“Lovely, lovely.” The actress had apparently been shopping and dropped several luxury store bags on the floor as she settled on the sofa. “I’m so glad you suggested the hotel. I get so little time to look for clothes and I love the shops in this part of the city.”
“That’s good to know. Things have changed so since I was here last. I need some things.” She touched the sleeve of her tan tweed jacket. “When I left New York it was still freezing winter and it’s getting like spring here. Ah, here’s our coffee.”
The waiter arranged the cups, saucers and a silver tray of mabrouchec, a sweet apricot tart.
“Milk, please, no sugar,” Nadia said to the waiter, winking at him as she whisked a pastry from the tray. “Elie Saab is my favorite local designer. This jacket is hers. I wear it everywhere. Her showroom is by appointment, but the concierge here will fix you up. Tell her I sent you. She’ll show you things nobody else gets to see.”
“Terrific. I will.”
The two women chatted as Emile got his camera set.
“I’m ready any time you want to begin,” he said. “The light’s good right now and you both look gorgeous.”
“Let’s begin then. Are you comfortable, Nadia?”
“Perfect.”
Emile pinned the tiny mic to her lapel.
When the red recording light came on, India began, “I’m India Fox for World Broadcast News. It’s morning here in Beirut, Lebanon. I’m sitting having coffee in the lobby of the beautiful Four Seasons Hotel with Nadia Rohbani, one of the country’s most illustrious film actors. Many of you will remember her last year’s Oscar-nominated film, Across the Far Lake.” She turned to Nadia. “What are you working on now Nadia? Any chance there’ll be another nomination for Best Foreign Film?”
“There are plans to enter it, I know that. ‘Two Brothers Fighting’ is a serious film about the great sadness of families when war tears their lives apart. I play a woman who must see her fiancé and her brother go off to fight on different sides of a conflict. This kind of tragedy happens often in my part of the world. I have witnessed similar things, so I bring that knowledge to my performance.”
“You’re a busy actress. Any plans to direct?”
“There is a script I’m working on. But it’s all premature. The story is very romantic.”
“So you’re a screen writer, too.”
“Yes, but this one is more ambitions than what I’ve done before.”
“The film industry in the Middle East is very collegial, is it not? Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran all have active studios and many of them share actors, directors, and technical talent.”
“Yes. We are familiar with each other. Many of us have worked together. Also, financing is always a problem in the Middle East and we are all sharing the same pot of gold, so to speak.”
“Though more and more these studios are sending films to the festivals.”
“Oh, certainly. Our films have matured as our technical abilities have improved. And our actors’ faces are becoming familiar. World-wide, because of all the festivals. ” Nadia laughed. “I get fan letters even from the U.S. China, too, as well as the Middle East. It’s thrilling. ”
India’s eyes saw Nadia, her head back, laughing. Her last remark.
Against a brilliant sudden burst of light, a searing orange sun. A split second. Then the massive wall of sound, the blast of scorching wind that buckled the heavy glass windows. India’s last sight was Nadia, in the air, her hair spinning forward, her arms and legs spread wide. India felt herself slammed against Emile. A scalding heat. A roaring sound. And then nothing.
She didn’t know how long it was before she became aware of choking dust in her nose and lungs. Sounds of screaming and sirens.
India clawed at her eyes. Her fingers scraped fine granules away and finally images came out of the haze. Something heavy immobilized her, her breathing labored. She was pinned under the sofa. Shoved with all her strength as the sofa lifted enough for her to squirm free.
Something blurred her left eye. When her hand came away it was red with blood. Everything touched felt searingly hot. Gingerly India felt her face and into her hair. A cut in her scalp she couldn’t feel was matting, warm blood oozing. Was it deep? It didn’t hurt, but how to tell? She stared at her red, sticky fingers trying to register if they were hers.
Bile rose in her throat and she scrubbed her hands on her jacket.
India struggled to sit up, brushing heavy plaster and dust from her clothes, relieved to find she could move all her limbs. Looking around, details became clearer. The heavy glass of the coffee table had cracked into vicious angles that could have sliced her in two. Emile lay off to her side.
Nadia had been flung across the sofa that had imprisoned India, the actress’s body at terrible angles, her long dark hair hanging nearly to the floor, its glossiness dimmed by a frost of white plaster. A long shard of window glass was imbedded in her back—the hot pink jacket covered in blood, her pink stilettos disappeared from her bare feet. Foot. One of her feet was gone.
India recoiled at the bleeding stump, then took a breath, her stomach heaving, reached and picked up Nadia’s wrist, tried to find a pulse, but there was nothing. The arm sagged limply when she dropped it. A feeling of overwhelming emptiness filled her.
Desperately she looked around at what had been the beautiful lobby. The porcelain coffee service that had just arrived when they began the interview lay in miniscule pieces, the sugary tarts scattered, mashed apricot jam smeared across the sofa. A fine dust hung in the air like fog, tainted with the reek of fire, chemicals and an underlying sweetish smell. A crystal chandelier in the center of the lobby had sprung from the ceiling and hung crookedly, two of its lights still glowing dimly through the smoke and haze. The dramatic floral arrangement that had been on the large center table was blasted apart, petals and greenery hanging from overturned chairs and settees. The check-in desk had tilted, the clerk slumped over it, motionless. Suitcases had sprung open and guests’ belongings scattered. And overall a pall of grayish dust, eye-stinging smoke and the wailing of sirens. Three plaster-coated figures lying on the floor in front of the desk were stirring. Two more were not. Somewhere a phone rang and rang and rang.
India saw Emile move and crawled over. He was on his back, his camera halfway under him. India felt for his pulse and it seemed fairly strong. “Emile. Can you hear me?” Her voice sounded far away to her ears. The blast had deafened her. “Emile? It’s India. Can you move?”
Emile, his eyes closed, muttered something she couldn’t understand, but he was alive.
People had begun to appear, searching, sifting the rubble. India registered that they were emergency workers. She called out. “Over here. Please. Over here.”
Two men came over quickly with a stretcher and she motioned them to Emile, but they stopped before reaching him and bent to another casualty.
Another woman in a soot-smeared white shirt appeared and knelt beside India, wiping the blood from her face. “Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere else?”
India grabbed her hand. “I think I’m okay. Will you look at the woman there? Can you help her?”
India watched as the woman worked with Nadia, checking her, trying to remove the glass shard. She glanced at India and shook her head. She raised her arm and gestured. More people came and took the actress’s body off the sofa and laid it onto a stretcher. Her voice shaking, India pleaded. “Her foot. Can you find her foot?”
But the stretcher bearers glanced at her, then moved toward the door. India looked away.
She turned to Emile and stroked his forehead. “They’re coming, Emile. You’ll be fine. You’ll go to the hospital. They’ll fix you up. I’ll call your mother and father. Don’t worry.”
He didn’t open his eyes or answer, but smiled and took her hand.
When the men carried Emile from the lobby India saw his camera in the debris. Amazingly the light was still on. Gingerly she touched the hot surface, picked it up and
brushed off the dust. She looked through the lens, saw the tiny screen at the side, slightly askew, but the image was still there. Could it possibly still work? She took the tail of her shirt and polished the lens. Shaky, she panned the camera around the devastation and numbly began to speak. She coughed the dust from her throat, then continued.
“This is India Fox. I am standing in the destroyed lobby of the Four Season Hotel in Beirut. A bomb appears to have been detonated in the street outside the hotel. I was interviewing Lebanon’s great film star Nadia Rohbani here in the lobby when the bomb exploded. I believe Miss Rohbani has been…badly…injured. Emergency workers are on the scene, giving aid to those who have been hurt.” She stopped to clear her throat. “I seem to have suffered only minor injuries, my cameraman has been taken, I assume, to a hospital. I don’t know the extent of other casualties or the damage. All in know is, around me you can see the rubble of a beautiful hotel in ruins. You can hear the sirens, the screams and the cries of the wounded and dying. What had been a quiet morning, a normal day in the city, with people going about their business, is now a terrible scene of death and destruction, innocent people blown to pieces. I will find out who is responsible. Or who is going to take credit for this…massacre…” Her voice trailed off.
Would there be any images on the camera, or her voice recorded. The red light was on. Had she operated the right buttons?
Now she must get outside, on the street to find out what happened. She tried to stand, swing the camera around the chaos. Her head swam and she stumbled.
“Here, Miss, let me help you.” Hands took the camera away.
India grabbed at it, hearing her own voice hysterical. “That’s mine!”
“We’ll hold it for you. You need attention.”
“Don’t you dare. It’s important. You must give it to me. Give it back to me!” She screamed in Arabic, in French, in English. Any language that would get the camera back. Her head was filled with the certainty that if she gave it up, she would never see it again.
The Lebanese EMT shrugged and handed it back to her, shaking his head at his fellow worker. “Give it to her,” he said in Arabic. “She’s out of her head.”
India hugged the camera as they took her arms and led her to a makeshift emergency station set up by what had been the front door of the luxury hotel. Hands probed her head, looked in her eyes, put a gauze over the cut. Someone took her outside through the twisted metal and broken glass that had been the hotel entrance. The topiary trees in big concrete urns hung pathetically, with only a few shredded leaves. The street was nothing but buckled concrete around a crater she estimated ten feet wide. A twisted, blackened taxi hung precariously over the edge of the hole, the charred driver halfway out the broken window. Overturned cars smoldered, some of them on fire. The acrid smell of fuel and burning rubber was overcoming the smell of the explosive. India’s foot slipped in a congealing red pool.
Over her protests she was loaded into an ambulance where she crouched against the door next to an unconscious bloody man on a gurney, the camera between her knees. She tried to see the front of the hotel, see more what had happened, but the ambulance jerked into gear and sped through the snaking fire hoses, police cars and fire trucks, its siren bawling, away from the horrific bedlam.
Earlier India had parked her car in the hotel garage underground at the back of the building. She supposed it was all right. Her cell phone was in her jacket pocket. She fumbled to find it and wrapped her fingers around the comforting smoothness and closed her eyes. Nobody had listened that she had to be back there. On the street. The network would expect her to be.
THE HOSPITAL WAS close. After the ambulance broke away from the confusion of the bomb scene it was only minutes until it pulled into the emergency entrance. Signs indicated CLEMENCEAU MEDICAL CENTER. Ambulance personnel were unloading gurneys non-stop, while hospital triage staff worked to separate the gravely injured. Inside, stretchers lined hallways. There were moans and cries, shrill background calls for doctors over the intercom, but the scene appeared organized to India, more than she expected. Her head ached, but the bandage on her head had arrested the bleeding, now drying on her shirt and jacket.
She followed as the unconscious man who had been next to her on the way to the hospital was taken out of the ambulance and into the hospital. There were too many people who needed more care than she, so she moved through the corridors with the camera, stepping over the wounded, some on gurneys, many just on blankets. India’s mind spun erratically, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, automatically moving the camera over the scene. She thought to add some kind of narration, to add a clarity to the horror, but the words wouldn’t come.
She wanted to find Emile, hoping he hadn’t been taken somewhere else. Perhaps he was in a treatment room. She felt drained, afraid she couldn’t go further, when she found him, his stretcher on the floor outside a cubicle in the Emergency Room. He raised his hand weakly when he saw her.
His voice shook. “Hey, India. Over here. I’m over here. Thank God you’re all right. You are all right, aren’t you?”
India knelt. “Yes, Emile, I’m good. A cut on my head. Some scratches. Thank God I found you. Where are you hurt?”
“Don’t know exactly. Pain everywhere, but I can move my arms and legs. I just don’t want to. Well, not my shoulder. Think maybe it’s broken. Something yipping like hell around my hip. Got a buzzy noise in my ears. Maybe my nose is broken, so I must look like shit. Oh, God, you’ve got my camera. I love you. I thought it was gone.”
“I’ve taken pictures. I don’t know if I got anything much. Emile, I’m going to leave. I’ll call your parents. They’ll probably want you to be in the American University Hospital. But you shouldn’t move from here until they find out what’s up with you.”
He reached out and grabbed her hand. “I don’t want you to go. This all so terrible. All these people dying. Nadia’s dead, isn’t she?” He started to cry. “If we hadn’t been in that lobby, she’d still be alive.”
India moved to sit, still holding his hand. “I’ll stay for a little. Emile, we can’t think like that. We were there, doing our job, just like everybody else who was at the hotel and on the street. Some people just passing by, simply driving down the street.” She took a corner of the blanket covering him and wiped his face. “And you look fine.” She patted his cheek. “Your nose is swollen a bit, but it’s just as pretty as ever.”
He tried to smile. “You don’t have to stay. I was being selfish. But call my Mom and Dad. They’ll be worried. They knew I’d be at the hotel this morning.”
“I can call them right now.” She held up her phone. “I still have this. Isn’t that lucky? It was in my pocket. You can tell them yourself.”
She was able to get Emile’s father at the university. The young man perked up after he talked to him and India left without feeling like she was abandoning her friend. His father had said they’d be there soon.
When she got through the chaos of the emergency room and outside, even taxis were unloading the wounded now. They would be classified by the triage staff. She was ambulatory, they’d be too busy for her. She made her way to a low wall away from the entrance and slumped down. It was too far to walk to her apartment. Maybe she could make it back to the hotel parking garage and get her car. Yes, she could do that. Maybe one of the taxis going back to pick up the injured would take her.
But I’ll just sit here for a little bit. God, I’m so tired. Maybe I’m not so hot after all. She put the camera between her feet. I’ll try to get more pictures. In a minute. Her body tilted and she jerked herself upright.
Dimly she was aware of the ambulances and the sirens, the exhaust fumes as vehicles sped in and out. She heard the flap, flap of a helicopter landing somewhere on the roof of the hospital. Her eyes closed. Her head spun.
“India? My God, is that you?” Someone held her hands.
Her eyes flew open and it took her a moment to remember where she was. Jack Spear knelt
in front of her, his face full of concern, his glance swept over her bloody shirt.
“You were at the blast? At the Four Seasons? You were there? Are you all right?”
“Jack?” She nodded and put her hand on the bandage on her head. It came away smeared. She swayed.
“Oh bloody hell, you’re not all right.” He took in the pandemonium of the arriving wounded. “Come with me. My place isn’t that far. I’m going to stitch you up. They’re too busy here to get to you.” He put his arm around her and stood her up. “My car’s over there.”
She leaned against him and let him lead her away from the pandemonium.
India slumped in a daze, sprawled on the back seat of Jack’s car. He drove, maneuvered around screaming ambulances, woop-wooping police vehicles, people fleeing the downtown area. Gawkers heading toward it.
HE SHOOK HER awake and helped her out of the car. He put his arm around her waist as she leaned against him. “Can you climb the stairs? I can carry you if you can’t.”
India heard her mouth say she could, but she wasn’t sure as she tried to keep her balance steady.
She felt his arms scoop her up and closed her eyes.
Once again she sat in Jack Spear’s bathroom as he readied to patch her up. It had a nice, familiar soapy smell. Her eyes were closed as she heard rustles and clinks of whatever he was assembling.
He put his hand under her chin. “Now hold your head still and look at that mirror on the wall in back of me.” He shone a light in one eye and then the other. “Hmmm. Okay.”
“That’s too bright.” Her eyes drooped.
He turned and fussed with something, then moved back to her. “Don’t move. This will hurt some, but has to be done or you’ll have a nasty scar.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Going to stitch you up, love.”
Her eyes flew open. “You’re what?”
“You heard me. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. Now, be quiet.”
She watched him, tensing as he touched a needle to her cut. “Jack Spear,” she mumbled, “The man of many talents. How do you know how to sew up people?”
I Am India Fox Page 13
