Memories of the Forgotten
This story is a partial prologue to my upcoming novel Where the Jasmine Blooms. It features Yasmine’s mother.
Beirut, 1992
The moment I’d been dreading for the past 10 years had finally arrived: Mama was dying a slow, gradual death. I’ve secretly hoped that when the inevitable happened, that it would be sudden, in a way that wouldn’t compel me to leave my nest in Canada and risk letting his family know that I had come back. But, I couldn’t let Mama die, like Baba, without having seen her only daughter in years.
I landed in Beirut on a bright morning in July. I had almost forgotten how close the runway edged the curvature of the earth along the Mediterranean. These waters were, once upon a time, the only measure of hope for a brighter future. The vastness in the open sea filled with possibilities and an exit from a country bordered by death and destruction. A country that never wanted me or the likes of me, yet still we held onto that hope.
I walked out of the plane, down the stairs and took in the smell of the ocean water coupled with that humid scent of petrol. It ignited a deep sense of nostalgia, a feeling I immediately shrugged off and buried deep in my soul. Inside the airport, I grabbed my luggage and headed to the customs desk, wondering if the officer could sense my anxiety or notice my clammy palms. Could they have put a flag on my name, in case I ever returned? No, I comforted myself. Lebanon hadn’t gotten organized enough for anyone to put out a flag on any name.
I presented the man behind the glass wall with my Canadian passport and told him that I was here to visit family and will be gone in a week. He flipped through the pages with a look of disgust on his face. “You have a Lebanese passport?”
I shook my head. “No, I used to have a Palestinian travel document.”
He raised an eyebrow and flicked through the pages again, placed a stamp on it and tossed it back to me. “You have three months, don’t overstay like the rest of your people.”
My people.
Was he talking about those who carried that sad excuse of a passport? The travel document that led to nowhere, merely a reminder of statelessness. A reminder that this body was not worthy of rights. Yes, those were my people and they would forever be.
Khalid waited for me past the security line among all the other family and friends waiting to see loved ones bearing chocolate, flowers, and other things that were indicative of their longing. Khalid’s sweet, beautiful round face smiled at me, marked with renewed wrinkles carved by the trauma that he’d accumulated caring for a family in a country that wouldn’t let him get a proper job or education. That smile was home.
I embraced him in a deep hug and we both shed tears in silent mourning for the time that was lost between us. On the car ride, I asked how Mama was doing. “Not good. She barely recognizes anyone now.” He rubbed his beard and leaned forward toward me. A knot formed in my stomach at the thought of being confronted with her confusion, or worse, blankness. Was this the price that I had to pay to stay alive and give my kids a better life?
“Everything is different,” I say to my Khalid, looking around at the new roads and buildings that towered over the old ones.
“Ooohooo, everything has changed. Wait until you see the camp. Some people have built extra floors and doors that open with electricity. And the really rich people built tall buildings by the boardwalk. Can you believe they get electricity all day long? They have it all day!” He chuckled.
He’s always had a sense of profound innocence to him—he took comfort in knowing that some people had power and running water all day every day, and wished them well. He’d convinced himself that if he was good to others, then one day, God would reward him with a better life. If not now, then in the afterlife. Me? I didn’t have that kind of patience. I wanted to burn it all to the ground if we couldn’t all have justice and freedom. This place that treated us like animals, encapsulated in those walls of the camp. There was no future for me here, only resistance and I had lost the will to fight, especially after his disappearance.
Twenty minutes later, we were home at the Burj Al Barajni camp. And, he was right—the enclosed fortress felt bigger. There were more children running around the alleyways and the amount of electric wires exposed and running between buildings had almost tripled. It smelled exactly the way it always did, of sewage water and humidity. We walked by the narrow passageways, navigating between houses that all connected to each other. Metal doors indicated the separate dwellings. A man sitting out front of a makeshift shop that sells roasted nuts greeted us with a ‘Salam’ and a nod. Fresh graffiti covered the wall behind him. A dove with an olive branch in its mouth, another picture of a child in handcuffs, his mouth stitched closed, and then more images of the sky and the sun that rarely shone here.
In our home, Khalid had built a second floor, atop the one I remembered. We went inside and I saw that they had also expanded the living room space. It was more spacious, but that old Persian rug was still laid on the floor with very little real furniture around. Floor cushions were spread out instead. We headed upstairs and I followed Khalid into a bedroom, one of the new additions. When we were growing up, this house had one bedroom and tin roofs that made a loud pounding noise whenever it rained.
He was also right about Mama not recognizing me. She laid on the bed, frail and unable to move. Her dark eyes glared at me with an intensity that made me quiver. Khalid walked over to fluff her pillows, but I was frozen. All those years I had failed to care for her surfaced in my heart. I hadn’t come when she fell and broke her hip. I hadn’t come when Baba died. I hadn’t come Khalid’s son was diagnosed with hepatitis. I did not offer comfort. Instead, I sent money as if the financial reinforcements relieved me from the commands to love and be loved. I thought that money was the most valuable thing I could possess and disburse. But, standing in front of her, I wanted her forgiveness. I wanted her memories and the stories of our lives before this country took them. Khalid said that the doctors said she only had a few more weeks, if not days. Those memories and her tender touch would then be lost forever.
“Mama, it’s Samira,” Khalid said loudly as if shouting at someone from across the street.
“Who?” She squinted her eyes at me.
“Samira, your daughter,” I said.
And then, something shifted in her eyes. Instead of looking at me with suspicion, she looked at me with sorrow. “Habibte,” she said, her voice crackling. “Where is... is... Akram?”
Akram. The sound of his name made my spine quiver. Heat rushed to my face. Khalid cleared his throat and fiddled with the edge of his shirt. Pity that not only did Mama not recognize me, but that she had to utter his name, shattering my heart into pieces. The man who left me alone with two children to survive in the middle of a civil war. The man that I once loved, who had committed to a cause over our own safety.
I stepped into the living room in an attempt to get some air, the knot in my throat threatened to choke me. I could still hear the conversation in the bedroom. “Akram and Samira are not together anymore, he’s gone now,” Khalid said.
“But why? He was so sweet,” she cried out.
Khalid has always been my ally. When I first told him about everything that Akram was getting involved in and how it was putting us all at risk, he was the first to try and convince him to stop. His voice, his advocacy as a journalist put a target on my back. He was blinded by his Lebanese citizenship and the privilege of having a father who controlled a miniscule fraction of the country’s decisions. And then one day, he disappeared. Assumed dead, leaving us to live in the shadows of his life.
About twenty minutes passed before he walked out of the room and closed the door. “She’s asleep now,” he whispered. “Don’t worry about what she said, she gets glimpses of random memories that come back to her occasionally. I wouldn’t make anything of it. I have to go to the pharmacy and pick up her medication.” He picked up a stack of keys and made his way to the door.
I put my hand on his arm. “No, I will do it. Tell me where to go and I’ll pick it up.”
***
The pharmacy was a short walk from the camp into the Haret Hreik neighborhood. I picked up the drugs and made a swift stop at a convenience store nearby to pick up some shampoo and conditioner. On my way, I couldn’t help but feel like I was being followed, like a shadowy figure was lurking behind me. I was too scared to look so I kept walking, one step over the next, increasing my speed at every foot. The sun cast its shadow along my path.
I moved with swiftness past the bullet-laced buildings, artifacts of the civil war that already seems to have been forgotten. And then, something wrapped tight around my arm just as I was about to cross the road and into the camp.
“Samira,” a man’s voice called. He knew my name. “Listen, I don’t want to hurt you. I was just sent by the Hassan family. They heard that you were in town.”
He said he didn’t want to hurt me. Except his clothes, all black and layered, like he was hiding something under his jacket, told me otherwise. I looked around and couldn't see anyone but the two of us between residential buildings. I was cornered. The shortcut I was taking between buildings had turned into a trap. There was no one else around, only clothes lines and laundry hanging from above.
“The family has heard rumors that Akram is alive. They want to know where he is. They want to see the grandkids.”
Blood rushed to my face. I hadn’t heard a whisper from my husband in over seven years. He was lost to the war. Went to work one morning in 1982 and never returned. I was told to forget him, that he was likely dead. That there had already been a target on his life.
“Akram is dead, you must have the wrong person,” I tried to mask the quiver in my voice, without success.
His family had agreed that he was dead. They had given up on finding him, no matter how much I pleaded with them to use their connections. We all assumed that he had been taken, killed, and buried somewhere in an unmarked grave like the thousands of other men who had gone missing. His family liked to blame his involvement with the PLO and the resistance, but we all knew it was their own corruption that had him killed. They were fascists who’d do anything for a few dollars, no matter who was spewing the money, whether it was the Phalange or the Israelis. They told me to leave and build a life elsewhere and I did, not to appease their desire, but to escape the suffocation of their influence. I exterminated my memories of a time long lost and tried to establish new ones, raising children so that they never had to feel this pain. The pain of a body constantly ripped apart from the familiar.
I walked faster, crushing rocks and gravel underneath my feet.
“There’s been some evidence that he is alive, living in Syria. The family believe that he went to hide there, but they can’t locate him. They thought.” He paused for a moment. “They thought that maybe you’d heard from him.”
I stopped and turned to face him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but my husband died years ago. They searched, they looked, and even with all of their connections and their wealth, they couldn’t find him. You expect me to believe their lies now?”
He looked down and sighed. “What about the kids then? The family wants to see them.”
“I can’t give my kids to the them.” My voice was trembling now, no denying it.
The man’s demeanor changed when he noticed the desperation in my face. I now saw sympathy in his eyes as he pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket. A letter from Akram. It was intercepted by his brother, an official in the government, intended for me.
“Samira,
If you are reading this letter, then you know that I’m not sure how much time I have left on this earth. I have been sick for some time now. I know that we have had our disagreements and I’m sorry for pursuing a dream that I now know cost me my life and family. I really believed that the movement could have been successful and I believed that maybe, we could have had a chance at a peaceful life where we owned land and that our kids could be free and happy. I was naive and you tried to show me that, but I didn’t listen. I really thought that our pursuit of peace and justice would be stronger than their drive and hunger for power and control.
My only other wish is to be forgiven and loved again by you and that you pray for me when I am gone. Samira, if this letter reaches you, please go to Imam Amin at the Soleyman masjid in Trablous. Please, go to him and bring him your answer. I want to see you. I want to see the kids. I am sorry, please forgive me.”
The letter was dated a year ago. For all I knew he could be dead. Or worse, the they could have forged this letter to lure me and my kids back to them. I crumbled it in my hands at the recognition that there was so much I didn’t know.
There was so much ambiguity in our existence. About Akram's existence. I’ve lived the last seven years of my life with the knowledge that he was gone. My children’s father was dead and now this man is asking me to undo that memory? To instill the trauma of my past into their own minds? The war had broken so much of what was already in pieces. I was always going to be a foreigner, a guest, a refugee—never fully fitting in anywhere until I returned to my lord, Ar-Rahman, the merciful. Pieces of myself had been spread out across continents. A piece of me here, with Khalid, another in Syria with Akram and more of it back in Canada. My existence, the ache of that disjointed existence haunted my every waking moment. And the generations that followed me would not know this experience.
I decided at that moment that my kids would not know this reality. No, their father was dead and gone. His family along with it. Those children did not need to know the treachery that I had lived through. It was a life better left dead and buried in this country they had never known.
I turned around to face the man again. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you are talking about, I must go.” I hurried back to Mama and Khalid. He shouted something at me and I blocked it out, the way that I blocked out so much of my history. When I returned, Khaled asked me why I had taken so long. I told him that I took a long way back along the main road. I wanted to study this place one last time, to absorb the dust into my skin, to remember the way that my feet felt as they roamed the earth here. Mama died the next day and when I left, I promised myself that I would never return.
