I begin to wonder if Margo might now regret her decision to remain in Lebanon, especially given the political instability we are now experiencing.
‘So where do you feel you belong, Margo?’ I finally ask.
She drops her cigarette to the ground, puts it out with her shoe and pulls herself up with her stick.
‘Wherever I happen to be, sweetheart, whoever I happen to be with,’ she says. ‘With you here, now, and somewhere else later on. It’s all the same, after all, don’t you think?’
I laugh loudly.
‘You know that’s not how I feel, Margo,’ I protest, gesturing at the view before us. ‘This country is everything to me, this city. It’s where I grew up, where I became who I am.’
‘Mmm. But perhaps one day that feeling too will change in you.’
My uncle and his wife still live in the old neighbourhood by the American University, though they moved some years ago into a larger apartment that has a partial view of the Corniche and the sea beyond it. Every once in a while I visit and when the weather is fine, we relax on the balcony in the shade of a large beach umbrella and chat while the hum of traffic and people goes on below.
My cousins left home years ago, but my uncle and aunt remain a surprisingly forward-looking couple, unwilling to hark back to the miseries of the civil war and enjoying the here and now of Beirut days.
This city, my uncle insists every time I see him, is still the best place to be. It has everything and everyone I could ever need in it and more, he says.
Several years ago, he and his wife came to visit us in Australia and seemed to enjoy their holiday, but when the time came for them to leave and my father suggested they set up home there, my uncle adamantly refused. The civil war had just come to a shaky end and they were both anxious, he said, to get back and play a part in rebuilding Lebanon.
I did not know it then, but my uncle’s determination played a part in my own longing to return, and confirmed my conviction that what I had always seen as my roots on this earth were worth preserving, that in abandoning them I might also be losing the very qualities that defined me. How does one live, I began to ask myself, without a clear sense of self in a world where individuality is constantly being eroded?
‘You know, amou,’ I tell my uncle during one of our conversations on the terrace. The air is warm but not uncomfortably so. ‘In many ways you’re very different from my father.’
‘Oh?’
‘I mean you both grew up here, set up business and eventually married and had families. Yet he was prepared to give it all up and move away, without looking back once.’
I shake my head to emphasize my disapproval.
‘There’s no right or wrong in what we each chose to do, Layla,’ he says.
‘He left home and dragged his family away with him, without allowing anyone else a say in it.’
‘You were too young to make choices then, habibti, and your mother was very happy to leave the war behind. They did it for you, after all.’
‘You have children too,’ I protest. ‘Why did you decide to stay?’
He sits up and looks at me.
‘I suppose I couldn’t imagine myself and my family being happy anywhere else.’
‘Is it really as simple as that?’
He shrugs his shoulders and leans back in his chair.
‘Why don’t we just try to enjoy the afternoon and stop worrying about things we can do nothing about?’ he says not unkindly.
Would it take only a change of perspective to make me comfortable with myself wherever I happen to be, I wonder later. Could Margo be right, am I simply misleading myself in thinking that there is only one place, one way for me to be?
Margo is not old in my eyes. Her hair is white, her skin is furrowed and lined and the colour in her eyes seems to have faded to translucent, but her spirit is unblemished by age, as though in living so long and so much she has merely reverted to innocence and fooled the inevitable movement of time. It is strange but often, when we are together, I feel wiser and less vulnerable than she, the protector rather than the one in need of protection.
‘Margo, are you on your way somewhere?’
She is standing at the end of the alleyway leaning heavily on her stick and looking around her with some bewilderment.
‘Layla, sweetheart,’ she says, her voice anxious. ‘Fouad just dropped me off. He couldn’t find anywhere to park his car so I told him to go on home.’
‘Why don’t I walk with you up the stairs?’
I reach out to take her arm but she shakes her head.
‘I…I’m feeling suddenly tired, sweetheart. I think I need to rest for a moment.’
She is looking pale and I am concerned she might fall down. I knock on the door of one of the ground-floor flats and ask them for a chair.
‘I’m sorry for being so much trouble, sweetheart,’ she says, sitting down.
I hand her the glass of water that the neighbour has given me and she sips at it slowly.
‘Perhaps we should take you to see a doctor?’
‘Margo, are you alright?’ Fouad asks, walking into the alley.
He leans over to wrap an arm around Margo’s shoulders.
‘I found a parking spot further up the road,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to leave you to walk up the stairs on your own.’
‘Please don’t fret you two,’ Margo says, patting Fouad’s arm. ‘I’m feeling better now.’
‘I’m glad you were here for her, Layla,’ Fouad says.
‘You are beginning to look better, Margo,’ I say. ‘The colour’s coming back into your cheeks.’
‘I was a bit worried there for a moment,’ Fouad says, looking at me. ‘We were on our way down from the mountains and Margo said she wasn’t feeling too well. But she wouldn’t let me stop at a doctor’s to have her checked.’
‘I’m a useless old thing sometimes, I know,’ Margo interrupts him. ‘But I’m perfectly alright now, and I’m ready to make my way up to the flat.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Fouad insists, helping her up from the chair.
Margo looks at him and shakes her head.
‘Actually, I was on my way back upstairs,’ I say. ‘I just realized I’ve forgotten something. Why don’t I go with you, Margo?’
‘If you’re going to be with her, Layla, that’ll be fine. She’s always had a hard time accepting help anyway.’
He bends down and gives Margo a hug, then pulls away again, looking at her with a depth of tenderness that makes a deep impression on me.
Once upstairs, I ask Margo if she would like me to help her into the bedroom.
‘You know I’ve always thought of myself as self-sufficient,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I suppose it’s easy to do when you’re young and strong, but old age changes all that.’
She laughs and I reach out to touch her hand.
‘I’m always here for you, Margo.’
‘Yes, I know, sweetheart. It’s just that sometimes I can’t help wishing…’
She looks