Bone Ash Sky (17 page)

‘We Turks are civilised after all,' he liked to say to the gendarmes. He didn't quite agree with the ideology of the moment: reminiscent of the golden age of Turkic and Mongol warriors, fierce-bearded Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. ‘We are the master race,' Talaat Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, had proclaimed in Constantinople. ‘It is our duty to subjugate inferior peoples.' This glorification of ethnic Turkism irked Djevet, when he stopped to think. All that talk of blood and race, mystical. He much preferred the Ottomans, yet knew the boys screwed up their faces at him when he continued to refer to them as such. It was a term in danger of becoming obsolete.

At the same time, he knew the boys needed some diversion. It was hot and boring work guarding prisoners, feeding them, dealing with their constant cries and their smell. He watched the gendarmes throw off their embroidered jackets and roll up their sleeves. They began by stripping the prisoners down. Some women helped by doing it themselves, all the more fun to watch. It was slower, for one thing. More satisfying.

When the women were all lined up in the courtyard in the sunlight, some shivering, although it was so warm, the gendarmes stood aside and whispered among themselves. He could see their faces clearly: the boys were enjoying the situation. Some of the naked women were old and wrinkled in strange places and he turned his head away, not liking to look at those. They cried the loudest, short little quacks of fear.

The boys began whipping the women with branches. The more they wailed, the harder the boys struck them. He could hear the women praying and screaming, ‘Lord, have mercy, Jesus help us, Oh dear God, why have you abandoned us?' The boys kept on whipping them, telling them to dance, to sing Turkish songs. ‘Sing,
gaivour
, sing it loud. Dance, Armenian slut!' He could see they were in a frenzy of sex – pain and sex. He saw it was good for morale, a little healthy exertion before the long march they would have to take in the next few days. They forced the little children to stand in a circle around their mothers and sisters, and Djevet heard the high, reedy sound of their singing voices over the cries and groans. Soon the youngest children stopped, sobbing uncontrollably now, and one by one they all began to cry.

The boys let them be. They had run out of branches, having whipped the women so hard the boughs were breaking into bits. More trees were stripped, feverishly, with the leaves still clinging onto them. The prisoners were now nearly all on the ground, shielding their faces and those soft women's parts with their hands. Some were motionless, supine in the dust.
Perhaps the boys are going too far.
He opened the window and leaned out, enjoying the sensation of his ribs sharp against the wooden sill.
Perhaps not far enough.

‘Soon there'll be no trees left the way you're going!'

The young men stopped and looked up at him with open mouths. He shut the window to flick a pregnant fly from his shoulder.
Slap
– he killed it and kicked it under the rug for the cleaner to find.

‘Idiots,' he muttered. ‘I'll show them how it's done.'

In the following days, the remaining Armenian prisoners were shod like horses with nails driven into their soles. They were forced to dance to ballads set up on a gramophone in the prison courtyard.
My darling,
my love, your sufferings and joys will be many.
Djevet Bey stood aside and clapped in time with the music, his ring flashing dark in the sunlight.

BEIRUT, 1982

S
elim was driven back to east Beirut at dawn through a hail of hard rice and rosewater. Lebanese Christians welcoming the Israeli troops, heralding the end of seven years of war. Or so they thought. As he walked from his car to the Phalange HQ, women blew kisses to him as well, festooning the dour building with ropes of ribbon and hothouse flowers. He wasn't as flattered as he would have liked to be. He didn't think it was that easy. One young woman with crooked lipstick came close to him, simpering and mispronouncing
shalom
. He shouted at her.

‘I'm not Israeli, all right? I'm Lebanese, like you.'

He felt a little guilty for not saying he was Armenian, after everything his people had suffered. Some of them had died rather than renounce who they were. But his guilt didn't last long. He walked home after a couple of hours spent shuffling paper and making telephone calls. People embraced in the streets. They made love in destroyed parks. They danced with Israeli soldiers, dragging the heavy-booted youths into whirls of movement and laughter.

At home he opened the fridge and drank four glasses of French champagne for breakfast.

‘Here's to Lebanon,' he toasted himself.

When he was sufficiently drunk, he decided to ring Sanaya. After two unsuccessful attempts to connect to west Beirut he heard her exhale on the line before she said, ‘
Sa' laam
.'

‘Be ready,
chérie
. My driver will come and get you. We're going on a picnic.'

In the hills above the east of the city, the Israeli-troop compound was filled with the sounds of improvised music from hastily assembled instruments. Sunni families watched in awe of the officers' antics, wanting to see for themselves what liberation looked like. Selim hoped this would be peace only for the deserving. These Muslims had no place here. He strode through the mess of children playing on blankets and mothers in deckchairs, to the knot of leaping, yelping, off-duty soldiers. They noted his cedar insignia and offered him a glass of something bubbly and pink, not worthy of being called champagne. He took a sip then emptied the contents behind his back.

Sanaya stayed in the car – she didn't like to be seen in public with Selim. So much for the fabled picnic. She could smell cheese and bread and cured meat on the back seat. His driver must have bought them quickly, without thought. Maybe they could drive somewhere secluded, up into the mountains; maybe Selim would lie down on the grass, his head in her lap.

She laid her head back and closed her eyes. She let herself imagine a future with Selim: the wedding in Cyprus, the simple cream dress. A spray of roses, lone drinks after the ceremony. A life together, away from the danger and filth. But what would they have left to talk about? Her mouth hung open; she dozed. The sun made red patterns behind her eyelids. She heard a tap on the window, sat stiffly upright, wound it down. An Israeli airforce officer leaned in.

‘I've been watching you, Mademoiselle. You look sad.'

His Arabic was classical, affected, yet he was almost boyish, with frank eyes full of confidence. He seemed too young to be so high up in the ranks. Sanaya was taken aback.

‘Not really. Just tired. Too many late nights.'

‘Your name?'

‘Why do you want to know?'

‘I'm just making conversation.'

‘Okay, it's Sanaya.'

‘Mine's Alon.'

She shook his outstretched hand. As she sat, uncertain, neither pulling her arm away nor offering any warmth, Selim sauntered over to them and put out his hand. The Israeli released Sanaya and clasped Selim with feeling.

‘Hey, I've seen you around. You've done some good work. Pakradounian, isn't it?'

‘Selim Pakradounian.'

‘Pleasure. Alon Herzberg.'

He smiled, and Sanaya could see his blind hope for the country, his beatitude. It dazzled her for a moment.

‘Should all be over soon,' he said.

Selim leaned over and lit his cigarette for him. Sanaya was surprised at herself for despising the gesture, so deferent, so mercenary, a subject king bowing down before an emperor.

‘You think so?' Selim asked.

‘I know so. The PLO will be running out of here in days with their tails between their legs.'

Sanaya wondered how the Israeli soldiers could be so young, so touchingly naive, so arrogant. Their ignorance coupled with civility was unnerving. She watched Selim take a long puff of his cigarette, considering.

‘What about all the rest of the troublemakers? Hezbollah, Amal, all the Shias. Push them back into Iran, I say.'

‘They'll pipe down. Once they realise we're not leaving until Bashir Gemayel's firmly in power.'

‘And then?'

Both men looked surprised. Neither of them expected Sanaya to volunteer an opinion. They turned around and stared at her, not answering. She repeated her question.

‘Well? What then?'

Selim grew red in the face, threw down the butt of his cigarette.

‘What do you mean, what then? What more do you want?'

‘What's going to stop us all killing each other again as soon as the Israelis leave?'

Alon put his hand up between them.

‘If you allow me, I think we will put enough structures in place to stop that happening.'

‘Like what? Mossad agents? Shin Bet? More secret police? Suspension of civil liberties?'

Selim tried to light another cigarette, burnt his fingers, swore.

‘Enough, Sanaya,' he said. ‘What are you trying to get at?'

Sanaya shook her head, tears starting in her eyes. Alon looked from one to the other, with puzzlement and sympathy in his face. Sanaya waved him and Selim away with a flick of her hand. She stumbled out of the car, slamming the door. Before she walked two paces, she viciously ground the butt of Selim's cigarette into the ground under her heel.

The Israeli bombardments continued, increasing in duration and force. Sanaya was surprised Issa spent so much time at home, finding food and water, sitting on the divan smoking shisha, spouting rhetoric about a holy war. Then why wasn't he out there fighting it?

‘Come on,' he said. ‘In the corridor. It's safer there.'

‘But—'

She took one last look through the intact glass from her window. Crimson fire from Israeli planes burnt the seafront in successive washes, bleeding out, fading, only to return again.

‘It's safer there,' Issa repeated. ‘I know. When the bombing gets really bad, there's no choice.'

As Sanaya followed Issa into thicker darkness, she heard her chandeliers breaking one by one with the force of each blast. Lamps of Persian coloured glass and gold filigree, shaped like Hadiya's tulip tumblers. Smash. Shards against her face. She ducked. A fragment in her hair. Issa plucked it out.

‘It's okay. You'll live.'

She let herself smile at him, knowing he could hardly see her face in the dark. Downstairs in the courtyard, she could hear the canary trilling with desperation, an all-is-lost-so-there's-nothing-to-lose bravado. She felt the same herself tonight. Nothing to lose now. So why not enjoy? As if sensing her thoughts, Issa grasped her arm above the elbow. She pulled it away with involuntary petulance, suddenly realising just how much she resented the familiarity he'd assumed in the past few weeks. For a fundamentalist Muslim, his gesture was tantamount to ownership. In that instant he felt her rebuke and there was a moment of awkward silence until he covered it over by shouting in her ear.

‘He's just like me, that little bird.'

They sat huddled together in the gloom: the old concierge and his wife, the Druze family from downstairs, refugees who had come to camp in the garden when their apartment block was reduced to rubble. They had three daughters, mouths open, dribble at the corners, deeply asleep. A baby boy sucking frantically at his mother's breast. The stone stairs were cold. Rouba lay on one of the shallow steps, bedroom pillows piled about her, Hadiya curled so close she seemed an extension of her mother's body. The explosions coming ever closer reverberated in Sanaya's heart, drowning out its trip-trip beat. She held Hadiya's hand where it lay, illuminated, each time there was a flash of white. The sound thudded in her lungs and throat and in her very marrow. Each time a bomb exploded, she felt that this time she should be used to it, that next time she wouldn't shudder in its impact. She cried out, an involuntary sound. Issa smiled, as if excited by her fear. Another explosion, closer this time. The ringing in her ears drowned out every other sound for minutes, so many long minutes she was afraid she'd be deaf forever.

The Druze man had a radio that worked.

‘President Reagan has appealed to Menachem Begin earlier today to call an immediate ceasefire,' the BBC newsreader announced.

Sanaya cringed at another loud blast, cutting through the transmission. Israeli warships fired rockets into the Corniche. Shells fell in Hamra. This was Begin's reply.

After four hours of continuous bombing, the concierge produced a bottle of Scotch.

‘I don't drink,' Issa said. ‘It's against the will of Allah.'

Sanaya drank her own glass down, looking at him over the rim.

When the bombardment ended they walked out into the heat of a morning tinged with the smell of burnt hair, ash, cordite.