Rosemary Church
Samar Barakat
It was a cold day in February. Rayan was just rising from his afternoon nap, woken by the beep of his alarm clock. He did not want to take too long a nap. He never did. The winter salad he had prepared earlier that morning was waiting for the final touches. Yes, today was Friday, and it was winter salad with awarma and fat instead of chopped parsley and mint. He would add some extra portions of the salted beef that he loved, with a bigger spoonful of fresh, chopped onions. The key is to keep the bulgur fresh, to soak it just a few minutes before the meal, so it doesn’t become too soft, so it is just the right degree of crunch. He had learned that trick from Teta Sara, who used to prepare this dish on Sundays for her huge family gatherings.
He had woken up earlier than usual today. Normally his alarm was set for nine, but today he wanted to personally greet Milo, who brought the pure water canisters every Friday. Rayan had been awakened by his alarm clock at seven this morning, but he allowed himself an extra hour of sleep, like he used to do when he worked at the university. It was a delicious extra hour of sleep, an hour that would feel stolen from a day that would have been stacked with events: all the grocery shopping, then the teaching, then the grading, then the meetings, the cooking, the emails, the preparation for his upcoming lectures, the bank visits and then the dental and doctor appointments. Dr. Ram was so friendly, Dr. Sino, too, and their receptionists would always offer mints and a smile and a bit of a chat.
The first thing he did today, as he did every day, was switch on the television. He felt privileged to be living in an age when he had access to 350 different satellite channels (which cost only a pittance) and then all the social media feeds from the groups of “October Revolution Observatories,” “Health not Wealth,” “Corruption in the Age of COVID.” He should really remove himself from some of these groups; he felt cloyed by the overload of messages and posts. He must remember to put that on his to-do list for the day.
Rosemary Church has such a beautiful tonal voice, deep but feminine, like fresh cream. She always anchored on Fridays (morning) on CNN. and then again in the early evening. It was remarkable how her voice had not changed over the years. He used to tell his students to watch her program, and he could see the winks and the smirks whenever he said this. This was back in the nineties and the students reminded him then that they had no access to CNN. But now, despite the dire economic situation, they had access to a whole host of satellite channels, as well all the news on the Internet. They have no memory of what it was like to live before the Internet age, when you waited for the Annahar newspaper to be passed from your grandfather to your father to your mother and finally to you so the news was already dated and the ink faded before you could settle down to a Sarkis Naoum editorial, only to be interrupted by your great aunt snatching it away from you to read her horoscope.
Rosemary Church would be a grandmother by now, definitely. If she had two children, which is the expected average for the Americans (no she’s English!) and then each had two children, then that would be four or five grandchildren. He heard that she had been married before. So with all the blended families common in the West, her husband would have three or four grandchildren from his first marriage, and she probably one or two children from her first marriage. So we’re looking at ten to twelve grandchildren, probably. Amazing how she hadn’t aged over the decades. The skin, like the voice, deep and smooth, like warm honey on fresh golden pancakes.
The second thing he did every day was to make his coffee. It was important to use the right water, as tap water in Beirut was undrinkable. Pure water, delivered in large plastic canisters every Friday, was guaranteed to be fresh from the Sannine brooks. Three carefully measured small cups of such water were then poured into a small tin pot, then brought to boiling point, and then three carefully measured small spoons of ground coffee beans (with cardamom) added. The water would be then brought to a boil again, removed from the heat, returned, then removed, like a languid flirtation before a first kiss, until the coffee powder had melted into a creamy swirl. The coffeepot would then be covered for around four minutes, and then small droplets of fresh pure water would be sprinkled on the pot to help the coffee settle.
It was now midafternoon, and the children upstairs were making such a racket. Ever since the lockdown, the children had become unbearable, stomping up and down the living room, banging at their electric drums, and firing away with their plastic rifles. Lebanese kids these days, he thought. Completely bala marba. Parents these days were not much better, not that he had ever met any of the parents in this apartment building.
He flicked channels to the Lebanese news. It was a repeat of the Marcel Ghanem episode, and the studio was packed with people, as Ghanem had hosted the top medical doctors in the country last night. Stay home, was the message. Remain socially distanced. Wear double masks. The lockdown is being extended. There was a huge uproar in the studio. People, outraged, rose to their feet, pumped the air with their fists, and booed as an image of the minister appeared on the screen. The economy couldn’t survive it, of course. But the volume was too loud and Rayan flicked channels again.
His phone pinged. It was a reminder to complete the first afternoon item on his list. He had signed up for a Coursera course on “The Biology of New Viruses.” The key, he had heard on one of the groups, was to keep the mind active, to learn something new every day. He had never been a science or biology person. Political science was always about people and groups and how large communities of people could come together to instigate change. But he had to push himself out of his comfort zone. With his intellect and brilliant mind, he wanted to understand how these nasty new creatures were evolving
Of course, there were other tips from the “Health not Wealth” group. The girth should be kept under control. The winter salad with fresh fat and salted beef, eaten with boiled steaming cabbages, would, of course, not be advisable, but it was a treat he allowed himself once a week, followed by a small piece of his low-calorie dark chocolate. Teta Sara used to laugh at his dieting attempts and pour grape molasses into her coffee saying, “The worries will melt it all away.”
The Coursera session took an hour to complete, then he joined the “Coffee with Bytes” session where he posted questions about the course, to be answered by machines, not humans. He posted a particularly difficult question today, and seasoned it with some Lebanese obscenities, for his amusement maybe, but also to test the cultural sensitivities of these machines, and of the Duke University professors who designed this course. The question was “Given the dire economic situation in Beirut and the inability of the sharmouta people responsible here to address our health needs, when will the manyoukee COVID situation in this country be resolved?”
He checked his Coursera feed twice for a response from the automated instructors. But there was nothing yet. Ha! These machines are not as smart as they think they are. Even with Google translate, they cannot absorb the tone of my question. Is it a cry of despair? A tongue-in-cheek post meant to entertain other readers? A question to force the Americans to think of the horrific situation in Beirut? (Would they care?) Are the Duke University professors now holding an urgent meeting, trying to word a policy statement regarding the use of obscenities by students in their course?
He would check back again in an hour.
He made another pot of coffee (he hadn’t eaten his portion of dark chocolate yet), watched some more local news, and then headed for the treadmill that had been dropped off by his cousin Sami who left for America last year, right after the start of the crisis. Sami was more than eager to give away all his possessions, hoping never to return, and Rayan hadn’t heard from him since. The treadmill, as promised, was in excellent condition. It was a piece of machinery, Rayan had once read, used to torture prisoners, but this treadmill was a friendly, encouraging torturer! It was programmed to cheer and yell, “Bravo Rayan” after he completed his first ten minutes, “Yo bro” after his second ten minutes, and “Keep it up ya zalami” at the end. Sami and his never-ending humor. Rayan would get in touch with him some day, perhaps
Rayan never missed a workout, usually from four to five in the afternoon. It was one of the recommendations of the “Health not Wealth” group. Keep the mind active, the girdle narrow, and the heart pumping. And there was more, yes more. A glass of red wine a day, actually two for men, has been known to do wonders for the aging brain. And what better country to drink red wine in but Lebanon, the land of milk and honey, the land of wine and money, as his university colleagues used to say.
The latest edition of Ksara red wines, the medium-bodied cabernet sauvignon, had cost him a fortune, but was worth every penny (lira, dollar?). The bottle he opened last month lasted a whole week, as he normally had only one glass on weekdays and two on weekends. After drinking his first glass, he would transfer the remaining wine to a smaller bottle and store it in the fridge. The next day he did the same, now using an even smaller bottle, until he finally reached his last glass on Sundays. He had a whole collection of these bottles, in consecutively smaller sizes like Russian dolls, painted in bronze Arabic letters in the Kufic style. All for a good cause, he told himself.
But he would have his wine glass only at the end of the day, after his other activities had been completed. His phone pinged again. It was time to complete his household chores. Of course, there weren’t many dishes to be washed or clothes to be loaded, so he scheduled all this for one day weekly, always on Friday afternoons. He liked to have a fresh clean home on his hands as he approached the weekend. It was glorious to wake up on Saturday mornings and inhale the freshness of his home, the coconut scent of his cream polish for wood, and realize that he had the weekend to himself, to do as he pleased.
He liked to turn on the television as he completed his chores and he also kept his eyes on the laptop for any notification from Coursera. He couldn’t wait to see what the machines would have to say to his question. Or would it be the flesh and blood professors Keaton and Nagroska who might invite him to a private meeting to ask for his input on the course?
There was no message from Sami, but he did not expect one. Not for another six months. Sami had never been one to stay in touch, not even here in Beirut. The last he had seen him, before he delivered his friendly treadmill, was at their grandfather’s funeral over ten years ago. “Keep it oiled bro,” Sami had told him, when delivering the treadmill. “Not the blasted machine. You, I mean. You.”
And that was the other thing from the “Health without Wealth” group. Community relations. As good for the aging brain as the organic tabboule and the daily hour on the treadmill. Talk to people. Make an effort. Reach out and be available. He had posted a question about it on the Facebook group “Silver Slivers” but was still waiting for meaningful answers.
It was early evening now, and he had all but ticked off the items for the day. He would pour himself another glass of wine, water the flowers, and try the BBC for news of the latest vaccine. Then he would take off the shirt and tie he had put on that morning as he waited for Milo to bring his plastic water canisters.
Milo had been a little late this morning, which gave Rayan some time to polish the shoes he hadn’t worn in three weeks as he waited to greet Milo. He wanted to tell Milo how much he appreciated his hard work, coming in the rain, endangering his health during the pandemic, and all for a trifling 700,000 liras a month, which, Milo was surely told, was above the minimum wage.
Milo needed to know how appreciated he was, if not by the general population, then by people like Rayan, with his wide intellect and his expansive empathy. Milo would sense how kind and sensitive Rayan was and would tell Rayan stories about his other customers all around Beirut who were not as engaging, nor as generous. It was definitely something to get dressed for, and Rayan wanted to show Milo that he was respected enough to be greeted by an elegant, freshly showered man. He would tip Milo, generously, in dollars, to reaffirm his appreciation.
He wondered how many homes Milo had visited that morning. Who had he spoken to? Whether it was women or men who opened the doors for him. He wondered how many children he had and how he entertained them in the evenings.
The doorbell rang at a quarter to nine and Rayan rushed to the bathroom to spray on a mist of his Azzaro Cologne for Day before heading for the door. He straightened his tie and looked through the peephole.
He could see the two canisters of fresh sparkling water. He could not see Milo.
He flung the door open and rushed down the stairs, but Milo was nowhere to be seen.
Milo had left the two canisters of fresh sparkling water by the door. On the bottles was a printed message from the water company, Bey2Na: “Stay safe. Maintain social distancing. Wear your mask. For our generous customers, tips can be made online on our Facebook page.”
Rayan rolled in the water canisters and went back to his living room. He flicked on the television and turned to CNN. In two minutes, he thought, Rosemary Church would be back on.
Samar Barakat
It was a cold day in February. Rayan was just rising from his afternoon nap, woken by the beep of his alarm clock. He did not want to take too long a nap. He never did. The winter salad he had prepared earlier that morning was waiting for the final touches. Yes, today was Friday, and it was winter salad with awarma and fat instead of chopped parsley and mint. He would add some extra portions of the salted beef that he loved, with a bigger spoonful of fresh, chopped onions. The key is to keep the bulgur fresh, to soak it just a few minutes before the meal, so it doesn’t become too soft, so it is just the right degree of crunch. He had learned that trick from Teta Sara, who used to prepare this dish on Sundays for her huge family gatherings.
He had woken up earlier than usual today. Normally his alarm was set for nine, but today he wanted to personally greet Milo, who brought the pure water canisters every Friday. Rayan had been awakened by his alarm clock at seven this morning, but he allowed himself an extra hour of sleep, like he used to do when he worked at the university. It was a delicious extra hour of sleep, an hour that would feel stolen from a day that would have been stacked with events: all the grocery shopping, then the teaching, then the grading, then the meetings, the cooking, the emails, the preparation for his upcoming lectures, the bank visits and then the dental and doctor appointments. Dr. Ram was so friendly, Dr. Sino, too, and their receptionists would always offer mints and a smile and a bit of a chat.
The first thing he did today, as he did every day, was switch on the television. He felt privileged to be living in an age when he had access to 350 different satellite channels (which cost only a pittance) and then all the social media feeds from the groups of “October Revolution Observatories,” “Health not Wealth,” “Corruption in the Age of COVID.” He should really remove himself from some of these groups; he felt cloyed by the overload of messages and posts. He must remember to put that on his to-do list for the day.
Rosemary Church has such a beautiful tonal voice, deep but feminine, like fresh cream. She always anchored on Fridays (morning) on CNN. and then again in the early evening. It was remarkable how her voice had not changed over the years. He used to tell his students to watch her program, and he could see the winks and the smirks whenever he said this. This was back in the nineties and the students reminded him then that they had no access to CNN. But now, despite the dire economic situation, they had access to a whole host of satellite channels, as well all the news on the Internet. They have no memory of what it was like to live before the Internet age, when you waited for the Annahar newspaper to be passed from your grandfather to your father to your mother and finally to you so the news was already dated and the ink faded before you could settle down to a Sarkis Naoum editorial, only to be interrupted by your great aunt snatching it away from you to read her horoscope.
Rosemary Church would be a grandmother by now, definitely. If she had two children, which is the expected average for the Americans (no she’s English!) and then each had two children, then that would be four or five grandchildren. He heard that she had been married before. So with all the blended families common in the West, her husband would have three or four grandchildren from his first marriage, and she probably one or two children from her first marriage. So we’re looking at ten to twelve grandchildren, probably. Amazing how she hadn’t aged over the decades. The skin, like the voice, deep and smooth, like warm honey on fresh golden pancakes.
The second thing he did every day was to make his coffee. It was important to use the right water, as tap water in Beirut was undrinkable. Pure water, delivered in large plastic canisters every Friday, was guaranteed to be fresh from the Sannine brooks. Three carefully measured small cups of such water were then poured into a small tin pot, then brought to boiling point, and then three carefully measured small spoons of ground coffee beans (with cardamom) added. The water would be then brought to a boil again, removed from the heat, returned, then removed, like a languid flirtation before a first kiss, until the coffee powder had melted into a creamy swirl. The coffeepot would then be covered for around four minutes, and then small droplets of fresh pure water would be sprinkled on the pot to help the coffee settle.
It was now midafternoon, and the children upstairs were making such a racket. Ever since the lockdown, the children had become unbearable, stomping up and down the living room, banging at their electric drums, and firing away with their plastic rifles. Lebanese kids these days, he thought. Completely bala marba. Parents these days were not much better, not that he had ever met any of the parents in this apartment building.
He flicked channels to the Lebanese news. It was a repeat of the Marcel Ghanem episode, and the studio was packed with people, as Ghanem had hosted the top medical doctors in the country last night. Stay home, was the message. Remain socially distanced. Wear double masks. The lockdown is being extended. There was a huge uproar in the studio. People, outraged, rose to their feet, pumped the air with their fists, and booed as an image of the minister appeared on the screen. The economy couldn’t survive it, of course. But the volume was too loud and Rayan flicked channels again.
His phone pinged. It was a reminder to complete the first afternoon item on his list. He had signed up for a Coursera course on “The Biology of New Viruses.” The key, he had heard on one of the groups, was to keep the mind active, to learn something new every day. He had never been a science or biology person. Political science was always about people and groups and how large communities of people could come together to instigate change. But he had to push himself out of his comfort zone. With his intellect and brilliant mind, he wanted to understand how these nasty new creatures were evolving
Of course, there were other tips from the “Health not Wealth” group. The girth should be kept under control. The winter salad with fresh fat and salted beef, eaten with boiled steaming cabbages, would, of course, not be advisable, but it was a treat he allowed himself once a week, followed by a small piece of his low-calorie dark chocolate. Teta Sara used to laugh at his dieting attempts and pour grape molasses into her coffee saying, “The worries will melt it all away.”
The Coursera session took an hour to complete, then he joined the “Coffee with Bytes” session where he posted questions about the course, to be answered by machines, not humans. He posted a particularly difficult question today, and seasoned it with some Lebanese obscenities, for his amusement maybe, but also to test the cultural sensitivities of these machines, and of the Duke University professors who designed this course. The question was “Given the dire economic situation in Beirut and the inability of the sharmouta people responsible here to address our health needs, when will the manyoukee COVID situation in this country be resolved?”
He checked his Coursera feed twice for a response from the automated instructors. But there was nothing yet. Ha! These machines are not as smart as they think they are. Even with Google translate, they cannot absorb the tone of my question. Is it a cry of despair? A tongue-in-cheek post meant to entertain other readers? A question to force the Americans to think of the horrific situation in Beirut? (Would they care?) Are the Duke University professors now holding an urgent meeting, trying to word a policy statement regarding the use of obscenities by students in their course?
He would check back again in an hour.
He made another pot of coffee (he hadn’t eaten his portion of dark chocolate yet), watched some more local news, and then headed for the treadmill that had been dropped off by his cousin Sami who left for America last year, right after the start of the crisis. Sami was more than eager to give away all his possessions, hoping never to return, and Rayan hadn’t heard from him since. The treadmill, as promised, was in excellent condition. It was a piece of machinery, Rayan had once read, used to torture prisoners, but this treadmill was a friendly, encouraging torturer! It was programmed to cheer and yell, “Bravo Rayan” after he completed his first ten minutes, “Yo bro” after his second ten minutes, and “Keep it up ya zalami” at the end. Sami and his never-ending humor. Rayan would get in touch with him some day, perhaps
Rayan never missed a workout, usually from four to five in the afternoon. It was one of the recommendations of the “Health not Wealth” group. Keep the mind active, the girdle narrow, and the heart pumping. And there was more, yes more. A glass of red wine a day, actually two for men, has been known to do wonders for the aging brain. And what better country to drink red wine in but Lebanon, the land of milk and honey, the land of wine and money, as his university colleagues used to say.
The latest edition of Ksara red wines, the medium-bodied cabernet sauvignon, had cost him a fortune, but was worth every penny (lira, dollar?). The bottle he opened last month lasted a whole week, as he normally had only one glass on weekdays and two on weekends. After drinking his first glass, he would transfer the remaining wine to a smaller bottle and store it in the fridge. The next day he did the same, now using an even smaller bottle, until he finally reached his last glass on Sundays. He had a whole collection of these bottles, in consecutively smaller sizes like Russian dolls, painted in bronze Arabic letters in the Kufic style. All for a good cause, he told himself.
But he would have his wine glass only at the end of the day, after his other activities had been completed. His phone pinged again. It was time to complete his household chores. Of course, there weren’t many dishes to be washed or clothes to be loaded, so he scheduled all this for one day weekly, always on Friday afternoons. He liked to have a fresh clean home on his hands as he approached the weekend. It was glorious to wake up on Saturday mornings and inhale the freshness of his home, the coconut scent of his cream polish for wood, and realize that he had the weekend to himself, to do as he pleased.
He liked to turn on the television as he completed his chores and he also kept his eyes on the laptop for any notification from Coursera. He couldn’t wait to see what the machines would have to say to his question. Or would it be the flesh and blood professors Keaton and Nagroska who might invite him to a private meeting to ask for his input on the course?
There was no message from Sami, but he did not expect one. Not for another six months. Sami had never been one to stay in touch, not even here in Beirut. The last he had seen him, before he delivered his friendly treadmill, was at their grandfather’s funeral over ten years ago. “Keep it oiled bro,” Sami had told him, when delivering the treadmill. “Not the blasted machine. You, I mean. You.”
And that was the other thing from the “Health without Wealth” group. Community relations. As good for the aging brain as the organic tabboule and the daily hour on the treadmill. Talk to people. Make an effort. Reach out and be available. He had posted a question about it on the Facebook group “Silver Slivers” but was still waiting for meaningful answers.
It was early evening now, and he had all but ticked off the items for the day. He would pour himself another glass of wine, water the flowers, and try the BBC for news of the latest vaccine. Then he would take off the shirt and tie he had put on that morning as he waited for Milo to bring his plastic water canisters.
Milo had been a little late this morning, which gave Rayan some time to polish the shoes he hadn’t worn in three weeks as he waited to greet Milo. He wanted to tell Milo how much he appreciated his hard work, coming in the rain, endangering his health during the pandemic, and all for a trifling 700,000 liras a month, which, Milo was surely told, was above the minimum wage.
Milo needed to know how appreciated he was, if not by the general population, then by people like Rayan, with his wide intellect and his expansive empathy. Milo would sense how kind and sensitive Rayan was and would tell Rayan stories about his other customers all around Beirut who were not as engaging, nor as generous. It was definitely something to get dressed for, and Rayan wanted to show Milo that he was respected enough to be greeted by an elegant, freshly showered man. He would tip Milo, generously, in dollars, to reaffirm his appreciation.
He wondered how many homes Milo had visited that morning. Who had he spoken to? Whether it was women or men who opened the doors for him. He wondered how many children he had and how he entertained them in the evenings.
The doorbell rang at a quarter to nine and Rayan rushed to the bathroom to spray on a mist of his Azzaro Cologne for Day before heading for the door. He straightened his tie and looked through the peephole.
He could see the two canisters of fresh sparkling water. He could not see Milo.
He flung the door open and rushed down the stairs, but Milo was nowhere to be seen.
Milo had left the two canisters of fresh sparkling water by the door. On the bottles was a printed message from the water company, Bey2Na: “Stay safe. Maintain social distancing. Wear your mask. For our generous customers, tips can be made online on our Facebook page.”
Rayan rolled in the water canisters and went back to his living room. He flicked on the television and turned to CNN. In two minutes, he thought, Rosemary Church would be back on.