Bone Ash Sky (18 page)

‘That was the longest we've had,' Issa said.

‘We're helpless,' Sanaya murmured.

‘What did you say?'

‘There's no use fighting, Issa. They're too powerful for us.'

‘Take those words back. It's a sin.'

‘I don't see you out there with your fellow fighters.'

‘Part of my duty is to protect my dead brother's wife and daughter. And you, if you want it.'

She strode ahead of him as if she hadn't heard, opening the tall iron gates with some difficulty and walking out into the street.

‘Hey, you can't go out there! It's not safe.'

‘There's nothing you can do, Issa. You might as well not be here.'

He ran out after her, grasping and pulling on her hand. This time she surrendered to him but let her hand lie limp in his. He was babbling like a child in the effort to convince her of his importance.

‘I find food for you, I bring clean water, I fix the generator when it breaks down. I kill the rats in your kitchen, the cockroaches that come into your bed—'

She still let him hold her hand but remained firm against him, pushing forward all the while. They walked down the street – he let her lead him. The destruction of their neighbourhood was far greater than she had imagined. This celebrated district of seaside hotels and restaurants had become, overnight, a graveyard of twisted steel, slabs of concrete scattered like the ruins of Roman columns. She felt a hard bullet form in her throat; she wouldn't cry. Wouldn't give the Israelis that satisfaction. She looked around for familiar landmarks: the corner shop where she sometimes bought chewing gum and toilet paper, gone. The flower seller who swore at her whenever she brushed against any of his arrangements, pulverised. Nothing left. No, she would not cry. The debris of people's lives everywhere on the ground: a charred exercise book with no covers, broken pieces of crockery – some still with bits of food clinging to them – a nylon negligee draped over the bonnet of a car. Dust coated their faces and eyes and they both walked blind, holding each other close and then closer, coughing at intervals to expel the black particles from their throats.

‘We should go back,' Issa said.

‘No. One more block.'

She wanted to see the Khalidi hospital, to see for herself if it had been bombed. He clutched her hand tighter, anticipating the worst. It had been three days since Israeli troops had cut off water, food and electricity in west Beirut. As they passed open doorways, the sounds of children crying and women wailing for the dead were interspersed with more familiar, comforting sounds: slosh of reservoir water poured from jug into glass, the tinny French of the Phalangist
Voice of Lebanon
radio station, sizzle of potatoes dropped into a pan, the papery thin rustle of
L'Orient Le Jour
being opened to read news of last night's blasts.

They neared the hospital, Sanaya stony, white-faced. Gunmen from rival Muslim militias shouted at them to leave, ‘Fucking leave, leave now', firing their automatics in the air for emphasis. They too were coated in grey dust, comic-book ghosts. As Issa and Sanaya turned the corner, a high red smell caught them unawares. Flies settled on their lips and eyes and the smell intensified until it became too sweet, suspending speech or coherent judgement.

The dead were lined up in messy rows with heads against feet all the way to the entrance of the hospital. A woman nearby lay on her back with one leg crumpled beneath her, tan stockings pulled halfway down her calves by the force of the explosion. An old man next to her had the top half of his face scooped out, his mouth intact and twisted into an incredulous smile. The hospital facade was gone, all that remained was the basement, where open-air surgeries were being performed. No electricity; Sanaya could discern the hum of generators beneath the screams of old people and young women. Relatives of the wounded, even of the dead, shrieking at doctors to save their loved ones, grasping at them, pushing them away from someone else and to their own people. Scuffles broke out. Guns fired. Babies and children in hysterics, their open mouths black with horror. A thin little boy with a halo of chestnut hair was having his leg amputated. Two blood-spattered nurses hovered above him like anxious angels.

‘Let's go,' Issa said. ‘I can't.'

Sanaya stood staring at the tableau. The doctors and nurses were so tired they looked as if they were about to cry. This couldn't be happening to her city, her neighbourhood. She could hear the doctors talking among themselves as they made their rounds of the wounded, their voices growing louder and more irritable. The hospital had no clean water, no painkillers, no anaesthetic. The syringes they were using were recycled. There was no gauze for bandages, only ripped-up clothes and underwear donated by the relatives of the wounded. Thick cloth stuck to open sores. The wounded lay on the ground, sweating and moaning in the sun. The hospital was running out of body bags for the dead.

Half the people who had lived here were Christian, more than half hated the PLO, aping the West for generations in their politics and lifestyle. They took holidays in New York and Paris, sent their children to German schools, their daughters to Switzerland. They consumed and went on consuming just like good Americans. They had done nothing to deserve this, except perhaps by being too shallow, or trusting. Sanaya made to go. Issa tugged at her arm. She stopped and he bent over and vomited. She held his forehead, murmuring to him as if he were a child. He pushed her hand away.

SYRIAN DESERT, 1915

M
inas could stop himself from despair for moments at a time by imagining it all as one big game: last person standing wins the prize. As he saw the surging crowd thin, as the gasps and sighs and screams subsided, he knew he would survive the journey – if only because he lulled himself into apathy. The voice in his head conspired to keep it so.

It doesn't matter,
it said to him.
Nothing matters. It will all be over soon.
He didn't dare look at Van behind him, houses burning, their mutinous crackle heard well into the fields, the fabled lake awash with fire. Mamma groaned and fell onto the dirt, knocking her forehead against stone, hand to chest in immovable despair. He couldn't help thinking it was all an act. If she really cared to survive, she'd be still and quiet, circumspect as he was.

He clapped his hand over his mouth so he wouldn't yell at her. Lie low, head down. The only way to get out of this alive. He imagined his schoolbooks burning in neat piles where he'd left them, in order of size, propped against the window. The voice in his head whispered, cajoled.
Isn't it ironic? The first novel ever published in Turkish was written by an
Armenian.
He was holding a book to his chest when the Turks came, now he couldn't even think what it was. The officer in charge had arrived waving a
firman
from the Vali of Van and the Minister of the Interior in his hand. He dismounted from his horse, handed the paper to Mamma, who looked at it blankly. As Minas stretched out his arm to take the official document, one of the gendarmes knocked the book out of his hand.

He watched the book skid across the floor, pages unfurled and spine broken, then thud against the
tonir
. It made a sound like bone cracking. He stood with his back against the wall, unable to move, breathing hard. He thought he'd vomit –
please, God, no
– and, as if watching a stranger fall, he felt his body bend in half and crumple, both palms down on the floor. When he eventually looked up, the officer stood above him, face screwed into fastidious disgust. Flecks of bile on his polished boots and on Minas's knees.

Mamma came forward, knelt on the floor beside Minas. He felt her arms around him, but didn't dare look at her. She peered up at the officer, recognition lighting faint hope in her eyes.

‘
Bey effendim
, I know you. You do remember me, don't you? I clean your home each Sunday. I know your wife, your children. Please,
effendim
, you're a family man, you understand. Your little boy always asks me to—'

But he cut her off with a slap to the face so hard Minas felt his heart jump in his chest. He was ashamed, so ashamed. Ashamed to see Mamma so helpless, and so hated. He watched her press her lips together, holding the tears in, resting her head on her knees, waiting for the pain, the disbelief to pass. After that he didn't remember much. He must have received a blow to the head as well, because his temples throbbed even now. He came to, still sitting on the floor, propped up against the linen chest. Mamma's right cheek was scarlet, head held high. She and Lilit were bustling about as the gendarmes shouted and cursed at them to leave the house, quick. They picked up one object at a time – a patterned plate, a daguerreotype, a discarded stocking – then laid it down and took another, until they were forced to drop everything they held in their hands. Mamma had placed a pale rose from the garden in the middle of the table two nights ago, when Papa was still alive and everything had been different. The flower fell to the ground now from its smashed vase, petals in disarray, blown. All blown away.

The gendarmes went through the house in a frenzy, finding money Papa had hidden behind the plaster walls, an old fob watch, some jewellery he'd been repairing, Lilit's silver-inscribed belt. They ripped icons from the walls and swept cups and glasses from the shelves to the ground. Minas watched Lilit stop at the door to slide her feet into her clogs as one of the gendarmes took them on the point of his bayonet and flung them outside.

He looked back at his home among the laughter of Turkish men, the tears of Armenian women. He was picked up and forced to walk, a gendarme on each side.

‘Steady there,
janoum
,' one of them yelled. ‘Get back into line.'

Janoum
– he knew that word. It meant jewel in Turkish, used for darling, precious one, a term of endearment for sweethearts, beloved children. His mother sometimes used it when he was younger, with a mocking, half-reproving air. His legs refused to obey him – was it fear or sadness, was it the blow the Turk had given him? – he lolled between them like a man stuffed full of straw. His feet rolled outward and the gendarmes gave up in disgust and dropped him to the ground. He was drowned in the crowd of deportees, losing Mamma and Lilit, helped up by some neighbours and carried along. He craned his head over them to keep home in sight until he was forced to turn the corner. The windows – unshuttered now, open to wind and the sighing summer rains – flashed at him for the last time in the morning light:
You will never be back.
He fought to hold down the tears, wiping his eyes with his dirty sleeve.

Mamma kneeled like a Muslim, face to the sand, hands cupped around her ears. Now they were gone from Van, Minas tried not to look at her. He was ashamed of her: a deep, deathly shame he'd never known before. If she could alter in an instant, what would become of him? He sprang to her side, bent down and shook her by the shoulders.

‘Straighten up, Ma! I can't breathe when you carry on like this.'

She flung herself away from him, wild-eyed, her weeping uninterrupted by his outburst. He could see her eyes questioning, trying to put it together in some digestible pattern, failing in the end. He glanced at his sister, telegraphed her a frantic message with his eyes.
What do we do now?

‘Ma! Why are you doing this to us?'

She looked up as if she didn't recognise him, unresponsive to his once-familiar voice. He felt her pain in his skull, at the back of his eyes. ‘Stop it,' he mouthed. ‘Stop doing this to me.' His mother continued to wail, hitting out when Lilit knelt to help her up. He bent down, gripped her chin in his hand.

‘Enough,' he said. ‘I can't stand it anymore.'

He let go of her face and watched her flop onto the dirt, walked away, lost himself in the horde of patient women and wailing babies, didn't look back. He was struck now by the silence of the gathering; except for the babies, nobody made a sound. They were being led like sheep to the slaughter. Wasn't someone going to scream, raise their fists, make a run for it? People shuffled around him, heads down, helping grandparents and children walk faster. A blind man walked alone, his arms held out in front of him, face untroubled and serene. The gendarmes must have knocked his stick out of his hand. Everyone was resigned. Everyone was quiet except his mother. He could hear his own spit being swallowed, the sucking sound it made in his mouth. They had all become one terrified, cringing organism, alert to any hint of danger, moving blindly toward some obscure goal. Only his mother could bring them all down. He could still hear her, louder and more unpredictable than the children's droning whine.

Please, God, make her stop,
he prayed.
Make her stop, just make her
be quiet
. They were all so vulnerable here. They were one slow-moving, brainless beast. His mother's cries were a buzzing of hornets in his ears, not allowing him to think. The time she bathed his ear with warm wax and water when he was stung in the field; the time she rocked him to sleep when Turkish girls snubbed him on the street, holding their noses at an imagined stink, for his being an infidel. She rocked him and rubbed his back even though he was already twelve and a big boy too.

He remembered his father's slumped body in red flashes of heat, shutters opening and closing in his mind, no connective thread to the story. Papa. Body soft. Falling. Poked in the rib by a Turkish heel. Sharp spurs. Cut. Gaping flesh. Papa. His mouth. Wide open.
I know what
it's like. She doesn't.
He still hadn't told his mother or sister what he'd really seen last night. He hung back for a moment or two, eluded the guards, made his way slowly to the outer edge of the column to his mother.
Thank God she's stopped.
He could breathe again. She walked, unsteady, her face now composed in the mask she had always worn. Her cut forehead trickled a tear of blood into her eyebrow. Lilit put her hand out to wipe it but Mamma stopped her.