Broken Mirrors Read Free

receded and the story had reached its appointed end, he became as one who dwells on the verge of tears.
    Karim didn’t know why he’d thought of the verb “to be” in the past tense as he was sitting in the Boeing 707 from Paris’s Orly Airport to Beirut. He’d pictured the city, seeing it as it had been ten years ago, as though it was something from the past that couldn’t be brought back but to which he was nevertheless going back. He hadn’t said he was “going back” when he told his wife of his decision; he’d said he was going to the city to build a hospital. But he’d known he was returning to a place that no longer existed. He’d closed his eyes and seen the sentence written out before him: “Beirut was.”
    When he opened his eyes inside the plane, he thought it was his wife in front of him, shaking him by the shoulder to wake him. With her extreme whiteness and small eyes, the flight attendant resembled Bernadette. She’d said the airplane was starting its descent and asked him to put his seat back in the upright position and fasten his seat belt.
    When Nasim embraced him at the airport, he smelled zaatar and a shudder of nostalgia seized him. Looking at his brother he recovered the mirror image that had trailed him for so long. He had been used to seeing in his twin a likeness of himself he didn’t want to see, but never before had he smelled on him the scent of zaatar. Bernadette had told him, the morningafter they met, that she could smell zaatar. He’d told her he hadn’t eaten zaatar for ages and she replied, laughing, “You’re from Lebanon. You told me you were Lebanese. That’s what the Lebanese smell like.” He’d said to her that the true smell of Lebanon was apples. “What apples?” she answered. “It’s zaatar,
thym
– you know the word? – and I love zaatar.”
    Two men on the threshold of their forties smelling zaatar and not crying. They’d searched for things to say but had found only ready-made words, the ones said to plug the silence. They got into the black Volvo. Nasim turned on the engine and the voice of Fairuz rang out, singing, “I loved you in summer, I loved you in winter.” Nasim turned to his brother, who had returned; he’d bought the cassette for him, he said. “Do you still like her?” he asked, and before he could hear the reply said he didn’t like her anymore. “She’s become like Lebanon,” said Nasim. “Everyone says they love it, and when everyone says they love you, it means no one loves you. That’s how Lebanon is. Everyone loves it but no one loves it. Like the war, none of us likes it but we all fight, and like your father, God rest his soul …”
    “Don’t talk about Father like that,” said Karim.
    “Why? What do you know?”
    “What is it I don’t know? I don’t understand.”
    “All in good time.”
    What strange reception was this? Had his brother asked him to come to Lebanon so he could humiliate him and settle old scores? Karim thought the whole thing had been laid to rest once and for all when Nasim married Hend. On the phone he’d wanted to tell his brother that he’d won in the end, but he’d choked on the words.
    Karim didn’t want to reopen old accounts, but why then had he returned to Beirut?
    How would Hend take his return? “In the end the dog won and bought us both,” he would tell her later.
    “He only bought because you sold,” she answered.
    The July sun burned the city’s asphalt. Karim felt he too was burning. But he didn’t ask his brother where he was taking him. He’d been certain he was going to his father’s apartment, but the car passed the pharmacist’s shop at the bottom of the building and kept going.
    “Hend’s waiting for us. She’s got a glass of arak and some mezze ready for you.”
    “I’m tired. Let me go to the apartment, and we can have dinner together tomorrow.”
    “Your mother-in-law has made kibbeh nayyeh just for you and she’s waiting for you at home.”
    “My