Oliver of the Levant

by Debra Jopson

  I was gutted. I’d wanted to be really afraid. We stood over the dirt heap created by our failed bomb. The lawn was an emerald tablecloth with a tear in it.

  ‘Clay.’ Sharkie sounded professional. His father was an engineer. ‘The clay soil beneath contained the blast. That black stuff is just topsoil.’ I watched, forlorn, as a pink and grey shape wriggled through the crumbled dirt. ‘We didn’t even kill a worm.’

  ‘What am I going to say?’ Sharkie whimpered at his watch. His father would be home from work soon. I left fast.

  Back at the bus, Grandad’s spiky silver hair was sticking up from his pillow. His false teeth glistened pink and white beside him, like a half-dead sea creature, submerged in a water glass. I shook him. He didn’t wake up. Just like Mum. So I left and didn’t say goodbye and walked to the station.

  In a cold, sooty train carriage with slashed vinyl seats and dirty, winking lights, I stewed over what had gone wrong with the gelignite. I pulled the rock that had nearly brained me from my tote bag. It shed crystals, which twinkled in my lap. The sight of them filled me with a wild happiness. I thought of the star that had exploded right at the beginning of everything, the star that made the universe.

  Everything is supposed to have begun with a bang.

  I didn’t know how much Mahmoud understood, but confessing to him filled me with warmth.

  At the end, though, he had startled eyes. ‘What about the man you put the bomb in the garden? Was he a bad man? Take your own house from you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you hurt his garden?’

  I shrugged. ‘Just for fun.’

  He frowned. He didn’t look like someone who had fun. He wanted to show me a photo. There was nothing in it except a bunch of pine trees, but he spoke as if he were singing a tune he’d known forever, one that made him choke with sadness. ‘This is my family village in Palestine. My family ran away before I was born. The Zionist come and push us out. Then they plant pines to make beautiful scenery, so people not know here were houses.’ My skin prickled. It was like being in church at school – the quiet, thick air so solemn you’re frightened you’re going to laugh.

  ‘I have never tasted the air of my home. Only this place. I am born in Lebanon, but I cannot be Lebanese. It is not allowed.’ He flicked his fingers, revealing the blisters on them, maybe from the gun. ‘And I don’t want to be Lebanese. My family house is now nothing; only bricks behind those trees. But it is in my heart. My grandmother tell me that the house have big windows. Thick walls. Room for everybody. In the garden, lemon trees. Strong earth.’

  Suddenly, sitting on his lumpy bed, I smelt the soil. His longing for home became mine. ‘Rich earth,’ I corrected.

  ‘I like Yasser Arafat very much. You, who?’

  Yasser? He was the Palestinian leader. I couldn’t figure how someone so soft and pudgy could boss a bunch of fighters. Babette said he should shave.

  ‘Lawrence of Arabia. Al Orentz.’ My heart swelled when I said the name.

  ‘Ach. Bad man. He help make Israel.’

  ‘No, no, the soldier who took Aqaba.’ I hummed the opening bars of the film’s theme music. His face was blank. ‘Maybe I could come to the border with you. Have they drawn a line on the ground?’ I’d never seen a border. He frowned. I blushed. ‘That was a joke. Ha-ha. But seriously, you should come to Hamra with me one day. We’ll walk up and down and, and … eat ice-cream.’ I didn’t know if he would. It might not seem manly enough. I didn’t know if guerrillas ate ice-cream.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Why do you think Mr Arafat is so groovy?’

  ‘He decide we must have our own army, our Al-Fatah, so we do not just cry like those old ladies who visit my mother, so we make a political fight. He is fedayeen. Man of sacrifice. The Lebanese Army put him in prison for going into Israel to fight. He suffer for me. So I love him.’

  I didn’t really love Al Orentz, and I wished I knew what he’d done to create Israel. I felt sorry that the Palestinians didn’t have their own homes, but I didn’t want any Israelis to be killed, either. I thought maybe Mr Arafat could’ve asked them nicely, instead, to give the Palestinians a bit of room.

  A few days later, when I saw two fedayeen, their faces enlarged in the teardrop glass of our front door’s spyhole, my heart raced. They were brothers in pimple-hood; awkward inside their checked headcloths.

  ‘We want money for our cause.’ The skinny guy pronounced it ‘cows’, which made me laugh.

  ‘Tfaddal.’ I invited them in. They inspected the room with curious eyes.

  ‘Nice Kalashnikovs,’ I drawled, cowboy-like. ‘Back in a sec.’

  I was puffing as I reached into my stash-hole. I grabbed the cash bundle Babette had given me for the beggar with the baby and shoved it into the plump guy’s palms.

  ‘Shookran, shookran.’ His eyes grew as round as his face.

  ‘S’okay. Do you know Mahmoud?’

  ‘I am Mahmoud,’ thin boy said.

  ‘Mahmoud, Souhar’s son. He’s fedayeen.’

  He lifted his eyebrows to say no. ‘Many fedayeen. Many lions in Lebanon.’

  ‘Many Mahmoud,’ the fat kid said.

  16

  Oliver of the Levant

  I bet those fedayeen didn’t have to put up with school teachers going on, like mine did, about their ‘attitude’. I was put on trash duty, picking up rubbish like an old garbo for the crime of ‘talking back’. In lunchtime detention, I had to fill pages with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, ‘Politeness is a sign of dignity, not subservience.’

  I’d spent a lot of time on my own because of the type of mother and father I had. Jess was my shadow when he was little, but once he’d started primary school, he began to hang out most of the time with kids his own age, playing at their houses and sleeping over. So I’d had thinking time alone and evolved my own philosophy. Take maths – school grades were just numbers. Mine didn’t look high in anything except biology, where I was scoring a term average of 52 per cent. The life of plant tendrils and moving creatures felt part of me. But the things you can’t touch, like algebra equations, swooped and soared around my brain without landing, as elusive as Joseph’s flocking pigeons when they weren’t ready to be caught. Jimi knew how numbers could turn themselves upside down in your head. He sang:

  Now if 6 turned out to be 9

  I don’t mind, I don’t mind …

  Dig, ’cos I got my own world to live through

  And I ain’t gonna copy you.

  Jimi was saying you didn’t have to believe everything you were told. You could find your own explanations. I started wondering what it would mean if the number one didn’t exist. After all, I’d learnt at school that there was no root of minus one. Therefore, it followed that minus one itself did not exist. In turn, there could not be a number one. If the number one did not exist, arithmetic was a con and algebra was a fraud perpetuated by generations of teachers.

  But I was good at the geometry of the pinball machine. When I beat all the locals at the parlour on Hamra, they called me ‘The Pinball Wizard’. Top score.

  Al Orentz had found another name in Arabia. ‘Pinball wizard’ was okay, but I wished that one day people would think of me as someone with heft, someone who made even sheikhs and generals sit up and listen. I introduced myself to Jimi in his poster: ‘Oliver of the Levant.’ A man who would not bow to bullies. And no more string bags.

  ‘Levant’ is a French word that means ‘rising’. That was the best thing I’d ever learnt in school. The old sun rises over Lebanon and other countries of the Levant, before it pops up in France a few hours later. In pictures of the Levant, it’s a land of palm trees flicking feathered branches in the wind, as perky as roosters tossing their combs. It’s a word with rhythm, like a Hendrix riff, or the sway of a camel.

  To me, the Levant did not contain school or Abdo or whatever it was that made Babette cry when she thought she was alone. And The Slave would definitely never have got a visa to my Levant
. Whenever he called, I hung up and unplugged both phones from the wall. It drove Babette mad when she discovered the phone line dead. I made a po face and said I needed the peace and quiet to study. She rolled her eyes, unbelieving. But I worried that Babette would answer one day when I wasn’t there.

  There was only one way to keep up surveillance. I gave Jess a note to take to school that I’d forged in Babette’s round hand:

  Dear Mr Foot,

  Oliver Lawrence will not attend school until further notice due to an attack of Beirut Belly.

  Yours sincerly,

  Mrs Babette Lawrence (Mother)

  17

  Wimpy Bar

  Morning of another school day. The man from the BBC, who we called Mr Plum, gave us the news:

  A soldier and seven Palestinian guerrillas have been killed in Lebanon’s south during battles between army and Al-Fatah forces.

  In an escalation of the nation’s internal conflict, pro-Palestinian forces marched through Beirut streets last night firing guns and shouting anti-government slogans, following the death of a guerrilla in another skirmish.

  Since the march on the Corniche, the city – the whole country – had grown clumps of trouble that had spread like weeds across a paddock. Most nights my eyelids burnt until I swooned, exhausted, into sleep. I had appointed myself to watch duty, hoping I’d be able to hear the sound of the attackers before they got Babette, Jess or Sabine.

  Just the other night, Dad had said, ‘It’s all ratcheting up. Some bozo in tennis clothes has fired a volley of bullets at Lebanese soldiers blocking a street demo. The genius ran off, leaving everybody else to shoot it out. Now, the Palestinians are out in the open, fighting the army. This tennis match is not gonna end love–love.’

  Ringo phoned. ‘Allo. Olifer. Please meet me at Wimpy Bar. Hamra, four o’clock tomorrow.’ I was so shocked, I grunted.

  Me and Mr Cool, soon to be seen on Hamra.

  I would have thrown the phone in the air with excitement if I hadn’t been depressed about having to face another day of school. Babette had twigged that I was skiving off and said I had to go.

  When the school bus pulled up outside, I made the screeching hyenas wait behind the breath-fogged windows – I had other business. Sabine appeared as I passed her door. A beam from the lobby chandelier turned her eyes into jewels.

  She whispered, ‘Give me the key, please. My father is very angry. He think I lost it.’ I was frozen; the bus driver tooted the horn. ‘Bring cigarette, too. I see you on roof at four tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Roger that.’ But she’d gone, leaving a hollow space for my words.

  I was silent in the roar of voices and stamping feet. The bus headed upward, leaving Beirut spread below like a stricken centipede, TV aerial legs waving in the air.

  My lucky rock has done too good a job.

  All day, the school soundtrack of piano tinkle, tuneless voices and tapping blackboard pointers rose and fell, distant from my racing thoughts. I was feverish with worry about having to stand up either Ringo or Sabine, and wondered how I could skip class for a day without a hiding. A teacher spluttered through tobacco breath, ‘Are you ever going to be with us today, Lawrence?’ The other boys snickered.

  I coughed all night and faked a sore throat in the morning, filling in the day with sloppy dreams about Sabine and me. At 3.30, I nicked some fags from Babette’s stash and climbed to the roof. I could make out a figure, sitting beside the stack of pigeon cages. Joseph.

  ‘Ah, Monsieur Lawrence. You come to see my birds?’ A strangled cry came out of me. ‘Watch.’ He flipped a strip of red cloth then shook a paint can, which rattled like maracas. Birds wheeled in from the sky and strutted on the cage roof, ringing the bells tied to their legs. Joseph tossed grain from the tin onto the ground, looking to me for appreciation, as the birds scrabbled to eat. ‘Beautiful, eh? See that one? Stand tall. Taller than giraffe.’

  How do I escape this zoo?

  ‘Look, look.’ He threw grain into the cages to usher the birds in, calling, ‘Sssssssss.’ They jumped onto their perches, cooing and jingling. He pulled me towards him in a rough, friendly way. The pigeons bobbed and gargled and koo-tooed in their cages, which were shit-streaked tarry white and khaki. ‘They make me feel peace when I look at them.’ He pointed at two with black feathers and red eyes. ‘They belong to my neighbour. I trick them to come here, and then I catch them.’

  I made a face that I hoped expressed amazement.

  ‘The neighbour knows I will give them back. He knows this is sport. Friendly.’

  I smiled. Joseph grabbed my neck, hard, and breathed sour garlic into my face. ‘But if I take his wife, he shoot me.’

  I rubbed the key in my pocket. The one that, to me, was Sabine. ‘Don’t do it, then.’

  I was hoping Sabine wouldn’t step onto the roof now.

  ‘I look at the birds and I know others look at me.’ He waved at the windows overlooking the roof and stabbed his finger in a circle above him. ‘Eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes.’ He paused, before turning back to me. ‘I can see you, too, whatever you do.’ I fled, rubbing my neck, unsettled by his threat. I was glad not to meet Sabine on the way down. I restored my pride by telling myself he was deranged.

  Ringo was already at Wimpy Bar, hanging his long legs over a cane chair, looking tough and soldier-like in khaki. I was busting to tell him about the cigar bomb gag. Walid had suggested that I try stuffing match-heads in a cigar end. ‘When you light the cigar, you’ll get a marvellous display of phosphorescence, but move it away from your face, fast …’

  I’d smiled at finding someone who thought like me. ‘I was thinking of using gunpowder, but that would be harder to get.’

  I ordered ice-cream sundaes and Nescafé, but Ringo barely looked at me. He watched the Hamra promenade as if he were aiming to spit. I was glad I hadn’t mentioned the cigar bomb made with ladies’ face powder. Too wimpy. I’d just do the gag one day to get a smile out of him. With gunpowder. For max effect.

  ‘You want a hot dog?’ I asked. ‘They make them here with Dijon mustard, pickles and ketchup.’ He lifted his chin a fraction and clicked his tongue, Lebanese for no. Every now and then, he drummed on the table to the café’s piped music, but whenever I started to speak he’d stop, make a hawking noise in his throat and jiggle his knees. He put six spoons of sugar in his coffee, cradling the cup, shoulders hunched.

  ‘Are you going on a raid tonight?’

  That made him look at me. ‘You wait. My uncle come.’ He grumped like an old man. I thought about his mother, who earlier that day had gone quiet, her eyes ringed in grey, her skin a lemon tinge when Babette had asked her about the people who’d died in the latest fighting.

  The Wimpy Bar customers faced the footpath, as usual, their dark glasses trained on Hamra, showing off their high-priced hot Dijon dogs. I didn’t hear how their voices chirruped until they’d dropped down several notes. Then they died away altogether. Ringo stopped drumming. I looked up. Two fedayeen were striding around the tables. They held their rifles pointed to the floor, innocent as shepherds’ crooks. Bandoliers crisscrossed their chests. The Wimpy patrons rustled through pockets and handbags for money, making an effort to hold their faces blank. I pulled my donation from my pocket, but Mahmoud–Ringo dismissed me with a wave. I stuck the lousy piastres back, blushing.

  The men kissed Ringo with tenderness, three times on the cheeks, making their bandoliers clunk against their rifles. The older one, the boss, had a curved nose and two vertical grooves running down his cheeks. He was sinewy like Souhar and had a look of disgust. The other commando was younger, with a soft face and a moustache struggling to feel its way into the world, like my own. One of his brown eyes turned in.

  ‘My uncle, Abu Iyad, and my cousin, George,’ Ringo said with grave formality. George shook my hand with soft fingers. Abu Iyad put his palm over his heart and stared into my eyes. The leather of his bandolier creaked. I felt every part of me shrink, and he, too, pulled away, stroki
ng the bullets lined up in rows like miniature missiles. The chorus of voices in the café began to rise again. A woman with boofed-up hair and a glimmer of nuggets around her neck observed Ringo with hatred.

  ‘Yallah.’ The uncle beckoned Ringo away with his chin. Ringo fell over his legs, hurrying to the footpath. I jumped up to follow. A Chiclets boy scurried to our table and began a quick, silent feast on my melted ice-cream, until a waiter chased him out. As I paid, Abu Iyad and George strode down Hamra, Ringo lurching after them.

  They had dumped me, a useless kid. Lonely. Unneeded. The café patrons glowered at me. I wished I knew what Abu Iyad and George knew that made them walk so confidently, so sure of their direction. I wanted to be kissed on the cheeks like Ringo and to be with them, barrelling down Hamra, forcing casual walkers to skip out of the way. I wanted to walk in Ringo’s cool shadow. He was afraid, like me, but he followed his uncle anyway, tripping over his own feet.

  One man shouted at me, ‘Why are you friends with those thieves? How long can we live with this? Did you see them take our money?’

  My head drooped in bewilderment. ‘You gave it to them.’

  ‘Huh. If not …’ The man slashed his hand across his throat.

  ‘Sorry.’ I didn’t know what else to say, how to defend Ringo.

  As Ringo faded into the Hamra hordes, I remembered how Al Orentz just went to Arabia and joined right in.

  Al Orentz made fear his plaything. Right at the beginning of the movie, we see the end. Lawrence–Orentz judders down a laneway on his motorbike, English trees twining their leaves above him, as if they’re holding hands, so that he hurtles through shade then sunlight, over and over. Each time I saw that, I wondered if he knew that he was about to die, speeding into infinity between hedges, after all that Arabian sky.

  That was how I wanted to go.