Loom: A Novel

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66 Eva is f u ll of hope when she hangs up. They might be able to start again where they left off that scorching August day, saying goodbye in the lobby of Beirut International Airport. There were tears and promises to write and visit they would not always keep. Yet despite her sadness, she was relieved to see the last of her family leave. (Her father had died in his sleep earlier that year, leaving her fully orphaned but not devastated.) A happy young wife she was that day, her arm linked to that of her gifted husband, a big apartment with expensive furnishings and the glamorous life of a political wife on her mind, and those who reminded her of the place she came from boarding the plane that would take them to the other side of the world. That part of her life excised. Yet her eyes filled with tears as she pressed her face against the large window and watched the plane disappear. Some things never change. And so her life hasn’t come as far as that. Her aunt still sharp, and Josephine still conciliatory. Still trying hard to get beyond an injury Eva doesn’t remember inflicting. What Eva remembers is always being outside, waiting to be let in. And yet luck her lot, too, for being the niece and therefore part of the family, the door always wide open for her in the end. Childhood the sweetest of times. Her uncle Farid bouncing her and Josephine on his lap, the girls teasing the corners of his mustache and watching him tip his head back, push out his lips, and wag his finger at them in mock anger to make them laugh and laugh. She knows she will be welcome. Blood thicker than water. She’s missed them something awful. Such great optimism she feels. Her sins forgiven. She will be taken back into the fold if she asks. 67 In the bathroom, she turns on the shower. The water comes down in a mist. In the land of plenty, a water-saving shower head! She feels deeply, cruelly deprived. This smattering on her body a torment, when she wants a deluge. Her uncle’s speeches swept over her like a flood. She heard him clearly, how could she help it? A practiced orator, he spoke with authority and passion, his words so vivid they played out like movies before their nodding heads. He steered them to ask what craziness has us trapped, still, in the archaic system of handing out government posts by confessional affiliation? How is this rigid system supposed to keep up with shifts in demographics? Suppose the Greek Orthodox began procreating at rates unseen? Suppose an epidemic killed off the Maronites, and the Sunnis were left to wander the earth? What then? Then there were the Palestinians, always his beloved Palestinians, cause du jour of every self-respecting left-wing intellectual in Lebanon. Their slums, their diaspora. Sometimes she’d sigh impatiently. What was she supposed to do about all this? Then she’d close her eyes to shut out the treacherous voice that whispered in her ear about the boring, boring way she had been choosing to spend her afternoons lately and would open them again to see his beautiful hands striking the air in concert with his words. Much was asked of them. She would see to it that she did her part. Her uncle and her mother died within months of each other. Eva doesn’t remember grief. She remembers instead leaping straight to the state after grief, throwing herself in a stream of activities that carried her away, impatient to resume her life, her skin tingling with a mild itch. Then the war started and she joined the Christian militia, trying hard to ignore what her uncle would have said, happy for the excuse to leave the house where her father stayed confined since the death of his wife, unable to get to work when the fighting stopped, unwilling during breaks. And then happy to be gone for good when she started sleeping at the district’s central office, an apartment in a run-down building with stray cats in the courtyard and bad plumbing. A mattress, a closet, and a shower were all she needed. She was cutting loose, taking her time in choosing the props of her new life. She wasn’t exactly sure why she had joined. The jumble of ideas that had...