Excerpt of Beirut 39 by Samuel Shimon
(Page 2 of 5)
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These writers believe that the new era, the information age, the
computer and internet age does not leave them with enough time
to decipher the mysteries of grammar and rhetoric. They seek the
language of life. These writers are not afraid to make grammatical
errors. Some purposefully don’t finish their sentences, others are fond
of slang and street talk and dialect.
This book contains selections from novels, short stories and poems
by 39 young Arab writers, and presents the reader with a panoramic
glimpse of Arab youth literature. It aims to engage the reader in a
conversation, and to help illuminate this scene.
Abdo Wazen
Beirut, February 2010
Haneef from Glasgow
Mohammad Hassan Alwan
I was crossing Al Khaleej Bridge when he phoned. My eyes clouded
over a little but my wife didn’t say anything.
‘Congratulations,’ he said, and in his voice was the smell of wool
you’d expect from a man whose throat was woven in Kashmir. It
seemed he still felt the same loyalty to me that had defined our relationship
for twenty years and had today inspired him to send his best
wishes via a telephone call that must have cost him quite a bit over
there in Glasgow.
The call came unexpectedly, right in the middle of the bridge,
and that’s why the conversation seemed hesitant, awkward, ready
at any moment to tumble over the edge into the surging coldness
of formality which I did not think appropriate. I slowed down and
tried to be as kind to him as he was to me, in the hope that my sins
would not proliferate. It was a strange situation, trying to be intimate
with a friend whose Arabic is still very broken, and whose English is
in its rudimentary stages, and switching between the two languages
was the last thing my affection needed, for it was cautious at the best
of times and not used to expressing unexpected sentiments like this.
I had last embraced him two years ago when he told me that his
immigration visa to Britain had been issued at last, ten years later than
in his dream. His suitcase, admirably prepared for the journey north,
reminded me that we had been no kinder to him than that promised
land. Twenty years he’d been pacing the streets of Riyadh, until the
city was as familiar to him as the mountains of Kashmir, and neither
of them any longer held precedence in his memory. His life had been
divided between the two places so exactly that bias towards either
one of them at this turning point of forty threatened to cripple his
memory, which was the last thing he needed, especially as he was on
his way to a third, new city with no idea what it would have in store
for him.
When he left Riyadh for the last time the visa in his passport was
no different than the one he had entered with twenty years before,
and although his status had not changed after he left he took with him
the many experiences that were written on his days here. I remember
when I was five years old happily celebrating the arrival of the new
family driver. He was very tall with black hair and thick lips, and
skinny, although my mother’s cooking soon put an end to that last
attribute and caused him to develop a rounded paunch not entirely
in keeping with his extreme height. I remembered our farewell two
years before. He was still tall but his hair had whitened gradually in a
methodical kind of way, and he had recently begun to look tired. His
sense of humour was depleted, his carefree laughter gone altogether;
I couldn’t even be sure that I had heard him laugh for years!
For a long time he occupied the middle ground between family
and servant, unable to cross from one to the other. He went home and
came back a dozen times, and every time his humble suitcase would
be bulging with small textile gifts, marble ornaments and fruit from
Hind and videotapes that he’d filmed in his village. We’d all gather
round in the living room, Mother wrapped in her khimar sitting at
the back, and my brother and sister and I in front of the television
while he sat unobtrusively next to the video player, stretching out his
long arm from time to time to point to an alleyway on the screen, or
a shop, or a twist in the road: ‘Walk on a little, that my mother sister
house. Two street after on left my big brother house.’ He would be
interrupted by all kinds of questions which varied according to the
age of the person asking. I, having ignored all the family history he
was trying to explain to us, asked him: ‘Is there no tarmac?’ Haneef
laughed, as did my mother and my big brother while my little sister
waited, like me, for the answer.
Excerpted from Beirut 39
by Samuel Shimon. Copyright © 2010 by Samuel Shimon.
Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury. All rights
reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
