It was not until fifteen years after the conflict in Lebanon began that the warring factions finally signed an agreement that ended the fighting and we were able to return and be a family again.
But coming back had not been as easy as we thought it would be. Beirut had changed almost beyond recognition, not just in terms of the physical destruction everywhere but in the attitude of the people too, those who had stayed behind and harboured resentment against others who were lucky enough to escape the worst of the fighting. The friends I had hoped to meet again had either left for good or were reluctant to renew their relationships with returnees like myself.
When I began attending classes at the American University of Beirut, I felt like an outsider; the bonds I thought I had with my country, its culture and history were tenuous at best, non-existent for the most part. What I remembered of home had been irreparably destroyed by present reality, seemed only to have survived as sentiment in the minds of exiles. Eventually, my brother Sammy decided he could not live with all these changes and left for America where he studied and eventually settled down with a family of his own.
My career in journalism began soon after I graduated when I went to work for an international news agency, first as a fixer for the foreign journalists who came to Beirut to cover stories on the region, and then as a reporter. It was not long after Mother fell ill and died that I met and married Peter and, in growing older, began to believe I had gained some wisdom.
Since the war in Syria began nearly five years ago, it seems there is no end to the misery it can cause. Those who flee it and seek refuge in Lebanon bring their heartache with them, and for nearly four years now, Beirut’s street corners have been manned by insistent beggars by day, and at night, in shop doorways, under bridges, in abandoned buildings and anywhere a nook can be found, there are sleeping figures, whole families, wrapped in whatever they can find to shield their eyes from the light. Many others have fled to Turkey and Jordan, countries that also have borders with Syria. Most recently, hundreds of thousands of refugees have been making the perilous journey to Greece and France, to Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia, and on to Austria and Germany and still further north, in search of safety and welcome.
Things are not as they should be. There is pain where there should be strength, hesitation instead of resolve, and in the places where imagination once had free rein, the Arab people are tied to the foundations of their fears.
By the time they arrive at the gallery, Anas has told Hannah about the problems he and Brigitte have been having and she has voiced the necessary commiserations: I didn’t know; I’m so sorry; maybe it’s not as bad as you think; and, finally, what can I do to help? She eventually realizes that it is not solutions he is asking for but the simple relief that telling her affords him.
The gallery is smaller than she imagined it would be but there is plenty of light and the carpets and other surfaces are immaculately clean. Some paintings have already been hung while others remain on the floor, propped up against the walls; and sculptures, mostly small to medium-sized pieces, many of which are still swathed in bubble wrap, have been put on stands that are placed at intervals in the centre of the room.
—Do you like it? Anas asks.
—Yes, it’s lovely and welcoming.
—That’s exactly the feel I wanted for this exhibition. I wanted it to feel intimate.
—Is it OK if I take a look around? she asks.
—Yes, of course. I’ll have to get to work on the lighting, anyway.
Hannah watches him walk into the office at one corner of the gallery and turns to explore on her own.
She has always loved Anas’s work, the suggestion that it offers more than the eye can see about the circumstances in which it was conceived and executed. The pieces are mostly sombre, the colours he uses muted and unassuming, yet there is something about the square-headed figures he depicts, their limbs out of proportion to their torsos, their features fragmented and eyes usually closed, that moves her. They do not inspire joy, she thinks, but rather compel her to think about the politics of a country that has lived under dictatorship for decades and, in trying to break free, has now lost its way.
She takes a closer look at the pieces within reach and realizes that what fascinates her most in contemplating artistic works is the process itself, the ideas and people that inspire creativity, the phase during which a piece is brought into being by its creator and that moment when the artist instinctively knows that a piece has achieved completeness.
Among these objects of poignant beauty, she also experiences a sense of release, an interval of peace that dispels her misgivings and allows her, momentarily, to dream.
In the Baghdad of her childhood, in the dazzling summer heat, Maysoun would run out to the back garden, her feet kicking dust in the yellowing grass, and play in the shade of her mother’s beloved naranj trees, fragrant and laden with fruit. The exact nature of the games she played now eludes her but she recalls their joys with unwavering clarity: the embrace of silence in those seemingly undying hours and a conviction in her young heart that life was unchanging, that love would always be to hand.
She remembers other moments too: her father’s voice calling to her to come in out of the sun; the welcome feel of cold water splashing on to her burning face; and, early in the evening, climbing up to the roof with her mother to unfurl the mattresses on which the family would sleep to escape the stifling heat trapped indoors, the marvel of darkness descending, the anticipation.
Later, lying with the dark sky above and familiar, still bodies breathing beside her, Maysoun would listen again for confirmation of that earlier happiness and receive it in the clamouring abundance of stars or in the whispers of neighbours carried across rooftops by the night breeze: memories of Baghdad that would last forever.
An only child, she was born to older parents who had until then settled themselves into the relative comfort of childlessness but who nonetheless welcomed the disruption to their lives that followed her coming. They had loved her with something like indecisiveness at first, but with time and growing confidence in their own roles their affection for her had become more sure so that instead of freeing her as she grew, they tethered her further to the notions of childhood and dependence that she had hoped to leave behind, the idea that in the realization of need is borne the willingness to love and to give.
In adolescence, at a private school for girls, Maysoun discovered the kind of freedom others enjoyed, classmates with European mothers from countries of which she had never heard and which she imagined more exotic than her own – Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, Norway and Denmark – tall, attractive girls who dressed daringly and expressed contempt for their elders with ease. In admiring and eventually emulating them, she was nonetheless aware of the necessary impermanence of these friendships, for she was conscious of her differentness, of the essential truth that while these young women rebelled with a view to their futures outside Iraq, she would forever remain rooted to the country of her birth and tied to the notion that whatever had come before was preferable to an uncertain present.
The First Gulf War and her father’s death soon after she left school brought profound changes to Maysoun’s life in Baghdad, bestowing on her the role of her mother’s companion and widening her horizons to the many ways in which things could suddenly go wrong, not only for herself but for an entire country and its people. After the allied campaign led to the killing of thousands of retreating Iraqi troops
