Bone Ash Sky (37 page)

Through the terrace doors, Selim could see Bashir on a brocade armchair in the middle of the room, sipping champagne from a crystal glass. His florid, high-coloured face smoothed by a sun-lamp tan. He threw back his head and laughed at something a man beside him had said, and Selim could see the blackened fillings in his molars.

He made his excuses to the princess, not before making sure she had somebody else to talk to. He made his way through the doors and across the room to Bashir, sank to one knee before him and kissed his outstretched hand. Nearby, he could sense his commander Elie Hobeika staring at him – was it in approval or distrust? – with his deathly cheekbones and frowning eyes.

‘Monsieur,’ Selim breathed. ‘An honour, as always.’

Bashir tossed his glass to a servant, helped Selim up with both hands.

‘None of that! Well, Selim. Selim, my good soldier. Are you enjoying our little gathering?’

‘Immensely, monsieur. A pleasure to be in your presence.’

Bashir waved away the compliment.

‘How do you like the barman? We brought him all the way from Paris.’

Selim watched the little man pouring drinks with a sullen expression and mechanical flourishes of the wrist.

‘I see the Israeli officers are all here.’

Bashir looked across at the bar, where the Israelis had gathered. Selim thought he could perceive a slight wrinkling of distaste in the perfect nose, the full, pink-tinged mouth.

‘Yes, indeed they are all here, Selim.’

He followed Bashir’s gaze to the officers, noticing the relaxed gestures of their arms, their wide-open stance as they lolled at the marble counter. They handed around drinks to the socialites who milled and fluttered about them like bedraggled birds of paradise. One of the officers elbowed Bashir’s barman out of the way and now stood in his place, mixing cocktails with far too many different spirits, and cutting up indecent wedges of fruit.

At the end of the bar Selim recognised Alon Herzberg, the fighter pilot he’d met – it now seemed so long ago – on the hills above the city when the Israelis first arrived. He lounged by himself, picking at pistachios. The Israelis appeared so at home here, in Bashir’s villa, almost as if it was they hosting the party and not he.

He saw Bashir’s father, Pierre, sitting in a corner with an Israeli commander. Two old grey heads conferring close together, two boys plotting mischief. Combined cufflinks gleamed. They seemed so immersed in each other he thought twice before approaching, but the old man saw him and beckoned him to them.

‘Ah, Selim! How good to see you here, my boy.’

He knelt in front of the old man, bowing his head for a moment. He made a curt salute and put out his hand to shake that of the Israeli, murmured his name and position.

‘Pleasure.’

Pierre looked from one to the other with crinkled, beady eyes.

‘What a happy day this is, gentlemen. The culmination of all our beleaguered dreams.’

‘All our dreams,’ the Israeli echoed, and smiled with satisfaction at Selim.

At the news of Bashir Gemayel’s ‘election’ as president, Sanaya told herself she should continue to side with the winners while still helping the losers. That way she could do so much more. At times she wondered why she bothered anyway. Wasn’t everyone looking after their own interests, just trying to survive?

‘Bashir is our father,’ Selim said at night in bed. He sat up and smoked, absent-mindedly flicking ash on the sheets. ‘He’s closer to being the son of God than Christ himself was.’

She sighed, rubbing at the ash mark that only seemed to spread. She took off her dressing-gown, sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him.

‘You’re mad. He’s a thug and a killer.’

She said the words automatically, knowing they made no impact, not sure herself whether she could any longer recognise the truth. As she lay beside Selim in her satin-sheeted bed she told herself yet again she wasn’t really a traitor. She’d helped Issa’s Shia militia with money from Selim and, by default, with money from their worst enemies the Phalange. She’d attained her fortunate position, neither Christian nor really Muslim, through less than scrupulous means, she accepted that, and this little outburst was just a continuation of her habit of taking no side. If any of it would drive out the Israelis, then so be it. Yet this was the first time she’d dared to question him outright since their meeting with the Israeli pilot.

‘Operation Peace for Galilee,’ she mocked. ‘They’ve come here to bring
peace
.’

‘Exactly. Terrorist targets are under attack. And I don’t know why you’re laughing like that.’

‘Am I a terrorist?’

She couldn’t stop herself from laughing, as if all the fear and bitterness of the past weeks could find only one outlet – the high, hysterical snort of a mechanism beyond her control.

‘I keep telling you to come and live in east Beirut. And it’s no laughing matter.’

‘Oh no, Selim, it’s no joke.’

‘Isn’t it?’

And he’d wrestled her back onto the bed.

‘The shelling’s smashed our water pipes,’ she said.

‘
Bon
,’ he growled. ‘Now you’ll have to come live with me.’

‘I’m getting a rash,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘You won’t want to touch me.’

She submitted to his large caresses, let her body drown in this brief state of luxury, of such careless irresponsibility.
Four hundred
civilians blasted to death in their waterfront apartments
, she murmured. Or did she only think it? Selim was intent on his own breathing. Her limbs were inert and heavy while her mind floated on the waves of his proximity:
slowly, please; no conscience, faster; no opinions; frenzied until
he was finished; no guilt.
Only the strong yet gentle force of his two thick legs between hers, his face and torso blocking out the light, the sounds outside, her own tenuous arguments.

When he left, she fantasised about telling him it was all over.
Never
come back, I don’t want you anymore. Your politics sicken me.
Didn’t she always tell people she was apolitical? It had been easier to say before the war. Now, in her deliberate flitting from side to side – Christian Maronite to Muslim, Phalangist to Shia freedom fighter – she’d split her allegiances, fractured her sense of self.

Selim was driven back to east Beirut once again by a different militiaman. He said his name was Gilbert when Selim questioned him. The driver knew the routine, briefed at dawn by the others: Monsieur liked to take black coffee and brandy in the morning before reporting to HQ. Gilbert waited in the car, eyes trained on Selim’s every movement, pistol at the ready in case there was trouble.

Selim watched the driver from the corner of his eye. It was good to be protected. Good to feel safe. He ordered another brandy with an understated gesture. A man used to getting his own way. The waitress smiled at him when she placed the glass on the marble top. He pressed a crisp note into her hand, smiled back. He liked to feel attractive, it made him strong. He watched the girl’s tight black skirt and swell of buttocks as she bent over an empty table to wipe it clean. Sex with Sanaya always did that to him: a heightened consciousness of eroticism in the most innocuous of places. The girl turned around to smile again, she had dark, short hair and a milkiness to the skin not often found in hot climates.

He liked her. He called her over to him again. He liked her very much. She was about the same age as the daughter he never knew. Sixteen. Maybe seventeen. Maybe she even looked like his daughter, the way she was now. Anoush, they had decided to call her. Well, he had nothing to do with it – it had been Anahit’s choice the moment the baby was born. That in itself alienated him from his daughter – she wasn’t really his; she was some interloper Anahit had manufactured all on her own. She had wailed without stopping for an hour after her birth, writhing and slippery, refusing to nurse at Anahit’s breasts, as if she had some intimation of her mother’s impending death. Selim had tried to hold her but she flailed and wriggled so much her swaddling came off and the nurse took her away. He called for the nurse to bring her back – he wanted to hold his baby again, skin to skin, but the woman ignored him, and his aunts ushered him out of the room. He could hear the baby crying as he left, wondered if she smelled him, missed him, sensed who he was.

When he had left that next day, he didn’t say goodbye to anyone. Not his mother, nor his father, especially not his aunt Lilit, that scheming bitch. It was all too much for him. He’d been trapped.

What is it about me?
Selim had thought, as he stood behind Anahit and watched her puff out her cheeks and strain, the tendons in her neck double their size.
Why do I have to suffer?
He placed his hands under her arms and held her spine upright against the bedhead, but her whole body seemed swollen and inert, as if she were drowned. She pushed and pushed but the baby wouldn’t come out. Her breathing was violent, unbearable to listen to. She slapped at the nurse’s hands when the young woman tried to massage her belly. She wanted nobody to touch her anymore.

She moved about the room like a caged animal, changing position, crouching, rocking her pelvis back and forth, crawling on all fours. She swore in Armenian and Arabic. She grazed her cheek on the rough wool of the rug. When she vomited and clutched at a chair leg, beating at the floor, Lilit guided her back onto the bed. Selim helped her lie down again, then went and sat on a chair in the corner. Anahit’s eyes followed him, but she didn’t speak. The accusation was foremost in her face, plain for all to see.
Accusation of what? That I made her pregnant? That I’m here
at all?

She’d been trying for twelve hours now, it seemed more like days. She didn’t want to go to hospital. Selim thought about ringing an ambulance, hauling her into it even if she screamed and kicked, but he was too tired. Maybe it was time now. Maybe she was ready to birth, and he would be interrupting the process. He was beginning to feel tired and sweaty, couldn’t remember the last time he washed, or had something to eat.
Why are they all looking at me like that? It’s not my fault she can’t do it
properly.

The oldest nurse didn’t want him present at the birth. She said it brought bad luck and punishment for the masculine and feminine principles to be confused at such an amorphous time. Demons would surely come up to earth and take over. Now it seemed as if she was telling the truth. Even his aunt and mother drew him aside and shook their heads, saying, ‘It’s not right, Selim. You should be waiting outside.’ He was tempted, but now he was here; to leave Anahit at this juncture seemed too close to cowardice. If he upset the order of the universe by being at the birth, it was already too late. He helped tie hot towels around her lower back and belly. He brought buckets of steaming water from downstairs and arranged them around the bed. What they were for, he wasn’t quite sure. Perhaps, he told himself as he sat back in the corner, he was expiating in this way for some future sin. Abandonment and escape. It had to be done. He couldn’t survive in this household. But this was not the time.

On the bed, Anahit kept her mouth shut tight against the pain. Now she would not scream. The nurses begged with her to help a little by letting out a breath at least, or by grunting and moaning as other women did, but she kept silent. Her bright rabbit’s eyes stayed fixed on Selim as if he were the only answer.

An hour later, she was dead. He tied the shoelaces on his boots with shaking hands, bending over with one eye on the door in case someone walked in. His bedroom. For a few months, his and Anahit’s. There were still traces of her there: the damp imprint of her head on the pillow next to his, her nightgown flung over the chair when Lilit had undressed her and wrapped her body in a stiff, crackling sheet.

He could hear the keening of the old women his father had engaged, murmured conversations beneath, rattling plates and forks being passed back and forth. The new baby tugging then pausing to scream at the wet nurse’s breast. They christened her Anoush while Anahit was still alive: the choice of name her mother’s last wish. There was a hasty baptism at her bedside by the priest who married them, in case the baby died, too, so at least she could follow her mother to heaven.