by Mike Bond
The small moon hung in the mulberry branches like a hapless skull. The garden of bare peach and pear trunks and freshly turned strawberry beds gave nowhere to hide. Moonlight glittered on the broken glass set like fossil teeth in the top of the wall. He went to the door, opened it and peered round it. The narrow street lay in moon shadow, smelling of flowers and manure. Again the lamb bleated.
He shut the door and relocked it, the dark house quiet and warm, a lingering odor of his father, of thyme and drying cheese, the cool dampness of the well in the garden. His feet rustled over the stone floor. Be silent, he thought, don't wake her, wishing she were awake, wanting to talk to her. Soundless, he entered the corridor.
He sensed the gun, ducked and dove forward to snatch it before it fired, twisting it, twisting her wrist, hand clenching her throat.
“Let me go!” she hissed, yanking at one wrist.
He dropped his hands.
“Where were you? I damn near shot you!”
“I damn near shot you!”
She sat naked, trembling on the floor in his arms. He made her get up and they went back into the room. He lit the candle. Her face was white. “I almost shot you,” she said again.
“What were you doing?” He picked up her gun; she had mounted a black silencer on it. “Where'd you get this?”
She got under the blankets. “I keep it in my bag, like that. I woke up and heard a noise in the hall. You were gone – I was afraid they had you.”
“They? Who?”
“I don't know! Get into bed. Sometimes I worry about everyone.”
He lay beside her, the bed still warm. I could have been dead, he thought, and my bed still warm.
Before dawn he rose and washed, said his prayers, his back stretching and limbering as he knelt forward, face to the ground. It bothered him that she could see him, she who would not pray. “Why am I with her, God?” he asked, smelling her musk on his hands. “What do You want?”
He finished the prayer. She sat naked, cross-legged, brushing her hair. It made a ripping sound, like a fire spreading. She's a jinni, he thought, she can help or kill you. The backward people of Yammouné still believe that if a jinni wants a young man she'll condemn his beloved to death. But Rosa doesn't want me.
“In half a day,” she said, “we'll be back in Beirut. To who we were.”
“I was wondering, could we stay up here?” He shrugged. “I suppose now it's my house.”
“If you've come back from the dead,” her eyes warmed him, for an instant, “then it's to drive them out. Palestinians and Shiites together – we can do it.”
His arms felt weak. It's still the wound, he thought. “If we go back –”
“If?”
“We'll get a lift with somebody, go by Baalbek and Zahlé. After that I don't know what I'll do with you.”
She stood in one motion, elastic. “Nothing! I'm on my own.”
“But I don't want that!”
She smiled, watching him. “Jealous?”
“You've slept with other men.” He trembled, not wanting to hear.
“So did Mary, the Prophet's servant girl, before she gave him a son.”
His insides congealed. “We didn't –”
“Don't worry!” she laughed. “Anyway, the Prophet never married her.”
“Of course not.”
“But when his wife complained, he threw her out and banished all his other wives, and only lived with Mary. Then people criticized him, so he had a new revelation that it's fine for prophets to do this but nobody else.”
“I'm no prophet.”
She cocked her head, biting her lip. “Why?”
“I can't find my own way out of the desert, let alone anybody else's.”
“Neither could the Prophet. He just did what he wanted. As with Mary. And told everybody to do what he said, not what he did.”
His head spun. Once again she was contorting things. He wanted to sit down but that would seem weakness. To whom? To her? He sat on the floor.
“Hey!” She rushed to him.
The room was going round. If she saw it as weakness that meant she didn't care for him and then he couldn't chance being himself. But what if he could be himself, all the way? Nauseous dizziness washed over him. When it lessened he pushed her away and stood. “When we get to Beirut I start anew. The path of peace –”
“Lie down, you fool,” she clicked her tongue, “pushing yourself!”
The ceiling stopped spinning. He smiled up at her, heart full of joy. “You're the one who's been pushing – “Oh, don't stop!” he moaned. “No, don't, not now ...”
She slapped him. “Pig! I should leave you to them!”
“Who?” he laughed.
“Everybody who wants you!” She tried to stalk away but the room was too small so she bent and snatched her underpants and stepped into them, yanked them up. With sorrow he watched them cover her luscious black crotch, the bra hooked over her lovely tight-nippled breasts, the robe like a curtain coming down. I’m a fool, he thought, not knowing why.
NEILL WOKE to the recorded plaint of a muezzin out of a loudspeaker across the Jardin Public. He thought of Layla waking now, warm and drowsy, Mohammed snoring beside her. She probably has to take a piss, he reminded himself. Just like me. He had to piss too much to go back to sleep now that he was awake, thanks to the muezzin. His burnt hand still hurt against the rough bandage. Our God, the Bible says, is a consuming fire.
Once he got up and wandered down the stairs to the outhouse in the back yard, he might as well stay up. Another tired meaningless day. Another day closer to death. Waiting for Mohammed. For Layla, really. Like he'd been doing all these years.
Another day of helping Nicolas and Samantha look for food – we're right back in the hunter-gatherer mode, he thought, maybe we never left it – and trying to make contact with other people who might know Mohammed. People he hadn't seen in years, hadn't wanted to. Why had he become a journalist when he hated people? Actually, he realized, it made perfect sense.
If he didn't speak to Mohammed, Freeman was going to want his money back. Freeman didn't give a shit about Layla. Neill hugged his arm against his ribs.
He sat on the edge of the bed, bent over rubbing his neck. Another day. He really did have to piss. He stood, found his trousers and pulled them on, trying not to jiggle his bladder.
He went down the echoing dusty stairs, trying not to wake Nicolas and Samantha, and out the back corridor. New blue daylight glistened over the trees. Already dawn, he realized, and no shells, no rockets, no sound of guns, no wail of ambulances or bray of fire trucks.
War's like the Devil, he thought as he hopped barefoot across the cold crinkly dew-wet grass. Sometimes it just gets tired of tormenting you. Those are the times called peace.
40
MOHAMMED STEPPED FROM his father's house into the sun-bright street. The air was cool, down from the ice sheets of the mountain and perfumed with the spring herbs of the valley, the warm smell of charcoal in the village hearths, the fur and dung of animals, the onions hung on stone walls to dry in the sun. “Cover yourself,” he said, turning to check that Rosa had hidden her hair completely under her scarf, that the veil covered all but her eyes and that the gown fell to her feet.
A boy and two little girls passed, holding hands; he did not recognize them, nor the crippled old man driving goats down the street, waving a bent stick. He went into the shop's cool spicy shadows but did not know the woman behind the counter. “Good morning, young man,” she said; he realized she was the sister of a boy he'd gone to school with, up the hill.
“You're the shopkeeper now?” he said.
“Yacoub's dead – you don't remember?”
“Of course...”
“And you're still fighting.”
“Perhaps soon we can stop.”
She was cutting the stems of garlic bulbs and tossing them into a basket. “Don't believe it.”
“I need a ride to Baalbek and Beirut.”
She looked up from the garlic, the curved knife in her hand. “You're not of here any more, are you? You belong to Beirut, the war.”
“Nothing owns me but God.”
“That's what you all say but look what you've done to us!”
“God owns us all.”
“No God would do this to those He loves!” She let the knife clatter to the counter. “The farm by the lake, they're sending a truck to Beirut with vegetables. You and the Mother of the Revolution, there, can ride with them.”
“She's not –”
“It doesn't matter. They'll be happy to send you both back to the war.”
THE MADNESS RETURNED and André couldn't stop his hands from smashing at the concrete, his spine from trying to arch, pry it up. Finally beaten and exhausted, he lay gasping, head twisted to one side.
She was hitting a rock steadily against the wall behind her. Tunk, it went, tunk tunk. “I had friends in Rue de Mexique,” she said. “Their building fell in on them and they were caught in a basement like this, curled up in a shower stall, the caved-in floor on their shoulders. It took three days to find them. All the time they kept signaling, like this.”
He licked sweat off his lips, couldn't bring his arms up his sides.
“If you fight it,” she said, “you won't last.”
He listened to the steady cadence of her knocking, like an arrhythmic heart. “How are the kids?”
She said something in Arabic, one answered. “Fine,” she said.
“I don't know how they stand it.”
“They already have ten years of war behind them.”
“What do you tell them?”
“Pray to Allah.”
“You're Muslim?”
“They are.”
“You're not their mother?”
“Their teacher. The shelling started while I was running them home. We ducked in here. You live here?”
“I live in Paris. Down on a visit.”
“Must be nice, Paris. Peaceful.”
“We had a bombing last month – Muslims.”
“One bombing a mouth – that's Paradise.” She cleared her throat. “We shouldn't talk so much.”
“You thirsty?”
“A little.”
“You have to drink each other's urine. You can last a day longer –”
“That's silly.”
“It's true. They told us that, the Army. They wouldn't lie.”
She kept up the steady knocking. “When we get out of here, I'll buy you champagne.”
“If we get out of this...” He did not finish, not knowing what to say. What had happened to the dog?
“How old are you?” she said.
“Twenty-seven.”
“Married?”
“No. You?”
“Twenty-two. I was married but my husband died.”
“Wait! Stop! That sound!”
She stopped. There was nothing but the dullness of the great weight leaning down on top of them. Then in the distance tick tick like the sound of someone's watch in another room. “It's them!” she said. “I told you!”
MOHAMMED got down with Rosa from the vegetable truck and watched it rattle away, holding his breath against its last burst of sooty exhaust. In front of them, Beirut seemed the same under the dark clouds of war, making him hunger for the dry cool air of Yammouné.
Rosa had taken off her veil and gown; seeing her breasts outlined beneath her dress made him excited and ashamed. “I'm going home,” he said.
She smiled, like the sun. “Run to her, after I've saved you.”
“They're my family, they'll be worried.”
“Not enough to come after you like I did.”
“I still don't know why you did.”
“Nor do I.” She shrugged. “A mistake.”
He took her hands, the gesture seemed to shock her. “Anyway,” he said, “I thank you for this new life. This chance for peace.”
She glanced up at the contrails of fighters far above. “If I'd known that's what you wanted I would have left you.”
Feeling strangely alone he climbed the crest of Beirut toward the apartment on the Rue Maalouf that he had commandeered from a Greek Orthodox family to lodge his own. Seeing the church of Saints Peter and Paul on the corner made him wonder at his aloneness, at why humans bothered to fight. We don't love life at all, he thought, we just love to destroy it.
THE TINY TICKING noise had vanished but the teacher kept beating her rock against the concrete wall till the rock broke into pieces and then each of the pieces crumbled. “I can't see my watch,” André said. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Mine's broken.”
“Must be day outside.”
“They'll be coming. They always do.”
André tried to envision this mysterious they who would at great danger to themselves dig down in shattered buildings to retrieve survivors pinned under sliding tons of concrete and stone. “Unless there's new shelling. Anyway, they'll have lots of people to dig out, after last night. It'll be a long while till they get to us.”
“Do you remember what street this is? Were there any buildings knocked down, blocking it?”
“It's off Basta. They hit every building on this street. Never have I seen such bombing.”
“It was much worse in eighty-two. Every time they got some Palestinians cornered, they'd drop a vacuum bomb.”
“Last night, some of that was Syrian.”
“And Christian. We Christians are the worst. We started this by not sharing Parliament although the Muslims were the majority.”
“You could say we started it, the French. There's always a million guilty for everything that's wrong.”
“It's people,” she said. “That's what's wrong.”
“I FEARED TERRIBLY for you, my husband.” Layla squeezed his hands, raised them to her brow.
Mohammed snatched them away, wondered will she want to make love? The idea disgusted him. Was it because she'd talked to that Englishman? The one there'd been a rumor about, years ago. “You really love me that much, Layla? After all these years? Or do you just love who I am?”
“They're the same.”
Irritated he turned away. Why was returning such a defeat? When all along he'd looked forward to it? “To others I'm the Lion of God and all that foolishness, and people do what I say not because of who I am but of who they think I am.”
“I don't care what people think.”
“You don't seem to understand, Layla.” He liked having his back to her like this, his words booming back from the walls at her. “This girl who saved me, I'm keeping her with me.”
“As you wish.”
“You don't care?”
“Does it matter? Should I?”
“That's what has always irked me most about you, Layla. Sarcasm. The way you never say what you feel.”
“You've told me many times you don't care what I feel, that it's my problem. I agree.”
“Layla, please understand. I've been hurt and I'm wondering if we can end this war.”
“If you try you'll be killed. Like everyone else who's tried.”
“I'm being told by God, Layla.”
“Then you can't help yourself.” For a moment she said nothing; he picked up his rifle and slid it over his shoulder. “So talk to this English journalist,” she added. “Maybe you can use him.”
41
THE TINK TINK sound of steel on concrete had returned but seemed farther away. “They're back digging!” she crie
d.
He tried not to talk too much, too thirsty. “When we get out – we'll go up to the Casino. Have dinner. Looking out over the bay –”
“Stop! Don't do this.”
“What would you eat, right now?”
“I would've said lobster, but have you ever seen them, the poor things, thrashing in the pot?”
“If you worry about that, Anne-Marie, you'll starve.”
“People are digging!” She hammered louder, in rhythm, waited; the other skipped a beat, followed the rhythm. “See?” she kept saying. “See?”
André told her the Morse code letters for SOS and she hammered them out and the others repeated them note for note.
“They don't know what it means,” he said.
“They're just repeating,” she stopped knocking, “everything I do.”
“Buried,” André said. “Just like us.”
THE SHELLING HAD DESTROYED all the buildings around the Conservatoire. Neill stood watching the rescue crews and bulldozers digging out the corpses, once a whole family still alive, all crying and holding each other. Over one rubble-filled basement a single column of concrete stairs spiraled up several flights and ended in a half-step over the void. Stairway to Heaven, the words came to him bizarrely.
If they could only see this, all the people letting this happen. If you could only write it well enough, they'd see. What the Hell did they think the world was coming to as they went about their profitable mortal businesses, propagating money, children, carbon dioxide, effluents and hazardous waste?
They? Him too, everyone. The next century was going to be a horror like none in history: warring billions of swarming hordes tearing everything down in their hunger, the technical horrors, the diseases, the weapons of Armageddon. While a few unraveled the riddle of aging, the toxins of death, traveled to new planets, learned to speak with machines, the barbarians were going to be tearing it all down faster than it could be built.