Bone Ash Sky (66 page)

The play stops all at once when the young woman has had enough. Inam looks rebuffed, puffing out her reddened cheeks. The woman rests her hands on her narrow hips and surveys the ceiling.

‘Phew! That’s my workout for the day.’

She collapses onto Bilqis’s bed, gives every impression of having only just spied me.

‘Hi, I’m Rowda. You must be Anoush? Inam talks about you all the time.’

‘She does? All good things, I hope.’

‘Of course, but—’

Rowda seems to be withholding information she would dearly love to divulge. She fiddles with the buckle on her belt – black as her hair, with thick silver studs. I bark out a forced laugh, lightening the pause.

‘Well,’ Rowda begins. You’re the one going with an Israeli, aren’t you? Asking questions? People around here talk.’

‘So? I don’t understand.’

I look around the room. Bilqis seems very busy making tea, her back turned away from the conversation.

‘Oh, nothing. I just don’t think a Jew – or an American, for that matter – could have anything much of value to offer us here.’

I face her square on. ‘Excuse me? The Jew I know is out there right now, disarming your country’s landmines, saving your citizens from being blown up. I don’t see you doing anything like that.’

I take a scalding gulp of my tea, and leave as soon as it’s polite to do so. Inam hugs me briefly at the door, but soon joins Rowda on the floor, playing cards. Rowda stares after me for a moment, then resumes playing the game.

I cube lamb off the bone for a stir-fry and Julius whimpers, pawing at my feet. I throw him a morsel of fat.

‘Patience, Julius! I’m keeping the bone for you.’

I swear under my breath at these Beirut butchers, selling whole legs of animal, no shrink-wrapped pre-cut packets. Struggle with the unwieldy shape. String of tendon, white muscle, resistant flesh. Cubes of red meat. Cut. Move finger. Chop. Move finger. Cube. Knife flash. Bone. Cut finger. I shake my hand out the window, trying not to drip blood onto the chopping board.

As I jiggle my finger in the air my thoughts turn to Rowda again: at the lisping, confident way she’d passed judgement on a stranger. Her long, crossed legs, the arched foot swinging back and forth. The dark lipstick she reapplied, turning her back on the three of us with studied ostentation. The mannish, forceful gestures that belied her statements about modesty, sensitivity to culture, fitting in with the local population. ‘First step to making a difference,’ she said. ‘Not standing out.’ Is she making a difference? And what about me?

I’m happy with my article on Sayed. It’s finished, and
The Globe
has also allowed me to offer it to the local
Daily Star
. I wrap my finger in a napkin; blood soaks through in an instant. I throw it away, take another. Do I believe what I’ve written? Is Sayed really innocent? As innocent as Issa Ali was? What a lame joke. I actually say it aloud, hear my voice duplicate itself in the silent room.

I walk to the oval mirror over the fireplace, wishing Lilit were here to make some sense of it all. Siran was worse the last time I went to visit. The nurses implied it wouldn’t be long now; she was deteriorating by the day. I despise myself for thinking that if she dies I can at last bring myself to wear the earrings, feel their burnished weight against my neck. Am I as selfish as my father was?

I continue to look in the mirror, keeping my expression neutral, trying not to put any feminine mask over my bland reflection. Boyish. In certain moods, definitely my father’s face. He personally murdered dozens, even hundreds, of civilians. Yet I can forgive him for that. After all, he was my father; we share blood, history, too many personality traits. Lilit would tell me so when I was naughty as a child, weary and disapproving.
But which traits, Grandma?
Lilit wouldn’t say.
You’ ll find
out when you get older. You’ ll just know.

I unwrap the napkin from my finger. Is it ruthlessness? The ability to inflict pain? I could easily get up and leave Chaim today; I know I have it in me. I could walk down the Corniche with my backpack, even wave at him in a friendly, off-hand gesture. He’d stand, gazing after me, on the balcony. His grief wouldn’t hold me back. I could, if I had to. I’d leave him without regrets. As I’ve left my friends in Boston, those admiring boys, as my father once left my mother – and me. I could switch focus, try another life. Get Sayed out of prison, get to know him. Now wouldn’t that be resolution of the best kind? Cousin of the killer, daughter of the killed, coupling under a Beirut night sky. At least I’m his equal, whereas with Chaim I often feel naive, diminished. Yet at the same time he gives me hope of change. That with him I can rise above myself, and my background.

Bright blood wells from my jagged cut, runnels of red in the creases of my fingerprint, the faint, fluting throb of my pulse. Dislodged flap of skin exposing white cells beneath. Cruelty in the same whirling DNA. My father was cruel; I’ve come to accept that. But he thought he was doing the right thing. Yet what of Issa Ali? Much as I wish to forgive him, this longed-for absolution eludes me, night after sleepless night.

And what of Chaim and Sayed? I can feel, even in all his cautious politeness, that Chaim distrusts the Palestinian. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. Or is there? In the cold light of reality, I tell myself I feel nothing more for Sayed than the camaraderie of youth. Some admiration. Pity. A healthy dose of outrage at his plight. Why should Chaim feel threatened by that? But there’s something more, something dark and shameful. I think about Sayed too much. I can’t stop thinking about him.

As the light fades, Chaim comes home. I’m sitting at the table, sucking at my bleeding finger, quickly put it behind my back when I see him.

Chaim’s gone south for another fortnight. Dinner together was hard last night; he asked again and again why I’m so preoccupied lately.

‘Is it me? Have I done anything wrong?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not you. It’s everything.’

He threw up his hands then in exasperation and went to bed.

I stayed behind at the kitchen table, studying the rhythmic way grilled lamb juices dripped onto pita bread and stained it the colour of old blood. Something in its slow deliberation reminded me of my father, although I never knew him to be deliberate in his actions or otherwise. But something in me suspects he was methodical at the very least. Armenians were famed for their attention to detail, their love of the precise. Jewellery, illuminated manuscripts, architecture, the thousands of upright stone grave steles called
khatchkars
, carved into minuscule patterns with a passion that could be maddening. Of course Selim was finicky. How else could he have risen up the ranks of the Phalange?

I went out onto the balcony after what seemed like an inordinate length of time, watched the Corniche slowing down after another hot day and night. Only a few tourists remained, probably young oil heirs from the Gulf, stumbling out of bars. Most lights had extinguished in shops and restaurants. The beggars had long since huddled under their cardboard shelters on the beach. I stood for a while, letting my arms hang limp and my neck relax. When I crawled into bed sometime in the early hours of the morning, Chaim was cold and unresponsive. At first.

Now I wake with him gone, yet with the memory of his arms around me all night, my back raw from his stubbled cheek pressed into the hollow between my shoulderblades. Meanwhile I dreamed of Sayed: his muscular, dark-flecked arms, his rough face on my skin. There’s something slightly distasteful about my attraction to him. How can I condone his acceptance of hatred, his hardness, his connection with Issa Ali? Or is that an intrinsic part of the attraction? It feels such a betrayal to take pleasure in thoughts of his body, the promise of his flesh – a betrayal not so much of Chaim, I’m ashamed to admit, but of my father.

I get up with a growing aversion to myself and the day, jerk open the curtains. The new sun warms my skin and I dress after my shower in its slanted glow. Now I feel almost restored, part of the empty morning hush of these five rectangular rooms. Stripes of light echo the designs of the tiles at my feet: triangles and starbursts and diamonds in faded shades of ruby and sapphire and clotted cream. I’ve grown fond of Beirut again, and I love this apartment more than any place I’ve lived in, more than my childhood home. I belong here. In my saner, quieter moments, I can accept that I belong with Chaim too, that we can build a good life together. Then I think of Sayed, or of going back to Boston – and don’t know what’s good for me anymore. As for Sarkis’s apartment – well, I haven’t lived there long enough to know. I might want to sell it when I go back, find something with no traces of the past.

Chaim’s home is a haven of calm amid the traffic noises below, motorists honking and swearing, hawkers whining, the sea booming on the Pigeon Rocks. I love the cubbyhole kitchen, the bedroom with its tiny Juliet balcony and narrow French doors, the huge balcony that comes off the living room. I love the worn Turkish kilims Chaim has thrown on the floor. I love his low futon with its vanilla-hued sheets, his large white wicker baskets for clothes and shoes and books, peeling posters on all the walls proclaiming their memories of old marches and protests: world hunger, minority rights, the end of war.

I feed Julius, who seems less hungry than usual, then take him for his daily walk through the noisy streets. Chaim is mad to keep a dog in Beirut. Julius strains, wanting to run. Surely a mastiff wasn’t bred for this dust, this chaos, this blazing sun? I take him off the leash and let him run in and out of waves on the shore.

When we arrive home I pull an old leather rucksack out of Chaim’s cupboard – legacy of his college days – and pile a jumble of supplies into it: wool sweater, water bottle, a packet of raisins, feel for my wallet in my jeans.

‘No, Julius, I can’t take you with me,’ and I stoop to pat his massive head.

I’m apprehensive about leaving him behind, if only for the day, when Chaim has explicitly entrusted him to my care. I tell the women downstairs I need to go out; they nod in their practical fashion and promise to feed him if I don’t come home before nightfall.

There’s nobody to leave a note for. I’m going to the Beka’a Valley. There’s no choice to make anymore. I’m going to see the place where my father died.

When I arrive I find it difficult to suppress the rising gorge in my throat. Maybe it’s merely hunger, or the swaying motion of the service taxi for the past hour. I shared it with a malodorous old man, whiffs of decay from empty gums, who used every opportunity of the vehicle’s lurch to lay his hand on my knee. His veiled wife and daughters didn’t seem to notice or care.

I squat on the side of the road, eat a handful of raisins. Their mustiness only makes me feel worse and I spit the half-chewed remnants into the dust. I take to wandering aimlessly up and down the dry, deserted streets. No idea where to look. All I know, from Sarkis, is that my father was taken to a disused barn in the Beka’a and killed. I’m certain the barn is – or was; it could be burned down now, for all I know – somewhere close to this transit town, a few miles out of Ba’albek. There’s nobody to ask for directions. They all seem to have been swallowed up by the dust-filled, echoing street. The gap-toothed old man and his brood disappeared into a walled house long ago without a backward glance.