‘What happened here yesterday?’ I asked, partly to distract him.
‘Yesterday they came for us – yesterday morning.’ He yelped at the needle going into his tender flesh. ‘After the doctors left, the Phalangists came round the beds and removed some of the men. They killed some others in their beds.’
I ignored the digging that was going on at the other end; Asha was saying something about the need for reconstructive surgery.
‘Then what happened?’
‘The Red Cross took some of us away to the other hospitals is what happened.’ He looked at what they were doing to his foot. ‘That girl with the missing leg is lucky – she went to England before all this happened.’
‘Yes, I’d forgotten about her.’ They’d gone with the BBC team only the day before the camp was sealed off.
‘The interpreter went too, you know,’ he said. He looked at me as if he and I were stuck here through some negligence on my part. Bloody swabs dropped at my feet.
‘They say it rains all the time in London,’ I told him. He frowned with pain.
‘Is that the worst thing you can say about it?’ he asked.
Back at the Etoile Eli was delighted to see Youssef again.
‘I’m so glad you found him,’ she said. She bent over to give him a hug and a kiss in his oversized wheelchair. He squirmed at this attention but I saw him trying to get a good eyeful of cleavage and he managed to get his hands on her waist. He winked at me when he saw me glaring at him. The news of his aunt had possibly not sunk in or, in light of what else had happened, he couldn’t process it. Asha wanted Youssef to stay at the hotel but the hotel manager wouldn’t hear of it. Perhaps he thought having a wounded boy staying would put off the tourists. I readied myself to translate a fight between him and Asha but she just shrugged and said she’d take him to the AUB until things stabilised in the camp. John took the wheelchair and they got ready to go.
‘Are you going too?’ Eli said, touching my arm. Asha and John were standing behind Youssef, looking at me as if I was a wayward son.
‘I’ll catch up with you,’ I told them.
‘We’ll expect you for dinner,’ Asha said. I headed upstairs behind Eli before Youssef made some lewd comment.
Her room was empty.
‘Where’s Liv?’ I asked.
‘She’s at the embassy, organising the trip back.’ Eli sat on the end of her bed and patted the mattress beside her. Close up she smelt clean, which made me aware of my own dirty state; I stunk of post-massacre camp and unclean hospitals. I put my hand on her knee.
‘When’s she leaving?’ I asked, moving my hand up her thigh. She took my hand and held it in hers.
‘We’re both leaving together,’ she said.
I removed my hand and rubbed between my eyes. I stood up.
‘When?’ I asked.
‘Maybe tomorrow – probably tomorrow, if Liv can organise it.’ She patted the bed beside her again but I moved to the window. I could see Asha, John and Youssef move down the road in the distance. They looked like a family together. I now wished I’d gone with them.
‘But the airport is still closed,’ I said, hating my petulant tone.
‘We’re going through east Beirut, getting a boat to Cyprus. That’s what Liv has gone to the embassy for, to get them to drive us to the port.’
‘Then tonight is our last night.’
She crossed her legs and my chest constricted; it was like she was closing a door. I watched her, thinking of what to say.
‘I’m going home to my partner, Ivan.’ I winced at her manner; that of an adult explaining something to a difficult child. ‘I’ll be seeing him tomorrow or the day after. I don’t think anything will happen tonight.’
I was trying to keep quiet, telling myself that keeping quiet was the right thing to do, the manly thing to do. ‘That’s not what I mean. I mean just sleeping together. Next to each other. Like we used to before we, you know. I mean, what’s changed?’
She shook her head and smiled, raised her eyebrows at what I was saying. I found her smile patronising.
‘Everything has changed,’ she said.
I looked out of the window again but Asha, John and Youssef had disappeared from view.
I arrived at the AUB apartment in time for dinner. We sat outside even though the evenings were a little colder now. Youssef was shiny from being scrubbed clean, John joking about how he’d had to run two baths before the water ran clear, how they’d rigged a sling over the bath to keep his foot dry. I picked at Asha’s lentil dhal. Youssef complained about the food; he’d not had curry before. I let him eat my rice while Asha fried him a couple of eggs.
Samir turned up after dinner, ashen-faced with tiredness. He refused to even sit down, saying that he couldn’t stay long. Youssef and I were alone outside, he with huge earphones clamped to his head, nodding in time to whatever John had put on. Samir ruffled Youssef’s hair but he pushed Samir’s hand away, annoyed.
‘Did you tell him about his aunt?’
‘He’d already guessed.’
Samir was going to touch Youssef’s head again but thought better of it.
‘I was hoping Liv was still here,’ he said, picking at leftovers on the table.
I told him that she was at the Etoile with Eli.
‘So why aren’t you there? Aren’t they leaving tomorrow?’
I mumbled something about having already said goodbye; if you could count our hug and her plea for me to do something with my life a goodbye. It had been more like seeing off an anxious aunt.
Samir looked at me and shook his head. ‘You ever become a man with her, my friend?’ he asked in Arabic.
‘Is that how you become a man?’ I asked.
He picked up a piece of bread and rolled it between his hands until it was a doughy ball. ‘I’ve been to see Faris’s family. I wanted to let Liv know that he’d told them about her.’
‘He had family?’ I asked.
‘Of course. Do you think he was created from dust?’ He moved to the living room where no doubt he thought he could have a more intelligent conversation. Asha was wondering aloud whether the massacre would be a turning point for the Palestinians, whether the world would do something to tackle the problem. John just shrugged his shoulders, swirling whisky around in his glass. It was Samir that spoke.
‘It wasn’t just Palestinians killed in the camp, it was Lebanese too. Maybe 25 per cent of them, maybe more, but we’ll never know. They were only poor uneducated Lebanese, so no one will worry.’ He stopped, aware now that we were all looking at him, then continued. ‘It’s the same for the Palestinians. Do you think any educated or rich Palestinians died in the camp? Do you think any PLO cadres were there? No, only Faris and his friends were stupid enough to be there.’
I’d never seen Samir so worked up.
‘It’s always the way,’ said John.
‘I have to believe this will change things – we have to have hope for the future,’ said Asha.
Samir snorted angrily. ‘I like you and I salute you for being here,’ he said, saluting. ‘But you are being like a child. This will change nothing except maybe some headlines for a few weeks.’
I wanted to agree with Asha but Samir had history on his side.
‘Then Faris is gone for no reason,’ she said harshly.
‘Faris is gone, probably dead, because he tried to defend the camp; he wanted to do the right thing which was the stupid thing. But he has wasted his life for nothing, the camp could not be defended by such a small number of fighters. It was a foolish gesture.’
To me, Faris was a hero and a martyr, words that I felt had been devalued over the years by too many deaths. Faris was someone who I could only hope to look up to rather than aspire to be like.
‘Faris was a hero,’ I said, blushing. ‘Because he did the only thing he knew, which was to try and defend those people.’
Samir left, after hugging Asha, and we went to bed. Youssef and John were sharing his room whi
le Asha was in the main bedroom and I was on the sofa. I could hear Youssef snoring as soon as he put his head down but I couldn’t sleep despite the exhaustion that infused my body. I was trying to stop images from the day before coming into my head, trying not to see the small shape on the table connected to the body on the floor. To counter them I tried to think of Eli and our afternoon together in the apartment but things got confused in my head. First Eli naked in the bed, then the girl straightening her dress in her house in the camp, with her dead parents in the room and her dead brother outside, telling us that she’d been raped. I gave up and went out to the balcony. I was surprised to see John there, smoking a cigarette. I’d never seen him smoke before, except for hashish. I sat opposite him and removed a cigarette from the soft packet like I’d seen Faris do, by tapping the bottom. We looked out over the Mediterranean sea, illuminated by a full moon. I was just in my underwear and a T-shirt and goose pimples were forming on my legs. The cold helped to repress my thoughts.
‘Can’t sleep either?’ he asked eventually.
I shook my head. We watched a car travel down the Corniche, its headlights picking out palm trees in the central reservation.
‘Will they ever go away, do you think? The images, I mean, and the smell …’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, laddie. No, I don’t see how they can.’
22
A week after Eli had gone home I opened her letter for the second time. I was in the sitting room of my apartment, the table covered in empty wine, beer and vodka bottles. The first time I’d opened it was the night before, when it was handed to me by Lene, a medical technician fresh off the plane from Oslo. The first thing I’d seen on opening it was the money and the photograph, which I had left in the envelope, not wanting to take them out in front of the others. Lene was here for two weeks to instruct the locals in the use of some new intensive-care monitoring equipment that had been donated by the Norwegian government. I had left her sleeping in my bed. I counted $500 and put it in my wallet. I pulled out the letter and the photograph fell from it. It was of Eli and me taken in this room. We were sitting next to each other on the sofa with our glasses raised to the photographer who must have been sitting where I was now. We were smiling, our shoulders touching because we’d been asked to move together so we would be in frame. On the back she’d written, ‘The first night we met.’
Her one-page letter was addressed to ‘My Beautiful Boy’ and said the same things that it had said the last time I read it. Liv was going to Nicaragua, where apparently the Sandinistas were in control, an actual people’s revolution had happened, according to Liv. The money was to ‘get out of Beirut and do something with your life, to fulfil your potential’. Also, Lene was ‘very nice’ and I should make her feel at home, like I had Eli. I read the letter again, but could find nothing beyond the kind and concerned tone. I didn’t know what I was looking for – a declaration of love, perhaps, an emotional outpouring of regret at leaving Beirut. Lene had told me that Eli had asked her to look after me and last night, when the others had gone, she’d done just that. I wasn’t sure whether it was what Eli’d had in mind. When I joked with Lene about it afterwards she’d said, in all seriousness, ‘But ja, of course it is.’ And maybe it was what Eli had wanted – to put herself out of my mind by putting someone else in my bed. But Lene wasn’t Eli, far from it. She was younger – only a couple of years older than me – with cropped blonde hair and lots of mascara. She was also more energetic. Last night she’d easily matched my frantic need and hadn’t worried about exquisitely prolonging the moment, which Eli had ambitiously tried to teach me in one afternoon. But by one in the morning Lene was asking me about Samir and I instinctively knew that she would probably be with him next.
Lene came into the room, barefoot and dressed only in one of my T-shirts. I could see the tendons in her thighs. Eli had a roundness to her, which seemed more feminine.
‘Is this your place?’ she asked. She stretched her angular body and then lay on her side on the sofa opposite, propped on one elbow, her head resting on her hand.
‘I think it belongs to friends of my parents,’ I said. I watched my T-shirt ride up over Lene’s bony hip.
‘Who pays the rent then?’ she asked. I didn’t know who paid the rent. I wished she would put some clothes on.
‘Eli said you were in the camp after what happened. What was it like?’
I looked over her shoulder at a crack in the wall. If she’d asked me that last night, both of us smoking, looking up at the ceiling in the dark, I might have been able to answer. Morning, with the low sun illuminating every corner of the room, wasn’t the right time for such questions.
‘Samir will be here soon, to take you to the hospital,’ I said. She sat up, trying to pull the shirt down over her thighs while appraising me. I looked down at the photo.
‘I’ll take a shower,’ she said. Nowadays we had water four days out of five, and electricity. The end of September had brought with it torrential rains, which had washed away the accumulated dust of the summer bombardment. The subsequent flooding had brought more bodies to the surface in the camp, like the tide used to bring them to the shore during the Civil War, bloated and decaying. We were dressed and breakfasted and waiting for Samir as we drank coffee. Lene looked professional now, like she’d put on a different persona, not just clothes. I struggled to think of something to say to her.
‘What will you do with the money?’ she asked.
‘The money?’
‘Yes, the money Eli sent you. It was there, wasn’t it?’ she said, concerned that it hadn’t been in the envelope.
‘I don’t know yet – I haven’t thought about it.’
‘Eli said you should go home,’ she said.
Did Eli happen to say where home was, I wanted to ask. But I was just annoyed by the fact that Eli had discussed this with Lene, like I was a problem to be solved. I felt as if Eli had been disloyal.
When I opened the door to Samir he smelt of aftershave and cigarettes and I got a fleeting sense of Faris. As he drank his coffee he told me about the new falafel shop he was going to open in the camp, on the main street.
‘Even the poor and dispossessed deserve decent falafel with special sauce, my friend,’ he said.
Lene gave an overenthusiastic cackle.
‘Are you coming into the camp?’ Samir asked me.
‘I’ll make my own way. I have something to do first.’
Samir shrugged and headed for the front door. Lene kissed me on the cheek and annoyingly ruffled my hair while Samir jangled his car keys impatiently in the hall. She didn’t say that she’d see me later and I didn’t ask her because I wasn’t sure I wanted to see her. As I closed the door behind them I realised that I was in the apartment alone for the first time since I believed it was ‘blown’ by Nabil, but now it didn’t bother me. I knew what I had to do.
In the bedroom I rummaged in my duffle-bag and pulled out a battered address book. I put it in my back pocket along with Eli’s letter and my passport and headed for the Commodore.
I found Bob sitting with a thin sweaty man in the hotel bar. They were at the table where Stacy used to write on her legal pads.
Bob gestured to the man after greeting me. ‘This is Peter – my replacement.’ He turned to Peter. ‘And this is Ivan, the best interpreter in Beirut.’
I took Peter’s limp and clammy hand. His hair was plastered to his forehead. His smile was nervous and brief, his gaze quickly shifting back to Bob, dismissing me as someone he didn’t need to bother with. I wiped my hand on my jeans, turning to Bob.
‘I need a favour. I need to make an international phone call,’ I said.
Bob didn’t hesitate, he knew what I was asking. ‘You can use the agency phone.’ He got up, saying he would take me there. On the way out of the lobby I processed what he’d said earlier.
‘What do you mean, replacement?’
‘Yeah, I’m going to Managua.’
‘Don�
��t tell me: it’s in Nicaragua.’
He looked at me to see if I was pulling his leg. ‘It’s the capital, yes.’
‘Isn’t Stacy there?’
‘She’s somewhere in Nicaragua.’ We went into a side office in the agency and he pointed out the desk and telephone. ‘I’ll be in the edit room, in case anyone asks why you’re here.’ He grinned and closed the door behind him. I took out my address book and found my grandmother’s number in Denmark. It would be early morning there, and at that time she would probably be making breakfast for herself.
She answered on the third ring. She wasn’t gushing or emotional; it was as if we had spoken last week rather than six months ago. She told me that she’d spoken to my mother only two days before. My parents were worried and had been trying to contact me. No, she told me, I shouldn’t go to them, my mother had said I should go to Denmark if I wanted to leave Beirut, because they didn’t know what their plans were. They would be visiting Denmark at some point. That sounded like maybe they trusted me to make my own decision. My grandmother asked me if I needed money and I told her I didn’t. I paused before telling her about Youssef. She asked me a couple of questions then she was quiet. I waited, listening to the crackles on the line.
‘Can you ring me the day after tomorrow?’ she said.
‘Yes, I’ll try.’ I hoped Bob would still be here.
‘How are you, Ivan?’ she asked. It was typical of her to leave this question until last. It was a real question and she wanted a real answer. I looked down, watching my tears pool on the metal desk. ‘I don’t know who’s paying the rent where I’m living,’ was all I could think to say.
She laughed and it echoed over the line, like her voice was being bounced around the world.
The space was cramped and the walls pockmarked with bullet holes. Rubble and dust were everywhere. John, however, thought it was perfect.
‘This can be the reception area and the examination room could be in here,’ he said, pointing into a room the size of a large cupboard.
‘There is no room for a desk,’ Samir said. He was trying to brush dust from his shirt.
Sabra Zoo Page 17
