It is sunny Sunday in Beirut 1994.
Two little heads in swimsuits, flowery dresses and sandals jumped into the back seat of the white Renault 12 parked glamorously in al Itihad building in Tarik al Jdide. Mother, with her chestnut proud bun, lit a cigarette and settled behind the wheel after pouring water into her cherished vehicle. She was waiting, patiently, unlike her, for the neighbor to move their car blocking the alleyway. I thought it was patience; but I deduct now that she was just waiting for her the Renault to warm up. One minute down the line, she hammered the klaxon until the whole building pumped out of their windows Sunday 9AM.
A small background note.
No one was to mess with Mother. The last time her car was blocked, a police patrol arrived for the second floor neighbor. They arrested him for a couple of hours until his uncle, who happened to be her dentist, interfered. She dropped her rights, they released the guy and she got free dental care for a year for our family.
Our Renault 12 didn’t have to wait much. By the time she finished her cigarette, the passage was cleared.
On the road, my eyes devoured each moving object and landscape. If I closed them, I could still describe the tiniest detail of each stray dog who roamed in the small alleys of postwar Beirut. The mixed smell of blood and sea infiltrated my nostrils and gave me a weird feeling of nostalgic nausea.
I still get it sometimes next to the new water front built on seaside Beirut leading to Beit el Katayeb. Other times, I feel it up my throat, on Madfoun road next to the old railway trail, and occasionally on Sundays when heading back from South on Damour road.
On the daily sea passage that we took with my mama, I had memorized by heart each pacing scenery, although the same daily, but I was still able to be amazed each time by the unsettling dull layers of abandoned concrete and landmarks that the war had left. A few eucalyptus trees remained standing tall near the corniche. Savoring their odor until she filled up her lungs, euphorically, mother would lower the windows every day and retell us the same story:
“When I was 10 years old, I used to ride the tram with my grandmother, Primo seats, and all of this corniche was planted with eucalyptus trees. There were no buildings, just hills of trees.” She would inhale now the last puff of her cigarette, throw the butt out of the window and start singing batwanessbik chorus of a great artist whom I despised her music back then, Warda al jaza2iria. Mother repeated the cassette from side to side, smoking one bafra after another, smiling, yet with tears running from behind her black wayfarer.
I hated Warda and the eucalyptus trees, for a long time. Her voice and the smell of the eucalyptus stung to my memory along with the agonizing sceneries of the corniche and reminded me of the horrendous pains that broke my heart at the age of 10.
It was when we reached Raouche’s intersection that the oxygen was sucked out of my lungs.
During that same year, I developed asthma.
Children my age and younger were scattered on the street, screaming with laughter and fear. I remember them barefoot, gluing their bodies to the cars’ windows, asking for breadcrumbs and niggles, with pink candy floss in their tiny hands. Their hair looked different than mine; I envied them and stood in awe in front of the magic sunbeams coloring their heads. I memorized their faces from one Sunday to another and imagined their lives and stories. I had built with them a one way silent affectionate bond that they never discovered, but that stayed with me in my dreams and books and which paved my career twenty years later. My mother used to speed up when we passed them by and lock the windows, as if she was afraid they would steal her children’s colored sandals or maybe their seats at school. I begged her so many times we invite these children with us even if for a day to spend it at the beach. Most of the time she stood silent, turned off the radio and shut “my nonsense”. The next Sunday she would bring them manaeech or knefe from her favorite Halleb branch.
This memory inked my skin at a very early age with a growing feeling of helplessness that just got hollower with every child I saw on the street. From one decade to another. From one country to another. From one post to another. The bitterness remained. The awkwardness dominated. Helpless I felt on every crossroad.
Children are not made for wars nor made for injustice. Children in shelter. Children on the street. Children during wars. Children on the verge of famine. Children at home abused. Children behind bars. Yet we are unable to stop their pain, the bombs, the stigma or the fear.
Four years ago I had the chance to reconcile with Beirut postwar years and build a two way relationship with the children whom Warda and eucalyptus trees once constructed a wall between us. I came to discover that my unilateral relationship with them and the stigma I fabricated was nothing but a faded fiction. Children on the street are stronger than me and you. The brave labourers, who still roam today Raouche, Corniche al Mazraa, Hamra and other Beirut 2020 streets, are highly resilient heroes fighting the system on our behalf.
We have little to offer them as long as we are not waving a revolution in the justice and social system.
Many children succeeded in escaping the streets and going back to school with supportive communities’ efforts. Some were removed from abusive environments with the aid of social workers. Others were offered safe spaces to just be, play and find moments of peace and pure joy. Others were reunited with their beloved families across seas.
The lives of some children on the street changed for the better, and they have grown their resilience to defend themselves and pave a new future. They were able to create their own safe haven where no abuse nor fear can infiltrate.
As a community, we might fight and single out abusers on an individual level, we can impact lives of hundreds maybe. But how many perpetrators in reality are we able to bring to justice in postwar Beirut and in 2020 Beirut? What about the abuser who is a system and not an individual? Are we able to fight it? Able to fight corruption, cultural stigma and racism? Are we the ones who would stand along street children and fight their struggle side by side?
It is sunny Sunday in Beirut 2020.
Since two weeks, a general mobilization order was issued by the government in an attempt to contain Corona virus ravaging the country. It is 12 noon. An unprecedented silent is hovering over the city. It is a first time in my 35 years that I see this popular area deserted. After a few minutes, a first car passed by. It stopped at the red light. Two girls, barely aged 8 years old, covering their face with scarves and still giggling, ran to the car parked at the intersection. The man ignored them at first. After a few knockings on his window, galvanized, he lowered the glass and screamed at the girls from the top of his lungs, as if he was blaming them for all the calamities of the universe. He extended his hand to grab one of them, to terrorize her maybe, or to unload his cumulative frustration, or probably to project on her his anger from his wife, maybe his mistress, perhaps his beloved country or maybe God. He then controlled his internalized oppression at the last minute, remembering, from behind his N95 mask, that the girl might contaminate him. The children mortified by the man’s aggressiveness started crying, and ran each in a direction.
Everyone left and I stayed there watching from my balcony the cruel system. Aside from the daily harassment and struggle children on the street face, now lay a whole new array of risks.
These children would struggle to abide by curfews and lockdowns. For many they found refuge in day centers and shelters, where they had a meal, a space to play, learn and be safe. Now they have closed down. The homes that the children go back to at night might mean sometimes an unsafe environment where higher level of abuse and violence could take place. The streets are heavily policed or empty leaving ways for aggressors to attack.
We have little to offer them as long as we are not waving a revolution in the justice and social system.
It is Dark Friday night in Beirut. It feels cold and lonely. While everyone is sleeping and confined, a shoe shiner spirit frees itself from the bottom of the building shaft in Tallet al khayat. That same abyss where his body laid breathless, silent, unjustly, a few months back. His soul, garnished with his apotropaic amulet around his neck, found peace today and flew high in the sky, away from our Beirut’s suffocating catacombs.
Una Gola 