The Med (61 page)

“Bunny, Mom's got to go downstairs for a few minutes.” Her voice sounded faint in the thin hot air. “You won't mind staying here alone for a little while, will you? You won't cry? You won't go out?”

Nan's eyes did not alter. For a moment Susan wondered what this was doing to her; what nightmares, what vein of dark terror was being laid down that she would carry all her life. Then she thought, It's not my fault. I've done all I can to protect her. More, I know now, than I should have. I will have to depend on her for the rest.

“Nan? Did you hear me? I—”

“I heard you, Mommy. I be quiet. You come back, won't you?”

“That's right, Bunny. I promise.” She crossed her heart solemnly and pushed her hair back. “Want anything before I go?”

“No.”

“I've got someone I have to talk to. Maybe he can help us.”

“Daddy?” she suggested, without hope.

“No.”

The child said nothing more then. After a moment Susan bent and kissed her, tasting the sweet salt, and went out of the room. Halfway to the stairwell she remembered that she was filthy, unkempt, her T-shirt soaked through with sweat; but she threw her hair back again and went on anyway. There was nothing to be done about it. There was one guard in the stairwell, lighting a cigarette. He looked startled to see her, and grabbed for his rifle, coughing the cigarette out of his mouth.

“I want to see Harisah,” she said, spacing the words so that he might understand.

“Harisah? El-Majd?”

“Yes.”

He did not say anything more, simply looked at her stupidly, so she shoved by him and went down. Her thongs flapped on the stairs. The stairwell stank of urine. They've been doing it right here, she thought. Disgust and fear slowed her for a moment at the foot of the stairs, but then she took a breath, lifted her head, and went out into the lobby.

Crowded through it the morning before, she had seen it only briefly; had gained a confused impression of luxury long abandoned. But now she could see that the lobby, the carpet, was littered with trash. Crumpled plastic and bits of metal and empty glasses lay around a Russian-style water machine. Its coin mechanism gaped open, unlocked with a bullet. Razored fragments of mirror snapped beneath her feet. Crumpled cigarette packs, heels of bread and empty juice bottles lay about the lobby.

Across it, by the propped-open entranceway, she saw the men. They were standing under the portico. Their backs were to her; they were watching the airstrip and the desert beyond. They all held guns. As she stood there, waiting, another rumble came in faintly from the mountains. For a moment she fancied it seemed closer than before.

She moved forward, glass cracking underfoot. And then she stopped again.

He stood at the center of a group of his men, hidden from her before by a corner of the building. He was talking to the others. He gestured; none of them moved. He shouted, made violent blows of his fist in the air. She wished she could understand the Arabic. His listeners shuffled their feet on the dirty marble of the steps. They glanced toward the mountains, at each other, and then, as if drawn, back toward the leader, as if they could not take their eyes from him or their attention from his impassioned speech.

Susan waited alone, in the middle of the empty lobby. She felt tired, but unafraid.

At last the group broke up. He was second through the door. His head lifted and a wary look took his face as he saw her.

“Go upstairs.”

“I came down to talk to you.”

“I can't help you.”

“I want you to talk to me.”

“We have nothing to say.”

“Oh, yes we do.” She took a breath. How to make him listen? She remembered something Dan had told her. His “command voice,” the tone he used aboard ship when he gave orders. Another of the inanities they taught him at Annapolis, she had supposed.

“Look, you bastard. You're going to talk to me, and now. First, I want to know why you took my friends.”

“Oh,” he said. His expression changed. He glanced backward, then nodded unwillingly. “In there.”

My God,
she thought,
it works.

The bare walls of the stairwell echoed, and she lowered her voice, remembering the guard above. The
za'im
leaned against the wall, his eyes on his feet. He looked hostile, like a man cornered by a debtor who asks for more.

“Hanna—this is not right, what you're doing.”

“I think you do not understand what is going on here. I am a fighter. This is a war for our country.”

“I don't care what it is. This isn't the way to fight.” She took a breath; no anger, no emotion now; she had to be calm, she had to reason with him. “Yesterday you shot, your men shot, a doctor, a harmless old man. Today you're going to shoot two archaeologists, one of them a woman. This is a war? Wars are fought between armed men. You think that's going to make the Turks release your men? That's going to make the Jews leave Israel? Not a chance. This isn't even terrorism, Hanna, because it hasn't any chance of working. It's just murder.”

He kept looking at his shoes. He scowled.

“Hanna—”

“Ma kint lazim hinte'i.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I should not have made love to you.”

“What?”

“It was not a right thing to do.”

She saw suddenly, and cursed herself for not seeing it before: what his reluctance and averted face meant. He was an Arab. To him, now, she was just a whore, a soiled piece of female flesh. A sudden need to laugh hysterically came over her. She glanced up the stairwell, its dimming upward flights, and had a sudden feeling that this was, had to be, unreal; arguing with this stranger, this terrorist, the same way she did with her husband; having him turn guilty and perverse on her, the way Nan did sometimes.… “Look,” she said, forcing her feelings inside somewhere. She put her hand on his arm, feeling at the same moment his heat and the trickle of sweat along her own ribs. “Leave that aside, what happened last night. Just listen.

“I don't know what these other men, this committee, are telling you to do. But these are
your
men. Not theirs. You can refuse to go on with this. They tell you to do it now, but when—when peace comes, you'll be a criminal.”

“It is my duty,” he said, turning his eyes upward, away from hers.

“Duty doesn't mean murder! Someday you'll make a mistake, and they'll catch you and hang you. Terrorists don't live long, whoever wins. And I don't—I don't want you to die.”

She could not say herself, now, how much of what she was saying was true. And it didn't matter. She would say anything, do anything, if it worked.

“I don't care about my life. If the party says that what we do will win us back Palestine, that it will bring the Revolution one day closer, then it is my duty to do it.”

Duty. The word rang heavy in the stairwell. Where had she heard it before? “But this is crazy,” she said again, then stopped. She was failing. It was true, what Moira said; they were too imbued with hate to see reason. Or what an American saw as reason, anyway, she reminded herself.

There remained only one way, and it was easy; so easy that she felt ashamed, both for her and for him. She reached up slowly to brush his dark hair back. He stirred at her touch, but still looked down, away, not at her.

She drew his lips downward to hers, and felt him resist. Resist; and then yield.

They stood together in the heat and stench of the stairwell for a long time.

“You'll let me talk to my friends, at least, won't you?” she asked him at last.

He took his hands away from her, nodding, looking relieved. She followed his broad back, wanting to touch the patch of sweat between his shoulder blades, out into the lobby. They went past the desk and down a short hall to a door marked
établissement
in faded lettering. A guard, the youngest one, stood up from a squat as the Majd came up, grinning and giving him a half-salute. Although he carried a rifle it still shocked her a little to see one so young with a cigarette in his mouth.

“He's in here,” said Harisah. “They both are. Now I have to go. Things may be happening soon. Go back to your room when you're done with your friends. Go back to your little girl. Susan—”

“What?”

“I may not see you again.”

“What do you mean?” She glanced at Junior; he was still grinning, glancing from her to his leader, but it was evident from his expression that he did not understand their words.

“The Syrians have left. I think that means we may be attacked soon.”

“Attacked—” she stopped.

“If we are,” he said somberly, “I will fight till I and all my men are dead. That is
sharaf
—honor. I became a soldier, a fighter, to fight this battle. There are others in our party than those here. You see? If we fight here, even if we lose, we strengthen them for next time. And we may win. I can die for that. I have to; I have promised.”

So neat, so wrapped up, she thought. There's no way he can lose, even if he dies. And abruptly she felt angry. It was so fucking masculine. Soldier or terrorist, it was all the same. “Duty” and “glory” and “victory,” and meanwhile people dying, with families, with dreams of their own. Or just people … like old Stanweis. And Moira. And Cook.

And he was so eager, not just to take the lives of others, but to give his own. That was the tragedy.

“Yes, I see,” she said, forcing a smile. “But if you think we'll be attacked—what happens to us? Can't you let us go? Won't you? For me?”

He hesitated for a long time. Then he said, “I wish … I wish now I had done that. But I was angry. I can't now. Not in front of my men.”

“Won't you at least think about it? If we're attacked?”

“I will think about it.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“But one more thing,” he said.

She waited, in the close air of the corridor, smelling him and herself.

“If fighting starts here, stay in your room. Understand? There are men like Ihab”—he jerked his head back toward the boy—“and the man I punished, who have been told that you are our enemies; and I cannot be everywhere.
Don't
come down to help your friends. Don't come down to the lobby. Wait till it is over, until it stops. If we win, I will come and find you. If we lose, don't go back to the plane.”

“The
plane?”

“Even after the fighting is over.” He leaned closer over her, lowering his voice, although the guard still looked on blankly. “Do you understand?”

“No, I don't. Why not? If anything happens, why shouldn't we try to get out?”

“Listen to me, stupid woman! I am trying to help you. Don't go out of your room. Don't go back to the airplane.”

“I'll go wherever we'll be safe,” Susan said. She straightened her back, and a little of her courage came back from wherever it had gone when she saw old Stanweis die. “I'm responsible for my daughter. I'm not promising anything where she's concerned.”

“All right, all right.” He waved one hand in an irritated gesture. “Are all American women as stubborn as you? Look. I will make you a deal. All right? If you stay here, in the hotel, I will try to protect you. You and the child. You see? If you stay in the room with her I will make sure no one hurts you. Is good enough? Will you be happy then?”

“You'll protect us yourself?”

“That's what I say. Yes.”

And it was strange. It was what she had wanted, yet not dared to hope for. It was more than he had any reason to promise. Yet now as she looked up at his face in silence, in the cavelike dimness of the corridor, despite what he was, she did not doubt him at all. He would stay with them and protect them. It seemed natural. It was the way it should be. And she knew that despite his unwillingness to acknowledge it, it had not been only hers, that feeling of last night, that sense that there was something unspoken and complex between them. He felt it too, and he would stay. The knowledge flooded her, made her light, free, until beside her the guard sniffled and she remembered Moira.

But you could push a man, this man, only so far. “Thank you,” she said again. “I knew you … cared for me.”

“I care only for my people,” he said stiffly, but she knew that he was not really speaking to her now; it was for the guard, or more truly for some yet-unyielding part of himself. The way he stood, his hands gripping and releasing the stock of the rifle, told her that.

“Can I see them now?” she asked him.

“Yes. Go in. I will tell the guard to let you come out.”

Lieberman and Cook were sitting behind an incongruous oak desk, the manager's, apparently, looking out a barred window into the square. The guard followed her in. They both moved silently. As she came up to the desk, feeling the hot, still air cut at her face, neither of them heard. They were not speaking, not moving, just sitting together in green leather chairs. She saw just before she reached them that their hands were locked.

From outside, through the bars, a stutter of distant shots filtered into the room.

“Ox?”

They both turned, but their hands stayed together. Moira's face was streaked with tears, glistening trails through the dirt, and her eyes were wide and wet.

Susan went to her and hugged her, and then, almost as an afterthought, kissed Michael. She paused then, uncertain what to do. She wanted to tell Moira about Harisah's promise, but that seemed cruel. Instead she perched herself on a corner of the desk and said, too brightly, “Well, it's not so bad down here, is it? There don't seem to be as many flies.”

“No.” Moira didn't smile.

“What's happening?” said Cook. He looked excited, his cheeks flamed with color; she had never seen him so keyed up. “Can you see anything? Who's doing all the firing?”