‘Good morning, habibi.’ Jiddo looked up and smiled. ‘Not too long before we’ll be having tabbouleh with our dinner. The mint will be coming up soon as well.’
Fouad nodded.
‘Are you off to school then?’
Fouad watched his grandfather slowly straighten himself up.
‘I haven’t had breakfast yet,’ he said, waiting for jiddo to remember his promise from the night before.
A light breeze appeared and it seemed to both of them as if the garden were suddenly unfolding, the trees stretching further up towards the sky and the flowers shaking themselves awake, the plants glistening with intention. He heard his grandfather’s resonant laugh.
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ jiddo said. ‘Here you are, habibi.’
He handed Fouad a coin.
‘There’s enough there for something for Marwan as well.’
‘Thanks.’ Fouad took the money and turned back into the house.
‘Let’s go,’ he called out to his brother.
Father came out of his bedroom and placed a hand on Fouad’s shoulder. He smelled fresh and bright, like lemons do when you first cut into them, and looked very handsome in a dark suit and his red tarboosh perched on his head.
‘Good morning, son. Rushing off as usual?’
‘Hello, baba,’ Fouad replied, fingering the coin in his pocket.
Marwan appeared from the bedroom, his eyelids drooping with unfinished sleep. Fouad shook his head and motioned for him to follow.
‘Where are your sisters?’ Father asked.
‘Waiting for us by the gate,’ said Fouad, grabbing his brother by the arm. ‘We’re going.’
The two boys walked their sisters, Samia and Afaf, to the evangelical school for girls in the Hamra district moments away from home, and then doubled back towards Bliss Street and the international college they had both attended since they were very young. On the way, they went through fields filled with flowering cactus and, in season, sour sops and daisies, kicking the dirt and pebbles with their shoes and grinning at the rising dust.
Once on Bliss Street, Fouad took the coin his grandfather had given him out of his pocket and showed it to Marwan.
‘For kaak,’ he said.
A tram came roaring past. Fouad looked up, catching a glimpse of a carriage and passengers crowded inside. He felt Marwan grab the money from his hand and run towards the kaak vendor on the other side of the street.
‘I don’t want zaatar in mine,’ he called after his brother.
Then Fouad smiled because the day had begun exactly as he had imagined it would.
They went to the movies on Saturdays after school, to the Roxy and the Empire cinemas in the Bourj in downtown Beirut, getting on the tram during morning break to buy the much-sought-after tickets, then back again to wait impatiently for classes to end and the weekend to begin.
The films featured Fouad’s favourite stars, Stewart Granger and Clark Gable, Ginger Rogers and Betty Grable with her famously beautiful legs, gutsy westerns and spy thrillers in black and white or lively musicals that attracted girls from the French Protestant College to the cinema who sat where the boys could watch them too.
Fouad would stare resolutely at the screen as Marwan and his friends tried to attract the girls’ attention, sometimes even striking up a whispered conversation until a litany of shushing echoed through the theatre, and still he watched, focused and fascinated, the heroes himself in different guises, his head filled with fast-moving pictures.
Then on the way home in the clattering tram, squeezed between an old man in a straw hat and a woman with a small child in her lap, perhaps catching the eye of a young girl as she sat quietly in her seat across from him, her brown hair falling softly to cover one side of her face, her hands wringing nervously in her lap, and finally the faint glimmer of a smile before she quickly turned away again. His heart fluttering briefly in his chest before settling down, his feet involuntarily shuffling back and forth on the floor of the carriage and the clang clang of the overhead bell in his ears, he jumped up to the exit and leaned out of it, both hands clinging to the railing, the wind in his face blowing away his embarrassment and reminding him that he was destined for greater things.
1939 and just turned nine years old, Fouad heard of war breaking out in Europe. Tiptoeing into the living room late one night, he crawled under the dining-room table and watched his father and grandfather as they listened to the news on the radio and discussed the situation, their voices hushed and solemn. Lebanon’s position as a French mandate, baba said, means it is bound to be adversely affected by events in Europe. Jiddo sighed loudly. The French will never give us our independence now, he said. They’ll use this as an opportunity to stay on, you mark my words.
The next day mama began stocking up on food, huge bags of burghul, rice and flour, of lentils, split peas and broad beans arriving at their doorstep, Fatima the housekeeper picking them up one by one and placing them in a row beneath the pantry shelves, her back bent low and the hem of her long, cotton work dress lifting to reveal old, tired legs. She shooed Fouad away, off you go young man, not answering him at first when he asked her what all the food was for, then turning to him to say: We’re not going to go hungry this time, not if I can help it.
Like many in this country, Fatima’s family had had to go without during the Great War, his mother later explained, and she is a little anxious about the future.
‘A boy at school said we’re all going to starve,’ Fouad said. ‘Is that true, mama?’
She pulled him to her, gentle fingers smoothing back his hair, her sweet breath permeating the air around him.
‘No, habibi, of course we’re not going to starve. This war is a long way away and it has nothing to do with us.’
But things did change, after all, Fouad becoming more aware of the French soldiers who roamed the streets and manned barricades around the neighbourhood and of the bitterness people felt at their constant presence.
One afternoon, walking home from school with Marwan, he looked on in horror when a passing French officer pulled out a gun and pointed it at his brother. What did you say, you rascal, the officer shouted. Marwan grabbed his hand and pulled Fouad behind him as they ran through familiar streets, back to the safety of their home.
‘What happened?’ Fouad asked once they were standing at the front door.
Marwan grinned.
‘I just told him what I thought of him,’ he said.
‘What’s that then?’
Marwan shrugged and turned away with a look of disgust.
‘You’re such a baby, Fouad. Don’t you know anything at all?’
Two years later, the Vichy government in France finally defeated, Allied troops began to arrive in Beirut, British soldiers who spoke English with a quick, clipped accent that was difficult to understand at first until one became accustomed to it, and Australians who became known for their fondness for beer and pretty girls. More French soldiers came too with troops from their colonies in Africa.
When the YMCA set up a dormitory and canteen for the newcomers from Britain at the American University, Fouad and a few of his classmates volunteered their services, selling luncheon vouchers at the canteen on weekends as well as helping with a variety of other tasks to make the soldiers’ stay more pleasant. He would arrive on a Saturday morning, bright-eyed and full of enthusiasm, his cinema days well behind him, eager only to learn more about these men who in many ways seemed out of place here but who also promised something better for Lebanon, the autonomy he had heard spoken of so often, a future filled