Read an extract from Theodore Ell’s memoir Lebanon Days.
The first I saw of Lebanon was the silhouette of a mountain range arching its back into blue dawn light. Then the plane slid down through a low cloud layer and revealed a coastline lit with streets and towers, which were glittering on the black slopes and on the surface of the sea, deferring sunrise. The neon chains stretched from one edge of the night to the other as though winding through space. All at once a great arm of the land, draped and gloved in this night jewellery, reached out towards the plane. The banked electric cells of a city crowded my window and then hurried away massively, block after block: Beirut, a peninsula crammed with rooms. A rush of balconies at the wingtips. Car headlights turning corners and shining into my eyes. Roaring beneath the floor of the plane, a sensation of grounding and recoil, and a stop.
In that descent was the whole way I came to know Lebanon: the coming alongside one another, the drifting, Beirut’s burst into acquaintance before the shaking and the settling, the sheer force and vividness of experience that the country impressed upon me and that defied analysis. Lebanon demanded to be known by its images and its sensations before it could be probed for its ideas, let alone distilled into an argument.
While in the air, I had been contemplating what I knew about this part of the world: the lines that power drew, the people the lines enclosed, the alliances and enmities the lines ingrained. And I felt the hardening of theory into force as the Qatari flight repeatedly banked and turned, altering course to avoid airspace forbidden to Qatar by other Arab nations that had turned against it. Saudi Arabia denied Qatar the shortest route over the desert, the Red Sea and Egypt. Nor did the plane dare to travel north-west over Iraq and Syria, for fear of being shot down by one side or another in this, the seventh year of the Syrian civil war. So, in a detour lasting many hours in absolute darkness, the plane headed north across the Gulf and over Iran, turned in a long arc over the Caucasus and Türkiye, then headed south, in sight of the Syrian coast but keeping its distance, finally to slip down at first light into the envelope of Lebanon without straying into Israeli airspace, which was another invisible barrier again. Like Qatar, Lebanon was all but an island, blockaded by the laws of other states that wished to be islands themselves and make islands of one another.
Of the lives the barriers encircled I had read and thought much, but knew nothing. Three and perhaps four years of unmapped time lay in the night ahead of the plane. The only certainty was Caitlin, who had gone on five months ahead. She had half a year left of learning Arabic before beginning as deputy ambassador in the Australian embassy, a posting due to last three years but that might well be extended. As a diplomatic spouse, I would have the privilege of being housed but I had no work rights. For years I had craved steady employment and had found it at last in Canberra, where I had met Caitlin just as she was looking to leave on a posting. In the first months of our relationship she was turned down for Qatar and Ethiopia but was chosen for Lebanon, whereupon she rang me breathless with excitement to ask if I would go with her. There was anxiety in leaving but I fought to dismiss that instinct. In agreeing to join Caitlin in the final months of her Arabic training, I, like the plane, was required to alter course. I hoped that doing so would, in time, alter me.
In the empty space around Caitlin, possible Lebanons sketched themselves, prompted by Caitlin’s stories or by details heard in the backgrounds of our telephone conversations. Snatches of a call to prayer from a mosque. The climbing, lingering voice. Car horns in traffic. The sound of wind and voices outdoors, during a long meal under vine trellises. A soldier halting Caitlin at a checkpoint in Beirut.
‘Miss, why are you walking here?’
‘I’m going for a walk. Just exploring.’
‘No. Why are you walking here?’
‘Well . . . it’s the footpath . . .’
‘But why are you walking here? You shouldn’t be.’
‘Why not? There’s nothing saying it’s restricted—’
‘No, miss. You shouldn’t be walking here. It’s what, like, 40 degrees? Everybody is driving. It’s too hot for you to be walking!’
These small pieces were a kind of preparation. From the instant I joined Caitlin, Lebanon possessed me in just such a rush of scenes, with a vehemence that would forever outstrip and correct my book-learning. Life there conceded nothing to a calmer way of thinking until many months had passed.
Extract from Lebanon Days by Theodore Ells, published by Atlantic Books Australia
Lebanon Days
by Theodore Ell
Memories of an ancient land through economic meltdown, a revolution of hope and surviving the 2020 Beirut explosion.
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