Beirut Blues Read Online Free PDF Page B

although her words no longer make much sense to me.
    She looks like a cyclamen. Do you remember those flowers? I was so embarrassed when I called them “hunchbacks,” as we do in the South. I rushed to pick one and crushed it in the palm of my hand, exclaiming as it excreted its yellow juice, “It’s got diarrhea!” You looked quite taken aback at my way of talking. As far as you were concerned, the flower was called a “shepherd’s crook,” and the word “diarrhea”and other words I’ve forgotten now shocked you at first, until you grew accustomed to the fact that there were people who’d been brought up differently from you.
    I wish Zemzem would get an ulcer on her tongue so that I wouldn’t have to listen to her nervy conversations all the time, and maybe some on her feet too, then she couldn’t pace about in that agitated way. I’ve changed my mind: cyclamens are beautiful and Zemzem isn’t. Her eyebrows are thin and constantly twisting into expressions of surprise and fear.
    “Come on. Let’s go down to the shelter across the road,” she shouts.
    “I’m putting oil on my hair,” I reply.

Dear Jill Morrell,
    The story of the hostages has only started to figure prominently on the news and in people’s thoughts again over the last couple of days. Before that it had been submerged by day-to-day events.
    The violence going on at the minute has prompted local and international radio networks to keep mentioning them because the area called Al-Dahiya where they’re being held is ablaze now: Amal and Hizbullah are pointing the finger at each other; Hizbullah says Amal are traitors for calling them troublemakers, and Amal says that Hizbullah’s turned Al-Dahiya into a no-go area. Our house is near Hirj Beirut, close to Al-Dahiya. We always maintain it’s on the outskirts but actually it’s part of Al-Dahiya these days.
    What scares me is that they’ll be forgotten, and as the kidnappings mount up, people will grow accustomed to the idea. I used to think of you every time his name cropped up,or I saw your picture, or heard you talking on the news, hoping for a glimmer of information about him. I wished I could help you. I thought of you as I went through the backstreets of Al-Dahiya and saw alleyways like mazes, never-ending like a shaggy-dog story, or dark like the inside of a whale, and when I heard rumors that the hostages were in a certain apartment or garage. But what can I do about the forgetting, the acceptance bred of repetition and habit, the thinking which leaps barriers and leads us inevitably back to ourselves?
    I must admit when I first heard the report about your lover McCarthy, I thought of Paul McCartney and the Beatles and wondered what I’d done with their records. I began recalling the covers, especially the one where they’re all leaning against a door, next to a bust of a woman wearing a black cap. I always wondered who owned the cap. John or Ringo? And who thought of putting it on the bust? I remembered the gloom of the loft where my old possessions were stored. Zemzem never dared to throw them away, even though it wouldn’t have made any difference, for once we threw them in there, we forgot all about them. I felt nostalgic for the loft and our old house, where I was born and lived until my father died, and my mother burned all his things and nearly burned the house down. The moment his corpse had been turned to face Mecca and the wailing had begun around him, my mother rushed to gather up the belongings he had accumulated over the years and fed them to the fire. Tongues of flame beat against the walls and ceiling and the wood crackled. The funereal wailing was punctuated by screaming and coughing, as they tried to extinguish the fire,and the clatter of pots, jugs, and Nido milk cans added to the uproar. In their haste the women accidentally drenched each other, then dissolved into laughter. “If the old man came back now and saw us like this, and his things going up in flames,