June Rain (30 page)

Samih did even better than his father had done and was so talented that the large white bread came to be associated with him by name.

‘This is Samih’s bread for sure,’ they’d say, savouring it.

Samih’s bread came out nice and thin and could be separated into two layers that looked like delicate communion wafers. Samih kept his eye on the fire, turned each loaf over and then took it out of the oven at just the right time. The whole operation hinged on timing. Samih would decide to remove the loaf of bread the moment he started to smell the faint odour of burning that had to occur otherwise the bread would turn out doughy. It was an odour he sensed within seconds of it reaching the bread, in the flash of time between burning, for which he would have to pay the price if it happened, and the appearance of little black spots on the surface of the loaf as it glowed in the fiery oven.

Samih’s bread loaves were baked to perfection. They came out of the oven all round and puffy. Whenever we were on vacation and went with our mothers to the bakery, there was nothing we loved more than to make a little vent in the fat loaves Samih would toss to us; we so enjoyed watching the steam come out as if from a fiery chimney before they began to go limp.

Samih’s eye was always on the flames, and his livelihood, too, was in the flames. His father had known how to disregard the women’s chatter and would say that if he responded even once to what one of the women said, he’d burn something in the oven, without a doubt, as punishment for paying attention to their talk. Samih maintained that same rule; either your eye is here or it’s there.

And the women never stopped talking, as if they didn’t have time for a truce. There was a saying about them that said if one of them fell silent one morning, all the others would think there was something – some sickness or need – behind her silence about which they should worry. She’d be bombarded with questions until she spoke, at which time their anxiety was sure to fade away once she’d joined back in. Most of the talk was generalities, nothing that hurt anyone, a preliminary exercise. The morning would begin with vague homilies about the importance of education these days, even for girls, or something about the sanctity of neighbourly ties, or that a boy belonged to his family whereas a girl belonged to her husband’s family or possibly the opposite of that; then the talk would move on to a specific person, though how he got into their conversation nobody knew. That was when they’d start getting serious. First of all, they’d take a quick look around the table to make sure none of the women sitting there was related to the person. If not, their tongues would be let loose; otherwise they’d choose some other person of no relation to any of the women. Sometimes they’d miscalculate and one of the women would start talking, unaware that the person she was talking about was a distant relative of one of the other women. But there was always someone ready to rescue the situation by changing the subject and bringing up some much more serious matter that drew their attention away from the impending embarrassment.

Samih’s mother also had advised him not to listen to the women and not to let them take advantage of him. His mother died only one month after his father. She was no good at living without him – that’s what the bakery women themselves said, praising her loyalty despite knowing that she didn’t really like them.

Samih was an only child. They left him the bakery and the house which consisted mainly of two rooms. That was everything they owned. The house was connected to the bakery, most likely because Samih’s father or grandfather had decided to section off a portion of the house to turn into a bakery. The heat from the oven penetrated the wall separating the bakery from Samih’s parents’ bedroom. He painted it twice a year but eventually it would start peeling again from the intense heat. Samih had been born in that room and his parents died there in that bedroom propped up against the oven. His parents hadn’t been blessed with any other children. They had a daughter who died of measles while still an infant. Her mother let out a single cry over her and then was silent, and she did the same thing when her husband died. One loud shriek and that was all.

After their deaths, Samih left his parents’ bedroom as it was – a modest closet, two formica beds, and, hanging on the wall, a picture half-eaten by the heat that crept in from the opposite side, of a man with obscure features. His father used to say that the man was his grandfather and that he had travelled to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, leaving behind his young grandmother and his infant father. And he never came back. He went to Tripoli to buy some leather for making shoes, and never came back. No doubt something happened to him – an accident or a fight – that prevented him from returning to his town and compelled him to climb aboard a ship at the city’s seaport.

Samih didn’t touch a thing in the bedroom, not even the bedcovers, until someone told him he should open the window and door and let the sun and air come in from time to time, otherwise the mould and mildew would creep in. The other room and the kitchen were enough for him, along with the small area at the entrance. When he was finished working at the bakery he liked to take a chair and sit out in that area after changing his clothes. People said that from there he would peer into the house of the girl he was in love with, though she had no idea how madly in love with her he was. He would say he was in love with her but all he ever did was sit there on the wicker chair, holding three marbles in his left hand that were bigger than the ones children play with. He’d sit for two or three hours, depending on the length or shortness of the day. He rolled the marbles between his fingers tirelessly, continuously casting glances towards her balcony in case she came out to hang laundry or to glimpse her shadow behind the window pane. It was even said that he stayed there in the Semaani family neighbourhood for her sake . . .

He revered the words of his father and mother. Women were more wicked than men, his mother told him. They sat inside the bakery in hand-me-down house clothes facing each other in two rows before the low, smooth, stone table. They sat with their legs stretched out in front of them, in attack position, while their hands worked without stopping. Their hands and their tongues, too. A hand would scoop out a lump of dough for kneading. She’d roll it between her hand and the surface of the stone table forming it into a ball, and then she’d dust it with flour and start flattening it out. With the right hand at first, as long as the dough was round and ball-like, then with both hands once it started to flatten into a circle. Finally, the rolling pin would finish and widen what the hands had started. The woman would roll it from the right and from the left and in all directions. She’d make the loaf circular, thin it out a little more and then hand toss it. She’d give it one last look before handing it over to Samih. The women followed his every move. Samih went to the city once and went into a bakery, just out of curiosity. There the bread was made by men only. He didn’t see any trace of a woman. He felt jealous.

Before Samih took on the job of standing in front of the hot oven, he used to socialise with the women, too. His father tried to get him away from the bakery and away from the heat especially. He let him work beside him for a while, but it wasn’t long before his heart went out to him and he suggested Samih try accompanying his uncle. His uncle refurbished mattresses and served his customers in their homes, the exact opposite of a baker. Samih would carry the tools as they went from house to house. The woman of the house would leave the mattress outside the front door or in an open space where he could work on it comfortably. They worked at people’s houses while the men were out working. Samih would open up the mattress or the comforter and his uncle would start pounding the dead cotton, fluffing it up for Samih to stuff back inside and then sew back up again. It was a simple trade, easy to do, and didn’t require anything more than an iron rod, a needle and some thread . . . and an ability to please women, too.

But Samih went back to the bakery and picked up his father’s bread paddle anew after his death. He only closed the bakery for three days in order to mourn for his father, in loud intermittent sobs, after bearing his coffin, all by himself at the front end while four men carried from behind. He returned the toolbox to his uncle and bid him goodbye saying he was his father’s only child and he didn’t want the bakery to close down. His uncle gave him a look of real pity and said simply, ‘Be careful of your eyes, nephew.’

The bakery was his whole life and he seemed content with it. He was there seven days a week, Sundays the busiest of all. People brought trays of
kibbeh
to be baked in the oven, bulgur wheat and meat. They brought him trays of
kibbeh
by the hundreds. It was a long day but very profitable; Samih wouldn’t finish until two o’clock in the afternoon, after which he would relax and enjoy his free time. He’d change his clothes, take a bath (once a week), comb his hair and go out to the main street. He’d head straight for the public water fountain which was about two hundred metres from his house and the bakery. He walked there with his head held high: a new Samih looking at the onlookers as if to lure their glances his way. On this day he was out for a stroll like everyone else, out of the house for no other reason than to be like all the other people. Sometimes it happened that the neighbours or people out walking, heading for that same location, would see him on the road during the middle of the week, going to the store near the spring to buy eggs or yogurt. On those days he’d be dressed in his work clothes, walking in a hurry, looking straight ahead, intent only on getting what he needed and going back home. A quick trip that was nothing more than an extension of his work at the bakery.

But how would he get a feeling for Sunday if he didn’t put on his clean shirt and walk slowly, nearly all the way to the water source, and stop there alone? He didn’t have time to enjoy the company of friends. He stood up straight, in the middle of the sidewalk, not leaning against any wall or tree, trying to occupy an empty space all to himself and not share it with anyone. If some women passed by him, they smiled. There was Samih in his Sunday clothes. They smiled at seeing him out of the bakery, as if he wasn’t qualified to do anything except stand in front of the hot oven making bread. He scrutinised everything that passed along the road, watching every passing thing like an event. There were the American cars or German Mercedes, which had recently grown in number – he followed them with his eyes until they disappeared around the bend; there were the young girls strolling up and down the main road arm in arm whispering and giggling whenever the young men looked their way or made comments; or there was a wedding procession or a bicycle race. He would smile when the leading racer appeared, leaning with all his effort over the handlebars of his bicycle. Samih would come a little closer to the public water fountain where the cyclists in their colourful clothing slowed down to grab bottles of water or sandwiches from the crowd waiting there for them, helping them stay the long course of the race. He knew they would climb the high mountains on those little bicycles of theirs. He waited for the last of the cyclists in the Homenetmen Club race and clapped for him with lots of enthusiasm. He clapped all by himself where no one else was waiting, which made the bystanders laugh as he concluded in a loud voice on his way towards the crowd gathered on the pavement who were also watching the scene:

‘The race is over. You can all go home now!’

When the town split into two, his house ended up being on the enemy side, but he didn’t leave it. They advised him to go to his own clan, as they called it, out of deference to the Bedouin tribes, but he refused. He said, ‘This is my house, the house of my father and my grandfather, and I’m going to stay in it. I didn’t harm anyone and everyone loves me and they’re all my customers.’ He stayed in the house, a mere five hundred metres from the border of his family’s neighbourhood, a stone’s throw away. When the shooting started at the beginning of the tensions, some of his family members would call out to him loud enough to be heard from behind their barricades to make sure he was safe. He was able to hear them clearly but he avoided answering. If he heard a voice calling to him when he was outside his house, he hurried back inside and shut the door behind him. Samih remained on the wrong side of the green line.

It hadn’t come to be called the green line yet. That was a fancy term that was later coined in the Beirut newspapers for the line of battle that divided the capital for two decades and extended from the hills overlooking the city down to the Damascus Highway and all the way to the port. We on the other hand had no name for it, or maybe we hadn’t managed to arrive at a concrete form for the idea of that imaginary line separating the Semaani family neighbourhood, which extended all the way to the southern edge, from the Rami family to the north of the town, though it was drawn there like a protruding line on a relief map. The townspeople all knew about it and knew precisely where it was, where it stretched to, where it took a turn, and where it got lost at some unidentifiable juncture. The green line, as demographics would have it, gave control of the town’s western outlet leading to the city to the Semaani family, while the Rami family controlled the eastern outlet that led to the towns in the elevations above. The coast was theirs and the mountains were ours. But the line became complicated once inside the crowded neighbourhoods and the ancient, damp quarters. It turned upwards around a cluster of houses whose inhabitants stood strong with all their men and guns, extending the Semaani neighbourhood up into the mountains. Or it left behind some deserted areas that stretched between the two quarters and were exposed to the opposing side’s barricades, making it impossible to live there. The important thing was that this line was drawn in the minds of the townspeople, young and old alike. They all knew that if they took ten extra steps in one direction or the other, they moved from one neighbourhood to another. The main road was not the divider; it was much more difficult than that, which was why it was nerve-wracking to clarify the situation to strangers. The line was drawn in stages, in conjunction with the rise in tensions. After the Burj al-Hawa incident, crossing the line remained possible for those who hadn’t been directly involved, but movement started to diminish when the barricades were set up. It seemed as though a deep abyss had come between the two quarters. The problems ended, the commander of the army was elected President of the Republic with the blessing of American special envoy to Lebanon Richard Murphy, and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and a national unity government was formed. It sent the army back to the town and the barricades were lifted after eight months during which the green line hadn’t budged an inch.