Bone Ash Sky (56 page)

Lilit hurried past, wanting to get away from the crush of bodies. Men in turbans and long white robes frowned at her; reminiscent of Suleiman, they made her long for home. Throughout the journey from Der ez Zor to Damascus she did not allow herself to sleep, musing instead over the serene house she’d left behind, its fountains and cleantiled courtyard, missing Suleiman, even Fatima. Mourning the graves of her two dead babies. Dead babies, soldiers, wars. She was one of the few passengers awake at midnight when the driver stopped in the desert for cigarettes and tea; she accepted his own refilled glass and held the steaming liquid to her lips, not drinking.

Endless sands stretched out black and windless in the cold night. Away in the distance a pale-blue flush heralded stars, but when she pointed it out to the driver he smiled with a dazzle of teeth and said that was just a trick the desert djinns played on you – to give you hope and make you lower your guard. ‘No,’ he continued, ‘the moon is what we should be watching for. Our desert, Badiet-es-Sham, is treacherous, like a woman.’

Lilit blushed, thankful he couldn’t see her face in the dark. He leaned toward her and his breath stirred the thread-like hairs at her neck. ‘But the moon is like a mother,’ he said, ‘and she will guide us to the coast.’

Lilit scanned the sky, but the pall that enveloped them was immense, with no beginning and no end. She was glad to crawl back under her blanket in the bus, resting Anahit’s hot cheek on her lap. The desert had made her aware, for the first time since the deportations, of her own insignificance.

She must have dozed for a while as they traversed the valley road from Damascus to Beirut, past the cedars and the Chouf Mountains, because her memories became more distinct then, with no logic of narrative as before, yet with an intensity of images flooding her eyes. Suleiman’s faint shudders, his long, veined arms twisted in death. Fatima’s thin mouth as she stood at the gates of the courtyard and watched Lilit leave the house.

She woke with the jolting of the bus and saw the sea. She’d never seen it before in her life, this great silver sheet of light. She grew up near Lake Van, of course, mirror-blue and ruffled by wind, became sick and afraid of the sand-silted Euphrates on those forced marches, sloping banks the colour of old blood. Then, slowly, she grew to love it over the years as she once loved the lake of her childhood. At times she even plunged with Suleiman into its summer coolness under cover of night; he, leaping and teasing, teaching her to swim.

Yet this sea was alarming and ecstatic all at once in its proximity. In the dawn starkness it snaked alongside the coast road, growing now closer, now further away. The fishing village of Damour glimmered bright with its flat whitewashed rooftops, a blinding extension of the sea itself. Festoons of fishing nets, purple and indigo, were strung between balconies and beaded with spray like diamonds – or tears. She longed to stop the bus, give up her search for Minas, live there in that peaceful place with her daughter. She even roused Anahit to show her its beauty. The little girl grizzled, hugging her doll still closer to her, opened her eyes for a moment then closed them again.

When the bus stopped on the Corniche in Beirut, she smoothed Anahit’s sweaty curls off her forehead and straightened her own wool skirt over her stockings. It was the first time she’d worn European clothes in three decades.

‘Dolly needs comb as well,’ Anahit said. ‘Her hair all messy.’

Lilit combed the black doll’s frizzed locks down with her fingers. Its glassy eyes betrayed no sentiment. She bent down as she gathered their luggage and peered out of the bus window at the city outside, and as she did so a surge of excitement made the tears start to her eyes. Minas was out there somewhere. The Red Cross in Der ez Zor had confirmed the survival of another Pakradounian. It could only be him. He had been waiting for her all these years.

‘Keep close to me and don’t even think of running away,’ she warned her daughter.

She was afraid she’d lose Anahit in this throng of people: street vendors calling their wares in mournful voices as if they despaired of any sales today, beggars screeching and pulling at her mourning garb, foreign men in the uniforms of many armies sitting on the sea wall, eating what she now knew was Western food – chemical-red sausages, minced patties of meat, oily fried potatoes – from the busy braziers that took over the footpath and made it difficult to move.

‘Let’s get away from here,’ she said, and pulled Anahit down past lighted shops and restaurants to the edge of the water. It was slow-going, especially for Anahit: the decline steep and consisting only of pebbles and smashed shards of rock. Finally, they reached the shore. Here at least they could breathe. Anahit was silent, looking about her with wide, shocked eyes. She held her doll in the crook of her arm and checked now and then that the painted porcelain mouth wasn’t crying. Lilit squatted on the smooth pebbles with her daughter and the doll on her lap and whispered in her ear.

‘We’re fine here for a minute, aren’t we? We’ll just catch our breath then go find your uncle.’

They sat, swaying against each other with tiredness, for a few minutes. Lilit picked up one of the pebbles and felt its cool heaviness in her hand.

‘Anahit,’ she said. ‘Watch Mamma.’

She tossed it away and they both watched as it skimmed over the water, barely making a ripple on the surface.

‘Mamma used to play with pebbles on the shore of a lake, far, far away,’ she whispered.

Anahit didn’t answer; she’d fallen asleep again. Lilit took in the fresh air, felt it cleanse her. It was calmer here, the sea spray covered their faces in a fine mist and the ragged fishermen further down the beach called out to each other fondly. The palms behind her rustled with invitation. It was easy to like Beirut, here.

A solitary figure came walking toward them, crunching his boots on the soft surface. Lilit narrowed her eyes in the sunlight and saw he was a soldier, wearing a uniform she couldn’t place. She could see the gun in its holster, see the determination in his huge jaw. In a sudden grip of fear, she hauled Anahit into her arms and began running up the incline to the road. Her luggage lay abandoned on the shore, forgotten. The pebbles thwarted her, they slipped and rolled under her feet and it was all she could do to stop from falling down.

‘Hey,’ the soldier was calling in Arabic. ‘It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.’

She kept scrabbling up the incline. Anahit had woken fully now and was protesting with high, sharp cries. The doll fell to the ground and Anahit squirmed to release herself from her mother’s grip, kicking out with legs and arms.

‘Dolly gone,’ she wailed. ‘She fall down!’

‘Here,’ the soldier said, holding out the doll to her. He caught up with them in a few long strides and now stood before Lilit, his bloodshot eyes peering into her hot, sweat-streaked face. ‘Are you okay, madam? Is there anything I can do to help?’

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she murmured.

He looked at Anahit, standing now at his feet and squinting up at him, clutching at her doll.

‘Is your mamma telling the truth?’

Anahit looked up at him, tears still wet in her eyes. She was silent. Lilit felt a sob choke her, swallowed it down.

‘Can you help us find my brother?’

Minas gazed at the little girl as if to try to commit to memory all that bound him to her: the silent surge of blood and her single Levantine curve of nose and chin. She had arrived out of nowhere with her mother, as if they had materialised out of the ground. He hadn’t had any time to bark at Siran for coffee and sweets from inside the house.

He merely stood by the door, dropping the tangled necklace he’d been repairing for some extra cash, its frail links broken. He blinked at the illicit curls and gash of mouth he imagined to be a legacy of the girl’s Turkish father. A static scene flashed through his head. Another little girl, bright-haired too, lying among smashed vegetables ground into dirt. She had looked asleep, if it wasn’t for her smashed skull, red of tomato, pale yellow, soft grey—
Enough. That was more than twenty years ago.

This little girl was glaring up at him with all the ferocity a two-and-a-half-year-old could muster. She knew her mamma was upset and it could only be this strange man causing her to tremble so.

‘How could you have let him touch you?’

Lilit stood open-faced before her brother’s fury. One hand rested on her daughter’s forehead, shielding her pale skin from the sun.

‘He was my husband, Minas.’

‘What did everyone die for? For you to be slave to a Turk?’

When Lilit thought of Suleiman her voice grew slight, like a little girl’s. She waited for the wave of grief to pass, looked at her brother. He refused to acknowledge her, continued staring at Anahit as if she might suddenly spring up and bite him.

‘He was an
odar
,’ Minas finally said. ‘Not like us. A heretic.’

‘Really, brother, you’re as bad as a Jew.’

He seemed not to hear her, choking on his words.

‘Far better to have been killed than succumb to that.’

Then he realised someone else had said that to him, once, a long time ago.
Mamma.
And he had turned away, leaving her behind in his desperation to survive. Lilit leaned forward and pointed her finger at him.

‘Don’t you dare say it! You—you don’t know what I went through. You have no idea.’

‘Keep your voice down. Standing out here in full view of the neighbours, arguing like Arabs. Come inside.’

‘No.’

‘I would have escaped, Lilit, if it had been me.’

‘You know nothing.’

He recoiled at the disdain in her voice, sat down, shaky, outside his house. A few bougainvillea blossoms fell about his face and he brushed them away with a show of impatience. He gestured to the other stool. Siran peered out from the gloom of the interior, frightened by her husband’s shouting. Lilit continued to stand while the little girl sat down.

Minas tried not to look at his sister, at the dark spots of pigmentation under her eyes; she had aged. Where was the merry, laughing, fibbing girl of that vanished summer? Replaced by this dour woman in widow’s weeds, eyes dimmed, too Islamic even without the scarf. At length, he spoke again. His voice came out in a croak.

‘How did you find me?’

‘The Red Cross in Der ez Zor. They told me there was a Pakradounian here.’

Lilit saw Minas gazing at her daughter with mingled fear, confusion and wonder. She had no idea what he saw. Anahit reached upward where she sat, fat hands opening and closing, grasping at air. She was trying to catch one of the papery blossoms that rained down on her from the sudden wind. The bougainvillea vines around her stirred and flickered, sun making splashes on her upraised, cameo-shaped face. Minas concentrated on the movement of shadow across her half-familiar features; he blinked once, her ancestry blurred, eyes and mouth watery, sliding in and out of focus like one of those new Leica cameras he’d seen downtown, a shutter on slow speed.

‘She looks so much like our mother,’ he breathed.

‘You’re imagining it.’

The little girl decided to smile, vaguely, in no particular direction.
She could be smiling at the sun,
Minas thought, the Beirut sun beating hot as a hand on their backs and the crowns of their heads.

‘Her name’s Anahit.’

Minas put out his hand.

‘Say hello to your uncle.’

Minas stood aside and watched his sister decide – after much cajoling by Siran – to stay the night. Siran made up a bed on the floor before Lilit’s eyes, said she wouldn’t hear of her leaving, brought out iced water and spoon sweets, stroked Lilit’s fine, grey-threaded hair.

Lilit protested, trying to help, saying a pregnant woman shouldn’t be exerting herself so. Siran smiled and hugged her, saying she missed her own sisters, that it was so good to have another woman in the house. Minas watched his sister acquiesce to his wife’s boundless innocence. She led Lilit around the tiny two-roomed house, showing her bits and pieces picked up at market sales, chipped jugs and bowls and tablecloths she now afforded heirloom status. He saw Lilit inwardly turn her nose at them, remembering her own fine Turkish things, no doubt, trying not to let her arrogance show.

What riches have you left behind, eh, Lilit? Blood money.
He laughed out loud and Siran rebuked him for scaring the little girl. But Anahit was not scared. Something about him fascinated her so she allowed him to take her hand and introduce her as his niece to the curious neighbours that crowded the surrounding streets.

They walked through stone-arched alleys to Municipality Square and took tea with his elderly employer at the jewellery shop, exclaiming together at the turquoise studs and rows of gold rings Minas had fashioned. Anahit chose a beaten-silver bracelet for her very own at the shopkeeper’s insistence. It was large, with heavy links and a design of Armenian crosses, and meant for a grown woman: they looped it twice to fit onto her baby wrist. Minas engraved the bracelet with the family name:
Pakradounian.
The name not of her father but her uncle.

He showed Anahit crooked rows of Armenian titles at open stalls, couldn’t resist stopping to look at the new volumes, his boyhood thirst for books still unslaked. He shopped for fresh lamb at his usual butcher in the covered market. There wasn’t much for sale anymore, what with the war still on, but his friend always managed to find some good meat that wasn’t all fat or bone.