Chapter Thirty Three
The Rain That Tested the New Stall Roof
The rain came on a Tuesday, without warning, the way rain comes to Beirut in the late autumn, in a sudden darkening of the sky and a rush of wind that rattled the shutters. Mariam had watched the clouds gather while she sold the last of the morning's leeks, and she had thought the rain would hold off until afternoon. It did not hold off. It came at noon, in heavy drops, and within minutes the street was running with water and the customers were running for cover.
The roof had been built the week before, by Rami and Sami Barakat, with four wooden poles and a sheet of heavy canvas stretched tight across the top and tied down with rope. It was not a grand roof. It was a working roof, made for a working stall. Rami had built it on a Sunday morning with Sami Barakat holding the poles steady and Nour handing up the rope and giving orders in a serious voice. The roof stood over the crates in their chalk square, clear of the shop doorway and clear of the walkway, and it had kept off two light showers already. This rain was different. This rain meant it.
The first drops drummed on the canvas and ran off the edges in bright streams, and for a while Mariam stood under the roof with her arms folded, satisfied, while the crates stayed dry beneath her. Then the wind rose, and the canvas flapped at one corner, and a thin stream of water found its way through a seam and fell, drop by drop, onto the crate of leafy greens. Mariam moved the crate of greens to the dry side at once, then the crate of tomatoes. She stood looking up at the flapping corner, hands on her hips, the way she looked at any problem that needed solving. Rami was at the university, and Sami Barakat was at his bread stall across the street. If she waited for help, the greens would be soaked. She did not wait.
She climbed onto the low crate of potatoes, steady as a woman half her age, reached up, caught the loose rope, pulled it tight, and tied it with a knot she had learned from her husband Youssef forty years before. The canvas went still. Sami Barakat saw her from across the street and came running through the rain with his coat over his head, shouting at her to come down before she fell. Mariam came down, laughing, and told him the roof was holding and the greens were dry. Sami looked up at the canvas and shook his head, and said she was stubborn and brave. He checked the other ropes himself, pulling each one tight, and wedged a spare pole under the middle of the canvas, and declared the roof sound.
Rami arrived soon after, running from the university gates with his jacket over his books. He checked the poles and ropes, because he was careful and the roof was his work, and found one rope that had slipped and tied it again, tighter, with a double knot. He told Mariam the canvas would need waxing before winter, to keep the water from soaking through. Mariam said she would buy the wax from her tin cup money, and that the roof was an investment, and investments must be looked after. Nour arrived after school with her umbrella and said the canvas sounded like a drum. Mariam said that was the sound of a roof doing its job.
The customers came anyway. That was what Mariam remembered best about that day. The rain did not stop them. An old woman came with her shopping bag and bought onions and leeks under the canvas, standing close to Mariam to keep dry, and they talked about the rain as old friends do. A young mother came with a child in a raincoat and bought potatoes and tomatoes, and the child watched the rain fall off the canvas in streams and laughed. A man from the offices nearby bought greens for his supper and said he had walked an extra street in the rain because he had heard the stall stayed open. Elias Khoury came out of his shop with a towel for Mariam's shoulders and said his doorway was dry if she needed it. Mariam thanked him and said the roof was holding.
By late afternoon the rain had eased to a drizzle, then to nothing, and the street shone wet in the low sun. The canvas dripped its last drops onto the pavement outside the chalk square, and the crates stood dry in their rows, potatoes and onions and leeks and greens and tomatoes, all safe. Mariam, Rami and Sami stood under the roof together and looked at what they had built and saved. Rami said the roof had passed its test, and Sami Barakat said it had passed better than some roofs he had seen on houses, and Mariam said nothing, because she was tired and happy and there was nothing that needed saying. She counted the day's coins into her tin cup, and the cup was full, and the rain had not beaten her, and the roof had not failed her, and the street had come to her even in the storm. That night Mariam sat by her window and listened to the water dripping from the eaves, and slept well, knowing her crates would be dry in the morning.