What Will Survive

by Joan Smith

  ‘Those guys we met on the road?’

  ‘Yes. They torture people — dogs, electric shocks.’

  ‘Marwan is there? Why?’

  ‘That is one of the things I am trying to find out.’

  There was a noise at the door and the young woman appeared with a tray.

  ‘Choucran,’ Ingrid said, getting up to take it from her.

  The girl pulled up a small table and they bent over it together, talking in Arabic as she poured two glasses of mint tea. Amanda watched, thinking she would have preferred a cold drink but doubting whether the family even owned a fridge.

  ‘Thanks.’ She took a glass and sipped from it as the girl sat down at a polite distance.

  Ingrid said, ‘This is Amal, Marwan’s sister.’ The older woman entered the room, coming to sit beside the girl, her gnarled fingers clasping and unclasping. ‘His mother, Um Marwan.’

  Amanda nodded at each of them in turn, able to see the resemblance to the boy in the photo. Ingrid spoke to Amal in Arabic, listening to what seemed to be a long story, interrupted occasionally by Marwan’s mother.

  Eventually she turned to Amanda. ‘You were right — Aisha came here with Fabio. He wanted to see Marwan, but he’s been taken to Khiam.’

  ‘Where is this place?’

  ‘Not far — maybe that is why we met those men on the road.’

  Amal interjected, repeating the words ‘Al-Khiam’ several times. Ingrid translated: ‘Fabio was upset. He wanted to go to Khiam, but Aisha —’ She paused to ask a question. ‘Amal is saying Aisha did not think it was safe. She said they should go to Beirut and come back with people from an NGO, perhaps a camera crew.’

  The mother said a few words and Ingrid smiled faintly. ‘She says CNN. Everyone has heard of CNN.’

  ‘To get him out, you mean?’

  Ingrid nodded. ‘Once someone is in this place, they disappear for years.’

  Now the older woman was speaking, her voice lower and more guttural than her daughter’s. Ingrid listened, frowning.

  ‘What’s she saying?’

  ‘Something about a helicopter.’ Ingrid asked a question and Amal took over, speaking fast and gesturing with her hands.

  ‘The one that took Aisha to hospital?’

  ‘No — a military helicopter. Shh.’

  After a while, Amal finished speaking and took a cup of tea to her mother, coaxing her to drink it. The older woman sipped listlessly, her eyes watery and red.

  Amanda said suddenly: ‘You don’t think he’s dead? Is that why they’re so upset?’

  ‘They do not know. What they are saying —’ Ingrid hesitated. ‘I will tell you, but you have to forget all your Western ideas for a moment, Amanda.’

  She waited, not sure what was coming.

  ‘The next morning — they stayed the night, you were right about that as well — Fabio went to see someone in the village, the head man, and came back very late. The next morning, while they were deciding what to do, a helicopter flew over the house. Aisha recognised it from the day before. It had flown overhead while Fabio was taking pictures on the road.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘As I said, they were arguing. Fabio wanted to go to Khiam but Aisha insisted they go to Beirut.’

  ‘Good for her.’

  Ingrid’s eyes flicked to Marwan’s family. ‘They do not think so. Aisha won the argument, I think, because the driver would not go to Khiam, and they set off for Beirut. This was on the Monday morning, about eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Yes, that makes sense.’

  ‘Then the helicopter comes back, high up this time, the whole family sees it as they wave them off. A few minutes later there is an explosion, a huge explosion, you can hear it for miles around.’

  ‘The mine. We know all this.’

  ‘Yes, but they are saying it forced them off the road.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You always wanted to know why they left the road...’

  Amanda choked. ‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous.’

  Amal and her mother started talking at the same time. Ingrid said, ‘For God’s sake, Amanda, you are not making this easy.’

  She held up her hands, calming the two women as best she could.

  Amanda got to her feet. ‘I don’t want to be rude to these people but I’ve never heard such rubbish in my life. We’re wasting our time, let’s get back to Beirut.’

  ‘Sit down, Amanda. Sit down.’

  Amanda had never heard Ingrid speak so firmly. She subsided, muttering, ‘You’re never going to convince me.’

  Ingrid passed a hand across her brow, coughing to clear her throat. Aware of the charged emotions in the room, Amanda suddenly felt sorry for her. ‘Look, I didn’t mean to —’

  ‘Just listen to me, OK?’

  Ingrid said something to Amal and her mother, and the girl nodded a couple of times. She got up, taking her mother’s arm and drawing her gently from the room.

  When they were alone, Ingrid said, ‘Remember that evening in Achrafiye, when you showed me a photo of Fabio?’

  Amanda hadn’t expected this. ‘In the restaurant? I suppose so.’

  ‘I said he reminded me of someone.’

  Amanda shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘He looks — looked like Abu Thaer.’ Seeing that Amanda was about to interrupt, she said in a flat voice: ‘Abu Thaer is Syrian. He makes bombs.’

  ‘For Hezbollah?’

  ‘Hezbollah, Hamas. Some people say he used to work for Colonel Gaddafi.’

  ‘Gaddafi — oh.’ A memory stirred but Amanda couldn’t place it. She said, ‘They thought Fabio was this Syrian guy, is that what you’re saying?’

  Ingrid noded. ‘The Israelis have been after him for years.’

  A phone rang, obscenely loud in the silent room. It took Amanda a moment to realise it was hers before she pulled it from her bag.

  ‘Hello? Sabri?’ She gazed round the room, her eyes dazed. ‘It’s not — can I call you back in ten minutes?’ She slid the phone into a pocket of her jeans and gave her head a slight shake.

  ‘It sounds incredibly far-fetched. I mean, you’re talking about an assassination.’

  ‘It would not be the first time. A stranger comes here, looking like Abu Thaer, to the house of a suspected terrorist —’

  ‘You mean Marwan? You didn’t tell me that bit.’

  ‘Amal says it was a mistake, they wanted someone else — his friend. This is something we need to find out.’

  ‘Christ, Ingrid, what are we getting into here?’

  Ingrid bowed her head, resting it in her cupped hand. ‘I cannot think, I am so tired.’

  ‘You don’t really believe all this.’

  Ingrid lifted her head, her cheeks flushed. ‘I believe Marwan is in Al-Khiam, and I know Fabio looked like Abu Thaer. The rest.

  ‘There’s not a shred of evidence.’

  ‘You are a journalist. It is your job to find out.’

  Amanda gasped: ‘Ingrid, I write stuff about movies and who Princess Diana’s going out with. I wouldn’t even begin to know how to do a story like this.’

  ‘What about your Aisha?’

  ‘My Aisha?’

  ‘You always talk as though you care about her.’

  ‘She’s dead, nothing can change that.’

  ‘Her family — wouldn’t they want to know the truth?’

  Amanda snorted. ‘Her husband, God knows. Her sons, maybe.’ For some reason she thought about the MP, Stephen Massinger, whom she’d spoken to on the phone before leaving London. ‘Look, I’m not going to go back and make some dramatic announcement about her being murdered. It sounds like a — a total conspiracy theory. They’d think I was nuts.’

  Amal slid back into the room, sitting opposite them and looking as though she was waiting for a decision. Amanda dropped her gaze, not wanting to look her in the eye, and fiddled with the bandage on her leg. As she smoothed it out, sliding it over the fading bruises, Amal came and knelt besid
e her, asking a question in Arabic. ‘Thanks,’ Amanda assured her, pushing her hand away, ‘I can do it.’

  Ingrid asked, ‘Is it hurting again? Go and sit in the car. I will talk to Um Marwan and find out if there is a phone in the village.’

  Amanda left the room, looking apologetically at Amal, and limped to the gate. On her right, light streamed from a half-open door and she could hear voices; dusk was turning to night and she looked carefully before crossing the road, although she didn’t really expect to see any traffic. In the car, she fastened the seat belt and took out her mobile to call Sabri. It rang a couple of times — the comforting English dial tone — then she got his voicemail.

  ‘I couldn’t talk — actually, it’s all getting a bit weird down here. I’ll try you again from Beirut.’ She ended the call and put the phone away as Ingrid slid into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Her sister has a phone, I have the number.’

  Amanda shook her head, although it was too dark by now to see each other.

  Ingrid started the engine. She said wearily: ‘I think you have forgotten the driver.’

  ‘The — oh.’ Amanda winced as the ache in her ankle suddenly sharpened: she should have taken an anti-inflammatory, but they were locked in the boot with her lugagge. ‘We don’t have a clue where he is,’ she said irritably.

  ‘He is in Syria.’

  ‘You mean we have to call every hospital in Syria?’ Amanda lifted her hands and massaged her eyelids with her fingers.

  Ingrid slowed at the main road. ‘I have a friend in Beirut, her husband is high up in the government. I will call her in the morning.’

  ‘You were going to take tomorrow off.’

  ‘And Samih, he knows many people in Syria.’

  ‘Well, I can’t stop you, if you want to waste your time.’

  Amanda picked up the water bottle and played with the cap.

  ‘What time is your flight on Monday?’

  ‘Mmm? Early, very early.’

  Ingrid glanced sideways. ‘So we have two days.’

  ‘Yes, but tomorrow’s Saturday, no one will be in the office.’

  ‘You are exhausted, Amanda, it is not good to think in this state. We will be in Beirut in an hour or so. Try and get some sleep.’

  Amanda shifted in her seat. ‘I couldn’t possibly sleep, not after this.’

  Ingrid slowed as they passed a couple of bombed buildings and a dog darted out, barking at the car. Beside her, Amanda slid down in her seat, adjusting the headrest. Not long after, the car reverberated to the first of a series of snores. Ingrid reached over, took the water bottle from Amanda’s loose grip and put it on the floor. Returning her hand to the steering wheel, she switched the headlights to full beam, trying to control the thoughts spinning in her head.

  The next morning Amanda was woken by a storm. For a few seconds she wasn’t sure where she was, until the furniture in her hotel room became familiar. She got out of bed and padded to the sliding doors, pulling back the curtain in time to see a bolt of lightning crack the sky She watched for a while, until the dark clouds began passing out to sea, and then called for coffee and croissants to be brought up to her room. She ate standing by the balcony door, flexing her stiff leg, noticing how the driving rain had washed clean the high-rise apartment blocks and offices near the hotel; they were the colour of bone against a clear blue sky, already beginning to dry off as a weak sun appeared overhead. When she’d finished breakfast, she called Séverine Bosseau, apologising for disturbing her on a Saturday.

  ‘We got back last night and I feel dreadful — stiff all over,’ she said.

  Séverine told her to get in a cab and come straight over, exclaiming that she could see the tension in Amanda’s neck and shoulders as soon as she walked through the door.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she asked for the second time, leading her into the sitting room where the massage table was already set up. Amanda started to reply but her thoughts were so disjointed that Séverine held up a hand. ‘My God, you are in a state. Lie down and you can tell me later.’

  After the massage, Amanda started on a more coherent account of her visit to the Hadidi family. Séverine lit a cigarette and listened, her expression darkening when Amanda said that Marwan Hadidi was in the prison at Al-Khiam.

  ‘This is terrible,’ she said, stubbing out her cigarette and looking directly at Amanda. ‘Do you know what happens in this place? You are a journalist, you must do something.’

  ‘Hang on.’ Amanda told her the rest of it, watching Séverine’s face as she described Ingrid’s theory that Fabio and Aisha had been murdered — she found it hard even to say the word — because of his resemblance to Abu Thaer. Expecting Séverine to react, she was surprised when the Frenchwoman merely tipped another cigarette out of the packet.

  ‘I mean, I like Ingrid, she’s been incredibly helpful. But things like that don’t happen outside movies...’

  ‘Merde.’ Séverine was having trouble with her lighter. She fiddled with it, and a tall flame shot up. When she had got her cigarette going, she said, ‘I did not think of it before now, but he did look like Abu Thaer.’

  ‘You’ve heard of him, then?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘All right, but even so —’

  ‘Poor Amanda, you do not know much about this part of the world. Can you write it for your paper?’

  ‘That Aisha was assassinated?’ She pictured the editor’s face.

  ‘About Marwan Hadidi. He is a decent young man, from a decent family. He does not deserve this.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m meeting Ingrid shortly, she might have some ideas.’ She hesitated. ‘You don’t really think — I mean, the stuff about the helicopter?’

  Séverine nodded, as though the question was ridiculous: ‘Of course! Such things happen all the time.’

  Amanda flinched and tried to change the subject, but Séverine kept returning to it, lecturing her about detention without trial and political assassinations until it was time to take a cab to Ingrid’s apartment.

  ‘Write about Marwan,’ she said, kissing Amanda goodbye. ‘And watch that neck! You will have trouble later if you don’t.’

  When Amanda got out of the taxi, the ginger cat was in Ingrid’s scrubby garden, hunched over a bowl of cat food.

  ‘He’s putting on weight,’ Amanda said brightly when Riad opened the door. He nodded, asked how she was and went to look at something that was arriving through the fax machine.

  ‘Go through,’ he said, his mind elsewhere.

  Amanda went into the big living room, smiling with genuine pleasure when Samih Al-Neimi got up from one of the armchairs. He shook her hand as Ingrid paced up and down at the other end of the room, speaking Swedish into her mobile and holding up two fingers to indicate that she’d be off the phone in a couple of minutes.

  ‘Amanda, welcome — I have something for you,’ Samih said.

  He handed her a book with a plain blue cover, and she saw that it was an edition of his poems in French. Her eyes widened — she could read a French newspaper with the help of a dictionary, but doubted whether she would be able to understand verse translated from Arabic — but she thanked him and began turning the pages, reading some of the tides.

  By then Riad had come back into the room, sitting down and opening a Lebanese newspaper, and he addressed a remark to Samih over the top of it. Samih said something and they both laughed, then he turned to Amanda and apologised for not speaking in English. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt and she noticed a series of red marks, like cigarette burns, on his forearms. She was trying not to stare when Ingrid appeared in front of her, still on the mobile, and held out some papers. Amanda looked up. ‘What’s this?’

  Ingrid put a finger to her lips and moved away. She was wearing an old pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt, and her eyes were tired. Amanda glanced at Samih, sat down and looked at the top sheet. It was a press release from an organisation she’d vaguely heard of, not as big as Am
nesty International but sufficiently well known to get its name into the press from time to time. She read:

  12 March 1997: Fair World Now! Demands Closure of Al-Khiam Detention Centre in Occupied South Lebanon

  Khiam Prison in occupied South Lebanon operates outside the framework of international law and should be closed at once, says FWN! Director, Sara Thompson QC, who returned last week from a fact-finding visit to the Middle East. In Lebanon, Ms Thompson met former detainees at Al-Khiam who graphically described beatings, torture and threats of reprisals against relatives. Ms Thompson is particularly concerned about female detainees, some of whom have been threatened with rape.

  She said, ‘Prisoners have no idea how long they will be detained or the charges against them. Interrogations are carried out under torture, which is outlawed under international treaties. One former inmate told me he had been suspended by his wrists for long periods and given electric shocks on his fingers, feet and ears.’ Other men who were held in Khiam described being forced to eat and sleep in filthy punishment cells, which were too small to stand up in, for up to ten days.

  ‘I was horrified to hear that children as young as fifteen, and a man of over seventy, have been detained in the prison,’ said Ms Thompson. ‘I was also told that a number of inmates have died in Khiam, including one man who was suspended naked on a cold night and found dead in the morning. I call on the international community to act immediately to ensure justice for the remaining victims of this cruel and unacceptable regime.’

  Note to editors: Al-Khiam Detention Camp was set up in 1985 in a complex originally built by the French in the 1930s. It was run directly by the Israelis for two years, after which they handed control of the prison to their proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army. Former detainees say that Israeli interrogators continue to take an active role in Khiam, and Israel’s defence ministry has admitted training members of the SLA. The International Committee of the Red Cross was not allowed to visit the prison until January 1995, since when conditions have improved. But more than one hundred and forty Lebanese and Palestinians are being held in extra-judicial detention at the facility; the longest-serving is Suleiman Ramadan, who has been held without charge since September 1985.