THE HOUSE THAT REMINDS ME OF MY MOTHER

THE HOUSE THAT REMINDS ME OF MY MOTHER

My mother on the Balcony of the House

My first house is the house where I was born. It is an apartment in a simple three storey building that is still there to the south of Hamra street near Commodore Hotel.

We lived in this house until I was four when we had to leave. That's when my mother passed away. She died of Jaundice I was told. Didn't know what Jaundice was, except that it was what killed my mother.

How did your mother die?
She died of jaundice. 
Jaundice was a word that found its way into my vocabulary at the age of four. 

The only Picture I  have with my Mother

 The last memory I have of being inside this house is of many people sitting on chairs around the main room coming offer their condolences. I did something very strange. I passed around the people extending my palm to them facing upward as if begging for something. Was I begging for money, for sympathy. That behavior still puzzles me. I believe now it was an expression of the abject misery I felt myself in, at the time.
Losing my mother at the age of four gashed a deep wound in my heart that never healed. 

Jiddi Abou Yousif

My grandparents, having seen my father's predicament, took me and my sister Umayma to live with them. They lived at the end of Bliss Street near the Manara............. I can still remember the day we moved. The picture is always there in front of my eyes.  My grandfather carrying my one year old sister in one arm and holding my hand in another, walking us to their place.

My father, who had to travel away from Lebanon to earn our living, leased the house to a friend of his whom I knew.

Not long after we moved to my grandparents’ house, I had a longing and a strong urge to go back to that house. I missed my mother. I missed the house. Thought the house was where I could connect with her again.

Sometime, I do not know how long after, but definitely before I became five, I saw myself walking all the way from Manara to our house, go up the stairs, and knock at the door. The occupant opened, recognized me, and was surprised to see me standing there by myself. I asked for his permission to go into the house and recollect the feeling of living with my mother again. Of course he obliged. I went inside and started staring at the walls and the ceilings went from one room to the other. How can I, now in my  seventies, describe my feelings there and then as a four year old??? I then thanked the tenant and walked back to my new home.

The Building as it Looks Now

Now, when I pass by that house and look at it, I still have the urge to go up the stairs, knock on the new occupants and ask if I can go inside and again repeat that encounter and connect with a mother whose loss had gashed a hidden deep wound in my heart that never healed. How sweet that would be if I can get into the inside of that house again. But I lack that courage of the four years old.

I am afraid the building will be knocked down before I get back that courage.