After Josette and Marcelle leave, I discover
there’s no wi-fi signal in the apartment tonight, so I
walk around the corner to a smoky Internet café to
my life, still unresolved? Why do I crave a final
reckoning with this place?
I need to do this, I remind myself, and I need to
send Richard an e-mail, letting him know I’ve
do it now. Before I make any firmer commitments
arrived safely. There’s an e-mail from him waiting
in New York, or to Richard if we make it that far,
in my inbox, saying how much he already misses
and before I potentially have kids (I’m thirty-eight,
me. Reading his note makes me swallow my
so I’m not breaking any speed records on that front),
stomach and tighten the small muscles around my
I need to make sure I’m living in the right place and
mouth. I can’t cry in here, not within sight of the
that my head, on this one issue anyway, is straight.
chain-smoking cashier and the teenagers playing
Despite my smooth journey from New York,
video games at terminals next to me. I e-mail him
and a loving cousin and aunt who filled my fridge
back—I’m so tired, I miss you so much, more news
and drove me home from the airport and kept me
tomorrow—and I head back to an empty apartment.
company over dinner, my first night in Beirut sucks.
Unlocking the door and walking into the dark, quiet
I wake up at five o’clock to the sound of water
space, this time without family around, is hard. Not
crashing down on my dresser. It’s cold water from
just hard: it’s been a long time since I’ve felt this
the air-conditioning system backing up through the
disoriented and down. My head is pounding from
pipes into my bedroom—a problem my mother had
jet lag, and everything in me aches, from my feet to
warned me about. Before I went to bed, I was
my neck to my heart to the inside of my brain.
supposed to check on a pipe on the balcony and
I allow just one what the fuck am I doing here?
make sure it wasn’t dislodged, so I’d avoid a
self-laceration tonight, as I’m opening my suitcase
middle-of-the-night leak. But I’d forgotten. I’d also
and taking out a nightshirt to sleep in.
forgotten that in this building, as in pretty much
The doubts come crashing in: What am I doing?
every building in Beirut that I know of, something
I’m leaving behind my close friends, and a New
is always breaking down. When I’d had no water in
York life I love, and a relationship that might have a
my New York apartment the morning I left, that
future, and I’m turning my entire reality upside
was a fluke. Here? Just another day in Beirut. The
down for—what? To relive my childhood, to
electricity goes out for a few hours every single day
recapture a life that was interrupted so long ago?
across the city, early morning or midday or evening,
Shouldn’t my childhood be over already, damn it?
depending on what neighborhood you’re in. There’s
Beirut was just an early, long-gone chapter of my
frequently no Internet signal, and often it’s
life. The New York life I’ve worked so hard to build
excruciatingly slow. On past visits to Beirut, the
is the now, the present, the reality. Isn’t it?
elevator in our building has broken down. Now the
But if that’s true, then why is my relationship
with Beirut, which sometimes feels like yet another
one of the volatile on-again off-again romances in
latest meltdown is happening just inches from my
bed. My new digital video camera happens to be