Arms for Adonis

by Charlotte Jay

  ‘Get back!’ shouted Alan.

  ‘We like them,’ explained Nigel, ‘because they are different from us.’ The Arabs, few of whom could understand what he said, shuffled closer around him, peering watchfully into his face. ‘We like things that are different. It would be boring if everything were the same.’

  ‘Aha! You admit it!’ cried the Iranian. ‘You want to keep things for yourselves. You grind them under foot! It interests you that they sit here in the dust with dogs. Nobody built a road for them. You see the temple that the Romans built. Why did they not build roads for the people?’

  ‘That’s just what they did do,’ said Nigel patiently. ‘Nobody built better roads than they did. And what’s that got to do with taking pictures?’

  ‘These men sit in the dust wearing old-fashioned clothes and no hats. They put white cloths on their heads like desert barbarians when they ought to wear hats in the modern way like we do.’ The Iranian smiled suddenly, as though aware, all in a happy rush of feeling, of his superiority to the Baalbek Arabs; but in the next moment his face had darkened with anger. ‘You photograph them and print their pictures in newspapers and mock at them.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous.’

  ‘It does not matter!’ cried the Iranian, suddenly beginning to shout with excitement. ‘You must respect the customs of the people. Here it is the custom not to take photographs. There is supposed to be a revolution starting. Perhaps, who knows, it is starting here. You never can tell. Why did you not ask their permission? Aha! That is it!’ He turned and addressed the company.

  The Arabs listened to him attentively. At length a few shadowy smiles appeared. One of the older men began to order people around and at his direction the men lined up into two straggling rows and shuffled closer together.

  ‘What are they doing?’ asked Margaret hysterically.

  ‘I think they’re getting ready to have their photographs taken,’ said Alan.

  She burst out laughing. ‘Please control yourself,’ he said sharply. ‘That wasn’t funny!’

  ‘Don’t I know it! The filthy brutes!’

  In the meantime other people hurried up to be photo­graphed. Urchins came running, but the original group wanted to keep the company exclusive and shouted to them to go away. At last they were ready, each man standing to attention and looking glassily into the distance.

  ‘Now, Madame, they are ready!’ said the Iranian. ‘Now you can take a picture and please give them a copy afterward.’

  ‘Not if it kills me!’ cried Margaret.

  ‘Madame! You must not insult them by refusing.’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ said Nigel quickly.

  ‘Et moi aussi!’ cried out both Frenchmen, hurrying forward with their tripods.

  Alan looked back at the shop, in sudden recollection. Leaving Margaret, he hurried across the street. Ibrahim, his wife and five children filled up the doorway. He pushed past them into the shop. Ibrahim’s grandmother sat in a corner among wooden camels and leather slippers, talking to herself. Ishmael and Sarah had disappeared.

  ‘Where are they?’ He grabbed Ibrahim by his fleshy shoulders and swung him round. ‘Where are the lady and Ishmael Qazzaz?’

  Ibrahim shook himself free of Alan’s grip and, moving slowly past him, took his place behind the counter. ‘They have gone.’

  ‘Where?’ The ugly scene in the street outside had established a mood, seemed a preface to disaster. ‘Where did they go?’ he shouted.

  Ibrahim, his expression sulky and obscure, merely shrugged his shoulders.

  C H A P T E R 1 1

  Ishmael and Sarah left the town by way of a narrow lane that wound between low stone walls. On either side poplar trees, growing close and slender, bent to the wind like ripe barley and in its fitful gusts burst into a flurry of silver; the air was filled with their rustling and with the ripple of water from innumerable hidden streams.

  Ishmael drove fast, swerving to avoid occasional goats, chickens and children, and for some time neither of them spoke. Sarah was feeling a little ashamed of the way in which they had abandoned the rest of the party, but there had been no time to think. A moment ago she had been sitting in Ibrahim’s shop trying to make out what was going on outside; then Ishmael had grabbed her by the hand whispering, ‘Hurry, Miss Lane! I’ve got the keys. It’s now or never. It’s your only chance!’

  The lane led them out onto a broader road that pointed straight across the valley to the mountains. At this point the Beka’a begins its slow ascent toward the plain of Homs, where the Orontes rises in a gush of crystal waters; but the climb up onto the northern plain was not here perceptible; the valley was mountain-locked, inviolable; the great ranges enclosed it in an immense peace and isolation. Cloud shadows brooded over a patchwork of fields, the green of wheat alternating with the dark red and purple of ploughed land; and the valley looked so sumptuous in its vivid colours and the thick plush of crops, that the mountain slopes, dressed with little but thorn bushes and boulders, seemed to be plunging down into some softer, richer element swathed at their feet.

  Ishmael increased his speed; and still no word passed between them. The Baalbek party and their troubles had drifted out of Sarah’s mind and a curious despondency possessed her. She would have found it hard to say why, but now that she was doing the very thing that she had wanted to do, she felt sad. It was so simple after all. Influenced subtly by Alan’s cautiousness, she had come to believe that Emile Khalife at Chakra was a long way away and that a long time and a great deal of trouble would be spent in reaching him. But now they were almost there. In another twenty minutes or so they would reach Chakra. Then she would ask to be taken to Emile Khalife, she would give him Colonel Ahmed’s letter, and that would be the end of it.

  Colonel Ahmed only lived through the task he had imposed on her and by completing it she would condemn him to extinction. Already, as they drew nearer to the mountains he was losing substance in her imagination. Death had already claimed him.

  Suddenly Ishmael burst out, ‘Miss Lane, do you ever feel that you’re just so fed up with everything that you’d like to get away—right away from everything you’ve ever known and start your life all over again?’

  She looked at him in surprise. He sat beside her, gripping the wheel and staring at the road ahead of him. There was a look of such suffering on his face that she felt shocked, as though she had looked up to find a stranger sitting in his place. ‘Of course, everyone feels that sometimes.’

  ‘You know, I lived six years in London. Dear old London! I wish I could go back. I wouldn’t mind what I did, just to get out of this place. Miss Lane, you don’t know what it’s like. Nothing can ever be the same again.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s like that everywhere? And this country is so beautiful.’ She looked out over the splendid valley, lying calm as a lake, and peaceful, with the snow peaks glittering above it. The fields through which they were now passing were divided by rose hedges covered in pink blossoms, and peasant women wearing black head shawls and long skirts of red and purple were picking the roses, stuffing them into sacks and loading them onto donkeys. ‘What are they doing with all the roses?’ she asked.

  ‘They take them back to their villages,’ replied Ishmael in an abstracted voice. ‘They make scent out of them. It’s quite an important industry.’

  The sight of the women plundering the rose hedges moved Sarah deeply and introduced the feeling of unreality that was to claim her. She wondered what was troubling Ishmael. She knew nothing about him, and wondered if he was a refugee who had been driven from his home and from fields and orchards similar to these. She felt inexpressibly sad for him, and sad because she carried a letter from a dead man in her handbag. ‘After a year,’ she said, ‘you’d be so homesick you’d have to come back.’

  ‘You know, Miss Lane,’ said Ishmael, after a moment’s silence, ‘I’m Palestinian, if you can say you’re something that doesn’t exist anymore. I said that to an American last week and he sai
d, “Now, you know, I’m a bit vague about all this, just exactly where is Palestine?” “It isn’t anywhere,” I said. We had a house and land in Jaffa. You should have seen our orchards. You should have seen our oranges, Miss Lane. The oranges they grow here are like walnuts compared with ours. Then the Jews came. The British were there and they did try and stop them after a bit, when it was too late. Nobody could stop the Jews—they just came—and more and more and more of them. And then those damn Egyptians. They told us that if we didn’t get out we’d be killed because they’d be dropping bombs on us. So out we went, my mother and Georgette and me, and did they drop bombs? Not on your life, they didn’t. And the Syrians and the Lebanese—they said we were martyrs and heroes and all that rot—they were going to do everything in the world to help us, and do you know what they did? We got to the Lebanese border. It was ten o’clock at night and it was cold. They helped us all right. They gave us cups of coffee and made us pay for them afterwards. Three times what we’d have had to pay in Beirut. That’s how much help they gave us. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed behind with the Jews. My two elder brothers did and they’ve done pretty well for themselves. They told me I was a fool to listen to Radio Cairo and I was.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you go back? It’s not too late.’

  ‘What’s the good? Miss Lane, if I went back and the Egyptians ever did go in, they’d shoot me on the spot.’

  ‘But you’re all right now, aren’t you? I mean you’ve got the travel agency, and you like Alan—’

  ‘I’m devoted to him. I’d do absolutely anything for him. But, you know, he doesn’t understand me.’

  She looked up at him. He stared straight ahead and the sun, striking full on his face, glittered on the tears in his eyes.

  It was then that she began to feel afraid. Why was he crying? Why was he talking like this?

  Yet what was there to be afraid of? Nothing had happened except that they were driving a little faster; nothing alarming had come into view.

  On their right they were passing a small village, its mud houses long and flat, and shining white, with patterns in soft bright blue, the blue of the Virgin’s robe, painted around their doorways. A Christian village. There was the square church with a rounded arch over its door and a belfry topped with a small white dome. A caravan of donkeys trotted along the road ahead of them, bells tinkling on their blue bead collars and Hessian sacks loaded on their backs. Every now and again, from a split in one of these sacks, a pink rose dropped to the ground. It was quite a long caravan and they slowed up to pass it, for it was taking up most of the road. A man walking in front turned a handsome, swarthy face towards them as they passed.

  The land began to tilt toward the hills. Wheat fields and poplars, the red Beka’a tulips, nomads with their goat–hair tents—all this in a matter of moments was behind them. They entered a world of white rocks and wild lavender. They passed the first stone house commanding a few acres of heroic terracing, the house and the terraces hardly distinguishable from the barren slope out of which they had been fashioned. Behind the houses, high up on a cliff face, goats patterned the sun-drenched rocks like strings of black beads; there was no one in sight but the shepherd who watched them.

  Ishmael changed gear for the ascent. One would have thought that he was taking the hill on foot, for he was out of breath. Sarah saw that his round face glistened with sweat.

  A wilderness was closing around them. No one seemed to live on these barren westward slopes of the mountains. Sarah’s perceptions were playing tricks with her and the hot, dry desolation of the landscape affected her strangely, as though their way were leading her into danger, when in fact they were travelling swiftly and comfortably to Emile Khalife.

  Emile Khalife. Even this name rang with a new resonance. Who was Emile Khalife?

  It was beyond belief! Only two days before she had left Marcel, vowing sternly to be wiser in the future, and an hour later a handsome stranger had only to look at her, to speak softly, to plead. Would her fatal susceptibilities always override her judgement?

  Then ahead of them was a sign post and the road forked. Ishmael turned his wheel and took the left hand road.

  ‘No,’ said Sarah. ‘This is the wrong way.’

  Ishmael increased his speed. ‘Mr Ishmael stop! This is not the way to Chakra.’

  ‘Miss Sarah, I know every stone of this country. I have driven tourists to Chakra many times.’

  ‘Stop! Stop!’

  Ishmael stopped and, changing into reverse, shot back to the sign post.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘Read that.’

  The arm of the sign post pointing left carried the word ‘Chakra.’

  As she looked at it for the first time her trust in Colonel Ahmed faltered. The loss of her trust was sad and heavy like bereavement. As with Marcel, he had made a fool of her. She also regretted not having trusted Ishmael. She was shocked and disappointed, feeling that Colonel Ahmed had betrayed her. It was not until later that she remembered that the signpost had been newly painted; perhaps on that very day. And this error in judgement, and bereavement, confused her.

  In the meantime Ishmael again took the left-hand road and she glanced at him, wondering if this was the time to apologise.

  ‘Mr Ishmael, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, everything will be perfectly all right.’

  The road turned again. Fifty yards ahead a group of big grey boulders hung over it like the posts of a ruined gateway and, from behind these, six men stepped out into the centre of the road. Their kaffiyehs were drawn over the lower part of their faces, swathing their heads so that only eyes and nose were visible; heavy leather bandoliers crossed their bodies; they carried rifles. One man advanced ahead of the others and held up his hand.

  Ishmael slowed the car to a standstill and they crowded around it.

  ‘Who are these men?’ cried Sarah. ‘What do they want?’

  As though impelled against his will to look at her, Ishmael turned. His lips trembled. His face was haggard and drawn. ‘How—how—should I?’ he gasped.

  One of the men opened the door and stood silently beside it, waiting for him to get out. Ishmael shouted at him in Arabic, then slid around in his seat, kicked out with both feet and lunged forward, driving his head into the man’s chest. Two men sprang forward and, grabbing him by the arms, hauled him from the car. Sarah watched as they dragged him to the side of the road and threw him down. He flung out an arm toward her.

  ‘Miss Sarah, don’t worry … These bullies!’

  They closed around him. Broad backs and flapping Lebanese trousers hid him from view. She wondered what they were doing to him; whatever it was, it must have been instantly effective for there was no sound from Ishmael.

  She felt curiously unmoved by his fate. Perhaps some reservation in her mind neutralised compassion; perhaps she was numbed by surprise. Yet was she surprised? For the past five minutes or so, for a reason that she could not now remember, she had been expecting something like this to happen.

  I must hide the letter, she thought; but there was no chance of doing so now, for the men were coming back to the car. The tallest of them, the man who had grabbed Ishmael, came and stood by the window and looked in at her. His face, or all that she could see of it behind the swathes of white cloth, was dark, brick red; the eyes piercing blue.

  She had not yet fully accepted what had happened. By one of those unpredictable tricks of the imagination she saw the scene and herself in it with detachment, as though these things were happening to someone else. She stared calmly into the face of the blue-eyed man. ‘What do you want?’ she said in English and then in French. The man did not answer, but jerked his head at her as an indication that she should get out of the car. When she did not move he took hold of her by the wrists and dragged her out. ‘Let me go! I can get out!’ He let her go and she stood on the road, her legs suddenly soft with fear.

  They’re going to kill me now, she th
ought. Like Ishmael. She looked across expecting to see his body huddled on the side of the road, but a group of men still hid it from view. She did not need to see him, her imagination informed her and, drawing upon her store of violence, she remembered Colonel Ahmed and the old man in the French suk crawling about among his broken, blood-coloured flowers.

  But she was not to be killed or, at any rate, not at that moment. Two of the men took hold of her and led her down the road away from the car. She struggled to shake herself free. ‘Leave me alone! I can walk on my own!’ But they insisted on holding her as though to impress upon her the fact of her captivity.

  Sarah upbraided them futilely. ‘This is outrageous! You’ll all be put in jail. The British Embassy shall hear of this!’

  She did not suppose that they understood her, but she knew that people in the Middle East were impressed by quantities of words, even if they did not know what they meant. Moreover, these threats brought her a certain comfort; by mentioning the British Embassy she was made aware of all its sober strength behind her. Surely English girls could not disappear into the Lebanon, never to be heard of again.

  Having shouted herself into a little false courage she fell silent. They had left the road and turned down a rough stony track that led into a valley; a little way down it a jeep stood waiting. Her captors signalled her to get into the back and crowded in after her. The jeep hurtled off like a Beirut taxi down the rough track into the valley below.

  Sarah lurched against cartridge belt and rifle, but the two men on either side of her sat erect and easy as though riding spirited horses. She was beginning to suspect that they were peasants from some nearby village, not hired thugs, and looked anxiously from one to the other for some sign of friendliness. But their eyes avoided her and they did not speak to one another.

  The track seemed to be leading deeper and deeper into desolation; only the stone walls dividing the small fields showed that people lived there and made some attempt to cultivate the barren land. Along the roadside purple thistles, already drying to a brittle gold, rattled in the wind. Sarah thought of Lebanon as it appears on the map, a mere strip of coast and a mountain range … You could drive from its northern to its southern border in a day, and from Beirut over the mountains to Damascus in four hours. Such smallness was undoubtedly comforting; yet these stark, unpopulated hills did not fit the picture, and suggested, rather, an immensity of wilderness.