Bone Ash Sky (70 page)

‘I understand. But you will not have a good life with Sayed. I know this. On the other hand, the Israeli is too old. Better to wait.’

I close my eyes as well, let them rest for a moment. Inam rustles paper and hums tunelessly in an undertone. When I eventually speak it’s in a whisper as quiet as Inam’s shuffle and murmur.

‘Bilqis. Why do you care so much about me, anyway?’

‘How could I not care for you? We are both tied together by the past. Both suffering for it.’

A small moan escapes me. Somehow I’m more embarrassed before Inam’s silent regard than Bilqis’s gaze.

‘I don’t think I love either of them. Or maybe I love them both.’

Bilqis tuts.

‘Love? What’s love? Who knows nowadays? In any case, you won’t feel it till you’ve had children.’

She invites me to stay. I offer to pay board but she shakes her head, puts her large spotted hand over mine.

‘You’re family now. Part of us. It’s the least I can do, after what my poor son did to your father.’

I lean forward, studying her. Everything seems small and pinpointed in this dark, dingy room, her face, this throbbing instance. She smiles – a sad, lopsided smile.

‘Family,’ she repeats. ‘Too much blood between us, good and bad.’

‘What? Did you know Sayed told me?’

‘Of course Sayed told you. And of course he told me what has happened between the two of you. The very first day he met you he said,
Aunty, I think I’m falling in love with that Armenian girl
. Do you think he doesn’t talk? That’s what got him into prison in the first place.’

I lean back again in disbelief.

‘And you still want me to stay here?’

Bilqis laughs.

‘It’s you that should be cautious, my girl, not us. My son – I think he hated your father, more than just a wartime battle. But I don’t think he would have wanted that hate to poison the next generation. He wasn’t a hateful man.’

‘I’m sorry – I can’t believe that. I can’t forgive him. I wish I could. I really wish that. But I can’t. And yet – I feel no animosity toward you. None.’

Bilqis pulls me into her arms. I lean onto her lap, smelling the strong, herbal scent of her clothes and skin and hair. In that moment my tears begin, huge all at once. I’m heaving, crying so hard I seem to be outside my body. I think of her, having the heart to be so open to me, not being vengeful, as her son and my father were. I think of D’Andrea and my forgiveness of him. I cry for a long while. After a time, Bilqis slowly draws away. I can see tiny points of light in her eyes, tears she won’t let fall. Inam is standing, watching us.

‘Come, come, enough of this,’ Bilqis says. ‘Let’s drink a glass of arak together.’

Her grip is a little less firm than it was a few weeks ago. One side of her torso shakes, causing her to spill drinks and rattle plates when she serves. I move to help.

‘Are you okay, Bilqis?’

‘Feeling my age. I’m sixty-seven this year, you know.’

‘Still young.’

‘Yes.’ Bilqis smiles at Inam. ‘Still strong enough, Allah willing, to raise this one here a little longer.’

Inam stays in the corner, doing her homework and pulling faces. When I hold out my arms she runs to me in a wild rush of dirty hair and legs.

The three of us establish a routine over the coming days and weeks. In the beginning I am constantly on edge about bumping into D’Andrea, but after a week or so I realise that, if I do see him, I’ll merely smile and greet him. I’ve forgiven what he said and did.

In the morning I encourage Bilqis to lie in bed late, behind a sheet she has strung up for privacy. She has periodic bouts of numbness in her neck and arms, making it difficult for her to get out of bed. I urge her to see the camp doctor, but she says it’s nothing, just old age. I make breakfast and Inam and I eat sitting on wooden crates outside the front of the hut in our nightgowns, watching labourers pile onto trucks bound each morning for the south of the border, to work in road gangs for the Israelis. The men wave and blow kisses, dressed in filthy blue gear, caps pulled low over their eyebrows. Inam smirks her delight at such flattery but I can see she’s old enough now to also be embarrassed. I feel myself wanting to protect her more and more: from strange men’s gazes, hardship, suffering, from pain. She leaves her crusts behind for the sparrows, shooing her grandmother’s hens away when they come too close, and licks fig jam from her thumb. I learn how tightly she likes her flatbread rolled, which sweet spreads to buy at the camp’s only shop.

Inam drinks instant coffee every morning with evaporated milk and four teaspoons of sugar. I’m in no position to discipline her. She makes it herself as soon as she gets out of bed, and a mug for me and her grandmother as well. I don’t have the heart to refuse but spill most of mine in the dirt when Inam isn’t looking. The hens seem jerkier than usual on the days I do this.

Rowda comes once a week. I’ve grown accustomed to her presence but this doesn’t stop me from resenting it more each time. I’m used to her faded-black jeans – tight but not too tight; that would be culturally insensitive – the cinched-in waist and shining buckle. Her rants about Israelis and white people and Western academics, the US conspiracy to keep the Arab world down. I agree with some of what she says but will never admit it, and my agreement doesn’t go so far as to condemn anyone who isn’t Arab, or black, or oppressed. And then there’s Chaim – and what he’s taught me about not hating, about questioning everything. So each time Rowda begins one of her rants I cut her off. If she speaks of Palestinian civilian deaths, I tell her of the latest bombing in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. If she speaks of the rights of a dispossessed people, I counter with the image of those tattered remnants, survivors of the Holocaust, who found the only place that would have them. It does no good, of course, but it makes me feel that little bit closer to Chaim, allows me to miss him less if I speak in his voice. Even though I’ve tried so hard to banish him from my thoughts, as he’s seemingly banished me in turn. It’s been three weeks and still no sign of him.

Inam doesn’t come home for lunch, as UNRWA provides stewed lamb, oranges and fresh milk for the refugee children at school. In the afternoon, I make her take off her school clothes to keep them clean. We wash her hair in a bucket every three days, trying to untangle knots as big as burrs. Inam moans about me hurting her, twists and wriggles; she’s not used to doing what she’s told. Bilqis reprimands her, yet more and more has become reduced to a painful whisper, slurring her words slightly, making quiet demands from the safety of her bed. Eventually we get to a point where Inam does it herself, and I don’t have to help anymore.

Finally, when Inam has combed her hair, scraped it back with her favourite hair tie and dressed in the discoloured Bob Marley T-shirt and baggy shorts she wears every day after school, the three of us stroll out of the camp and toward the mountains towering above the city. Bilqis ties a shawl around her shoulders, girding herself for the first time she’ll get out of bed all day. I hold hands with Bilqis, who walks with irritating slowness, and Inam demonstrates how she can twirl three times around her grandmother in the time Bilqis can only take one step. Sometimes we meet Amal at the crossroads and she ushers us into her hut, fussing about with tiny wooden stools and tea glasses. She’s particularly careful of me, patting my hand and smoothing my hair, offering walnut biscuits she’s bought fresh and warm from the sole pastry vendor who dares venture into the camp.

‘So, Anoush,’ she asks each time. ‘When is my poor boy to be freed?’

‘Patience. We need patience. Everything will be all right.’

And I think about my unsaid longing for Sayed, my hard lesson of patience for Chaim’s return. But do I really want either of them? I have to admit that I’m not sure. Chaim feels right for me in so many ways. And I miss him, more than I’ve missed anyone before. More than I’ve longed for Lilit, or my mother and father. Sayed is something else: the possibility of a new future, the ability to wipe the slate clean.

When we reach the edge of the camp, we turn back to cook dinner and Inam tells us lurid stories about the other children at school, between demonstrations of acrobatics in her long-legged grace.

Without meaning to, hardly realising, I feel I’m recreating my life with my grandmothers here, in yet another ghetto. Armenian quarter: Palestinian refugee camp. The boundaries blur, wash into each other as I sleep and wake and cook and eat, walk arm in arm with Inam to go shopping, buying meagre provisions and taking a second-hand skirt or singlet donated by the compassionate West. I’m truly at home here, I realise. I continue to miss Chaim, and the beauty and repose of his apartment, but here I feel needed, and strong.

I do exactly as I did until the age of sixteen: feeding and tending Lilit’s failing strength, turning over the old body, sponging it, massaging the clawed yellow feet, kissing the parchment forehead before nightfall. Reading aloud by the light of a lamp, curled in bed. The only difference now is that the reading and talking is in Arabic only, and the cadences of Armenian are merely a phrase I wake from after a dream.

I decide to take Inam with me to see Sayed. It might be easier that way. Might make it harder for us to distrust one another – or like one another too much. Might make it easier just to be friendly, neutral. Now I’ve been able to pay for Sayed’s lawyer with help from Amal, I feel more entwined with him, and I’m not sure I like the sensation.

I buy Inam a bag of striped sweets at the rest stop. We stroll across the highway to the sandy strip bordering the sea, the silver-nude sea that’s followed us south all the way from Beirut, a winking conspirator on our journey. Inam balances a large white box on her knees, bird’s nest pieces of
baqlawa
hand-chosen for her uncle.

When we arrive at the prison gate, there are two guards on duty that I’ve never seen before. With them, trained dogs with hyperactive movements. The men decide to hold us up, inventing excuses, telephoning superiors, being difficult. They’re bored, hot in the sentry box, ready for some quiet fun. They’re young, teenagers really. I feel sorry for them at first. Pretending to go and photocopy my press pass, the older one disappears. The other – younger, more handsome, brash – waves my passport and Inam’s soiled identity papers in the air. She has no passport, only a
laissezpasser
given out by the Lebanese government. The guard hands the papers back as if they’ve infected him and bends down so he’s level with Inam’s face. ‘What’s a little troublemaker like you doing with an American citizen?’

Inam grips my hand tighter. She stares straight ahead as if she’s gone blind. The other guard comes back with my press card, in time to catch his friend’s last remark.

‘And such a sexy American at that,’ he says.

I hold out my hand for the card. He makes as if to hand it over then, just as I reach out to take it, hides it behind his back.

‘Say please. No, not just please. A kiss. A kiss for a card.’ He addresses Inam. ‘That sounds fair, doesn’t it, little Palestinian?’

Inam continues to stare straight ahead at the wall of the sentry box, painted in the muted colours of the Israeli flag, her feet planted firmly on the ground like a little soldier herself.

‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?’ My voice wobbles. ‘Aren’t you sick of teasing and harassing women and children?’

I lunge at my card, grab it from the guard’s hands. I’m white-hot now, reckless. He steps forward, menacing.

‘You better watch your mouth. We have the authority to stop you from coming here, ever again.’

I turn on my heel, dragging Inam toward the prison. I’m shivering all over from fear and rage. I can hear the dogs barking, can feel Inam’s small hand shaking in mine. The other guard yells.

‘Don’t worry, Avram,’ he shouts to his friend, louder over the dogs, so I can hear. ‘She’s just a
shiksa
whore, a fucking Arab-loving whore!’

Inside the prison, we sit down to wait. I’m still flustered and Inam takes my hand, caressing it in gentle circles as if she’s the elder. A guard enters the waiting room and I half-rise, while Inam grasps my skirt in anticipation.

‘Detainee Sayed Ali will not see you today, Miss.’

‘I’m sorry? Why?’

‘He said he does not wish to see anyone today – and you in particular.’

‘Please. Can I speak to him for a moment? I’ve been coming for weeks and haven’t been allowed even a glimpse of him.’

The guard shakes his head, impassive.

‘Does he know his niece is here, at least?’

The guard nods, winking at Inam with a changed, boyish face.

‘Well, can we leave him this box of cakes then?’

Inam hands over the box with great ceremony. As she does, she looks from my face to the guard’s in appeal, as if we’ve made some mistake, as if either of us can make some swift remark or gesture to change her world. Nothing comes. Inam gives the
baqlawa
one last, longing glance. We stumble out of the prison into the bright, sunlit world.

‘Anoush, did they really tell him I was here? Of course he’ll see me if he knows.’

I turn around.

‘Didn’t you hear, you silly girl? I asked the guard! He must be sick. Or angry with me. I have no idea why. Don’t be difficult now, let’s just go.’