Bone Ash Sky (38 page)

Selim buttoned his coat high at the collar and wound his scarf doubly thick around his neck. It had become a ritual for him, comforting as a child’s blanket clutched tight to the chin. The lambswool soft and yielding, like a mother. He scrawled a hasty note, wincing at how trite it was to leave such a banal record of his existence, to apologise in advance for causing grief. The pen bled onto the page then ran out, scratching at the paper. He shook it for a moment, then decided he’d written enough. He left the note on the end of the bed, weighted with the edge of the coverlet.

He took one last look at his bedroom as he stood at the open door. Anahit’s red shoes lay discarded: the right one under the bed, the left one heel up near the window. He knelt down and put the two shoes together at the foot of the bed, as if she’d just stepped out of them. This made him feel as if he wasn’t abandoning her at all.

He planned on slipping out the side door under the pomegranate tree. He hadn’t packed much: one change of clothes, his identity papers, a thick envelope of money given to them both at the wedding. Yet he took the silver bracelet Anahit had worn since she was a child, stripped it from her wrist before the women undressed and sponged her. He knew Lilit would miss it at some point and take note. Take note of what, his selfishness, avarice, cruelty? Who cared anyway? The bracelet was some reminder of his cousin at least, a cheap, glinting token of her girlish need. He wore it now on his own wrist, far too tight so it bit into his flesh, but he told himself he deserved the constant reminder, the sensation of pain.
Let me bleed too.
Or at least it allowed him to pretend he had suffered as she had.

He took a moment to look in the hall mirror, smoothed the fine down on his upper lip with a lick of saliva. His hands were shaking again and he ignored them, instead looking more intently at his reflected face. His mouth so close to the mirror he could see a small circle of fog, his breath frozen on the glass. It was a necessary distraction, so that he wouldn’t have to think too deeply about Anahit’s death, his new baby daughter, what he was about to do. Look in the mirror, concentrate on the easy problems of the material, of pores and pimples and hair. His features did not please him – had never pleased him. He didn’t look Lebanese enough, or tough enough. And militiamen needed proper moustaches. After all, didn’t Father once sport one, soft and bushy, in those grainy shots from his fighting days? Selim was on his way to becoming a hero too. He’d already been given his first rifle by the Phalangists in secret, and offered military training in the Catholic monasteries of the north. If he showed talent there, he would be sent to Galilee with the Jews for specialised training in the techniques guerrilla commandos used. He would have to convert from Armenian Orthodox to Maronite, but that was a small sacrifice. Already he’d been to confession, knelt in a box with the faceless priest, but couldn’t think of any sins. The old man had been kind, taking him down into the crypt afterward to show him all the armaments the church had agreed to store for the Phalange. He was struck by how much like a simple, work-worn peasant the frail Father looked.

‘This is a sacred war we’re fighting,’ he whispered, his breath rank on Selim’s cheek.

He suppressed a brief stab of regret as he closed the gate behind him. He expected to feel something more for his newborn child, or for Anahit’s death, but it was his father he suddenly pained for.
I only
married her to please you, Father. Honour. To keep that stupid shop in the
family too. Because we all know who really owns it, don’t we?
And yet it wasn’t good enough. Nothing was ever good enough.
Don’t shame
me again, my son.
Father had slapped him on the back and settled the marriage crown more firmly on his head. Selim winced at the gesture: uncareful, off-hand. It was then he thought:
Fine. If you really think I
can’t measure up then I’ ll leave.

As soon as Anahit took her last breath, the family’s accusation was worse. He could feel the disapproval in their eyes.
If it weren’t for you
she would still be alive. You made her pregnant too early. Then you had
the audacity to be present at the birth.
Little did they know. Or maybe they did. He knew Lilit had something to do with it. Anahit seemed so sure that night at the university that she had her period, she was used to this, knew what she was doing. He even saw her blood, smeared it on rough concrete with his fingers. She said she didn’t want anything from him, that it was just fun, harmless fun. After all, wasn’t this the sixties? Americans in the movies she watched were doing it all the time.

He paused on the pavement outside the house. Inside, he could see figures moving slow and trance-like before the windows, could hear the low, painful pitch of women crying. He made a gesture as if to brush something aside, and stepped out onto the road to flag a taxi.

The waitress stood before him now, almost awkward, balancing a laden tray on her hip. It was crammed with half-full coffee cups and crumbs.

‘Monsieur, did you want anything else?’

‘Put your tray down; it must be heavy.’

‘I’m sorry, monsieur, I can’t. My father is watching.’

He raised his eyebrow at the little man behind the counter, who nodded. He touched the side of her face with one finger, got up and sauntered toward the car.

More leaflets. Pink and tan, less shocking than the first, now the worst prophecies had been fulfilled. They piled in a snowdrift on the balcony, carpeting the streets thick and silent with the non-sound of shoes impacting on soft paper.

Men of Beirut
If you value the lives of your women and children
take them and leave the west of the city now

They’re not addressed to me, Sanaya said, and tore them up.

Issa came back for sporadic visits now he was officially stationed in Beirut, fighting Israelis and Phalange with combined Shia militias on the borders. It was early September now; the sea swelled in anger and appeared even more blue, but the days and nights were hot as summer past. Only at dawn when Sanaya woke and then couldn’t get back to sleep, when she sat on the balcony nursing her tea and a cigarette, did she draw her mother’s dressing-gown tighter around her against the breeze. Then she felt the possibility of autumn, the hope for peace in the promise of cool air.

Rouba still stayed away, barely acknowledging her in the courtyard or corridor. Nothing sincere had passed between them for weeks, nothing more than a swift nod and a puzzled stare. It hurt. She couldn’t stop herself from turning away, hiding the sudden sting of tears at such overt indifference. Rouba still sent Hadiya upstairs to her, though – or did the child beg her mother to visit each morning? At any rate, she was thankful she still saw Hadiya once a day, was allowed to give her chocolate milk and brush her hair. Yet Rouba’s disapproval remained heavy. It was more than the conversation they had at the washing line. Rouba couldn’t pretend she condoned Sanaya’s relationship with Selim, now she guessed its true nature. She assumed Issa too knew of Selim’s clandestine visits, from Rouba, yet hoped he would keep her secret and not betray her to his superiors. There was no use thinking about what they would do to her, no use being frightened. She had to trust Issa, Rouba too. At the same time Sanaya felt that Rouba was not exactly pleased about Sanaya’s recent friendship with Issa. She avoided speaking about him when Sanaya asked.

Sanaya allowed Issa to visit again, even welcomed him, more so now Bashir Gemayel had been assassinated – by the Israelis? Palestinians? Syrians? By his own? – after less than a month in power. It looked as though the Muslim majority might govern Lebanon after all
.
Issa spent most nights downstairs with Rouba, and Sanaya stifled a pinprick of jealousy when she thought of what they did there together, all alone in the dark.

She tried to draw Issa out when he was home, sat him beside her on the divan and asked about fighting in the south, the militias he aligned himself with in Beirut. She polished her nails when he was around, brushed her hair, darned underwear, treating him in the familiar fashion she would a female confidante, or a household pet she spoke to from time to time. Issa sat with his legs drawn up under his knees, bit his nails in a reverse mirroring of her movements.

‘Is it hard for you, Issa? To get up every morning and know that today you might die?’

‘It’s the same for you. You could be bombed today, or any other day.’

‘It’s different, and you know it. I have no control, but you do.’

‘How?’

‘You choose to go out there and fight. You can decide how many you kill or don’t kill.’

He smiled at her, a tight, patronising smile.

‘You lie to yourself if you think I have control. My life is in Allah’s hands, just as much as yours.’

She flounced up from the divan, gathered tea glasses from the low table at his side.

‘I’m tired. Time for you to go now.’

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

‘I’m sick of being sneered at, Issa.’

‘Who’s sneering?’

‘You are. Condescending to me.’

‘I’m merely telling you the truth.’

‘Your truth! Allah protect me from your lies then.’

She strode to where he still lolled on the divan, put her face inches from his.

‘What really happened to you down south, Issa? Why do you keep having nightmares?’

Issa half rose, then flopped down on the divan again when he saw she wouldn’t move.

‘Who told you that? It’s a lie.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Don’t swear in front of me.’

‘Who are you to tell me I can’t?’

‘Nobody, Sanaya. I’m nobody, if that’s the way you want it.’

With that, he pushed past her and slammed the door behind him.

Issa sat downstairs on the spare-room bed, nursing his Koran. He looked up at the ceiling, Sanaya’s bedroom right up there above him. If he jumped up, he could touch her ankle, wind his fingers around it, drag her down to him here.

He opened the holy book randomly, chanted aloud. ‘But the true servants of God shall be well provided for, feasting on fruit, and honoured in the gardens of delight. Reclining face to face on soft couches.’ He stopped reading and thought of Sanaya’s questions. So many questions, what did she want? And how did she know about his nightmares? The way he called out his commander’s name every night and woke, sweaty and shivering, afraid Rouba and the child had heard. Chief, his men called him. His hands were strangely soft for a soldier’s, clammy and spongy, knuckles constantly ridged with unhealed scratches. His grip was tight, though, on shoulders, wrists, around other soldier’s necks. Issa saw him strangle a young boy, only to teach him a lesson, just long enough to knock him unconscious, not long enough for him to die.

Then there were those nights. When the moon was new and frail, so enveloped by scudding cloud that the consistency of dark would muffle sound, self, coherent thought. That nameless fear again. On those nights, Chief ’s grip was tight on Issa’s hair, his waist, over his mouth, choking him so he wouldn’t scream.

Now he looked out the spare-room window. Through the mess of buildings and balconies and aerials he could catch a glimpse of sky, blood orange fading to rose. Nightfall, and with it the advent of Selim, that bastard.