Last week I shared with you my own story, “Meditation on My Home in Lebanon.” As I did so, I kept thinking about the many thousands of Lebanese who lost their homes during the Lebanese civil war. In response to my sadness about the little house in Beit Meri, many people including Lebanese, sent me sympathetic notes. I am so glad that now I can present, as suitable follow-up, today’s guest blog, which was already in my files. Tracey Kallab is a friend I have not yet met face-to-face. She writes well, and I hope you will be seeing her name again somewhere. Frances Fuller
Time Capsule
By Tracey Kallab
My husband turned the key, an old-fashioned skeleton key, the kind that makes one think of a moth-eaten trunk or a forgotten attic closet. This particular key opened a heavy, wooden door that led to a place I had never been but had heard about in countless stories over the years. It was a place that I hoped would answer questions I had about my husband and his past life in Lebanon. The lock clicked open with an echoing thud. Georges pushed open the door to his childhood home and the two of us peered in without moving. “I can’t believe it’s been…geez, eighteen years?” he said, scanning the foyer, like a soldier securing an enemy hideout.
Thick, grimy dust clung to the door and blanketed the floor. It was obvious that no one had been here for a long time. A moment later he looked at me. “Well, let’s check it out.” With Georges leading the way, we entered the front hallway and then into the main living area. Our every step was recorded on the floor, in a thick layer of soot. The furniture was still draped in the white sheets that family members had placed years ago when Georges’ parents fled. The walls were blemished from water stains, and splotches of grey-yellow mold hung in the corners of the ceiling. Through the large living room window, a building across the street grabbed my attention. It was an absolute carcass, a picked-over skeleton of a building. All that remained was the concrete foundation and cinder block walls. It was so peppered with holes and blast marks that it appeared to have suffered some catastrophic disease.
Georges came up beside me and pointed toward the building. “That’s where the snipers hid out—Palestinians and Syrians. Our street was part of the front lines in the fighting. Every morning at sunrise, the Israelis would do a big sweep in front of our building. They would have six or ten soldiers on one side and six on the other. The first one would have a stick to poke at things that might be bombs. They’d patrol our street and in the afternoon they’d walk back. Ziad and I would wake up early to see them—they’d give us M&Ms with Hebrew on them.” I saw that my husband was caught in a tide of his past. Although he was gazing out of the same window, he was seeing things from a different time that I could not see.
My husband’s voice became thick with melancholy as he continued his journey inward. “One morning, I was having a dream that somebody slammed a door and as it slammed, I was jolted out of bed from this massive explosion. It was followed by crazy amounts of gunfire. It was right under our building. The Israelis were shooting everywhere. My mom was screaming in the background “Run to the bathroom!” I could barely hear her over the gunfire. My brother and I crawled to the bathroom and it lasted maybe fifteen minutes.
When it was over we went back out to the balcony to see what happened. My mom was screaming at us to go back inside, but we didn’t listen. Later we found out that Palestinian militants snuck up and ambushed the Israeli soldiers. They fired an RPG at the Israeli tank, and that’s the explosion that woke me up. After that day, I didn’t see the Israelis park under our house again. When we did see them, they wouldn’t let us approach them.”
Firmly in the grip of his memories now, Georges pointed to a large distortion on the living room wall, opposite the sliding door. It was about two feet long and just as wide and had been hastily covered over with plaster. “That patch on the wall–I was maybe six or seven when the fighting started. My dad had stacked concrete blocks to cover our windows. He got sick of having to buy new glass for the windows. One night some anti-tank bullets pierced through the concrete and exploded on the wall above our TV as we were sitting on the couch. The bullets missed our heads by centimeters.”
Speechless, I stared at the scar on the wall. I could hardly comprehend the things he was telling me. The Lebanese civil war began when my husband was just three years old. Christian and Muslim Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians and Israelis fought on and off for the next fifteen years. His and most other Lebanese families had no opportunity to live a normal life because of the bombs, shelling, and sniper fire. Every now and then there would be a period of tense calm but it wasn’t long until the violence began again.
“How did you guys do it? How did you survive?”
“We spent a lot of time in the bomb shelters. Sometimes I did my homework by candlelight, when there was school. I used to sit in my seat at school and look out the window and see where the Syrian positions were in the mountain range across from the school. When I was bored I would imagine the battlefield—that was my escape. And we always saved things like canned food, water; we always had a stock of emergency food. We also relied on humanitarian aid. Sometimes churches would give out rations during the breaks in combat.”
“It’s a miracle that none of you were killed,” I said.
I wanted to believe the violence he described had not been so bad, but the evidence in the buildings across the street and around the city was undeniable. As we continued our walk through the foyer, the shuffling of our footsteps echoed through the empty apartment. The angles of the apartment were strange. The walls bent and turned in unpredictable places and it seemed none of the rooms had the same shape. Georges stopped in front of one of the bedrooms. “This is the room me and Ziad shared.” It was small and empty except for two twin beds. A crucifix hung on the stained wall above them. As if the memories had become a physical weight on his shoulders, my husband slumped against the doorway.
“The day I left Lebanon, it was a Friday afternoon. I was like sixteen years old. My Mom had made my favorite dish–fried eggs with a spice called sumac. And she was crying but trying not to let me see. She told me ‘this might be the last time we see you for a while.’ I knew I was going to the US, to a camp and that my aunt was working on something to help me stay there. But I didn’t think it would actually work. I was sure I’d be back.”
“But you didn’t come back.”
“No. I was away from my family for a whole year, until they made it to the U.S. I wasn’t able to hear my parents’ voices on the phone without crying. Then everyone around me would cry too.”
Georges held his gaze through the window where we stood. Tears began to spill down his cheeks.
“I didn’t want to leave. My life ended then, it just stopped. I feel like part of me died then.”
Georges swiped at his eyes. “Let’s keep going.”
The sounds of chaotic traffic permeated the thin windowpanes. We continued exploring the apartment, opening drawers and closets and sifting through papers that had sat untouched for so many years. Yellowed newspapers and magazines were stacked haphazzardly beside some of George’s old school report cards. He picked through the remnants of his past with tentative interest. My usually stoic husband became more moved as the minutes passed. I could sense something building up inside him. I felt strangely out of place, as though I were spying on a private moment.
“You know something? I was robbed,” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“I was robbed of the chance to grow up here, to make a life here.”
He started to say something else but his voice caught abruptly. His eyes became more bloodshot and teary. Tremendous grief seemed to roll through him and I became afraid that, maybe, he regretted coming back to this place. Had I been selfish for encouraging him to return to Lebanon? I did not know what to say next, so I stayed quiet and put my hand on his shoulder. He turned away from me and headed for the front door.
“It’s not fair,” he mumbled, and then turned to face me. “Let’s get out of here.” With that, my husband turned and headed toward the front door.