A Wayfarer in the Square

I stepped into Nejmeh Square as a daughter returned to trace the features of a face long hidden behind rusted locks, barbed wire, and decisions that weighed upon the hearts of the people. I visit it for the second time since it had been closed in my face — closed in our faces, for years, those of us who once believed that squares were created to belong to us, and that cities only lock themselves in old books when historians write of sieges and wars. For long years, Nejmeh Square remained a name we pronounced with caution, gesturing toward it the way one gestures toward a wound that has not healed. It was shut by those who believed they possessed its keys, and the keys of those within it; our steps were confiscated, and our reunion with its corners — which know the sound of our footsteps better than the "guards" ever could — was indefinitely postponed.

I visit it as a tourist — I, daughter of this land who had chosen to stay when leaving was easier than explaining why one stays. I chose to remain, not out of heroism or defiance, but because my roots ran too deep to be torn out by a breaking news alert or a prolonged power cut. I walk today among its elegant buildings alongside relatives whose father exile carried into the arms of "the benevolent mother," where they were born. The letter ghain dominates their accent. They never pronounced the language of the dâd as we do, and their memory was not shaped to the rhythm of generators or the calls of street vendors. They looked around with a tourist's wonder, while I looked with the wonder of someone seeing her own city from the outside.

We wander together, step by step, and a landmark, a few stones that remained witnesses to ages and civilizations that passed over this land, will sometimes stop us. I explain how names succeeded one another upon the city as seasons succeed one another, how Beirut was once a port of books, once an arena of cannons, once a stage for dreams larger than its modest dimensions. In my French laced with a few words of English, I try to find the words that might compress a history that resists compression. I search my memory for neutral sentences, for a narrative that wounds no one and betrays no one, and I find myself stumbling between nostalgia and rage.

Beirut was empty in a way that unsettles the heart. Not empty of people, but empty of the noise that used to fill it with meaning. Its alleyways that once hummed with voices seemed to be holding their breath, and the gleaming facades reflected a grey sky with no bottom. It is empty, except for what remains in my memory: from our repeated uprisings, with which we filled the streets with chanting and hope, to the August 4th explosion whose blast lingers still in the buildings, in the stained glass of churches, in the shops belted by iron doors half-closed. Every corner here carries an invisible trace: a small crack in a wall, or the shadow of a window whose glass will never again be what it was.

I walked and saw, simultaneously, two superimposed images: the image of the city as it stands before me, and its image as it lived within me. In my memory, it was crowned with laughter that defied the weariness of days. The voice of music used to slip through narrow balconies, mingling sometimes with live gunfire, and we could not tell whether it was celebration or warning. Tear gas was part of our vocabulary, just as love was part of our small courage. I witnessed on its steps fleeting encounters, whispered confessions, and partings made in haste for fear of a breaking news alert.

How do I describe to them what Beirut means to its children? How do I explain an obvious duality: a heavy exile and a restless longing? Those of us who live in it and yet sometimes feel like strangers to it, as though it were a city administered from behind thick glass we cannot reach. And at the same time, we cannot bear the thought of leaving it, because it inhabits us like the salt of the sea. I tell them that Beirut is not merely elegant buildings and a paved square, but a living memory and an open wound.

In those moments, I felt that I was the real tourist. I was discovering my city as if meeting it again for the first time. Every corner pushed me toward the question: is this the city I knew, or a quieter version, less noisy, more tired? I searched the faces for a trace of what had been, for a gleam resembling the gleam I had known when we believed that tomorrow was possible.

I remembered a distant day when I had believed we were as close as we would ever come to possessing this place. Then came the years when doors shut and the square became a distant image. Today, crossing it without barriers, I understood that a place is not possessed — it is lived. And that cities do not return as they were. I felt that this city, despite all it had been through, had not lost its capacity for waiting.

I did not explain all of this to them. I contented myself with walking among them as a tourist seeing a city not without beauty, a city waiting to live again. I smiled when they took photographs, and pointed to the small details that the passing stranger might overlook. And within me, I hoped to return a third time — not as a tourist, but as a woman reconciled with her city, however long the waiting.

We left the square. I turned back toward it the way one turns back toward an old house in which one has lived for a long time. I did not bid it farewell, because farewell implies an ending — and I understood that Beirut is a beginning that repeats itself, that has mastered the art of falling and rising, and that leaves to its children the task of loving it or of leaving it behind.