Beirut 2020 Read online

  were silent for a few seconds as we looked at this unexpected striking apparition, this sudden crystallization of a quivering animal staring at us and tilting its tiny head, presenting us with one of its inexpressive round eyes. Every time this scene occurs, I think of the first page of The Palace by Claude Simon, and of the description of the magical transmutation of a pigeon on a windowsill, in Barcelona, in 1938, a description that it occurred to me right then was probably inspired by the magnificent scene of the appearance of the stag in the middle of the forest in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, which I had recently read. My giant electrician pulled me away from these fleeting thoughts, declaring that we would soon be so hungry we would end up eating these kinds of animals. I was thinking about the stag. He was talking about the pigeon. I replied that it would be a while before that happened, that we were too proud for that.

  On February 11, 2020, a new government was formed, against the will of the millions of citizens who had been protesting for four months. To make everyone believe that their voices had been heard, the cabinet was composed of unknown people, who were supposedly independent. It soon became clear that they were all close to the senior politicians and leaders of the incumbent parties, notably Hezbollah, the Amal Movement, and the movement of General Aoun and his son-in-law. The other parties declared themselves to be in opposition, even though when the day came to vote in Parliament, they gave their confidence to the party they claimed to reject. In any event, the only way you could possibly describe that cabinet is as a puppet show. Since then, in other words for five months now, even as the economic crisis has only continued to escalate past points of no return, and as the collapse is complete in all sectors of the economy, nothing is being done, no resolutions, no decisions, no action plans, nothing.

  For a few weeks now I’ve sensed that Nayla is exhausted when she comes home from her practice. Through her work she knows that the financial and public health crises and the lockdowns awaken fears and more long-standing problems in each of us that can be psychologically devastating when they are revived. She is starting to feel this herself. On top of all this, she keeps telling me that her patients’ problems are echoing more and more with what she is experiencing herself when faced with the disintegration of everything around us, and she sometimes feels overwhelmed by emotion and complex, exhausting sensations. I noticed three or four days ago that she was regularly sitting down to her computer to write, and for longer spells than when she was just answering emails or preparing notes or short presentations. She finally admitted to me that she was doing a peculiar exercise, prompted by the pressing need to purge herself of all the violent feelings she was experiencing—a kind of self-therapy, for herself and with herself, which she writes down every day, creating a session where she is both the therapist and the patient, engaged in a conversation. She let me read the first sessions.

  MY THERAPY WITH MYSELF

  First Session

  I’m feeling very nervous about starting this session, and even quite a high degree of anxiety. I actually have no idea what kind of a therapist I will turn out to be for myself, and especially how I, as a patient, will play this game. But it’s clear that if I’m talking about a “game,” then my resistance is already firmly in place. We’ll see how this goes.

  THERAPIST: I’m listening.

  PATIENT: For a while now, specifically since the end of lockdown, I’ve started feeling anxious, especially at the end of the day and when I’m going to bed, which is causing me huge sleep problems.

  TH: Since the end of lockdown, you say? Was there a specific event that set off your anxiety?

  P: Not really. But two things gradually became unbearable to me: social media and the Netflix series we were watching every night back then.

  TH: What do you mean by unbearable? How were they unbearable?

  P: Social media started to feel suffocating to me. Literally. After three or four minutes looking at my Instagram or Facebook accounts, my breath would become labored and I’d start to feel a heavy weight in my chest and an urge to shout, to run.

  TH: Shout what? Run where?

  P: I don’t know.

  TH: Are you noticing that your anxiety is rising now, as you’re talking to me?

  P: Yes.

  TH: Where do you feel it?

  P: It grabs me here, in my throat, it’s suffocating me.

  TH: And these tears?

  P: Frustration, lots of frustration.

  TH: Can you say a little more about that?

  P: I can’t stand reading all those endless cynical posts, talking about our failure, or ceaselessly repeating that we were helpless faced with the people in power. But I do feel that it’s true that all our efforts during the revolution were actually in vain. No one heard us. No one cared about our demands. It makes me want to scream, to howl…

  TH: Anger and sadness resulting from a feeling of helplessness?

  P: Absolutely.

  TH: And this helplessness, is that something you have felt before, when you were young, because people wouldn’t listen to you?

  P: (A pause.) No one has ever listened to me. (Tears.)

  TH: Yes, let your sadness come…Who never listened to you?

  P: My mother and father, each in their own way.

  TH: Who do you want to start with?

  P: My mother. When she was cross with me, I remember she took on this cold and distant attitude, which lasted for days. She wouldn’t even speak to me, as if I didn’t exist anymore. It didn’t matter that I cried in my room, noisily and sometimes for hours, hoping that she would end up relenting or taking pity on me and come and console me—all in vain. Nothing softened her: not my tears, nor my swollen eyes, nor my upset face, nor sighs, nor hunger strikes…I always had to go apologize to her in order for our relationship to gradually return to normal.

  TH: And now, right here, what are you feeling? I see that you have changed posture, that you’re sitting up straighter in your chair.

  P: Yes, I’m angry at her.

  TH: And if you were to express this anger in words, what would you say to your mother? “Maman, I’m angry at you because…”

  P:…

  TH: “Maman, I’m angry at you because…”

  P:…I’m angry at you because when you were cross with me, when I was little, you abandoned me, you let me cry alone, in despair. You remained cold in the face of my distress and you were deaf to my suffering. I had to bend, to break myself, to bow my head and come apologize, every time, for you to deign to reinstate me in your field of vision and hearing, for me to exist for you again. I can remember several times during those humiliating apology exercises when you made a point of correcting me, explaining that it wasn’t enough, in good French, to just say “I’m sorry,” that I had to say, “I apologize, Maman!” That was all you cared about, my using the correct phrase, more than my distress.

  TH: Keep talking to her: “That was all you cared about, whereas all I wanted was for you to—”

  P: —All I wanted was for you to treat me as a mother would and not like an indifferent tormentor, for you to take me in your arms, for you to tell me that you loved me no matter what, that nothing was worth causing me such pain…

  I interrupt the session. I’m allowed to do that, I’m just here with myself after all. I know what comes next, naturally…Don’t bother, it’s okay, I heard you, I understand. Our leaders’ arrogant indifference to the country’s collapse, to our demands, and to our hatred suffocates me and plunges me into a state of high anxiety because in fact it is my suffering in the face of my mother’s indifference and deafness from long ago that is being reawakened in me…Except that I’ve also just understood that I am no longer the distressed little girl who has to suppress her anger in order to protect her relationship with her mother…

  Second Session

  Th: What brings
you here today?

  P: Over the same period that we’ve been talking about since we began, in other words for about three months now, I’ve been feeling very tired after my sessions with my patients. It’s as if their problems are suddenly affecting me directly. I can no longer find the right emotional distance between us. I don’t understand why I’ve become so vulnerable when I’ve always been so proud of not letting other people’s suffering overwhelm me, while also not losing my empathy.

  Th: Can you give me an example of a session that you found particularly affecting?

  P: Last week a new patient was telling me about how he was endlessly mourning his mother. She died a year ago from cancer. You know how much I like working on grief with my patients and you also know that, despite my own situation, this very frequently recurring topic doesn’t affect me on a personal level. I’ve worked with patients at all stages of illness, treatment, and remission, and with other patients whose family members were cancer sufferers or victims.

  Th: So what was different with this patient?

  P: When he was talking about his mother and her last days, I felt anxiety, I had trouble breathing, and I disconnected from him for a moment and suddenly found myself imagining her death. That had never happened to me before.

  Th: What did you imagine?

  P: Her physical decline.

  Th: Keep going.

  P: He was talking about his pain at seeing his mother, who was once so beautiful and lively, turn into an old woman who had everything wrong with her. It was his sadness, his distress at seeing her physical decline that upset me, much more than the state his mother was in during her terminal phase.

  Th: But then…Why this time, and not with other patients?

  P: I know, I’ve done the work on myself, and I thought I had dealt with my fear of dying.

  Th: But if I understand this correctly, your distress mostly comes from your identification with the observer, the witness to the illness, not with the sick woman herself.

  P: Yes. With another patient, who had survived two bouts of cancer, it was the word “dignity” that had come between us. I’m not even sure who said the word first. What is terrible with this illness, and with the invasive treatments that people undergo in the hope of a so-called cure, is that it takes away a human being’s dignity.

  Th: Interminable mourning, physical decline, loss of dignity…

  P:…

  Th: Interminable mourning, physical decline, loss of dignity…

  P:…

  Th: Interminable mourning, physical decline, loss of dignity…You’re crying. Yes, go ahead, that’s good, cry…

  P: It’s not me I’m crying about.

  Once again I interrupt the session. I know what I’m crying about, now, but mostly I know why that session with my patient was so difficult. That sick woman, with aggressive lung cancer, suffocating, calling for help, losing her vital organs one by one, losing her dignity and autonomy along with them, that woman is not me. I was not overcome by pity or the fear of death. It’s not that the young man’s story reminded me of the illness I carry inside me either. I’ve just understood that this son’s mourning, the heartache he experiences again every day from having seen his mother perish, is another loss that I have been experiencing myself, for a few months now. A loss I didn’t want to face, that I still find hard to admit to, but which is real and pressing and overwhelming. I’m finding it hard to say, to write…But it’s about this country, which is in physical decline too, in its death throes in fact, it’s about the loss of everything we did, the splendor of our former lives, everything we dreamed of, and all the other potential deaths to come…

  There are many reasons why the government held on to power in the end, and didn’t cave under pressure from the population and street demonstrations. There is the obstinate resistance of all those who were embroiled in thirty years of corruption and can sense that, if they don’t hang on at any price and obstruct even the slightest change, they will be carried off with no mercy. There is the power of the traditional political parties and the alarms of factionalism that they know how to sound when it suits them. And among those parties is the most dangerous one of all, Hezbollah, the only party that is still armed, on the pretext of fighting the Israeli occupation of the southern provinces where there have been no Israeli troops for fifteen years, but in fact so that the party can be used as an instrument of pressure and destabilization in Syrian and Iranian hands.

  At the time of the October 2019 uprising, Hezbollah tried to show that it was in favor of governmental reform. Like other parties, in the first few days it authorized its members and supporters to join the protests. Then it became more hard-line, no doubt because things seemed to be getting out of control. It apparently couldn’t allow itself to contemplate any changes in government because that would entail reevaluating its strategic choices and putting the Syrian-Iranian axis, of which it was an essential part, at risk. Shortly afterward the Shiite community was largely forced to renounce its demands for the end of the corrupt regime, an end it was hoping for just as much as other citizens were. Hezbollah also let its allies in the Amal party and sometimes even its own sympathizers provoke or confront the protestors. After a few months of hesitation and prevarication, the two Shiite parties and their allies in President Aoun’s circle finally created a new puppet government on February 11, whose rallying cry appears to be mostly to do nothing at all, except continue the same practices with the same arrogance, such as the mafialike divvying up—not of the cake that doesn’t exist anymore, but of the key posts in government agencies, just in case manna might fall from the sky again after all.

  I can’t stop wondering, every time we go into a pub or a restaurant—there being no other forms of entertainment left anymore—how people can continue to eat and drink and pay the checks that are almost the same amounts as before the economic crisis. Marylin, the cheerful and always enthusiastic manager of Super Vega, explained one evening that she serves almost no meat anymore, because it is too expensive now, or avocados, for the same reason, when one of the most delicious items on her menu was based on them. And that everything else is from local producers, fresh fruit and vegetables, but also liquor, especially gin, and beer of course. As for whiskey and tequila, she has to sell them at a loss or significantly raise the prices she charges.

  A few months ago, Youssef Fares, who is an olive oil producer, explained to me that since the end of the war even the so-called local products are actually completely dependent on imports, because of the banks’ absurd interest rate policies and the government’s complete indifference to everything, and to business in particular, which mean that Lebanon is producing absolutely nothing anymore. Which also means, as he told me after a protest when we were in a café and all around us other protestors also taking a break were setting down flags and banners on the nearby seats, which also means that in his business for example, everything, absolutely everything, from the bottles to the corks to the labels, everything is imported. Our so-called local products are in fact largely made up of imported goods, and with the rise in the dollar, that local production is not much cheaper than the imports anymore.

  I recalled this conversation and relayed it to Marylin, who declared that there are always ways to solve these kinds of problems. For example to get the excellent local gin, her restaurant buys a few bottles from the producers, who then agree to refill them when they are empty. “Just like demijohns back in the day,” I said. “We’re going back to the old trading models.” Marylin laughed, or at least I think she did. I told her that if we met her in the street by chance, we wouldn’t recognize her, because she always wears a face mask. She laughed again, you could see it in the sparkle in her eyes.

  I asked the same question of Adonis, the owner of Café de Pénélope, which is actually a restaurant, not far from Badaro Street, under the pine trees of the Kfoury district. When I was giving an interview t
o a journalist from Le Monde a few years ago, I had suggested we meet at Penelope’s, as we used to call it, and the restaurant’s name had appeared in the prestigious newspaper. Adonis was grateful for this, and ever since then we always have a chat or a discussion when we go to his place for a meal. His cuisine is sophisticated and his music excellent. There’s also a screen with nonstop clips from Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton silent films. I sometimes meet my students here too, to talk about their progress on their theses or dissertations, and I’ve even gotten into the habit of calling the café “my office” or “my cafeteria.” I told Adonis how one of my books, Villa des femmes, is a kind of rewriting of Homer’s Odyssey, and that the villa in question is none other than Penelope’s house. I’ve been thinking lately that, in this period of mass departures, in this unceasing Odyssean movement, with young people dreaming of emigration and old people forlornly fantasizing about returning to the land, Penelope is the symbol of anchorage, of resistance to thugs taking the country hostage, like the frightfully vulgar suitors besieging Odysseus’s house and family in the Homeric epic.

  I’ve never bored Adonis with these interpretations of the name of his establishment, although I’m sure he’d be keen to hear them. He’s a handsome, athletic young man, a good fit with his namesake, even if my wife thinks that his beard and his black shoulder-length hair make him look more like the classical representations of Jesus Christ. To me, he does look a lot like a kind of Greek god or hero, just like his namesake in fact. The Adonis of legend is part of our national mythology, but he is also a symbol of resurrection, like Osiris, Dionysus, or the Christ. The ancient fable has him dying from being charged by a wild boar in the gorges of a torrent south of Byblos, now called Nahr Ibrahim—gorges of sublime beauty, which were obviously devastated by the recent construction of a dam—and being reborn every spring in the same place. I don’t know what our Adonis thinks of the fact that his name is associated with the hope of rebirth. Good things, no doubt. And yet last time we ate at his restaurant, when I asked him how he was getting on, he just shrugged. “Surviving,” he added. “We just have to get through this.” And then he had that look that we all have when we think about the new government’s incredible powers of inertia and about their lack of any attempt whatsoever to find a solution to the disaster that is sweeping us all away. At the moment, for our Adonis, rebirth is not really the issue.