Beirut', the city that moves me. (Travel).

Accad, Evelyne

WHENEVER I HEAR the destination "Beirut" announced by the stewardess as we are about to land, my heart leaps with joy and excitement, and I am overwhelmed with a sensation of identity and belonging. I look out the window at the city below, which has changed so much and yet so little over the years, and I see the same flat roofs, the same mountains rising from the sea, the many sites of demolition and reconstruction from the seventeen years of nightmarish war (1975-92), all of which makes me love Beirut even more in its despair, like a mother tending her sick child. My heart palpitates with emotion for this country, which has never ceased to amaze me with its capacity to overcome war and destruction and its resilience in continually starting all over again.

I love many other cities: Paris, Chicago, Tunis, Cairo, Singapore -- outstanding and beautiful all. It is in Paris that I write best, in my little apartment in the 18th arrondissement, overlooking the Montmartre cemetery and its white gravestones dotted with splashes of color, flowers and yellow leaves, like paintings by the Impressionists who once lived and worked in this neighborhood. The Paris sky has extraordinary, everchanging light, clouds that break apart and rearrange themselves as they alternately threaten and comfort, reflecting the hours and the seasons, a metamorphosis in tune with the rhythms of nature. Death here is peaceful; it does not frighten me, or rather, I no longer fear it. In Beirut, during the war, I was afraid of death, for I could feel it so close, so tangible.

It is in Chicago that I come to terms with the multiplicity of my identity. I discover the enormous attraction of skyscrapers reaching up to the clouds, their arms extended to the wind, but also the slums and poverty of its South Side, like the South of Lebanon crouching under sun and snow. Violence here frightens me more than in Beirut, for it is often gratuitous, as inexplicable as a desert wind. In Chicago, one is told, there are "little Beirut" districts, to be avoided like the plague; but I have never wanted to avoid Beirut, little or big, and I don't understand the logic.

Tunis I cherish as a harbor that sheltered me during some of the hardest years of the Beirut war. It is all curves and seas, hills dotted in blues and whites. It reminds me of Beirut with its history of conquests and exchanges. It is also a crossroads of many civilizations, languages, religions. Its sun and sea are soothing to the soul, permeating each gesture, each thought. It is here that Queen Dido landed from Phoenicia, the Lebanon of pre-biblical days. She founded Carthage and erected temples to the Phoenician gods and goddesses that blessed its shores. Like Beirut, Carthage was conquered by the Romans and disappeared, to be replaced by Tunis. Tunis and Beirut, two cities risen from their own ashes, have spread themselves out monstrously in recent years, overflowing on all sides with ugly concrete buildings devoid of esthetic planning.

Cairo I have visited many times on research trips. My father was born in Egypt, and relatives whom we like to visit are still living there. I have always been fascinated with Cairo's City of the Dead, an entire district made up of cemeteries which used to surround the city completely but has, over time, been transformed into a free-housing or low-income belt within the sprawling metropolis. The suburbs of Cairo, Beirut, Chicago, and Tunis are similar in their disorder and poverty; the rapid increase of their populations makes them burst at their peripheral seams and overflow with life in splendid misery.

Singapore I discovered only recently, thanks to a brother and his Chinese wife. It is a city of contrasts, like Chicago, with skyscrapers and order at its center and a discipline more akin to the Swiss mentality than to anything American, yet with an appealing disorder in its Chinese and Indian quarters, with colorful and sensual Buddhist temples in the middle of souks displaying the most exotic fruits and vegetables I have ever seen, all of it exercising a harmonious calming effect in its reserved Eastern warmth and hospitality. Singapore, like Beirut, opens onto the sea, but here the sea is an ocean, majestic and vast. The humidity of its wind sticks to the skin as in Beirut, calling one to the horizon and to faraway places.

Still, no city is as effective as Beirut in turning my emotions upside down, in confronting me with my identity in all of its complexity, in making me realize what lies at the core of some of the world's most crucial issues. It is in Beirut that I seek answers to my questions, because here I have experienced them directly. Each time I land in Beirut now, I am reminded of how I felt right after my father's death and during my convalescence from breast cancer.

1995. We are approaching Beirut. Soon we will land. Night is falling. Beirut, the magical city. Beirut, the sensitive city, so often close to folly and death. Beirut, eaten up by a cancer, a devouring war over which it triumphed. Beirut, city of my childhood and adolescence. I miss Father, who will not be there to greet me with his broad smile, who tormented me during my adolescence, only to apologize later and tell me that I was an oversensitive child, that he should not have been so strict with me. I cry over the loss of Father and the loss of my youth.

Beirut, to me, means family, adolescence, youth, craziness, life and death, mixed with the tragic destiny of a land to which I feel attracted as to a magnet. So much is happening all the time in Lebanon. My heart is both heavy and light from all its wounds, slowly healing yet reopening with the slightest movement of wings, with any aggressiveness, with every harsh word, with each painful image, with each utterance of unassailable dogma, with all the memories this country holds for me. Why have I always been driven to return to this tormented land? I plunge into my past and interrogate it.

1973. Winter had taken Beirut, raw and biting. The sea winds gusted. The shutters rattled, and from time to time a window would shatter in a sudden shower of glass. Sitting near a fogged-over window, I watched the street flooded by torrential rains, the rare passer-by who leaped over the muddy pools, a hurried merchant straining every muscle to push along his wobbly cart, laden with luminously purple eggplants and scarlet tomatoes, globules of color glistening with rivulets of rainwater. Far away, on the horizon, the sky was black, the sea a menacing white. I was transfixed by the electricity, by the beauty and fragility of the moment, by the sequences of my life when I had sat looking out upon this same thoroughfare, my gaze drawn to that same horizon, dreaming of the future, expectant of what I hoped life would bring. It was the same sea I had often crossed, its tone having altered in tempo with the seasons, in rhythm with my life, yet always the same sea of hidden and immutable depths.

I had sailed that sea, speculating upon unknown coastlines, new faces, unpublished novels, and always I had returned to this small corner of the earth called Lebanon. Why had I always come back to this turbulent country, devastated by wars, conquests, colonization, revolution, and religious fanaticism? Was it because of nationalism or patriotism? Deep within me I really did not know if I belonged to this country, the land of my father, or to the other country, that of my mother. I felt bound neither to the one nor to the other. But why had my steps led me here? I was searching, trying to understand, while meditating and reflecting upon that landscape torn by the violence of the wind and the intensity of the hour.

1980. The Lebanese civil war shakes me, hurts and wounds me deeply. My world seems to crumble and fall apart into fragments of what I have held most precious. The tragedy makes me ask more questions. I try to explain its cruelty both scientifically and existentially, having both experienced it up close and seen it from afar. I discover that practices such as forced marriage and virginity, claustration, the veil, polygamy, repudiation, beatings, denial of freedom and of the possibility to achieve one's aims and desires in life -- oppressions which motivated me to run away from Lebanon at the age of twenty-two -- are closely connected to the internal war in Lebanon. I am therefore compelled to make connections between the role of women, the relationships between men and women, and the war. They become the central theme of an essay I later write on the subject.

I analyze the meaning of Beirut and the connection between sexuality and war. I choose a few novels about the war in Lebanon to illustrate the nexus of sexuality, war, nationalism, feminism, violence, love, and power as they relate to the body, the partner, the family, Marxism, religion, and pacifism. The works studied, originally written in Arabic or French, are by Lebanese women and men, authors who have lived or are still living in Lebanon. All the novels are set in Beirut, in the context of the war, and all of them can be analyzed to show how war and violence are rooted in sexuality, in the treatment of women in that part of the world. Most of the characters meet with a tragic fate due to the war, the women being the ultimate victims of both political and social violence.

In the destructive context of war, violence, and sexual oppression, I asked questions I personally felt were most pressing: Were there positive actions and resolutions the male and female characters could take? What were the differences and similarities between male and female protagonists, between male and female authors, between those writing in Arabic and those writing in French? What were some of the necessary changes Lebanon had to undergo to solve its tragedy and once again play its old democratic role as a melting pot of tolerance and freedom in that part of the world?

There were indeed differences between the ways men and women wrote about war. Women authors unmasked the ugliness of war; men exalted it and even found pleasure in it. Women sought peaceful solutions through active, nonviolent means; men asked for more violence and more destruction. The difference between a man and a woman's representation of Beirut appeared to me even more clearly when I lived the war in Beirut while there on sabbatical or research leave. I watched my women friends determinedly traverse the city two or three times a week, repeatedly crossing the demarcation line -- the most desolate, depressing, and (often) dangerous spot in Beirut -- most of the time on foot, as only a few cars with special permission were allowed through; they were convinced that, by this gesture, real as well as symbolic, Lebanon's reunification would ultimately take place.

They did this against all logic, under the ironic yet sometimes admiring gaze of their male companions. They defied the laws of weapons, militias, political games. They told me how the demarcation line had become a meeting place where, each morning, they looked forward to seeing one another, walking steadfastly in that apocalyptic space and smiling at one another as they passed, conscious that their march was not an ordinary one, that their crossing was a daring act, important and vital to Lebanon's survival.

1997. It is always a very moving experience just to be in Lebanon, center of culture, crossroads of so many fascinating exchanges, a country that has suffered so much, to be among people I connect with at the very deepest level.

Nasr Cafe of the Pigeon Rock in Ras-Beirut. I took a long walk, and now I am having a cold beer while writing. The sea in front of me is raging, like this country with its unfathomable violence. Yesterday Eloise and I went to pick up Theophile at the airport. A man in uniform rear-ended our car. Eloise ignored it. We were stuck in traffic, however, and the guy started insulting Eloise. She responded in kind. I was worried because the man was probably armed. Eloise told me it would be worse to let oneself be intimidated, that she should have insulted him right from the beginning. I admire the courage this woman has and the support she gave Theophile throughout the war. At the same time, I don't like the way one has to push and shove through traffic and through lines here, and the aggression some people exhibit disturbs me.

Theopolis in the mountains, the church beneath which Father is buried. Across from the church, one can see the house Father and his brother built, where we used to spend our summers and where Father thought he would spend his old age. The war almost destroyed the house, which is still standing thanks to the strength of its walls of hewn stone. Father died before being able to enjoy the fruit of his labor, but he was happy, in love with Mother, except that he suffered too much in the end with this terrible disease, cancer, from which I too have just emerged.

Ras-Beirut, site of my childhood and my adolescence. I am sitting in the same spot where Jay and I had sipped a beer, almost twenty-five years ago, when the war had not yet started and we did not yet expect it. We were also not aware that we would split up one day. So much has happened. How many things are we still unaware of? How quickly time goes by.

My trip to Lebanon is painful but essential. Mother is nothing but skin and bones at this point. She weighs forty-eight kilos in spite of her height. Some of her bones are even showing through in places. She has to be spoon-fed now, and I do that for her; I also sing, which makes her very happy. She used to love singing, and I inherited her voice. Now she can barely speak, let alone sing. I can tell that hearing me is, for her, almost like singing again herself, and her face beams with joy despite the pain she suffers all over her body. So I sing and I sing, religious and folk songs, Swiss and French songs from Piaf to Brel, songs in English and Arabic, whatever comes to mind. I go through my entire repertoire for my mother. I find it so therapeutic to sing!

The house in the mountains where the conference took place, the Nadia Tueni Foundation in Beit Merri, is a real wonderland. Located in a pine forest, it overlooks Beirut and the Mediterranean. Far above the pollution and the traffic noise, I can imagine how Nadia Tueni was inspired to write her poignant poetry in such surroundings. We were all very moved to see how faithful Ghassan Tueni has been to the memory of this woman, this extraordinary Lebanese francophone poet. I try to be faithful in my own way by teaching her work in my classes in the States. Her text Juin et les mecreantes (June and the Miscreants), adapted for the stage by Roger Assaf, was playing at the Beirut Theater while I was there. Four women, four different Lebanese identities, four religions representing Lebanon (Druze, Christian, Muslim, Jew), four voices and four ways, four wounds expressing their despair, their suffering, their joys, and their sorrow against the background of the outbreak of war: "Can one keep the desert from leaving with one's body / naked as a prayer / O sumptuous rottenness / each day is a resurrection / with the earth's complicity / all those unconcerned with the sun / make a liquid noise / the nights / here and there / have the flight of birds in their eyes / and I cry the time of a star / the one who stole my death" (my translation).

1999. I went back to Lebanon and, as I always do, took many walks down memory lane. I strolled around the campus of Beirut University College in Ras-Beirut. In my childhood and adolescence, these hills were still wild, covered with flowers, with birds singing and torrents of water flowing downhill whenever it rained. Now they are disfigured with luxurious concrete high-rises, many of them vacant because so few people can afford them. It is sad to see Beirut transformed into a huge construction monster.

Some young people came to see me. We had coffee several times at the City Cafe right below BUC. It is a very polluted and noisy spot, but I was glad to visit with them. One young man confessed to feeling rejected because he is gay. A young woman told me the only outlet for sex in this society is marriage. She was made to feel she had to find someone to wed in order to be accepted, and she felt marginalized because she did not have anyone. I told them about my life, what I had experienced in my adolescence, much as recorded in my novel L'Excisee. Things had not really changed since my youth; rather, the bleaker side of history seemed to be repeating itself and spiraling out of control. The promises of modernization had not been kept; the specter of chaos and disease looms greater than ever.

Beirut, asphyxiated, crushed, put to death so many times, yet always rising again from its ashes and from the sea. Beirut, like my life, complex and contradictory, with its multiple identities, its wounds barely healed, the scars still spotted with blood, reconstruction still in its first stages.

I cross the newly reconstructed center of Beirut. It has been renovated to revive the spirit of the old buildings and souks. But in an ironic contradiction, they are all empty, for no one has enough money to rent them, or dares to occupy them yet, as they look too new, too polished. The purpose of restoring old Beirut is defeated. I walk along cobblestone streets closed to car traffic. My heart is pounding with emotion.

I walk in an empty field. There is excavation everywhere, exposing layers and layers of old Beiruts from Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Ottoman times. Next to the field, a highway is being built, with its bridges and its high-speed lanes. Beirut will be a modern city after all. I regret the disfiguration of the landscape, the loss of the center that we used to cherish in my childhood. I weep at the loss of my childhood and of the part of me that lies buried in these ruins.

University of Illinois, Urbana

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Accad, Evelyne. "Entre deux." Emotions. Boston. Houghton Mifflin. 1994.

--. L'Excisee. Paris. L'Harmattan. 1982. (English translation: Washington, Three Continents, 1989.)

--. Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East. New York. New York University Press. 1990.

--. The Wounded Breast: Intimate Journeys through Cancer. Melbourne. Spinifex. 2001.

Adnan, Etel. Sitt Marie Rose. Sausalito, California. Post-Apollo. 1982.

Chedid, Andree. La maison sans racines. Paris. Flammarion. 1985. Khoury, Elias. La petite montagne. Paris. Arlea. 1987.

Tueni, Nadia. La terre arretee. Paris. Belfond. 1984.

--. Les oeuvres poetiques completes. Beirut. Dar An-Nahar. 1986.

EVELYNE ACCAD, a native of Lebanon, is Professor of French at the University of Illinois in Urbana. Among her many publications in French, Arabic, and English are the novel L'Excisee (1982) and the nonfiction texts Sexuality and War (1990) and The Wounded Breast (2001). She has regularly reviewed contemporary francophone and Near Eastern literature for WLT for more than a quarter-century, and recently served as a member of the 2002 Neustadt Prize jury.