Sabra Zoo (16 page)

It was dead space; no doors into the apartments. I could hear the car coming down the street and climbed onto a putrid-smelling bin, disturbing some rats inside. I scrambled over the wall and landed on a patch of dirt, scattering some emaciated chickens. The chickens beat their scrawny wings in a hopeless attempt to fly. I was in a courtyard. I couldn't hear the car any more but my heart was thumping too loudly and the courtyard echoed with squawking. I gestured desperately for them to settle down, but that only set them off again. I was still clutching the stuffed envelope from Najwa, now damp with sweat. It had torn and I could see Lebanese passports inside. I sat against the wall I'd just jumped over, trying to slow my breathing, thinking of the Tokarev sitting uselessly in the apartment. I could see an iron gate which covered a door into a shuttered house but it was padlocked. My eyes stung from the sweat dripping off my forehead. I heard footsteps on the other side of the wall. I badly needed to urinate.

‘Are you sure he came in here?' a voice asked.

‘No, the shit could have gone into any of the buildings on the street,' said Lazy Eye in resignation.

‘Come on, let's go, he's not worth it,' said the first voice.

‘It's who he can lead us to,' said Lazy Eye.

‘Can you hear chickens?' said the first voice.

‘Come on, you guys,' called a third, more distant voice.

The footsteps receded and it went quiet and the voices started up again but were too far away to make out what was being said. A car started and drove away. The chickens had calmed down; they were pecking fruitlessly in the dust. They looked as though their feathers had been nibbled and plucked, probably by rats. I waited for a long time before crawling on my knees to pick up a rusty tin lid. I used it to start digging in the dirt, making a hole big enough for the envelope, which I buried and covered. Only then did I piss against the wall, easing the pressure in my bladder. The wall looked impossibly high from this side and I had to take a running jump at it, clambering until I could get a leg over the top. It was only when I was on the other side that I stopped to think about where I should go. I looked for cigarettes, finding Asha's key on the
AUB
keyring in my pocket. Her flat was the safest place I knew.

By the time I found the courage to emerge from the alley the streets were empty and it was starting to get dark. I walked as fast as possible to the
AUB
, avoiding my street. I had to convince the guard at the gate that I was allowed to enter, pretending that I couldn't speak Arabic to avoid awkward questions. I realised that my mock outrage at being stopped didn't sit well with my appearance, but the passport and
AUB
keyring seemed to convince him.

Once inside I was glad the apartment was empty. In the bathroom mirror I could see why the guard was reluctant to let me pass. The knees on my jeans were covered in ground-in chicken shit. My hands and wrists were scratched and my face was covered in dirt streaked by dried sweat. I made full use of the facilities then helped myself to the owner's Canadian Club whisky. I even found ice in the freezer. Standing at the balcony door I lit a cigarette and held the whisky-flavoured ice in my mouth as long as I could. The
BBC
World Service led on the fact that Grace Kelly had been in a car accident. That was followed by an item on the entry of the
IDF
into west Beirut in order to ‘restore order' after the vacuum left by the assassination of President-elect Bashir. No traffic was visible on the Corniche below. I was starting to relax with a second Canadian Club when I heard a distant rumbling that kept stopping and restarting, getting louder all the time. Then, through the palm trees lining the Corniche, I could see an Israeli tank, a sand-coloured Merkava, growling to a halt. It waited, then moved forward about a hundred metres before stopping again, spewing black smoke into the air. Soldiers followed behind, helmeted and wary, and I instinctively dropped to the floor of the balcony, worried that I might be seen. This then was the enemy, I thought; at last, we got to see them after experiencing their firepower for weeks. I had seen them before, but through binoculars across no-man's-land at the airport, the shimmer of the August heat distorted by the lenses, making them look ghostly and unreal.

Now here they were, entering Beirut for the first time, with no resistance, just driving up the fucking Corniche without so much as a shot being fired. I watched as a column of these mechanical beasts tore up the tarmac. Eventually the line stopped and after a while the engines switched off to leave a stunning silence. Then, as if the whole event was being choreographed, the electricity cut out and the whole city went black.

Inside I lit some candles and, not knowing what to expect, burnt the photos of my parents that I'd rescued from our home. I kept just one, the one of all four of us taken in 1973, where we all looked so young.

I was woken at midnight by knocking, and staggered to the door, half expecting Asha or John. It was Samir. He came in and collapsed on the sofa, looking like he'd seen the devil.

‘They're everywhere,' he said, after catching his breath; I handed him a live cigarette and a beer from the still cold refrigerator. ‘They've surrounded the camp, no one's allowed in or out – I've just tried to get back in.'

‘Where are the others, where's Faris?' I asked.

‘I don't know. I dropped him and his friends in the camp this morning. Asha and John were already at the hospital; Liv and the others arrived later. I brought some of the others back to the Etoile. Then I tried to go back but couldn't get in – the Jews have roadblocks everywhere.'

‘Maybe Faris is in hiding,' I said.

‘No, he's in the camp somewhere. Waiting.' I watched his Adam's apple bob up and down as he gulped his beer.

‘Waiting for what?'

‘I don't know, maybe the Israelis are planning to enter the camp at some point – the hospital is full of people from the camp, just come to spend the night, scared shitless.'

I told him about the tanks so we went and sat on the balcony in the dark and watched them far below. Nothing moved, but the dim moonlight made it possible to see their outlines.

‘You could take one of those out with an
RPG
from here,' Samir said, a little too loudly for my liking. He was on his feet, measuring distances and angles with his hands.

‘You'd only get one shot before they blew the apartment away,' I told him, worried that he'd talk himself into doing it for real. He sank back into his chair and we sat for a bit until it got too cold.

For the second day running I was woken by low-flying jets, their sonic boom reverberating over the city, a reminder of the terror they could inflict. I watched the window over the bed rattle, grateful for the criss-cross of tape on the glass. I found Samir standing on the balcony in his underwear drinking coffee, watching
F
-16
S
fly out to sea over the gunships. The column of tanks had disappeared from the Corniche below. I poured coffee and sat down, feeling uneasy at him standing by the railing.

‘I wonder what happened to that Soviet battleship?' I said.

Samir shrugged dismissively. Throughout the siege, the Soviets had positioned a battleship offshore to monitor events. At times we'd wished they'd done more than simply watch. I didn't understand how anyone could have let things carry on as they did, least of all the self-proclaimed peace-loving Soviet regime. An American battleship joined them at some point but neither saw fit to stop the Israeli gunships pummelling the city.

‘Like all the other fuckers, they don't care what happens here; not enough to do anything – I mean really do something, not fuck about at the
UN
.' He lit a cigarette. ‘Do you think they would just watch if these things happened to them, in their country?' he asked.

I'd lived long enough in Denmark to know that most people there, or indeed in the rest of the world, probably didn't give more than a passing thought to what went on here, beyond what they had to sit through on the news, and even that was watered down and sanitised, according to Bob. But I wondered how much Samir cared about what went on elsewhere in the world. Maybe Liv had the right idea with her internationalist outlook. Maybe you couldn't fix things in one place without fixing them everywhere.

‘I'll tell you what needs to happen,' Samir was saying. He turned away from the sea and came over to me. ‘They need to experience what we experience.' He prodded me in the chest. ‘Do you know what we should do?' he asked.

‘What?'

‘Have some breakfast.'

We fried some eggs and Samir made some fresh coffee. After we'd eaten and lit up I told him that I needed to get some things from my place.

He studied me. ‘Can't go back, my friend?'

‘Do you remember Nabil?' I said.

‘The guy with the eye? Yes, I haven't seen him since the siege.'

‘He works for the Israelis. He spotted me near the apartment.'

‘That son of a whore. That fucking son of a dog whore.' He shook his head. ‘I always knew he was bad.'

‘You did? How so?'

He pointed at his eye. ‘He looked wrong.'

Later we were sitting in Samir's yellow taxi two blocks from my house.

‘Give me the keys,' he said, holding out his hand.

‘Are you sure you want to go?'

‘I drove your father around for over three months, my friend. When he left he told me to keep an eye on you. Give me the keys.'

I gave him the keys and told him what to get.

‘I'll be twenty minutes.'

I looked at my watch, switched on the radio and moved the dial. I didn't know whether to be pleased or annoyed that my father had asked Samir to look out for me. Local radio said that the IDF had occupied the whole of west Beirut and spoke of heroic resistance. I found the
BBC
World Service. They led on Grace Kelly, saying she'd died from her injuries. Then they spoke of Beirut and an
IDF
spokesman said that ‘2,000
PLO
terrorists' remained in Beirut and they were determined to root them out.

Samir was back with my duffle-bag, throwing it onto the back seat.

‘What now?' Samir asked.

‘Let's go to the Commodore. Bob might know what's going on.'

We pulled onto Hamra Street to see Israeli soldiers crouching at street corners, nervously pointing their weapons everywhere. Most people seemed to be ignoring them, going about their business, mildly curious at the fact that yet more armed men were on the streets of Beirut, just in a different uniform.

‘We were mentioned on the news, after Grace Kelly.'

‘Which one is Grace Kelly?' he asked, slowing the car due to traffic.

‘She was in that Hitchcock film,
Rear Window
. The one where he sees a murder from his window.'

‘Why all this traffic? We've just been fucking invaded,' he said.

We didn't see the roadblock until we were caught in the queue for it, with cars behind us. I'd never seen Samir look concerned before. He put his hand to his door and I thought he was going to bolt, but he just wound down the window to let some air in. He searched for somewhere to turn off but we were stuck. He looked wild-eyed and it was making me scared.

‘It's just an Israeli roadblock,' I told him, without much conviction. ‘You're Lebanese and I'm Danish, right? We're just out for a nice drive, improving relations between our countries.' I checked my pocket for my passport, my armpits were wet.

‘Are relations between our countries bad?' he asked. There were beads of sweat on his forehead.

‘What's the worst thing that could happen?' I asked him.

‘It depends on who is under there.' He pointed at the roadblock ahead, which was formed by two jeeps and an armoured personnel carrier. Next to the soldiers was a man in civilian clothing with a cloth sack over his head. Slits were cut in the hood for his eyes. He was looking into each car as it stopped at the roadblock. My heart was banging in my ears as we pulled another car ahead – now there were only two between us and the roadblock.

‘I have a confession,' he said, looking straight ahead. Someone was being pulled from the back of a taxi and being made to go and sit with a group of three men who were crouched on the tarmac by the jeep, their hands clasped behind their heads.

I looked at Samir. ‘Well?'

‘I put your weapon in your bag, I thought it would be useful.'

‘You stupid fucker.' If we were caught with the Tokarev we'd have no chance. ‘Listen, maybe I should get out with the bag,' I said.

‘And leave me on my own, you son of a dog?'

‘If I could drive I'd let you go.'

‘There's nothing to it, my friend. This is the clutch, this here is the gear. You need to depress the clutch …'

‘Look! They're going.' The men sitting on the tarmac were being bundled into the back of one of the jeeps. The hooded informer got into the back of the other jeep with the other soldiers and they sped off. The half-track followed and the roadblock was gone. It all happened so quickly. The traffic started to move again.

‘Were you afraid?' Samir asked, as he tried to light a cigarette with a shaking hand.

‘Of course not – why, were you?' I helped him keep the lighter still. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. ‘You put the fucking gun in the bag.'

‘We could have taken them,' he said. He started laughing and shaking his head and I was laughing, laughing until I could taste tears. By the time we pulled up outside the Commodore I had a stitch in my side from laughing.

The lobby was full of news agency drivers, fixers, stringers and general hangers-on. We found Bob in the TeleNews edit suite, checking the morning rushes. On the screen Israeli tanks rumbled forward down the main Hamra Street followed by edgy-looking troops pointing their guns at the balconies above them. They were ignoring the bystanders, mainly women, standing with crossed arms as if watching a boring military parade. One elderly woman was shouting something at the passing tanks. Bob, looking drawn and tired, wanted a translation and I tried to make out what the woman was saying above the noise of the tanks.