The Little Drummer Girl

by John le Carré

  Of what? Charlie asked.

  Of thirst, said Kareem, and explained a small piece of modern history to her: Tal al-Zataar, the hill of thyme, was a refugee camp in Beirut. Tin-roofed huts, often eleven to a room. Thirty thousand Palestinians and poor Lebanese held out there for seventeen months against persistent shelling.

  By whom? Charlie asked.

  Kareem was puzzled by her question. By the Kata’ib, he said, as if it were obvious. By Fascist Maronite irregulars, assisted by the Syrians and doubtless by the Zionists also. Thousands died, but no one knew how many, he said, because so few remained to miss them. When the attackers came in, they shot most of the survivors. The nurses and doctors were lined up and shot dead too, which was logical, since they had no medicine left, no water, and no patients.

  ‘Were you there?’ Charlie asked Kareem.

  No, he replied; but Yasir was.

  ‘In the future, do not sunbathe,’ Tayeh told her when he arrived to collect her the next evening. ‘This is not the Riviera.’

  She never saw the boys again. She was entering by degrees exactly that condition which Joseph had predicted. She was being educated to tragedy, and the tragedy absolved her of the need to explain herself. She was a blinkered rider, being conveyed through events and emotions too great for her to encompass, into a land where merely to be present was to be part of a monstrous injustice. She had joined the victims and was finally reconciled to her deceit. As each day passed, the fiction of her pretended allegiance to Michel became more firmly based in fact, while her allegiance to Joseph, if not a fiction, survived only as a secret mark upon her soul.

  ‘Soon we shall all use to be dead,’ Kareem told her, echoing Tayeh. ‘The Zionists will genocide us to death, you will use to see.’

  The old prison was in the centre of town, and it was the place, Tayeh had said cryptically, where the innocent served their life sentences. To reach it, they had to park in the main square and enter a maze of ancient passages open to the sky but hung with plastic-covered slogans, which she at first mistook for washing. It was the evening hour of trading; shops and stalls were full. The street lamps shone deeply into the old marble of the walls, seeming to light them from inside. The noise in the alleys was piecemeal, and sometimes when they turned a corner it stopped, except for their own footsteps clipping and shuffling on the polished Roman paving stones. A hostile man in bowlegged trousers led the way.

  ‘I have explained to the Administrator that you are a Western journalist,’ Tayeh told her as he hobbled at her side. ‘His manners towards you are not good, because he does not love those who come here to improve their knowledge of zoology.’

  The torn moon kept pace with them; the night was very hot. They entered another square and a burst of Arab music greeted them, relayed from improvised loudspeakers on poles. The high gates stood open and gave on to a bright-lit courtyard from which a stone staircase lifted to successive balconies. The music was louder.

  ‘So who are they?’ Charlie whispered, still mystified. ‘What have they done?’

  ‘Nothing. That is their crime. They are the refugees who have taken refuge from the refugee camps,’ Tayeh replied. ‘The prison has thick walls and was empty, so we took possession of it to protect them. Greet people solemnly,’ he added. ‘Do not smile too readily or they will think you are laughing at their misery.’

  An old man on a kitchen chair stared blankly at them. Tayeh and the Administrator went forward to greet him. Charlie gazed around. I see this every day. I am a hard-nosed Western journalist describing deprivation to those who have everything and are miserable. She was in the centre of a vast stone silo whose ancient walls were lined to the sky with cage doors and wooden balconies. Fresh white paint, covering everything, gave an illusion of hygiene. The cells on the ground floor were arched. Their doors stood open as if for hospitality; the figures inside them appeared at first motionless. Even the children moved with great economy. Clotheslines hung before every cell, and their symmetry suggested the competitive pride of village life. Charlie smelt coffee, open drains, and wash-day. Tayeh and the Administrator returned.

  ‘Allow them to speak to you first,’ Tayeh advised her, yet again. ‘Do not be forward to these people, they will not understand. You are observing a species already half extinct.’

  They climbed a marble staircase. The cells on this floor had solid doors, with peepholes for the jailers. The noise seemed to rise with the heat. A woman passed wearing full peasant costume. The Administrator addressed her and she pointed along the balcony to a hand-drawn sign in Arabic, shaped like a crude arrow. Looking downward into the well, Charlie saw the old man back on his chair, staring into nothing. He has done his day’s work, she thought; he has told us, ‘Go upstairs.’ They reached the arrow, followed its direction, came upon another, and were soon advancing into the very centre of the prison. I’ll need string to find my way back, she thought. She glanced at Tayeh, but he did not want to look at her. In future don’t sunbathe. They entered a former staffroom or canteen. At the centre stood a plastic-covered examination table and, on a new trolley, medicines, swab buckets, and syringes. A man and a woman were ministering; the woman, dressed in black, was swabbing a baby’s eyes with cotton wool. The waiting mothers sat patiently along the wall while their babies dozed or fretted.

  ‘Stand here,’ Tayeh ordered, and this time went forward himself, leaving Charlie with the Administrator. But the woman had already seen him enter; her eyes lifted to him, then to Charlie, and remained on her, full of meaning and question. She said something to the child’s mother and handed back the baby. She went to the handbasin and methodically washed her hands while she studied Charlie in the mirror.

  ‘Follow us,’ Tayeh said.

  Every prison has one: a small bright room with plastic flowers and a photograph of Switzerland, where blameless people can be entertained. The Administrator had departed. Tayeh and the girl sat either side of Charlie, the girl as straight as a nun, and Tayeh on the slope, with one leg stuck stiffly to one side of him and the stick like a tentpole down the centre of him, and the sweat running over his cratered face while he smoked and fidgeted and frowned. The sounds from the prison had not ceased, but had joined together in a single jangle, partly of music, partly of human voices. Sometimes, amazingly, Charlie heard laughter. The girl was beautiful and stern, and a little awesome in her blackness, with straight strong features and a dark, direct gaze that had no interest in dissembling. She had cut her hair short. The door stood open. The usual two boys guarded it.

  ‘You know who she is?’ Tayeh enquired, already stubbing out his first cigarette. ‘You recognise something familiar in the face? Look hard.’

  Charlie did not need to. ‘Fatmeh,’ she said.

  ‘She has returned to Sidon to be among her people. She speaks no English, but she knows who you are. She has read your letters to Michel, also his letters to you. Translated. She is interested in you, naturally.’

  Shifting painfully in his chair, Tayeh fished out a sweat-smeared cigarette and lit it.

  ‘She is in grief, but so are we all. When you speak to her, please do not sentimentalise. She has lost three brothers and a sister already. She knows how it is done.’

  Very calmly, Fatmeh began speaking. When she stopped, Tayeh interpreted – with contempt, which was his manner tonight.

  ‘She wishes first to thank you for the great comfort you gave to her brother Salim while he was fighting Zionism, also that you yourself have joined the struggle for justice.’ He waited as Fatmeh resumed. ‘She says, now you are sisters. Both loved Michel, both are proud of his heroic death. She asks you –’ Again he paused to let her speak. ‘She asks you, will you also accept death rather than become the slave of imperialism? She is very political. Tell her yes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She wishes to hear about how Michel spoke of his family and of Palestine. Don’t fabricate. She has a good instinct.’

  Tayeh’s manner was no longer careless. Clambering to
his feet, he began a slow tour of the room, now interpreting, now throwing in his own subsidiary questions.

  Charlie spoke directly ahead of her, from the heart, from her wounded memory. She was an impostor to nobody, not even to herself. At first, she said, Michel would not speak of his brothers at all; and only once, in passing, of his beloved Fatmeh. Then one day – it was in Greece – he started with great love to reminisce about them, remarking that since his mother’s death, his sister Fatmeh had made herself the mother of all the family.

  Tayeh brusquely translated. The girl made no response, but her eyes were all the time on Charlie’s face, watching it, listening to it, questioning it.

  ‘What did he say about them – the brothers,’ Tayeh ordered impatiently. ‘Repeat it to her.’

  ‘He said that all through his childhood, his elder brothers were his shining inspiration. In Jordan, in their first camp, when he was still too young to fight, the brothers would slip away without saying where they were going. Then Fatmeh would come to his bed and whisper to him that they had made another attack against the Zionists –’

  Tayeh interrupted with a swift translation.

  Fatmeh’s questions lost their nostalgic note and acquired the harshness of examination. What had her brothers studied? What were their skills and aptitudes, how had they died? Charlie answered where she could, piecemeal: Salim – Michel – had not told her everything. Fawaz was a great lawyer, or had meant to be. He had been in love with a student in Amman – she was his childhood sweetheart from their village in Palestine. The Zionists shot him down as he came out of her house early one morning. ‘According to Fatmeh –’ she began.

  ‘What according to Fatmeh?’ Tayeh demanded.

  ‘According to Fatmeh, the Jordanians had betrayed her address to the Zionists.’

  Fatmeh was putting a question. Angrily. Tayeh again translated:

  ‘In one of his letters, Michel mentions his pride at sharing torture with his great brother,’ Tayeh said. ‘He writes regarding this incident that his sister Fatmeh is the only woman on earth, other than you, whom he can love completely. Explain this to Fatmeh, please. Which brother does he mean?’

  ‘Khalil,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Describe the whole incident,’ Tayeh ordered.

  ‘It was in Jordan.’

  ‘Where? How? Describe exactly.’

  ‘It was evening. A convoy of Jordanian jeeps came into the camp, six of them. They grabbed Khalil and Michel – Salim – and ordered Michel to go and cut some branches from a pomegranate tree’ – she held out her hands, just as Michel had done that night in Delphi – ‘six young branches, one metre each. They made Khalil take his shoes off and Salim kneel down and hold Khalil’s feet while they beat them with the pomegranate branches. Then they had to change over. Khalil holds Salim. Their feet aren’t feet any more, they’re unrecognisable. But the Jordanians make them run all the same, by shooting behind them into the ground.’

  ‘So?’ said Tayeh impatiently.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So why is Fatmeh so important in this matter?’

  ‘She nursed them. Day and night, bathing their feet. She gave them courage. Read to them from the great Arab writers. Made them plan new attacks. “Fatmeh is our heart,” he said. “She is our Palestine. I must learn from her courage and her strength.” He said that.’

  ‘He even wrote it, the fool,’ said Tayeh, hanging his walking stick over the back of a chair with an angry clank. He lit himself another cigarette.

  Staring stiffly towards the blank wall as if there were a mirror on it, leaning backward on his ash stick, Tayeh was drying off his face with a handkerchief. Fatmeh rose and went silently to the basin and fetched a glass of water for him. From his pocket, Tayeh pulled a flat half-bottle of Scotch and poured some in. Not for the first time it occurred to Charlie that they knew each other very well, in the manner of close colleagues, even lovers. They talked together a moment; then Fatmeh turned and faced her again, while Tayeh put her last question.

  ‘What is this in his letter: “The plan we agreed over the grave of my father” – explain this also. What plan?’

  She started to describe the manner of his death, but Tayeh impatiently cut her short.

  ‘We know how he died. He died of despair. Tell us about the funeral.’

  ‘He asked to be buried in Hebron – in El Khalil – so they took him to the Allenby Bridge. The Zionists wouldn’t let him cross. So Michel and Fatmeh and two friends carried the coffin up a high hill, and when evening came they dug a grave at a place where he could look down into the land the Zionists stole from him.’

  ‘Where is Khalil while they are doing this?’

  ‘Absent. He’s been away for years. Out of touch. Fighting. But that night, while they were filling in the grave, he suddenly showed up.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He helped fill in the grave. Then he told Michel to come and fight.’

  ‘Come and fight?’ Tayeh repeated.

  ‘He said it was time to attack the Jewish entity. Everywhere. There was to be no distinction any more between Jew and Israeli. He said the whole Jewish race was a Zionist power base and that the Zionists would never rest until they had destroyed our people. Our only chance was to lift the world up by the ears and make it listen. Again and again. If innocent life was to be wasted, why should it always be Palestinian? The Palestinians were not going to imitate the Jews and wait two thousand years to get back their homeland.’

  ‘So what was the plan?’ Tayeh insisted, unimpressed.

  ‘Michel should come to Europe. Khalil would arrange it. Become a student, but also a fighter.’

  Fatmeh spoke. Not for very long.

  ‘She says her small brother had a big mouth, and that God was wise to close it when he did,’ said Tayeh and, beckoning to the boys, he limped quickly ahead of her down the stairs. But Fatmeh put a hand on Charlie’s arm and held her back, then yet again stared at her with a frank but friendly curiosity. Side by side, the two women returned along the corridor. At the door to the clinic, Fatmeh again stared at her, this time with undisguised bewilderment. Then she kissed Charlie on the cheek. The last Charlie saw of her, she had recovered the baby and was once more swabbing its eyes, and if Tayeh hadn’t been calling to her to make haste, she would have stayed and helped Fatmeh for the rest of her life.

  ‘You must wait,’ Tayeh told her as he drove her up to the camp. ‘We were not expecting you, after all. We did not invite you.’

  She thought at first sight that he had brought her to a village, for the terraces of white huts that clambered down the hillside looked quite attractive enough in the headlights. But as the drive continued, the scale of the place began to reveal itself, and by the time they had reached the hilltop, she was in a makeshift town built for thousands, not hundreds. A grizzled, dignified man received them, but it was Tayeh on whom he lavished his warmth. He wore polished black shoes and a khaki uniform pressed into razor-sharp creases, and she guessed he had put on his best clothes for Tayeh’s coming.

  ‘He is our headman here,’ Tayeh said simply, introducing him. ‘He knows you are English, otherwise nothing. He will not ask.’

  They followed him to a sparse room lined with sporting cups in glass cases. On a coffee table at the centre lay a plate piled high with packets of cigarettes of different brands. A very tall young woman brought sweet tea and cakes, but no one spoke to her. She wore a headscarf, a traditional full skirt, and flat shoes. Wife? Sister? Charlie could not make her out. She had bruises of grief beneath her eyes and seemed to move in a realm of private sadness. When she had gone, the headman fixed Charlie with a ferocious stare and delivered a sombre speech with a distinct Scottish accent. He explained without smiling that during the Mandate years he had served in the Palestine police, and still drew a British pension. The spirit of his people, he said, had been greatly strengthened by its suffering. He supplied statistics. In the last twelve years, the camp had been bombed seven hundred times.
He gave the casualty figures and dwelt upon the proportion of dead women and children. The most effective weapons were American-built cluster bombs; the Zionists also dropped booby traps disguised as children’s toys. He gave an order and a boy disappeared and returned with a battered toy racing-car. He lifted off the casing and revealed wiring and explosive inside. Maybe, thought Charlie. Maybe not. He referred to the variety of political theory among Palestinians, but earnestly assured her that, in the fight against Zionism, such distinctions disappeared.

  ‘They bomb us all,’ he said.

  He addressed her as ‘Comrade Leila’, which was how Tayeh had announced her, and when he had finished, he declared her welcome and handed her gratefully to the tall sad woman.

  ‘For justice,’ he said, by way of good night.

  ‘For justice,’ Charlie replied.

  Tayeh watched her go.

  The narrow streets had a candlelit darkness. Open drains ran down the centre; a three-quarter moon drifted above the hills. The tall girl led the way; the boys followed with machine guns and Charlie’s shoulder bag. They passed a mud playing-field and low huts that could have been a school. Charlie remembered Michel’s football, and wondered too late whether he had won any silver cups for the headman’s shelves. Pale blue lights burned over the rusted doors of the air-raid shelters. The noise was the night noise of exiles. Rock and patriotic music mingled with the timeless murmur of old men. Somewhere a young couple was feuding. Their voices welled into an explosion of pent-up fury.

  ‘My father apologises for the sparseness of the accommodation. It is a rule of the camp that buildings should not be permanent, lest we forget where our true home is. If there is an air raid, please do not wait for the sirens, but follow the direction in which everybody is running. After a raid, please be sure to touch nothing that is lying on the ground. Pens, bottles, radios – nothing.’