That Hill Was Like Any Other
That hill was like any other. A gentle serene olive grove overlooking the citrus orchards skirting the southern parts of Tripoli. Tripoli was named “Al-Faiha’a” literally meaning the scented. Approaching Tripoli during spring was a floral explosion, buzzing bees, swallows, all scented with the aroma of orange blossom filling the air.
Spring was such a festival in the air, on the ground and in every nook and cranny. It started early, as early as winter, each season with its own crops of marvel. Feasts of flowers both great and small carpeted the ground with every colour of the rainbow.
That was the Tripoli I grew up in and had known as a boy. On that hill, some half a century ago, my family had many picnics. During one of them, for some silly boyish reason, my middle brother took Mum’s wedding ring and threw it there, not admitting his guilt till twenty years later. That ring stayed there, probably still hidden underground, telling an untold story and keeping the days of glory alive paved with gold.
That hill was like any other. Nothing was different about it. Not back then.
Then the wind of change began to blow and the gentle olive groves had to give way to the urban sprawl and the ugly concrete jungles. The new invention “plastic” marred the ground and replaced the flowers, the grass, and all what filth could cover and stifle. Only the hardy plants were still able to survive in hidden hard-to-reach places.
Unable to spot trees, even the sparrows now nest in the shrapnel holes the Civil War left behind in ugly building walls.
All those olives trees that I once knew one by one, as personal friends, have been chopped down.
Nothing is left behind, nothing at all.
In the last few months, I tracked those graveyards looking for figments of past glory to find nothing but filth and more filth.
In between one pile of filth and the next, I could only see the odd Oxalis flower here and there. Would it be possible at all to ever find a Cyclamen? I often wondered!! How could I? How could I ever imagine finding that shy and sensitive queen of the Lebanese winter flowers amongst all that carnage?
But just yesterday, my Susan and I found our feet taking a turn during our walk ending us up on that hill where the wedding ring sits patiently in silence. That hill is no longer like any other hill. Unlike other hills, it hadn’t changed and all of a sudden, it was unique, clean, and buzzing with tiny buds gearing up for the spring rhapsody. There were some Tulip leaves, Arum leaves, with their flowers still in their inception waiting for the message from heaven to get up and bloom. Tiny violets were here and there together with millions and millions of the run of the mill Oxalis.
Would I be still dreaming if I were to search for the elusive Cyclamen or has it deserted Lebanon in protest to the sprawl that has contaminated its land and dignity?
With hope and apprehension, I kept looking. I had to keep looking, and then in a little shady spot covered with some spikes, my eyes finally saw what they haven’t seen since I left this land some three decades ago. I found the local queen, the elusive shy violet Cyclamen.
Not very far from my mother’s ring, that gorgeous flower refuses to give up and die away. It is here throwing its seed in hope that it will be here when the hands of destruction have grown sick and tired of violating its home. The queen and the ring keep each other company, adamantly refusing to leave and vehemently declining to give up their inner beauty.
Salutes, Larks and Executioners.
We tend to walk down the steep hill, the olive grove side, to the "Al Manar" shopping complex. The shopping centre is just in front of the army check point where soldiers inspect the various vehicles entering the city from the south. We always have to go and stand near them to flag down a taxi to take us and our shopping back home. Often these young soldiers signal to a taxi driver to collect us. Once they actually put all our shopping into the boot of the taxi and waved goodbye to us. I often see the soldiers do nice things like that.
Today we didn’t get the soldier’s help. We flagged down a taxi driven by an old man who was haggling with the price. I thought he was going to be an unpleasant character. In no time, this old man, informed us that we had disturbed his singing by flagging him down.
He started to sing with a strong, deep beautiful voice. He sang old, old haunting Arabic folk songs. My husband joined in and the man looked pleasantly surprised. The singer was visibly impressed when suddenly “oudh” - like sounds and notes were provided to accompany parts of his song. It was just one of those rare and special moments.
The man had been a professional singer in Kuwait in his earlier years. He kept on checking in the rear view mirror to gauge my reaction. After hearing us speaking in a foreign language, the old man in wonder asked, “where did you get her from?” He got his answer and replied “yeh, I thought she looked different”.
This lark voiced, fading star, driving his battered and fraying Mercedes, by the time he pulled up outside our building, was beaming the widest beam as we expressed our heartfelt appreciation for the wonderful ride home.
Back at home I noticed a light shining into our apartment from next door. The light came from an apartment normally closed up. The last time I saw anyone in the apartment was some months back, in summer. It was a man and his European wife. Apparently, the man also visits the apartment with his North African wife. But, today there us a cleaner was busy inside, getting it spotless. I am told that this activity means that the woman of the house must be coming over from her home in Europe.
When she is here, she wants to visit some of her neighbours and socialize. But, the neighbours don’t want anything to do with her. “Why?” I ask.
The answer I received was that, the woman from next door lived in that apartment with her two boys and two girls for many years. Her two sons were part of a political party from a neighbouring country. Quite some years back, during a time of civil unrest, they took it upon themselves to go to the area near the check point outside the front of the now Al Manar shopping complex, stop everyone, check their identification papers and put to one side all those who were from a particular religious group. They then killed them, 13 young people, apparently with a bomb.
I heard scant details of this story back in summer and it was always on my mind as I walked that road to Al Manar. The men’s mother was brought up a Christian but must have converted to Islam when she married her now absent husband. The story is that the boy’s paternal grandfather took ill and died after learning what his grandsons had done. Children from the neighbourhood identified them as the bombers. They saw the two men put black socks over their faces and plant the bomb.
Neighbours saw, on that evening after the bombing, the men’s mother pacing up and down the balcony till late at night. The next morning the apartment was deserted. Apparently, there were family links to a parliamentarian who assisted the whole family to move to Europe. Only one of the children, a daughter, lives here nowadays.
The land that “Al Manar” sits on has heard it all; from sounds of screams of those about to be executed to the voice of a lark making the most of the acoustics in his taxi.
