had named him Fouad, another Arabic word, among many, for the heart. This was a sign that his passions would always lead him.
The family lived in the heart of Ras Beirut, on the ground floor of a two-storey house near the American University, his mother and father, grandparents and an ageing housekeeper, his brother and two sisters and himself, with fruit and flowering trees in its spacious garden and a low wall around its borders where cats often sat bathing in the sun and passers-by stopped to sniff the heady scent of jasmine in spring.
Fouad shared a bedroom with his older brother Marwan that had a window overlooking a busy street corner. On weekday mornings, being a light sleeper, he would wake up to the call of tradesmen announcing their wares or the whistle of boys running past, down towards Bliss Street and the many neighbourhoods that bordered the university compound.
Getting up to shake Marwan out of his slumber, Fouad would open the shutters to let the sunlight in and pause for a moment to sniff at the air, the thought of the day ahead already filling him with anticipation. Then, washed and dressed, his dark hair smoothed back off his brow, he would run into the kitchen to see his mother making labneh and cucumber sandwiches for the children’s school lunches and the housekeeper stirring the beginnings of that day’s stew at the stove. His grandmother, seated at the kitchen table with a bowl of French beans from the garden in her lap, would look up briefly to greet him before bending down again to her task, knobby fingers breaking the pods in two then stringing them on either side in one fluid movement.
The apartment was large with high ceilings and elegant arches for doorways, its floors tiled in repeating patterns of brilliant green and a burnt orange that recalled the colour of the dirt on the street outside, its walls solid and reassuring. The entrance way led into two big reception rooms and a dining area behind which was the kitchen and bathroom and beyond that the back door to the garden. The five doors on either side of a long hallway opened onto the bedrooms as well as a small box room where trunks and other objects were kept out of sight. Outside the front door was an elegant landing with a wide stone stairwell leading up to the apartment above where an American professor at the university and his wife had lived for as long as anyone could remember.
Going outside into the garden, Fouad would find his grandfather, his grey head disappearing behind the greenery and then coming out again, his clothes already brown with dirt, a small trowel in one hand and in the other a handkerchief that he used to wipe his brow. These hours that he spent tending the plants and flowers, the fruits and vegetables that would eventually be served at the family table, were, grandfather always said, the most important of the day.
‘Jiddo,’ Fouad called out, waving a hand.
‘Over here.’
Grandfather was bent over a bed of parsley, the still tiny shoots fragile beneath his fingers, a delicate green that would eventually turn darker, sharp and savoury to the taste.
‘Good morning, habibi.’ Jiddo looked up and smiled. ‘Not too long before we’ll be having tabbouleh with our dinner. The mint will be coming up soon as well.’
Fouad nodded.
‘Are you off to school then?’
Fouad watched his grandfather slowly straighten himself up.
‘I haven’t had breakfast yet,’ he said, waiting for jiddo to remember his promise from the night before.
A light breeze appeared and it seemed to both of them as if the garden were suddenly unfolding, the trees stretching further up towards the sky and the flowers shaking themselves awake, the plants glistening with intention. He heard his grandfather’s resonant laugh.
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ jiddo said. ‘Here you are, habibi.’
He handed Fouad a coin.
‘There’s enough there for something for Marwan as well.’
‘Thanks.’ Fouad took the money and turned back into the house.
‘Let’s go,’ he called out to his brother.
Father came out of his bedroom and placed a hand on Fouad’s shoulder. He smelled fresh and bright, like lemons do when you first cut into them, and looked very handsome in a dark suit and his red tarboosh perched on his head.
‘Good morning, son. Rushing off as usual?’
‘Hello, baba,’ Fouad replied, fingering the coin in his pocket.
Marwan appeared from the bedroom, his eyelids drooping with unfinished sleep. Fouad shook his head and motioned for him to follow.
‘Where are your sisters?’ Father asked.
‘Waiting for us by the gate,’ said Fouad, grabbing his brother by the arm. ‘We’re going.’
The two boys walked their sisters, Samia and Afaf, to the evangelical school for girls in the Hamra district moments away from home, and then doubled back towards Bliss Street and the international college they had both attended since they were very young. On the way, they went through fields filled with flowering cactus and, in season, sour sops and daisies, kicking the dirt and pebbles with their shoes and grinning at the rising dust.
Once on Bliss Street, Fouad took the coin his grandfather had given him out of his pocket and showed it to Marwan.
‘For kaak,’ he said.
A tram came roaring past. Fouad looked up, catching a glimpse of a carriage and passengers crowded inside. He felt Marwan grab the money from his hand and run towards the kaak vendor on the other side of the street.
‘I don’t want zaatar in mine,’ he called after his brother.
Then Fouad smiled because the day had begun exactly as he had imagined it would.
They went to the movies on Saturdays after school, to the Roxy and the Empire cinemas in the Bourj in downtown Beirut, getting on the tram during morning break to buy the much-sought-after tickets, then back again to wait impatiently for classes to end and the weekend to begin.
The films featured Fouad’s favourite stars, Stewart Granger and Clark Gable, Ginger Rogers and Betty Grable with her famously beautiful legs, gutsy westerns and spy thrillers in black and white or lively musicals that attracted girls from the French Protestant College to the cinema who sat where the boys could watch them too.
Fouad would stare resolutely at the screen as Marwan and his friends tried to attract the girls’ attention, sometimes even striking up a whispered conversation until a litany of shushing echoed through the theatre, and still he watched, focused and fascinated, the heroes himself in different guises, his head filled with fast-moving pictures.
Then on the way home in the clattering tram, squeezed between an old man in a straw hat and a woman with a small child in her lap, perhaps catching the eye of a young girl as she sat quietly in her seat across from him, her brown hair falling softly to cover one side of her face, her hands wringing nervously in her lap, and finally the faint glimmer of a smile before she quickly turned away again. His heart fluttering briefly in his chest before settling down, his feet involuntarily shuffling back and forth on the floor of the carriage and the clang clang of the overhead bell in his ears, he jumped up to the exit and leaned out of it, both hands clinging to the railing, the wind in his face blowing away his embarrassment and reminding him that
