Home: A Man's Sanctuary

Poor M.  He works long hours at a job with a lot of responsibilities and he treasures the hours he gets to spend at home with his loving wife and children. Our home is a sanctuary of peace and harmony in which he can relax, put his feet up, and let his troubles melt away.

Um…

Actually, it’s not quite like that.

This morning as he sat on the couch blowing his nose and weakly popping a cold and sinus tablet out of its packet to treat the cold he’s been stricken with all week, I suggested that later on we go for a drive outside the city to look at houses.

He looked at me steadily while one hand slowly lowered a tube of nasal spray. “Look at houses?  What for?”

“To see if there is one we might want to buy, of course.”  I blew out my breath impatiently. “Remember? We talked about this before.  We both agreed it would be nice to have some to get away to on weekends, somewhere out of the noise and pollution of Beirut.”

“Yeah, I remember that.  But I don’t remember agreeing to buy a house just to go stay in on weekends.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have to be a fancy, expensive house. You know me, I don’t even want fancy.  Just a cottage-type of thing with a nice garden area. Something with some trees and a bit of nature. And maybe it wouldn’t be just for weekends. Maybe we could live there permanently.”

M stared at me. “Do you know how much houses near Beirut with private gardens cost?  The cheapest one is a million dollars.  And there are no cottages in Lebanon, only villas. Not to mention the drive in to the city.  Do you really want the kids to sit for an hour in the car each morning and afternoon as they go to and from school?”

“Well, all I know is that I’ve got to get out of here,” I burst out, gesturing around me at the room which was filled with the ceaseless honking of car horns from the street below. “The kids need to get out of here most of all.  They need somewhere they can stretch their legs, be outside a bit.”

“You’re not going to find a North American style backyard anywhere in Lebanon,” M said. “People here have more important things to worry about.”

“More important things to worry about? What on earth are you talking about?”

“People here have had wars and getting enough to eat to worry about.”

“Oh, right, and for how many decades will that excuse cover every single thing wrong with this country? When people litter all over the Ramlet El Baida beach, it’s understandable because there has been war in the country?  And there are a lot of Lebanese who don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from but they don’t strive to beautify their country. They don't even seem to care.  As long as the inside of their house is posh and well-disinfected with Dettol, they feel complete.  Look at your parents.  They have a piece of land in the ancestral village and what have they done with it but bury half of it under a great, bulky, misshapen house and the other half under concrete for a parking area.”

“What are you talking about? There’s a garden there, a big one.”

“That’s not the kind of garden I’m talking about. You can’t even walk on that bumpy, overgrown ground, or find a place to sit.  What’s the use of that?”

“Well, my grandparents didn’t design it for someone to sit in all afternoon reading a book.  They had work to do. Why do you think all the trees in the garden are fruit trees?  They didn’t plant them for decoration.”

“Well, That’s neither here nor there. I’m just saying I want a bit of green space I can actually walk in.  I’m not asking for the moon.  I don’t want a fancy house, just a bit of garden where I can hear myself think and the kids can remember what trees and soil look like.”

M waved the tube of nasal spray impatiently.  “You have to accept Lebanon for what it is.  There are no parks here.  But there are other things to enjoy. When in Rome and all that.”

But I was in no mood to listen to reason.

I don’t know if people who have grown up in a city, especially a dense, noisy city, can relate to this but I simply have never been able to adjust to living in such a place. I can’t bear that our kids are growing up without the incredible nature that I grew up with.

These feelings build and build and though I keep them under wraps most of the time there are moments, like this, in which the pressure valve blows and the panicky urge to GET OUT OF BEIRUT AND PREFERABLY LEBANON AND AS FAR AS THAT GOES THE ENTIRE MIDDLE EAST PERMANENTLY overwhelms me. And M, sitting in front of the telly enjoying the first quiet hours of his week, gets the brunt of my outburst right between the eyes.

“I just can’t stand it, I can’t! I have to get out of this stinky, concrete cage.  We owe it to the kids to get them out of it. They’re missing out on so much.  They’re missing out on life!”

M sighed. “I don’t think it’s as bad as all that.”

I continued to vent for a quarter of an hour or so.  The theme of my rant remained the same.  There wasn’t much M could say in reply.  He has heard it all before a hundred times.

Eventually I lost my steam and ground to an unsteady halt. The atmosphere in the room was sour.  We both wore frowns.

Suddenly the kids burst through from the corridor, yelling and screeching.  Noonie was chasing Dude with a wooden slat from a set of venetian blinds.  Dude was laughing as he ran and saying that he had only been trying to help when he pointed out that if she kept eating chocolate pudding the way she was she would get a fat bum.

Noonie had murder in her eyes.  As they made a loop around the kitchen island and galloped back past us, Noonie shouting that he was a dead man, I looked at M.

He was sitting in exactly the same position as he had been throughout our conversation.  He had a fleece blanket pulled up over him, a box of kleenex on his lap and the tube of nasal spray in one hand.

As the sound of the kids settling their dispute in the ‘natural’ way abruptly cut out behind a bedroom door, M looked over at me.  I think he knew I didn’t mean to go nuts, that it just overcomes me sometimes, like a malarial fever.

“We could go for a picnic,” he suggested.

From the street below, the car horns rose in angry, waspish crescendo. That would be due to a 'service' taxi blocking two lanes of traffic as he stopped to talk to a potential passenger.

“A picnic would be nice,” I said.

The car horns died down to the normal, steady burble of toots and peeps. The stopped taxi must have moved off.

In the relative quiet I could hear a muted thumping sound from the bedroom and a soft hiss as M squeezed the nasal spray into one nostril.

“A picnic would be really nice.”