Bone Ash Sky (72 page)

‘You won't,' I whisper, next to his face. ‘You won't.'

He turns over in the bed to kiss me, his cheeks wet against mine.

‘It's hard for me, Anoush. Here I am, feeling that I'm betraying my family and my people by being here in the first place, and then feeling as if I'm betraying you if I'm truly myself. I'm just making it up as I go along.'

I stop, exhale.

‘I still want to help him, Chaim. All of them.'

‘I know. I'm sorry I was so suspicious. It's hard to trust, and just accept them as people. Too often who they are gets covered over by their own prejudices against me.'

I pause. ‘I'm hoping Inam hasn't had time to fully identify with any race, or religion. Or have any prejudices. I hope she can learn to move between all these worlds. But she won't have anyone after Bilqis and Amal are gone. I don't know how I can help. I just feel that I need to go back there, be with them.'

He's sitting up now and pulls me by the neck toward his chest. I submit, laughing helplessly.

‘Okay. Okay, I'll stay here for a while. Just a little while.'

My arms high up in the air. He imprisons my wrists in one hand, and takes me down with him.

We're all here in court, dressed sombrely, hands clutched tight in laps, eyes averted from each other. The trip down to Israel was fraught with difficulty: Amal taken sick with apprehension and having to go back, silence and sullenness from Inam, a two-hour hold-up at the border. Israeli soldiers with designer sunglasses and condescending grins who treated Chaim as if he were some sort of traitor.

Now the waiting is unbearable. Inam asks to go to the bathroom ten times. I don't realise until the fifth time that this is because it's the first time she's seen a flushing toilet. She comes back after each trip dripping with pink liquid soap and wetting her only dress.

Weeks ago I'd asked to report on Sayed's trial for
The Globe
. My request was refused. The tribunal is under military jurisdiction, subject to security and anti-terror legislation, making it difficult for any civilian to attend. The best lawyer I could find for Sayed is an Arab–Israeli, educated in a Jewish university yet adamantly pro-Palestinian, a man with one precarious foot in both camps. His mother still lives in the Occupied Territories. Chaim couldn't help but cringe at the term, and I hated him for a brief moment.

I accompany Inam on her latest visit to the toilet. She spends an inordinate amount of time in the cubicle humming, and I have to shout above her garbled song.

‘Are we friends again?'

Inam stops at the end of a verse, taking her time before answering.

‘No.'

‘Please, Inam. When you get older you'll understand.'

‘I am older.'

‘Big girls need a man sometimes.'

‘I know
that.
But not one like him.'

She comes out of the cubicle, washes and dries her hands, using dozens of paper towels, turns and looks at me.

‘How could you leave us for him? He's Israeli.'

‘What does that mean, sweetheart? Does that mean he's a bad man? You know better than that.'

‘No, I don't.'

I squat down and put my hands around her tiny waist. ‘Yes, he's Israeli, and he's also a good person. Not all Israelis are bad. And not all Palestinians are good, true?'

She won't look at me.

We walk out of the restroom in silence. As we approach Bilqis and Chaim, Inam slips her fingers into my palm. She glares up at Chaim and wriggles her behind between us on the bench outside the courtroom.

Bilqis whispers, ‘Are they going to put him away forever?'

‘He has a good lawyer,' Chaim soothes.

‘How do we know if it's a fair trial if they won't even let us in to see?'

‘Shh,' I warn. ‘He's coming now.'

Sayed's lawyer looks relaxed, almost too relaxed. He slouches about in front of his prosecuting colleague, adjusts his suit trousers, surveying the anxious families in the corridor with a self-consciously puzzled air. He smiles broadly at me as if we share some secret, and I smile back, encouraging. Chaim jiggles my arm over Inam's competing, resolute presence.

‘What's his problem? Why's he acting as if he knows you so well?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You know I don't want to be here. You know I'm here against my better judgement.'

‘All right!' I whisper furiously in his ear. ‘Go back home then.'

Chaim settles back in his chair, glancing at Inam. She's put her hand on my knee in a proprietary fashion.

‘You know I'm only doing this for you,' he says.

‘Don't trouble yourself, please.'

Inam smiles at nothing in particular. I turn away, blocking Chaim from my line of sight. Sayed is being led through a side door to the courtroom, less than ten metres away. His eyes are blindfolded.

In the days following the verdict, Bilqis grows somehow frailer, more transparent. I move back into the camp to be with her, lacerated by Chaim's protests. I'm flat, worn out. Sayed has been sentenced to twenty-one years in the infamous Russian Compound in Jerusalem, with little hope of appeal.

I stroke Bilqis's arm where it rests on the faded, floral sheet.

‘Don't worry. I'll visit him every week. I'll write more articles.'

Bilqis protests, ‘How can you go there? They won't let you in.'

‘I have two passports, Aunty. I can use one for here and one for there.'

Bilqis mutters into her nightie, ‘That's not what I meant. It's your safety I worry about.'

‘I can take Chaim with me.'

At the mention of Chaim's name, Bilqis sniffs and turns her face to the wall. She's become more critical of him since their meeting. She thinks he's too old for me, too jocular, too confident, too Israeli. And she's been more emotional lately, dwelling on the past – her dead son, Inam's mother – as though unaware of the tears streaming down her cheeks. I lean in further so my lips touch her cheek.

‘We've already arranged for a counsellor to see him once a week. Medical care and visits from the Red Crescent.'

Bilqis continues to stare at the wall. I stand, brisk and falsely cheerful. I put my hand out to Inam, who's still clutching the now-bedraggled book I once gave her.

‘Should we let Grandma take a nap, sweetheart? Let's go for a little walk.'

I hurry home with Inam in the deepening dusk. People on the street jostle us as we run past; taxi drivers slow down, honking their horns, recognising me always as a foreigner. They keep up a meaningless patter of entreaty as they cruise alongside: ‘Is very hot, mademoiselle, you need hat for your beautiful skin, you want I take you anywhere, is cheap, is cheap.' I grow tired of shaking my head at them.

We're both starving; it's past dinnertime. We stop at a sudden scent of spice and salt, a stall selling hot thyme bread. I buy four and we stuff them into our mouths as we run. I think of Bilqis opening a tin of something, trying to heat it on that tiny flame.

We come back to the hut to find her mumbling incoherently, evidently in a great deal of pain. Her right side is locked in a curve, almost completely paralysed. I run to find the camp doctor. He massages her arm and shoulder, gives her an injection, takes to pummelling her after fifteen minutes.

‘Stop!' I scream. ‘Can't you see you're hurting her?'

‘She can't feel a thing, believe me.'

‘What's wrong with her?'

‘It may be the onset of multiple sclerosis or motor neurone disease. We need to run some blood tests and scans to see. Either way, she needs to get to a hospital tonight. If it's either of the two, she'll eventually lose control of her limbs, bowels and bladder. In extreme cases, her mouth and throat, and even the ability to speak.'

I cast a swift glance at Inam to see if she's listening. She sits crosslegged near the open door, leafing through the same dog-eared book. She gives no appearance of having heard but I know better. I come closer to the doctor's face.

‘How long will it take for this to happen?'

‘Weeks. Months. Maybe even years before it takes over and ends her life. There's no cure, no real treatment. She'll need a full-time carer. Unfortunately we don't have those facilities here in the camps. She'll have to be transferred to another hospital or a hospice as soon as we get these tests done.'

He calls an ambulance. Inam and I watch as it takes Bilqis away. She can hardly look at us.

Her last words are covered over by Inam's voice, but I think she says:
I' ll be back tomorrow.
Inam is sobbing, screaming, hitting out at me.

When it's over, I try to get her to bed, lie down on top of the covers next to her. She holds my hand until she falls asleep, her fingers tracing my veins in an eternal circle.

I dream. Chaim's face. Sayed, smiling. I run, keep running through night-filled streets. Cats screech at me from alleys. I'm breathless and sobbing. Out of the gloom, the figure of a man. I stop, not sure who it is, tears drying on my cheeks. Before I can catch a glimpse of his face, he's turned away.

I dread supervising the move to the hospice. The hut now empty, hollowed out. I'm shocked at how quickly one can remove any traces of a human presence, even after so many years. All that's left now are two single mattresses stripped down to their sheets, the dented saucepan for making tea. Concrete walls bare of any decoration. All of Bilqis's bibelots have been stored in cardboard boxes by the door, and her old house keys from Jaffa are nowhere to be found. Nobody except me knows she's hidden them under her nightdress, clutched tight against her belly so they don't jingle and give her away. They're too precious to be shown to strangers.

She's back from the hospital. The tests were conclusive: she has motor neurone disease, middle-stage. She lies on her bed, waiting for another ambulance that will take her to the hospice, and confronts the inevitability of her own decline. Inam stands outside in the yard, scowling. When I try to touch her she springs back and snarls.

‘I'm too old to be in an orphanage. And even if I was, I don't want to go to any
French
one.'