Bone Ash Sky (31 page)

‘You all right?’

I shiver, a chill breeze off the sea.

‘I’m—just remembering. Reminded of who I used to be.’

Now I take his hand, naturally, as if we’ve been doing this for years. As we walk, women glance down at my sandals. A quick once-over of the face and legs, then without exception down to my feet. I lean closer and whisper.

‘Why do they keep looking at me?’

‘You’re not wearing a boob tube. And, horror of horrors, you’re wearing flat shoes.’

‘I don’t remember it being like this before.’

‘Before? You were just a kid. Isn’t that what you told me? Image is everything now. Did you know they’re one of the highest users of cosmetic surgery in the world?’

‘I wouldn’t think they’d have the money.’

‘Back-room jobs. My theory is they’re trying to forget the war any way they can.’

‘And the possibility of another war,’ I blurt out.

He’s not looking at me. We pass a fish restaurant, its blackboard announcing ‘Fresh Crab Strait from Sea’, and the tuxedoed tout with his plastic-covered menu takes my arm in a surreptitious scoop. Chris gently steers me away.

‘Well, that’s something no one wants to discuss.’

I whisper again as we pass two young women who slow down and openly stare.

‘They don’t care whether I know they’re staring or not. What’s there to look at?’

‘They’re trying to figure out if you’re poor, in those clothes.’

‘I am poor.’

‘Not compared to them.’

‘Oh, really! How about all the BMWs and Mercs everywhere? The beauty parlours and fake tans?’

‘Families think nothing of going into debt for a luxury car. These same families live in hovels with no running water.’

‘You don’t have a car?’

‘I wouldn’t dare drive in Beirut. I’m not crazy.’

‘So you weren’t born here?’

‘Tel Aviv. And I holidayed in Eilat, in the summers.’

‘I didn’t know you were—’

He interrupts and points.

‘See that man over there? He sits on this corner all day and night. We call him the man who wants words.’

I follow his gaze. An old man sits on the curb with his sparrow legs folded beneath him, arranging and rearranging bits of paper. He seems oblivious to the clattering traffic, the feet of passers-by, the billowing dust and grit blown in from the mountains and out to the sea. In the half-light I can faintly discern that each piece of paper has only one Arabic word written on it, either torn from school notebooks, written on the back of bills, bus tickets, cardboard, or print carefully cut from newspapers.

‘What’s he doing?’

‘He’s Syrian. They’re all mad. He begs for words instead of money.’

As we pass the old man he looks up and smiles at me.

‘He’s crazier than most,’ Chris mutters. ‘A Yezidi.’

‘A what?’

‘A strange religion in these parts. Heretical Muslims. Didn’t your grandmothers ever tell you about them?’

The old man croaks at me in Arabic, putting out his hand in the begging position.

‘Any words to give me, little lady?’

I shake my head and look to Chris for assistance.

‘Look, he’s showing you the words he already has.’

I bend down near him as he spreads out his collection on the asphalt, careful not to make my knees grubby. He smells painfully of unwashed scalp. His white moustache makes two curly worms on his upper lip. Chris translates as the old man lays each piece out, saying the word in Arabic and nodding at me each time he hears the word in English.

‘
Exile
,’ Chris says. ‘
Grapes
.
Loss
.
Rage
.
Fresh eggs
. That’s two words; his standards are slipping.
Identity. Futility. Denial
.’

The old man’s face lights up when I indicate my willingness to give him a word. Chris passes me one of his business cards and I turn it over.

‘
Truth
,’ I write in English with the beggar’s pen, get up and leave, not sure why I don’t wait to hear Chris translate. I’m afraid of him for a moment, as if he’s exposed something about me I’m not willing to see.

He catches up to me, holds my arm. ‘Hey, are you okay?’

‘I’m fine. Really.’

He shakes his head, disbelieving.

When we arrive at the nightclub, bouncers wave him through, assessing my clothes and hair for a moment then nodding. We descend many steps, into humid darkness shot with green light. Even this early in the night, people fight for space in the large, low-ceilinged room, ambushing the bar, overflowing into the middle of the floor where nobody seems to dance. The music hums and shudders, thudding hard, and people shove against each other in small, ever-diminishing circles, shouting in each other’s ears over the din, swaying, wiggling their hips, while at the same time holding drinks out toward each other, flimsy barriers to intimacy.

I look around again – it looks exactly the dimensions of a torture chamber – and I shudder. ‘Hey,’ I shout. ‘Can we find somewhere quieter?’

‘It’s great. You’ll love it. We’ll find you a secluded spot. What are you drinking?’

‘Same as last time.’

We make for the bar together, with Chris using his elbows to propel us through.

‘So tell me your real name.’

‘My name’s Chaim. But nobody calls me that these days – except my mother.’

‘So you are Jewish.’

‘And? Is that a problem?’

‘No. No, not at all. Why would it be?’

He doesn’t answer, instead takes my hand to pull me through the crowd.

‘Good. Now we can have fun. Let’s dance before we get a drink.’

‘Wait a minute – Chaim.’

He turns to me, his expression changed under the pulsing greenish light.

‘I want to call you Chaim from now on. Your real name. If that’s okay with you.’

He hesitates, then smiles. In that wide smile, I see the little boy he once was, and I warm to him further.

‘Well … thank you,’ he says, stepping closer to me. ‘I’m not sure what else to say.
Toda lach
.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Thank you, in Hebrew.
Toda lach.’

I repeat it. ‘
Toda.
And you’re welcome – Chaim.’

He chuckles, grabs my hand.

‘Let’s dance.’

‘But there’s nobody else dancing.’

‘All the better, then.’

I tug at his arm. ‘Really, I don’t think I want to—’

He ignores me, making his way through the people, greeting and smiling. I think of the old Syrian beggar and my word for him:
Truth.

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Let’s sit down for a minute. Tell me more about the old man.’

We’ve reached the outer row of people storming the bar. Chaim raises his hand over the sea of heads, signals almost miraculously to the barman. He lifts up two fingers and the barman seems to know what he wants. He turns to me, looking straight into my eyes. His pupils are huge and black in the dim light.

‘Tell me,’ I say again.

‘Yezidi. They believe the devil’s been forgiven by God and reinstated as the principal angel. There’s no more hell, not anymore.’

‘There’s hope for us all then.’

‘Don’t laugh. These guys have been persecuted for thousands of years as devil-worshippers. They call him the Peacock Angel and it’s his job now to supervise the running of the world. Quite a job!’

‘He’s not doing it very well.’

‘Could you do any better?’

I can do better, I think – much better. I’ve come back to this place to see if I can make a difference. If anything could be said to
make a
difference
in these days of cynical obsolescence. What a worn-out, bankrupted phrase.

I walk through neighbourhoods of wild children and pyramids of garbage. Nothing has changed in Beirut except multi-million-dollar airbrushes of buildings and downtown districts, the influx of more money for the Christians from the West. I can still see the poverty, the camps, the shantytowns of the displaced, Shia Lebanese and Palestinians, pushed out once again by the Israelis from the south. I feel anxiety in the air of the city: the icy breath of change running like a current beneath early summer’s heat.

The Israelis are still squeezing the south like an orange, with Hezbollah fighting them for the pips. Could these small, brutal wars escalate and spread to the rest of the country? I’m lost in thought, slipping more than once on tyre-tracked streets. A young man brushes past, gazing at my bare arms and short hair with startled, inquisitive eyes. He stops, murmuring something salacious in Arabic, and I want to swing him around and smash his face against a wall. I want to scream. I want to see Chaim again tonight and abuse him for doing this to my people. Doing what to my people? Are they my people? I only lived here for sixteen years. And why should it be his fault anyway? Of the two of us, he’s the one actually
making a
difference.
But the desire to pinpoint somebody else to censure for my own confusion remains. Would the Arabs be like this anyway, even without these skirmishes on their southern and eastern borders, without Israel flexing its muscles each time they utter a sound above a whimper?

Before I left Beirut, Lilit once said: ‘We’re not Arabs, even though we live here. We’re Armenian.’ She sat up straighter in bed, monitoring my expression.

‘Where is Armenia?’ I asked.

Lilit took time over her answer. ‘Armenia doesn’t exist anymore.’ Her voice lowering, as if admitting a crime. ‘Your grandfather was Turkish, but, never mind, you’re really Armenian.’ And she smiled, as if not quite sure of it herself.

I stop at a corner. The sea at the end of the street is obscured by heat haze and car fumes, a white backdrop to chaos. My stomach hurts. It’s too far to walk back to the hotel. I’m lost, anyway. The city of my childhood has rearranged itself into new and confusing configurations. The worn stones at my feet claim no prior memory. I step out to hail a cab, think better of it. Don’t want to be duped again, targeted in yet another reinforcement of my difference. Don’t want another driver thinking I’m an American tourist, a New World Lebanese back for a tour of the old country. Easy pickings.

I pass a phone box. Chaim. Somehow I feel he can answer my questions, absolve himself. But why should he have to absolve himself anyway? He’s done nothing wrong. I know it’s not his fault; it’s not the Israelis, or the Americans, not even the Lebanese themselves. It’s this that makes me feel rage: nobody to blame.

I walk straight past the phone, start toward the direction of the hotel in short, determined strides. My face clotted in self-reproach. Chaim has insinuated himself into my life already; I’ve let him. An Israeli? Of my father’s generation. And what of my life back in Boston? The only friend I want to call is Dilek. And even to her, I don’t know what to say.

I wipe sweat from my forehead with my shirtsleeve, motes of dust float before my eyes. Part of me is pleased I feel so uncomfortable, as if this is in some way a confirmation of my anger. I like Chaim already. More than like. He’s funny, he’s sincere, he already seems like a still point of calm in the midst of all this chaos. Do I like him because he’s the only man paying attention to me here? Am I that superficial?

I pass the American University, on impulse go in. At the gate I’m relieved of my bag by a bored-looking woman in a brown uniform. I walk past palms and manicured gardens, knowing exactly where I’m going now. To the library.

Air-conditioned cold hits me like a door in the face. I walk the length of the room, trailing the broken spines of French and Arabic titles on the shelves with my finger, sit at one of the computer terminals. The woman behind the counter nods, then connects me.

I click onto a search engine, type without thinking.
Minesweeping
in Lebanon
. One hundred and forty-five entries.

I pull Chaim’s card out of my wallet.
Chaim Herzberg: Mechanical
Technical Advisor
. A crude line-drawing of a skull and crossbones on a scarlet background.

I type in the name of the company:
Mines Advisory Group
. Chaim’s surname. Let’s see what he really does for a living. His name appears among a list of other employees, a description of work being done in the south of the country, the funding they’re hoping to get next year. I click onto the next hit under Herzberg. An article from
The Jerusalem Post
dated August 1982:

ALON HERZBERG, ONE OF OUR MOST
ESTEEMED FIGHTER PILOTS, RECOUNTS HIS
DAYS AND NIGHTS IN BEIRUT

Mr Herzberg recently joined a protest organisation in Tel Aviv to put a stop to the Begin government’s incursion into Lebanon. He claimed the ‘invasion’ is both brutal and inefficient, entailing many Israeli military deaths as well as the expected Lebanese collateral damage. Yet Herzberg continues to fly his nightly missions into Beirut. ‘I made a pact with my country,’ he said. ‘I can protest from a moral stance, but at the same time I must continue to do my duty.’

I read no further. Could this be Chaim’s brother, an uncle, a cousin? I click on the next entry. It’s an obituary notice, dated September 1982:

ALON HERZBERG, BELOVED SON AND BROTHER, DIED TRAGICALLY IN THE COURSE OF DUTY. MAY THE LIGHT OF ZION CONTINUE TO BURN IN HIM AND IN HIS SORROWING FAMILY. Survived and mourned by his mother Tova and brother Chaim. Memorial in the Great Synagogue, Allenby Street, Tel Aviv, Thursday, 2 pm.