The inspector, alarmed, hastened to reassure him. ‘It is our earnest wish to protect you, to seek out the assassins. Naturally, Colonel, it is my duty to question you.’
But Raschid continued to lie with closed eyes—deaf to further questions.
After the inspector had gone, he slept and when he awoke again it was to find Tawfik by his bedside.
The two brothers smiled at each other. There was a great sympathy between them, though their lives had taken very different directions.
‘This was kind of them,’ said Raschid, ‘to send you to me. Or has it been published in the press that I am here?’
‘Not a word. The people think you are dead and Radio Cairo supports that. I knew nothing until they rang me from the hospital, at two o’clock, you had just regained consciousness. They said you asked for me and I came straightaway, but you were sleeping and they would not let me stay.’
‘Did I ask for you? I don’t remember. I am sorry, Tawfik.’
‘How can you say that?’ Tawfik looked at him reproachfully. It was acknowledged between them that he was nervous of his younger brother’s career and troubled by a constant fear that it might damage his own. ‘I would have stayed and watched you, but they would not let me. They told me to come again this evening and so I have come.’
‘Is it evening?’ Raschid turned his head to the window and saw that the sky had darkened to an intense violet.
Tawfik leaned forward and spoke with deep emotion. ‘Raschid, this is a terrible thing. A terrible thing!’
Raschid smiled. ‘I should have thought it a most happy occasion. I am well. I am safe. How are Alexa and the children? Are they well?’
‘We have taken a house in Dour-esh-Chouer this year; they’re going up next weekend. The youngest boy is at school now, you know. Do not put me off, Raschid! I beg you. Think of the last time! Why do you put yourself in such a position? Why are you a man to be shot at? Come to me, I implore you! There will always be a place for you in my business. It is prosperous; it can support you. You can live with us. Alex has always been fond of you.’
Raschid shook his head. ‘I cannot accept, Tawfik. Can you see me selling suit lengths to fat Armenians and Maronites?’
Tawfik suppressed his indignation. ‘I can do it,’ he said. ‘There is no loss of dignity in honest business. Think of us. You are my only brother. And what are you achieving? You call yourself a patriot. Is it patriotism to lie bleeding in the gutter?’
Raschid regarded his brother sombrely. ‘We are a bungling and ineffectual people, Tawfik. Even our assassinations misfire; and we are so divided that even as I point my gun at our deadliest enemy, the friend at my side jolts my elbow in case too much credit falls to me.’
‘You mean that Colonel Yazid?’
‘I think so.’
‘But why?’
‘I have known for some time that he wants me out of the way. He has an unsympathetic character. He holds a high rank, but he is not liked. He has little power and he’s looking for power elsewhere.’
‘Stop Raschid. I do not want to hear any more.’
‘But you must listen to me. If I die, someone must know, and it is better he should be uninvolved. The Lebanese are being led, or forced, you might say, into an insurrection, and I believe that Yazid is behind this. What is more he knows that I know, and that is why he tried to kill me. He is smuggling arms into this country which are being dispersed in a number of remote villages. He is fostering old village feuds. He is a dangerous man and he must be stopped.’
‘So are you going to arrange for his assassination? Where will this end?’
‘Tawfik, all I want is that he should be exposed. The people of our countries must not be allowed to admire such a man.’
‘This is a dirty business Raschid, and you are living in an open trench.’
‘This fell upon me by chance. Would you have expected me to forget it? I have no further interest in what you call this dirty business. I am approaching forty. It is time for me to marry and raise a family.’
‘I don’t believe it. This fever is in your blood, and you have known too many women to settle down with one.’
Raschid smiled. ‘Wait and see.’
‘Raschid, in this life you are surrounded by betrayal and deceit. This girl whom you trusted has betrayed you.’
Raschid spoke softly, raising his head from his pillow to look into his brother’s eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I have seen her. I came here this afternoon, as I told you. You were sleeping. They said your condition was not serious but that you must rest, so I left and set out to do as you had asked me. I went to the bank and drew out the money and then I went to the girl’s house at the address you gave me. I did not go in for I thought that someone might be watching me. I waited till she came out and then I followed her. I gave her the money and she took it.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Had she some commission to carry out?’
‘Yes.’
‘I knew it! She took your money but pretended to know nothing. She was afraid. She saw your danger and now she is looking after her own skin and robbing you at the same time. Why do you trust this woman? Can she do you any harm?’
‘No. It’s I who could harm her. I have asked too much of her.’
‘She has gone. She has left Beirut. I wondered if I had misjudged her and went to the house where she has been staying. The two old people who own the house told me that she would be away for a while. There you see?’
‘I see. But you don’t, Tawfik.’
‘You’re tired. I’ll go.’
When he had gone, Raschid lay considering his plans. Sarah’s presence pervaded the room.
The doctor, a humorous Scotsman, came to see him. The nurses dressed his wounds.
When they had gone, he waited a few minutes then sat up, threw back the blanket and slowly got himself out of bed. With the supreme contempt for his own weakness and pain that had marked his ancestors, he dressed. His torn, bloodstained jacket had been taken away so he tucked his pyjama jacket into his trousers and, pulling a blanket from the bed, wrapped it around his shoulders. Supporting himself with a hand on the wall, he made his way down the hospital corridor. It was the time for visitors.
He came to the stairs and descended them slowly. He avoided the main entrance, knowing he would be stopped there, and looked along the corridor of the ground floor for a way out. He found a door leading into the garden and opened it. He did not think of the pain as an ordeal to be endured, only as an enemy to be mastered. Concentrating all his will, he dragged himself across the garden to a side gate. A few steps further on and he had reached a busy road. A taxi cruised by. He hailed it and, falling into the back, gasped, ‘Take me to Chakra.’
The words were hardly spoken when he fainted, but he regained consciousness some moments later to find himself passing the museum and the Roman columns of Fourn-ech-Chebbak. A little further on, as the land began to slant toward the mountains, he saw the first police trap on the road ahead and, suspecting that there would be more on the Damascus road, told the driver to turn aside and drive over the mountains by a lesser known way. It was a long and painful journey, for the winding village roads were still pot-holed from the winter rains and blocked here and there by landfalls from the cliffs above.
They reached Chakra at four in the afternoon.
C H A P T E R 1 4
During the following weeks Beirut hovered, indecisively, between peace and revolution. In spite of the government’s swift action in arresting the ringleaders, a good many troublemakers managed to disappear underground and, although quantities of arms had been seized all over the country, enough remained in circulation to make life alarming. A curfew was imposed and police patrolled the streets day and night, but outbursts of firing and isolated explosions took their toll. At the beginning of the second week the casualty list stood at fifteen.
The people, although accustomed in a measure to this kind of situation, avoided the centre of Beir
ut. In any case most of the shops were closed and there was no reason for going there. Though never entirely empty, the streets had a desolate appearance and, with fewer taxis trying to pass each other three abreast, were seen to be wider than one had imagined. People who ventured out were conscious of a feeling of isolation and heard a silence which, in this usually noisy city, overcame sound.
Only in the swimming clubs was the crisis forgotten. These places, like Jupiter’s temple, imposed their own conditions upon their devotees. From the jewel-clear water, the salt-white, corrugated cliffs and the gardens of bright umbrellas, emanated an atmosphere of irrepressible and remorseless gaiety that reduced the agitations of Beirut as the sun fades into invisibility the light of a candle. Summer had come, people had to swim—it was a natural law and all else bowed before it. There was no falling off in attendance. If anything, the Lebanese, bereft of other amusements, thronged more eagerly to the sea’s edge, which would perhaps indicate that their troubles were but superficial—flesh wounds that would quickly heal.
As they drove off the Corniche into the parking lots they talked excitedly about the latest rumours—the politician who had been arrested the night before, the cache of arms in the Phoenician tomb at Byblos, the news from Damascus of a split in the Syrian army … But when they left their cars and walked out onto the terrace by the changing rooms, these words died upon their lips. The sun, falling across the blue water, struck blindingly, cleansingly, upon their faces; and their acres faded, leaving them open to the impression of white spray and coloured umbrellas, of green weed swirling upon a rock, the turn of a bird’s wing, the smile of a friend.
The second week of the crisis showed an improvement and the situation became more stable as feeling within Lebanon began to swing in the government’s favour. The general strike, at all times threatening, had never quite become a reality. The Lebanese could resign themselves to bloodshed and the boycotting of certain areas, but not to the utter dislocation of trade, with the docks at a standstill and the airport closed, and they were grateful to the government for having saved them, in the nick of time, from this supreme disaster.
The atmosphere was further improved when a number of the men who had been arrested were pardoned. The supporters of Salem Farid, for instance, were thought to have had a genuine grievance, and anyone who could claim kinship with the exiled politician was set free. This pleased not only the opposition, but also government supporters, who were glad to know that they could still go in for this kind of thing without undue fear of being punished for it. For who could tell, maybe in the elections next year they might be forced to use unorthodox methods themselves.
But the crisis was overcome in the long run simply by people becoming bored with it. When everyone had been either frightened or angry there had been no time to ask what it was all about, but with passions cooling the question seemed suddenly irrelevant—and no adequate answer was forthcoming. Even Radio Cairo seemed to feel it was wasting its breath, and, after one final, impassioned broadcast on a Thursday afternoon, dropped Lebanon, and threw its weight into a campaign advocating the assassination of King Hussein. As for the Syrians, they had become occupied with troubles in Damascus—a struggle for power within the army had come to a head and several senior officers were arrested.
One afternoon about three weeks after the shooting of Colonel Ahmed, Nadea returned to her apartment to find Sarah sitting on the verandah, her skirt pulled up to her knees and her legs stretched out to catch the sun.
Nadea had been seeing off the Thornes, who had only that day left Beirut. They had been forced to postpone their departure, owing to a revival of interest in the Sofar affair. The escaped driver, it turned out, had been found hiding in a mountain village, and on his arrest had declared that Nigel Thorne had instructed him to put the guns in the back of the car. Naturally these accusations had to be checked. Nothing could be proved, but nothing could be disproved either … and so the days went by. Nigel found himself confronted by some articles he had written for an English weekly, expressing opinions about Egypt, Syria and Lebanon which, in his present situation, were an embarrassment. Only intervention at high levels finally persuaded the Lebanese of his innocence.
‘Poor things,’ Nadea remarked. ‘They didn’t like it here. They didn’t have a good word to say for us. And what did you do to them, Sarah? I gave Margaret your message but she sounded awfully cold. You seem to have rubbed her up the wrong way.’
‘There was a mix-up that day in Baalbek,’ said Sarah. ‘They were left without a car.’
‘Don’t I know it! It seems to have upset her more than anything else. She kept harping on about some objectionable Iranian.’
Sarah smiled. She was sorry that Margaret had left disliking her. She would have liked to have explained. But she had not explained to anyone—not even to Nadea.
‘Well,’ said Nadea, ‘I’m going swimming now. Are you coming?’ She put the question as a matter of form, knowing what the answer would be.
Sarah shook her head.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Nadea broke out impatiently. ‘You’ve hardly been out of the house for the past week.’
‘I’m saving money.’
‘Good God! I’ll pay!’
‘I can’t sponge on you forever.’
‘You sponged on me for three months when you first came here and didn’t turn a hair. What’s the matter with you? You hang around here all day painting your toenails and rubbing oil on your legs.’ She frowned at Sarah suspiciously. ‘You’re not waiting for Marcel to turn up again, are you? Well, if you want to know he’s been at the swimming club all last week, so if you want to see him …’
‘All the more reason for staying away.’
‘He’s been with that blonde, but you can see he’s fed up with her. He came over to me yesterday and asked after you.’
‘You don’t want me to go back to Marcel, do you?’
‘God forbid! But you worry me. There you go again with that smile. What have you got to smile about?’
‘Darling Nadea, do go off and don’t bother me.’ She leaned back in her chair and stretched out her feet to the verandah railing. I ought to go with her, she thought. But the prospect held no temptation. A delicious lethargy enfolded her. Nadea left, and she settled herself deeper into her chair, smiling freely now.
In the apartment across the road the fat man in pyjamas leaned over the balcony eating a slice of watermelon. Seeing Sarah’s smile, he returned it. She frowned; he watched her for a moment hopefully, but eliciting no response lazily scratched an armpit and turned away.
‘Sarah!’ Nadea had returned. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’
‘Who?’ But she had already seen the tall figure standing behind Nadea. Hastily pulling down her skirt, she got up.
Colonel Ahmed bowed gravely. He wore a light grey suit and a blue silk tie dotted with red roses. A barber had recently shaved him and cut his hair. He had lost weight and his eyes, beneath their beautifully defined straight brows, burned with a residue of sickness. Sarah stood looking at him dumbly.
‘Please sit down,’ said Nadea, breaking the silence.
They sat down. Raschid was the first to speak.
‘Perhaps you did not know that I was still in Beirut.’
‘Yes, I knew.’
‘You did not come to see me in hospital.’
Sarah smiled but made no reply.
‘Every day I expected you.’
‘As Sarah is apparently not going to introduce us,’ said Nadea, ‘I shall introduce myself. I am Nadea Raziyah.’
He stood up and bowed. ‘Nadea, this is Colonel Ahmed,’ said Sarah.
‘Good God, you’re the man who was shot in Rue Zahle!’ cried Nadea, and burst into excited Arabic.
‘Sarah, you didn’t tell me you knew Colonel Ahmed.’ Now they were both staring at her, intently.
Sarah smiled. ‘It slipped my mind.’ Colonel Ahmed drew in his breath softly and fixed her with a glowing rega
rd.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ asked Nadea.
‘Yes, thank you, please.’ He waited till Nadea had gone and then, leaning forward, declared softly, ‘Not a letter did you write, neither did you send me flowers. I expected a letter.’
‘I thought about it,’ said Sarah. ‘But I decided that if I went to see you or wrote to you or sent you flowers, you would say I had put you at a disadvantage.’
He looked at her uncertainly. ‘You are laughing at me.’
‘Never!’
‘It is so,’ he said sadly. ‘That is how I remember you.’
Sarah thought in panic, What have I done? I’ve offended him. This was not how she remembered him—his handsome mouth sulky, his low brows drawn. Nevertheless, she realised now, this was how he had been.
‘No Muslim woman,’ she said, ‘would have done such a thing. You’d think it immodest. Now admit it!’
‘You are not a Muslim woman!’ Suddenly, decisively, he stood up. ‘I want to talk to you but not here in front of your friend.’
When Nadea returned they had gone.
C H A P T E R 1 5
Raschid drove at high speed into Avenue Bliss and down the hill toward the Bain Militaire. Here he slowed down and cruised along the Corniche.
The Bain Militaire was festive with splashing swimmers. A man in pink shorts and a wide-brimmed straw hat fished from the rocks; the water was dotted with bright bathing caps; small boys dived or jumped from the high board and swam about effortlessly.
Raschid followed the winding road along the contours of bays and peninsulas. Above Pigeon Rock he stopped at one of the cafés, overlooking the sea. He chose a table at the cliff’s edge and, while he talked to a waiter, Sarah sat, bathed in sunlight, happiness and confusion.
When the waiter had gone she said, ‘Aren’t you afraid that someone will shoot at you? Or throw a bomb?’
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