by Mike Bond
The sun was sinking like a flame into the sea. Once they'd stood hand in hand before it, stunned at the magnificence of life. Where are you, Layla? Without you I can't sleep, can't ever rest. He followed the smashed empty seaside boulevard where they'd walked so many times, felt her hand in his and remembered the strolling Sunday families, their children holding ice creams, the minty breeze off the sea and the smoke of broiling meat, old men playing backgammon on the concrete wall along the rocks, boys slapping cards down on upended boxes, the fruit and balloon sellers, girls lying bare-breasted on the golden rocks, the fishing boats rocking on the crest, the red, green, and white sailboats beyond. What is it about Paradise that condemns us to destroy it?
He was letting this obsess him. Layla. Keeping him up nights. Had to stop.
Behind one of the concrete pillars in the ruined hollows of the Artisanat, several fedayeen were taking turns with a woman. There was the stink of urine drying on the pillars, of piles of feces on the concrete floor, a burnt and bullet-riddled Volkswagen van. He kicked a cartridge case and it pinged across the floor, making him fear the fedayeen but they didn't notice.
A Palestinian in a red keffiyeh was driving a red BMW madly up and down the boulevard, spinning in circles, the tires shredding, smoking. The last red speck of the sun sank in the horizon and a wind came up quickly, cold on his neck. You shouldn't be here, he thought.
Ahead, the blunt ruins of the Hotel Saint George on its rocky point were like the stocky remnant of an old chateau, the bare burnt walls where once had been verandas and jalousies and red awnings tasseled in gold, the hideously scarred rooms where lust had been a constant visitor and every illusion about love must have come to dust. Where twenty years ago they'd sit out on the terrace under the stars, after he'd finished waiting tables at 2.15 a.m., hearing the lap of the sea and the soft solace of buoys, talking about the future and how good it was going to be.
Where were they, the other students who'd also worked the short hot summer nights, eight hours straight, four tables each? Sleeping from dawn to noon, then afternoons on the hot beaches, the hash and sun and the hot sweat of making love in the sand, long sultry days and wild nights, never sleeping, never wanting to, never getting enough of girls' hot sweaty slippery bodies, the taste of them, their cunts, their hungry cries.
It was getting dark and he was crazy to be here. Turning up his collar he hurried past the shell of the Holiday Inn with a rocket hole under “Holiday”, the Christian cemetery where the near buildings had been bulldozed, the cypresses and gravestones buried under rubble where children played at war, making him think of the archaeologists some day who'd find this perfect example of a late twentieth-century Christian cemetery crushed under whole flattened buildings, and think how primitive and vicious they were, back then.
The souk was gone.
Acres and acres of crushed buildings and vanished streets that once had been an ancient bazaar of shops, tenements, whorehouses, jewelry stores, ateliers, bars, hashish and opium dens, French bakeries, locksmiths and lawyers' offices, goldsmiths and smugglers, with its Phoenician walls and Roman streets and Crusader alleys sticky underfoot with centuries of blood.
There was no street where he once had lived on the top floor over La Croissant de Paris, in the little room with the worn silk bedspread over the mattress on the pine floor, with the French window letting in the night, Layla young and tanned in his arms.
But where did they go? If even where they'd been was gone, where were they?
He felt nauseous and wanted to sit down and throw up or weep, it was the same thing. Three men were coming downhill through the rubble; instead of turning aside he walked straight past them and they did not stop him.
There was a firefight somewhere, to the south, the salvos tailing off and erupting again. Rockets began to swish over, coming from the dark tall hulk of the Holiday Inn – Hezbollah, maybe, firing at Phalange. Pieces of sharp thin metal were falling, and a soft rain.
THOUGH LAYLA matters most, Mohammed thought, Rosa’s the one who saved me. He picked up his gun. “Wait till I come back.”
“Giving orders already? Now you've had me?”
“Go first, then, if you like.”
“We'll both go.” She tightened the coat over the nurse's uniform, scrunched out of the cave mouth and turned right along a string of rocks overseeing the trail. He waited a minute, then went left, also working toward the trail.
No one was visible across the whole broad ridge of snowy dark boulders. The other men's tracks had been softened by wind and half-filled with new snow. Mohammed followed them and met Rosa in the middle. Girl-like, she cocked up her head. “Let me go a hundred yards ahead?”
“Who's giving orders now?”
“We spread the ambush distance, and you're clear of mine shrapnel, if I hit one.”
“I'd be the world's worst coward!”
“You're the one I came here to protect, not me.”
He moved past. “Just stay in my steps, a good way behind.”
There's no point in worrying about the mines, he'd wanted to say, because if it's fated for me to step on one then, in'salah, I will. It won't do any good to worry. And if I do step on one, I'll be either dead or maimed, and if I'm maimed you'll have to shoot me.
Chances were there would be no mines in this path, only elsewhere. Chances were those men had mined below, then come up this path. She'd said they were carrying shovels but he hadn't seen them. No experience – she'd take anything for a shovel.
NICOLAS’ and Samantha's house was dark. Neill let himself in the back door and climbed the stairs to his room. Loudspeakers echoed in the street. He lit a candle and sat on the bed, poured a glass of Black Label, put out the candle. If Layla was going to send for him, it wouldn't be tonight. It was damn cold, the wind sucking through the empty windows, constant rumblings of war. Your heart gets numb, all these dying people weighing it down. He saw the woman's burning face, felt it melting on his hand, saw his building in the souk explode, him and Layla inside it. He went to the window. Only two flights if he fell but the concrete down there could crush your skull. No point in worrying about jumping because he wasn't going to jump. The dark hole leered up at him. You will if I want you to, it seemed to say.
And if he'd been with Layla, all these years? He saw her walking up the path toward College Hall past Marquand House, so slender and unconsciously lithe in her slim skirt and blouse and long dark hair, with a new black bag over one shoulder, smiling toward him, into the sun. He saw her in the crowded souk, holding up a dented brass coffee-maker with a carved bone handle. “It's real Bedouin!” she whispers in English, so the grizzled Druze shopkeeper won't understand.
Downstairs the back door squealed, Nicolas and Samantha's footsteps in the corridor. He put the Black Label under the pillow, lit the candle, and went down.
Nicolas and Samantha were holding each other, broke apart as he came into the room. “What's new?” he said, slowing, trying to sound jovial.
“It fell through.”
Neill snickered, wanting to inoculate them against defeat. “It would've been what – the seventeenth failed ceasefire?”
“It's not that. Every day without fighting's a success.”
Neill started to speak, held it. A fist hammered on the plank front door. Nicolas waved them down on the floor, went into the hall. “Who is it?”
“Hamid! For Dickson. Get him out here!”
Nicolas looked at him helplessly. “Maybe you shouldn't go.”
“It's to see her,” Neill answered. “Any message?”
“No,” Nicolas smiled. “Not after all these years.”
“Be careful,” Samantha said.
Neill went down the back stairs and round through the dark garden. When he got to the pavement it wasn't Hamid but two mujihadeen. “Let's go,” one said in English, jerking
his gun.
“Where's Hamid?”
“You're coming with us.”
“Hamid sent you?” he said in Arabic.
“Don't be such a pussy,” the first answered. “Who else would want you?”
“Wait!” Neill gestured at the house. “Let me tell them –”
“Nothing doing.”
They fitted a black hood over Neill's head and walked him into the street. “Beat it!” one called, and someone's steps scrambled away, high heels.
“Don't!” a woman screamed.
“He's just going for a visit,” the mujihadeen said. “He'll be right back.”
They trotted him down the street, tripping over cracks in the concrete. One gripped his burned hand and when he tried to pull away held tighter. They stopped, a car door snapped open and they shoved him in between them, a wide plastic seat smelling of fish oil, rust and dust. The car lurched forward pinning him to the back of the seat. A Mercedes diesel’s rough roar, the shocks gone, wheels banging in holes, jolting him left, then right, up the hill and over the top, down and up other streets, no end, once an ambulance screaming by, the smell of hot honey and spices – a shop somewhere. He tried to remember the turns but lost track, the car bottomed through ruts then jerked to a stop, a hurried conversation with someone through the driver's window. It lurched forward, uphill, always uphill now, stink of open-air sewers, burned rubbish, dead animals – he was back in Shatila.
Up an alley, round something in the middle of the street, the driver cursing, the car tipped, sliding Neill against one of the mujihadeen, the driver revved and pulled through, tires screeching, the car braked hard, dumping them forward then back then forward again as it drove over a mound and stopped. They walked him up seven steps and across a concrete porch into an empty-sounding room with a low, echoing ceiling. A door clicked shut.
“Take it off,” a woman said.
Fingers yanked the cord at the back of his neck, pulled off the hood. He held his hands over his eyes to shield the light. “You have five minutes,” she said.
He faced her, blinking. “You could have just given me the damn address. Why this hush-hush? This silly blindfolding? I'm not your enemy.”
She was two dark eyes out of a dark slit. “You've used fifteen seconds.”
36
“HOW ARE you, Layla?”
“We're here to discuss my husband.” Her voice, which he remembered so sweet and light, came deeply out of the black gown.
“Every day, Layla, for more than twenty years –”
She shook her head. “We'll only speak Arabic, so Feisal and Rastaf understand.”
He glanced at the two mujihadeen who'd brought him. “Then I'll speak English. Just to say your name, Layla –”
“You now have four minutes.”
“Do you remember, Layla?”
“If you're this crazy I'll tell my husband not to see you.”
Every time she said “my husband” his heart clenched. “You're the love of my life, the brightest happiness. The greatest pain.”
“Has so little happened in your life,” she snapped in English, “that you're willing to live in such a tiny part of your past?”
“It's where you lived!”
She stood. “That's insane!”
He caught at her arm, her cowl slid back and underneath it her hair was lustrous chestnut black; she swerved aside holding her veil, and it seemed crazy to him that this woman whose body he had known so well would now hide her face from him. One of the mujihadeen shoved him back. “You're going to get hurt,” he said.
“Send this jerk out!” Neill said in English.
“You're lucky he doesn't understand. He'd shoot you.”
“Why don't you stop this? I know you better than your own husband!”
“You're crazy!”
“And you're the Mother of the Revolution. Did you spawn this war?”
She hesitated. “It spawned itself. To stop it we'd have to give up completely. We, Lebanese people, thrown out of Lebanon. Syria wouldn't take us. Jordan wouldn't take us. Only Iran would take us. Can you imagine anyone wanting to live in Iran?”
“If Mohammed – or you for that matter – could explain your side in the foreign press –”
“We don't care about your foreign press. It's as crazy as your gambling and immorality and usury and heroin and crime and all the other silly things you do.”
“Do you remember what you and I did, Layla? Have you been to the British Museum where half the history of your land was preserved before it could be destroyed by camel thieves, nabobs, and assassins? Do you realize what's happened to your fine Muslim culture? Why are you stuck in the Dark Ages while the rest of us go to the moon?”
“I trust you enjoy it – living on the moon?” She nodded at the mujihadeen. “If and when we decide, Mohammed and I, that he should speak to you, we'll let you know. In the meantime stay where you are.”
“I saw Tomás in Bratislava. He sends his best. And Nicolas and Sammy send their love.”
“When we want, we'll come for you.”
“And all our other old friends would send their love too, if your husband hadn't killed them.”
“Poor Neill.” There was no wrath in her voice, just an exhaustion that made his heart break. “You don't understand a single thing.”
THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW dropped down the ridge to the right, deeper into Christian territory, far down the mountain's west flank to where the snow thinned, became dark ground. The wind and stars were sharp, snow crystals tinkling across the crust.
Mohammed waved and Rosa came up, stepping in his steps, holding her coat off the snow. She stood before him, couldn't stop shivering. We've got to get off this mountain, he thought. He pointed at the tracks. “They came up from Lasa.”
She looked past him down the ridge. “Damn them.”
He raised a cold hand to her brow, for an instant was willing to die to protect her from the minefield, saw his legs in bloody pieces on the ground, his cock that had been just inside her torn to shreds. “Trial and error, this is called.”
“We'd better follow them down.”
“Back into their territory? So in the morning they're all around us?” He slid the Makarov into a pocket and held her cold cheeks in his chilled hands. “When we get off here we'll celebrate, just you and me.” He couldn't stop shivering. “A little memory of what we've done.”
She bit her lip, shivering. “I already remember.”
He turned from her up the ridge, bending his knees into the deepening snow of the great ice fields, climbing east toward the crest of Mount Lebanon, away from the Christians below, away from the soldiers' tracks and into the minefield. “Same distance,” he called, “as before.”
ANDRÉ TURNED THE KEY, opened his door and it leaped for his throat – the dog, furry and warm, licking his face, chewing his arm when he tried to force it down. “Stop!” he laughed, and the dog sat quivering with joy, tail slapping back and forth. He shut the door, knelt down and hugged the dog. “You're all I have to come home to.” The dog reached out a front paw and put it in André's hand.
He went to the window – nothing in the yard, felt the bed – it was warm where the dog had been sleeping, so there'd been no danger. He drew down the shade and lit the candle.
The dog came and put its chin on Andre's knee. André patted its head – such smooth short fur over the hard muscular skull. “Yeah, big fellow, we'll go out.” He caressed the dog's soft mane, behind the ears. “How about a little scouting mission, on your old turf?”
It was seven fifteen, already dark. Six fifteen in Paris. Métros full, people and lights and motion and laughter, women with slim thighs going home to lovers and friends. Monique coming home to Hermann after an afternoon in bed with whom? Magret de canard and string
beans flown in from Kenya, lettuce from Spain, avocados from Mexico, Swiss silver and English bone china – what do you talk about when that's all there is between you?
I'm thinking I can't do what I came down here for. That's what I'm thinking. A draught quivered the flame and he moved the candle to the bedside table. On his pillow was the bone the dog carried everywhere, its favorite possession.
He checked the set of the Jericho under his arm, slipped on his leather jacket, put a spare clip of shotshell cartridges into a pocket, called the dog, snuffed the candle and went out into the Beirut night.
AS MOHAMMED shoved his soaked and frozen feet one by one through the crusted snow he was very careful to increase his weight carefully, slowly, hoping to feel the metal of a mine before he touched the detonator, wherever mines might be in this eternity of snow and wind, the little sphere or disc of explosive chemical in a compressing coat of sharp hard steel meant for him.
He’d studied all the photos, the arcs of kill, the arcs of maim, how many bodies you could get for how many dollars in Larnaca or Cairo or Rome or New York. That made it worse, somehow, as if the Prophet was going to show him how he'd gone astray, give him a bit of his own medicine. If we get out, I make a promise, he decided, to find some way to peace.
Because he'd been so careful he was shocked when it clicked under the snow, loud as a child's tin snapper. It was impossible that a sound so innocent could be so deadly; he wanted to step off nonchalantly, saying don't worry, I won't take it to heart.
Twisting round without moving his foot, he waved Rosa back. “Mine! Mine!” He realized he was losing control and quieted himself, forced down the need to jump, to finish it rather than have this horror, shivering so hard his foot would surely slither off the little metal box. Face what will be, he told himself; you're going to die.
37
HE COULDN’T STOP his ankle from quivering or steady his toe and heel against the soil, couldn’t keep his foot from shaking the mine. If it had a fuse or timer it'd blow any second. “Go back!” he yelled at Rosa, waving his arm, voice snatched by the wind.
