story
Since the plane landed, I’ve had this itchy feeling in the base of my skull, like something pulling at my memory, trying to get me to look at something, and I’m resisting with all the mental might I can muster, but everywhere I look I see it exactly how it was. That’s the problem with these people, they have a Civil War and instead of clearing away the rubble and rebuilding, they build over the mess, gaudy bullshit on top of a pile of bombed out garbage.
(Later, my daughter will repeat these words to me, and I will admonish her, bark that they’ve never had a break, there was never time or money or peace enough for rebuilding, tell her angrily that this place denies any possibility of a belief in anything constant, and she’ll look at me with the same serious eyes she’s had since the first time they opened and we’ll both be thinking about that Christmas when I yelled at my nephew for arguing that we are Lebanese-Armenian, that we are Lebanese at all--)
I drag the kids all over Beirut, following my sensory memory down a disappointing lane. I take them to my favorite lehmajun restaurant and my daughter cringes at the cockroaches scuttling over the doormat, and refuses to eat a thing, sitting tensely in a booth while I chew in vain, trying desperately to taste some sort of familiarity.
I take them to the Armenian Quarter for my favorite ice cream: vanilla dipped in crushed up pistachio nuts. They both look doubtful, and my son takes a tentative lick, and shakes his head. “I like it without the green.”
This happens over and over, and I begin to wonder if my tongue has become Americanized. I can tell the rest of me hasn’t from the way the kids have been looking at me. My daughter sits in the back of the van with all of our aunts and uncles and cousins packed in, listening to her CD player and staring semi-horrified out the window. My cousin is driving, and he cuts off a Jeep and curses at the driver in Arabic (“Haiwan!” - “Animal!”) before realizing he’s an officer in the army. He yells in Armenian, “I know your boss’ mother!” and we crack up as if we’re nineteen years old again and still making a hobby of narrowly escaping death. The kids ask, “What did he say?” I explain that the army general’s mother is Armenian and they look at me wide-eyed: “And Levon knows her?” I’m not sure how to explain to a 7 year old and a 12 year old the way a persecuted minority lays claim to any people they can. They watch us speaking broken Armenian-Arabic-French-English, their heads moving back and forth like they’re watching a ping pong game and can’t keep track of the ball.
“Car-eh park erir?”
“What does that mean, Dad?”
“Where did you park the car?”
“The words are the same!”
“Only for us.”
At night we’re driving back from a wedding reception and the boys are asleep and the only thing keeping my wife awake is the need she feels to brake for the other drivers. “You drive so well here!” she marvels. Lilya, my daughter, is staring out the window at the tanks on the side of the highway. We’re crawling along in traffic and when one begins to move, she jumps slightly and shrinks away from the window. We slow to a halt again and a little boy, probably the same age as my son, comes and knocks on my window, holding up a carton of cigarettes and some roses. I shake my head instinctively and he lingers for a moment before moving on. Something catches my eye in the rear view and I see Lilya shake a little, her back turned as she looks out the back window towards the little boy. She turns around and I can’t believe she already has tear tracks covering her little red face, and she’s sniffling and gasping she’s giving me this look that kids give you when you’re going to have to explain why its okay to be an asshole, but I’m not going to tell her that kid is probably being exploited Oliver-Twist style and doesn’t see a cent of the money he gets, and I can’t show her 20 years ago and she’ll never understand that the swank hotel on the dead sea with two swimming pools and all that posh shit was not a part of my Beirut so I just let her hate me while we sit in traffic and eventually she falls asleep and even after we get back to that ridiculous hotel room I lie awake wishing I had given that damn kid a dollar.
(Later, my daughter will repeat these words to me, and I will admonish her, bark that they’ve never had a break, there was never time or money or peace enough for rebuilding, tell her angrily that this place denies any possibility of a belief in anything constant, and she’ll look at me with the same serious eyes she’s had since the first time they opened and we’ll both be thinking about that Christmas when I yelled at my nephew for arguing that we are Lebanese-Armenian, that we are Lebanese at all--)
I drag the kids all over Beirut, following my sensory memory down a disappointing lane. I take them to my favorite lehmajun restaurant and my daughter cringes at the cockroaches scuttling over the doormat, and refuses to eat a thing, sitting tensely in a booth while I chew in vain, trying desperately to taste some sort of familiarity.
I take them to the Armenian Quarter for my favorite ice cream: vanilla dipped in crushed up pistachio nuts. They both look doubtful, and my son takes a tentative lick, and shakes his head. “I like it without the green.”
This happens over and over, and I begin to wonder if my tongue has become Americanized. I can tell the rest of me hasn’t from the way the kids have been looking at me. My daughter sits in the back of the van with all of our aunts and uncles and cousins packed in, listening to her CD player and staring semi-horrified out the window. My cousin is driving, and he cuts off a Jeep and curses at the driver in Arabic (“Haiwan!” - “Animal!”) before realizing he’s an officer in the army. He yells in Armenian, “I know your boss’ mother!” and we crack up as if we’re nineteen years old again and still making a hobby of narrowly escaping death. The kids ask, “What did he say?” I explain that the army general’s mother is Armenian and they look at me wide-eyed: “And Levon knows her?” I’m not sure how to explain to a 7 year old and a 12 year old the way a persecuted minority lays claim to any people they can. They watch us speaking broken Armenian-Arabic-French-English, their heads moving back and forth like they’re watching a ping pong game and can’t keep track of the ball.
“Car-eh park erir?”
“What does that mean, Dad?”
“Where did you park the car?”
“The words are the same!”
“Only for us.”
At night we’re driving back from a wedding reception and the boys are asleep and the only thing keeping my wife awake is the need she feels to brake for the other drivers. “You drive so well here!” she marvels. Lilya, my daughter, is staring out the window at the tanks on the side of the highway. We’re crawling along in traffic and when one begins to move, she jumps slightly and shrinks away from the window. We slow to a halt again and a little boy, probably the same age as my son, comes and knocks on my window, holding up a carton of cigarettes and some roses. I shake my head instinctively and he lingers for a moment before moving on. Something catches my eye in the rear view and I see Lilya shake a little, her back turned as she looks out the back window towards the little boy. She turns around and I can’t believe she already has tear tracks covering her little red face, and she’s sniffling and gasping she’s giving me this look that kids give you when you’re going to have to explain why its okay to be an asshole, but I’m not going to tell her that kid is probably being exploited Oliver-Twist style and doesn’t see a cent of the money he gets, and I can’t show her 20 years ago and she’ll never understand that the swank hotel on the dead sea with two swimming pools and all that posh shit was not a part of my Beirut so I just let her hate me while we sit in traffic and eventually she falls asleep and even after we get back to that ridiculous hotel room I lie awake wishing I had given that damn kid a dollar.