Chapter Forty-One
CATHERINE
Beirut, 1974
We arrive at Beirut International Airport about an hour after George delivered my new passport. Our flight wasn’t for four more hours, but I was eager to get out of that apartment and through customs. The line was moderate; there were mostly families and some businessmen. It was rare to see a woman and child alone, but I was relieved to see at least one other pair headed for Boston. It’s a funny thing, suspicion. Being the guilty party, I was desperate to glide through the airport unnoticed. It was a seemingly simple task that offered numerous opportunities to fail when trying to accomplish it with a small child.
We got in line and stood there about ten minutes before Ann Marie decided she needed to use the bathroom. Having just completed her potty training about two months prior, I wasn’t in a position to push my luck, but I just wanted to get through the line. She began to grab her dress and pull on my leg, and I could feel my chest start to sweat from the anxiety. If I tried to speak to her in three different languages to get my message across, it could’ve been disastrous. Instead, I gathered our things and left our place in line. That move turned a few heads, but mostly from people who just seemed pleased to be traveling without children.
By the time we got back in line and close to the customs officer, I thought my head was going to explode. I focused heavily on breathing through my nostrils—in through the nose and out through the mouth—and kept repeating simple directives to myself. Smile but don’t grin. Answer questions in a friendly tone, but don’t give more information than necessary. Breathe. I handed my passport to the officer and held Ann Marie’s hand. She was speaking to me about her chewing gum when he said something.
“Chin up, please.”
I looked him in the eyes as he held the passport up and compared my face with the photo.
“Anything to declare?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Place your bags on the table.”
I released Ann Marie’s hand and did as he asked, unzipping each one so he could easily rummage through them. There was purposely nothing in them but clothes and toys; I hadn’t even packed a tube of toothpaste, something I realized only when he began to pull things out. Ann Marie was antsy after waiting so long, and she had little interest in standing still while the man went through our things.
“May I?” I grabbed a book off the table as he was emptying the duffel.
He nodded, and I handed her the book. The one good thing about fussy children is that people often have little tolerance for them and are encouraged to move them along. She sat on the ground with her book, and I kept gesturing for her to stand up. When she began to speak Arabic, the man stopped what he was doing and looked at her.
“Yes.” I jumped right in without missing a beat. “Up, fawq.” I began flailing my arms up and down. “Fawq, up. Asfal, down.”
Ann Marie began to stand up and plop back down as if it were a game.
“We’ve been learning the language during our stay,” I said to him.
He just watched as my daughter stood up and down with my instruction.
“OK,” I said to her. “All done. No more.” I patted my leg, instructing her to stand by my side. “Today we’re going home.”
She picked up her book from the floor and understood.
My skin was burning up. When the officer looked at me, I thought I was going to burst into flames. “Very nice,” he said and zipped up our bags. “Next!” He waved to the man behind me.
I gave Ann Marie a little push with my hands and quickly grabbed our things off the table. She waved to the officer and said goodbye in French.
There wasn’t a moment that day when I wasn’t looking over my shoulder. I nearly had whiplash by the time we checked our bags and got to the gate. I found two chairs in a corner with our backs to the window so I could have a clear view of the airport and everyone’s comings and goings. I stayed seated while Ann Marie wandered around from row to row, engaging strangers with her smile. Every once in a while, she’d walk a little too far and look back at me, testing her boundaries. I would shake my head no and wave her back. In a short time, she’d come to trust me. She was calling me Mama by then, but she’d been calling the woman who dropped her at the police station the same thing. What did the word even mean to her? She was heading home with her mother, and yet with so little understanding of either of those two words. My heart ached at the idea that she didn’t have a home. That she’d lived in God only knew how many places.
“Children are resilient,” Mother would tell me before my daughter and I were reunited. “And she will always know her mother.”
I came to believe the second part, but I worried about my absence in those first critical years of her life. Would she be able to love if she wasn’t loved herself? Would she have a fear of abandonment her whole life? Now that she was three years old, would I be able to reshape whatever damage had been done? She was a skinny little girl when she came back to me. Was that genetics, or had she been underfed and hungry? These were questions to which I would never have answers. They were months and memories that she and I were both robbed of, and I thought about them often. How would the residual effects of the trauma play out in her adult life, and how would I ever forgive myself? How could she ever forgive me for allowing this to happen to her? It was important to me that she never learn the truth, but I knew that might be too much to ask.
I reached into my purse and pulled out my journal and a pen. It was difficult to wake up in the morning, let alone keep up with my writing after Ann Marie had been taken from me, but I knew one day she’d have questions. I felt a great responsibility to give her as many answers as I could, even if I didn’t have all of them myself.
My hand was jittery from the stress and excitement of the day, but I wanted to write down a few last-minute thoughts.
Once I was through, we boarded the flight that afternoon, and I held my breath until we landed in Boston.