Bone Ash Sky (7 page)

She helped the Palestinians dynamite a three-inch-thick steel door the old man had installed against just such calamities, ripping up brocade curtains for sheets, pulling apart faux Regency couches for makeshift beds. There was something seductive in destruction. She even gave them a set of crockery once destined for her own dowry, rose-patterned ware her mother had ordered all the way from England. It didn't hurt as much as she expected; she'd given up on marriage. Especially with Selim. Hope-chest pillowcases, her mother's honeymoon bedspread. All left to her in the convoluted will.

She didn't regret what she did. She saw the fate of others from the south camping in theatre foyers, alleys behind shops, in the few parks of the city, being robbed of the meagre possessions they had, the women raped, even knifed to death, by Christian extremists.

She and Hadiya's mother had become friends of a sort, especially now they were both living alone. Rouba's husband was fighting with a Shia militia against the Israelis, defending the port town of Tyre. No word from him for months now. She brought Sanaya damaged fruit from the stall she worked at; they washed their clothes downstairs together in the courtyard, hanging out sheets to dry in the sun, gossiping and worrying over their health, their hair, their sanity.

Sanaya looked after Hadiya when she came home from school. She'd grown to love the little girl, as though her existence somehow held the key to Sanaya's own continued survival. If Hadiya was all right, then everything would be. The city breathed along with her. So she fussed, scolded Hadiya when she sulked, made her walk to school with her back straight and toes pointed outward, heeding nothing, ignoring fear.

She kissed the nape of Hadiya's neck when she was done and the smell of milk and warmth brought on a renewed rush of tenderness.

‘Now run and put your shoes on. Here's the photo. Hurry, we don't want to get into trouble from the teacher.'

Hadiya collided with a young man at the open door.

‘Uncle Issa!'

Sanaya took in the spectacle of the man, not yet a man, almost still a boy: incongruous in his torn battle fatigues, tarnished cartridges slung about his hips, the lankness of his shoulder-length hair. He carried a Kalashnikov and couldn't have been more than twenty. As he sidled into the room, he scooped Hadiya in his arms and kissed the top of her head.

‘I heard your voice all the way outside, Hadi. You're way too loud for a little girl. Where's your ma?'

Hadiya didn't answer but instead looked up at him with something like fear. Sanaya felt something in her retract. Although he spoke coherently enough to his niece, even tenderly, his whole stance revealed a terrible weariness and indifference, resignation bordering on insanity. He eased Hadiya to the floor and dropped to his knees before her.

‘She shouldn't be out of the house. Setting a bad example again. And where's your scarf gone?'

At this, he put his head in his hands and rocked on his heels.

‘I should never have gone and left you, now your father's—'

Knowledge passed through Sanaya like sickness. She had the presence of mind to put out a hand before he could finish the sentence.

‘Go now, Hadiya. Samara's mummy is waiting downstairs; I heard her honk the horn. I'll look after your uncle.' She hugged Hadiya goodbye and led the uncle to the divan.

Hadiya hesitated for a second, spun on her heels and was gone. Sanaya hurried into the kitchen, trying not to let the young man see her consternation at his appearance. She looked out the window, to make sure Hadiya got safely into the waiting car.

‘I'll get you a drink. Something strong?'

‘Water,' he whispered.

From her vantage point at the kitchen counter she studied him without allowing him to see her. His eyes were hooded, surprising her, when he glanced up briefly, with their blueness. His hair so matted she could hardly make out its colour, but lightish and web-like where it waved at his neck. Small hands, girlish fingers, a hint of golden down on his exposed forearm. He was still a child. When she gave him the glass of water he drank so quickly some spilled on his front. She wanted to dab at the stain with a napkin, but there seemed no point amid the general disorder.

She didn't ask him how Hadiya's father died. Her instinct was to get him to take a shower, but she knew how this could be misconstrued. Instead she sat beside him on the divan until he fell asleep. She removed his boots and covered him with a cotton sheet. His body a dead weight at her touch.

As usual bombs fell and she could hear them far away across town. One explosion was fairly close that day and rattled the empty vase on the mantel. She put it in a cupboard. She'd latticed all her windows, the shower screen, mirrors and glass doors with masking tape. Only the picture frames, etchings of a faded pre-war Lebanon and solemn, pinched portraits of her forbears, were free of the patterns of potential annihilation.

She felt safe though; the bombs never came as close as here. It would be very unlikely if her block were to suffer a direct hit. Although she lived in west Beirut, it was the southern suburbs, the Palestinian camps of Sabra-Shatila, Bourj al Barajneh, that bore the brunt. Her city was divided by a no-man's land of crushed steel and toppled buildings, a Green Line not many had the courage to cross. The swarming camps of the Palestinians were teeming with filth and fear now, the Armenian quarter and Christian east, where Selim lived, still remaining untouched. But for how much longer?

She went out onto the balcony, trying to see. Nothing, only the sea before her: serene, limpid, a great swallowing eye. Sea draining colour from city and sky, sucking light from the pavement, the people, the pale, unhealthy fronds of the few palms still left standing on the Corniche. Hadiya, somewhere among those mismatched and rubbled streets, sitting up straight at her desk as Sanaya had taught her, mouthing her multiplication tables. A normal little girl at school, a normal day. Here, by the water, it was as if the war didn't exist.

Issa still didn't wake. Sanaya wandered around her apartment, straightening an ornament here, jerking a doily flat, rearranging the silk flowers just so. How pointless it all seemed. There wasn't much to do; she cleaned incessantly. She went into her bedroom, kicked off her slippers. For how many years, how many days and days had she looked at these same yellowish walls, these glossy brocaded curtains, the green upholstered chair her mother chose when she first married? It stood at a deliberately casual angle to the corner, the way her mother would place it when she was alive. Nothing in this room had changed. It was a monument, a mausoleum. Sanaya was born in this bed, napped under its covers. As a child, she would hide in the space between the bed and the wall, playing with her dolls, serenely content in a world of her own making. She never entered the room when she was a teenager.

Now she lay on top of the bedspread, staring at the ceiling. The plaster rose was cracked and flaking; a large grey moth nearby stayed very still, miming death.

Hadiya's father was dead.

She thought about breaking the news to Rouba, decided it was better for her to hear it from Issa. Was this cowardice or logic? Stupid men, always fighting. She wondered if Issa saw him die. She tried to nap. Restless. The vein in her right temple itching. She got up to make Arabic coffee, sipped it slowly while standing at the stove, watching the sleeping man. In repose, his face was gracious as a child's. She turned the cup over on its saucer to tell her own fortune, knowing this ploy could never work. Fate knew just who was cheating.

Sanaya woke early the next morning and sat up in bed. She was so still she could hardly feel herself breathe: statue, column, pillar of salt. A pale dawn spread itself out over the sea, smooth as a fresh sheet. The few last stars shimmered on the horizon and wind from the ocean set the palm trees on the Corniche alight with the first of the sun's rays. She sat, holding her dressing-gown closed over her breasts with one hand and Selim's erect penis with the other. She studied his sleeping face, moved his foreskin up and down indifferently, then, suddenly changing her mind, crept out of bed.

She sat on her balcony overlooking the sea, alert to any noises from the bedroom, and lit a cigarette from a large box – Cuban this time. Another gift from Selim, her ritual before breakfast. She exhaled with a voluptuous slowness, happy if only for a moment to sit, to revel in her aloneness, in her seeming safety. Her apartment was intact, unlike the other blocks she passed on her walks, doll's houses with facades torn off, women bathing, cooking, hanging washing in full view, assailed by the honking of cars and trucks. It allowed her to feel contained, with its creamy ornate ceilings, flaking pink-papered walls, the concrete balcony that was beginning to crumble in the sea mist that sprayed over it every evening in fine silver beads. A pearl necklace just like her mother's, kept in a flat blue satin box. Tiny bubbles, like the faint sheen of sweat on Selim's upper lip when he grew passionate, when he made his pronouncements on politics and women, women and religion, when they made love.

She made some tea, drank it gazing at the horizon, now milky white, indistinct, heat haze emanating from the city like sleeping breath. The tulip-shaped tumbler sparkled with refracted light. Hadiya always insisted on drinking her chocolate milk from one, entailing many refills. Yesterday morning she had pointed to the chandelier in the dining room and said she was drinking from the very same glasses that held those tiny electric candles. Little glasses filled with light. Little Hadiya, loved more with each passing day, loved more desperately because she was in so much danger. Her uncle Issa, out in the streets, fighting with Hezbollah against the PLO, against the Christian Phalange, against his own Shia comrades in Amal, and the Sunni Mourabitoun militia. Hand to hand for an alley or gutter, a few square inches of rubble to make the futility worth it for a while.

Sanaya shaded her eyes, peered closer, stood up. Planes. Planes arcing into the city, making for the Corniche, whirr and buzz of machinery flattening sound. Planes. Another bombing. She stood still at the rail, not daring to move. All around her, daisy-yellow pieces of paper dropping from the sky, so fast and thick she bowed her head and shut her eyes until the fluttering ceased and the silence was replaced by familiar sounds: horns honking, screech of tires, sough of sea, neighbours below exclaiming, leaflets in their clammy hands. She picked one up from the balcony floor: ‘10 June 1982. We shall capture the city in a short period. We have committed a large part of our air, naval and ground forces for the area of Beirut—'

She looked up. A series of quick taps at the door. Rouba came running in with more leaflets and the morning paper, already smudged by the sweat pouring from under her arms.

‘Sanaya, did you see what those Israelis—'

She didn't finish. Sanaya ran to the bedroom and closed the door on Selim, carefully, so as not to wake him. She turned to Rouba.

‘My little cousin is sleeping here. Her mother had to work overnight in the factory and couldn't look after her.'

Rouba nodded slowly, keeping up the pretence.

Sanaya crumpled all the leaflets and threw them in the kitchen bin, grabbed the newspaper and spread it out in front of her, reading the blurred headlines. She thought she might be reading the same line over and over but couldn't be sure. Her breath caught in her throat, a lump she pushed down with the heel of her hand. Her eyes filled. Was it fear? It couldn't be. Anger? Nostalgia for the city that she knew now – knew in the quiet unshakeable way of the dreaded truth – would be destroyed again and again?
Operation Peace for Galilee
. Rouba grabbed one of the balls of paper and smoothed it out behind her back. Sanaya looked up.

‘Tea, Rouba? Would you like some tea?'

‘I need to go downstairs in a minute. Hadiya might wake and will be scared if I'm not there. Give me half the paper; you can have the rest.'

When Rouba divided the paper, Sanaya turned to the back pages and read the atrocities of the day: kidnappings, bombings, torture, interrogations.
Two hundred dead in a single Israeli air strike.
Another day in Beirut. Except for one piece of news confirming those floating missives: the Israeli land army was sweeping north to Beirut and would reach the outskirts of the city in four days. She stood, shaking. Her voice when she spoke was unrecognisable.