The borders of a swimming pool to tell the story of Lebanon's foreign territory

Tuesday's books - Diana-Alice Ramsauer

A pool in the desert, is the daily life of three characters, for three days, coiled between three countries, struggling between the frontiers of strangeness, maternity and ownership. It's also an absurd, poetic Lebanese tale that should be read as a contemplation of a tile floor at the bottom of a swimming pool, where the whole is as important as each piece of ceramic, perfect or cracked.

It all began when Leo Bendos had to negotiate the sale of the land belonging to his family, on which Fausta Kyriakos had built a swimming pool. «He gave himself three days. A Quebecker with Lebanese roots, he landed in Beirut and then headed for the site. »Suddenly, as if two antagonistic landscapes had been brought together with tape and a piece of wire, Leo had arrived in a mountain desert.«

The young man spends his short stay at the vacation home of Fausta's uncle, Rodolphe Jr. Kyriakos, a lawyer «whose welcoming stoutness bounces with every step». It's with him that he must negotiate for the plot of land. As for Fausta, she's the type to sleep with three pairs of earplugs in her ears to escape outside noise. She only likes things that have been modified by humans.

«She prefers the dimming of artificial lighting to the raw of daylight, swimming in a beautiful chlorinated pool rather than the infinite sea, eating an industrial ice cream stick rather than an artisanal ice cream cone, following the cottony trail left by airliners in the sky rather than the path of wild raptors, the light blast of air conditioning in a five-star hotel room to the pure, powerful air of the mountains.»

Olive oil production or tourist syndrome

Another aspect of Fausta's behavior is her inability to have children without the help of medicine. «The fact that the most natural thing in the world - the power to bear children - was not given to her strengthened her self-image. She didn't like nature or landscapes untouched by human intervention».

Leo and Fausta are initially suspicious of each other. Certainly an ambiguous relationship between a Lebanese woman living there and this Quebecer who sees the country as a tourist potential before apprehending it as a homeland. «Maybe the time has come for me to familiarize myself with my origins,» he says, before adding, «I'll produce a range of extra-virgin olive oil and mark out a route of points of contemplation.» From Contemplation Points, in his words: «In short: a Total experience».

And yet, a kind of complicity is born between them. Simply complicity. Right up to the end, in one of the final scenes, Fausta makes up her mind about having a child. Probably one of the most important decisions of her life, she makes in Leo's company.

While the theme of motherhood figures prominently in the story, it's clear that it's the pool that's central to the plot. «In these arid confines, the pool was a tiny bluish pastille, an iridescent glitter, a living, shimmering cell, adjoining the pink stone house.» The most beautiful pool Leo had ever seen. It's the reason he's coming back: «In North America, the question of litigation wouldn't even arise. Here, it could have given rise to a novel.» This pool is the trigger, but it's also the symbol of a natural resource that's in short supply in this crossroads of three countries.

The sound of blue gold

The story takes place at the foot of Mount Hermon, a rock shared by Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The latter two (in particular) are still in conflict. For a host of reasons. One of them concerns the exploitation of water resources. With its vast reserves, Lebanon is the object of much covetousness and the cause of unresolved disputes.

«To the east, on the other side, the country is at war. They've been at war for over ten years, against whom, against what, God only knows. And over there, to the south, it's us who are in a state of war with them, or them with us, but for so long that we can't remember the reasons. What do you want, between our neighbors on the other side and our enemies over there, we're surrounded by fierce wars to which nothing seems able to put an end.»

Diane Mazloum's book does not explicitly address national responsibilities and the issues at stake. Instead, the theme is dealt with symbolically and allegorically, even if certain passages clearly illustrate the challenges. «Water] is (...) pumped by our neighbors, down there in the south, the enemy country. They sneak in all the water from our water tables. Relentlessly,» explains Rodolphe Jr. Kyriakos, referring to Israel. A whole poetry is built around the sound of blue gold and the hoses that fill the swimming pool - a pool that is completely full on the first day of Léon's stay, almost empty on the second and completely dry on the third.

«Only the translucent pink pipe remained, which, without regard to boundaries, like the wind or a bird, had traced its path through the various lands from the house's garden to the pool, into which a waterspout gushed.»

But the lexical field of sound doesn't stop at water, it also develops around other resources. The various engines in the house, the continuous thumping of generators, the hum of refrigerators and boilers, each have their own color. During one of these moments of complicity between Fausta and Leo, the latter asks how she would describe the litany of different whirring machines: «[The sound of the tanker pump] is a continuous high-pitched whistle [that of the generator] is a continuous high-pitched note.» To this Leo replies that he sees the first as a yellow line, the other orange.

 On the edge of absurdity

Beyond the literary aesthetics of these words, we find another geopolitical theme: the border. Once again, the swimming pool symbolizes these conflicts. As we understand it, the artificial body of water in question was built by the Kyriakos family (by Fausta) on the territory of the Bendos (Leo's family). We also discover that the edge of the pond nibbles a few centimetres of the land next door, that of the Barberras. This is not insignificant, since the path leading from the Kyriakos' house to the pool on the Bendos' land must pass through a strip of land belonging to the Barberras. Precisely.

What's there to get lost in? It's normal and deliberate. The story plays on this absurdity. These boundaries between neighbors« properties seem ridiculous. And yet, they are indicative of conflict. Philosophically, Leo sums it up with these words: »A border is nothing, just an artificial line or a mental barrier, drawn and decreed by man, then toiled and struggled with".

Diane Mazloum's book is not an easy read. It reveals the difficulties of a young Quebecer lost in his native region, a region whose contours he does not clearly perceive. For anyone who has not emigrated from Lebanon, this relationship is not obvious. Moreover, through the figure of the absurd tale, nothing is expressed with clarity. Readers have to immerse themselves in a poetic universe that sometimes forces them to put rationality and logical connection aside. As a result, trying to decipher everything doesn't seem possible on a first reading. The fact remains that A pool in the desert has a powerful escapism and a depth that defies any Olympic-size pool.

Write to the author: diana-alice.ramsauer@leregardlibre.com

Diane Mazloum
A pool in the desert
Jean-Claude Lattès
2020
206 pages

Order