Jamal

by Filipe Boucinha (Netherlands)

I didn't expect to find Lebanon

Jamal nodded at us from the third floor corridor as we climbed the wide stone staircase. - Hello! it’s up here. Outside we could hear the cars rolling in the evening warmth. It had been a silent ride from the airport, watching hill after hill covered in worn out condos, each balcony hidden by long curtains floating in the breeze and each kitchen window promising that never fully achievable suburban family happiness. We entered a narrow and dimly lit hall with a high ceiling. To the left, a rack full of coats made clear this was not a hotel. - Would you like to sit down a bit? The proposal, accompanied by a perfectly timed open arms gesture and a pleasantly contained smile, hit me like a sniper’s shot in the middle of a deserted square. After crossing a continent and a sea, two capital cities and two soulless airports, sitting down on the pale high back sofa while facing Jamal in his exuberant light blue living room, which seemed to have stopped in time way before his autumn years gently settled in, seemed like the right cure for the restlessness I had been feeling for so long. We sat down and all looked at each other, in a silence similar to the one that fills the room as the lone pianist throws himself at the first note. As I looked through the thick lenses of Jamal’s dark rimmed glasses, the assumptions I had been forming for the past months seemed to slowly dissolve into the tarnished mirror standing in the wall behind me. In their place, a blank paper sheet emerged. Though I had just arrived, I had reached that point in a trip when you realise your personality has fundamentally changed and start wondering what was it that you had failed to understand until then. In that enormous living room filled with plants, old portraits and poetry, where the protests, the war and the economic crisis outside were no more than ephemeral flowers too weak to subsist, I thought how the simple act of slowing down had shown a subtle richness in everything in front of me. I looked around me and Jamal’s living room turned into the whole city. I could see the austere elegance in the old tea trolley, the careless bohemian spirit in the pile of records. The dining table and the window shutters told stories of different cultures, different times. The two balconies, a tale of harmony with the world and the nature. A small cabinet filled with slim glasses, ceramic jars and tiny dishes made me crave for their renowned food and secretly wonderful wine. The huddled lamps and the wide open centre, a perfect representation of the inherent contradictions and the refusal to be labelled. A thin line showed up on the blank paper sheet. Slowly, the line grew into a drawing of a map without borders and then, suddenly, the question where is your home?, painted in bold red letters, appeared at the top of the sheet. I made a mental note to stop asking myself that question. I looked up. Jamal was in reflection mode, trying to figure out whether the run down palace or the corner food stall would serve us the most fitting meal. We prepared to go out and spend our first evening exploring Beirut. - And don’t worry, it is safe. We didn’t. After all, this had always been our home.