by Debra Jopson
A father can’t make a girl love anyone. Love comes from inside.
As the sea rocked swishing waves into the wall across the road from Paramount Apartments, I tumbled into delicious nothingness. I woke to a milky grey day, but it had Sabine in it, so my spirit was sunny.
I love Lebanon and everything in it.
But by afternoon I was in a panic about my date with her. My reflection in the mirror alarmed me; the thickening neck, the bushy eyebrows. I raked a razor over the pimples on my chin and made like a gorilla as I smeared Dad’s Old Spice deodorant onto my armpits, hoping to replace the school odour of pencil shavings and mice with cinnamon and pine. I pulled on a new blue and red checked shirt, new skin for a new land. It was the best I could do with my gangly body and all the new equipment it was sprouting, as if it was being fitted out for a mission. Single curls of hair sprouted on my chest like rusty wire. My hands were fumbling paddles, grown too big for my wrists. I cinched a broad plaited belt across my hips. They’d stayed narrow, at least. I shook them. ‘Snake hips.’
Maybe they’ll control the rogue gonad.
On the bubbly tar roof, below clanking air-conditioning works and a drooping clothesline, Joseph’s pigeons tinkled bells as they danced and strutted in their spacious wooden apartments with wire windows. Some had jewellery around their necks; silver and coloured beads which shook as they held evening conversations, or when they tucked their heads beneath their wings. There was a whiff of caged feathers and shellfish in the salt air.
Sabine was gazing down into the street’s amber-slanted sunlight from the rooftop wall. She’d swept her hair to one side under a navy beret and it cascaded over her right shoulder. Her lips were thicker than I’d remembered, coated in bright pink lipstick; her eyebrows narrower and finished in pencil. I was trembling like the bird’s bells.
I had the cigarettes and Joseph’s key in my pocket, but I didn’t hand them over. I wanted to keep Sabine with me as long as I could. When I came close, she let her heavy black coat fall back, revealing her bra; two hard cones arrowing to points under a see-through lace blouse. A gold cross dangled above her bosoms, keeping me, the devil, at bay.
‘Hello. You bring cigarette?’
‘You ask. I get.’
She put two in her mouth and curled her eyelashes up at me. I fumbled with the lighter purloined from Babette’s drawer. She took pity on me and held my nervous fingers to stop them shaking the flame at the cigarette tips. Or maybe she was just desperate for a light. She drew the smoke back with a noisy inhalation and handed me the second fag. I held it between my fingers, as if I were a smoker. I’d tried a few puffs when I’d taken Mum’s weed to those cats who’d taught me to drive back home and, after recovering from my coughing fit, hadn’t been able to believe that somebody would want to drag a bonfire into their lungs.
The small, soft cave at her throat made my mouth so dry, I had to swallow.
‘You don’t smoke?’ Her voice was deep and somewhat critical.
‘Sure. Every day.’
I lifted the butt and puffed, spitting the smoke straight out. Then I had to look away in case I fainted from the smoke and the sight of the tawny flesh of her throat. I moved my eyes to Pigeon Rocks, lemony in the late afternoon sea light. The wind had carved hollows into them, which were now deep shadows. Sabine smelt of smoke and headachy perfume and that nasty room she lived in. Olive oil spit, coffee grounds and sewer whiff had all worked their way into her clothes. I was disgusted, but at the same time, wanted to pull her closer.
‘Thank you for the cigarettes. Can I feel?’ I let her take Babette’s lighter so she could run her fingers over its gold stubble. Worrying, though, that she wouldn’t return it.
She sighed. ‘Your family very rich.’
I shrugged an apology but felt proud that she thought we were special. ‘Dad’s got a good job. Says the airline lays a golden egg for him once a month.’ I was copying something I’d heard Jess say to his schoolmates.
She sighed. ‘Before, my family not so poor. I go to Paris. I see many student, march in the boulevard. They think very much about government and they have strong politic. This is good about Western countries. You do this, too?’
‘All the time. Back home. Yes.’ I felt my face reddening with the lie.
I snuffed out my cig on the wall behind me. With her cigarette clamped in her mouth, Sabine peeled an orange and pulled it apart. She took a final drag of the Dunhill, squashed it under her boot and dropped an orange segment into my mouth, her fingertips sliding across my teeth. My equipment began gearing for its mission. I closed my eyelids over the sun and, for a moment, rocked on the pillow of the sea. I opened my mouth for more orange, but she was gone, hanging over the wall, craning down at the street again. I could only look down for a second. Heights made me so scared that I wanted to jump.
‘Every morning a man, he comes here and I buy fruit and vegetable from him for my mama. You see him? He has a big cart.’
I’d seen the man in his apron, head shaved smooth as an eggplant. He’d sing out as he moved up the street, in a voice much flatter than the muezzin’s. He would argue with the maids on the balconies above. They’d yell numbers in Arabic. When he’d agreed on a price, the maids would lower their baskets on ropes from balconies. He’d pile in the tomatoes, cucumbers, pomegranates, beans, cucumber and oranges … whatever the ladies liked. Then he’d tug the rope and the women would haul up their load, throw in their payment and lower the baskets again, the notes weighed down in the wind by stones.
Babette said the street merchant had lived in Australia, and at first she’d been excited when she’d heard his Aussie accent. But she’d liked him less after she’d bought apples from him, and he’d said as he gave her change, ‘There you go, love,’ holding on to her fingers.
Now Sabine complained. ‘He touch my hand and make licking noise with his tongue. He is awful man. Has to touch your hand when you give him money. He do it like this.’ She grabbed my hand and passed her fingers over my palm, as gentle as kittens’ whiskers. In Australia, that meant a girl really went for you. But she made me boil up, telling me that eggplant-skull had pawed her like that.
She let my hand drop. ‘My boyfriend Abdo come soon. When he arrive, I must go.’
She saw my face fall and led me to the pigeon houses. She pointed at two red-eyed black birds with crimson beads at their necks. ‘Those belong to the enemy of my father.’ The birds pulled their heads in and out.
‘How’d he get them?’
‘He make them fly in here. They have a war of birds. Make them fly in a circle and crash into the birds of the enemy. If one man is lucky, some birds of other man will join the circle and fly back home. That is what happened to these birds.’
‘Won’t the guy be angry? The enemy, I mean?’
‘Yes, but he is too afraid to come here. And it is a sport, too.’
‘Why would he be afraid? Would your father punch him?’ I made a fist and lifted it gently to her nose. ‘Punch?’
She laughed. ‘No. My boyfriend can take his gun and kill him.’
She sounded boastful. I didn’t believe her, although I could tell from her deep voice and confidence that she was older than me. I liked the coolness of older women. Babette had it, too. As Sabine laughed at the birds ducking their heads, flirting with her, I wondered if she had done it with her boyfriend. I closed my eyes. My heart had begun one of those long drum solos that gets boring after a while. I was trying to think of what I could say to make her want me. I hadn’t done it. But I was willing.
‘Stay eyes closed.’ I obeyed. She passed another pillow of orange through my lips. I thought I would faint with the fizz of it on my tongue. I waited, lids tight. There was a wet noise. I opened my eyes. She was crying. She batted her moist lashes. ‘My eyes are not beautiful when I cry.’
‘Oh, but they are.’ The sunset had shifted onto her face. The sun was a drooping fireball, obeying the pull of the horizon as it dipped into the Mediterranean. H
er eyes were filled with its reflection, her lashes sun-shower shiny.
‘My father make me marry Abdo. I don’t want. Abdo is ugly man. Too old. He have hair in his nose. He want me to make ten babies.’
I pictured her shoving small mewling faces away, like a mother dog with pushy pups. I put my hand on her arm. It was neither skeletal like Mum’s nor smooth muscle like Babette’s. It was soft; a marshmallow arm.
‘You have special touch, Oliver.’ I put her fingers, slippery with orange juice, into my mouth. ‘Your mother is a beautiful lady. I want to be like her. Choose my husband. I don’t want to marry my cousin.’
She doesn’t want him. And who would marry a cousin? I’ve got to make her think I’m not just some kid.
‘Babette’s all right, but she’s weird. She lies in soap bubbles in the bath until her feet go crinkly. I have to wait to shave.’ I touched my jaw. I wanted her to see the new-mown hair, without noticing the pimples.
‘She marries a rich man, so she can do what she wants, go where she likes. I can’t go where I like. She has maid. She has special clothes. She spend much money in nightclubs.’
How could Sabine watch Babette? She seemed to always be locked away in her cubbyhole. I released her fingers because the rogue gonad was making me hang onto them and I didn’t trust it. I didn’t know what I should do next, so I talked more about Babette.
‘She smokes in the bath.’
‘I like smoking.’
‘I said to her once, “Babette, when are you going to give up?” She said, “When they find a cure for hunger, darling.” She used to be a model, once. She says boredom is an enemy to slenderness; if she didn’t smoke, she’d eat.’
Telling Sabine something so secret made me feel close to her, but it didn’t last. A van farted up the street and she moved away.
‘Abdo, my fiancé.’ She puffed out her chest like a pigeon as, way below us, he stepped out of the van. Abdo looked like any old tradesman in dirty overalls with hummus-coloured hair, but one of Sabine’s brothers hurried a round glass bottle out to him, and he stood, hand on hip, chugging water straight down his gullet. I would have seen his tonsils if I’d had binoculars. I reeled back from the edge.
‘He fight, all the time.’ Sabine’s eyes were bright with pride. This was weird. One minute she hates him and the next he’s a hero. Behind her, Pigeon Rocks was a ghost in the sea. ‘In my country, we don’t want to fight, but we must do, to live.’
How was I going to compete with this guy who stuck his chin and prick out even to drink water? My stomach churned. I felt as lost as I had been as a kid in the crisscross surf tossed up by a rip.
‘I gotta go. If he sees me with you, he kill you. Then he kill me.’ She poked a tendril of hair behind her ear with shaking fingers, and I couldn’t tell if it was from nerves or satisfaction.
The rip was dragging me out. I had to catch a wave but found I could do nothing more than whine. ‘We haven’t done anything yet.’
She ran her fingers over my palm again and was gone. I’d been dumped and now I’d have to struggle to the surface, with sand in my lungs. Hoots of rising laughter brought me back to the rooftop wall. Abdo was mincing down the street behind Souhar, copying her hurried walk towards the Corniche. Head down, Souhar sped up. I’d never seen her cowed by a man before. It was Sabine’s oldest brother, Jacques, who was laughing.
‘No,’ I yelled. ‘Stop.’ Abdo revolved his body and peered up through the darkness. I pulled away from the wall. By the time I dared to look again, Souhar was near the ocean, arranging her own rescue by taxi, Abdo behind her, cursing in Arabic. I felt a bile of fury rising inside, mostly at myself. I was going to force myself to be brave.
The foyer was empty, the door to the concierge flat shut. Abdo was near his van – ABDO PAINTING! A FRESH ER FUTURE. He was laughing with Jacques, wiping his small, pretty mouth with the back of his hand. His overalls were slashed with red, as if he’d been killing furry animals. I twisted my arm hairs for courage.
‘Sabine!’ Her mother’s voice rang through the evening. Sabine emerged from behind a pillar, still laughing herself. She walked past without looking at me, trailing the scent of tobacco and orange peels. It was the last shovel of sand into the lungs. I sat dejected on the stone wall, in the surreal wash of amber streetlamp. Abdo flashed searchlight eyes over me as he passed. Rows of rings glimmered on his fingers. The nail on his pinkie was so long that it curled over. I pretended to study the fishing boats’ lanterns bobbing on the horizon. Then he was gone. He and Sabine were together. I wanted to cry as the cold night air sniffed my feet in their rubber thongs.
I still have the key. An excuse to see her again.
I went straight to bed, ashamed of my cowardice. Then I remembered. Sabine had said that she was going to marry her cousin. Impossible. You can’t marry a cousin. I still had a chance. I slid under the bedclothes and rubbed the key. The top was Sabine’s head, the nubbly sides her body.
11
Little Beggars
When Babette moaned about being bored, I suggested that she take us to Souhar’s refugee camp, but she pouted. ‘I can’t cheer poor people up when I feel like this.’
She’d given up saying things like, ‘Gosh, isn’t this a jumping bean of a city?’ since Dad had flown off – to Abu Dhabi, Doha, Bahrain, London and Berlin. New Bar, Zoo Bar, Roo Bar and Flu Bar.
Jess wanted us to promenade down Hamra, because it was the ‘in’ thing for the American kids. Babette didn’t want to because of the ‘street wolves’.
Jess gushed. ‘You don’t have to do anything. Just sit in a café and the whole world creeps past. The cars go slow. They’ve got arms. Guys yak, yak, yak with hands out the windows. Some are really handsome, like Omar Sharif.’ He knew just the sort of details that would impress her. ‘Everyone’s wearing radical shades, and there are the tallest ladies you’ve ever seen, with rings on their toes. Black skin in looong blue frocks.’
He didn’t tell her about the one-eyed pusher who always called under his breath as we passed, ‘Hashish. Very cheap. Just for you.’
I told her Hamra was a concrete catwalk and she could make like a model with the bony hips. Strut and pout.
‘I’ll escort you, and it’ll only cost you a couple of chocolate bars,’ Jess declared.
‘Okay. I need you two in case I get into a pickle. My security detail.’ She tousled Jess’s hair and he turned on his full 100-watt pearly-toothed beam.
Oh, great. The midget was now a bodyguard. But I couldn’t let him do it alone. Whenever we hit the street with Babette, the long metal caterpillar of traffic would crunch to a stop; men tooting horns, revving engines and popping their eyes.
‘Hey, where you from?’ they’d shout. ‘You got a sister?’
Up on Hamra, nobody said a word to the ladies from Saudi Arabia dressed in black from crown to toe. I wanted to peek beneath their veils, to see if they were old, or pimply, or as smooth-skinned as Sabine. Once, I’d spied on a lady staring through her veil slit into a window full of pink, purple and red brassieres. She’d fumbled a pink ice-cream to her mouth, lifting a hand in a black lace glove under her veil. Her tongue was a secret thing that thrilled me, until she saw me watching, dropped the cone into the gutter and strode away, a black curtain vanishing into the crowd.
I felt sorry for her, but confused. Was I one of the street wolves?
Babette slapped gunk on her face in preparation for her public appearance. I stood behind her and watched. If Dad had been there, he would’ve shouted, ‘For crying out loud, Babette, how much longer? You’re beautiful. You were born beautiful.’
She said to my reflection in the mirror, ‘Don’t grimace, Oliver. It’ll give you creases.’ Then she sighed. ‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about such things. Men can be as wrinkled as they want.’ It had never occurred to me that Babette thought being beautiful was hard work.
Her mirror-bright vermilion shoes with spiked heels made her taller than me. She clicked down the laneway in he
r starched white dress, her creamy hair swishing rhythmically across her favourite cloak, which was the same colour as a golden labrador. The small red pompoms at its rim shook as she walked. Swish click. Swish click.
The pandemonium began, first with a taxi that trailed us. ‘Habibi. Here! Here! Over here!’
Another followed. ‘Ooh, I love to give you a ride.’ Soon a shoal of cars tailed us. Men made sucking sounds with their tongues. One, with a big nose and a monster moustache, crossed the street to brush against her.
‘Yallah imshee,’ I yelled. ‘Go away.’
As I flicked my eyes about the street, watching for threats, the responsibility made me quiver. Babette sailed on, her frosted lips wearing a head-of-state smile. ‘I would never have chosen these wretched shoes if I’d remembered how shocking the footpaths are. The last thing I want is to twist an ankle in a ditch, because I’m not getting into one of those taxis.’
When we had reached Hamra, Jess said ‘Tarump tarum. The Champs Ulysses of Lebanon.’ As if he’d ever been to the Champs-friggin’-Élysées. I punched him in the arm. ‘Poser.’
He widened his eyes at me. ‘Der.’ Then we both giggled. He could still crack me up. The procession of Babette’s admirers evaporated, moving on to jam the traffic somewhere else.
We passed Piccadilly Theatre, Modca Café and Wimpy Bar, all filled with a gawping audience for Babette. Frantic salesmen in frayed suits bowed, brandishing lottery tickets. ‘Please buy. Make me lucky, pretty lady.’ The hashish pusher ogled, hope in his one eye, and even the mannequins, frozen behind polished windows, seemed to swivel for a squiz.
She glowed. ‘This is it. Beirut’s pulse. I’m glad you brought me.’