A Good Land. Nada Jarrar Awar

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ we had to do,’ Margo continues. ‘It was more that everyone was exhausted with the effort of surviving the war and people still had to cope with all of its consequences.’

      I try to imagine what it must have been like, to have lost so much and been broken, to have to struggle to put yourself together again when all you really wanted to do was to curl up into yourself and wish existence away. I shake my head.

      Margo gives me a questioning look.

      ‘Don’t look so worried, sweetheart,’ she says, laughing softly. ‘It’s all over now and things did work out in the end. Let’s have some more coffee.’

      In spring, during the almost sub-tropical rains that fall over Beirut, I step into Margo’s apartment, shut the front door behind me and feel as though I can finally stop and gather the scattered parts of myself together again. In this sitting room and in this solid armchair, rain descending outside the partially opened window and chaos far behind me, I know I am accepted just as I am, lost and sometimes lonely and looking for answers that elude me.

      Margo listens attentively, cigarette constantly in hand, her head shaking slightly or held to one side, her eyes blinking every now and then and her mouth making an ‘O’ of astonishment just at the right moment. And as time passes and the light in the room continues to tilt away from us, our faces falling into half-shadow, she manages to make me feel, imperceptibly and with the help of an occasional murmur, less needy somehow and worthy of her favour.

      It will be some time before I will learn to interpret the nuances in her conversation or catch the subtle hints behind her deliberately pronounced words. But I know that the exchanges which will follow, suspended as they are with silences that let in intermittent sounds from the street below, will always be rich with layers of meaning, fragile things that I can only guess at and which I might later hope to understand.

      Alone at night, I dream Margo’s stories, a long-drawn-out dream with a multitude of characters and Margo, her white hair luminous, her body youthful and strong. For a moment, we are interchangeable. I am Margo sixty years ago, a Resistance fighter in the Second World War in a field in France in the dead of night, the smells and sounds around me as sharp-edged as briars, my breathing heavy and filled with what feels like smoke, and in the distance a flickering light from a lone farmhouse, my heart hopeful and in my head the myriad thoughts that accompany nervous excitement.

      She has told me of once parachuting face down in daylight onto a bush of thorns and lifting her head to watch a fine stream of blood trickle from her eyelid and onto the grass where each blade was magnified a thousand times until she could see a tiny forest of green and hear an immutable silence. That is when I finally understood, she said, how life is preciously small, its details, so often invisible, a kind of greatness, unremarkable acts of kindness ever present, even at the very worst of times.

      She regrets being too headstrong in her youth, failing to see her father’s point of view while he was still alive, and being too crotchety in her old age; and once, standing outside the mesh fencing that surrounded a group of German prisoners of war, a young soldier, unkempt and with fear in his eyes, approaching her, asking for a cigarette: she took one out of its packet, lit it and then, the soldier watching, threw it on the ground and stepped on it for good measure.

      What could have possessed me to do something so cruel? Margo muttered quietly to herself. Since the only god she believes in is the power of one’s own conscience, I know this is one transgression among many that she can never forgive herself for. I know also, because of my love for her, that she is so much more than her past or her present, more than her misdeeds and regrets; that within the immeasurable spaces of Margo’s heart lies the freedom to be without judgement, beyond fear. And at a time when my own anxiety over the situation here seems to be growing beyond my control, her strength is formidable to me.

      This is what I also see in my dreams: Margo holding her front door open, the sun from the living room window lighting the air behind her so that she appears to glow through the outlines of her body. She is looking out with wonder, with the certainty of infinite compassion, and on the other side, trembling a little, is me.

      When I first knew Margo, she volunteered at a centre for disabled children not far from where we live. She was stronger then than she is now and looked forward to the two afternoons a week she spent supervising a play group. She spoke to me often of the children, explaining that many of their disabilities were due to the poverty they lived in, lack of immunization, perhaps, or unsupervised home births. Yet despite the challenges they faced, Margo always insisted, the children made every effort to enjoy their afternoons in the playground.

      ‘They love the new climbing frame that we had put in recently,’ she tells me one day. ‘Now we’re trying to collect enough money for a sandbox. That should be great fun for them.’

      ‘Children like that sort of thing, don’t they?’

      Margo’s eyes narrow.

      ‘You haven’t had much exposure to children, have you, sweetheart?’

      ‘I just don’t think I’d be any good with them, that’s all.’

      ‘Well, you won’t know unless you try,’ says Margo. ‘Why don’t you come with me next Saturday? We could do with some more help.’

      The playground is small but very colourful, with several swings, a large slide and the climbing frame that Margo has told me about. We walk into a small structure at one end of the playground and Margo introduces me to some of the other volunteers she works with.

      ‘The children will be arriving soon,’ she says, turning to me. ‘Let’s go meet them.’

      There are over a dozen girls and boys between the ages of four and ten, some in wheelchairs being pushed by their adult helpers, others on crutches or with walking frames, and still others approaching on their own, walking carefully and as if on the tips of their toes. I watch in silence as Margo greets each of the children, asking them how they are and encouraging them to have a good time.

      I nervously walk up to a young boy as he tries to climb up to the top of the slide. He has a metal brace on one of his legs.

      ‘Would you like me to help you?’ I ask quietly.

      He looks at me and nods.

      I try to push him up the steps from behind and when that doesn’t work put my hands under his arms and half-lift him to the top. Once there, the little boy sits down, places his good leg on the slide and then picks up the other with both hands and swings it over while I hold on him. Then he stretches both arms out like wings and plunges down the slide, landing with a loud thump on his bottom. I run to him, thinking that I will find him in tears and will have to comfort him. Instead, he is smiling widely.

      ‘Can we do that again?’ he asks me.

      ‘Yes,’ I say, suddenly feeling sad. ‘Of course we can.’

      I spend half an hour or so wandering around the playground with the other volunteers, watching the children and sometimes approaching to help them. I am not quite sure how to play with them as the other adults are doing and soon begin to feel inadequate. When Margo calls me to go back inside with her I sense that she has noticed my predicament.

      ‘They’ll be coming in for a snack soon,’ she says. ‘I’ll need you to help me with that, sweetheart.’

      We roll labneh sandwiches and place them on individual paper plates, then we pour orange juice into plastic cups and set them all on a large table СКАЧАТЬ