Sarah, who was trying to remember what time Nadea Raziyah came home on Mondays, because she wanted to say good-bye to her, asked vaguely, ‘Did you get any money out?’
‘Money! What do you think we are being thrown out for? They take everything, except what we can smuggle out. And it will be Lebanon next. I said to my husband, “What’s the use of coming here?” Another two years and we shall have to move on somewhere else. We should have gone to France. It is so difficult. Now, Madame, your husband is French. Why don’t you go while you can get your money out? When the Syrians take over Lebanon, what chance will you have then?’
‘I don’t think it’s as bad as all that. The Lebanese are good at keeping out of trouble. They’ll get along all right.’ What she really meant was that Marcel would get along all right, would know the right people and be well in the thick of things.
‘Not yet perhaps,’ cried Mrs Hourani, ‘but soon! You don’t understand, Madame, you don’t speak Arabic. They must go on now just to give the people something to shout about.’ She broke off and glanced at her watch. ‘Where is the bus? I shall be late for my appointment.’
At that moment two buses, one red, one blue, arrived from different directions. The red bus got to the corner first and the driver, a fierce-looking individual with a large moustache, stuck his head out of the window and yelled, ‘Beyrouth! Beyrouth!’
‘Not that one,’ said Sarah, putting a restraining hand on her companion’s arm, because Mrs Hourani, newly arrived and untutored in the subtleties of the Dhat Rhas bus service, was already stepping out onto the road. ‘He’ll take you halfway up the mountains before he turns back for town. He’s only trying to get in first.’
They waited. The driver of the red bus, finding he could not lure any passengers on board, became revengeful and obstructive, refusing to move his vehicle from the middle of the road where it stood, chugging and shaking and blocking the progress of the blue bus. A taxi appeared; horns began honking monotonously; the two bus drivers shouted at each other, then got out and, standing nose to nose like fighting cocks, launched into one of those violent but abortive arguments that are a feature of Beirut. It all came to nothing. Each driver returned, muttering, to his seat. The red bus backed a little, though not so much as to admit defeat, and the blue bus, by scraping its mudguard along the wall and knocking over a case of apples, managed to get by. Sarah and Mrs Hourani got into it and sat down behind the driver, a fat man whose countenance, now bereft of anger, looked jovial and kindly. Pictures of the Virgin Mary, stuck up along the windscreen, proclaimed him to be Christian. A string of blue beads dangled from the rear-vision mirror.
Amber beads for Muslims, blue beads for Christians, someone had told Sarah; blue, the colour of the Christian heaven and the Virgin’s robe. But someone else had said that whatever religion you were—Christian, Muslim or Druse—blue would protect you from the evil eye. Houses in the mountains had blue wooden shutters, donkeys wore blue bead collars. It was a vague country. Nobody was much interested in history or the question of origins and, when they were, usually in a dreamy, inaccurate way. Sarah was always correcting Michel Adib, her French professor, when he talked about the Phoenicians or the Crusades or anything more remote than the departure of the French. The present was the thing—the exciting, turbulent present. Politics, not history. The Lebanese could claim so much of history they had little reverence for it: there it was piled up behind them, millennium upon millennium. It bored them.
The blue bus began to move off on its journey to Beirut. It was on the verge of collapse and, for this reason only, moved slowly, shaking like a pneumatic drill. There was no knowing how long it would take to make the journey; if it stuck to its course it should get to the Place du Cannon in twenty minutes, but the drivers had a way of wandering far off their routes in search of passengers. On one occasion, Sarah remembered, the driver, attracted by a crowd of people at the end of a lane, headed his bus into them, crying, ‘Beyrouth! Beyrouth!’ out of the window, only to find himself in the middle of a funeral procession. It had taken an hour and a half to get into town that morning.
But on this day there was no such diversion. My last bus ride, she thought, as they rattled down the Rue de Damas past the racecourse and the groves of umbrella pines. It was like a pilgrimage. The thought, once having entered her head, fixed her mood. And on that her fate was decided.
The Place du Cannon, that morning, was in its usual state of animated confusion. Around lawns picked out by tattered palm trees and beautified with ponds and flower beds, cars and taxis honked, swooped, backed into one another and rushed for hapless pedestrians. Nearly all the cars were new (few Lebanese cars live to grow old) and large, for the Middle East pays no homage to modesty or discretion; their drivers handled them with a bravado and dexterity touching on the miraculous. Every man made his own rules: to give way to another until the very brink of death was contemptible. Here and there ineffectual traffic police stood gesticulating in a frenzied way and stopping not one line of traffic and then another, but an occasional isolated car, which seemed, through some faltering in the driver’s decision, disposed to stop anyway.
Sarah, leaving the bus terminus and entering the square from the top where the little dirty yellow trams rocked along the Rue des Martyrs, felt part of her life was rushing past her and leaving her stranded.
The spasm of revulsion that had sent her fleeing from Marcel that morning had passed, and she walked past the coffee shops and confectioners with their shallow trays of saffron sweets, her head filled with sober thoughts of the future. She was not going to change her mind about leaving Marcel, but the prospect of returning to London more or less penniless was not entrancing, and she walked slowly, hoping that something might happen to hold her back.
Beirut had suited her, had offered opportunities for her easy nature. Her spirit had thrived in its exhilarating atmosphere as her body had thrived in its hot summer sunshine. It asked her to accept a happy compromise; it was chaotic, but lusty and dynamic; order never made for rigidity or dullness and confusion stopped just short of anarchy. It was significant that although nobody followed the rules of the road there were few traffic jams—people still managed to get where they were going and had the added pleasure of being able to do so in an adventurous way. Even the ordinary daily round provided for excitement. You faced each new enterprise, however trivial, with the heat of battle in your blood—parking a car, getting a tram, buying a ticket for the cinema, all fell within the scope of contest. A woman could prove her ingenuity over such small matters—and was constantly doing so.
Sarah though of London and, in no mood to do justice to it, could visualise only fog and taxation forms.
Above her head the sky burned deeply blue; her shadow moved beside her, inky on the pavement. She walked on, passing tall Ethiopians with shining, coal-black faces who stood on street corners selling roasted nuts. The top of the square was bright with cinema hoardings—fat Egyptian film stars ogling from ill-drawn posters. Crowds of idle, black-eyed, noisy young men hung around the drink shops that sold orange and carrot juice, Lebanese girls wearing French and Italian clothes tripped past on high-heeled shoes and, outside the cafés at the top of the square, handsome men in amber robes and snow-white tasselled keffiyehs stared at the passing crowd over their hookahs. The air was thick with the exhaust of cars and the scent of hot ghee, coffee and roasting kebab.
At the bottom of the Place she stopped by the money-changers’ and, with a wallet of sterling notes, dollars and Lebanese pounds, felt one step nearer to departure. Her return ticket had not expired.
Now—a seat on the plane, the cold English summer, a job and bus queues. No one queued here. Personal pride would not permit it.
Turning the corner Sarah came into Bab Edriss and made a dash across the road. Here the traffic problems were further complicated by a tramline and crossroads at the top of the hill, where cars, hurtling from four different directions, poured into the street.
Near the
French suk service taxis waited one behind the other and hoarse-voiced touts shouted out for passengers, ‘El Hamra—service! El Hamra—service!’ The airway companies had their offices up a wide street to the left, but Sarah, enticed by the scent of freshly baked bread, roses and Damascus apricots, turned and entered the suk.
It was a small market, a narrow lane between tall houses with smaller side lanes leading off it, but Sarah knew of no place that gave her such a feeling of luxury and opulence, such a sense of nature’s abundance. Looking around at the flower stalls, the pyramids of vegetables and fruit, you would have thought that the seasons had been defied, that you had stepped into an extravaganza of the year’s productivity. Winter and high summer, the warm tropics and the chilly northern spring, were all lavishly represented, for snow still lingered on the high slopes of Mount Lebanon, yet summer had come to the Bekaa and the coast. Bundles of asparagus, aubergine, and sweet peppers shining like green wax kept company with winter leeks, artichokes and oranges. Strawberries and black cherries proclaimed the spring, and the first Bikfaya peaches, hard but red, nestled in vine leaves. The flower stalls were banked with carnations and roses, and small ragged boys were selling the last of the spring flowers, hyacinths and wild cyclamen that still bloomed in the mountains; at the end of the lane where it led out into the next street an old man standing in front of an enormous pink car held out posies of red anemones.
Sarah, stepping out into the sunshine, was tempted to buy some. Of all the wild flowers in Lebanon she particularly loved the anemone. In spring the olive groves in Dhat Rhas were splashed with their crimson. They grew abundantly, improvidently, thrusting out between the very stones of the orchard terraces.
The old man bent to the bucket at his feet and, taking out a posy, shook the water from the flower stems. ‘Coquelicot rouge, Madame, cinquante piastres.’
Sarah turned to glance back into the suk. The sunlight, striking through the narrow space between the high buildings, blazed upon marigolds and white daisies. Carriers with big yellow baskets trailed behind customers. A dirty youth with red hair, bequeathed to him perhaps from some Crusading ancestor, stood yelling in Arabic and waving bunches of wild broome.
‘Coquelicot rouge, cinquante piastres.’ The blood of Adonis, thought Sarah, remembering St Joseph’s church, that was built like a pagan temple. Coquelicot rouge—the symbol of a dying man whose blood stained the hillsides in the spring.
I’ll buy some for Nadea, thought Sarah. Nadea, who looked upon the past, except that part of it which had been favourable to her people, as a humiliation, had probably never heard of Adonis and would much prefer roses.
She went to open her bag, but halted. A man walking down the suk—a typical street Arab with dark eyes, a black moustache and stubble on his chin—fixed his eyes on her with a look of astonishment.
At that second the bomb went off.
C H A P T E R 2
The noise was deafening. A moment of silence and stillness followed upon it and then, as though at a signal, people started shouting and screaming. Sarah was unhurt, but the noise of the explosion had been like a blow. She felt shattered and powerless; and, although the bomb had evidently gone off directly behind her, she stood transfixed, staring into the suk.
Panic had broken loose. People rushed past her yelling. All over the suk could be heard the rasping sound of shutters being pulled down. One of the shopkeepers had caught hold of a man by the arms and the two of them, kicking and writhing, plunged about, knocking over fruit and flowers. Buckets crashed to the ground, and the white fleshy blooms of arum lilies scattered on the pavement were crushed under foot; new potatoes poured out from an overturned sack; and a child, running screaming into a shop, slipped and stumbled over them. On the edge of this scene, unmolested, one of the carriers was quietly helping himself to some cheese and salami sausages. Then somebody, running out from the suk, collided with Sarah and sent her sprawling.
She flung out her hands as she fell and knocked over the bucket of red anemones. An old man, who had either been knocked down also or was crouching on the ground in terror, crawled towards her, shaking his fist. His face with its dirty seamed cheeks and violent eyes was thrust close to her own. He was crying.
Suddenly she felt herself being lifted up and hauled away. The scent of carnations and burnt explosives gave way to Turkish tobacco. She felt too confused to look up at the man who had taken hold of her, and some strange attraction attached her to the chaotic scene so that she hung back in his arms and was dragged to a car and pushed in. She offered no resistance. It seemed advisable to get away from the suk and she supposed, vaguely, that someone was chivalrously rescuing her.
The car started up; she leaned out of the window for a last glimpse. On the pavement the old man was crawling on his knees in what looked to be a pool of blood. But it was not blood—only anemones.
But I did see blood, thought Sarah confusedly. In the butcher’s shop with the slaughtered beast bleeding in the gutter. It’s all over my shoe.
Then the car shot off from the pavement and, before she had time to collect her wits, they were careering down towards the Avenue des Francais. The shops, the pavement fled by. People were running, police whistles blowing and a confused shouting, audible in the short intervals when the man beside her stopped blaring his horn, coming from the distance.
Every Beirut motorist drives at full speed, but this was the first time that Sarah had been in a car with someone who was seriously in a hurry. The car, moreover, was the largest that she had ever been in. It seemed as wide as the road. The pink bonnet loomed way ahead and silver fin-like structures sticking out at the back gave it an appearance that was both futuristic and predatory. Inside it was upholstered in black and had every possible gadget, including a telephone. Oil, thought Sarah, and looked around her for her handbag. But it had gone.
‘Stop!’ she cried. ‘Stop! Put me down!’ The man beside her took no notice but sat with set lips, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. He looked to be around forty, perhaps less, and was remarkably handsome. He held the wheel with one hand on which flashed an enormous sapphire ring; the other, in the manner of Beirut drivers who disdain to keep both hands on the wheel, dangled out of the window. ‘Stop!’ cried Sarah. ‘Please stop!’
‘What is the matter with you?’ he said. ‘I am not abducting you. I am saving your life.’
‘My handbag, I dropped it! It’s back in the suk!’
‘It can’t be helped,’ said her benefactor indifferently and swerved to avoid a taxi. He had slackened his pace and, every now and again, Sarah noticed, his eyes shifted to the rear vision mirror. Amber beads dangled on the windscreen. A damn Muslim, thought Sarah. High-handed with women.
‘Who are you to say it can’t be helped? We haven`t got oil pouring out of our ears, like you Saudis or whatever you are. Do you realise you’ve paid more for this ridiculous car than most people have to live on for years. Put me down!’
‘I am Syrian,’ said her rescuer haughtily, his voice expressive of all the contempt that one Arab feels for another. Every man in the Middle East is proud to be what he is; to suggest that he might be anything else is to insult him with an implication of the second rate. And though the Arabs talk endlessly of unity, in their hearts they despise their less fortunate brethren for belonging to other countries, other tribes, other villages. ‘I have saved your life,’ he said, ‘and instead of thanking me you insult me.’
‘I insult you! You damn Arabs think you have a copyright on insult. Well, we have a touch of pride too, so remember that instead of raving on about your grievances. My life was not in danger and if it were I could look after it.’
He glanced at her and smiled. ‘So, an English girl with hot, red blood in her veins. I have never thought to meet one.’
Sarah was angry and disconcerted. She made no reply. ‘I shall buy you another bag,’ he said, still smiling, ‘if the loss of such an insignificant article distresses you.’ He spoke English with very little accent.
He glanced again at the rear-vision mirror and increased his speed.
Damn the bag! It had my passport in it and my air ticket to London and all the money I have in the world! Realisation of her plight struck her forcibly. ‘Put me down!’ she cried. ‘I must go back.’
But the man beside her paid no heed. The sea came into view, a blue shimmer dotted with the black heads of swimmers. Here hotels and cafés faced the water and shop windows glittered with polished brass and Damascus brocade. News of the explosion had apparently not yet reached this quarter for, apart from the usual confusion of traffic, the atmosphere was relatively calm. Men in grey suits and red fez hats sat in the corner coffee shop, a photographer with a camera on a tripod trailed a crowd of girls, and street urchins, who would have been the first to show signs of excitement if anything untoward were afoot, were busy claiming baksheesh from the motorists who had parked their cars along the sea front.
The road narrowed. They shot past nightclubs of doubtful reputation and came into the next bay. The sea slapped against the stones of the old wall; a man was aquaplaning in front of the Hotel St Georges, and another in pink shorts and a large straw hat held a fishing rod over the balustrade.
‘You won’t find your bag,’ said the Syrian. ‘You can’t go back. More bombs may be thrown and you’d be killed. Do you know what it’s like? First a bomb goes off and then people start fighting. How much money did you have?’
‘Thirty pounds,’ she said meekly. ‘And my passport and my air ticket.’
‘Why do you need an air ticket?’
‘I was leaving Beirut this evening if there was a seat on a plane. I was on my way to BOAC.’
Arms for Adonis Page 2
