The Radiant City. Lauren B. Davis
wraps the baklava in waxpaper, then she picks out a fat piece of pistachio maamoul. “I give it to you. For later. You’ll like it.”
After the girl leaves, the men resume their never-ending argument. To go. To stay. Finally, her father calls Ramzi ungrateful, which gives him an excuse to take off his apron and throw it on the floor. He walks out, leaving the old man in the doorway calling after him.
Elias turns to Saida; his arms open wide as if he could catch understanding trying to escape. “What does he want? What does he want?”
Saida shrugs. “A bigger life maybe. He’s young.”
“He needs a wife. Not to be married is unnatural.”
Saida looks at him but says nothing. The old man makes a sound, of apology perhaps, or merely confusion at the strange new world in which he finds himself.
Ten minutes later Ramzi comes back again, and the day continues as all their days do, serving the customers who are only plentiful around lunchtime when they come in for falafels and kebbé of lamb or chicken. The rest of the time Ramzi makes plans behind his newspapers, Elias revisits grief-salted dreams of the past behind his, and Saida cleans, cooks, does the accounts and pays the bills.
At five-thirty, she hears someone come in and looks up from the ledger book, expecting Joseph, who is already late, but it is not her son. It is the tall American, thin as a drug addict, whom Saida has seen in the square. She thought he was a tourist at first, but it seems he lives nearby.
“Good morning,” she says. She decides when Joseph gets here she will skin him alive.
The man returns the greeting and nods to her father and brother. He orders a café crème and sits at the counter. Saida watches him. He does not look healthy. There are red blotches on his skin, such fair skin, and his coppery hair is dull. He has a good nose, though, straight and long. And his chin shows character and strength. He holds his hand up over his mouth when he is not drinking. He moves slowly, deliberately, as though he plans his movements in advance. It strikes her that he is someone who is working very hard to look relaxed.
Ramzi makes himself an espresso and sits down next to the American, flipping through a real estate paper from Montpellier. He runs his fingers down the page and picks at an ingrown hair on his jaw, near his ear. He makes small noises, which Saida knows indicate he would like to begin a conversation, but the man does not speak.
“You are American, yes?” Ramzi says, finally.
“Canadian.”
“Canada? But not from Montreal, your French . . .”
“Not very good, is it? No, I’m from the Maritimes. East of Quebec. By the sea. Nova Scotia. Pretty much all English.”
“That’s all right. We speak English. Don’t we?” Saida and Elias agree that they do. “My father insisted on our education. You never know where you will end up, do you? It is good to keep in practise. So we will speak English with you.”
“Fine,” says the Canadian and he smiles. It is a good smile, Saida thinks. Not a smile that finds things funny, but a smile that tells the other person that they have done something good.
“You have been here before. You live on the square, yes? I have seen you. I am Ramzi. That is my father, and my sister.”
“Matthew.”
Ramzi and Matthew shake hands.
“America is a great country. Canada is the same, yes? Not like France. A man can get ahead in America. In France, it is a class system still. They say they kill off the aristocracy in their big revolution, but it is just a lie. You must be in one of their great schools, one of their great families – most of all, you must not be a Maghreb. You know this word?”
“North African,” says Matthew. He looks at a photo on the wall of the last remaining forest of Biblical cedars, the Arz Ar-rab, near Bcharré, and at another of the Qadisha Gorge where Maronite monasteries are cut into the rock. “But that’s Lebanon, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” says Ramzi, pleased. “We are Lebanese. But the French make no distinction.”
“Lots of racism in North America too.”
“If you have money, though, none of that matters, and you can get money in America. Here you are taxed to death. You cannot afford to hire anyone because of all the social security and health care and pension and such, and so you must do all the little work yourself and then you cannot make other plans. In America this is not the case,” Ramzi says this with absolute conviction. “I will not stay here in Paris. I do not wish to stay in France, but if I do, I will go to the south, to Montpellier. At least it is not so grey there all the winter. A man could die from lack of sun.”
In Arabic, Elias says, “Only the young have wings on their feet,” and Saida hates the sadness in his voice.
“My father says he is too old to move again.”
“Something to be said for staying in one place, I guess,” says Matthew, and Saida thinks he says this without conviction.
“And this is why you are not in Canada, yes?” says Ramzi with a grin. “Some of us are born nomads, I think.”
Matthew nods. “Some people are strangers wherever they go.” He smiles again.
“Have you been to Lebanon?” says Saida.
Matthew looks at her and there is something in his eyes that makes her sorry she asked the question, which suddenly does not seem as harmless as she’d thought.
“Yes. Beirut. In 1982,” he says and drops his eyes.
The silence in the café is quite loud then. “We left in 1979,” says Ramzi, and then they wait. “We were in Damour.”
“I’m a reporter,” says Matthew.
“So, you know why we left then,” says Saida.
Turning away into the kitchen alcove she busies herself cleaning the grill. She hears a noise and her son’s voice.
“Marhaba,” he says.
“You’re late,” she says, switching to Arabic.
“Not so much. A minute or two,” he says, also in Arabic.
“Where are your books?”
“I went home first, that’s why I’m late.”
“I called the school this afternoon. They said you were not there.”
The way his eyes dart around the room, looking for a clue, an escape, gives him away.
“You shouldn’t check up on me. It is humiliating. I was there.”
“You want to add lying to your crimes?” He smells of cigarettes.
“What time did you call? I had to go to the pharmacy for aspirin. I had a terrible pain in my neck from sleeping on that couch. I might have stepped out and maybe that’s when you called.” He licks the mark on his lower lip. As he does whenever he lies.
“Stepped out?” Ramzi laughs. “The only pain in the neck around here is you!” He says it in English and looks pointedly in the direction of the Canadian. He uses a joking tone to diffuse the tension.
“What’s happening?” Elias looked from his son to his daughter to his grandson, but no one answers him.
“Who are you running with in the street?” Saida comes around the counter now and stands in front of Joseph. She barely comes up to his shoulder. Her son is tall, like Habib. Strong through the arms and chest like him, too, and now he crosses his arms, making the muscles bigger. Only his eyes are his mother’s. She stares into eyes so much like her own, dark-rimmed, but bright with anger. “What are you doing? Picking pockets on the metro? Smoking dope?”
“No!” he says.
“Where