Funerals. Whichever way you look at them, especially from the coffin up, they are not fun.
Well, not unless they are in Beirut.
Beiruti funerals are not intrinsically fun, either, I should add, but long, somnolent, boring, affairs that last for days, endless, elastic days of yawning until tears run from the corner of your eyes, which at least is in keeping with the general spirit of the affair. However, there are compensations.
My mother-in-law died exiled in America and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge Massachusetts, a place where, oblivious to the Gothic gloom, she used to like to take visiting guests for picnics. Her funeral, however, took place some months after her death in the small turreted Ottoman-style palace where she grew up with her father and twelve siblings, one of whom was Prime Minister of Lebanon enough times to have a Boulevard named after him. The house is now inhabited by his son, a politician himself. When the kids were small we would pay court in the large salon downstairs, where the children clambered over the plush banquettes and the rest of us sat formally, our hands on our knees, but for the two days of the azzah, there were no clambering childrenm, just an awful lot of sitting.
My younger son, all grown up and flushed with adolescent razor burn stands, hot and uncomfortable in the suit his father wore at our wedding, choking behind a tie in the condolence line of men that includes his father, his grandfather, his politician uncle, a fraternal uncle, and assorted elderly male relatives, most of whom I've never seen before. Dutifully he loiters at the end, low in the pecking order as being a nus-nus (half-half) nobody knows who he is. His father, only marginally more recognisable, takes a demotion in rank to stand next to him as men file in throughout the morning and afternoon, shake hands and kiss each relative three times. My father-in-law resists the urge to wipe his palms on the side of his trousers after every touch, as though it defiles him and after he's freed to the custody of the whisky calling him from his hotel room, he first washes his hands compulsively.
I'm in the antechamber to the rear with the women. I had wanted to wear trousers but my husband, uber conventional after all his decades abroad, told me I couldn't. So I'm sitting in a long black skirt with my cardigan buttoned up to the neck despite the temperature being in the eighties outside. The chief mourners, my father-in-law's two sisters, Auntie Fuss Fuss, who lived up to her name, and Auntie Randa, sit side by side, flanked by the elderly wives of the men shaking hands, or more usually, their widows. I barely count as a legitimate family member though in recent years I was probably closer to the absent guest of honour than any of the other women in the room. I can hear giggling, then hiss in my ear from the grave as they arrive to pay their respects. Mish ma'ul, 'impossible' of the overdressed, bisha'a 'ugly' of the ruffled and gilded, 'sharshuha' common of their gaudy jewelry. She often said she felt as much of an outsider as I did, but today she isn't here to keep me company. Something I try not to think about because I don't want to commit the faux pas of crying real tears.
Mothers and daughters arrive with matching plastic surgery and matching bouffant, back combed hair. They have brown lines drawn, sometimes tattooed, around their mouths, and black lines drawn around their eyes. They make sad little moues with their puffed up caramel lips as they kiss the air, habibti, when they embrace the bereaved, their manicured fingernails clutching monogrammed handbags, with fists of rings. Occasionally someone glances at me and I hear the murmur 'zauj Ahmad' (Ahmad's wife - you're nobody unless you're a prefixed daughter or a wife in Arab society) followed by 'ajnabiya' (foreigner). Then they shrug and move on. You're nobody if you're a foreigner in Arab society.
Some of the mourners display deep décolletages to better show off their new fake boobs, others, calcium deprived and shrivelled, are swathed in bank teller black from chin to ankle, and one, a very frail ancient. wears round black sunglasses the size of tea cups though the light in the room is grievously muted. She sits next to me in the place vacated by the Muslim cousin who, alone in this family of alcoholic secularists, has come to religion late in life and wears the full hijab. It's telling that people are more shocked and outraged by this than the women who come dressed like Playboy pin ups from 1972.
The ancient nods at me and says something in French.
I nod back and introduce myself as the daughter-in-law in English, though I'm not sure she is clear who the deceased is. It's perfectly possible that she doesn't have a clue who we're mourning. My younger daughter is upstairs in the house watching MTV Asia with a room full of itinerant funeral refugees who don't seem to have known my mother-in-law but have come anyway because it's what you do, and the politician cousin is an important man and his family has to be honoured, even if he did split with his wife the week before last and is about to move in her replacement. Downstairs, my husband sat next to a man in the azzah who whispered to him: 'Who's dead?' to which he replied 'my mother'.
The ancient nods again and tells me how sorry she is before she falls silent for the Sheikh who recites the Quran every fifteen minutes, marking the time like a - it has to be said - fairly whiny cuckoo clock. Everyone opens their palms on their knees and I follow suit, though as an infidel, I'm not sure I should be masquerading as a believer. She removes her sunglasses to display an immobile face with lipstick that seems to exceed the boundaries of her mouth (this might be why they insist on lip liner, because they haven't learned how to colour in skilfully) and eyebrows that are drawn on. She asks were I live. She asks about my children. Without my children I would have absolutely no conversation. They are the Arabic equivalent of the weather. I recite their names: Anbara, Walid, Hussein, Alya...
I too have a Walid, she responds.
I don't know what to say to that - it's a common name. It's only when I'm beckoned out into the heat of the garden by one of the Russian twins that I realise that the Walid she's talking about is Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader.
The current Prime Minister of Lebanon arrives in the morning to pay his condolences, leaves and resigns and the one who succeeds him, comes later in the afternoon. The day drags on. It's Ramadan so there are no refreshments being served, but I'm also spared the fug of inevitable Marlborough Reds since nothing is supposed to pass your lips between dawn and dusk, not even cigarettes. Everybody in Lebanon smokes, but during a funeral in Ramadan, at least everybody smokes in the garden.
The Russian twins, are not twins, nor are they Russian. They just look like identikit parodies of each other, with more than a hint of the music hall about them. Separated by ten years, the elder dyes her hair a lurid shade of orange, and wears bright scarlet lipstick. The younger sister was encouraged to follow her example so that it looked 'natural'. So although, both very beautiful, now they both have bright, brassy hair that shines garishly in the harsh Beirut sun, offset by deathly white skin and the slash of red on their mouths. My mother-in-law thought the elder looked like a Russian sharmuta. Having been taken for a Russian sharmuta myself (in my defence - in Syria, at one time, any blonde woman would have been Russian and by default, a whore), I think it does Russian whores a great disservice especially in the present company where a great many of the women look like they keep successful brothels in Azerbaijan. To me the twins should be starring in Twilight as the sexy, attractive older Vampire aunts. The elder twin perches on the end of a dried up well and lights up. The filter of her cigarette, in common with those scattered across the dusty soil, is stained thick and waxy with lipstick. The cups of coffee being surreptitiously drunk by others with funeral fatigue is similarly branded.
Emboldened by their bright make-up, funeral or no funeral, I apply my own red lipstick. Today they are both dressed in Comme de Garçons, but, I'm wearing Gap. I feel horribly shabby. Though I can match them on the make up I can't follow their designer clothes.
The next day, however, I make damn sure I wear my trousers.
