The Radiant City (6 page)

“Third.”

“Ah. Well, let me tell you. The trick is, as far as I can tell, and fuck what the doctors tell you—wait, you seeing a shrink?”

“Nope.” Matthew’s leg trembles only in fits and starts now. The shaking in his hands is practically unnoticeable.

A girl in a red dress, her hair short and slicked back, gleaming with pomade, dances backward past them in the arms of a wire-thin man who looks like a pimp. Their eyes remain locked onto each other and their bodies move in perfect harmony, as if they are preprogrammed. Jack raises the camera to his eye. At the last second, before she turns, the dancer snaps her head around and stares upward. Jack clicks the button. “Good,” he says, and it is unclear if he means the shot, or the fact Matthew is not seeing a therapist. “I guess they help some guys, but I gave up on ’em too. Anyway. The trick is not to let it define you. You get an episode, you get up, you dust yourself off, and you keep going on with your day. You don’t let the fuckers live in your head. You don’t let that present-tense thing get to you. You know what I mean?”

Matthew does not, and listens hard, for he suspects this is a secret he must learn.

“One good thing a shrink told me was this: there’s a part of the brain that always lives in the present tense of the trauma, whatever it is. Like some little lizard part of your brain doesn’t realize that whatever shit happened to you isn’t still happening. So, if you have an episode, and you spend the rest of the day, or the week, or the fucking month dwelling on it, I figure you’re reinforcing that shit. Key is to kick the little fucker out as soon as you can. See what I mean?”

“Yes, possibly.”

Jack looks over at Matthew and then takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and polishes his lens. “It may do no good to talk about the fucking episodes, but sometimes it does help to talk about whatever’s causing them. Say what happened, and then what happened next, you know? And then what happened after that. Train your brain to realize it isn’t still going on, that you got past it. Like, I got shot, then I woke up in hospital, then I ate some crappy hospital eggs, pinched a nurse’s ass and went back to sleep. Tell the story over and over again, lead the mind through, and convince your lizard brain that time’s moved on.” Jack pauses, holding the camera up to his eye. “So, if you do want to talk about what happened . . . well, you know.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

A couple stops near them, executing a series of complex moves with their legs, intertwining them and stepping first right and then left at fantastic speed. They are both dressed in black, she with a red rose in her hair, he with a red rose in his lapel. Jack’s camera clicks happily away.

“Anyway,” says Matthew, feeling deeply vulnerable and foolish because of it, “Thanks for saving my ass back there.”

“No problem.”

“Remember Kosovo? Seems like you’re always saving my ass, doesn’t it?”

“You can do the same for me one day. Have another drink.”

And Matthew does, his hand damn near steady.

Saida swirls olive oil over the top of the hommos and sets it inside the refrigerated display case next to the bowls of eggplant
moutabal
, taboulé,
moujaddara
and spicy potato salad, as well as the platters of falafel,
safiha
—little pizzas with meat and pine nuts – two kinds of sausages, both
manakiche
and
makanek
. She arranges the pastries, the baklava,
maamou
, with either pistachios or dates, and macaroons flavoured with orange water. An oriental bakery near their apartment delivers fresh sweets to Chez Elias every morning. Saida herself is a fine pastry-maker and would prefer to make them herself, but there is no time for such things, nor is the kitchen nearly adequate. Already the savoury dishes must sometimes be cooked at home in the early hours of the morning. Since she left her husband, such responsibilities have fallen to her. Ramzi handles the coarser tasks, such as grilling the skewers of chicken and lamb or stuffing the pita with falafel while she makes the rest in the minuscule kitchen, just an alcove really, behind the counter. Saida does not mind that the kitchen is not private. She wants every customer to see how spotless and well organized the little space is.

In fact, the entire shop gleams. The floor, the four tabletops, and the counter—everything is spotless. Her father is her ally in this. She and Ramzi were raised to believe that a clean mind and clean body are intertwined, that a clean house is the outward manifestation of good spiritual health. If, however, Ramzi has relaxed his diligence as he grew into manhood, Saida lives with a bleached rag in one hand, ready to pounce.

Her father, of course, is not helpful in any practical sense. But he is her father and he is old and if he chooses to spend his days sitting by the window watching the world go by, reading Lebanese newspapers, then Saida feels he has earned the right.

She wishes Ramzi would leave her father alone. Every day the same thing and this morning is no exception. She listens to father and brother argue with only half an ear. The same old argument.

“We can’t stay here forever,” says Ramzi. “We’ll never get ahead.”

Her father shrugs. “No place is perfect. This is not so bad. We eat.”

Ramzi makes a sound of disgust.

“You want to go back to Lebanon?”

“No. I didn’t say that. But, well, maybe.”

“I’ll never go back. It is the land of the dead for me. And you are saying nothing. Wind across the sand.”

“There are more opportunities elsewhere. There is more sunshine elsewhere.”

“There are opportunities here. You think you have it so hard? You own this business. You can take a wife. Feed your children. The stores are full of things to buy.”

“This city is depressing. People are so unhappy.”Ramzi stands with his hands in his pockets, his stocky back and strong shoulders hunched. He looks out at the rain streaming down the window. “And unhappier still to see an Arab get ahead.”

“Bitterness will only make your breath sour! I will not move again. How many times do I have to say this?” The old man strikes the table with the flat of his palm just as a girl walks in; she looks at them, hesitates.

“Good morning,” Saida says with her friendliest smile and gestures with her hand to the sky. “Such dreadful weather.”

“It’s September, fall already,” says the girl, stepping in, not looking at the men. “It’s the season. October will be worse.” She shakes her umbrella in the street and leaves it propped up against the door.

“What can I get you?”

“Espresso. A double to take out.”

“Have a pastry to go with it, yes?”

“No. Just the coffee,” says the girl, but she eyes the confections. “Oh, all right. Just one.”

Saida wraps the baklava in waxpaper, then she picks out a fat piece of pistachio
maamoul
. “I give it to you. For later. You’ll like it.”

After the girl leaves, the men resume their never-ending argument. To go. To stay. Finally, her father calls Ramzi ungrateful, which gives him an excuse to take off his apron and throw it on the floor. He walks out, leaving the old man in the doorway calling after him.

Elias turns to Saida; his arms open wide as if he could catch understanding trying to escape. “What does he want? What does he want?”

Saida shrugs. “A bigger life maybe. He’s young.”

“He needs a wife. Not to be married is unnatural.”

Saida looks at him but says nothing. The old man makes a sound, of apology perhaps, or merely confusion at the strange new world in which he finds himself.

Ten minutes later Ramzi comes back again, and the day continues as all their days do, serving the customers who are only plentiful around lunchtime when they come in for falafels and
kebbé
of lamb or chicken. The rest of the time Ramzi makes plans behind his newspapers, Elias revisits grief-salted dreams of the past behind his, and Saida cleans, cooks, does the accounts and pays the bills.

At five-thirty, she hears someone come in and looks up from the ledger book, expecting Joseph, who is already late, but it is not her son. It is the tall American, thin as a drug addict, whom Saida has seen in the square. She thought he was a tourist at first, but it seems he lives nearby.

“Good morning,” she says. She decides when Joseph gets here she will skin him alive.

The man returns the greeting and nods to her father and brother. He orders a
café
crème
and sits at the counter. Saida watches him. He does not look healthy. There are red blotches on his skin, such fair skin, and his coppery hair is dull. He has a good nose, though, straight and long. And his chin shows character and strength. He holds his hand up over his mouth when he is not drinking. He moves slowly, deliberately, as though he plans his movements in advance. It strikes her that he is someone who is working very hard to look relaxed.

Ramzi makes himself an espresso and sits down next to the American, flipping through a real estate paper from Montpellier. He runs his fingers down the page and picks at an ingrown hair on his jaw, near his ear. He makes small noises, which Saida knows indicate he would like to begin a conversation, but the man does not speak.

“You are American, yes?” Ramzi says, finally.

“Canadian.”

“Canada? But not from Montreal, your French . . .”

“Not very good, is it? No, I’m from the Maritimes. East of Quebec. By the sea. Nova Scotia. Pretty much all English.”

“That’s all right. We speak English. Don’t we?” Saida and Elias agree that they do. “My father insisted on our education. You never know where you will end up, do you? It is good to keep in practise. So we will speak English with you.”

“Fine,” says the Canadian and he smiles. It is a good smile, Saida thinks. Not a smile that finds things funny, but a smile that tells the other person that they have done something good.

“You have been here before. You live on the square, yes? I have seen you. I am Ramzi. That is my father, and my sister.”

“Matthew.”

Ramzi and Matthew shake hands.

“America is a great country. Canada is the same, yes? Not like France. A man can get ahead in America. In France, it is a class system still. They say they kill off the aristocracy in their big revolution, but it is just a lie. You must be in one of their great schools, one of their great families – most of all, you must not be a Maghreb. You know this word?”

“North African,” says Matthew. He looks at a photo on the wall of the last remaining forest of Biblical cedars, the
Arz
Ar-rab, near Bcharré, and at another of the Qadisha Gorge where Maronite monasteries are cut into the rock. “But that’s Lebanon, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” says Ramzi, pleased. “We are Lebanese. But the French make no distinction.”

“Lots of racism in North America too.”

“If you have money, though, none of that matters, and you can get money in America. Here you are taxed to death. You cannot afford to hire anyone because of all the social security and health care and pension and such, and so you must do all the little work yourself and then you cannot make other plans. In America this is not the case,” Ramzi says this with absolute conviction. “I will not stay here in Paris. I do not wish to stay in France, but if I do, I will go to the south, to Montpellier. At least it is not so grey there all the winter. A man could die from lack of sun.”

In Arabic, Elias says, “Only the young have wings on their feet,” and Saida hates the sadness in his voice.

“My father says he is too old to move again.”

“Something to be said for staying in one place, I guess,” says Matthew, and Saida thinks he says this without conviction.

“And this is why you are not in Canada, yes?” says Ramzi with a grin. “Some of us are born nomads, I think.”

Matthew nods. “Some people are strangers wherever they go.” He smiles again.

“Have you been to Lebanon?” says Saida.

Matthew looks at her and there is something in his eyes that makes her sorry she asked the question, which suddenly does not seem as harmless as she’d thought.

“Yes. Beirut. In 1982,” he says and drops his eyes.

The silence in the café is quite loud then. “We left in 1979,” says Ramzi, and then they wait. “We were in Damour.”

“I’m a reporter,” says Matthew.

“So, you know why we left then,” says Saida.

Turning away into the kitchen alcove she busies herself cleaning the grill. She hears a noise and her son’s voice.

“
Marhaba
,” he says.

“You’re late,” she says, switching to Arabic.

“Not so much. A minute or two,” he says, also in Arabic.

“Where are your books?”

“I went home first, that’s why I’m late.”