At the hospital we had a little gathering on the orthopaedic ward for Donkey Man, who was being discharged into the camp and the care of his relatives. The nurses gave him a new walking stick and Asha shook his hand, saying he was her longest-staying patient. He had a new kufi on his head and tears in his eyes as he told me to thank everyone. Youssef was there, circling the get-together on his crutches, cursing and muttering.
‘He’s going mad here,’ I told Eli.
‘As his physio I recommend sea air. Why don’t we take him to the Corniche tomorrow?’ she suggested. ‘I’ll have time before my flight if we go in the morning.’
I told Youssef the good news.
‘The sea? What do I want with the sea? I want to see a film,’ he said.
I told her he was delighted with the idea.
She laughed. ‘I can tell from his expression.’
I left Eli to say some goodbyes and went to work in the clinic.
We met up at Asha’s for dinner. Afterwards we went back to my place and I put into practice what I’d learnt earlier that morning. Eli told me I was a good student.
Low-flying and screaming Israeli F-16S woke me from a deep and nourishing sleep – this was no dream. Eli was next to me, naked on her last day in Beirut.
‘Are they bombing?’ she asked, pulling the sheet over her chest.
‘No, they’re just breaking the sound barrier. All the terror without the destruction. Well, apart from some broken windows.’
After a wordless breakfast we walked to Samir’s falafel place where we’d agreed to meet him before picking up Youssef. Samir wasn’t there but among the regulars I saw Faris huddled with his ‘brothers’ at the back table. He hadn’t seen me so I approached, catching him drawing a map on a paper napkin.
‘I can’t see any other way,’ he was saying. ‘We can’t stand by while …’ He saw me and flipped the napkin, then stood up.
‘Ivan. What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for Samir.’ As if on cue, squealing announced a Red Crescent ambulance stopping outside. Samir jumped out of the driver’s side. He came in, his eye now black and blue.
‘A woman finally teach you some respect?’ someone asked.
‘Exactly so,’ he said, without smiling.
Faris and I joined Samir and Eli at a table.
‘You won’t be going home today,’ Samir told Eli. He helped himself to a cigarette from my pack. Eli and I looked to Faris.
‘The Israelis are invading the city,’ Faris explained. ‘The airport is closed.’
There went Youssef’s chance to see the sea. The regulars crowded round our table, firing questions: How far away were they? Would they come into the Hamra district? Faris just shrugged. They started to drift away.
‘I should go to the Etoile, find out what’s happening,’ Eli said.
‘Good idea,’ Faris said. I felt I should check in with Najwa and find out what I should be doing but instead I told Eli I’d walk her to the hotel. Faris called to his friends. We all spilt onto the street. Faris got in the passenger side of the ambulance while his mates got in the patient end. Samir shouted instructions for his café to close. He got in the driver’s side and the ambulance accelerated onto the road, the siren wailing into life but dying seconds later. I imagined an exasperated Faris telling Samir to turn the fucking thing off.
At the Etoile a man from the Norwegian embassy was addressing a mixed group of Westerners in English, telling them that there was nothing to worry about as long as they stayed in the hotel. He took the details of those whose departure had been delayed so he could let their charities know. As soon as he was done Liv stood on a chair.
‘The last thing I’m going to do is stay in this hotel,’ she declared in English. ‘I suggest we go to the camp – the more Europeans there the better.’ She pulled her black hair into a tight ponytail as if preparing to go for a long run.
‘Why, what do you think is going to happen?’ asked Fiona. Even with her shades on her anxiety was clear.
‘I don’t know exactly, but history tells us that it won’t be anything good.’ She lit a cigarette, puffing impatiently, and a multilingual discussion about what to do broke out. In the end half the people there decided they should go to the camp. Fiona, however, had already left the room. Liv joined Eli and me.
‘I’ll go with you,’ Eli said to her.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘She’s right, Ivan, we can’t sit here. Also, Youssef is there, remember.’
I nodded.
Liv hugged Eli and went to convince some others. I squeezed Eli’s hand and left for Najwa’s.
Najwa filled me in on what she knew: apparently the Israel Defense Forces were advancing along three fronts and would be in the streets below by tomorrow.
‘After all, who will resist them now – the fighters have gone, the mines have been cleared and most of the weapons handed over to the Lebanese army.’
She might as well have been talking to herself, pacing up and down in a trail of cigarette smoke. I yawned, feeling the effects of yesterday’s marathon. I wondered, now that Eli’s flight was cancelled, whether we’d be able to do it all again that night. I felt a pang of shame; we were being invaded and Eli’s flight home had been cancelled and all I could think about was sex. Najwa was handing me a package; it was to go to Dr Ramina at the American University Hospital.
‘Probably the last for a while,’ she said, as I tried to stuff the large envelope into my jacket without success. This time there’d been no attempt to camouflage it in newspaper.
The streets weren’t as busy now and most shops were closed or closing, the shutters clattering to the street in a burst of metallic noise. I turned onto my street, thinking I would cut through AUB to the hospital, which lay to the east of the campus. Halfway down the street and someone was shouting my name from a shiny black Mercedes coming towards me. I could see an arm waving from the back window but couldn’t see through the front screen due to the late sun reflecting on it.
At first I thought it must be Emile or one of his cronies, but when the car drew level I saw only strangers in the front, clean-shaven men in leather jackets. They were smiling. I stopped, peering into the back, and saw Lazy Eye Nabil alongside another man. He smiled when his good eye met mine and he started to open the door before the car had even stopped. My instinct was to turn and run but a calmer part of my brain told me to run in the direction I was walking, as they would have to reverse – already another car was pulling up behind them making that difficult. As I pulled away I knew I could easily outrun Lazy Eye, but I was panting by the time I reached a side street. I risked a look as I turned into it and saw them getting back into the car, yelling at the driver behind them to get out of the way. They were going to try to follow me in the car.
I ran as the whine of the reversing Mercedes’ engine followed me down the road. I heard a screech of brakes, some horn blowing and swearing but I didn’t stop to look. I reached the entrance to an alley and glanced back to see the Merc just turning onto the side street. I jumped into the alley, gambling on the fact that they were too far away to see me, and came to what looked like a dead end – a courtyard overlooked by apartment blocks on three sides and a high wall on the fourth lined with overflowing rubbish bins.
It was dead space; no doors into the apartments. I could hear the car coming down the street and climbed onto a putrid-smelling bin, disturbing some rats inside. I scrambled over the wall and landed on a patch of dirt, scattering some emaciated chickens. The chickens beat their scrawny wings in a hopeless attempt to fly. I was in a courtyard. I couldn’t hear the car any more but my heart was thumping too loudly and the courtyard echoed with squawking. I gestured desperately for them to settle down, but that only set them off again. I was still clutching the stuffed envelope from Najwa, now damp with sweat. It had torn and I could see Lebanese passports inside. I sat against the wall I’d just jumped over, trying to slow my breathing, thinking of the Tokarev sitting use
lessly in the apartment. I could see an iron gate which covered a door into a shuttered house but it was padlocked. My eyes stung from the sweat dripping off my forehead. I heard footsteps on the other side of the wall. I badly needed to urinate.
‘Are you sure he came in here?’ a voice asked.
‘No, the shit could have gone into any of the buildings on the street,’ said Lazy Eye in resignation.
‘Come on, let’s go, he’s not worth it,’ said the first voice.
‘It’s who he can lead us to,’ said Lazy Eye.
‘Can you hear chickens?’ said the first voice.
‘Come on, you guys,’ called a third, more distant voice.
The footsteps receded and it went quiet and the voices started up again but were too far away to make out what was being said. A car started and drove away. The chickens had calmed down; they were pecking fruitlessly in the dust. They looked as though their feathers had been nibbled and plucked, probably by rats. I waited for a long time before crawling on my knees to pick up a rusty tin lid. I used it to start digging in the dirt, making a hole big enough for the envelope, which I buried and covered. Only then did I piss against the wall, easing the pressure in my bladder. The wall looked impossibly high from this side and I had to take a running jump at it, clambering until I could get a leg over the top. It was only when I was on the other side that I stopped to think about where I should go. I looked for cigarettes, finding Asha’s key on the AUB keyring in my pocket. Her flat was the safest place I knew.
By the time I found the courage to emerge from the alley the streets were empty and it was starting to get dark. I walked as fast as possible to the AUB, avoiding my street. I had to convince the guard at the gate that I was allowed to enter, pretending that I couldn’t speak Arabic to avoid awkward questions. I realised that my mock outrage at being stopped didn’t sit well with my appearance, but the passport and AUB keyring seemed to convince him.
Once inside I was glad the apartment was empty. In the bathroom mirror I could see why the guard was reluctant to let me pass. The knees on my jeans were covered in ground-in chicken shit. My hands and wrists were scratched and my face was covered in dirt streaked by dried sweat. I made full use of the facilities then helped myself to the owner’s Canadian Club whisky. I even found ice in the freezer. Standing at the balcony door I lit a cigarette and held the whisky-flavoured ice in my mouth as long as I could. The BBC World Service led on the fact that Grace Kelly had been in a car accident. That was followed by an item on the entry of the IDF into west Beirut in order to ‘restore order’ after the vacuum left by the assassination of President-elect Bashir. No traffic was visible on the Corniche below. I was starting to relax with a second Canadian Club when I heard a distant rumbling that kept stopping and restarting, getting louder all the time. Then, through the palm trees lining the Corniche, I could see an Israeli tank, a sand-coloured Merkava, growling to a halt. It waited, then moved forward about a hundred metres before stopping again, spewing black smoke into the air. Soldiers followed behind, helmeted and wary, and I instinctively dropped to the floor of the balcony, worried that I might be seen. This then was the enemy, I thought; at last, we got to see them after experiencing their firepower for weeks. I had seen them before, but through binoculars across no-man’s-land at the airport, the shimmer of the August heat distorted by the lenses, making them look ghostly and unreal.
Now here they were, entering Beirut for the first time, with no resistance, just driving up the fucking Corniche without so much as a shot being fired. I watched as a column of these mechanical beasts tore up the tarmac. Eventually the line stopped and after a while the engines switched off to leave a stunning silence. Then, as if the whole event was being choreographed, the electricity cut out and the whole city went black.
Inside I lit some candles and, not knowing what to expect, burnt the photos of my parents that I’d rescued from our home. I kept just one, the one of all four of us taken in 1973, where we all looked so young.
16
I was woken at midnight by knocking, and staggered to the door, half expecting Asha or John. It was Samir. He came in and collapsed on the sofa, looking like he’d seen the devil.
‘They’re everywhere,’ he said, after catching his breath; I handed him a live cigarette and a beer from the still cold refrigerator. ‘They’ve surrounded the camp, no one’s allowed in or out – I’ve just tried to get back in.’
‘Where are the others, where’s Faris?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I dropped him and his friends in the camp this morning. Asha and John were already at the hospital; Liv and the others arrived later. I brought some of the others back to the Etoile. Then I tried to go back but couldn’t get in – the Jews have roadblocks everywhere.’
‘Maybe Faris is in hiding,’ I said.
‘No, he’s in the camp somewhere. Waiting.’ I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he gulped his beer.
‘Waiting for what?’
‘I don’t know, maybe the Israelis are planning to enter the camp at some point – the hospital is full of people from the camp, just come to spend the night, scared shitless.’
I told him about the tanks so we went and sat on the balcony in the dark and watched them far below. Nothing moved, but the dim moonlight made it possible to see their outlines.
‘You could take one of those out with an RPG from here,’ Samir said, a little too loudly for my liking. He was on his feet, measuring distances and angles with his hands.
‘You’d only get one shot before they blew the apartment away,’ I told him, worried that he’d talk himself into doing it for real. He sank back into his chair and we sat for a bit until it got too cold.
For the second day running I was woken by low-flying jets, their sonic boom reverberating over the city, a reminder of the terror they could inflict. I watched the window over the bed rattle, grateful for the criss-cross of tape on the glass. I found Samir standing on the balcony in his underwear drinking coffee, watching F-16S fly out to sea over the gunships. The column of tanks had disappeared from the Corniche below. I poured coffee and sat down, feeling uneasy at him standing by the railing.
‘I wonder what happened to that Soviet battleship?’ I said.
Samir shrugged dismissively. Throughout the siege, the Soviets had positioned a battleship offshore to monitor events. At times we’d wished they’d done more than simply watch. I didn’t understand how anyone could have let things carry on as they did, least of all the self-proclaimed peace-loving Soviet regime. An American battleship joined them at some point but neither saw fit to stop the Israeli gunships pummelling the city.
‘Like all the other fuckers, they don’t care what happens here; not enough to do anything – I mean really do something, not fuck about at the UN.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Do you think they would just watch if these things happened to them, in their country?’ he asked.
I’d lived long enough in Denmark to know that most people there, or indeed in the rest of the world, probably didn’t give more than a passing thought to what went on here, beyond what they had to sit through on the news, and even that was watered down and sanitised, according to Bob. But I wondered how much Samir cared about what went on elsewhere in the world. Maybe Liv had the right idea with her internationalist outlook. Maybe you couldn’t fix things in one place without fixing them everywhere.
‘I’ll tell you what needs to happen,’ Samir was saying. He turned away from the sea and came over to me. ‘They need to experience what we experience.’ He prodded me in the chest. ‘Do you know what we should do?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Have some breakfast.’
We fried some eggs and Samir made some fresh coffee. After we’d eaten and lit up I told him that I needed to get some things from my place.
He studied me. ‘Can’t go back, my friend?’
‘Do you remember Nabil?’ I said.
‘The guy with the eye? Yes, I haven’t seen him since the
siege.’
‘He works for the Israelis. He spotted me near the apartment.’
‘That son of a whore. That fucking son of a dog whore.’ He shook his head. ‘I always knew he was bad.’
‘You did? How so?’
He pointed at his eye. ‘He looked wrong.’
Later we were sitting in Samir’s yellow taxi two blocks from my house.
‘Give me the keys,’ he said, holding out his hand.
‘Are you sure you want to go?’
‘I drove your father around for over three months, my friend. When he left he told me to keep an eye on you. Give me the keys.’
I gave him the keys and told him what to get.
‘I’ll be twenty minutes.’
I looked at my watch, switched on the radio and moved the dial. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed that my father had asked Samir to look out for me. Local radio said that the IDF had occupied the whole of west Beirut and spoke of heroic resistance. I found the BBC World Service. They led on Grace Kelly, saying she’d died from her injuries. Then they spoke of Beirut and an IDF spokesman said that ‘2,000 PLO terrorists’ remained in Beirut and they were determined to root them out.
Samir was back with my duffle-bag, throwing it onto the back seat.
‘What now?’ Samir asked.
‘Let’s go to the Commodore. Bob might know what’s going on.’
We pulled onto Hamra Street to see Israeli soldiers crouching at street corners, nervously pointing their weapons everywhere. Most people seemed to be ignoring them, going about their business, mildly curious at the fact that yet more armed men were on the streets of Beirut, just in a different uniform.
‘We were mentioned on the news, after Grace Kelly.’
‘Which one is Grace Kelly?’ he asked, slowing the car due to traffic.
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