Sabra Zoo (10 page)

Later I was standing with Youssef and Eli in the corridor outside his ward. The crutches were not much wider than his legs, which looked like they belonged to an oversized chicken. I lifted him out of his chair and held him up while Eli placed the crutches under his arms. They needed to be shortened, so I held him up some more until Eli was satisfied that they were the right length. You often saw people around the camp walking with splayed crutches because they were too long or, worse still, the crutches were too short and the unfortunate users were bending at the knee to get any support. Youssef, contrary to Eli's instructions of one step at time, launched off as if triggered by a starter gun. I got in his wheelchair and followed him down the corridor as best I could, shouting, ‘Go! Go!' in Arabic. Eli was telling me to tell Youssef to slow down but I was wheeling along beside him, caught up in his effort. He was whooping as he went. Reaching the end of the corridor he spun round on one crutch and, because it was easier than standing still, careened forward. With no room to turn the wheelchair quickly enough I was forced to go into sudden reverse, giving my palms wheel burn in the process and almost tipping over as I headed backwards down the corridor. I overtook Youssef and saw him stop and look over my head, wobbling to keep upright.

‘You can't catch me,' I yelled, trying to decipher the smile on his face. My wheelchair hit something solid behind me. I looked round to see the hospital administrator rubbing her hip, staring down at me. Any hope that she might have mistaken me for a patient was dispelled when she spoke.

‘What are you doing in that wheelchair?' she said, grabbing the handles to prevent me moving forward and escaping. We looked at each other for a moment until I realised that she was waiting for me to get out of the chair. Youssef sniggered as Eli (the professional all of a sudden) led him onto the ward. I was left alone with the administrator. She was one of those people who had no trace of the child left in them. I found such people intimidating and difficult to relate to. ‘Who are you?' She squinted at me as if searching her memory.

‘I'm nobody, just –'

‘There you are, Ivan. I've been looking for you everywhere. Have you forgotten our appointment?' Asha's voice and her arm at my elbow were both welcome, even if it did mean a visit to Intensive Care.

Intensive Care only had three unwilling guests, one of whom was Sharif, the burns victim. My relief at being saved by Asha was cut short on seeing him; his life-support systems were being switched off today. There was a lot of noise coming from his bay, where even more people had gathered round his bed, some of them crying and wailing. The doctor who ran the
ICU
, a short and wiry-haired Egyptian, was detaching the intubation tube from the hole in Sharif's throat. The respirator had already been turned off; the heart-monitoring machine was emitting a monotonous note.

‘What's going on, Doctor?' Asha asked the Egyptian. ‘I wanted to be here when this happened.'

‘No need for you to be here. I can do this. I have done this before many times. It is normal.' He was pulling electrodes from Sharif's chest, trying to get the wires round Sharif's mother whose head was welded to her son's shoulder.

‘I wanted to be here for the family. I know you can turn the machines off. It was the family I was worried about,' Asha said, trying to comfort Sharif's mother. A couple of women, probably Sharif's sisters, were trying to lift her from the bed. The heart monitor was flatlining in the background. The young woman, who was Sharif's fiancée, according to Asha, and who I had last seen wiping his crusted face, was standing to one side, trying to take everything in, her eyes fixed on nothing. One of the sisters covered Sharif's face with the sheet but this only caused more wailing from his mother. I looked for the off switch on the monitoring machine; the noise was drilling into my ears.

‘He is not your patient, this is my ward,' said the
ICU
doctor.

‘You're right, he is not my patient, but I know the family – I told them I would be here for this.'

‘You didn't tell me you wanted to be here,' he said.

‘Is there a problem?' the fiancée was asking me, gesturing at the two people in white coats standing over her dead fiancé. She was holding a gold chain with a little Koran at the end; maybe it came from Sharif's neck. Her eyes were puffy and her skin pasty. I told her that nothing was wrong, that they were talking of medical things. This must have sounded stupid given that Sharif was dead but she was in another place, she didn't notice.

‘The Imam is coming to wash his body,' she said, ‘to shroud him before burial. We need to remove his bandages – is that
OK
?'

I moved to the end of the bed, which Asha and the
ICU
doctor were now leaning over, both talking at the same time. Sharif's dressings smelt; no one had thought it worthwhile to change them. ‘Listen …' I said, trying to be heard over their overlapping voices, the maternal wailing and the drone of the machine, but I'd become invisible. I tried again in a louder voice: ‘I need to ask a question.' This time I got their attention and they looked at me, moving away from one another. In English I told them that the family wanted to prepare the body for burial. The fucking machine droned on. I could now see where it was plugged into the wall.

‘Who are you?' the Egyptian doctor asked me in Arabic, deliberately ignoring what I'd just said. Everyone wanted to know who I was, I had to explain myself to everyone. What I wanted to say was, ‘Who I am doesn't matter, what matters are the feelings of these people here.' Instead, I just told him I was the translator.

‘I don't need a translator,' he said. He smiled at me and looked around for someone to share his stupid joke with. I thought about answering but I did the clever thing and avoided getting into a discussion, understanding that being rational was not top of his agenda. This was understandable, given the previous few months of intensive hell in this place that he called his ward. Instead I moved to the wall and yanked the plug from it, killing the machine, killing the noise.

Back at home electricity came out of the sockets, water from the taps. I was making risotto with an old chicken stock cube I'd found, planning to finish it off with half a packet of butter I'd picked up on the way home. John was in the shower; Samir, Faris and Liv were in the living room. Eli was watching me cook.

‘I like being here, in your apartment,' she said as I stirred the risotto.

‘Really? Because I'm not sure whether I like attractive Scandinavians being here,' I said.

Her face went blank for a few seconds before realisation flooded it. ‘Ah! You are joking with me?'

‘Yes, I am joking with you. Help me serve the risotto.'

After eating, Faris read from a two-day-old copy of
The Times
that John had brought with him.

‘“According to a United Nations report, between 6 June and 15 August 6,775 people have been killed and 30,000 others wounded. Over 80 per cent of these victims were civilians from west Beirut. According to the same source, 2,094 seriously injured persons had been burnt by phosphor bombs.”'

I thought of Sharif, who had started in the last statistic but could, since that afternoon, also be added to the first. A headline on the front read: ‘
LEBANESE LOATH TO SEE MARINES DEPART
'. Samir lit a joint but was the only one who smoked it with any conviction.

‘Maybe the war will change the way the world thinks about the Israeli problem,' Faris said, putting the newspaper down.

‘Don't you mean the Palestinian problem?' asked Eli.

I caught John rolling his eyes but she was right, that was how everyone referred to it.

‘The Israelis are the ones that came all this way to Beirut to try and get rid of us – they are the ones with a problem,' Faris told her.

Eli shrugged.

‘The world will be interested for five minutes maybe, then it will all be forgotten,' said John. His face was still pink and blotchy from the shower. ‘Even if they manage not to wipe you out.'

‘You should wipe that out,' Liv said, poking at John's paunch through his T-shirt. He swiped her hand away.

‘They could never destroy us completely,' said Faris. ‘Look what happened – all the fighters left Beirut with their weapons and the Israelis had to watch from gunboats. They, more than anyone else, should know you cannot make a people disappear.'

‘Then all this war and suffering must continue,' said Eli, as if it had just occurred to her as a possibility.

‘The Palestinians are used to suffering – it's in our blood,' said Faris with a grin.

‘You don't have a monopoly on suffering,' said Liv, tickling him under the chin. ‘People all over the world are the victims of injustice, some get even less support than you do, believe it or not.'

Faris raised his eyebrows at her. He picked the newspaper up and folded it, put it down again. ‘You are right, but it is the only suffering we know, we don't know anybody else's.'

An hour later Asha and John decided to go back with Samir.

‘Beatles or Rolling Stones?' John asked me as he got up.

I shook my head. I couldn't be bothered with his silly questions; why did you have to choose between one and the other? ‘Too difficult,' I said.

‘No it's not,' he said, disappointed.

Asha and Samir had already left and Faris and Liv had disappeared into the bedroom. Eli followed John to the front door. I started to clear the coffee table, watched them have a whispered conversation which ended with John shaking his head. Eli looked pissed off. When John had gone I asked her what they'd talked about.

‘I just wanted some medical advice, but he is so …' She waved her hands for the right word.

‘Why don't you ask Asha?'

‘She's a Catholic.' She took dishes into the kitchen while I tried to work it out. I didn't want to pry. I finished the dregs of wine from various glasses, relit the end of Samir's joint. After a while the power went and we lit candles in the sitting room.

‘Do you think it is possible to love two people at the same time?' she asked me.

It was getting late. I stared at the fresh candle burning in the Chianti bottle. I was too tired and drunk to think about it. ‘Ah, I suppose so, up to a point. But you could never love them both at the same time. I mean at some point you'd need to choose between them, like if you wanted to go on holiday with one of them or something.' I shut up before it became obvious that I didn't know what I was talking about; obviously hashish and alcohol couldn't give you insights you didn't already have.

‘I suppose you are right.' She smiled but in a sad way and I wondered whether I'd said the wrong thing and blown my chances.

‘Shall I stay again?' she asked.

‘Yes of course, it's too late for you to walk back to the hotel – but I think I'll sleep out here,' I said. Taking her hand I studied her short, neatly cropped nails. I wanted to explain that it wasn't that I didn't want to be with her, but I wanted to be with her in a different way. That I couldn't lie next to her warm, soft and curvy body with her nice-smelling hair in my face without wanting to know what it was like to be with her properly. To be with any woman properly would be good, but with her I thought would be special. It was difficult not to wrestle her to the sofa there and then. Perhaps that was where I was going wrong, maybe I was too timid.

‘You are right,' she said, ‘it isn't fair to expose you to the temptation of a sexy woman like me without experiencing the full delights.'

I looked at her straight face, eventually remembering to close my mouth. ‘You are joking with me?' I said.

‘Yes, I am joking with you.' She laughed, took my hands in hers and looked me in the eye. ‘I need to sort something out before we can be together, you know, as, ah, lovers.' She blushed as she said this. ‘Hopefully tomorrow night,' she added. She got up and tugged at my arms, trying to pull me up from the sofa. ‘Let's sleep together again tonight, just one more night. I don't want to be alone. Do you want to be alone?'

No, I didn't want to be alone.

At Beirut port, Bob, Stacy and I were just three in a company of maybe a hundred journalists covering the withdrawal of the us marines. I'd not seen that many together since Arafat left from the same spot two weeks ago, passing the same marines that were now leaving. Stacy was waiting with us, a battered reporter's notebook in her hand. They weren't talking, her and Bob, although both of them talked to me. It was an uncomfortable situation, like being with my parents at the dinner table during one of their arguments, arguments that – while his name was never spoken – were always about Karam.

We were all waiting for something to happen. I was standing with a videotape pack round my shoulder, holding a boom microphone plugged into it. I had my headphones round my neck and I was umbilically connected to Bob's camera which perched on his shoulder like a mechanical eye. I fiddled unnecessarily with the sound levels, thinking about what might happen that night if everything worked out with Eli. Bob asked me why I was grinning, but it was Stacy's inquisitive look and her little smile that made me blush. Stacy looked different to me that day, like I was already seeing her in a new light, a light that Eli had tantalisingly shone my way. When she walked over to interview a bespectacled captain, latching onto him with her killer smile, I saw the other journalists (male and female) follow her lazily with their eyes, as if distracted by the passing of an escaped party balloon. By the next morning I hoped to understand what it was they were seeing, rather than relying on my own vivid imaginings. I checked Bob out but he didn't (or chose not to) notice the attention Stacy was getting, preoccupied with some technical colour balancing of his camera against a white wall.