Merciless Gods

by Christos Tsiolkas

  ‘It looks perfectly manageable.’

  ‘Can’t we head back to the hotel? I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Then you should have stayed in the room.’ And with that, Amanda started to climb, not once looking back. When she reached the summit, sweat was running down her neck and back. There were only a few other tourists wandering the ruins below. She spotted Daniela sitting on a large slab of stone shaded by the eastern wall. Her frustration and annoyance vanished at once. A stomach bug was a miserable thing on a holiday; it was bad enough when it happened at home. She took one last look at the miniscule world below, the jumble of concrete and power lines, the narrow streets and laneways of the city.

  She carefully walked back to earth and sat down beside Daniela. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel. I want to escape this bloody sun. I’ll write postcards and you can rest.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Daniela’s tone was timid. Amanda nodded vigorously. Daniela’s answering smile was grateful and relieved.

  •

  ‘Your driver is waiting for you, madam.’

  The young clerk at the desk spoke English with a faint American accent. He was spindly thin, with a neatly trimmed black goatee, which he would stroke gently when faced with a request or a question. On their first afternoon there, the women had returned to the hotel to change for dinner and had found him praying on a small mat next to the desk. They had waited for him to finish before asking for the key and he had bowed to them and thanked them profusely. Amanda wondered what he thought of them, these two women sharing a room, no wedding rings on their fingers, no sign of husbands. But if he thought it at all unsavoury, his manner did not show it. He had been charming and polite from the beginning.

  ‘Shukrun, Ahmed,’ she said as she handed him back the key. ‘It was a wonderful stay.’

  Their driver, Hassan, was a large stout man in an olive-coloured ironed shirt and white linen trousers. He picked up both their bags as though they weighed nothing at all, and grinned cheerfully as he opened the rear door of the car for them.

  ‘Would you mind if I sat in the front seat?’ Amanda asked.

  He frowned, just for an instant, and then immediately his warm smile returned. ‘Of course not.’

  He had been recommended to them by their friends Archie and Colm, who had visited Petra two years earlier. Amanda had rung the mobile number they had given her from Cairo, not sure if the number would still work or whether he would still be working as a driver, but it had been picked up on the second ring. A male voice had answered, ‘Salaam’ and then ‘Hello’. Flustered, she had attempted a polite greeting in Arabic but then quickly asked, ‘You speak English?’ She thought she heard the hint of a laugh in the man’s quick response, ‘But of course.’

  His English was indeed excellent. The car sped down a dusty highway and then slowed as it neared a small caravan by the side of the road. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

  Daniela was still concerned about her stomach, and refused, but Amanda willingly agreed. She went to unclasp her purse but Hassan motioned with a quick lift of his head as his tongue hit the roof of his mouth—that gesture and sound that throughout the Middle East seemed to indicate, No, I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.

  Within a very short time they had reached the outskirts of Amman and were ascending the last hilltop. The narrow streets were cluttered with squat concrete cabins, lopsided electrical and telephone poles, precarious apartment blocks and the occasional villa. Then, the car accelerating, they dropped and were speeding along a straight motorway; on either side there was only the endless sea of burnished desert sand.

  Hassan asked if they wished to listen to music and when Amanda nodded he put in a cassette of old disco. Daniela leaned forward in her seat and asked if he had any Arabic music. Pleased, he inserted another cassette. A male voice sang a deep, plaintive lament, its strangeness exhilarating and uncanny to Amanda’s ear, but the music beneath was chintzy and slick, little different to the monotonous beat of the disco it had replaced. But Hassan was nodding his head to it as he drove; in the back seat Daniela too was gently swaying, her eyes hidden behind the thick lenses of her prescription sunglasses, gazing out to the unrelenting desert that surrounded them. At one point Hassan sang along to a chorus and Amanda wished she could turn off the stereo and just listen to the man sing. His was a rich baritone, and though not always faithful to the tune, it seemed to her an apt accompaniment to the sparse, brutal landscape. He was a handsome man, overweight, no doubt because of the sedentary life of driving—and also, Amanda supposed, from his wife’s rich cooking—but he was naturally thick-bellied, with a broad chest, and the heft suited him. His face was as slate, strong lines, a jutting jaw and elongated cheekbones. She could well understand why Archie and Colm had been so taken with him. Silly old poofs, she chuckled to herself, they would have fallen in love with him.

  Thinking of her old friends, a wave of homesickness overtook her. This desert earth seemed cleansed of scent. The first thing she would do when they returned to their home in Sydney would be to push open the small attic window of her study and take in the perfume of the jacaranda tree.

  As they drove they passed groups of men crouched wearily in long lines at the side of the road. They were all startlingly thin. As the car approached, the first man in the line would jump to his feet, waving his arms in the air as if he were dancing. As the car zoomed past he would return to sitting back despondently on his haunches.

  ‘They are Egyptians,’ Hassan explained. ‘Looking for work.’

  Again, the incredible propinquity of the Old World: the road ahead could lead them into Saudi Arabia or Egypt; to turn back would take them through Syria and Lebanon. If they turned right there would be Israel, or left they would be in Iraq. There is a war on, she reminded herself; to the east of this desert, a civilisation has been destroyed by war.

  Earlier, Hassan had talked about his family, his two sons and two daughters, his pride in them all. He spoke of his love for his mother and father, of his brother’s studies for the civil service, of his sister married in Damascus. ‘You must miss her,’ Amanda had said, and Hassan replied with a laugh, ‘Damascus is two hours from Amman in the car.’

  No wonder the family was a bedrock in this part of the world, she thought. If Australia was defined by the tyranny of distance, here was determined by its subjugation to proximity.

  At a crossroad leading to the Dead Sea in one direction and the River Jordan in the other, their passports were examined by a dark-skinned youth who was smoking a cigarette in his sentry box. He spent an age glancing at the three passports, looking at one face, then another, at one point asking Daniela to remove her glasses. Finally, as if reluctant to do so, his eyes still flicking from face to face, he returned their papers.

  As soon as Hassan had driven away, he let out a stream of Arabic that hinted at the sour fury of an expletive or a curse.

  ‘Are you okay, Hassan?’

  ‘He is a Bedouin. He doesn’t know how to read.’

  Amanda wondered if that could be true. He had seemed such a child, no more than Eric’s age. She tried to imagine her son in a military uniform. She couldn’t bear such a thought.

  When they arrived at the Dead Sea, Daniela annoyed her by asking her in the women’s changing room whether it was appropriate for them to be swimming. She was concerned that Hassan would be offended by the sight of them in bathing suits. Amanda snorted, kept on disrobing and did not dignify the question with a response. Hassan had asked them whether they wanted to swim, he had taken them to the small resort beach, had organised chairs for them, and had suggested a restaurant in which to have lunch. This was the man’s living, taking tourists and travellers from one end of his country to the other. He was not some fundamentalist warlord who recoiled at the thought of a woman’s bare flesh. He was an urbane, intelligent man who spoke at least two languages. He was certainly not wealthy, not of that Old World class at all, but he was working hard to support his family. Amanda and Daniela we
re probably the same age as his mother. It was absurd to think that their ageing bodies would have any effect on the man at all.

  Once in the water, Daniela’s reservations disappeared. The two of them floated in a state of surrender on that strange soup of sea, the brutal glare of the sun off the barren hilltops and motionless water affirming that they had indeed returned to an antediluvian world. A French family were swimming near them, the mother repeatedly warning the children to be careful of their eyes. There were not many in the water, but they all seemed to be European. The only Arabs were the assorted drivers and waiters watching from the shore. Amanda spotted Hassan. She fought back a childish urge to wave at him. Instead, she lay on the warm, viscous water and looked up at the sky. Even that looked seared by the intensity of the sun, the blue washed out to a near white.

  She had never been particularly religious, but being there she could not help but think of the stories from the Bible. It was no wonder this land gave birth to prophets. The earth here was forbidding, the very air ascetic. She thought of the verdant foliage of home, of the emerald harbour, the dense kingdom of forest that spread south from the edges of their city all the way down to Wollongong.

  She swam over to Daniela and they brushed shoulders. ‘I think God was lying when He said that this shithole was the Promised Land.’

  Daniela, who had experienced a fierce longing to have faith as a devout Catholic schoolgirl, could not stop laughing.

  On the beach they showered off the salt, then lay back on the lounge chairs. Amanda asked if Hassan wanted a seat, but he declined, indicating he was just as happy to sit behind them on the sand. She had just closed her eyes when two whiplash booms thundered through the valley. Hassan sprang to his feet, staring at the opposite shore. The Europeans glanced nervously at one another, as did Amanda and Daniela. The Arabs stood still, guarded, waiting, but there was the faintest of echoes and then the return to arid silence. Hassan sat back down.

  ‘What was that?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘Gunfire from Palestine,’ he answered.

  She looked across the placid tepid water. You could swim over there, she thought. You could swim there in less time than it would take you to cross Sydney Harbour.

  They invited Hassan to join them for lunch and when it came time for paying the bill, he tactfully excused himself from the table. Amanda left a generous tip, assuming the driver would receive a part of it for recommending the restaurant. On his return, Hassan glanced at the money on the small plate, and smiled at both of them. Amanda was pleased her instincts had been right.

  It was late afternoon when they reached the hotel in Wadi Musa. Amanda had booked it over the internet and was delighted by her choice. It was an old stone villa, with an enormous terraced verandah that looked down to the hills of Petra. Their room, it was true, was tiny; also, the edges of the carpets in the lobby were frayed, the garden could have been better maintained, and the tiles on the verandah were cracked and stained. But it was inexpensive, the dining room was grand, and she felt as if she and Daniela were characters in an Agatha Christie novel.

  They asked Hassan to join them for a drink and after a moment’s hesitation he agreed.

  The women quickly freshened up. Amanda changed her shirt and Daniela wore the bright yellow silk shawl she had bartered for in the bazaar in Cairo.

  ‘How do I look?’ she asked, turning to show Amanda.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ she said and kissed her on the lips. And she did. The colour perfectly suited her bronzed Mediterranean skin.

  Hassan was standing on the balcony when they came downstairs, looking down across the valleys. At one table an elderly couple were sitting quietly with their beers and at the other end of the patio sat another couple, very much younger, the girl with big streaks of silver in her black hair, the boy in bright red shorts. They were drinking cocktails and laughing loudly.

  Hassan walked over when he saw them, and stayed standing while they took their seats. Amanda looked around, spotted a waiter standing at attention at the bar, and gestured for him to come over to their table. He arrived, bowed and smiled, with just a flicker of anxiety evident as his gaze fell upon Hassan.

  ‘Salaam,’ said Amanda. ‘We’d like to order some drinks.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He looked again at Hassan.

  ‘Two white wines and . . .’ She looked over at Hassan, who spoke in Arabic. The waiter nodded and returned with the glasses of wine and a bottle of German beer.

  In the car, at the restaurant and on the beach, conversation between them all had flowed quite easily. But now it seemed they had little to say to one another. Hassan’s English was perfectly adequate but his vocabulary was limited. They had exhausted the topics of family and of work, and it somehow did not seem possible to speak freely about any other topics.

  Amanda realised that Hassan had not once alluded to her and Daniela’s relationship, that he had avoided any remark that would lead to a declaration or an explanation. Though it would not have been fair to blame Hassan for that. She and Daniela had avoided the subject too, had not spoken of their home or their life together, of their having raised her son, of having lived, breathed and loved one another for over twenty years. She liked the man; indeed she felt that even though she had only known him half a day, she respected and admired him. His courtesy reminded her of her grandfather, and of Daniela’s Italian father, men whose civility was underscored by a gentle kindness. But inviting him for a drink now felt like a charlatan act, as though they were striving to be some stereotype of the egalitarian Australian abroad. So here they were, awkward, uncomfortable, staring into their drinks.

  ‘I think they’re from home.’ Daniela was looking over her shoulder to the young couple in the corner. Amanda strained to hear them, but couldn’t catch any of their conversation. Hassan also looked over at the same time as the young man happened to glance their way. He turned so he was looking straight at them, and gave them a wide smile. He said something to the woman, who also turned to look at them.

  ‘May we join you?’ It wasn’t really a question, as they were on their feet already. He was most certainly Australian. They had been in shade at their table and Amanda had not been able to discern much about their appearance. But now, as they approached, she found herself a little taken aback. They were both in their twenties and she thought them outlandishly dressed for the Middle East. The youth’s scarlet shorts were almost skin tight; his legs were hairless, shaven. The woman was wearing a man’s tuxedo jacket and underneath that a tight Bonds singlet that fully displayed her prominent breasts. Her nipples were clearly visible beneath the fabric. But what disturbed Amanda more than anything was the young man’s T-shirt. It would have once been black but had faded to a wintry grey. On the front was a crude outline in red of a fist atop a circle with a cross beneath it, the symbol for women’s liberation. Amanda herself had worn such a T-shirt in her twenties, when she was first discovering feminism at university, and first fell in love with a woman.

  As the boy sat down across from her and they made their introductions, Amanda found she could hardly speak. Noting the direction of her gaze, he laughed loudly and slapped his chest. What a horsey sound, she thought spitefully, what a silly show pony.

  ‘This was my mother’s,’ he explained, laughing, ‘when she was slumming it at uni.’ He then turned around and motioned ostentatiously to the waiter for another round of drinks.

  Amanda looked over at Hassan but his eyes were firmly fixed on the girl’s bosom. He might as well have his tongue hanging out, she thought. It is a wonder he’s not salivating all over the table.

  The boy’s name was Frankie and his friend was Keira. They were friends from university where they had studied law, and were travelling together for six months before going back to Melbourne to begin their Articles. On a whim they had caught a plane from Nicosia to Amman, and had come to Petra because Frankie had always wanted to see the ancient city.

  ‘From when I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ar
k,’ he explained. ‘I’ve wanted to see it since I was a little boy.’ He sighed contentedly. ‘And it was worth it,’ he continued, then giggled. ‘But alas, I didn’t meet my Harrison Ford.’

  There was an uneasy silence, as both Amanda and Daniela quickly glanced across to Hassan. But he gave no indication that he had heard or understood anything of what Frankie had said. Too busy staring at the girl’s tits, fumed Amanda.

  ‘We’re going to Petra tomorrow,’ Daniela said. ‘I’ve always wanted to see it too.’

  ‘Another Harrison Ford fan?’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Frankie.’ Keira tapped Hassan’s packet of Marlboros. ‘May I?’ He nodded. She lit up.

  Daniela was explaining how she had become fascinated with Petra when she studied archaeology in first year. ‘That was a long time ago,’ she added.

  Keira smiled. ‘How long have you two been together?’

  Amanda was mortified. She didn’t know why she felt the flush of humiliation. She was proud of her love for Daniela; her whole life had been lived in the amity of lesbians. She felt wretched for asking the driver to join them. If he hadn’t been there, she and Daniela would have enjoyed the company of the two young people, been grateful for the opportunity to chat and gossip, to talk about home, to openly be a couple after weeks of walking around the Middle East as though they were Victorian spinsters. She envied Frankie his unashamed campness, Keira her fearless sensuality. Nevertheless, nevertheless, could they not shut up?

  ‘Twenty-two years,’ answered Daniela, winking at her lover.

  ‘Wow!’ Frankie clapped his hands. ‘Lesbians are so committed. We fags are hopeless at it.’

  Keira snorted. ‘Speak for yourself. Dad’s been with Michael for fifteen years. Maybe you’re the one hopeless at commitment.’

  ‘It’s been twenty-two terrific years,’ said Daniela. ‘But we’ve never had the opportunity to come to this part of the world before and I’m so glad we did.’ She smiled at Hassan. ‘Jordanians are very generous.’

  Thank you, sweetheart, thank you, thought Amanda. For changing the conversation, for saying exactly the right thing.