Bone Ash Sky (35 page)
He knew he must leave soon; Damascus was not far enough away from the Turks, the great maw of the death camps. The straight road to Der ez Zor like a character meaning death. Those long evenings in the sleeping blocks, with nothing to do with other prisoners except reminisce, mourn the death of their culture. The Ark foundered on the shores of Lake Van, or Mount Ararat? Some of the old stories did not stick. He was living the myths now, writing in his body a new narrative of suffering. Surviving the deluge, as they had. Their land of Hayastan, now gone forever. Only the women had kept the old words alive. The tenacity of wives and mothers and sisters: women scratching letters in the sand as they marched, teaching their children the Armenian alphabet so it would not be lost forever.
The Armenian alphabet, milky words flowing like hidden springs in the desert. Mamma had told him a story, when she sat in the slight breeze from their Aykesdan window at dusk. How the creator of their alphabet, Mesrop Mashtots, died and was to be buried on a mountain far away. The walk to the burial site was long and hard, much as Minas now knew the forced marches were. The mourners suffered with thirst. They were fatigued, could go no further. His body was laid on the grass, and from the place at his feet appeared a spring of cold, bubbling water, pure as truth.
No miracles in the desert this time. The women suffered great thirst, great hunger, watched their babies pushed deep into sand, not laid to rest on grass. They took the holy manuscripts of mediaeval Armenia with them, cut in half, buried them with rituals, psalms for the dead. Tears mixed with blood, with sand, words fragmenting into syllables, cries of uncoded meaning. The letters remained in the sand for an instant, only to vanish in the careless desert wind. The women died. The children perished without language to guide them.
Minas broke off a thin branch from the jasmine above him and knelt in the dirt.
Armenia is no more
, he wrote, in the squat, round script Mamma had taught him. Near his foot, he saw a wet blade of grass, a yellowing jasmine leaf, its striations as curved as the Armenian alphabet, the white squares of light between the mosque walls – and he had to stop. There was a litany of names, dates. A dirge. Lilit. Mamma and Papa. Yervan. The pimpled girl. So many more. And what of the shadowy ones, the unknown?
The voice in his head reached a higher pitch. It taunted him with his apathy. He rubbed out his previous sentence.
Minas Pakradounian is
no more
, he wrote. He would have to go away from here, to the farthest edge of land bordering the sea. He would go to Beirut.
Lilit stopped short when she saw Suleiman coming toward her. She thought of turning around and going the other way but it was too late – he’d already seen her. She drew her veil tighter around her face but knew he would recognise the cut of her clothes and her swaying walk, the advanced pregnancy singling her out from other women of the neighbourhood.
He came alongside and pressed his mouth to her veil.
‘What are you doing away from the house without my permission?’
She felt flecks of his saliva on her cheek through the fabric. She didn’t know how to begin, or even if it was wise to begin at all. He hauled her into the courtyard, gripping both her wrists in one of his hands.
‘You’re hurting me, Suleiman! Don’t pull so hard.’
‘Where have you been? What have you been doing?’
She unwound the veil from her face, let it fall to the floor in a heap. Suleiman came closer, thrusting his face into her line of vision.
‘Tell me why you were out of the house. Bringing shame onto me and my household.’
From the corner of her eye she saw Fatima by the door, woken by Suleiman’s shouting. She was wearing bathroom clogs, looked awkward without her jewelled slippers. Lilit remembered her own clogs, once bright as pomegranates, drifted for a moment, wondering where they ended up after the gendarme speared them with his bayonet and flung them into the garden. She had a vision of hundreds of shoes sprouting from tree branches, dangling fruit of painted wood. Looking into Suleiman’s eyes, illuminated by the memory, there was a moment of tenderness, of possibility.
I don’t have to be afraid of you.
Fatima moved slower than usual, as if a small part of life was drained out of her body. She made her way through the courtyard, reached up to touch the trembling fronds of the date palm as she passed. The cook shadowed her, wiping streaks of sheep’s blood on her apron, wearing the same neutral expression she always cultivated when in the presence of a man.
Lilit whispered, ‘Not in front of them.’
Suleiman slapped her twice, once on each cheek.
‘Yes, in front of them! I want them to listen and learn.’
She straightened, looked Suleiman in the eye. Her cheeks were pulsating; the sudden pain gave her power.
There’s nothing to lose now.
She made her voice high and shrill and fast so she could be carried away by its insistence, unafraid of what would happen when it stopped.
‘Fatima wanted me to give her our child then run away and leave you, and we’ve been planning it for months now and I couldn’t bear to give my baby away to her so I decided to leave today but then I came back because I was afraid and now I’m scared she’ll punish me and so will you, and I don’t know what to do.’
She stopped, felt the fear she’d kept at bay filling her lungs. She prepared herself for a beating, a swift drowning in the shallow pool, or a public death with the imam nodding in assent. Suleiman wheeled around, beckoned Fatima to him with a crook of his finger. She took her time responding, her powdered face suddenly flushed red under her transparent veil.
‘Kneel down,’ Suleiman told her.
She knelt in front of him, ringed hands flat on her thighs, waiting. She didn’t look at Lilit.
‘Now bend your head and kiss Lale’s feet.’
Fatima gasped, made as if to rise, but Suleiman held her down with one hand on her shoulder.
‘Go on. Lift up her robe and kiss her feet.’
Lilit’s knees turned to water. She saw Fatima look up at Suleiman imploringly, her eyes filling with tears under the veil. He remained impassive. She stood very still as Fatima crawled on her knees toward her, a bare shuffling on the wet tiles of the courtyard. It was an indecent, naked sound.
Oh God, she’s going to kill me after this.
Fatima lifted up the dusty fabric of Lilit’s travelling cloak with one hand. Her breathing became heavier; it filled the courtyard. Lilit kept her eyes lowered, almost shut.
I should not have to see this. This should not
be happening.
In a furtive movement, Fatima pressed her lips to Lilit’s toes. Her mouth was warm and moist, too intimate. Lilit tried not to breathe as loudly in the ensuing silence.
Suleiman clapped his hands, once, then twice, as if summoning a slave. He knelt beside Fatima and placed his open hand on her head, forcing her to stay down. Lilit felt Fatima’s jaw push hard against the delicate bones of her foot. Suleiman spoke precisely then, without emotion.
‘Never, ever think you can abuse my love, Fatima.’
He stood up and turned to Lilit; she felt rather than saw the flash of his teeth.
‘She will never hurt you again.’
Fatima stayed in the same position, lips pressed to Lilit’s feet, a moment that seemed to last an eternity.
T
here was a pall of silence over the whole city now. Even in Selim’s suburb of Achrafiye, where brave cafe owners once served spiced-meat pastries and coffee to tired gunmen, the shops were shuttered, curtains drawn. With the PLO forced to leave Beirut the previous day under multinational supervision – dodging the hailing bullets of their own guns in pretence of a victory farewell – Sanaya felt her allegiances shift like an involuntary shiver down the spine.
They were shooting in the air for five days prior to their final leavetaking, with Arafat embarking on a Greek ferry for Tunis, now safely out of the way. She didn’t go with all the other Muslims of west Beirut to see him off, afraid of being accidentally shot at in the clamorous streets, or of being too clear about her political loyalties. If she had any at all. By now she was too tired to be angry at herself for any lack of conviction.
For weeks, even months, she’d joined with the other inhabitants of west Beirut in tolerating, if not supporting, the presence of the PLO in their sector of the city. Of course she didn’t want them there – it was common knowledge they were the cause of all the trouble. Yet she didn’t want to hand them over to the Israelis either. It was all bound up in her refusal to abandon west Beirut. Leaving now would be conceding defeat. It had become a matter of pride in the streets to tape a poster of Abu Ammar – the people’s Arafat – to the door of every building. For a brief moment, he was their undisputed hero.
Now she was in no-man’s land once again. She tore down her poster of him, used it to duct tape over the smashed bathroom window, blank side looking out over the street. She thought resignedly that now she must endure his leer as she showered, his wide-armed gesture pointing not in the direction of an occupied Palestine, as before, but down the plughole. After two days she took out a thick felt pen and coloured in dark sunglasses over Arafat’s greedy eyes.
Issa was no help. He taunted the retreating Palestinians as much as the Christian Maronites did. He rejoiced when the freedom fighters were nearly all gone, a wild look in his eye she had never noticed before.
‘They’re not true Muslims,’ he said. ‘Apostates.’
She questioned him, puzzled by such factionalism. Or revenge. Rouba had told her once that Issa had sought work with the PLO time and time again, but had no connections. He’d never been able to find a job, and before the war had believed he never would.
Now he leaned into her and whispered. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, Sanaya, but our future lies with Iran.’
Rouba told her he stayed up all night reading the Koran, then would leave at five for morning worship at the mosque. Not even the old, pious men made it to the dawn prayers. He muttered
suras
to himself as he shaved, as he ate the meagre breakfast Rouba forced upon him, as he stood for too long under the shower’s trickle. He would only speak to Hadiya. She told her mother she’d grown sick of his favourite
sura
– and now she too knew it by heart, he’d chanted it aloud so many times.
Such
is the paradise which the righteous have been promised, it is watered by
running streams, eternal is its fruit, and eternal is its shade.
Sanaya saw him in the corridors sometimes when she went for her walk, his cheeks more hollow than ever, dark rings punched beneath the eyes, his manner both wary of her and obsequious.
But the fire shall be
the end of the unbelievers.
‘Issa!’ she called to him, putting out her hand.
He was already gone.
The two women discussed him as they hung up the washing to dry one morning in the courtyard, hiding their concerns behind strung sheets and crumpled pillowcases. Hadiya sat in the shade cast by the wet washing, placed her five precious dolls before her in a perfect row. Their pink plastic faces were inscrutable, like little cats.
‘Don’t speak so loud,’ Rouba said. ‘He’s right up there, watching us.’
Sanaya looked up over her line of pegs; Issa sat cross-legged on the window-seat of Rouba’s living room, Koran open on his lap, eyes fixed, staring at her. She waved, smiled. He signalled back, a slow sweep of the upper arm, but his expression remained unchanged. She turned away from him, shook out a shirt before hanging it up, murmured to Rouba.
‘Is he going south again soon? To fight?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Won’t he tell you?’
‘I don’t think he knows himself. To tell you the truth, I think he’s scared. Terrified. Something happened to him down there.’
Sanaya laughed; it came out as a high, hysterical snort.
‘Well of course it did, Rouba! He killed people and saw his own friends being killed. Even his own—brother. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to …’ Rouba gave Sanaya a frigid stare, indicated Hadiya, who seemed unaware of their conversation, now making muddy tea for her dolls in pebble cups. They let the comment pass. Rouba hung up a pair of trousers, made Sanaya wait.
‘No, I mean something more than that. I hear him in his sleep sometimes. He frightens Hadiya. Screams, calls out someone’s name.’
‘Whose?’
‘I can never make it out. It’s almost like he’s pleading with someone to leave him alone.’
‘Have you tried asking him?’
‘I wouldn’t dare to.’
Sanaya finished hanging up the clothes, her basket empty. She balanced it on one hip, made to leave.
‘Well, then I will.’
‘Don’t even think about it! He’ll know I told you.’
‘I’m going up now to ask him. I need to know what’s wrong with him.’
Rouba stopped Sanaya, grabbed her arm. Her voice had altered, a low growl akin to Issa’s when he was threatened.
‘I can’t believe how selfish you are. Why do you always need to know everything? It doesn’t look to me as if it’s really about what’s wrong with Issa at all. How about what’s up with you?’
