In memory of Joseph Samaha1
We are not a community, we who stayed abroad. We don’t resemble one another or share common bonds. We rarely meet, and when we do, for some occasion, we part ways and disperse, speaking of staying in touch. We’ve reached a stage where we now spare each other false reproaches. We part ways and disperse very quickly, relieved to have avoided a heavy moment that would disrupt our life here, which flows like a calm river. A heavier moment still when it’s a Lebanese occasion such as a film or a lecture about Beirut, or something which we attend to support and commiserate with and feel less guilty. Like most immigrants, we used to linger at entrances and in hallways and then gather at a café nearby to catch up, inquire about the situation back home, or engage in heated debates.We are not a community, and we resent our resemblance to each other or that which reminds us of it. We would rather melt away in the social setting we happen to be in. And now, we often bring along French friends to these Lebanese gatherings, conversing with them about unrelated matters, as we have grown accustomed to doing with our children, leaving them the freedom to choose their own relationship to a homeland that we no longer understand our ties to. Now, we even shy away from making the little effort to explain the difference between Lebanese tabouleh and the couscous salad that they call “tabouleh” here. This was our way of avoiding having to address the more complex issues that pertain to our homeland . . . but we have become bored.
We part ways and disperse with greater lightness, returning to our homes after watching this film or hearing that lecture about Beirut, retaining only what suits us. We no longer hang up on our walls those iconic images and posters of Al Burj Square or Raouché that we had brought back on our last trip or that were offered to us by a visitor from Lebanon. We keep them away in closets and drawers, just in case we might need them one day for a reason that currently remains unclear. Nothing in our homes here points to our belonging to our country of origin or to our attachment to it. A sort of detachment and the flow of time are all that we long for in a place where the gloomy weather now suits us perfectly, always.
We are not a community by any stretch of the imagination. And those who were our friends back home are precisely those who now cause us the most revulsion. We try to run away from them as if they were partners in an unsolved crime, the details of which we’d rather forget. Or it is as if they were cherished lovers for whose presence or absence we no longer make room. As for those who come from the present there, we feel so distant from them that it becomes absurd to even consider bridging the gap that separates us. We have grown accustomed to speaking and hearing this foreign language, both inside our homes and outside, while trying to avoid those intonations that might take us back to the melodies of that place we left behind and whose people we no longer look forward to seeing. We ask nothing of the newcomers, and we pretend to be embarrassed when we see their excitement as they offer us baklava and kishk with which they have stuffed their luggage. We can buy these things fresh here . . . but we don’t.
We are not a community, and we have no old friends we cherish or new ones we trust. And the few ones for whom we still care, those for whom our hearts palpitate still when we recognize their figures from afar and become overcome with shame when we see age gnawing at their frail bodies—only those embody our inability to speak, as if we had been thrown on a well-lit stage and forced to confront ourselves and express an illicit and sinful passion. As if, by avoiding them, we secretly want to spare them an unbearable burden or a worry that might add to their own. Recognizing in them our own weakness and fragility, we try to escape and avoid this encounter with them, with ourselves. In them, we also see our folks who are there, far away . . . at whom we unnecessarily yell over the phone so that we can empty the words of their meaning, a meaning that burns deep inside. We want to spare them a cruelty that would add to the cruelty of the thousands of miles that separate us, so that we never forget . . . that as we yell over the phone they will die soon, in that interval between two phone calls. They will certainly die while we’re still here.
We are not a community, but a thin thread infiltrates us and ties us a little closer together when we realize that one of us is about to move back to the homeland. We become ashamed to acknowledge that we feel a bit betrayed, avoiding each other’s eyes. We fail to recognize that part of what we feel is a dreadful loneliness, a death followed by another death, in this country where people cannot even pronounce our names and where we’ll have to spell words over and over. And we will raise our voice, yelling over the phone, to say nothing to the one who returned.
Among ourselves, we debate the benefits of returning and say that perhaps it is for the better. We also discuss what one needs to lead a decent life over there. We pretend to care, but we don’t. We believe in our uncaring and hold on to it. Our uncaring and indifference rather than our forgetting make us feel less betrayed and less abandoned. They also make us perceive those who return as preferring forgetfulness, joining those who stay and forget, while we here become gloomier and more diminished, as we continue to nourish our resentment and intractable grudges. We are not a community, but we now realize that those who never left Beirut, just like those who return to it now, are reconciled with forgetfulness and forgiveness . . . a blessing we lack. They watch seasons go by, and streets change features, and neighborhood women get older, and kids grow up, and parents pass away . . . they read the papers, and they know all the new politicians’ names. They also meet at cafés and venues, cursing the situation they’re in . . . and they forget. While our absence gets longer, farther, and our remembering more prolonged. We end up becoming imposing guests: the neighbor’s guests.
We stay up late to bid farewell to those moving back to the homeland, though we don’t stay long or directly discuss their return. We become paranoid that the one among us who says little or appears discreet is the one who will return next. We become paranoid when one of us declares his support for the decision to return, indulging in disinterested and objective elaborations. This makes us doubt ourselves as we recognize in his words an imminent decision to return, which we ignore or pretend not to care about. And we might exaggerate by saying that we might all return one day . . . knowing full well that we won’t.
We part ways and return to our homes. As we walk back at night, we realize that there are now fewer of us left, fewer at our gatherings and fewer individuals. We also realize that that which we hold onto deep inside has become diminished, and that we have become more vulnerable to the cold breeze and to the language of the country in which we now live, and we miss our animosities less. We realize that we have become more knowledgeable about traffic laws and about the bureaucracy and exhausting regulations of residency permits. We realize that our voices will be heard less complaining about the stringency of immigration departments, and heard more reconciling with our children who are basking with their new friends in forgetting us. They mock those painfully nostalgic songs to which we listen when we are alone in our homes, mocking the singers they think died ages ago. When one of us moves back, we realize how hateful we are to the country that hated us, while he has decided to love it again.
We part ways and disperse in the night, gesturing that we will be in touch soon. We scrutinize the sky dome above as we bury ourselves in our heavy coats . . . yet autumn is still far away. We look back at the sky and recognize the distance that separates yet connects us to that sky over there, where the sun is still rising and from which our plane would gently let down the ropes of its compassion. We smile mockingly, and we grow to appreciate our walls, free of ropes, while a slight pity draws us onward.
An English author by the name of Hugh of Saint-Victor (an aristocrat and an accursed military commander who once fled the battlefield with his entire battalion) once said:
“The one who gives his country of birth all his love is but a deluded and inexperienced youth. As for the one who bears affection to all homelands as to his own, he is a strong and mature man. But only a venerable and wise man is able to perceive the entire world as a forgotten land. So while the inexperienced youth gives all his love to one place, and the mature man divides his love among many, only the wise man, master of himself, recognizes that this love is expiring and disappearing.”
And the Lord told Lot: “I will turn it upside down, and I will make it rain torrents of fire and sulfur. Walk away, and don’t turn back, for he who does shall turn to a pillar of salt.”
English exercises in wisdom and self-mastery.
All this sulfur . . . all this runny salt.
The mechanical toll of the absurd.
