The Lemon Tree (4 page)

When, after her father’s death, Uncle James had offered her mother and herself a home, her mother had explained that he was not married to the lady who lived with him; and this could make life difficult for them, if they joined his household.

Benjamin Al-Khoury was an employee like any other employee. Yet, if he were her cousin, should she treat him differently? If he were highly resentful that she, instead of himself, had inherited his father’s Estate, how could she placate him, without losing her status as employer?

As she lay amid the unaccustomed softness of the feather bed, she began to think very carefully about how she could retain her authority and yet convey to him that she understood his probable unhappiness.

To her knowledge, she had no other blood relative and that would make him unique to her, someone very special in her estimation. It would put him on a completely different level from everyone else connected with the soapery.

A tiny thrill of hope went through her. To have a real relation implied a reciprocal obligation. Here might be a person of whom one could ask help and reasonably expect assistance as a duty, as from a brother. One could hope for consideration and affection, given freely. It was a wonderful idea to a woman who had faced as bravely as she could her uprooting from her native soil. And, when she had put down tenuous new roots in alien Chicago, she had been uprooted again, to face a life in Canada so harsh that she had expected to die. But, somehow, she had lived, a lonely refugee, misunderstood and disliked.

‘And why I should survive, God only knows,’ she thought wearily, with an odd sense of having been left out.

Amid the turmoil of new impressions collected through the day, it did not strike her that she had been thinking of the Lady Lavender Soap Works as an enterprise she would run herself. She had simply been annoyed when her lawyer, Mr Benson, had suggested that she should leave the selling of the works to him; she had brushed the suggestion off as an insult to her as a helpless woman. The fact that the original reason for her visit had simply been to assess the value of the business had been pushed to the back of her mind by the thrilling possibilities she had immediately seen, as she walked soberly round the buildings.

The straggling collection of sheds, which made up her late uncle’s factory, suggested to her not only a means of livelihood but also the chance to live in a city again, a place of fine new buildings, and homes full of lively enterprising people – literate people. They might even know where Lebanon is, she considered soberly – even have commercial ties with Beirut; Liverpool ships probably docked in Beirut sometimes.

Could one visit Beirut from Liverpool, she wondered suddenly. By this time the city might have settled down again and be safe for a Christian to visit.

As she lay staring at the moulded ceiling of the bedroom, a tightness from a long, sternly suppressed anguish seemed to grow in her chest. She breathed deeply in an effort to stop it engulfing her, and gradually, like some threatening shadow, it retreated.

She sat up and took a sip of water from a glass on the bedside table. Then she lay down again and curled herself up into a tight, foetal position, as if to protect herself from feelings too painful to be unleashed.

She slept uneasily and suffered a familiar nightmare, though some of the hazy, sadistic faces which seemed to peer at her out of the darkness were, this time, reminiscent of the men she had met in the soapery.

She cried out frantically to them, ‘I’m not Wallace Harding, I’m not! I’m Helena Al-Khoury – and I hate the Territories. I want to go home to Beirut. Let me go! I want to go home.’

It seemed as if she pulled herself away from restraining hands, and floated easily along a seashore; and then she was in her father’s courtyard amid the perfume from the blossom of the lemon tree. Uncle James was picking her up and saying she was as sweet as the flowers on the tree. She laughed in his swarthy, cheerful face, and he was gone. Instead, her mother was there, her blenched face beaded with sweat, as she held Helena’s hand and pulled her along. ‘Hurry, my darling. Run!’

1860 and she was nearly twelve. As her terrified mother pulled her along behind her father, Charles Al-Khoury, she heard his startled exclamations at the hideous sights which each turn in the narrow streets revealed, the carnage left by a mob gone mad.

Before turning into a narrow alley leading down to the waterfront, they crouched close to the side of the blank wall of a warehouse, to catch their breath, while Charles Al-Khoury peered down the lane to make sure it was clear.

It was already darkened by the long shadows of the evening and the smoke from the ruins of old houses further down, but there was no sound, except for the crackle of fire; the looters had been thorough. The little family flitted silently down it. As they crossed another alley they heard men shouting in the distance, and Charles Al-Khoury increased his pace.

Almost numb with fear, his wife and daughter followed closely after him. Suddenly, he half-tripped over a dark shape lying on the ground. His women bumped into him and clung to him.

They stared down in horror. A woman had had her clothes torn off her. She had been butchered like a dead cow, and the child of her womb lay smashed against a house wall. A horribly mutilated, decapitated man lay near her, and further down the alley were other pitiful bundles, blood-soaked and still.

Leila Al-Khoury vomited, the vomit making her fluttering black head veil cling to her face. Young Helena began to scream in pure terror.

Her father clapped his hand over her mouth. ‘Helena!’ he whispered forcefully. ‘Be quiet.’

She swallowed her fear and nearly choked with the effort.

As they continued to scurry down narrow lanes, leading seaward, her father held her close to him, so that she would see as little as possible of the carnage; dogs were already nosing cautiously at the corpses of the Maronite Christians and being challenged by venturesome birds. One or two dogs had entered little homes through smashed doorways and could be heard growling over the spoils inside.

Wallace Helena, the grown woman, stirred in her bed, and cried out to the only person left to assuage her nightmares. ‘Joe, darling! Joe!’ But she was not heard and
plunged again into her scarifying dreams, her heart beating a frantic tattoo.

Much later on, when they had established themselves in Chicago, she had asked her mother how the massacre had come about. She had been sitting cross-legged on her parents’ bed, watching her mother struggle into Western clothes.

Her mother had explained that the Muslim Turkish rulers of Lebanon did not like Christians very much; neither did another sect called Druze.

Egged on by the Turks, the Druze set out to eradicate their ancient enemies, the Maronite Christians, some of whom were enviably richer than they should be. In Beirut, they struck on July 9th, 1860.

‘We had heard rumours of unrest amongst the Druze, for some time before,’ her mother told her, ‘but neither your father nor your grandfather – my father – believed that we should be disturbed.

‘Our family had always lived in or near Beirut; it was such a pleasant little place – and you’ll remember our visiting our kin nearby. Our courtyard wall was high and strongly built – quite enough, we believed, to protect the house. And we were well-to-do; we could always placate the tax collectors and the servants of the Sultan, Abdul Mejid – may he be eternally accursed!’ She sounded vicious, as she lashed out at the hated Turkish ruler. Then she said more calmly, ‘You know, it’s usually the less powerful, and the poor who can’t pay, who are attacked.’

In the hope of obliterating her sickening memories, Helena had screwed up her eyes and covered them with her hands; yet there was a morbid desire to know more.

‘Well, why did we run away then?’

‘The rabble – Druze and Turks alike – swept right into our neighbourhood – you heard them and saw them. And your respected father knew then that this uprising was
much more serious than usual; he had not believed an earlier warning which his brother had had whispered to him by a kindly Turkish official – he had felt the warning was part of a campaign by the Turks to get the Maronites to move out of their own accord.

‘So when the mob came in like a flight of angry bees – they were mad with hashish, I suspect – he knew in a flash that the warning had been a genuine act of kindness. He heard the screams and the gunshots, and he ran upstairs from his office to the roof, to confirm his fears.’ She paused, her voice harsh from unshed tears. ‘You and I’d been sitting under the lemon tree, by the well – so quiet and peaceful. But from the roof Papa could really see what was happening. Dear Grandpa’s house was already a great bonfire and the shrieking crowd was pouring into the square at the bottom of our street; he said the menace of the swords and guns flashing in the evening sun was terrifying.’

Helena said hesitantly from behind her hands, ‘I remember Papa leaning over the parapet and yelling to us to come up immediately. I’d never seen Papa really frightened before.’

It was the moment when my whole world fell apart, she thought wretchedly; I simply didn’t understand how it could be so.

She watched her mother buttoning her shabby black blouse, getting ready to go to work as a menial in a foreign city, and apparently accepting with fortitude what the Turks had done to her.

Leila continued her story. ‘We didn’t know it then,’ she said, ‘but Christians were suffering all over the Turkish Empire.

‘When our servants heard the noise, they rushed into the courtyard to ask what was happening. They heard your father shout, and they panicked. Instead of running
up to the roof themselves, they followed Cook, who ran to the main gate and opened it! I suppose he thought they would be able to escape before the mob reached us. For a second, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – it was so stupid – our gate was very stout; it might have held.

‘As I whipped you indoors, I could hear their screams.’

Helena shuddered. ‘I heard them.’

Leila ignored the interjection, as she sat head bowed, her fingers on the top button of her blouse. ‘Well, after I’d bundled you into the house, I slammed the front door and turned the beam which locked it. That, and the barred windows, halted the crowd when they rushed into the courtyard, just long enough to allow us to escape.’

Helena sighed deeply. ‘I remember the smoke – the yells – men pounding on the door – and the smell of gunpowder – and blood.’

Her mother put her arm around her and held her close.

‘We were lucky, child, that we had an indoor staircase, not an outside one like many people have; if it had run straight up from the courtyard, the mob would have come up after us and killed us on the roof.’

‘Papa had a piece of rope on the roof, I remember. I was so scared we’d fall, when he lowered first you and then me down into the tiny alley at the back of the house.’

Her mother nodded. ‘I think he’d stored the rope up there, in case we needed an escape from fire,’ she said absently. Then she added, ‘The alleyway saved our lives by giving us an exit to another street.’

‘I wonder why we were saved, Mama? Was our neighbour’s family at the back saved?’

‘Not to my knowledge, dearest. I was told that by the time the Druze and the Turks had finished, the whole area was one big funeral pyre.’

‘Why does God allow such terrible things, Mama?’ the young girl asked piteously.

Her mother looked shocked. ‘We’re not here to question God’s Will, child.’ Her pretty lower lip trembled. ‘I didn’t ask that even when your brothers died.’

Helena laid her head on her mother’s shoulder. ‘Of course not, Mama,’ she said contritely. ‘It was a wrong question to ask.’

Leila looked down at the child cuddled beside her, and she sighed. Her husband had always said that Helena was too clever to be a woman. She hoped he was wrong; women were supposed to accept, not ask questions.

Helena fingered a small pendant embossed with the head of the Virgin Mary that hung on a fine gold chain from her mother’s neck. ‘Did you bring this from Beirut?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes, dear. For months and months that year, Papa insisted that I wear
all
my jewellery all the time. He must’ve been more nervous about the situation than he allowed us to think.’

‘It’s important for a lady to have lots of jewellery, isn’t it, Mama?’

‘Yes, dear – and small gold coins, easily carried. You never know what life has in store for you – life is very precarious. Jewellery is easy to carry – you can trade it anywhere – though at a great loss, of course.’

Helena nodded, and her mother hugged her again.

Leila thought with apprehension of a clouded future; but the child digested the lesson that good jewellery can be an important financial reserve – and that a collection of small gold coins is probably even better.

After a few minutes, Helena lifted her head and said heavily, ‘We must’ve run for ages; I was so puffed.’ Her young face was grim, and she swallowed. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget the ghastly cruelty – how can men do such dreadful things?’ She looked at her mother as if begging for some reasonable explanation of what she had seen.

Leila Al-Khoury had resumed easing herself clumsily into black woollen stockings, while sitting on the end of her bed. Now she turned again to her troubled little daughter and put her arms round her. She wished she had an answer to the child’s question.

‘My darling, I don’t know. Sometimes men seem to go mad.’ She stroked Helena’s silky black hair. ‘In time the memories will go away, my love. And life is not all cruelty. All kinds of nice things will happen to you in your life, you’ll see.’ She felt Helena give a shuddering sigh, and she added, ‘I wish we had foreseen what would happen, so that you could have been spared what you saw. And we might have been able to clear the warehouse and transfer some money – so that we wouldn’t be in quite such dire straits. But we lived in a good district; we’d never been disturbed before.’

Helena shut her eyes tightly and wanted to be sick, as she remembered a young boy lying sobbing in the dust, one arm severed, the rest of him terribly cut about as he had tried to protect himself from sword or bayonet. Her mother had paused instinctively, bent on helping him, but her husband caught her arm to propel her forward.

‘You can’t leave him! He’s alive!’ she had protested.

He did not answer her. Terrified of what the rampaging rabble would do to his lovely wife and little daughter if they were caught, he dragged her onwards.

The dying boy haunted Wallace Helena’s dreams all her life, returning like some eternal ghost to cry out to her in his agony, telling her that even loving fathers could have hearts of stone.

She had clear memories of reaching her father’s silk warehouse, as yet untouched by vandals, though deserted by its panic-stricken nightwatchmen, and of meeting a youth of about fifteen when they entered the wicket gate. He was the bookkeeper’s son, set to unlock the gate for
any members of the family who might not have a key.

In answer to Charles Al-Khoury’s inquiry, the boy said that nobody had come, except his own parents and younger brothers and Mr James Al-Khoury.

Charles Al-Khoury told him to continue to keep watch through the grating in the main door and to hurry to the boat if he heard or saw anything suspicious.

The whey-faced boy had nodded assent, and Charles hurried Helena and her mother between bales wrapped in cotton cloth and through the silk carpet section, which smelled of hemp and dust.

They had emerged onto a covered wharf on the seaward side of the building, where a small sailing boat with an Egyptian rig bobbed fretfully on the sunlit water.

Charles’s brother, James, was already in the boat. He looked up at the new arrivals and exclaimed fervently, ‘Thank God you’ve come! Nobody came to work this morning – I tried to get back to the house to warn you that something was up; but the whole town seemed to be rioting – and drunk. So I returned here to alert the boatman to be ready. I guessed you’d hear the racket in the town and be warned.’ He gestured towards the bookkeeper, and added, ‘Then Bachiro, here, brought his family.’

‘We got out by a hair’s breadth,’ Charles responded sombrely, as he took the hand of the Nubian boatman and jumped into the little craft. He turned to help his wife into the boat, and went on, ‘I’m afraid Leila’s family is lost.’

As James stared unbelievingly up at him, Leila balked and held back, as she cried out in horror, ‘Mama and Papa dead? Oh, no! And my sisters – and Auntie and my cousin?’