Early Days in Lebanon - Falling Pregnant.

My time in Lebanon was both good and bad.

The first few months were quite nightmarish. I was in a strange country, didn’t speak the language, and could only communicate in French. Some of the people there spoke French –albeit with a strong accent that I had trouble understanding. We communicated mostly by writing in French. For the first month our time was taken up with my mother-in-law dying of cancer. She was at home, and by the time I arrived hooked to a drip and barely able to stand. In the following month she deteriorated rapidly and died –as she put it, of embarrassment –she knew she had something wrong in the reproductive area but wouldn’t see a doctor as she was embarrassed to do so. So she died of cancer of the cervix at a fairly young age –about late fifties I believe.

The funeral was interesting. We women were supposed to wear black for a year – quite medieval in fact. The rules for dress in mourning were very strict – one day I wore a red rose on a jumper and was told it was inappropriate for deep mourning! One custom I liked was that he women did not go to the cemetery – only the men did that. The women stayed behind and prepared the backed meats. I approved of this custom and it is the only Lebanese custom I have taken up- I don’t go to funerals. They have always upset me anyway, since my great uncle Laurie died, I have avoided funerals.

After she died I expected that we would go back to Australia. In fact, the “troubles” of which I knew nothing, started up again, and we were trapped in Lebanon because they bombed the airport and we couldn’t use it, let alone get there – we were surrounded by muslin areas in a Christian enclave on the coast. We had a largish town close by, and my life revolved around the people in the village we lived in.

The village had been Michel’s home , and his mother’s before him. Michel’s mother’s brothers lived side by side down the road, and one of them had a large family. This family became my family away from home while I was there – and it is the only reason I managed to get through the experience with any sanity at all.

When I discovered I couldn’t leave, around early December, when we had been there about 10 weeks, I had a nervous breakdown. I just took to my bed and stayed there. I got up to tend to Elizabeth. and then went back to bed. I childproofed the house and left her to it. I was sharing a house with my brother-in-law, Farouk, and his wife and their son, who was born on the same day as Elizabeth. Elizabeth was crawling at 6 months and starting walking at 9 months – the same as me and my brothers. I recall my sister-in-law’s chagrin when E walked and her sin was barely able to sit up, and being the dame age it was very noticeable. As if they could get him to walk just by forcing him!

Michel took me to a doctor who prescribed vitamin B injections and some sort of painkiller. Michel administered these every day. I don’t think they did any good. I spent about two months in bed, doing nothing at all that I could get away with. I was very depressed, and with reason. I was in a strange country, trapped and not able to speak the language. I didn’t like my in-laws. The others were strangers and since I couldn’t communicate well, I was very lonely and alone. Michel did not like to spend tome with me to assist me. I was on my own.

I gradually come to out of the fugue I was in. By the time Elizabeth had her first birthday it was early summer and I was starting to take notice of my surroundings and participate a little in what was going on around me. I started to learn Arabic- I realised it was the only way I was going to understand people as they couldn’t understand me. My natural ability with languages stood me in good stead – I learned quickly and was able to converse in basic Arabic within a year of arriving.

I remember Elizabeth’s first birthday for one very momentous reason – I fell pregnant with Robert on that day. After we had a joint birthday party with my in-laws' son, Marni, we had a rest in the afternoon, including sex. I had recovered enough to be interested in sex a little again. Enough to allow Michel to do it. I was not on the pill, as I found it hard to tolerate. We used a condom, but like a lot of Michel’s ideas, not a good one. The condom was old, and split, and I fell pregnant. I cried and cried that night because I knew I was at the peak of my cycle and I just knew I was pregnant. I felt trapped. My marriage was not a good one and I had begun to dislike my husband. So I was not happy to be pregnant again. I was in a strange country and I believed my chances of getting a healthy baby were less because in my view the country was very backward in its medical carte. I was right, the medical care was backwards compared to Australia. But I managed anyway.

Almost immediately after I knew for sure I was pregnant, by missing my period, I became very ill with glandular fever, and spent three months in bed – from June to August was a blur. I remember knowing I was pregnant and wondering if I would keep the baby. Apart from that I can’t remember how or even who looked after Elizabeth in this time. I lay in the bed and watched the season turn while Michel worked on turning the room on the roof into a flat for us. I remember the sound of the building and watching the birds in the fig tree outside the window. We were in the room that used to belong to my mother-in-law and it was extremely cramped.

The move to the flat on the roof and my return to normal occurred around the same time. I got better, or so it seemed, and at 4 months pregnant I visited the midwife and the pregnancy was confirmed. The due date was 29 February. Funny how an unwanted pregnancy can change - the day I was to see the midwife I was hurrying and I slipped while I was mopping ht floor – we were upstairs by then – and I was afraid I would lose the baby. How hormones change one!

The pregnancy, luckily, was a good one. I had very little nausea, and I bloomed.