Bone Ash Sky (60 page)

Inam flounces away, through the front door.

‘You can’t catch me,’ Bilqis hears her shout, before she’s turned the corner and gone. ‘I’m a freedom fighter and I’ve got a gun!’

BEIRUT, 1983

I
ssa slept late every morning now. He told Sanaya the mosque could wait. His mother could wait. She was still living downstairs with Rouba, at times frightened by his liaison with Sanaya. He repeated all her dire warnings to Sanaya, and she wasn’t sure whether he was doing it to make fun of his mother or to warn her himself.
She’s dangerous, my boy. She
could hurt you. She’s too old for you; she’s Sunni; she doesn’t wear the veil.
His mother’s moods changed hourly, he said. Last night she was hostile to Sanaya when they met in the courtyard; at other times, she seemed to welcome her as a sane influence on her son.

Sanaya lay awake by his side now, one hand resting on his chest, listening to him cry and shout in his dreams. She would have liked to think he had fewer nightmares now they were together, but she knew they had increased.

She wanted her love to enfold him, buffer him, keep him safe. The Israelis had finally left the west of the city, but had handed over its jurisdiction to Phalangist militiamen – not before giving them the honorific of Lebanese Army. It was not safe for Issa to be out on the streets alone, as the Christians were rounding up and imprisoning Palestinians and Lebanese activists and militiamen. There had been rumours of gross beatings, torture. Nobody came out of the prisons alive.

Yet Issa seemed unable to accept her concern most days, scorning it as an illusion, a temptation, an invention of the devil to plunge him further into the dark. He went out each morning for a week, returning late at night with a haggard expression in his eyes. Told her he’d been to the mosque again. She pleaded with him. He lowered his eyes and muttered. ‘Orders. I have to.’

But he didn’t leave her. If anything, he began to ensconce himself still further into the apartment, cooking up messes of condensed milk and eggs late at night which he slurped in bed, sleeping with Sanaya, reading to her, bathing together, making love. Those were the good times, the sane times, when he didn’t give credence to his many fears.

Sometimes she’d wake in a panic, feeling her love for him more akin to that of a mother than an equal partner. Then she disturbed his sleep silently and held his penis, feeling it grow and pulse like a tropical flower in the dark, talking to it, stroking it into life. She convinced herself by her actions that her love for him was sexual, and adult, and whole.

He sobbed in his sleep. She patted him, soothed him, murmured in his ear.

‘It’s all right, Issa. I’m here. It’s all right.’

She could tell he was still ashamed of his fears. On particularly bad mornings, when the nightmares had been relentless and violent, he took his Koran into the bathroom and sat on the toilet with it until lunchtime. She usually ignored him, hoping he would resolve it himself, continued with her small tasks, waited for Rouba to come so they could sit and talk in the kitchen in whispers.

Today she kicked the bathroom door and banged on it with her fists.

‘Who are you in love with, Issa? Me or the fucking book?’

He rushed out through the door, almost knocking her over, brandishing the Koran over his head.

‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me.’

She was already walking down the corridor to the kitchen. He ran after her and pinned her against the wall.

‘Blasphemer! How could I even think you would understand?’

‘Understand what? That you’re a fanatic? Ha! If only I’d listened to my reason.’

His grip tightened on her upper arms until he was pinching into her flesh.

‘It’s not too late,’ he said.

His voice was squeaky, uncertain, the anger squeezed out of it.

‘For what?’

‘To throw me out. I’ll go now if you want me to.’

She felt his grip relax on her arms. The Koran was wedged between her ribs and the wall, an unwieldy barrier to any comfort. She sighed, letting the anger wash out of her. Issa followed suit, breathing heavily into her neck, his head lolling on her shoulder. He seemed exhausted, tired out by his struggle over who he wanted to be.

Selim walked down the rutted pathways of the Armenian quarter with firm strides. Streetlights were turning on one by one; it was nearly dusk. One last strip of sky on the horizon, alive in a wild-rose glow. He stopped to watch it fade. He was surprised the lights still worked at all in this part of the city. Each time he passed beneath one, it lit around his head as if he was controlling its flicker pulse with his own forward thrust of movement. His determination. In the lineaments of his body. To see his grown-up daughter. To see the baby he abandoned. Anoush.

He wanted to atone to his family, his daughter – for something; he wasn’t sure what. Everything. He wanted to explain to them that he wasn’t as bad as they thought. He peered into open doors and windows, stopped again in mid-step at the smell of meat cooking, children crowding around the stove demanding their dinner. Home-reared lamb in a rich cream sauce. Pearl onions and herbs. Shrill sounds of television, cartoons dubbed into Arabic. The smell of Armenian food made his eyes water, rather than his mouth, memory hurting too much for the quick response of simple pleasure. He walked past families in brightly lit rooms, safe from the outside, oblivious to his rheumy gaze.

Nobody else hurrying along the street gave him a second glance. He must look Armenian, then. He’d never been aware of it growing up. He was dressed in civilian clothes, a loose beige jacket and tie, linen trousers. All that sacrifice coming to nothing. Better to find Anoush now, explain. See her face. See if she bore any traces of his genes. Ask her forgiveness.

He carried a terracotta pot of pink cyclamens under his jacket in the hope that she would accept it – and him. He thought of bringing spirits or wine, but the gift would have seemed too worldly, too disrespectful of her youthful position. Flowers, more than anything else, signalled the humility of his intentions. He would give her back her mother’s bracelet too. It belonged to her more than ever now.

When he reached the marketplace and its crooked row of awnings, he seemed to know where to go. He made for his father’s jewellery shop, remembered exactly where it used to be.
Could Father still be in
there?
It was late, he would have shut the shop and walked home to his dinner. He pressed his nose against the glass. The shop was dark; at first glance he saw only his own face, reflected against rows of silver bracelets just like the one he wore, and drops of turquoise startling his eyes.

He could squint and see the long wooden-and-glass counter he would sit on as a boy. He could dimly see the outline of the cash drawer, gleaming display cases ranged against the far wall. He remembered the little boy he’d been: too solemn, tow-haired, precise, counting out the money at the end of the day and handing it to his father, who wrote the amount down in a large, leather-bound ledger. He squashed his eye against the cold glass. The ledger wasn’t sitting at the left end of the counter as it always did. Not like Father at all; he was such a stickler for order and tradition.

He looked around at the teeming street:
Now, where is my father’s
house from here?
He’d been driven here, certainly, but it had always been night and he had always been drunk. Now he was disoriented and afraid of what he might find.

An old man in a felt fedora brushed past as Selim looked up to the street signs at the crossroads, Armenian script blurring in the pale rain that had just begun to fall.

‘Need some help, son?’

Selim cupped one hand over his forehead, trying to stop the rain from trickling into his eyes and mouth.

‘Urfa Street. I’m looking for the Pakradounians.’

The old man slapped his own thigh and whooped. Selim stepped back, alarmed at his enthusiasm.

‘I knew you were one of them! I said to myself, Bedros, old man, if that’s not a Pakradounian, I’ll milk my own goat! I saw you looking in the shop window and decided to follow you and find out. So, which one of them are you, now?’

‘Selim. Minas’s only son.’

‘You? You’re the wild one that ran away! And to think that I, old Bedros, have the pleasure of taking you back into the fold. Talk of prodigal sons! And to think you’ve gotten so fine too, so handsome, so—I don’t know how to put it.’

‘Lebanese?’ Selim suggested.

‘Well, I wouldn’t have put it that way, but now that you’ve mentioned it—’

The old man cocked his head to one side in the rain and surveyed Selim critically. He seemed to have run out of things to say.

‘How is my father?’

The old man pursed his lips, licked them sympathetically.

‘You didn’t know? He’s passed on, my dear boy. Died many years ago. Fifteen or sixteen, it would be now, I think. He’s well at peace now. I’m sorry.’

Selim caught his breath. ‘I left—so long ago. It’s just hitting me now—’

He slumped onto the street sign, wiping the rain from his cheeks. The old man took his arm.

‘Come, come, I’ll take you to your aunt Lilit.’

‘Her?’ Selim’s voice was low, frightening. ‘I don’t want to look at her. Is my mother there?’

Bedros hesitated. ‘Ah, my boy.’ He patted Selim fondly. ‘Your mamma is in the nursing home. You can go visit her tomorrow. She’s forgotten who she is. Your aunt Lilit says—’

‘I don’t want to know what Lilit says.’

‘Come, come then; rest at my house. I’m only next door. You’ll catch your death if we stay out here jabbering. And whatever you think, Lilit will really be so pleased to see you; she’s not so well either these days …’

He trailed off as they came to the beginning of Urfa Street. Selim stopped and could faintly discern his childhood home in the drizzle and approaching darkness. The bougainvillea was still there, luxuriant, flinging deep magenta blooms onto the upstairs balcony: flat, dark foliage dripping moisture onto the eaves. The window shutters and French doors were still unpainted, rotting further in the rain.

‘Uncle. Uncle Bedros. I meant to ask you—I had a child with my cousin Anahit, a little girl. Is she—?’

Bedros squeezed Selim’s arm.

‘She’s gone to America, my boy. As soon as she turned sixteen, they packed her off to some expensive foreign school. A little less than two years ago now. She never stopped asking about you, I heard—hey, where are you going?’

Bedros stood at the corner of Urfa Street, hands outstretched, watching Selim vanish into the rain.

Selim sat at home on the carpet. A dark wet stain spread under his buttocks. His clothes and hair were sodden with rain but he couldn’t seem to get up and change. He had an open bottle of whisky between his legs and another on its side, rolled near the door. The cyclamen lay discarded, limp and waterlogged, smelling of sorrow and sweetness.

His daughter had gone away and he hadn’t even known. Could he not have sensed it? That she was no longer breathing the same sea air, hearing the same bombs and artillery in her sleep? To America, where she would forget her language, her culture, him. He should never have left her. Could he go and find her now? But he couldn’t leave Beirut. And now it was too late, everything too late.

He pressed the receiver to his ear and listened to the shrill ringing as he gulped down another shot.

‘Answer the phone, damn you.’

The telephone continued to ring. Sanaya was not at home.

‘Damn you, damn you, damn you!’

He put down the receiver and smashed his glass against the coffee table. It made a teeth-aching, unbearable sound. He drank from the bottle. The painful sting of liquid warmed him inside and gave him clarity, cancelling out the cold and damp and confusion of his body. He tried the number again. This time, it was picked up after only one ring.

‘Stop calling or I’ll kill you.’

He recognised the voice.

‘I need to speak to Sanaya.’

He could sense the muffled sound of a hand cupping the receiver, as if the other man was afraid to be heard.

‘I said I will kill you. Don’t make it happen sooner than it needs to.’