Age 10 - God
While playing chase in a friend’s garden one sunny afternoon in South London a Statue fell on my six year old sisters head.
Walking into the stark intensive care unit I found my mother bent over her hospital bed crying and praying in Arabic. Her emotions and screams felt alien and theatrical echoing around the walls of St Mary’s. “Mummy please stop doing it like that, “ I shouted … “The God hear wont understand you” I continued with conviction. This bought on another wave of frenzy from my frantic mother I now believe was crying as much over my confused wisdom as the state of my sister who thankfully recoved consciousness the following week.
Age 11 – Boot camp
I know I should be grateful for not having spent my formative years under a showering of bombs, but to the non-war experienced, The Arabic School was as close to boot camp as a 9 year old could dream. As an undetected dyslexic, I was struggling enough with mastering the English language without the pressure to learn a lingo that I hardly ever used. Predicting a lack of enthusiasm each week, the sadistic teachers with starched fringes poking out of there hajabs would pace the corridors and guard the gates for any late comers or those like myself that would be lingering close to exits dreaming up ways to escape.
It seemed cruel justice to spend Saturday afternoons at an Arabic school on the other side of London, learning the aid el kirsey when every other child was watching Tizwas. My brother and I were in our teens, him trying to look cool supporting a George Michael hairdo and wrist bands and Myself in hand painted denim jacket screaming the word “Unique” on my back. As there were only 3 classes at the school my fellow classmates were an assortment of refugee kids, middleclass kids and geeks aged 7-10. It was the beginner’s class and I was not only the weirdest, but also the oldest kid. It’s hard to be cool and ooze attitude when you’re competing with people who are the age of your shoe size… especially when they could read better then I could.
In a bid to keep my dignity and avoid the humiliation of not knowing my Alef- Ba -Te I resorted to drastic measures and would painstakingly transcribe the koranic text we had to learn in faint pencil in a sort of coded phonetic English. This was possible due to a Syrian nabour who would help me transcribe the text each day after school. It was painstaking work, the pencil makings had to be faint so my parents wouldn’t spot them, but I had to be able to read them convincingly. It all seemed worth it at the time, as it meant I would confidently read my English pencil markings above my Arabic homework like a well-trained actress. I became skilled in the art of deception & even allowed for the occasional dramatic pause to show how hard I had revised.
All was going swimmingly well, until one afternoon a supply teacher with a particularly evil streak caught me when he noticed my eyes were reading my book from left to right.
Snatching the book from my hand he looked in utter disgust at my English pencil markings and informed the class that what I had done was blasphemous and god would punish me. Just to make sure I was under no illusion that I had time to meet my maker and deal with the punishment at a later date, he took it upon himself to unleash the wrath of the almighty on the spot in front of the class with the aid of an old wooden ruler.
I ran away at lunchtime.
Age 12 – Dogs and The Lebanon.
One of my best friends at school was Cynthia Stewart. One Easter, I had the pleasure of accompanying the Stewart family to there rural retreat that they shared with Granny Lilly and her unmarried daughter Rachelle, AKA Aunt Hitler and her loud excitable dog Bingo. I say Aunt Hitler because she was fierce and wore a kind of house uniform with a tight hair bun that reminded Cynthia and I of pitchers we saw from Germany in our History Classes.
I spent much of the holiday avoiding Aunt Hitler and hiding from Bingo. I had an inexplicable phobia of dogs. I believed they were dumb and violent, and no one in my house seemed to disagree, so despite the fact that Bingo was a tiny sausage dog that couldn’t do anything but yelp, I was crippled by having him anywhere near me.
For Aunt Hitler the uneasy relationship I had with the animal kingdom was very explicable as she explained to us all over a Sunday roast when Cynthia asked me why how I could possibly be afraid of such a tiny thing “ Well its easy to answer that” Aunt Hitler interrupted in a very self assured tone. “Its because, they eat dogs in the Lebanon of course ” she said wile staring me strait in the eye. “What like Hot dogs” Cynthia responded in a contagious laughter that got everyone, excluding Aunt Hitler in hysterics.
A few hours later, it all didn’t seem so funny and I spent the journey home wondering if it could be true.
Age 15 – The dinner party’s
Despite my attempt to avoid Arabs, there way no getting away from them, especially at the monthly dinner party’s my parents would throw. They were a kind of cultural monthly Anglo-Arab soirée.
There were Shiites, Sunnis, christens, atheists, pacifists, and just about anyone who had an interest in Arab issues including British and French journalists, artists, authors, broadcasters and poets. Everyone had an opinion the state of the Middle East and was keen to share it. Each dinner was a frantic affair that would challenge the most efficient event organiser. I could never work out how my parents managed to invite anyone without sending invitations, or how my mother could handle such complex catering for the 40+ dinner guests mostly on her own with a little help from friends. I used to hate those party’s. We had a rule in my house that I could be as scruffy as I liked when with my friends, but had to wear what I was told when my parents entertained there’s. It seemed like a good compromise until those dreaded party weekends when I would be forced to don frilly white shirts with velvet skits and plaid tights. For all the children that accompanied the adults, my brother and I were put on entertainment duty. We had around 8-10 kids, including our 2 younger sisters to entertain from an assortment of ages, and for the most part everyone entertain med themselves, thanks to a well stocked archive of vhs videos, my little pony’s and Marvel comics.
Most of the adults would get drunk wile telling storeys or singing songs. There was always an oud, usually a microphone and most defiantly a sing along. Much of the music was of Um Kalthoum or Feyroze, not that I could have told you that at the time, for to my ears, it was a revolting kind of noise pollution. I used to eagerly wait for the nabours downstairs to come up and complain so that the tipsy guests would leave and the racket would stop, but most of the time my parents would invite them in and any complaints would be forgotten about over a glass of whisky.
Age 16 – The Kiss
Having my mother spit in my face after school one day, was not the response I expected from asking is she had a good day.
I met him at a crap party I had to attend to help a friend who needed an alibi from her strict father to see her boyfriend. I didn’t have many Arabic friends and although he was not someone I would have spoken to normally, he was polite and sat with me while I waited long enough for my girlfriend to know if they were still boyfriend and girlfriend. We made small talk; he tried to teach me a few Arabic words. He asked for my number, and offered to walk me to the tube station as I was leaving.
So we walked, we talked … well, he talked, I responded. Don’t recall much about his conversation except that he asked a lot of questions and had a thick Arabic accent and smelt of cheep aftershave. While walking at a steady pace, he grabbed my arm with his hand, and head with the other and tried to kiss me. It was an unexpected and unwelcome move that had me screaming abuse at him in my limited knowledge of the Arabic language. Ashamed and angry he made a swift exit and that was the end of that as far as I was concerned, expect, it wasn’t. His mother had called my mother the following day wile I was at school and asked her if she knew I had been kissing boys. His mother also informed her that I had offered to sleep with her precious son, but because he was a good boy he had refused and walked me to the station instead to make sure I wouldn’t get myself into trouble. Hence, my mothers reactionary face spiting. It wasn’t the idea that it might be true that upset her, because she knew form the old bag that called this was a classic case of shit stirring, it was more the frustration that even the most simple situations were open to interpretation by interfering Arabs who should know better, and that despite the physical distance between us and the home land, there was no getting away from it.
Age 21 - The graduation, the deadline and the inevitable decision to try.
They all met. They all frowned. He didn’t understand them, they didn’t like him. Besides... His socks were disgusting so my mother’s friends informed me. He was a collage beau and they were my family coming to watch my graduation. He didn’t stand a chance really, and despite our combined efforts they just didn’t want to know. What concerned them more was the idea that I had lived in a rough student flat with several girls and the place was falling apart. “ Don’t go up if you don’t want your heart to hurt “ said my mother in soap opera fashion as she passed another concerned parent on route to there own inspection. My flatmates and I had feverishly spent the day preparing for the arrival of our parents and siblings, hiding evince of interaction with the opposite sex and too many takeaways. We hid stuff in the washing machine, under the stairs, inside the boiler... of late nights, and frozen hot water pipes.
I was given funding and a 3-month deadline to find a media job before being shipped out to Beirut to join the rest of the family. I didn’t want to go. I was in love with my parentless London and convinced I would find a reason to stay, but as the summer came winding down and collage friends started buying suits I know it was inevitable as I cried all the way to the airport.
The move
“ How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content. A little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then, without warning, you find the solid floor is a trap door and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and who’s customs are strange “
I read and recited that passage from Janet Wintersons book “The passion” daily like a mantra. It summed up the hysterical situation I had found myself living in post war Beirut. There was, in my initial and very English opinion very little reason to stay in there. I walked into a world of tired people and broken buildings, and was ill equipped for the intricate social customs and religious divisions that faced me. The war was officially over, yet a dollar war was as fierce and despite the silence of the sectarian war, there was still a UN missable divide. Each side had there own media, own clubs, and even there own airport. In a country half the size of whales, you didn’t have to be well versed in the ins and outs of Lebanon’s history to know something wasn’t quite right. My father had raised me to take the better of two cultures and avoid anything in extremes; yet, moving to Beirut, there seemed to be nothing but extremes. If people partied, they did it with abandon and without thought of tomorrow, if they drank, they got exceedingly pissed, and if ate out, they had to order enough for the nabourhood.. The electricity supply was a rare as signs of indivualism, or freedom yet you seldom saw an ungroomed lady pounding the streets.
The initial plan had been to spend a few months, meet the family, get a tan and get the hell out of there. It was an awkward introduction after 3 hedonistic years as a student, yet despite the fact that I didn’t fit in, I was utterly seduced by craziness of the city and within months I began to live a good life. My pigeon Arab evolved under the watchful eye of new found friends and as the weeks moved into months, thoughts of my other reality London were but a distant memory until a hilalarious phone call from London where a friend asked if I had been Kidnapped. “ Please call me from the British embassy so I know your not being held there against your will. If you don’t call by tomorrow morning I will contact them and ask them to come and find you “ The well meaning friend said in a serious tone.
I spent several years in Beirut, growing, laughing and learning surrounded by love, from nature, from friendships, from family and myself. How such a reluctant visitor could reap such love was a wonder until….
The 7 year itch
Image a life where every moment felt like a dejavoo, What you said, where u went, and what u did.... where everyday was Sunday. Being partial to a bit of variety, and someone who always loved the flavour of Wednesdays and Thursdays, it was time to jump ship and swim to another shore.
The return.
I only went away for seven years, and had frequent visits back through out, yet moving back to London was a surprise, well, actually it was a slap. A stingy-sharp-leaves-a-mark-on-your-cheek kind of slap that still feels warm at the first sign of trouble.
There’s no place like home
Whenever I need a dose of national pride, I take the bus and go to Edgware rd. It reminds me of all that is good, bad, ugly and great about the culture some of us can proudly call our own. Each time I miss all that is at home I call my teta and eat a shawarma sandwich. The need to find home is no longer desperate, and judging by the range of scrappy apartments I have rented over the past few years, that may not be such a bad thing. I’m not suggesting that home is a place where you can get a shawrma sandwich with toum, but maybe, just maybe, Home is a place you can pick up a phone, or perhaps … Home is a place inside your head where you can take the good bits of two cultures and fuse them to become a member of your own cultural party. For now, home could be Hamra street in a sound clash with hoxton square, & sometimes, home is swimming in Jiyeh and coming out the water to Brighton pier and speaking in Cantonese or Welsh. I almost dread finding it because I’m worried that I wont like it, or that I shall love it so much I would never leave, and besides… there is always the risk that the “God” there might not speak English.
