Bone Ash Sky (29 page)
The car was wheeled around to a stop under the leafless plane trees at the top of the street. He didn’t remember them that way. Maybe the war had traumatised their growth. Jazz played from the tape deck – Frank Sinatra live with Count Basie, his favourite – and he tapped out the syncopated beat on the window as he peered at the streetscape, lighted lamps ghostly in the humid air, filthy kerbs just as he remembered them, that rampant bougainvillea still festooning the facade of every timbered house.
‘Pierre. You’re new to us, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, monsieur.’
‘You carry the name of our venerable founder, eh? Pierre Gemayel, what do you think? Is he genius or god?’
‘Yes, monsieur.’
‘Well, which is he, then?’
He took a quick swig of his whisky, not waiting for an answer. The man’s silence unnerved him.
‘Like the French, Pierre my friend, we Maronites have a civilising duty to this country. A mission. Without us, where would the nation be? Banging heads in mosques and shimmying up palms for dates, no doubt. None of this jazz from America, for one thing. Do you like it?’
‘Yes, monsieur.’ A scarcely perceptible sigh from the older man. Selim heard it and was hurt, yet it only served to make him more loquacious.
‘Our Phoenician forbears, Pierre, defenders of the only real democracy in the Arab world. Such hopes we have, for the future of our Lebanon.’ He gestured with the whisky bottle. ‘Park in front of the two-storey house over there, the one with the rotting balcony.’
He watched the lighted windows of his father’s house. Behind thick glass he could discern moving figures, voices, sounds of laughter. His father’s cough. Or was he only imagining it? He always contemplated going in, arriving in the midst of a family idyll with only a swift knock at the door to announce his presence. Then he stopped. Yet another part of him wanted to punish them, even his unknown daughter.
I won’t go
in. Won’t give them the satisfaction. Let them wonder about me. Let them
continue to worry, to wonder whether I love them, the twice-yearly envelopes
a constant reproach.
He’d been trapped, he’d been so young – and now they wanted him to feel guilty as well? And what of this little daughter of his, growing into a woman without a father to look to for protection? Not so little anymore. She must be at least sixteen by now. Tarred with her mother’s brush, no doubt, opinionated and wilful. Complicit in her grandmother’s ambitions.
Did I ever love Anahit?
He took another gulp from the bottle and was drunk enough now to be honest with himself.
I never did.
He only wanted her the way a boy wants the touch of any pliable flesh, the way he needed his own left hand at night under the bedcovers. Nothing more. She’d tricked him into having sex, then got herself pregnant to trap him. That was all there was to it, and he absolutely refused – even now – to feel any remorse. He remembered the night mostly because it had been so cold.
It was early spring but the nights were still chilly. He made sure to dress in warm, dark clothes before he left the house. At the side door he wound a woollen scarf around his neck twice; his only concession to colour. Mother had made it for him last winter in his football team’s stripes, and he knew it would bring him luck. He glanced at his watch, a New Year’s gift from Anahit, nearly midnight. He hadn’t told anyone at home, exams tomorrow and he had no intention of going back to the American University. He was no naive student, no idealist. He was a man of action, wanted to save his country. Or be a hero, whichever came first. He ran down Urfa Street and onto the highway, made it onto the last bus.
At Camp Marash he nodded to black-coated, capped figures. They were all men – no women were allowed at the meeting.
Of course
, he thought, but the thought was only a result of the habit of discussing everything with Anahit, internalising her disdain of men and their ways.
Why can’t I join a liberation organisation if I want?
He could hear the rising frustration in her girlish growl.
Bet I’ d be more ruthless than any of
them.
He didn’t doubt it.
The Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia was the largest anti-Turkish organisation he’d heard of, in response to Turkey’s official policy of denial. Archaeologists and academics in Turkey were employed solely to exhume Armenian bones from the killing fields and claim the muddy skulls were Turkish. Turning perpetrators into victims. The Turkish government was manipulating international opinion, with the press lobbied not to use the term genocide. Even the Americans and British called it the ‘alleged Armenian atrocity’, the ‘civil war’, or ‘intercommunal warfare’.
So far the organisation hadn’t managed to assassinate any Turkish figures of note, though not from want of trying. There were a few bungled attempts at government ministers and a few arrests of activists who had been caught, but it was still growing in size. For Selim, it had been hard to find out anything about them at first. They were notorious for their secrecy, even among fellow Armenians. Minas was uncharacteristically silent on the matter, telling him not to meddle. But Selim asked the right questions around the Armenian quarter, in underground bars and at the marketplace, was given the right answers. And so he was here.
He stayed at the back of the auditorium, pulling off his jacket and scarf. The space was quickly being filled with Armenian men, all with that shuffling, sidelong way of walking that betrayed a certain amount of suspicion. Nobody glanced in his direction, nobody spoke. He noticed one slight, boyish figure stand toward the back in the same way he did, shifting from foot to foot, keeping his cap on even in the rising heat. His boots looked just like Selim’s best Sunday pair.
The speeches began. Much talk of suffering, persecution, the danger of being Armenian in an Arab region. Revenge. Many speakers. Finally, a tense, black-browed young man stood and shook his fist at the assembly.
‘Down with Turkey!’
The rest of the men followed suit, shaking their fists. Selim did so as well, noticing from the corner of his eye that the boy kept his arms clasped behind his back.
‘Armenia is now one-seventh of her original size. The Turk has overrun our nation and culture while the rest of the world sits idly by!’
The auditorium blazed with shouts.
‘Shame! Shame!’
‘I propose we begin this holy war on all enemies of Armenia now! I propose—’
Selim felt his attention wandering, much as he was warmed by the sentiments expressed. The reason he was distracted was the boy near him. He sidled along the wall and was now slipping his sweaty hand into Selim’s.
‘Excuse me?’
He tried to pull his hand away but the other boy only gripped it tighter. He tried not to cause a scene. He struggled without moving, using his muscles to exert pressure. Was this a spy, a Muslim bomber, or an internal test for new members? He ceased to resist and became limp. The boy came closer so his cap tickled Selim’s cheek.
‘It’s me, you idiot.’
He pulled away from the hand. He whispered back, furious, spitting in his haste to speak. ‘What do you think you’re doing following me here? You could get shot.’
Only a girlish giggle in his ear. He yanked Anahit by the arm to his side.
‘We’re going. Not a word out of you – not a word.’
Past the guards at the door, who frowned but said nothing, past the floodlit courtyard, through the high gates that spelled
Camp
Marash
in Armenian script. Anahit was convulsing with laughter in his grip, and this made him madder still. He shook her, savage in his embarrassment.
‘They’ll never have me now! My name’s been noted, thanks to you.’
Anahit pushed the cap off her face with her free hand and suddenly her face had changed.
‘Oh, Selim. I didn’t realise. I just—wanted to surprise you.’
He turned from her and strode away.
‘Wait, Selim! I’m sorry—I’ll go back and tell them it was all my fault.’
He wheeled around and arranged his features into a scowl.
‘Then they’ll really think I’m a coward, letting a stupid girl do that.’
She ran to stop him from walking away again, gripping him by the lapels of his jacket. She was crying now, great convulsing sobs that embarrassed him still further.
‘I’m so, so sorry. Selim, please—’
He hesitated, wanting to punish her somehow, then in the next moment hugged her to him like the little boy he knew he still was, the movement of his arms and head fierce against her body.
‘Doesn’t matter. Let’s go. I’d rather fight with a real army than slink around stabbing people in the back anyway.’
They walked arm in arm to the highway. The last bus had gone. It was that time of the early morning when the sky would exert a slight, pale pressure on the eyes. Cars whizzed past, their headlights glowing in the dark. Anahit tightened her grip on him. He stayed passive. She took his arm in a decisive gesture and wound it around her waist. He then turned around, his arms still around her, until they were face to face. She was panting, her mouth open inches from his.
‘So,’ he said. He could feel the warmth of her breath.
It was the first time he’d ever touched her like this. It had always been her taking the initiative: flirting, caressing, even slapping him when she was angry. Now he felt how slim she was, almost frail, but with a core of muscle under his borrowed shirt and trousers, his second-best belt buckled twice around her. He bent his head and kissed her lips; they were like fire. Her teeth knocked against his, their tongues met, and through the kiss he felt her widen into a smile. Slowly, he reached behind her head and tenderly piled her hair up again under the cap; it was growing even colder now.
They reached Urfa Street after an hour and both of them stopped to stand on the rise of the hill, looking down on their home. The honeycoloured stone it was built with gleamed and beckoned, but they both turned, without conferring, away from it. They caught another bus, sat together with their legs twined, the only passengers. It made them giggle. They got out at the Corniche, the sea still and inky under a predawn sky. Made their way to Selim’s campus, lay down together in the middle of the courtyard. Damp grass hard on their spines. It wasn’t cold anymore, or at least they didn’t feel it. He plucked his cap from her and threw it as far as he could. Her breasts warm, the nipples alive. He loomed over her, looking down into her face. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t see him – stony, focused on a landmark way in the distance. Her bare head in his hands was ice, clammy, as if her hair had soaked up all the cold of night.
His aunt Lilit had organised it all. She showed her daughter how to get pregnant, to shame him, trap him into a marriage he was too young to want and too noble to refuse. And now this: Anahit’s death, an abandoned child, a broken family. Such unrelenting guilt.
How did
we all come to this?
He moaned, became aware of the driver’s puzzled enquiry, and excused himself.
‘I’m sorry, Pierre. Back pains. Always come on at night.’
Pierre nodded, self-consciously professional.
‘Perhaps we should be heading back to headquarters now, monsieur? You have a 6 am tomorrow. Or should I say today, sir; it’s already two in the morning.’
He pressed a couple of notes into the driver’s hand.
‘Please, Pierre. Let’s stay here a while longer.’
A
t the Cafe de Paris, dust motes trace their eternal dance on the table, the customers, the silvery evening air, my ringed hands. I’ve finished my fourth glass of tea. Yet I continue to sit, watching.
It’s my third week in Beirut and I’ve spent most of my time at the tribunal or writing, not living. Walking with my head down, unheeding the pale spring sunset, a lemon sky fading to green. Last time I called the editor of
The Globe
he asked me where my big story on the Sabra-Shatila survivors was. So far my New Beirut story and one on the sectarian nature of the camps have been well received.
Tonight I need to interview the Palestinian woman in the camp. She told the UNDP worker she’d be available at seven. Flipping through my appointment diary, I check the address. I dread bumping into D’Andrea there, but it’s more from embarrassment now than hostility. It’s late, though; he’d be finished work. The article has to be written, and the woman is ready to talk.
I set off from the cafe thinking about my early days in Boston. I’d felt uneasy, careful not to reveal the underside of my history. Much as I imagine Lilit would have been with her Turkish—what was he anyway, husband, lover, slave-owner? I imagine her circumspect, secretive, not allowing the real, contradictory Armenian girl to be revealed. Her voice in old age was frail, wavering. When she called me in Boston I would picture her sitting at the tiny hall stand by the side door: the shadow of the pomegranate tree on the wall behind trembling, moving, changing; the old-fashioned telephone, so black and heavy, in her tender hands.
As I told her about my uneventful days, I felt the threat of that same obscuring, that effacement, happening to me. The boys I met wanted me to be compliant and happy but only on the surface or in public: sitting down to dinner in a restaurant, dancing at a party, letting them brush a hand across my thigh in a crowd. They knew nothing of my true nature. And I can’t blame them – I was too scared to reveal something I’d regret later.