‘This is the one place everyone can enjoy,’ Margo says as if reading my mind. ‘That’s one of the reasons I chose to live in this part of the city when I decided to settle here.
‘At first, I stayed with friends who have an old house up in the mountains with a beautiful garden. I’ve told you about them, haven’t I? Fouad and his wife May. I loved it up there and stayed for several months before eventually coming down to Beirut.’
I nod. I have heard this story before, although Margot seems to have forgotten that I have met her friend Fouad before.
‘That first walk on the Corniche was something,’ Margo smiles. ‘Like being in the south of France again, although it’s a lot less polished here, of course.’
We look to the right, to the hills and mountains in the distance. It is a clear spring day and except for a small area of white on the highest summit, most of the winter snow is gone.
‘This is beautiful but I love the mountains too,’ I sigh. ‘I dream of having a small house there one day, somewhere I can go to breathe fresh air and quiet.’
‘Do you imagine a solitary life for yourself then, sweetheart?’
I turn to her.
‘What choice do I have? I’ve never been successful at relationships, you know that, Margo. Besides, as I get older it seems even less likely that I’ll meet a man I can really be with.’
Margo looks down and brushes some crumbs off her lap.
‘I don’t like to think of you always being on your own,’ she says quietly.
‘What kind of life do you wish for me then?’ I smile.
‘You will have a man to love you and children of your own too. It will all come when the time is right, I’m sure of that.’
Two young boys run past the bench, one of them tripping and falling down. Before I can stand up to help, he quickly picks himself up again and walks away with a slight limp. When I turn to Margo again, I realize that she looks very fragile today and feel my heart skip a beat.
‘What about you, Margo? Is this the kind of life that you wished for yourself?’
‘What makes you ask me that now, sweetheart?’
I hesitate and reach out to touch her arm.
‘Have you really been happy here, after all? Sometimes I think that maybe it’s not about place but just you, Margo. So many people come to you to be comforted, but do you have anyone to listen to you when you need solace?’
The myriad sounds of the Corniche continue around us, the sea a deep, even blue with almost no sign of waves in it.
Margo sighs.
‘You’re right, Layla, it’s not about place,’ she says, her voice trembling a little. ‘It never is about where you are or even the people you happen to be with. But somehow I don’t think I’ve really managed to help you understand that.’
‘I know wherever I choose to live will have advantages and disadvantages, Margo,’ I say a little impatiently. ‘I’m not that unperceptive, you know.’
‘No, of course you’re not.’
I clear my throat, hoping I have not offended Margo with my retort, and pick up the piece of kaak in my lap. I take a large bite from it, the sharp scent of the thyme inside it filling my nostrils. I am surprised to feel tears in my eyes and blink them back hurriedly so that she will not see them.
‘So what is it then, Margo?’ I try to smile as I ask the question. ‘What is it that I need to know to be really happy?’
She opens her hands out in front of her as if she were preparing to say a prayer.
‘More and more these days,’ she begins slowly, ‘when I look back on all the things I have done with my time, I understand that regret is, after all, futile.’
She places her hands in her lap once again.
‘What matters, sweetheart, is not what you do but how you do it, whether or not you give life the passion and seriousness it deserves and whether you have the courage and honesty to do this, not just every now and then, but every moment, right until the very end.’
She pauses.
‘It’s as hard as that?’ I finally ask.
Margo laughs.
‘Or as simple as taking pleasure in all of this,’ she says, gesturing at the scene around us. ‘As easy as finally letting go.’
His parents had named him Fouad, another Arabic word, among many, for the heart. This was a sign that his passions would always lead him.
The family lived in the heart of Ras Beirut, on the ground floor of a two-storey house near the American University, his mother and father, grandparents and an ageing housekeeper, his brother and two sisters and himself, with fruit and flowering trees in its spacious garden and a low wall around its borders where cats often sat bathing in the sun and passers-by stopped to sniff the heady scent of jasmine in spring.
Fouad shared a bedroom with his older brother Marwan that had a window overlooking a busy street corner. On weekday mornings, being a light sleeper, he would wake up to the call of tradesmen announcing their wares or the whistle of boys running past, down towards Bliss Street and the many neighbourhoods that bordered the university compound.
Getting up to shake Marwan out of his slumber, Fouad would open the shutters to let the sunlight in and pause for a moment to sniff at the air, the thought of the day ahead already filling him with anticipation. Then, washed and dressed, his dark hair smoothed back off his brow, he would run into the kitchen to see his mother making labneh and cucumber sandwiches for the children’s school lunches and the housekeeper stirring the beginnings of that day’s stew at the stove. His grandmother, seated at the kitchen table with a bowl of French beans from the garden in her lap, would look up briefly to greet him before bending down again to her task, knobby fingers breaking the pods in two then stringing them on either side in one fluid movement.
The apartment was large with high ceilings and elegant arches for doorways, its floors tiled in repeating patterns of brilliant green and a burnt orange that recalled the colour of the dirt on the street outside, its walls solid and reassuring. The entrance way led into two big reception rooms and a dining area behind which was the kitchen and bathroom and beyond that the back door to the garden. The five doors on either side of a long hallway opened onto the bedrooms as well as a small box room where trunks and other objects were kept out of sight. Outside the front door was an elegant landing with a wide stone stairwell leading up to the apartment above where an American professor at the university and his wife had lived for as long as anyone could remember.
Going outside into the garden, Fouad would find his grandfather, his grey head disappearing behind the greenery and then coming out again, his clothes already brown with dirt, a small trowel in one hand and in the other a handkerchief that he used to wipe his brow. These hours that he spent tending the plants and flowers, the fruits and vegetables that would eventually be served at the family table, were, grandfather always said, the most important of the day.
‘Jiddo,’ Fouad called out, waving a hand.
‘Over here.’
Grandfather was bent over