Broken Mirrors (22 page)

She told Khawaja George she was afraid.

In Brummana she’d begun to get to know George, the doctor’s only son, who kept to the house, read the newspapers, and never stopped smoking.

She’d thought she was alone in the house when she was surprised to find George entering the kitchen, carrying some pomegranates.

“What’s that strange smell?” said George.

“I’m cooking, mister.”

“It smells like Indian food and I like Indian food.”

He asked her to put a little of the food on a plate for him and said it tasted good.

He gave her the pomegranates and asked her to seed them.

“Be careful you don’t let a single seed fall on the floor because every
pomegranate contains within it one of the seeds of the pomegranates of paradise,” he said. He said the people of that country had once worshipped the god of love, whose name was Ramoun and who lived in the pomegranate trees.

She finished seeding the pomegranate, put the red seeds into a glass bowl, and took it out to the balcony where he was sitting.

“That day, he saw me,” said Meena. She told Hend that she’d felt how his eyes had seen her and that he’d put his hand on her cheek and told her she was beautiful.

“And after that you slept with him?” asked Hend. “God, what a silly goose!”

“
No-madam
. After, nothing.”

She said he’d asked her what perfume she used and she’d smiled and answered that she wore water perfume. She asked him if he could smell the water and he replied that water didn’t have a smell and burst out laughing. Meena laughed too and said the scent of water could be detected only on people’s bodies, and that the only real scent was the scent of people. She said her grandmother had told her people were created from mud and water, and that their original smell was the smell of soil moistened with rain.

Meena said everything had happened at the Feast of the Cross. The Feast of the Cross that fell on September 14, 1982 arrived weighted down with the rain of sorrow. On that day Bashir Gemayel, leader of the Christian militia allied with Israel, who had become president of the Republic of Lebanon, was killed. Brummana looked haggard and black. People stood in the roads, stunned. She heard Dr. Said tell his son that he’d been expecting this outcome. George wept as he said that the dream was dead.

Three days later Lebanon was full of corpses. After seeing the pictures of the massacre on the television Meena said she wished she were blind
because all she could see in front of her was dead bodies. The doctor had carried a copy of
al-Safir
and was beside himself. The pictures of the massacre at the Palestinian camps of Shatila and Sabra filled the front page of the newspaper, and that evening the whole family watched the news. Meena was sitting on the floor in a corner of the living room trying to understand what the television was saying, and when she started to understand some of the words that traced themselves over the bloated corpses she got up and ran to her room, where she burst into tears and started banging her head against the wall. George fidgeted in his chair and wanted to get up and go after her but Dr. Said was the first to enter her room and see the blood. The doctor took the woman in his arms, embracing her flowing tears. George reached the room and didn’t understand when he saw blood on his father’s shirt. He went over to them, led Meena by the hand to the bathroom, and washed the cuts on her head. The cuts weren’t serious, just grazes.

George spoke to her but she didn’t answer. She left him and went to her room.

That night George knocked on Meena’s door. She knew it was him but she hesitated. When she opened it he hugged her to his chest. The smell of alcohol wafted from his mouth and he looked like a lost child. He pulled her toward the bed. She said no, then yielded to his kisses.

Meena couldn’t remember what happened after that. She said George talked but she didn’t understand exactly what he was trying to say. She said he was angry because she hadn’t told him she was a virgin but he put his head on her neck and held her to himself for a long time before leaving her room at two in the morning.

Meena said she didn’t blame George. “It was my fault,” she said.

“That was it?” asked Hend.

Meena nodded her head.

“So you only slept with him once?”

The girl was silent and didn’t answer.

“You slept with him a lot. I bet he made a fool of you and told you he loved you.”

“
No-madam
. No fool. He never say the word but he say I make him crazy and he wish.”

“He wished what?”

“I don’t know,” said Meena. “I’m mistake. I loved him and I still love him but it’s over.”

Three and a half months later Meena went to the doctor to be sure her misgivings were right and that the interruption of her period was not due to psychological tension, as the social worker whom she met at the church had told her. She wasn’t unhappy. She immediately decided to get rid of the fetus and went back to the house.

She didn’t tell George she was pregnant, she just told him straightaway that she’d decided to get rid of the fetus and wanted his help in finding a doctor to carry out the abortion. George didn’t open his mouth. He put his head in his hands and said, “It’s wrong.” She asked him to get her an early appointment with the doctor, left him in the living room, and went to her room. She heard his footsteps outside the door but he didn’t knock. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

Two days later George came to her room at night and she was waiting for him. He sat on the edge of the bed and said he loved her. She said this wasn’t the time for being emotional and asked him about the doctor. He said he’d made her an appointment with a doctor who worked at the Greek Orthodox hospital and he’d take her there the day after next at nine a.m. “No,” she said, “I’m going to go alone. You shouldn’t have to go through that,” and she asked him the doctor’s name.

At Dr. Salim Hamid’s clinic the surprise that no one had expected occurred. The doctor was kind but after he finished the examination he
said he was sorry but couldn’t perform the operation because the fetus was in the fourth month and it would be murder and a sin. “I can’t. I apologize. Go to someone else, maybe they’ll do it, but not me.”

At that moment Meena decided to keep the child. She returned to the apartment exhausted and nauseous. She heard the mistress scream, “Where were you?” while telling her to get lunch ready because Dr. Said had invited some of his friends over, but she didn’t answer. She went to her room and closed her eyes.

She spoke only to George, who came home late, confident that the doctor would have performed the abortion. When he heard his mother yelling to say the maid was refusing to come out of her room, he told her to calm down and went to her. Meena told him she was going to keep the baby, whatever happened.

“Be patient. Maybe I can find another doctor to do the abortion.”

“I don’t want to kill the child, I’m going to keep it. I know I should have been careful. I don’t know what happened, I felt very queasy yet I didn’t take care of things. It’s my responsibility, it has nothing to do with you. It’s my child and I won’t let anyone kill it.”

This was the turning point that led to the bitterness. Had he said he could do nothing, had he washed his hands of the whole business, she would have understood and been understanding, but instead he sat next to her on the bed.

And when George left the room he found his parents waiting for him in the living room. He told them Meena was pregnant. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. It was his fault.

The family was seized by a fit of madness. There were screams and threats. The mistress swore she would kill herself and the father said an abortion was the only solution because if she didn’t get one it would be a death sentence for the whole family. He tried to convince Meena to accept the principle of an abortion but was taken aback by her adamant refusal.

When Dr. Said suffered a stroke, however, everything changed. George disappeared into the hospital with his father because he refused to leave him even for an instant, and when the patient came home George was no longer with him.

The mistress passed the information on to the maid. “George has gone to Harvard and he’ll be there for four years. You’ll have to get your things together and go. We’ve had nothing but trouble from you.”

Dr. Said tried to convince Meena to go through with an abortion. He said he knew all the doctors and would take her to the best.

Meena refused, and Dr. Said’s last offer was ten thousand dollars provided she left Lebanon immediately.

“Tomorrow I don’t want to see your face,” the mistress said.

“Tomorrow evening I’ll bring you the money and the ticket and you’ll leave the day after,” said Dr. Said.

“Never! No way!” said Hend. “You can stay with me if you don’t have a place to sleep and tomorrow I’ll go to the association. We’ll hire a lawyer, bring a case, and smash them to pulp.”

Later Meena would write to Hend to tell her she’d been wrong. “The decision to bring a case was a mistake and there was no need for it.”

Meena returned to her employers’ apartment. She got her things together without saying a word of farewell. From then on things moved fast. The lawyer from the Association for the Defense of Human Rights brought a case against Advocate George Haddad and his father, Dr. Said Haddad, and Dr. Said brought a case against the maid, accusing her of defaming him and his son. Meena was summoned to the Palace of Justice where the judge issued a decision that she be detained pending interrogation. Two days later Hend went with the lawyer to visit Meena at Roumieh Prison, only to discover that a decision had been issued by General Security for her deportation; she’d been deported from Lebanon the next day on board Air Lanka flight 420, destination Colombo via Dubai.

The story didn’t end there. Hend left her job at the clinic and had a nervous breakdown. Meena for her part wrote a letter to Hend six months later in which she told her she’d given birth to a beautiful boy and had wanted to call him Ramoun but everyone there referred to him as Baby Lebanon, and she was going to marry a young man who worked as a tuk-tuk driver; everyone there loved the boy; she was sad only for her heart and because George would never see his son.

Meena contented herself with sending a picture of the boy to Hend, who, though Meena had asked for nothing, took the picture to Dr. Said’s clinic. The moment he saw her he put his hand over his heart and doubled up, groping for a chair.

“Cut out the playacting,” yelled Hend. “Do you take me for an idiot?”

The doctor took his hand off his chest, stood up straight, and in a shaky voice ordered Hend to get out of the clinic.

What Meena’s letter hadn’t said was that when she was being led in handcuffs to the plane she’d caught sight of a ghost standing in the distance, watching her. Meena was sure the ghost was George.

Hend gave an implacable “no” to the presence of a Sri Lankan maid in her house. “I don’t want a maid, Sri Lankan or anything else. I don’t want anyone to help me with the housework. Aren’t I already a maid myself? What for? What don’t I already have? I’ve got nothing to do all day except sit at home and wait. At least this way I keep myself occupied.”

Hend hated herself. She went to the offices of the human rights NGO and resigned. She told May Nashawati, the president, that she hated herself and hated NGOs. “I’m a liar and you’re liars. I believed myself when I was browbeating the doctor and reassuring Meena but it’s impossible to work in a society based on lies and crime. Our role was to paper over the lie with a worse lie to quiet our consciences, and look at the disaster.”

Hend was crushed when she left the association’s headquarters. She felt
as though her voice had been strangled and she could no longer walk. She felt dizzy and nauseous.

“The doctor must be telling everyone I’m a fool now,” she told her mother when she got home, but Salma had no mercy on her daughter. She reminded her of what she’d told her when Hend had returned, so proud of herself, to recount the events of her last meeting with the doctor.

Hend had entered the doctor’s office and said she wanted a word with him.

Dr. Said looked up from the papers in front of him. “Nothing wrong, I hope, my dear?”

“I’ve come to tell you I’ve decided to leave the job because I can’t work with you after what’s happened.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Meena!” she said.

“What?” replied the doctor, in a shaky voice.

“I’m a member of the Association for the Defense of Human Rights and we’ve hired Advocate Iskandar Lahham to take on the case.”

“You?”

“That’s why I can’t go on working for you. I won’t work for racists who have no mercy and exploit people.”

Hend turned to go. The doctor leapt up and grabbed her by the wrist. “No, I won’t let you go till you’ve heard what I have to say.”

“I’ll hear it in court,” she said. “It’s my fault for believing you were ill. I believed you and worried about you and then I realized it was all a show put on to kill Meena and the child in her belly and blackmail your son and force him to go abroad.”

The doctor stood up, trembling, put his hand on his heart, and said in a croak that he’d never forgive her. “You’re like a daughter to me, Hend. Why are you talking to me like this?”

All Hend could remember of what she would refer to as “the doctor’s
ravings” were the words “the black child.” The word “black” emerged from between his lips and she saw tar smeared over his tongue and mouth and felt disgusted. He was pretending to bewail his bad luck because he had only that one son: “It would mean ruin, my dear. How could he live in Beirut with a woman of that type? We’d be a laughingstock. And anyway what did I do to God that I should have a black grandson?”

Hend told her mother that when she heard the word “black” she turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her.

“But the doctor’s right. I’d have done the same in his place,” Salma had said. “Suppose it had been you. I would have died.”

Hend went home that day with her shoulders drooping, despondent, and filled with sorrow, but Salma showed no mercy, even reproaching her for losing a job over a stupid point of principle that was no use to anyone. “A maid’s a maid and always will be, that’s how I see things.”