Quill of the Dove

by Ian Thomas Shaw

  Hoda has known Sadira a long time. When the girl comes to her distraught, she knows she needs to intervene. At first, she thinks about going to Abdullah. Most of the young men in the camp either admire or fear her cousin. She holds off though. There’s a rift building between leftists like Abdullah and more religious fighters. She doesn’t see any point in aggravating it. Instead, she decides to talk to Akil’s uncle who runs a small restaurant near the university where she studies. The uncle is sympathetic to his niece’s dilemma and pulls aside her brother to scold him one day. From that point, Akil’s watching changes. Resentment replaces desire.

  The street is dark when Marwan drops her off. She thanks him for driving her back from Shemlan but asks him not to enter the main street. It’s safer for him that way. The young men in the camp are increasingly wary of outsiders, especially at night. She begins walking the two hundred metres to her home. Almost all the shopkeepers have closed up and gone home for the Eid feast. She notices some young men still smoking in front of the Abu Sami’s grocery shop, but can’t make out their faces. She doesn’t worry. Even in the middle of the civil war, Sabra is a safe place for young women. She pulls up her hijab and continues on her way. In the days before the funeral, the skies over Rennes were grey and rainy as if the heavens also mourned Diego’s passing. Today the sun has returned. Marc drinks his third coffee in the kitchen. The knock on the door doesn’t surprise him. All morning, townspeople have dropped by to offer their condolences. He opens the door. Leyna stands there, her eyes red from the night’s journey. Her hand clutches the letter of apology from his father.

  “I thought that I should come. That you might need me.”

  Marc takes her in his arms. She holds him close and then pulls back to look up at him. She raises her hand to wipe away his tears. She seems ready for his kiss, but none comes. His mother joins them at the doorway, greeting Leyna and ushering her inside.

  Marc stands there, gazing east over the grey shingled roofs of the neighbours’ cottages. In the glare of the morning sun, he wonders what Hoda is doing. An elderly woman working in her garden waves at him. He waves back, and turns to enter his father’s house.

  The funeral has been delayed long enough for Diego’s former comrades to fly in from as far afield as Mexico and Argentina. From Spain, many cross the border—Catalans, Basques, Spaniards. Old men with limps, young men with defiance in their eyes. Women once radiant in their youth, and still beautiful in the sorrow of the moment.

  All gather in the open plaza before the mairie of Rennes-les-Bains. The mayor, himself a refugiado, officiates while the town’s priest looks on from a safe distance. Diego’s comrades come forward to deliver eulogies in Catalan, Spanish, and French. No word of God or the afterlife is uttered. To the end, the old men cling to their vision of a world free of divinities, one devoted to humanity.

  After the ceremony, Leyna approaches Marc. His mother has explained to her that Marc has fallen in love in Lebanon. She’s disappointed but not surprised. She realizes that she was at fault in having his letters returned to him. They sit together once last time before he must join the funeral convoy to Casteil. He asks her about her parents in Saigon. She hasn’t heard from them in months and fears the worse. Marc offers to talk to some friends in the foreign ministry, although he knows that little can be done. She takes his hand in both of hers to thank him and ask if she can write him as a friend. Yes, he answers.

  The hearse travels the winding road to Casteil where Marc joins Diego’s old comrades to carry his father’s coffin high into the mountains. Along the winding path, under the tall firs, they struggle with the weight of the casket until they reach a glade bordered by a steep ridge.

  “Our French comrades met us here in 1939,” Manuel says. “We were exhausted and freezing. It was a miracle they found us in time.”

  “Your father was the strongest of us,” the mayor of Rennes says. “He carried the sacks of others when they were too weak to continue.”

  The village gravedigger has carved a plot out of the rocky soil. It is sloped so that Diego can face the border he crossed thirty-six years before. Four strong boys hauled up a slab of cenia azul, a gift from comrades in Tarragona. On the blue limestone are engraved verses from Bodas de Sangre by Federico García Lorca.

  Marc’s mother passes her hand across the engraved letters.

  “They’re the words that your father whispered in my ear when he proposed to me, and the words he uttered with his last breath. Marc, will you read them to me?”

  Marc leans down and brushes aside the dirt and leaves obscuring the words. He takes in a breath and recites in his best Spanish.

  Vamos al rincón oscuro,

  donde yo siempre te quiera,

  que no me importe la gente,

  ni el veneno que nos echa.

  Let’s go to the dark corner,

  Where I will always love you,

  I do not care for other people,

  Nor for the venom that they cast on us.

  To the end, Diego stayed true to the voice of the revolution, the affirmation of free will, the rejection of conformity, the sanctity of individualism.

  Hoda walks toward her parents’ house. The main street is now pitch-black. She sees a lighted cigarette several metres in front of her. A dark shape in a dishdasha is pulling down the metal door to a shop. It’s the olive oil shop, Akil’s shop. She moves to the other side of the street to avoid him. Too late. He calls out to her.

  “Wait, I want to talk to you.”

  Hoda hesitates. Should she make a run for it?

  “Sharmouta—whore, how dare you speak to my uncle!”

  Hoda freezes. She doesn’t know how to answer the angry young man.

  He’s now facing her, a padlock in his left hand. He grabs her arm.

  “Come with me.”

  “Stop, Akil! You’re hurting me!”

  “I’ll teach you a lesson.”

  Hoda swings hard at Akil. He blocks her blow. Intense pain shoots up her forearm. Then she feels the padlock in his fist strike the side of her face. When she comes to, he has dragged her back to his shop. She looks up. The place is crammed with bottles of olive oil and barrels of olives in brine. An old oil lamp on the counter offers a dim light. Beside it is the padlock. Akil paces in front of her. It is clear he doesn’t know what to do next. He has struck a woman who defied him, but whose cousin is a Palestinian commander. Hoda feels for her hijab. It’s gone. It must have fallen off in the street. Her hair tosses wildly on her shoulders. Her skirt is torn. Her legs are exposed. She desperately tries to cover herself.

  “Akil, listen. I won’t say anything. Just let me go.”

  “Quiet!”

  The shop’s door is still open. Hoda scrambles to her feet and begins running toward it. Akil grabs her shoulders and throws her back onto the floor.

  “Sharmouta, you will pay for trying to dishonour my family.”

  He leans over her. His eyes burn with rage. She whispers, no, Akil, no. He pins her arms down. She screams. He clamps his right hand over her mouth. Her left arm reaches out searching for a weapon. Nothing. He yanks her over onto her stomach and presses one hand against the small of her back, pinning her to the ground and forcing the air from her lungs. She wants to scream again but she can’t. She tries futilely to push away from the ground, but Akil’s hand on her back forces her down. This time with such force, she hears one of her ribs crack. His other hand is fumbling to pull up her skirt. His knee pries her legs apart. Her mind races to find some means to defend herself as fear cuts through her like a razor. Her fingers reach the glass bottle.

  Marc’s father’s last testament takes him by surprise. He had forgotten that Diego was the half-owner of Le Matin de l’Occitan, a small leftist paper in Toulouse, and he certainly hadn’t expected to be willed his father’s share. His father’s partner, François Pelletier, makes Marc a fair offer to buy the estate’s share but on one condition. Marc must work for one year as a journalist there. The paper i
s undergoing a transformation, and François needs a young man to get it on a solid footing. Marc agrees and writes to Hoda that he’ll have to stay in France a little longer.

  Marc quickly excels as a journalist and helps François develop a long-term plan to appeal to a much younger readership. But he can’t get Hoda out of his mind, and every night he writes to her. Her first reply elates him. When a few days pass without receiving another letter, he begins to fear that he’s losing her like he had Leyna. When Hoda’s second letter finally arrives, he reads it eagerly. At first, her letters are discreet, but in time they match the open passion that he puts in his own. At night he looks at the photos she sends him, falling asleep to dreams of what their life will be together.

  After three months, Marc can take the separation no longer. He walks into François’ office to explain he needs to return to Lebanon, and is ready to hand over his share in the paper. The violence there has spiralled, and he must get Hoda out of the country. In the corner of the office sits the foreign editor for Le Nouvel Observateur, Jean Simon.

  “Excuse me for interrupting. François has told me a lot about you. If he’s comfortable with it, I would like to make you an offer.”

  “It’s fine with me, Jean. Go ahead.”

  “Marc, would you like to be one of our stringers in Lebanon?”

  “That would be fantastic.”

  “It wouldn’t be full-time work, but you could also write for other publications.”

  “What are you interested in?”

  “The French people are conflicted. Naturally, many lean toward the cause of the Christians in Lebanon. They speak our language and share many of our values. But with our own history of colonial domination, especially in Algeria, there’s also a lot of sympathy for the Palestinians. Add to that, the considerable interest in French intellectual circles about Israel. Many of our best people, including in my own magazine, are Jewish. Can you give us the most objective reporting possible—articles that break down stereotypes and go to the core of the matter?”

  “I can do my best.”

  Marc turns to François.

  “So, Monsieur Pelletier, will you release me from my commitment? I can sign over my half in the paper today. I won’t ask anything for it.”

  “Marc, it was your father’s wish that you work with me for one reason. He wanted you to follow in his footsteps as a journalist. You’ve already learned everything I can teach, and now Jean can teach you much more. Taking Jean’s offer is what your father would have wished.”

  Out of his cherrywood desk, François Pelletier pulls out a chequebook. He opens it to a cheque already made out.

  “Here, this is for your share of the paper. I hope you’ll find it fair.”

  Marc looks at the cheque. Two hundred thousand francs, much more than Pelletier had offered three months earlier.

  “I don’t know how to thank you!”

  “You can thank me by making your father proud,” François says. “He was my oldest friend. I’m happy that I could help his son. Now bring us the truth about Lebanon!”

  Hoda tries to move out from under Akil’s inert body. Shards of glass protrude from the back of his head. Her hand also bleeds from the bottle’s broken glass. Olive oil now mingles with their blood. How many times she hit him with the bottle she doesn’t know. She draws on all her strength to pull out from under him.

  “Hoda?”

  A thin dark figure holding her hijab stands at the door.

  “Nabil?”

  “Yes. What happened?”

  “He, he … tried to rape me.”

  Nabil helps his sister to her feet. Slung over his shoulder is a wooden box of the paints and solvent he uses for his murals on the walls in the camp.

  “I was just coming home when I saw your hijab on the street.”

  “What should we do, Nabil?”

  “You should go home now. I need to see if he’s still alive, and then I’ll go to the police.”

  “No, don’t! We can’t trust the police. We should tell Abdullah instead. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Okay, but go. Go now!”

  Nabil watches his sister run down the street and turn the corner to their house. He walks to the counter, puts the padlock in his pocket and picks up the oil lamp. He kneels before Akil’s body, and places the lamp close to his face. Akil’s eyes show no sign of movement. He nudges the man’s shoulder—no response. He places two fingers on the thumb side of his wrist. There is a pulse, faint at first and then a little stronger. Nabil looks for a telephone in the shop. It takes a minute to locate it amid the rubble of upset crates. He leans over and begins to dial Abdullah’s number.

  “You!” a voice behind him says. Nabil turns to see Akil on his feet, blood streaming onto his shoulders, his clenched fist ready to strike.

  “Akil, wait!”

  Nabil pulls back but too late to duck the blow. He crashes against the shelves of olive oil. He tries to get up but slips on the oil, smashing his knee against the broken glass. A hard kick to his stomach sends him flying onto his back.

  Akil stands over him.

  “Bastard, where’s that whore, your sister?”

  Nabil looks around and grabs the strap of his box of paints. With all his strength he swings it at Akil’s legs, toppling him onto the oil lamp. The lamp’s glass shatters and its flames set Akil’s dishdasha on fire. Nabil limps out the door, ignoring the pain of the glass embedded deep in his knee. He glances back. Akil has torn off his burning clothes. Naked he looks like a rabid animal. The pool of spilt paint and solvent lies between them. Akil ignores the fire moving toward it and charges. Nabil pulls down the metal door just before an explosion engulfs Akil in flames. He tries to block out the man’s pleading for his life on the other side of the door, but he can’t. He begins to loosen his grip on the door handle. Then Akil chokes out the words. “I will kill all of you!”

  Nabil takes the padlock out of his pocket.

  Chapter

  17

  Montreal – April 2007

  MARIE OPENS THE E-MAIL FROM TARAGON. Can she meet him in Paris for the next interview? He could put her up in his apartment if she wanted. Why not, she thinks. Her editor at Le Devoir loved her first piece on Taragon. And a new interview might be the fastest way to get to the truth. Besides, she loves Paris. But she certainly isn’t going to stay at his apartment. She opens her laptop and books a room at the Hôtel Foch on Rue Malbeau. She quickly writes back that she’ll see him on the seventeenth at Café Pergo, and politely declines his offer of accommodation.

  Marie walks to the window of her Montreal apartment. The trip back from Istanbul had exhausted her. But that was two days ago, and she’s starting to recover. She looks at her cell phone. There’s a missed call from Minh Chau. Right, she remembers, her friend is coming down from Ottawa this weekend. She quickly calls her.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Minh Chau. How are you?”

  “Marie, I can’t wait to see you. We had a blast in Istanbul, didn’t we?”

  “That we did, but seeing that Israeli again still gives me the chills. You really shouldn’t have confronted him. You scared me to death!”

  “Well, he’s out of the picture now.”

  “I certainly hope so!”

  “So is he?”

  “What? Who?”

  “The famous Mr. Taragon! Is he … ?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’m going to see him next week in Paris. I hope that I’ll have the courage to ask him.”

  “I googled him.”

  “And?”

  “He’s incredibly attractive.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Really? I mean … Of course, you didn’t notice. You wouldn’t, would you? Especially, since …”

  Marie feels a tinge of irritation, discomfort at the lie that she’s just told her friend. Of course, she finds Taragon attractive. Who wouldn’t? But it isn’t something that she can share. She resolves to settle things as soon as pos
sible.

  “By the way, I can’t make it until Sunday. Mathieu is arriving back from Vancouver on Saturday.”

  “How does he feel about becoming a father?”

  “I haven’t told him yet.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “I’ll tell him this weekend.”

  “Why don’t you bring him down to Montreal?”

  “Can I?”

  “Of course, I’d love to meet him.”

  Marie hangs up, and pauses for a moment. She heads for the bookshelf with all of Taragon’s books. His treatise on the Lebanese Civil War, his exposé on Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank, and his most recent book on the rise of Hamas. She opens the last to look again at the photo on the back flap. She searches for any resemblance to herself but finds none. She can see the Spanish in him—the thick wavy hair, the slightly hooked nose. He has the classic Mediterranean look that lets him fit into the crowds from Tangiers to Tel Aviv. Her own features are so different. Her eyes are dark, very dark, but her hair is blonde framing a china-white complexion. His lips are thin forming a sly smile. Hers are full and naturally red, always slightly parted to reveal immaculately white teeth.

  She knows that she’s beautiful—so many men have told her so as they awkwardly tried to win her heart. She knows that her summary rejection of suitors has earned her a harsh reputation and the occasional rumour of liking women more than men. Untrue. But there’s so much lacking in the men she knows. Their fawning attempts to assert their political correctness, shallow proclamations of support for feminism. Their hypocrisy emasculates them. With Taragon, there is honesty, sincerity grounded in acts, not words.

  Marie looks hard in the mirror and holds up the tattered photo that she always keeps with her. She searches in her own face that of the woman in the photo. It’s there and then vanishes.