Beirut Blues by Hanan al-Shaykh Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t going to be alone with him. But this feeling was replaced by a surge of renewedpleasure at the thought that he was drawing me into him, whatever the circumstances, and I watched him playing with the children before he ate, then noticed them observing him uncertainly as he chewed and swallowed, and when one of the children reached out and touched his Adam’s apple, I had the urge to do the same.
    I tried to guess what the place would be like as soon as he contacted me and gave me the new address. Was it an apartment, an office, a house? Would we be by ourselves? I began to picture the place. The unknown chair waiting for me to sit on it. A room in a hotel which transported me to a seaside town, unaffected by the war. Despite the tension, I blessed this Aladdin’s lamp which whisked me from one world to another, once from dry land to the ocean in the form of an undulating water bed. I sprawled delightedly on its soft dark red cover like a film star and felt faintly nauseous. “You mean we can’t travel by sea?” remarked Naser in a mock-serious voice. Travel? When we are meeting fleetingly in the waves like the ebb and flow of the tide?
    But I knew he used to think about marriage more than those men who led ordinary, normal lives. He needed to. Even when he walked along the street, he was aware of what he was doing, conscious of his feet as they struck the pavement. The idea of marriage removed the uncertainty he felt about his commitment. When sometimes he lost faith in his revolutionary activity, he regained some enthusiasm if he could think that his struggle was also for the sake of protecting his family and creating a better, more stable future for them.
    “I hope you have lots of children, Naser,” Asya had saidin Beirut. He had just presented her with a female kitten as a consolation for giving birth to a son instead of the daughter she wanted.
    “Both of you, I mean,” she added, turning to me.
    I was pleased she saw our relationship as serious and liked us meeting in her house while she was away, but he was scornful. “What?” he scoffed. “Do you think I want to drag my children from one house to another like you do? I’m not that crazy!”
    “The garden?”
    The Spaniard didn’t appear to be as enthusiastic as Asya.
    “Oh, Asmahan, you’re going to be wild about it,” she whispered to me.
    If she knew where I am and what I’m thinking of. I don’t want to hear any voice but Naser’s, sit anywhere but beside him. Nothing I see interests me. In fact, I scarcely see anything, and I don’t notice what I am eating. I follow them to the iron gate, kicking stones like a petulant child, wondering how I’m going to get through the rest of the evening.
    I went a few steps along a narrow path. There were a lot of trees surrounding a lake. I was thinking how Asya exaggerated, but then I caught my breath in wonder. It was paradise, as described in holy books or pictured in flights of the imagination. Underground rivers, cataracts, waterfalls, willow trees, and other trees I’d never seen before either in reality or in books. Their branches reached out, intertwining. Only a sliver of moon was visible, or perhaps it was the sun.
    “How beautiful!” Naser’s friend cleared his throat as he spoke, and the sleeping birds stirred a little, then settled down again. The tree roots had emerged from underground,curious to see how their daughter trees were growing, what shape their branches were, what color their leaves; roots like Tarzan’s ropes, some descending into the water which tumbled among the rocks. A round clearing in the sky between the treetops left us silent, awestruck. The Spaniard rushed to pick up flat stones and skimmed them across the water. The music rippled out into the silent night. The birds ruffled their wings again, and only settled down as they grew accustomed to the sound, and calm returned to the trees. When we began to be able to see each other, we realized that a portion of