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39

THE AIR WAS AFIRE, impossible to breathe. Huge heavy concrete was crushing André's chest into the floor. Chunks of concrete jabbed up into his back. When he realized where he was, the terror made him thrash and beat at the concrete but he could not move it. You're down here forever, he realized. Entombed.

“Don't fight,” a woman whispered. “Uses air.”

“What?” He could barely speak, he was shaking so crazily with fear of this concrete slab on his chest.

“Calm down,” she said. “They'll find us.”

He took deep breaths, trying to calm. “Where are you?”

“Over here in the corner. The floor – or something. It's bent down on us. Where are you?”

“On the floor. There's a floor on my chest. Who's with you?”

“Two kids.”

“The others?”

“The building fell in. I think they're all dead.”

“How are the kids?”

“They're fine. I've told them exactly what's happened and that we must be quiet and save energy for when the rescuers come.”

THE LAND FAR BELOW was tanned and crinkled under the blue light, speckled with the shadows of small white clouds, the air sharp, cold and very thin. Mohammed could see the wide curving earth and every path and house upon it. He dived and rose on canyons and peaks of wind and cloud, perfectly alive.

The cry came again and he realized it was a lamb in the stables. He wasn't free, couldn't fly. The lamb was calling its mother and should be suckling – what did it fear? He took the Makarov, slipped from bed, opened the door and went naked down the corridor and stood in the darkness watching out through the window to the garden.

The small moon hung in the mulberry branches like a hapless skull. The garden of bare peach and pear trunks and freshly turned strawberry beds gave nowhere to hide. Moonlight glittered on the broken glass set like fossil teeth in the top of the wall. He went to the door, opened it and peered round it. The narrow street lay in moon shadow, smelling of flowers and manure. Again the lamb bleated.

He shut the door and relocked it, the dark house quiet and warm, a lingering odor of his father, of thyme and drying cheese, the cool dampness of the well in the garden. His feet rustled over the stone floor. Be silent, he thought, don't wake her, wishing she were awake, wanting to talk to her. Soundless, he entered the corridor.

He sensed the gun, ducked and dove forward to snatch it before it fired, twisting it, twisting her wrist, hand clenching her throat.

“Let me go!” she hissed, yanking at one wrist.

He dropped his hands.

“Where were you? I damn near shot you!”

“I damn near shot you!”

She sat naked, trembling on the floor in his arms. He made her get up and they went back into the room. He lit the candle. Her face was white. “I almost shot you,” she said again.

“What were you doing?” He picked up her gun; she had mounted a black silencer on it. “Where'd you get this?”

She got under the blankets. “I keep it in my bag, like that. I woke up and heard a noise in the hall. You were gone – I was afraid they had you.”

“They? Who?”

“I don't know! Get into bed. Sometimes I worry about everyone.”

He lay beside her, the bed still warm. I could have been dead, he thought, and my bed still warm.

Before dawn he rose and washed, said his prayers, his back stretching and limbering as he knelt forward, face to the ground. It bothered him that she could see him, she who would not pray. “Why am I with her, God?” he asked, smelling her musk on his hands. “What do You want?”

He finished the prayer. She sat naked, cross-legged, brushing her hair. It made a ripping sound, like a fire spreading. She's a jinni, he thought, she can help or kill you. The backward people of Yammouné still believe that if a jinni wants a young man she'll condemn his beloved to death. But Rosa doesn't want me.

“In half a day,” she said, “we'll be back in Beirut. To who we were.”

“I was wondering, could we stay up here?” He shrugged. “I suppose now it's my house.”

“If you've come back from the dead,” her eyes warmed him, for an instant, “then it's to drive them out. Palestinians and Shiites together – we can do it.”

His arms felt weak. It's still the wound, he thought. “If we go back –”

“If?”

“We'll get a lift with somebody, go by Baalbek and Zahlé. After that I don't know what I'll do with you.”

She stood in one motion, elastic. “Nothing! I'm on my own.”

“But I don't want that!”

She smiled, watching him. “Jealous?”

“You've slept with other men.” He trembled, not wanting to hear.

“So did Mary, the Prophet's servant girl, before she gave him a son.”

His insides congealed. “We didn't –”

“Don't worry!” she laughed. “Anyway, the Prophet never married her.”

“Of course not.”

“But when his wife complained, he threw her out and banished all his other wives, and only lived with Mary. Then people criticized him, so he had a new revelation that it's fine for prophets to do this but nobody else.”

“I'm no prophet.”

She cocked her head, biting her lip. “Why?”

“I can't find my own way out of the desert, let alone anybody else's.”

“Neither could the Prophet. He just did what he wanted. As with Mary. And told everybody to do what he said, not what he did.”

His head spun. Once again she was contorting things. He wanted to sit down but that would seem weakness. To whom? To her? He sat on the floor.

“Hey!” She rushed to him.

The room was going round. If she saw it as weakness that meant she didn't care for him and then he couldn't chance being himself. But what if he could be himself, all the way? Nauseous dizziness washed over him. When it lessened he pushed her away and stood. “When we get to Beirut I start anew. The path of peace –”

“Lie down, you fool,” she clicked her tongue, “pushing yourself!”

The ceiling stopped spinning. He smiled up at her, heart full of joy. “You're the one who's been pushing – “Oh, don't stop!” he moaned. “No, don't, not now ...”

She slapped him. “Pig! I should leave you to them!”

“Who?” he laughed.

“Everybody who wants you!” She tried to stalk away but the room was too small so she bent and snatched her underpants and stepped into them, yanked them up. With sorrow he watched them cover her luscious black crotch, the bra hooked over her lovely tight-nippled breasts, the robe like a curtain coming down. I’m a fool, he thought, not knowing why.

NEILL WOKE to the recorded plaint of a muezzin out of a loudspeaker across the Jardin Public. He thought of Layla waking now, warm and drowsy, Mohammed snoring beside her. She probably has to take a piss, he reminded himself. Just like me. He had to piss too much to go back to sleep now that he was awake, thanks to the muezzin. His burnt hand still hurt against the rough bandage. Our God, the Bible says, is a consuming fire.

Once he got up and wandered down the stairs to the outhouse in the back yard, he might as well stay up. Another tired meaningless day. Another day closer to death. Waiting for Mohammed. For Layla, really. Like he'd been doing all these years.

Another day of helping Nicolas and Samantha look for food – we're right back in the hunter-gatherer mode, he thought, maybe we never left it – and trying to make contact with other people who might know Mohammed. People he hadn't seen in years, hadn't wanted to. Why had he become a journalist when he hated people? Actually, he realized, it made perfect sense.

If he didn't speak to Mohammed, Freeman was going to want his money back. Freeman didn't give a shit about Layla. Neill hugged his arm against his ribs.

He sat on the edge of the bed, bent over rubbing his neck. Another day. He really did have to piss. He stood, found his trousers and pulled them on, trying not to jiggle his bladder.

He went down the echoing dusty stairs, trying not to wake Nicolas and Samantha, and out the back corridor. New blue daylight glistened over the trees. Already dawn, he realized, and no shells, no rockets, no sound of guns, no wail of ambulances or bray of fire trucks.

War's like the Devil, he thought as he hopped barefoot across the cold crinkly dew-wet grass. Sometimes it just gets tired of tormenting you. Those are the times called peace.