The Med

by David Poyer

  “I don’t know, Betts.”

  “We don’t have anything to go on, Susan,” said Michael, staring out. “There must be something going on, but what? Is the Majd negotiating with the Syrians? Are they supporting him or surrounding him? We don’t know. Are the Turks going to release the prisoners? What kind of leverage does the States have? Since that bastard busted my radio we don’t know a thing.”

  “So, I guess we just look on the bright side,” said Moira. “He’s feeding us, anyway.”

  “Stale bread,” said Susan.

  “Wait a minute,” said Cook then.

  “What, Michael?”

  “Quiet. Come here.”

  They got up quietly, not jostling Nan, and went to his side. He pointed, and their eyes followed his finger downward, into blackness.

  The square below had been a handful of night, cupped by the shadowy masses of the other buildings. Within it now a yellow circle bobbed, lengthening and shortening across the pavement. The lantern showed them three men. Two wore the white shirts and makeshift brassards that seemed to be Wihdah uniform. The other, held between them by pinioned arms, was bare-chested.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Jeez, Betts, we don’t know any more than you do,” said Moira. “Watch.”

  The wind eased itself through the opened window, stirring her hair. She leaned forward, into the jamb, to see around Cook.

  The shadows halted in the middle of the square. The bobble of light halted too, then contracted as the man carrying the lantern set it down. The two in shirts paused then, conferring. The clouds flickered, and long seconds later, the sound of a heavy barrage reached them. The other one, the one with tied hands, looked around; looked back, it seemed, at the lobby entrance.

  The two men stepped up to him, unslinging the rifles. The man cringed, then, and tried to run; but they caught him easily.

  “Oh, God,” whispered Moira.

  The rifle butts swung quickly, heavily, and the half-naked man staggered. A scream came faintly up to them. At the third swing he fell, but the others did not stop or even slow. The crunch of blows came up clearly to them.

  “Oh, God … who is it? I can’t see down there—”

  “It’s Snaggletooth,” said Cook.

  “But what are they doing?”

  “It’s terrorist justice,” said the archaeologist grimly. “Pretty rapid court procedure, wouldn’t you say?”

  Susan watched. She could not reply. She did not know what to say, or what to feel. A part of her wanted to laugh, wanted this man to suffer. He deserved it. For one moment, when she had seen him with her daughter, she had wanted him to die. She would have shot him herself if she had held the gun.

  But watching it, hearing the steady thudding of metal into bone and flesh, was different.

  It seemed a long time until the beating ended. The small man lay in the flickering circle, motionless save for a slow twitching of the legs. They could see dark stains spreading on his back.

  The man with the lantern picked it up. They paused for a moment, looking toward the entrance; then one of them slung his rifle and grasped the prone man under the arms. His legs dragged.

  The light bobbed onward, out of their sight.

  Cook closed the window and drew the ragged curtain. They sat touching close in near darkness, each grateful for the warmth of the others.

  “He got off easy. They should have shot him,” said Moira tentatively, glancing at her.

  Susan could think of nothing to say in reply. She had seen a man beaten almost to death. She wanted to vomit. But behind that, alongside it, an older and more savage persona gloated. Revenge—yes; she had wanted that, demanded it, in the heat of the moment.

  This calm, unhurried punishment, that could leave a man a cripple—she could not accept that as right. She remembered the terrible fear in the short man’s face. And then her mind recoiled from pity. Not pity but hypocrisy, it said. You have the right to hate, even the duty; and she saw again the way Nan had looked toward the door as she burst through it. The terror of that lone search. The minutes when she feared her daughter gone, and knew that her heart would break.

  But she could not enjoy this revenge. She couldn’t. And then, suddenly, she knew why.

  To almost kill a man so deliberately … to do that, to order that … what kind of person would it take?

  She found herself suddenly in Moira’s arms. “It’s okay, okay. Betts, he had it coming.” She felt a hand on her hair, stroking it as she stroked Nan’s.

  “Ox … if he can do that to his own men, what will he do to us?”

  It was as if, she thought blindly, not until now had she realized what was going to happen to them—to all of them. What protection, what safety could there be here? They were alone with this madness, this terror. Alone.

  Oh, Jesus, God … my father … Dan … she thought blindly, rage and fear knotting heavy beneath her breastbone. Why have you abandoned us to this?

  “Okay, okay,” she heard Moira whisper in the dark. And then, a caught sob of shared fear. “I don’t know, Betts. I really don’t.”

  After a moment she pulled away, and drew the arm of her T-shirt across her face. The room was quiet for a time. “I’m going to sleep,” came Moira’s sobered mutter, then, “Mike, you coming?”

  “Yeah.”

  Susan sat in the dark, on the bed, for a long time, long enough that she heard the Ox begin to snore.

  She was thinking.

  At last she got up and pushed her feet into her sandals. She was surprised to find them still damp from the morning’s rain. Nicosia, that morning, seemed weeks distant. She adjusted the strap, hesitated, and then went out.

  In the hallway the air stank of burning, and fearing fire she glanced quickly around. The guard was at the far end, near the stairwell. He had a kerosene lamp beside him, the same kind the men in the square had carried. That was what smelled. The Arab watched her by its buttery light as she went to the bucket and dipped up a cupful of water. Perhaps an inch more remained. Drink as much as you can, and take some back for Nan, she thought. If they don’t give us any more in the morning, she won’t cry from thirst—

  “Ahlan.”

  Startled, she almost spilled the precious liquid. She caught the cup in midair, though, and tossed back her hair, looking toward the light.

  He had come up the stairwell, out of the shadows, so stealthily that there had been no sound at all. He stood now motionless beside the guard, his face in shadow above the smoky flame of the candle he shielded in his left hand.

  “Hello,” the Majd repeated. “Your child is better?”

  “The same.” She took a breath, released it, and bent to dip up another cup. Her hand made rings in the water. She took another breath. “The water and the bread helped. Thank you.”

  “We had to ask for the food from the Syrians. They didn’t want to give it at first. Then they agreed. Anyway, we needed it, too.”

  So there’s friction, she thought. Whose side were the Syrians on? Did they know themselves? But aloud she only said, “So it was a beneficial trade for you.”

  “Beneficial?”

  “Good.”

  He laughed, seemed to find the word amusing. His face was still in shadow. “Yes. For us it was, beneficial.”

  They stood silent in the slow yellow glow. She finished the drink and put the cup back in the bucket. I must be careful, she thought then. It does not matter that he punished one of his own. He did not do it for us. All fear in this place comes from him. He is the evil.

  “What is your name?”

  “Susan. Susan Lenson.”

  “You are American?”

  “Yes.”

  There was the space of perhaps five heartbeats. “I saw the punishment,” she said then, into the unquiet shadows of two flames. The outlines of a man and a woman stretched far down the carpet, their heads joined in a pool of darkness.

  “From your window? I thought you might.”

  “Di
d you order it?”

  “Yes. He was my man, under my orders and party discipline.”

  She shivered. He said it so matter-of-factly. Party discipline.

  He said a few words to the guard, who nodded, and then his long body detached itself from the shadows of the wall and moved toward her. He bent at the bucket, and drank as she had, sipping at the water. She watched the golden light slide over his face, focus in onyx gleams in his mustache.

  “You want to talk?” he said.

  “I don’t know what about,” she said quickly. “I don’t have anything to say. Thank you, I suppose, for your … discipline. But that’s all.”

  “But still—”

  “But you’re still holding us here,” she said. “Why don’t you—why don’t you just let us go? At least some of us?”

  He said nothing. Just looked at her, and shook his head. His face was closed again. She knew she was taking risks, but she went on. “Then we’re enemies, aren’t we? Moira’s right, why pretend otherwise? You’re using us. We don’t matter at all to you as human beings.”

  “Ah,” he said. His face changed. “If it’s a political discussion that you want—”

  “No, I don’t—”

  “Maybe it’s time for one.” Harisah shrugged his shoulders then, and smiled. He lifted his head too, and for that moment, for the first time since they had begun speaking, she saw his eyes. “Sit down. Or do you refuse to talk to me?”

  “Well…”

  “Here. Just here. Sit down.”

  It was as if there were two of her, one wanting to flee, the other, to stay. She saw herself for an unaccustomed moment as if from outside, saw herself hesitating between which “she” she was.

  Don’t blow it, Betts, she thought then. He wants me to be grateful? I’m grateful. He wants to talk? I do whatever he wants. As long as he leaves us alone.

  There was an underthought to that, but she did not acknowledge it even to herself.

  Meanwhile, while she stood uncertain, he had set the candle into the carpet, around a corner from the guard. “Come, sit down. I won’t harm you.”

  She hesitated still, looking at the wax dripping into the carpet. One more consideration struck her; she turned, looking back. No, Nan would be all right for a few minutes more.…

  She sat down. The wall was hard against her back. The floor, under the carpet, was hard against her rump. She glanced across the flame. His head was bent, a strand of damp hair clinging blackly to his forehead, his profile to her. She examined the stab of nose, the heavy chin. His mustache needed trimming; it was ragged at the line of the lip, as if he had tried to cut it himself, hurriedly, and failed. Wiry black hair curled at the neck of his shirt. His arms were outstretched, curled around his knees, and the rifle lay across his arm, opposite her. In the close light she could see the grooves at the mouth of the barrel. Arabic characters had been scratched near the trigger, near where his hand rested, where his fingers stroked it unconsciously. The wooden stock was scarred with hard use. But the metal was smooth with oil, and she could see grease clinging to it, as if it had been wiped off hurriedly with a rag. The light of the candle fell yellow over his hand, throwing the tendons of his wrist into relief.

  “I am sorry. I’m out of Luckies.”

  She looked at the pack. They weren’t American, some foreign brand in a light green pack. “I don’t—I quit smoking. Years ago.”

  “Take one. You’re too nervous.”

  Whatever he wants.

  “Well, all right. Thank you.”

  The nervousness eased as he held the candle for her. The harsh cheap tobacco, after abstinence for so long, made her head swim.

  The silence was becoming too long. “This gun. Is it—where did it come from, Majd?” she said.

  He exhaled smoke, his eyes sliding to her and then away. “My name is Hanna, Susan. The gun? In a way it is my father’s. Now it is mine.”

  “Was he a—a soldier?”

  Under the tangled hair she saw him turn wary, a scowl drawing the dark brows together. Something there he didn’t want to remember. “He was a fighter, yes,” he said, emphasizing the word. “As a young man—you have heard of the revolt of 1938? Of Al-Quasim’s men?”

  “No.”

  “He fought then, and after. He hid in the mountains, as a young man. He killed many Jews and British. His rifle was British. He took it from a dead soldier. Mine—” he patted it—“it is Chinese. Why? Because they gave it to me. I would use any other, if I could get ammunition.”

  “That was before the war.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he do afterward? After the fighting stopped?”

  Harisah lifted his hand and made a chopping motion above the flame. Again, she noticed, he scowled at questions he did not like. At those times he looked dangerous. “Ah, you know so little. For us the fighting has never stopped. What did he do? After the British prison he could fight no longer. They broke his legs. What he did after that, that doesn’t matter, that was not an important part of his life.

  “He told me, my father,”—and he held the rifle up, as if to let her admire it, and perhaps that was what he meant for her to do, she thought—“where he left his, in Jaffa. He wrapped it in cloth of grease and buried it, with the bullets, under the earth, where no one could find. And sometimes they came, and they looked.”

  “Who?”

  “Israeli police. Troops, sometimes. I saw them beat him once. He never told. Perhaps it is there still.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would they—?”

  “Because he never stopped fighting, in his way. We hid people. He made bombs for Fatah. He did not change easily, my father. He did not … give up, surrender, like some of the others.”

  “Was that in—in Palestine?”

  “Yes. In Gaza. We went there when I was small, when the Zionists forced our people out of Jaffa. We scattered—they scattered us to all the world.” And with a sway of his head he indicated the world outside the walls; indicated, she realized, the south, the ancient and violent lands that to her had once been only names: Lebanon; Israel; Jordan. “He had a shop there for a little while; he repaired the clocks, the watches. He was good at that; he taught me some of it. But he lost it when the Israelis came again in 1967. We had to leave, my mother and sisters, all our … neighbors.

  “So then we went to Jordan. To Baqa’a, the refugee camps. That is where I grew up.”

  “He lives there now? In Jordan?”

  “Who?”

  “Your father.”

  “No, my father, he’s dead. He made trouble again, and then he died.”

  Died how, she wanted to ask; but the grimness that had deepened the corners of his mouth as he talked put her off. It was a warning, like a sign before a precipice, and she went extra slow, as she had driving the winding roads of Cyprus with Nan asleep beside her. She studied the glowing tip of her cigarette. God, they made her dizzy after so long. “I see … and your mother?”

  “She lives.”

  “You said you had sisters. How many?”

  But he only shrugged, slowly, and looked at her. “That is not important.”

  “No, I wanted to know—”

  “Do you? What do you want to know? I know what you think of me. All Palestinians are terrorists, dirty Arab killers, cowards. Is it not right? You never ask why we fight. If your land was taken and occupied, if you were driven off to live as strangers in foreign lands, would you not resist?”

  Resisting, yes, I can understand that, she thought; but hostage-taking, murder, terrorism? She knew she shouldn’t argue, though. Instead she said, “I don’t know much about it. But what is it you want?”

  “We want Palestine back.”

  “But the Israelis are there now. Where will they go?”

  “Where they go does not concern me. They will leave or they will die.”

  His face was hard now and she saw his hands tighten on the rifle.

  “I don’t know much about it,�
� she said again cautiously. “What I would like to know is how long we’ll have to stay here.”

  He shrugged. “That’s not up to me; that is up to others. They will be doing the negotiating with the Turks. So far they do not respond.”

  “I hope—”

  “I know what you hope. Don’t expect it. I am not going to release you. And don’t expect rescue, either. The Syrians don’t want to be seen helping us, too much, but they will protect us. No, you will be here for a long time, I think.”

  “What if they let your friends go?”

  “That is unlikely. But if that happens there are other things we want, too.”

  “I don’t understand. It sounds like you mean to hold us anyway.”

  “When you have a dollar, and buy what you want for less, do you throw the rest of the money away? Anyway, I tire of explaining.” He shifted on the floor. “Tell me, what of yourself? Your name is Susan. The others called you that. You are with them? The ones in your room?”

  “Yes. They’re my friends.”

  “The girl. How old is she?”

  “Nan is three.”

  “Three years old … your husband, the tall one, he is good to you?”

  “The tall … oh, no.” She had to laugh, there in the warm darkness. “Michael? No, he’s not my husband. He’s Moira’s friend. The brunette.”

  “Brunette,” he repeated.

  “A woman with dark hair. Like yours.”

  “I am a brunette?”

  “Well, it’s generally used in English for women. But yes, you are.”

  “You are a brunette.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you look different from the others.”

  “I’m part Chinese.”

  “You look a little like our women, you know. But you are American.”

  “That’s right, buster.”

  “Many Americans are Jews.”

  “Americans are everything.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I have seen black ones, brunette ones, everything. Buster. This is strange language, too. I studied it in the camp, to prepare myself for struggle.” He was gazing at the ceiling; she followed his glance, to see their shadows caught together in the golden wavering of the candle. “I did not think to be using it like this, talking to a pretty woman.”