by Joan Smith
‘I know. The Israelis —’
‘Not just the Israelis. Syria.’
‘Syria?’
‘Of course. Who do you think runs this country? When we leave Beirut, you will see the Syrian army everywhere. Sure, the civil war is over, but things are not normal here. How can you write only about what happened to this woman, this Englishwoman, when every day children are losing their legs?’
‘Ingrid.’ Amanda gave the Swedish woman a pleading smile. ‘Can we talk about this another time? I’ve spent the entire day in airports or on a plane, and I don’t think I can stay awake much longer.’
Ingrid stared for a moment, her eyes flashing. Then her expression softened. ‘I’m sorry. Let me get the bill.’ She signalled to a waiter. ‘Shall we make a plan for tomorrow?’
Amanda felt tension drain from her neck and shoulders. ‘I’ve got an appointment at the British embassy at ten-thirty. I doubt if they’ll say much — it’s a courtesy call, sort of.’
‘You can take a taxi from your hotel, you will be perfectly safe, but do not pick one up in the street. Later I think you can talk to a nurse who was on duty when Aisha was brought to the hospital — I have to check when her shift ends. You will have to pay her something, but she will not ask for much. Do you have Lebanese money?’
‘No, just dollars, like you said.’
‘I will show you the best place to change it.’
The bill arrived and Amanda put down a couple of ten-dollar bills. ‘Will they take these?’
‘Of course. Thank you, Amanda.’
On the way to the door, she remembered something. ‘What about the car? Did you find out where it is?’
Ingrid glanced over her shoulder. ‘I have made many phone calls — no one can understand why I am interested in a wreck. But I have an address in Nabatiyeh, not far from where it happened. Do you want to go there?’
‘I don’t know yet. When are we going to Damascus?’
‘I am waiting to hear from my friend at the Swedish embassy, he knows a journalist who interviewed Aisha for his radio programme. I think maybe it was her last interview.’
‘Oh — that’s good.’
They stepped into the street, where Amanda could smell something in the night air, a flowery scent she could not identify. As Ingrid unlocked the car she said, ‘You know, it all feels very strange. Not what I expected.’
Ingrid smiled. ‘You will get used to it. Now when I go home, Malmo seems unreal to me.’
Amanda reached for the seat belt. ‘How often do you go back?’
Ingrid closed the driver’s door and started the engine. ‘One month each year, to see my children.’
‘How old are they?’
‘Twenty-two and twenty-four.’
Amanda turned in surprise. ‘You must have got married very young.’
‘Too young — we were both too young. I have been divorced for many years.’ Ingrid’s eyes flicked to Amanda’s left hand before she started to pull out of the parking space. ‘You are not married?’
‘No. I used to live with someone but — well, it didn’t work out.’
A couple of minutes later, Ingrid’s mobile rang. She felt for it in her pocket, speaking in Arabic for a while and steering with one hand. ‘OK, habibi,’ she said, reverting to English for the final part of the conversation.
‘My partner,’ she told Amanda, putting the phone away. ‘I have to pick him up from the airport in the morning.’
‘Is he Lebanese?’
‘Palestinian. He is an architect, though not a rich one.’
‘Like Aisha’s husband. I mean, I don’t know whether he’s rich or not.’
‘Oh?’ Ingrid paused. ‘Riad was in charge of the project I told you about in Homs.’
‘The Mam —’
‘Mameluke, yes. That is how we met.’ She turned into Baalbek Street and drew up outside the hotel, saying formally: ‘So here we are at your hotel. I hope you sleep well.’
‘Thanks, Ingrid.’
As Amanda got out of the car, Ingrid leaned across and said, ‘We will meet here at twelve-thirty, yes? If you are not back from the embassy, do not worry, I will wait in the lobby. Good night.’
‘Good night.’
Amanda watched as the maroon Renault pulled away from the kerb, the sensation of being alone in a strange city returning as Ingrid’s tail lights grew smaller. Inside the hotel, she manouevred round a group of men in long white robes — Saudi businessmen she guessed, recalling something Ingrid had said about Gulf money funding some of the city’s redevlopment — and picked up her key.
In her room, she turned on the TV, flipping through foreign channels until she found CNN, relieved to hear English being spoken. When she emerged from the bathroom a couple of minutes later, there was a news item about the Princess of Wales’ boyfriend, Dodi al-Fayed: a woman had turned up in Los Angeles, claiming to be his fiancée, and was telling reporters that he had dumped her without warning for Diana. Amanda shook her head, thinking that the whole thing was becoming more and more like a soap opera. She watched for a while, reminded of Patrick for some reason, and used the remote to turn of the TV. Pulling back the covers, she climbed into bed and was asleep almost as soon as she turned out the light.
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‘She was making noises and moving — like this.’ Salma Khoury made restless movements with her shoulders, then glanced towards Ingrid. ‘I am sorry, my English —’
Amanda leaned forward, glancing at her tape recorder to make sure it was recording what the nurse said. ‘Your English is fine. Where was this? Was she on a stretcher?’
‘Stretcher, no. She was on a... trolley? I come from the lift and suddenly there are many people. Big emer — emergency.’
The nurse picked up her coffee cup and sipped from it. Amanda waited, not wanting to rush her, picturing the chaotic scene at the hospital in nearby Cairo Street. As Salma put down her cup, she pressed on.
‘Where were they taking her? Did you hear the helicopter arrive?’
‘No —’
‘The operating theatre, is that where they were going?’
‘Aywa. Yes.’
‘Who was with her? How many people?’
Salma made a face. ‘I do not remember, it all happened very fast. I do not know who she is, you understand, but I can see she is important lady.’
‘Was there another casualty — a man?’ Amanda could not remember the driver’s name.
‘Laa. I did not see —’
‘Then what happened? Was she conscious?’
‘They are trying to give her morphine’ — the nurse gestured to her arm — ‘but she is wanting to sit up. She is delirious, shouting things, a name I think. Then they are all gone through the doors, and I go back to my work.’
‘This name — do you remember what it was?’
Salma shook her head.
‘Tim?’ Amanda enunciated it as clearly as possible. ‘Max, Ricky — they’re her sons.’
‘Laa’ The nurse made a negative motion with her hand. She was wearing several rings, one of them an engagement ring, but her nails were short and unpolished.
‘Iris?’ Amanda hazar
ded, retrieving the name of Aisha’s best friend from her memory. ‘Zulaykha?’
This brought a very definite response from Salma: ‘Not woman’s name.’
Amanda thought back, trying to recall whether anyone had ever mentioned the name of Aisha’s father. For a few seconds, she even thought about taking out her mobile and calling Tim Lincoln, whom she had been avoiding since he started leaving almost daily messages on her voicemail. But if she explained why, he might want to speak to Salma himself, causing needless pain...
‘OK,’ she said, scribbling the number of her mobile in her notebook and tearing out the page. ‘Call me if you remember. You’ve been really helpful.’
She handed the number to Salma, along with twenty dollars. It was twice as much as the nurse had asked for at the beginning of the interview, but she had told Amanda a little of her life story — she was twenty-four, lived with her aunt and uncle in Beirut and was saving to get married — and obviously didn’t have much money.
‘Choucran.’ Salma’s eyes widened and she looked less nervous than at any time since they had begun talking. She was an attractive young woman, with curly dark hair and expressive eyes rimmed with kohl. ‘I am sorry I cannot tell you more.’ She hesitated. ‘I can go now?’
‘Yes, unless you’d like more coffee.’
‘Laa, choucran.’
Salma slid out of her seat. She had come to the cafe straight from work and was wearing her uniform with a cardigan draped over her shoulders. Ingrid said something to her and they chatted in Arabic while Amanda finished her coffee and ate a little cake sprinkled with nuts. She was wiping her lips with a napkin when she realised that Salma was taking leave of Ingrid and lifted her head to say ‘ma-a-salaameh’, one of the phrases she had asked Ingrid to teach her over lunch. In return, Salma gave her a brilliant smile, revealing even white teeth.
‘She was nice,’ Amanda said as the door swung shut behind the nurse. ‘Pity she can’t remember that name.’
Ingrid started to say something, but appeared to think better of it. Her hair was in a kind of French pleat today, and she wore a faint perfume which smelled like jasmine. She had brought English and Arabic newspapers from the airport, where she had picked up her partner that morning, and she gathered them up with the rest of her things. Amanda followed her to the door, stopping to look at a collage of photographs and newspaper clippings, some of them showing the front of the cafe after a shell had landed directly outside.
‘Now you have a choice,’ Ingrid said. The heat, as they stepped out of the air-conditioned cafe, was stifling. ‘Either you can walk back to the hotel, it is not very far, and have a rest before you see Madame — Madame Boisseau. Or you can come with me and I will drop you at her apartment, but I need to do some shopping first. I have to cook for Riad this evening.’
Amanda hesitated, tempted by the idea of a swim in the hotel pool. The woman Ingrid had mentioned, Séverine Boisseau, had lived in Beirut for many years and knew Fabio Terzano during the civil war. She had sounded puzzled on the phone, but agreed to talk to Amanda at her flat at five-thirty that afternoon.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said at last, not sure she had time for a swim. Ingrid nodded. ‘You should see more of Beirut than the big hotels.’
They crossed the road to Ingrid’s car. As they set off, she slipped a cassette into the player and a woman’s voice filled the car.
‘Do you know who this is?’
‘Mmm?’ Amanda was still thinking about Salma. Most of what she’d said was too disturbing to use in the article, but Amanda reassured herself that she had plenty more people to talk to here and in Damascus.
‘Amanda?’
‘Sorry?’
‘This is Fayrouz,’ said Ingrid, turning it up. A moment later, when the song finished, she started talking about the rivalry between Fayrouz, who was Lebanese, and the Egyptian Um Khaltoum. Only half listening — she hadn’t heard of either singer, and the music was too unfamiliar for her to pick up the tune — Amanda noticed that they were entering an area of Beirut which was much shabbier than anything she had seen so far. The streets were crowded and most of the people wore what she thought of as country clothes, the kind of thing she’d seen in rural areas of Spain and Greece, except that most of the women had their hair covered by scarves.
‘Where are we? What’s this place called?’
Ingrid braked and Amanda jerked forward, bouncing back from the seat belt.
‘Sorry!’ Ingrid reversed at speed towards a parking space, slotting in behind a car with scratched bodywork and one door a different colour from the rest. Reaching for a shopping basket on the back seat, she said, ‘Do you want to come with me?’
‘Sure.’
They were at the beginning of a market, and Amanda thought she might buy some fruit to eat in her room. The stalls were in the middle of a busy street with crumbling concrete shacks to either side, cables carrying electricity slung carelessly between them. Ingrid walked purposefully past the first sellers and stopped at a vegetable stall, reaching for some large, misshapen tomatoes and testing them for ripeness. She began a lively conversation with the stallholder and they both glanced at Amanda, who heard the word ‘London’ a couple of times. She gazed round, watching women with heavily-lined faces bargain with the man behind the next stall. Their Arabic was harsh, almost guttural, and Amanda thought they were angry until they broke into noisy laughter.
‘Want anything?’
‘Oh — some oranges, please.’
‘Do you like figs?’
Amanda nodded and watched as Ingrid added them to her bag. ‘Can we walk a bit?’
Ingrid looked surprised. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘if you like.’
They pushed their way through the crowd, the street becoming shabbier and more littered with rubbish by the moment. Some of the stallholders were selling poultry, tied together by the legs or in wicker cages, while emaciated dogs scavenged in heaps of rubbish, sidling away with bones and unidentifiable scraps. Amanda looked from side to side, trying not to inhale the pungent odour of raw meat, human sweat and live animals. When they reached the last stall, she saw that the dilapidated buildings extended for miles, marking the beginning of what looked like a vast slum.
‘What is this place?’ She turned to Ingrid. ‘How can people live here?’
‘They have no choice.’ Ingrid gave her a compassionate look. ‘This is where I made my film, the one I’m editing now.’
‘This is the camp?’ Amanda broke off, realising that whenever Ingrid talked about her film she had pictured rows of tents in some dusty place far beyond the city; images familiar from news reports of wars or famine in Africa. This was nothing like —
Amanda turned to look at a three-story building which seemed to have collapsed in on itself. It was like peering into a doll’s house with the front ripped off, except that real people were living there: on the ground floor she saw a table, armchairs covered in ripped orange plastic and an old TV set, with the remains of the first floor forming a makeshift roof. Beyond its shelter, children played in the dust and chickens scratched between lumps of concrete.
She wiped sweat from her forehead. ‘Why doesn’t somebody do something? It looks as though it’s been hit by an earthquake. Where’s the aid? When will they be moved out?’
Ingrid said quietly: ‘They won’t be moved out. The Lebanese government doesn’t want them here, but they have nowhere to go.’ She waved towards the warren of buildings that stretched as far as the eye could see. ‘Come, I’ll show you.’
She set off. The smell had worsened and in a few yards Amanda recoiled from a vast mound of stinking rubbish, towering over the street. Hurrying on with her hand over her nose, she spotted a low building which appeared to be some kind of office. Two men, unshaven and wearing leather jackets, lounged in chairs outside, impassively watching the street. Behind them was a mural of a mosque, executed in primary colours like a child’s painting, and Amanda stopped for a closer look.
‘
What’s that?’ she asked. ‘Can I take a photo—’
Ingrid was nowhere to be seen. Amanda took a few steps, was jostled by some teenage boys and slipped on something viscous. Losing her balance, she crashed to the ground, a crippling pain shooting through her ankle. She clutched it, tears springing to her eyes. Her hands were grubby, where she had tried to save herself, and she was aware of people clustering round her, asking questions she didn’t understand. Terrified that she’d broken a bone, she tried to massage her lower leg but the pain got worse. She looked up, blinking away tears, and said in an agonised voice: ‘Ingrid.’
‘Where does it hurt?’
A man knelt beside her. He moved her hand and gently touched her leg. ‘Here? Show me.’
She gasped.
‘Don’t move.’ He massaged the sore spot gently, then probed with his fingers.
Amanda watched his hands. ‘Are you a doctor?’
‘Yes.’ He had springy brown hair and a foreign accent.
‘Amanda! Are you all right?’
The man looked up as Ingrid arrived, breathless and alarmed. ‘She is your friend? I do not think she has broken anything, probably it is a sprain.’
Ingrid knelt beside them, her skirt trailing in the dust. ‘Can she walk?’
‘I think so. Do you have a car?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, take her home and give her tea with lots of sugar. For shock. She will need painkillers and maybe a bandage for support. I do not have one... You must go to a pharmacy.’ He turned back to Amanda. ‘Now I will help you up — slowly, there is no hurry.’
He put his hands under her shoulders, taking most of her weight as she made a shaky attempt to stand up. She gasped when her left foot touched the ground but the pain was not quite as bad as she had feared. Ingrid held out her arm and Amanda leaned on it. ‘Thanks,’ she said to the man. ‘Choucran.’
Ingrid grinned. ‘Do you speak Arabic?’ she asked.
‘A little — I am learning.’
‘You are Russian?’
‘From Ukraine.’
‘Hold on to me, Amanda.’ Ingrid felt in her bag and produced a card. She held it out. ‘Ingrid Hansson.’
‘Grigory Radionov. We do not have cards —’