The Diary Experiment (Then Abandoned)

Nov 28th, 2010

9 am: Am I going mad or is M raising the shower head by half an inch per day? I keep lowering it but it always seems to get higher. Was careful to watch his eyes when exiting the bathroom but couldn't be absolutely sure of his expression. Will bide my time...

10 am: The mosquitoes have launched a full-scale attack! No wonder we haven't seen any for weeks now -- they were busy consolidating their forces, preparing for this day. We've secured our perimeters but cannot discover how they are getting in. Also, more ominously, they seem to be unusually robust. M zapped one with the racket-zapper in the bathroom, picked it up off the floor where it lay quite burnt (we thought) and chucked it in the toilet. Moments later when one grazed his head he said, "Could it be...?", looked in the toilet and saw that the 'dead' mosquito had disappeared. M hit it again with the zapper and kept zapping it this time till it shrivelled up and turned black.

Noon: My mother-in-law brought a plate of something up for us that got Noonie excited 'cause she thought it was strawberry cake. Turned out to be raw meat, a Lebanese delicacy and one of my mother-in-law's specialties. She whips it up till it looks just like pink gelatto.

Discovered we were out of pita bread (absolutely necessary to eat the raw meat with) so M sent the natoor's son to get us some from the shop around the corner. The natoor (building superintendent, in a purely Lebanese sense – his duties pretty much amount to taking out the garbage and washing down the steps) has gone home to Syria for a week or two and left his son in charge of looking after our building. The son can’t be much more than eight years old and he is living in the little apartment down on the ground floor by himself while his father is gone. He only comes up to my midriff.

4 pm: Doorbell rang, a woman I've never seen before looming in the peephole. Introduced herself abruptly as neighbour from downstairs. Was steaming mad, said there was water leaking into her master bedroom. Fussed around quite angrily, insisted I come downstairs to view the damage, which she said had been going on for a month. Also showed me damage in another of their bedrooms from last winter when our flat was being renovated. I was sympathetic but didn't actually say I was sorry because this is the first I've heard about it and so can hardly be accused of negligence (I wasn't even living in the country last winter during the renovations). Why didn't she tell me a month ago? Everyone in this building is completely cracked, I'm telling you.

5 pm: Suddenly realized that the angry downstairs neighbour would be the same woman I accidentally trapped between floors in the elevator last month when I turned off the generator. How was I to know she was in there and that they would have to pry open the doors and haul her up by her armpits? Still, kind of explains her shirty attitude.

Nov 30th, 2010

10 am: Apparently at my father-in-law’s request, a man has painted the elevator door on our landing a hideous poo brown. It doesn’t match our apartment door, it doesn’t match the walls, but it does sort of match a bruise I have on my thigh from a shopping cart.

7 pm: Called my parents-in-law and said I was bringing a cake down to eat with them as soon as it came out of the oven.

Half an hour later got a phone call from my father-in-law. “What happened? Aren’t you coming?”

“The cake’s not done yet,” I said. “I mean, I did say I would bring it when it came out of the oven.”

“Oh. I thought maybe I’d misunderstood you.”

Fifteen minutes later the kids and I rang their doorbell. We found them sitting in front of the television with the plates already set out and the kettle on. They like cake. They asked me what kind it was. I said, “Banana and zucchini.” They burst into laughter. “Zucchini! That’s a good one! Can you imagine a zucchini cake? Ha ha ha!”

I said, “No, really. It has zucchini in it.”

Well, I wish you could have seen their faces. They had never heard of putting zucchini in a cake. I told them huffily that it was a well-established cake ingredient where I come from. I wasn’t actually sure if it was well-established or not. I know I used to have a very good chocolate cake recipe that had zucchini in it so when I ran short of bananas this time I’d grated some of the little local courgettes into the batter.

The cake tasted fine but I don’t think my father-in-law really enjoyed it. He ate very slowly, working through his slice with a thoughtful, sombre expression. My mother-in-law is quite strict with what she feeds him and zealously trys to cut all the fat and sugar out of his diet. But he gets a sort of free pass to eat whatever someone else has made and he normally has two pieces of cake when he's at our house. I'm sure it made his day when I called to say I was bringing round a cake. He probably waited for it in a state of happy anticipation. He laughed with such delight at my wit when I announced that the cake contained a certain quantity of vegetable. And at the end of it all to find it wasn't a joke at all! Poor man.

8:30 pm: The new paint has caused the elevator door to stick. We arrived at our floor and found we couldn't get out of the lift so I threw myself at the door with a cry of "You'll never take me alive!", whereupon it burst open with a ripping sound and I fell out onto the landing with one slipper gone and my t-shirt riding up my back. Later I realized we could have gone down to the floor below and got out.

Dec 3rd, 2010

9 am: Father-in-law having very bad week. Ruptured a disc in his back and was told he should have immediate surgery. In the midst of this he was faced with my zucchini cake. And last night while he was out his faithful old Chevy Blazer died and he was forced to abandon it and come home in a taxi.

4 pm: Shirty neighbour has invited me to tea! Ha!

I left her a note (when no one answered the door bell) saying I was about to run water in the bathroom that we think was causing the problem and to let me know if she found any water coming down. She called me later and thanked me for ‘caring’ and asked me if I’d like to come round for tea sometime.

I don’t, though. Scary image of her livid face still twitching in my memory circuits.

Dec 5th, 2010

6 pm: Went out to a cafe with M, just the two of us. His mind is always preoccupied with work, multi-million dollar projects and people who are getting the sack, but to my everlasting disappointment he doesn't like to talk about it. I have the opposite problem: I love to talk but have no material. I considered telling him how I'd finally found where the weird smell in the bathroom was coming from but he was eating a cream-filled cake which didn't lend itself to the tale. And so we watched people walking by on the street and remarked to one another how young everyone seems to be getting.

7pm: After the cafe drove down to the beach road and took a walk. The beach itself was mostly deserted except for a group of men on plastic chairs playing cards under the palm frond roof of a make-shift hut. A little Honda generator buzzed power for three light bulbs strung on a wire over their heads. We went down to the water and listened to the waves and I recalled the time I came across a dead goat washed up on the sand there.

8 pm: My key for the building wouldn’t work, which was not surprising since it has never worked. The building isn’t locked during the day so it’s not usually a problem. While M parked the car I stood there jigging the key around and cursing softly but the water-leak neighbour happened to come home just then and with a cheery salutation used her key to let us in.

I think Nawras is back from Syria because as we stepped into the elevator I saw his elbow, or an elbow that looks uncannily like his, propping up an unseen body on the floor in front of the telly in his room.