Читать книгу The Storyteller - Pierre Jarawan - Страница 16

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5

In that warm late summer of 1992 when we found our new home, I was seven, Yasmin nine. She and Hakim moved into the flat below us, which was similar in layout but a little smaller. On this street, nearly all the satellite dishes pointed 26 degrees east. We were happy. In the schoolyard, we swapped Diddl Mouse characters and sealed friendships with colourful bracelets; Bill Clinton took the presidential oath; and Take That sang “Could It Be Magic.” In Lebanon, the general election was held, and everything seemed to be heading in the right direction. Things were looking good. I felt like I was part of an animal pack calmly awaiting autumn and winter, safe in the knowledge that we had plentiful supplies and a warm and cosy den.

So there we were a few weeks after moving in, watching TV in the living room, the usual images of post-election Beirut. Hakim had told me the Syrian joke and I’d laughed. Father didn’t laugh, though, which reminded me how distracted he’d seemed of late and how rarely he was in good humour. Instead, he’d scratch the back of his neck abstractedly, seeming to stare right through the walls, yet not seeing anything. He spoke very little and withdrew into himself. In the evenings he would sometimes disappear for hours at a time after dinner; out walking, he said. If I started putting on my shoes and jacket in the hall to go with him, he’d be gone before I was ready, the door closed behind him. Sometimes I imagined that his limp was worse when he got back. I didn’t know my father without the limp. It was part of him, as normal as the colour of his eyes. If you didn’t know he had a limp, you’d barely notice it, except when Father exerted himself. He still walked very straight, but his head was bowed and he rarely looked at me. Whenever I managed to catch his eye, he’d give me a smile, but he wouldn’t say much, and he’d usually turn away quickly, as if he felt ill at ease or caught out. It sounded more like he was sighing than breathing then, a strained breath coming from somewhere very deep, as if he’d had to climb a thousand steps. Sometimes, in passing, he would stroke my head with his big hand. His eyes looked red occasionally, as if he’d been crying. But that’s just a guess—I never did see Father cry.

Then there was the other extreme. Times I’d look over at him and find him staring at me, his eyes glued to me as if I had some weird marking on my forehead. Moments when I felt there was a tortured look in his eyes, just for a split second, before he’d catch me watching him and force a little smile. If he gave me a hug when he was in this kind of mood, he’d squeeze me far too tight, wouldn’t want to let go. I’d stick it out, even if it nearly hurt. And if he spoke to me in moments like these, he’d talk really fast, without so much as a pause, as if he was trying to stop me getting up and leaving, to keep me sitting there listening. He’d gesticulate wildly and try to make it all sound very exciting, which worked every time. He did all this with my sister too, though I don’t think she really got it. What worried me most of all about Father’s behaviour was that he didn’t talk to Mother. If she addressed him, he would just lift his head slowly and nod in awkward silence. For some reason, he couldn’t bear to look her in the eye.

Only a few days earlier, we’d been at the lake with our nutshell ships. If I had to pinpoint a time when his behaviour changed, I’d say it was that day. Or rather, that night. After we’d come home from the lake, Father put on a slide show. That evening is burned into my memory. It is the reason why I remember that summer and the following autumn as if in sepia: every scene is tinged with a nostalgic glow and tightly cocooned by my memories.

I didn’t even know it existed, the box Father placed on the living-room table in front of us. It never caught my attention when we were moving. Now Father had taken it from one of the shelves, turned to face us, and carried it over with great ceremony.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You’ll see in a minute,” he said, smiling mysteriously.

Mother smiled too. She still smiled a lot back then. I don’t have many memories of my parents like that. Standing close together. So conspiratorial, so affectionate. I never saw them like that again after that evening. They had clearly planned it together and were looking forward to letting us in on the secret. I was very excited. I noticed that Mother was wearing her perfume, even though it was just us. I knew where she kept it in the bathroom, the little bottle with Arzet Lebanon written on it, and I imagined her standing at the mirror, dabbing a drop or two on her neck. She smelt divine.

“You smell nice,” I said.

“Thank you, Samir,” she replied, stroking my cheek.

At that very moment, there was a knock on the door.

“Shall I get it?” she asked.

“No, I’ll go,” Father said, planting a quick kiss on her forehead. Another thing I very rarely witnessed.

Hakim and Yasmin were at the door. She was wearing a blue dress with white dots and looked like an almost cloudless blue sky. Hakim had his arms clamped around a large object that I couldn’t identify, as it was covered by a dark cloth. It seemed pretty heavy because Hakim practically staggered the last few metres into the living room, where he carefully deposited the object on the table.

“What’s that?”

“You’ll see in a minute,” he said.

“That’s what Baba said too.”

“It must be true, then.”

When I looked at Yasmin, asking with my eyes what her father had just lugged into our living room, she just shrugged.

Father told us to take a seat. The three grown-ups remained standing. I took my sister on my lap; she showed no interest but was happy to suck her soother. Yasmin sat beside us.

“Hakim,” said Father, raising his index finger, “drumroll, please!”

Hakim started making drumroll noises and beating invisible drumsticks. Father approached the table, grabbed the cloth between thumb and index finger, and swept it off the object underneath, like a magician performing his favourite trick: “Ta-da!”

On the table was something grey that looked a bit like a snouted raccoon or coatimundi. Could it be a coati-robot? It had a rectangular metal base with an oval structure on top from which a longish tube projected like a snout. I hadn’t a clue what it was.

“What is that?”

“A Leitz Prado,” exclaimed Father.

“A what?” said Yasmin, her eyebrows raised.

“A Leitz Prado,” he repeated, still in character, as if he was about to recite a magic spell. “The best slide projector money can buy.”

I looked over at Mother, who lowered her head and smiled with embarrassment. If Father was convinced about something, it was the best thing in the world. End of story. He knew where you could buy the freshest lettuce, which second-hand car dealer had the safest winter tyres, and which kebab shop had the best doner in the world. The kebab shop might change, but the doner would always be the best in the world. And now, here in our living room, we were looking at the best slide projector in the world. A Leitz Prado.

“Why did you buy it?” I enquired.

“I didn’t. Hakim borrowed it for us.”

“Why?” asked Yasmin.

“We wanted to show you something.” Father nodded to Hakim, who plugged the projector cable into the wall socket and turned off the overhead light. Then Father switched the machine on. It projected a large, bright rectangle onto our living-room wall. Dust motes danced in the beam of light.

“We wanted to show you photos,” Mother said. “Pictures of Lebanon, of us. So that you can see where we come from.”

“Where you come from, too,” said Father.

I liked the sound of that. I, German-born Samir, was going to learn more about my family’s homeland. Father had explained it to me once: “It’s called nationality based on parentage. You were born in Germany but your mother and I are Lebanese, not German. That’s why your passport says you’re Lebanese.” I had accepted this with a simple “OK” and hadn’t given the document a second thought.

Now Father was putting the first slide in. The projector rattled. A colourful image of my mother appeared on our wall. She was sitting on a chair, wearing a magnificent wedding dress.

“Wow,” said Yasmin. “That’s beautiful.”

Mother rarely wore make-up and hardly ever accentuated her eyes as much as on the photo. It looked like a very expensive portrait commissioned from an artist; there was something fragile about her, but also a special aura. I had never seen her in such finery. She really was very pretty.

The next slide showed Father standing beside a woman I didn’t recognise. She had black, curly hair and very straight, dignified posture. Her air of gravitas was compelling, even in this old image. Father was noticeably taller than her. She had her arm linked with his and wore a thin-lipped smile.

“That’s your Teta,” he said, in response to my questioning look.

“That’s Grandmother?” I took a closer look at the picture. “She doesn’t look sick at all.”

Father lowered his head but smiled.

“No. But she’s sick these days, you know that.”

I nodded.

“When was that picture taken?” Yasmin wanted to know.

“1982,” said Mother. “It was our wedding day.”

In the picture, Father had a smart suit on. Grandmother was wearing a blue dress and a lot of lipstick, which made it hard to tell her age. I reckoned early forties, maybe. I was struck by her enormous earrings, which were all the more eye-catching because she wore her curly hair short. Father’s smile looked a bit strained, but then he’d never liked having his picture taken.

“Now, here it comes,” said Hakim, all excited. The projector rattled.

Yasmin and I were amazed by the next slide. It showed my parents standing facing each other. And behind them was Hakim.

“You’re playing the guitar!” I exclaimed.

“It’s a lute,” said Mother. “Hakim played beautifully for us.”

In the photo, Hakim’s eyes were fixed on some point in the distance, as if they were following the notes that soared out of his lute.

“How come you knew each other?”

“From another wedding,” said Father. “Hakim played at lots of weddings.”

“And where is Yasmin’s mother?” I asked.

No one seemed to be expecting this question, and I realised that I’d never asked it before, of Hakim or of my parents. And in all the hours I’d spent playing and dreaming with Yasmin, all the times we’d gone in search of a secret to share, I’d never asked her this question either. Now it hung in the room like a heavy ball that could fall on top of us any minute. The three grown-ups looked at each other. Yasmin looked at me. I felt uncomfortable, partly because I didn’t get any answer.

Several more slides followed, mainly of the wedding feast and of guests enjoying themselves, until Father said, “This is the last of the wedding photos,” as he put another slide into the projector. There were so many people in the picture that it took me a minute to figure it out. It showed my parents in front of a tree, a magnificent fig tree. They were obviously dancing the wedding dance, with the guests gathered in a semi-circle around them, clapping. The women were all wearing lots of jewellery and make-up. It must have been a warm, sunny day. The sky was a glorious blue. The women were in colourful dresses, the men in suits. Some of them had their jackets slung over their shoulders, like film stars. Something struck me: there were other men too, men we hadn’t seen in any of the other photos. They were standing in the background, in front of a brick and mud wall. Some had their arms folded, watching the dancing. They were wearing brown trousers and khaki-coloured T-shirts. They had a cedar embroidered on the left breast of the T-shirt. A cedar with a red circle round it. There was a gun propped against the tree.

“Who are those men?” I asked.

“Guests,” said Father.

“Friends,” said Mother.

Hakim said nothing.

A brief silence ensued.

“We’ve plenty more slides,” Father announced, rubbing his hands. “Now I’m going to show you your country.”

And he did. Whenever he got a chance to talk about Lebanon, he was in his element. We saw photos of the sea, of Beirut and its tall buildings, of the Pigeon Rocks, standing just off the coast like the city’s sentinels. He showed us a photo of the six remaining columns of the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek. It was after dark, but they were illuminated and very impressive. When he showed us a photo of a port, he said, “See that? That’s Byblos. Where our ancestors, the Phoenicians, invented the alphabet. Not many people know that. They all say, ‘Look at the Egyptians and the amazing pyramids they built—such a highly developed Arab culture!’ But let me tell you, if we’d followed the Egyptians’ example, we’d still be reading picture books today!”

I saw Mother and Hakim exchange glances. They knew there was no point in interrupting Father at this stage. But we kids were infected by his enthusiasm. He didn’t just show the pictures, he told the stories behind them as well. At times he went into full lecture mode.

“Lebanon is the only Arab country with no desert,” he informed us as he showed a slide of Lake Qaraoun in the Bekaa Valley. Its surface shimmered bright blue, reflecting the mountain chain behind it. “There is so much fertile land there, and so many vineyards.”

“Especially in Zahle,” cried Yasmin, her eyes sparkling.

“Exactly,” grinned Father with pride. Then he reached for the next slide. The one that changed his behaviour.

Looking back, I think he just picked up the wrong slide in his excitement, because he wasn’t watching what he was doing. My guess is he meant to pick the one next to it. The slide he actually showed us had been moved to the back of the bunch on purpose. He had filtered it out so that it wouldn’t end up in the projector, so that we wouldn’t get to see it.

The projector rattled.

My mother glanced at the photo, looked away, then back again suddenly, as if she had to convince herself it was really there.

At the right-hand edge of the image stood my father, beside a good-looking young man with thick black hair, dark brown eyes, and an engaging smile. They were posing beneath a chandelier in a large foyer, a wide carpeted staircase with a gilt banister behind them. Opposite them, at the left edge of the image, was a photographer. He had a camera held up to his eye and the others were looking at him. Curious onlookers had gathered around the photographer—more uniformed men, a young woman, people who looked like waiters. The man beside Father was wearing a uniform and had a gun tucked into his belt. There was a cedar stitched onto the left breast of his shirt. A cedar with a red circle round it. Next I studied Father. He was very young and seemed almost shy. The look in his eyes—today, I’d describe it as dreamy—didn’t quite match the rest of the scene. Father was smiling a dreamy smile and saluting. He was wearing the same uniform as the other man, and he too had a gun tucked into his belt.

There are moments in life when you experience something that makes you wonder. Then more of those moments follow. But it’s only much later, when you barely remember those moments, that they acquire new meaning, because in the meantime you’ve learned more about someone or something, more than you knew before. All the inexplicable gestures, looks, movements, and behaviour suddenly make sense. Like finding a piece of a jigsaw and fitting it into the unfinished puzzle you’ve kept for years in case you’d one day manage to complete it.

There are moments when you think about asking a question but decide not to. Your antennae sense a barrier. Your intuition tells you it’s not the right time for that question. Adults can sense this. Children too. But years later, when you know more than you did then, you regret it. You regret not asking the question. The one question that might have explained everything. Why he was wearing a uniform, for example. Why he had a gun. Who the man was beside him. It would have made things so much easier.

Father stared at the picture as if he didn’t recognise himself. There he was on our living-room wall, large as life, standing beside a man who looked as if his uniform was a second skin, as if he’d been wearing it his whole life. I can only speculate now what thoughts went through Father’s mind in that moment. What feelings the slide must have triggered. What memories. What pain, even. We all stared at the picture. Nobody said a word for what seemed like an eternity. Then my sister began to squirm and cry on my lap. Mother snapped out of her stunned silence and took the wriggling bundle from me. She left the room, rocking the baby in her arms. Hakim signalled to Yasmin that they’d better go. She gave me an uncertain look, slid off the couch, took his hand, and they left. Father turned off the projector and slid out of the room with his head bowed. I stayed behind. A second earlier I’d wanted to ask him the story behind that picture. Now I’d decided not to.