Bone Ash Sky (59 page)

I don’t feel so fine. I let Julius out into the downstairs courtyard and crawl into Chaim’s rumpled bed to await his evening return from Nabatiye. He’s been away for a week, still clearing the south of landmines planted by his own country’s army.

At sunset I call him at work, impatient.

‘I’m already in bed.’

‘Good, can’t wait.’

‘I mean I’m sick. The usual thing. Are you coming home soon?’

‘Yeah. Don’t fall asleep until I come home, okay? It’s been such a frustrating week. I keep removing these mines and the bastard Hezbollah just keep using the cleared space to launch more bombs into Israel. Seems pretty futile, doesn’t it?’

‘At least you’re trying. I just ran away from my responsibility.’

‘Tell me when I get back. My driver’s waiting.’

I smile at the woman, who smiles back. She says her name is Bilqis and I reply in Arabic that improves as I gain confidence. As I watch her prepare to make tea, I marvel at how long a simple domestic act can take without running water or electricity. The little girl ignores me, drawing complex patterns in the dirt outside the door. Watching them like this, they look so familiar it hurts. I lean forward.

‘Bilqis? Was it you, with a little girl, that I saw at the tribunal recently? The war crimes tribunal?’

Bilqis places a battered saucepan on the primus stove, kneels down before it.

‘Why? Were you there?’

‘Yes. Just in my capacity as a journalist. I knew I recognised you from somewhere. I felt that it wasn’t a very good outcome for families of the victims – no reparations.’

She looks at my recorder.

‘Is it off? Good. Understand me. There will never be reparations for people like us. We are not human to them, so why should they treat us as such?’

She turns away and spoons tea-leaves into a copper pot and sugar into small glasses. I’m not sure whether she’s annoyed with me. We sit in silence watching the water boil. Finally the tea is made and she reaches under the bed for a tin of high-protein, dust-flavoured biscuits, courtesy of UNRWA.

I turn on my tape recorder.

‘You don’t mind if we start the interview now?’

Bilqis nods many times, suddenly looking nervous and overly hospitable.

‘How long have you lived here, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Since 1948. Except for a period in the early eighties.’

I look around the low-ceilinged, flimsy room. This woman has lived in the same hovel for close to fifty years.

‘What happened in that period?’

‘My sister and I lived with a relative for a time while the camps were rebuilt.’

‘Rebuilt?’

‘There was some destruction of buildings.’

I look at the opened UNRWA boxes under the bed, away from her face.

‘The Phalange?’

‘Yes. And the Israelis.’

I decide not to respond to the wider criticism.

‘And how old are you now, if you don’t mind?’

‘Too old to remember. Nearly seventy.’

‘Is this your granddaughter? She’s very beautiful.’

Except for the hair,
I want to add. The girl’s ponytail is matted and sticky, unwashed for what looks like months. She pretends not to hear the spoken compliment but a grin appears at the corners of her mouth. She tries to appear mirthless when she catches me looking at her, intent on concentrating elsewhere and not looking into my eyes.

‘She turns twelve in November. Both parents dead.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Her mother was blown up by a car bomb. CIA involvement, they say.’

‘Who says?’

I can tell she doesn’t want to say any more. I turn off the tape recorder, she notices and relaxes visibly.

‘Our newspapers suspected the Americans were involved. Then made it look like the Muslims did it.’

‘I’m sorry. If it helps a little, I’m an orphan too. My mother died giving birth to me. My father was murdered when I was sent to America. Casualties of war, eh?’

Bilqis doesn’t laugh and I press on, feeling a growing sense of desperation, the hypocrisy of playing this chatty, cheery role I don’t believe in.

‘Have you any ongoing help? Welfare services, counselling?’

‘There’s a young woman – a welfare worker – who comes once a week and talks to us. She’s from the Red Crescent. We like Rowda, don’t we, Inam?’

The girl sidles over to her grandmother and places a hand in her lap. It seems a strange gesture for a girl her age: deliberately childish, theatrical. She nods, dramatically shy. Bilqis ruffles her ponytail and continues.

‘Rowda’s Australian-born, with Lebanese parents. We feel she understands us.’

I lower my chin. Does this mean I don’t?

‘So, she’s a counsellor? She helps you speak your pain?’

‘She tries. It is hard for her to make a difference. Too many deaths.’

I swallow.

‘Is there anything I can do?’

Bilqis seems not to have heard.

‘Too many deaths in our family.’

She shakes her head, tears pooling in her eyes. The girl wags her head too, making fun of her grandmother’s solemnity, winks and pokes her tongue out at me. Again, it’s such a self-consciously childish gesture I laugh. Bilqis notices.

‘Inam, if I catch you doing that again!’

The girl smirks and points at me. ‘My uncle’s in prison.’

‘Inam, go play outside. That’s no news to be telling everyone.’

Inam bangs the door behind her, bare feet slapping in the dust.

‘She’s very sharp.’

‘Too sharp for her own good. True, she heard me say I wanted to ask you about her uncle, my sister Amal’s only son. She had him late in life, when nobody thought she would have any more children. I ask all the journalists if they can help, and some of them write a piece here and there. Not many. Though you, being an orphan yourself, can understand that if Sayed doesn’t get out of prison there is no family to look after Inam when I am gone. The poor boy has been wrongly accused. Could you help him?’

‘How could I do that?’

Now I realise why the woman was so eager to meet me initially. She needs help and thinks I’m gullible enough to believe her.

‘Let me tell you about Sayed and you will understand.’

I shift in my seat. Immediately Bilqis notices and looks me in the eye.

‘You do not think I am telling the truth?’

I hesitate, falter before I speak. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

‘Then I will tell you. My nephew was – is – a good boy. He was bored and disillusioned, as are all young men. Especially Palestinians. What do they have to lose? I ask you. He became involved with the wrong people and they pinned this lie to him. They were jealous he was able to go and study in New York for a year. Now they say he bombed a building there. I ask you, how could a mere boy do that? He is misguided, yes, but never a militant.’

I cut her off.

‘What’s his surname? Have I read about him in the papers?’

‘What does it matter? Sayed Ali.’

The name seems familiar to me, I’m not sure why. I’ve read so much on the war by now that everything has blurred. ‘Is that a common surname?’ I ask.

Bilqis stops stirring her tea. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I’ve seen it referred to in my reading. I can’t remember in which context.’

‘Many Palestinian and Shia families have this name. An old and renowned name. What is the matter?’

‘Nothing—I … I need to get more information on your nephew before I can do anything. But I still don’t know how I can help you.’

Bilqis puts her hand on my cheek.

‘Just by writing his story. He’s innocent.’

Bilqis gazes after the journalist when she is gone. A good girl. Sincere. She even looks Arabic, except for those non-existent eyebrows. Her name is Pakradounian, and Bilqis suspected right away who her father was. She had a distinct feeling when the UN worker rang and asked if anyone would be available to meet an Armenian–American journalist named Pakradounian, new to the country after a long absence.

Now that the girl has confirmed her identity by speaking so openly about her past, Bilqis knows for certain. Her father was Sanaya’s lover, the Phalange militiaman. The man Issa killed. The girl is on a quest; it’s written all over her face. No matter. Her need for atonement will spur her into helping Sayed. Maybe she can get him out then poor Amal can see her son again, and Inam can have her uncle back. He was always good to her, treated her as his own child.

She can’t rely on me for much longer,
Bilqis thinks, bending to fetch a beaker of water for her cooking. The bucket is nearly empty and she has to go outside and down the street to the pump. On the way back, water spills onto her wrists and feet, the bucket growing heavier with each step. She stops, puts it down.
Look at me, trembling at the slightest exertion. I’m
getting old now. Time to die. Seen too much. Forgiven so much.

Once inside again, she measures two handfuls of rice into her only, blackened saucepan, trying not to drop any grains on the floor. It has become harder over the last few weeks to do anything without some slight mishap. She eases the pan over the stove. Rice again. Boiled rice with condensed milk and sugar, a stick of cinnamon, a splash of rosewater, cloves for flavour.
At least we have our spices.

Inam likes that dish. Issa liked it too. It was one of the only meals he would eat with relish, without picking at it like a three-legged sparrow. That and eggs. Fresh, if they could get them. None of that powdered stuff. And then only if the Israelis didn’t confiscate the hens over some imagined transgression, if the poor birds hadn’t succumbed to the weather or the lack of grain, or hysteria caused by the bombs.
Thank
Allah there are fresh eggs now. And no more bombs, not for the moment
anyway.
Fresh eggs every morning, the hard-boiled yolk so perfect, a shiny crescent moon.

Issa, her blue-eyed boy. She can still see him at the breast, his mute gaze following every twitch of her muscles, every facial tic. That little topknot she kept unshorn at the crown of his head, easy handle for the angels if he should die, to swoop down and take him up to Paradise. Dead for all these years now, twelve already, and yet when something funny happens she’ll still say to herself,
Must remember to tell Issa that
. Or if Inam makes a joke, or acts silly, as she often does, Bilqis will turn around and nearly say, ‘My darling Issa, did you see your crazy daughter?’

What a pure boy he was. Pure and committed to Islam. Not that she condoned the violence. He killed too many people, too many women, children. ‘Holy war, Mumma,’ he would say. ‘The Prophet tells us to fight against infidels if they threaten our religion. And they have.’ She would shake her head, knowing it was useless to argue. ‘Killing is killing, Issa, my boy,’ was all she allowed herself to end with. ‘No matter who is doing it or why.’

When Issa killed himself she covered her face with her veil and did not stir from bed for days. She felt abandoned by Allah. The only person who could rouse her was Sanaya, with her tender face and the promise of a grandchild. Sanaya, who she’d hated and distrusted at first, judging her liaison with the Armenian Phalangist. Rouba had told Bilqis all she knew.

She stirs the white glug in her saucepan. It thickens; she pours in a drop more milk, turns off the heat. She sits on the end of the bed to catch her breath and watches Inam come in the door, after having seen the young woman off to the edge of the camp.

‘What took you so long, child?’

‘She bought me an ice-cream at the shop. We sat outside.’

‘Do you like her?’

Inam puffs her cheeks out in that way she affects, considering. ‘I like her enough.’

She puts a finger into the bubbling saucepan with a sidelong glance at her grandmother, grimaces at her then licks it clean.

‘I warned you – next time I see you do that, no supper! I’ll eat it all myself.’

Inam steps up to her, placing her head on the ample lap.

‘Play with my hair, Grandma, and tell me those old stories.’

Bilqis twirls a lock with her finger, her mind elsewhere, then pushes Inam off.

‘You’re wriggling like two fish in a bottle! Enough. No playing until we manage to brush that hair of yours. Come on, get me the comb.’