A Good Land. Nada Jarrar Awar

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СКАЧАТЬ want to ask him what Margo was like when she was young but I am afraid of appearing too forward.

      ‘You want to know more about Margo and her past, don’t you?’

      I’m startled by his question.

      ‘Am I that transparent?’

      ‘I don’t blame you,’ he says, leaning forward in his seat. ‘I would be curious too. She’s a remarkable woman and she’s been through a great deal.’

      ‘She’s a very special friend,’ I say.

      ‘What is he telling you?’ Margo appears in the doorway with a tray.

      I help her carry it to the table and pour the coffee.

      ‘Just how wonderful you are, my dear,’ Fouad says. ‘But Layla already knows that, I think.’

      Margo sits down, lights a cigarette and looks at me through a cloud of smoke, her eyes half-closed, her head tilted to one side.

      ‘Fouad helped me through a very difficult period in my life,’ she says. ‘I owe him a great deal.’

      We talk mostly about Beirut and the unfolding of our lives here. With Margo looking on, I tell him about my work at the university and am then delighted to hear that he graduated from there, too many years ago to admit to, he laughs. Like me, Fouad is Beirut born and bred, though since the death of his wife two years ago he has been living in their house in the hills above the city because it is easier to be alone there, he explains, with a garden for solace and a mountain of memories to sort through.

      ‘You must come up with Margo next time she visits, Layla,’ Fouad says. ‘Get away from the strain and stress of living in Beirut. We don’t hear about the antics of our politicians up there. It’s like being in a different country.’

      ‘I would love to, thank you,’ I reply and look at Margo for a reaction.

      ‘Yes, of course you must,’ she says with a smile. ‘It would do you lots of good.’

      At home later, I replay the visit in my mind. Margo has always been guarded about her friends, especially those like Fouad from the distant past, and although I am certain he knows much more about her than I do, I don’t think she would want him to talk to me about it. It is not the first time I experience bewilderment in her presence. It is as if there are aspects to her life that I will never understand, the darker side of an otherwise resplendent moon.

      I think of love as a state of being that I might one day find myself in without previous intention. This is how I feel about Beirut, after all, an attachment that I am not conscious of ever acquiring, my love for it having no beginning nor a likely end, a bond that is impossible to abandon because it has become so much a part of me.

      Soon after my return to Beirut, a colleague in my department who had been born in America to Lebanese parents asks me to come out to see a film with him. The film, based on a novel about immigrants in a Western city, is very moving, and afterwards, over a light dinner at a quiet restaurant not far from the theatre, we discuss it at length, examine the motivation behind the characters’ actions and the strengths and weaknesses of the plot.

      ‘I imagine the reverse is also true, that it has been difficult for you to adjust to being here again, after all the years away,’ David says as we eventually make our way home.

      ‘This country has changed so much since I was a child,’ I sigh.

      ‘And you are very different as well, aren’t you?’

      I laugh nervously and stop to look up at him for a moment.

      ‘Yes, that too, I suppose.’

      With time, I discover in David an underlying kindness that puts me at my ease. It is not just being with him that makes me contented but also the anticipation of our encounters, the certainty that they will continue to be a part of today and of the days to come. We speak of work and of our pasts, the small town in Virginia where David’s parents had settled and his childhood there, my experience of the civil war and the years that followed my family’s departure. We also indulge our mutual love of literature by discussing favourite authors and books, the successes or otherwise of our endeavours as teachers and our ambitions for the future. David taught in the United States for many years and could have expected to get far in the academic world there, yet still chose to come to Beirut.

      ‘Why come here now, David, when things are in such a mess?’ I ask him as we sit in my office one day.

      ‘Life in the West is not always what it might seem,’ he replies. ‘I just wanted to get away, to experience something new and different.’

      He is in the armchair by the open window and for a moment a passing breeze ruffles his fair, smooth hair.

      ‘And is it different enough for you?’

      David shifts in his seat and looks at me.

      ‘So you were only looking for something exotic and you plan to leave eventually, is that it?’ I continue, surprised at the sharpness in my voice. ‘Once you’ve had enough of new and different, I mean.’

      ‘Have I said something to upset you?’

      I suddenly feel ashamed of myself.

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘Layla, are you alright?’

      He stands up and walks towards me.

      ‘I’m fine,’ I reply. ‘Just fine. Why don’t we go get something to eat?’

      Soon after this conversation, David left Lebanon to return to America, just as I had suspected he would. I am here to stay, I say out loud alone in my bed at night, and nothing will happen to change that.

      On days when Margo seems particularly frail, her small body shaking more than usual, her speech more deliberate, she is more inclined to talk about herself if I ask her a question about her life and wait for her to begin at some undefined point in her past, to unravel stories like tangled twine.

      We go for a walk through the university campus and sit on a wooden bench surrounded by the trees and plants Margo so loves.

      ‘My mother adored flowers and our house was always full of them,’ she begins. ‘It’s no wonder really that I grew up dreaming of being a gardener, although father was horrified at the thought.’

      When she turned sixteen and her parents discovered that Margo had fallen in love with the gardener, they hurriedly shipped her off to finishing school in Switzerland. And although the young man was soon forgotten, she never quite lost her love for growing things. Now, in place of a garden of her own, Margo tends the plants in the pots at her doorstep.

      ‘What happened after they sent you away?’ I ask.

      ‘My parents were hopeful I would change and there was a part of me that wanted to please them but I still managed to disgrace myself at finishing school doing things that were bound to infuriate everyone, like smoking and drinking and getting up to all sorts of mischief with the boys.’

      She sighs, takes a cigarette and lighter out of her pocket and lights up.

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