Other Lives by Iman Humaydan

Author:Iman Humaydan [Humaydan, Iman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781566569620
Publisher: Interlink Publishing

Olga accompanies us on the visit to Georges’ mother. The war prevented us from building a life together in Australia, Georges and I. Georges’ mother is there waiting for me, his sister with her. She’s holds a cigarette as if it were the same one she was holding when I bade her farewell fifteen years ago. When she sees me, she cries. She tells me that she’s still waiting for him, that she feels close to death and has bequeathed the task of continuing to search for Georges to her daughter. “After the mother, only the sister can pursue this cause.” She chokes up as she says this. I cry, too. This moment helps me understand why I came to see her. She’s the only person who can allow me, just by seeing her, to finish my ongoing mourning.

On the way back, Olga can’t stop talking. It’s like she wants to erase all trace of this visit. “The war is over… It’s over!” Olga sings, theatrically stretching her arms out of the window of Nour’s car, waving her hands outside. “Look at the streets, look at the traffic… All the hotel rooms are booked up!” I don’t know at that moment where Olga really is. Is she joking? Or is she making fun of the television channels that rejoice all day long that the war’s ended, even though still today men are missing and no one dares ask questions about them. I know that Olga is lying to herself and to us—that she doesn’t believe what she’s saying at all.

“We’re not going to be afraid anymore, the war’s over,” she continues, pointing out that they took away all the sandbags used at checkpoints—there’s only one pile of sandbags left on the Jounieh Highway, near the Nahr al-Kalb Tunnel, and they say that they’ll “cleanse” the area soon. Yesterday, they “cleansed” the “Lebanese Forces” areas and arrested a number of them, I say to myself silently. Before this, a Phalange Party figure disappeared, and they said that the Syrian secret service apparatus had disappeared him. After that another man and another and all of this is happening in a time of peace. “The war is over,” I repeat what Olga said soundlessly. I look at her reproachfully, because she doesn’t want to see the truth, above all she wants to believe the lies she’s repeating. I motion to her to be quiet. Olga quiets down but her words bring me back to a past I want to forget. So why do I blame Olga? I too want to remember the past without pain.

Beirut is heavy with pain. But perhaps Olga is right, what use is memory? A wave from inside the sea should rise up and cleanse everything, wash away tales from the past… its stories, hatreds and resentment. For a moment I live the war as it was then, all that I lived through more than fifteen years before. As though it has been asleep in my body and needs only a little push to reawaken and float up to the surface of my memory.

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