my shirt, I happened to glance through a doorway and see your friend’s daughter resting her head on your chest while you stroked her hair affectionately. Was she crying? She must have been afraid. The boy’s hand played with my nipple while Beirut lay under siege and watchful eyes stared intently through telescopes at weapons attacking the city from land, sea, and air. Everything faded as the music died, except the boy’s hand squeezing my breast. I was aware of nothing except the blackness encircling the city. Once again the living room looked like a room in a girls’ boarding school. As you came back in, I saw you patting