by Debra Jopson
18
Harem Screen
Babette provided me with a brilliant spy-hole – not that she knew it. It was my secret storage spot too, behind two small doors in the wall between my bedroom and the living room.
Through the stash-hole, I heard her say to Dad, ‘This silly serving hatch is ugly, don’t you think? It’s obviously a leftover from when Oliver’s room was a kitchen.’ Dad didn’t say anything. He would have adopted his trapped look, worried that she was planning something artistic and messy.
She’d bought a pale-brown rectangle of wood, carved with starbursts, at the souk near Place des Martyrs, and now Joseph was in the living room, mounting it in place of the hatch with his nicotine-orange fingers. I shone a torch through the wooden web, and the light threw a network of overlapping triangles and circles over his screwed-up face. He squinted at me, eyes unfocused like a blind man’s, and growled. ‘A mushrabiya. Now you are like a harem lady. You can look out, but no-one can see in.’
I flipped my hand at him. ‘Hope you think I’m pretty, darling.’
‘I can’t see you.’ Joseph’s voice was flat. I vowed I’d get a laugh out of him one day.
From then on, I peered through the mushrabiya whenever I heard someone in the living room. I got very little action for a few weeks, and then Babette had The Slave on the phone.
‘Phillip, have you forgiven me yet?’ She lay on the floor on her side, curled over the receiver. Through static, I could hear that the caller’s voice was high-pitched and angry.
Babette’s voice wore a pout. ‘Darling, I haven’t been avoiding you. It might have been the rain. The phones stopped working.’
At that moment, the rhythmic thud started up of that old, wobbly-armed woman who gouged garlic to mash in a mortar and pestle below my room. It was like a drum roll every day, and I had discovered what caused it by climbing to the top of the quarry and peering across to the kitchen window below my room.
I couldn’t hear Babette, but I could see her through the mushrabiya, speaking with animation, inspecting her hair ends, itching her ankle with her toe. The banging stopped at last. ‘I’m finding it hard to remember what I saw in the man. The kid here looks like P. Maybe that’s why I married the father.’
The Slave burbled something back.
‘I love you too.’ Babette looked at the receiver, brows crossed in puzzlement. ‘Don’t hang up on me, you bastard.’
She held the phone to her chest for a long time, then reached for the gin bottle on the sideboard. This was serious. I knew that The Slave loved her, but she loved him back.
‘The kid looks like P.’ Who was that?
I didn’t know how to protect her. Mum’s danger came from inside, and I couldn’t do much about that either. But Babette was trapped in some other secret, out in the ocean, beyond any depth I’d ever encountered.
Dad didn’t have a clue. A few nights later, he pulled her novel from her hands as she lazed in the living room. ‘Quick, darling, get that red dress on. I want you to knock the lads out in the Mayflower.’
‘Oh, boy, a night of airline gossip. What have I been missing?’
Dad smashed the book to the floor, breaking its spine. ‘I’m sick of your sulking. You want the view, the clothes, the free flights to Rome – this is what goes with it.’
‘Could you and the boys close the hangar doors for just one night?’ He put his hands on his hips and huffed. ‘I may just skip it, Lachlan.’
He grabbed her arm. ‘Don’t play hard to get with me. You’ve got nothing you have to do all day.’
‘Exactly right, including this.’
Dad stormed out and, for once, I felt sorry for him being such an unknowing clod. But I couldn’t tell him about Phillip. He could just go on and on, trying to find new wives, if he and Babette split. Who knows where we would live then?
Sure, Beirut was sometimes dangerous and school was a pain, but we could stay. And Dad had given me a camera from Walid – a Box Brownie, all nubbly black and smooth silver, with two lenses like airmen’s goggles. ‘Walid says it’s old, but good for you to muck about with.’
I photographed my neighbourhood, where fresh concrete walls climbed skywards, leaving crumbs of soil around their edges, as if they were plants pushing up out of the weeds. I knew every speck of view from seven floors up. If I pressed my nose against my bedroom window, I could follow the bony backs of cats stalking invisible prey in the giant hole gouged from orange clay, which we called ‘the quarry’. Dad said it was probably the grave of a developer’s dream.
Nothing sprouted there except rubbish, where mammoth rats snuffled while cats stole babies from their nests. The quarry reeked of cats’ piss and rotting fruit mingled with sweet, poisonous exhaust fumes. It didn’t stop people from climbing to the quarry top in the evening to watch the sun drop into the sea. I’d train my lens on them as they munched snacks and danced to tinny taped songs, while their faces turned yellow, then red. Once darkness fell, their cigarettes would glow, red squiggles following their flapping fingers as they chatted.
One evening, as the sun tilted its last rays onto the Corniche, a man in a keffiyeh shot a rat from the quarry cliff-top. I cranked my window open and hung my camera lens out. I thought when he raised a hand towards me that he was going to point his rifle straight up the barrel of my lens. But he gave the peace sign, and I hung there and photographed it, my heart thumping against the wall below the window.
That night, I re-read The Slave’s postcard, which I’d never returned to Babette.
Happy Bondi Chrissie.
Couldn’t resist. This is so you.
Elsewhere. Where you always want to be.
Missing you. News: I’ve papped P.
Your slave,
Phillip xxxxxxx
I’d missed that line at first. News: I’ve papped P. What did ‘papped’ mean?
One afternoon, while Babette hollered in the bathroom because Souhar was ripping hairs from her legs with hot wax, I sneaked into her room to mine new intelligence. As long as she was howling, I was safe. The 1961 diary was a daggy exercise book with very few entries.
London.
I was seasick all the way from Sydney, hanging from the deck railing like a strand of seaweed. I clung to the bed at night, my life raft. The only solid thing around. Phillip thought it was wonderful: ‘Perfect for weight loss, Babs. You’d grown a bit porky.’
With every lurch and grind of that bloody ship, I was shrinking ever closer to the pale, gutted look he loved. I can still hear the screaming wind and the thwack of the bow. And see the birds surfing the air above those rolling waves, watching while I wrenched out my heart.’
‘Sugar, Souhar. That really hurt. You’ll have to bring me a drink.’ Babette’s indignation bounced down the corridor. I sighed. She’d be out soon and the dull 1961 diary had none of the ‘P’ clues I was after. That year, she’d apparently rushed around London being excited about everything.
I opened 1968. Round loops of mauve ink.
Question to self: Should I marry him?
Drawbacks: He’s 37, ex-wife, children. Me, 29. Have I grown up yet?
Had so many husbands – other people’s – can I trust my own?
Pluses: Travel. He wants me to live in Beirut. Some Lebanese men are delicious! Voluptuous eyelashes, long and wild – remind me of theatre curtains.
I started. Babette’s voice grew louder as she headed my way. ‘No need to apologise, Souhar. We females have to suffer for beauty.’
I madly stuffed the diary back but grabbed 1964, slid it between the waist of my jeans and skin, and lowered the trunk top. The lid caught my fingers and I cowered, sucking them, doubled over with the effort of trying not to scream. Babette’s feet tip-tapped on the marble past her room. Ice tinkle, gin glug. I seized the moment to duck into my room with jelly legs. Och. Now I got to savour my booty.
But there was very little in this diary. Babette babble.
Today I saw the ear of the tiniest creature, in a nurse’s arms.
Pink curves of half a conch shell, polished and perfect.
I have two of these, growing in deep water.
But I may never see them.
He’s rich. He can do anything he wants.
A poem? Something about the ocean?
Babette had gone back to yelping over the bath.
19
Skateboard Cowboy
Brendan began a game of grabbing me in the bus aisle, so I had to crab-walk with my school bag as a shield. The other boys joined in. I had to find an island at school. While the other kids bustled at lunchbreak, yelling, thumping their feet and thwacking balls, I’d shut myself in the science lab and let the mice run over my hands, arms and shoulders, shivering at the tickle and scratch of their claws. They pushed quivering noses into my ears, bellies breathing in miniature bellows, huffing like tiny engines.
I named them: Ringo. Babette. My chubby, brown, perky-eyed favourite was Sabine. They stood on their hind legs for mouse food and I began to teach them circus tricks. Allez-oop. I controlled their lives. I ruled their world every afternoon, until a kid called Samir found me alone with my mice, held me down and spat in my mouth. I couldn’t tell anyone for shame; the hurt burnt my guts. So I tried to stop caring.
The teachers always made out that America was the greatest country on earth, saving everyone from communists and Nazis, but at school no-one ever appeared to rescue me. Brendan used a history lesson to get me. The teacher, Mr Beaver, told us that one hot day in 1958, the Marines arrived to stop some stupid Lebanese fight. Landing craft dumped the Yanks into the surf near the airport. They were carrying gigantic packs.
‘They weren’t much older than you. They probably still had pimples. Imagine the scene: women lying in bikinis on the sand, the Sixth Fleet destroyers rising and falling on the horizon.’
Mr Beaver showed us photos. The soldiers bristled with weapons, weird as insect eyes and legs – tommy guns, grenades, rifles and mortars. ‘They were supposed to be flushing out Nasserite rebels, and they started searching among the bikini girls on the beach. Lebanese kids wanted to help carry their gear, but they had to turn them away. You can’t hand over your arms to the potential enemy.’
Some Lebanese men rode their horses onto the beach to gape. They cheered and clapped.
‘Then the true Lebanese spirit took over,’ Mr Beaver continued. ‘Soft drink and ice-cream sellers crowded around the Americans. Can you just see them? “Mister, mister, I give you a good price.” And these soldiers, born into the land of free enterprise, didn’t even bargain. The resourceful Lebanese merchants made quite a profit, selling them overpriced soda … Samir, ever heard the saying, “empty vessels make the most sound”? This is your history. Next, the Lebanese president called the American Ambassador in a panic because he believed there was a plot and he was to be assassinated at 4 pm.’
Mr Beaver looked at his watch. ‘4 pm. Nothing happened. My belief is that the President of the United States, the leader of the Free World, wielded his power behind the scenes to save the Lebanese president.’ He smoothed his short beatnik beard and beamed at us.
I folded my arms. ‘Maybe no-one was going to assassinate the Lebanese president.’
‘Sir,’ Mr Beaver said.
‘He may have been lying, sir. Or the US Ambassador may have made the whole story up.’
‘That is a possibility.’ Mr Beaver frowned. ‘Seems to me you don’t believe in anything, Lawrence. Not God, not country …’
I stood. ‘I believe in the American way, sir.’ I had my fingers crossed behind my back.
Brendan got me in the lonely corridor. Grabbed my suitcase and whirled me around. ‘You hate us, you limey.’ He punched me in the stomach. ‘Show respect, you gorilla!’
He ran down the corridor, leaving me bent over, winded. I had to wipe my cheeks before I could stand and face a small boy with a savage crew cut staring at me.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Stomach cramp. Piss off.’
On the bus home, I gave Brendan the finger but he couldn’t get me, even though the driver watched me in the mirror as if he knew I couldn’t win. As I ambled down the bus aisle, I grabbed the skateboard he’d made Brendan leave at the door. Brendan didn’t see me. He was trying to strangle some little kid.
But I knew he would probably work out that I’d lifted his wheels. I tossed with fear and dread deep into the night in tangled bedclothes. Next day, Jess ran onto the bus ahead of me, holding two fingers of each hand high, piping loudly, ‘I’ve arrived, people.’ The other kids laughed.
As soon as I straggled onto the bus, a fleet of paper aeroplanes swooped at me. I didn’t duck, but I turned back. The driver stared straight ahead. ‘I’m leaving, people.’ I tried to sound cool, but it came out as a mutter. I jumped out of the bus, leaving behind jeers and Jess’s forlorn face as he sat flanked by his friends. While the boys spewed insults through the tasselled curtains, I tried to walk with stiff dignity towards the Corniche. When the bus’s smashed tail-lights had gone and the last acrid puff of its exhaust had drifted away, I hurried up to Hamra. A brown-skinned man with a hook nose and blue eyes sold me a neat matchbox of hash. I wanted to turn my brain to mush, to get those wide, lost, saucer eyes and laugh like the fellas back home I’d given Mum’s grass to. I shared the hash in a sewer-stinking alley with the Chiclets boys. They asked me my name.
‘Al Orentz.’
If he’d been held down and filled with someone else’s spit, if he’d seen his school bag clatter down the school corridor, burst open, then a half-finished love letter seized and read aloud by a Brendan, Al Orentz would have taken a time-out. He was beaten far worse than I had been, by a Turkish officer who’d had his near-dead body thrown onto a rubbish heap. He lost the appetite for war for a while.
I took a break from school. Dad would never understand, but Jess did. He became my carrier pigeon, ferrying notes to Mr Foot’s office. With all that diary reading, I now faked Babette’s writing well.
Dear Mr Foot,
Please excuse Oliver Lawrence from school for an indeffinate time due to an attack of amoebic dissent.
Yours sincerly,
Mrs Babette Lawrence (Mother)
I reckoned I would have scored an A for wagging if it had been listed as an achievement, rather than an excuse for fault-finding on report cards. I had five notes with different excuses signed with Babette’s name ready in my stash-hole for future use.
Of a morning, I’d pretend to Babette that I was heading for the bus, then mooch around Hamra with the Chiclets boys, or hit the Pinball Palais until I could head safely home without being busted.
The afternoon that Ringo drummed on the front door, I was coiled on my bed, counting insect specks on the ceiling. I wanted to sing when I saw his crazy curls magnified through the fisheye door peephole. Ringo had a gun slung over his shoulder. So did his cousin George, whose wispy moustache had grown since I’d met him on Hamra. I touched the straggly strip of seedlings on my upper lip. Ringo’s uncle, Abu Iyad, had hard whiskers in his jawline. The three of them smiled together with a sunshine-y warmth, reminding me of Mormons.
Ringo’s eyes were especially bright. ‘We go to Corniche. We collect money for refugee. You want to come?’
‘Oh, yeah, man. Too cool.’ I felt wanted for the first time in ages. I grabbed Brendan’s skateboard to ride down the hill, hoping to impress Ringo. But the pavement cracks stuffed up the wheels. I was afraid of looking like an idiot, so I cradled the skateboard under my arm instead, ready-for-action man.
Abu Iyad and George had their Kalashnikovs slung over their backs, the muzzles pointed down at an angle that I calculated could, in an attack, shoot my foot off. I tried to skip ahead, but Abu Iyad leaned out and squeezed a hard hand on my shoulder. He had a slow smile and a gentle voice. ‘Who live in the small apartment downstairs in your building?’
I shrugged. ‘Just the concierge, Joseph Khoury.’
‘I know this family. Khoury.’ He gave a pleasant smile. I relax
ed a little.
‘He’s probably home. You could visit.’
‘Next time. Maybe we go to Beit Zizi together. Mahmoud, you, me …’
‘Yes. Madame Khoury said that we’re welcome anytime.’
Abu Iyad stretched his stubble into a smile again and touched my hand with his puffy fingers. ‘You see Mr Abdo around here?’
I said nothing for a while. We had stopped walking for a moment and Abu Iyad was looking into my face. I tried to seem untroubled by his question. Ringo nodded at me. Abu Iyad pulled his eyebrows together and handed me some Chiclets and two cigarettes.
I decided to trust him. ‘He’s not my friend.’ Abu Iyad waited. Abdo was the cause of my emptiness over Sabine. I thought of his cruelty to Souhar and how he walked with care, like a man in bad shoes – Dad said he’d once been shot in the groin. I thought of the trail of pumpkin seed skins he left behind, cracking them between his front teeth, one after the other. He’d given up smoking, but his teeth stayed yellow. I couldn’t bear the thought of them near Sabine’s flesh. ‘A show-off. Hangs around his van, spitting and strutting. He’s here every Wednesday night and Sunday after church.’
Abu Iyad frowned. ‘I don’t know him, but I know people that he kill.’
‘Who?’
‘I cannot tell you now.’
I held my breath, feeling the tragedy of being in love with Sabine, who was betrothed to a murderer. When we’d walked a little further, Abu Iyad said, ‘Come. Booza.’
A vendor wheeling an icebox plucked out the ice-creams on sticks that Abu Iyad ordered, not looking into our eyes. He stretched his palm out for payment, but the commandos had already walked away and the man, hangdog, watched their backs recede. I thought he was going to cry. A cross dangled inside his shirt. ‘Please. Pay me money. I have children.’
‘Are you a Phalangist?’
‘No. I sell booza. No politic.’
I gave him enough for the ice-creams, as well as a tip, and rolled on the skateboard after the three fedayeen, churning inside, thinking they’d dumped me again and worrying that maybe I should have told Abu Iyad more about Abdo. But I knew that the casual way he asked questions about Abdo might be dangerous to Sabine. I couldn’t let the commandos get near her. At the same time, I felt I had failed some test that Abu Iyad had set me.