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Oliver of the Levant

Page 19

by Debra Jopson


  ‘Where Abdo live? Where Madame Khoury live?’ His voice was kind and his eyes had rays fanning out from the pupils, as if they held the sun.

  ‘I don’t know where Abdo lives. But I think his family owns this land.’ I put an X in the middle of the Christmas trees. I was the lizard, dropping my tail, steering Abu Iyad away from the house in the village where Sabine would live after she’d married Abdo.

  ‘Who did Abdo kill?’ I hoped to get an answer in payment for my X. Abu Iyad’s forehead lifted in surprise. Had he forgotten that he’d told me Abdo had killed someone he knew?

  ‘My cousin father.’ He wiped his mouth, as if that would remove a bitterness. Ringo spat and stared, all moody, out to sea, as if that fierce rocking water was going to tell him something. I felt I was out there myself, trying to swim against the waves.

  Ringo sounded wounded. ‘Those bloody Zionist come here, kidnap our people. Shoot into villages in Lebanon, but the Phalangist let them in.’

  ‘The Lebanese government invites them.’ Abu Iyad’s voice squeaked with astonishment.

  I felt their anguish, but every time I tried to understand what was happening in Lebanon, the truth skipped away from me. There was so much I found hard to believe. I thought of the pictures in school scripture classes when I was small. They’d shown Palestine as a land of docile donkeys and shepherds with crooks. Blond Jesus roamed the land under a golden halo, offering love in his soft, open hands. It was nothing like the Palestine Ringo spoke of.

  ‘You want cigarette?’ Abu Iyad held out a packet. I snaffled three, for Sabine.

  He looked like an ordinary guy in his T-shirt with ‘Handyman’ written on it. Not a commando. I felt when I was with him that he wanted to lead me into ideas that would not occur to me unless he suggested them. He was like one of the nice teachers – there weren’t many of them. He planted thoughts and then grew them. Even so, I was a little ashamed that I had written that X on his map, marking the Khoury’s village land.

  Not long after that, I bumped into Abu Iyad again, near the pinball parlour. While Ringo’s eyes strayed towards the bells and bouncing lights, Abu Iyad pushed Chiclets into my shirt pocket. ‘You like Leila Khaled?’ I cast my eyes down. It was hard to admit that a hijacker was one of my secret heroes when one day she might commandeer a plane my father was flying.

  Ringo put his hand over his heart, pinball lights flashing in his eyes. ‘I love Leila Khaled. She make a ring for her finger with a bullet. I, too, marry Palestine. My country is my love.’ I felt a shaft of envy for his certainty.

  Abu Iyad held Ringo’s elbow and turned him away from the pinball parlour window, calling to me, ‘Come see us. We will wait for you next week at the camp.’

  As they walked away and Ringo looked back with longing, I wished once more that I could be him. I wished for a grand mission in my life. Despite my misgivings about Leila Khaled, even in photos, she held that same mysterious power as Jimi Hendrix. Like him, her dark, sulky eyes held secrets, and she held a weapon in her hands that exploded so loudly when she used it that the whole world heard.

  When Dad got home, I asked him where Leila Khaled was now. He made a sour mouth. ‘She’s still on the loose. She’s undeservedly got herself and her cause a barrelful of publicity. But there’s good news. The 707 is out of surgery and doing fine. The plane doctors flew in a new nose cone and grafted it onto her, in Damascus, where she so spectacularly lost her dignity. They call it the “Damascus nose job”.’

  I gave him a hug, hoping he never met Leila Khaled, because in my mind she was always a shadow passenger, waiting in a queue to hijack someone’s plane. When I pulled away, his tired eyes were still wide with astonishment.

  ‘Sorry about your mouse. Unfortunately, no nose job was going to fix him.’

  We both turned our eyes to the marble floor in embarrassment, not knowing what to say next.

  32

  Peace on Earth

  At Christmas, trees blinked in town squares and the delicious tang of fire-works in the cold air made me itch for action. Dad gave me two hundred Lebanese pounds. I added it to the wad of banknotes I’d earnt as Walid’s grunt; my little stash for buying gunpowder.

  We spent Christmas Day at Beit Zizi. In the village, a bonfire flared and red-cheeked, purple-eared kids rushed about, carrying sticks in a war game. Madame Khoury made us marvel at the Christmas cave in her lounge room corner, where miniature Jesus lay in His manger, His parents craning to admire His holiness.

  Babette got sick of everyone paying Jesus so much attention and asked Madame Khoury, ‘Why’d you come back? Paris is so lovely in winter – gold filigree and silver light and elegant, bare tree branches.’

  ‘I belong here. My husband is here.’

  ‘Maman talks to him,’ Walid said.

  ‘Isn’t he dead?’ Jess chirped.

  Madame Khoury gave a tired smile. As we arranged ourselves around the table, Dad was puzzled when she guided him away from the chair at its head.

  ‘Who’s the mystery guest?’ Dad asked.

  Walid faltered. ‘No-one sits there since Papa died.’ Dad did an ‘oops’ and elbowed me.

  Madame Khoury’s eyes turned liquid and light. ‘It was summer. He died on the terrace with his eyes looking up to the stars. I found him there. Ten years ago. We always pray for him at Christmas.’

  ‘He’s buried near here. Maman had the priest bless the earth,’ Walid said, and I shivered.

  In the bird-killing forest. That I marked with an X on the map.

  Madame Khoury signalled to the maid to serve the meal. ‘My husband was a distant cousin of your concierge, Joseph … How’s the girl? Is she married yet to the revolutionary?’

  She means Sabine.

  My heart pumped and my appetite dissolved. ‘Abdo?’

  ‘Maman, don’t say anything about him.’ Walid raised his eyebrows and nodded towards the maid, whose long eyelashes almost rested on her fat cheeks as she laid a plate of garlic chicken on the table.

  ‘He wants to be the village chief. He likes his power.’ Madame Khoury stared straight at the maid then changed the subject, leaving me swimming in sadness.

  On the way home, Jess acted all spooked. ‘Ee-yew, Mrs Khoury talks to a ghost.’

  But so did I, to Mum’s shadow that came to me sometimes in the night. She haunted me alive.

  Dad was on about The Situation again. ‘There are so many Abdos in so many villages. Every stripe of would-be boss man with a grudge against someone and an arms stash to do something about it … Then there’s another barrel of trouble in all the Mahmouds, the guys who have no village and want one.’

  ‘Mahmoud’s not the same as Abdo.’ My face stung with indignation.

  ‘Political zealots, both – with guns, just different politics.’ Dad had to try to win.

  We passed a sign in English: PEACE ON EARTH

  Now he picked on Babette. ‘I’m tired of the way Walid looks at you.’

  Jess and I groaned.

  ‘You’ve caught the Lebanese disease, Lachlan. Want me to walk three steps behind you, like a good Muslim wife?’

  ‘They don’t do that … Muslim wives.’ Because he spoke a bit of Arabic, Jess considered himself an authority.

  ‘Oliver’s always mooning about,’ Babette said then raised her voice. ‘Oliver, have you ever caught Walid and me in flagrante delicto, as did that private D your father sicced onto your mother?’

  I knew what the words meant now and a sickness came into my throat.

  ‘Babette, stop. You’ve aroused suspicion with your own behaviour, so don’t lash out at Oliver, or me, or anyone else.’

  Dad and Babette started in on each other. I knew why Dad was jealous, because I remembered the upwelling of envy that had left me dark and hollow under the chandelier’s glitter in the foyer, the day Abdo had pulled Sabine into his van and kissed her.

  Abu Iyad will use that ‘X’ I made on the map and he’ll get Abdo good.

  I imagined Abdo’s moustac
he mangled by a cigar bomb, and the thought of payback made me feel good, even though I didn’t think I could ever be that bloodthirsty.

  I desperately wanted to see Ringo; a bit of fun with gunpowder would bring relief from all this worry.

  ‘Mahmoud is camping in the south.’ Souhar made it sound like a school outing. ‘He came safe from Syria. Thanks you, Syria. Syria say to Lebanon: you cannot stop fedayeen going to fight at the border in the south. If you do, khalas, no trade. Lebanon must to let our commandos fight. I am glad.’ She kissed her own fingers.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid he’ll get killed?’ I was. I didn’t want Ringo to die. I didn’t want him to kill people who I imagined leading innocent lives on the other side of the border.

  Souhar rubbed her arms. ‘Yes, but he say he’ll be happy to accept death for his country. We have nothing else. Is-ray-ell has America to help. We can only fight back with our own selves.’

  It brought acid into my throat, to hear her speak of her own son dying. But her words also set off a strange flutter in my belly, which I liked. She was risking the thing she loved most. I didn’t know if I’d ever care about anything enough to do that.

  33

  The Bath

  Sabine was back from visiting a cousin somewhere near Damour. I loitered on the stairs, spying on the twists of her hands, the shake of her head, as she bargained with the bald man selling vegetables from his donkey cart. She had to jerk her fingers away from his own, which kept wriggling towards her like worms. I scowled at him as he stroked his zucchinis while caressing her with his eyes.

  As she carted a loaded basket into the foyer, with her cross banging against her chest, I whispered her name and held out the three black market Marlboro fake fags from Abu Iyad.

  Her mother’s sharp voice barked: ‘Sabine!’

  That lady can smell me.

  Sabine turned the edges of her mouth down. I hoped it was in disgust at the vege man or at her mother. She ignored the cigarettes. That also left me baffled. When her door had closed, I laid them on the lowest step of the stairs, beneath a metal statue of an angel, hoping she’d find them.

  Every night I’d thought of her curved in on herself on her narrow mattress in the room where she’d told me she slept with her brothers and parents. If I curled my fists under my nose, I could feel the warm breath as hers. We would lie, if we could, face to face, breathing together. She had told me that at night sometimes, the two humps in her parents’ bed next to hers moved, making a mound that groaned, puffed, then dissolved as her father called out, ‘Hmmmmph’.

  ‘I feel poor, we all live together in one room. When I marry, two people only in one room.’

  If I had moolah, I would give her a gigantic bedroom with a round waterbed that would shift like jelly whenever she turned in its black satin sheets. A mirror disco ball would twirl above, spilling crystals of light on us as we kissed. I’d hire bodyguards so Abdo couldn’t kill us.

  After Sabine’s return, thunderclaps rolled across the clouds, chased by jagged lightning spears hurled by weird Mediterranean gods. The sea joined in, churning over the Corniche. I got out into it with my camera, photographing a bunch of drenched ladies whose long dresses clung so you could see where, as Babette said, ‘the hummus went to their hips’. They yelled at me. Some people here thought you were taking their spirit with their photo. Maybe I was.

  Thunder was still pinging around my brain box when I loped into our apartment, which felt hollow and indifferent in the absence of everyone who lived here. But behind the bathroom door, I heard a tap drip – plink – into a full bath, leaving a hush. I stood like a shadow caught mid-stride and turned my ears towards the sound. Caught the swish of flesh heaving up from a body of water and a splash as it settled back again. Then silence, until a few small drops fell, the tongues of tiny bells dropped onto the echoing tiles.

  I was about to call ‘Babette’ when there was a burst of song: ‘Habibi, yallah ya habibi.’

  Sabine.

  Bubbles seeped under the door, and with them a faint waft of Babette’s flowery perfume. I strained to hear more through the annoying drumming in my chest. She stopped singing.

  She’ll be able to hear my heart.

  The rogue gonad flashed fire into my face. I wanted to walk in.

  ‘Anyone home?’ Babette’s voice echoed down the hallway.

  Acidic starbursts of anxiety stabbed at my belly and then shot right through me. How was I going to make the perfume, the water, the whole aura of Sabine – and, most of all, Sabine herself – go away? Because it looked pretty well like Babette hadn’t invited Sabine up and, for sure, someone would blame me. What would Joseph do if he knew?

  I tried to think of the logistics, to acquire the plotting brain of Al Orentz, who had had to outwit the desert chieftains.

  Plan A: If I could hold Babette at bay, I could smuggle Sabine out of the bathroom and she could wait in my bedroom for the all-clear. I’d mop the flooded tiles as Souhar did, on my knees with a towel.

  Plan B: If Babette caught Sabine here, I’d light a Gauloise and then Babette would be so mad about me smoking that she wouldn’t notice the perfume. Sabine and I could hurry to Hamra and sit in the front row at Wimpy Bar, crooking our pinkies over pine-nut pastries and coffee. Sabine would still have the scent of Babette on her. We’d return to our rooftop and, while the pigeons wheeled around above, we’d kiss. She would take her time to tell Abdo she had to break off the engagement. He wouldn’t be happy. If it looked like he really would kill us, we’d flee to Australia. I’d teach her to surf.

  I was tossing in the Bondi waves, Sabine’s face glowing beside mine in the foam, when Babette called out again. ‘Who’s that? Oliver? Jess?’

  I slid into the bathroom. Hot air rushed at me. Through a steam fog, Sabine performed a small scream, but I pasted my finger over my mouth and pointed towards Babette’s voice. She shut up, holding her hands over her bosoms.

  The steam cleared to reveal Babette’s potions spilling from upended coloured bottles, rolling on the slick floor. One had shattered. Blue glass shards floated in bubbles across the tiles. Sabine’s own storm. She huddled in its wreckage, watching me with suspicion.

  I only dared look at her from the edges of my eyelids, snatching an impression of her fingers fanned over brown freckle-nipples riding high on two creamy cushions.

  This was better than the postcard from Babette’s slave. Sabine swished her hands and the bath bubbles cleared, allowing me a glimpse of the black triangle beneath. Drumsticks bashed my ribcage. I closed my eyes, but there was no escape. A vision of a sea urchin floated into my mind, one I’d seen a man eating in a restaurant hanging over sea-wash. He’d pushed past the spikes with a silver knife and cracked open the shell. Inside, a pink shellfish cowered to his touch. My mouth filled with liquid thinking about it, and I had an urge to vomit. I opened my eyes but Sabine had folded one plump leg over the other. No urchins.

  Her full, rosy lips opened, threatening a scream. I held my hand out in a ‘stop’ sign. She dropped a silent heavy sigh into the bubbles. Babette called again, ‘Hello-ooo.’

  A twist of black hair dripped a thin stream of water onto Sabine’s neck. She was wearing nothing but her diamond engagement ring.

  It’s on the wrong finger and she can’t marry her cousin.

  I turned my face into the door corner, whispering ‘Sorry.’

  Babette was outside, emitting small exasperated whines. ‘What are you doing, Oliver?’

  I moved towards the tub. ‘I just felt like a bubble bath.’

  ‘You? In a bubble bath? Darling, I don’t think the Chamade is quite you.’

  ‘I’m coming out soon.’

  ‘Coming out, darling? I’ll assist.’

  ‘What?’

  She was laughing at some private joke. ‘I have to lie down, Oliver. But I do have to speak to you. Knock on my door when you’re decent.’

  Her boots marched away. My neck hurt from craning it away from the part of Sabine w
here my brain wanted to take my eyes, so my whisper was urgent: ‘Get out of the bath.’

  Sabine spat great, guttural Arabic curses, which she had to choke off so Babette wouldn’t hear. ‘Give me towel, sharamoota.’

  I obeyed, hand over eyes. I stole a peek when she grabbed at Dad’s big man-towel. She waited for me to turn my back, then lifted up from the water. I heard it streaming from her creamy cushions and her sea urchin.

  Drops flicked onto me as she flipped her wet hair around. ‘Yallah, imshee. Get out.’

  ‘But Babette might come in if I leave.’

  Now, wrapped in the towel – I should have given her Babette’s smaller one – she pushed her bare sole onto my bum and booted me out.

  ‘Hey! Get caught if you want.’ I waited in the hall, enjoying the warm imprint of her foot on my body. But she was in no hurry. I glared at possible eyes in the next-door windows, which glowed intermittently with lightning flashes.

  Sabine emerged, fresh and cheerful, with black blobs in her eyelashes from clumsily caking on Babette’s mascara.

  ‘Oliver?’ Babette called from her room. I took Sabine’s generous, placid hand. Her breath was on my neck; I locked my bedroom door.

  Babette’s ballet slippers slapped into the bathroom. ‘This is like a sauna. What have you been up to? Where are my perfumes?’

  Sabine’s eyes went big and wild as Babette hammered on my bedroom door, straining against the closed bolt. To drown it out, I spun a disc from Jimi and maxed out the volume.

  ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky.’

  Sabine sat on my bed, twirling one strand of hair around her finger and making a point of not looking at me. She had somehow purloined a bright pink cardigan Babette had brought back from New York. It stretched across her chest, straining the buttons.

  I held my hand out. ‘Give me that.’

  She surrendered it, pouting. I chucked it onto my pillow, where it lay like the ghost of Babette, accusing us. I turned the music down and conducted a recce. Babette’s door was open. She was lying on her bed, riffling through magazines.

 

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