Читать книгу A Girl Made of Dust - Nathalie Abi-Ezzi - Страница 8

‘You children, wasn't your uncle a friend of the departed?’ asked the nut-shop owner. He and another man with a bushy moustache had been talking about a funeral while Naji and I chose sweets.

‘I'm not sure,’ replied Naji.

‘Does he mean Uncle Wadih?’ I asked. It was the first time Uncle Wadih's name had ever been connected with something bad.

Naji frowned at me. ‘He's the only uncle we have, isn't he?’

The shop owner turned back. ‘I think the departed had business dealings with Wadih Khouri. Anyway, his wife has family. They'll help her sort out his affairs. Not like my neighbour – her son was killed last week, her only son, and she'd already lost her husband. Now she has no one.’

The customer laid his hands flat on the counter. I noticed the long nail on his little finger, which I thought was for picking his nose but Naji said was to show he wasn't a manual worker. ‘The young Mansoor boy? What happened to him?’

‘What happened to him, my brother? What happens to any of them? He joined a militia, they picked a fight with some boys from the Lebanese Army and he was sprayed with bullets. When they're young’ – the shop owner tapped the side of his head – ‘when they're young they don't think.’

The nut shop was lined with containers full of different sorts of sweets, biscuits and lollipops, while shelves along the back wall displayed large boxes of chocolates, most with pictures of green hills, lakes and cows on the front. Ali was humming and roasting upstairs, and behind the glass counter the bzoorat were separated by type: watermelon and pumpkin seeds, pistachios, almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, peanuts, in their shells and out, roasted maize, and chickpeas coated with sugar. We were still deciding what to buy.

‘Did Uncle really know a dead man?’ I asked Naji, but he shushed me. He was listening.

‘We could barely lift him,’ the customer was saying. ‘If his wife hadn't been such a good cook yesterday, maybe I wouldn't have such a bad back today. I'm telling you, a crane would have found it difficult to lift him. Don't think badly of me, I don't wish to speak ill of the dead, and I loved the man, but there was too much of him for his own sake as well as mine.’ He rolled his moustache between thumb and forefinger. ‘My spine was creaking the whole way – and his wife had her eye on us from start to finish.’

Naji's elbow poked me in the ribs. ‘They're talking about that funeral – the one when we had to get off the bus.’ Some days ago the street had been black with mourners, inching their way to the church like a stream of melting tar so that we'd had to get off our school bus and walk. Women in the crowd had wailed, a pair of hands rising occasionally to the sky. And at the head of all this the coffin had moved silently along, like a boat with no sail.

As we left, grey clouds were gathering on the horizon like dirty soapsuds. Autumn was coming. The leaves were turning yellow, and humidity built up during the day until steam rose from the sea in the afternoons that made the air thick and rubbed out Beirut so that only its ghost-lines were left. In the evenings people sat out on their balconies less often, closed their shutters at night, and Mami had climbed into the attic to bring down clothes that smelt of mothballs. And behind everything, the growl of shelling had become insistent.

When we got home, Papi was reading his newspaper and the telephone was ringing.

Mami answered. ‘Yes, I … I'm well. We're all well.’ Her free hand went to her hair first, then to her skirt, slipped to the edge of the dresser, then hooked onto the phone cord. She glanced at Papi and his paper sank to his lap.

There was a little more talk, then Mami stopped moving, her fingers strangled in the coiled cord. ‘Of course.’ Her voice didn't change, it was still polite and cool, only her hand closed into a fist that made the cord quiver.

After she'd put down the phone she stood quite still, and the black kohl that she pencilled round her eyes in the morning made them seem enormous now. Slowly, she unwound the phone cord from her fingers. ‘It was Wadih.’

Papi looked at the phone, then back at her. ‘Why didn't he speak to me?’

‘I don't know.’ Her feet shuffled uncomfortably. ‘He's coming over.’

‘Uncle Wadih's coming?’ yelled Naji.

Papi moved to the edge of his seat. ‘Coming here? When?’

‘Today.’

Papi got to his feet. ‘Has something happened?’

‘No, nothing. All he said was he's coming. You know how he is. That's just his way.’ She frowned and laid a hand on top of her head, as if to stop it flying off. ‘And now I have even more to do.’

‘But what did he say?’

‘Didn't you hear me? Nothing!’ She clicked her tongue in annoyance.

The nut-shop owner had asked us about Uncle Wadih not half an hour ago, and now he was coming.

Naji and I didn't know what to do with ourselves. The hands of the clock in the dining room refused to move round as fast as they usually did, and we grew jumpy as two fleas. The walls felt too close, the ceiling too low, and the smell of cooking too heavy. Mami's sighs and tuts fluttered through the stillness like moths, and even though no sweat droplets formed on her upper lip, her cheeks burnt redder and redder.

‘That's him!’ Naji cried each time he heard a car, but every time it carried on past.

‘When will he come?’ I asked Mami for the hundredth time. ‘Is he going to stay?’

She didn't answer, so I tried again.

‘Don't pester me about your uncle,’ she snapped, so we went outside to wait.

Beneath the darkening sky, a strange cotton-wool quiet had fallen.

‘When was the last time he came, Naji?’

‘Maybe two years ago, or three. He used to come more often – he used to come all the time.’

‘Why did he stop?’

‘Maybe …’ Naji hesitated. ‘He was here the day it happened, the day I was telling you about.’

I hopped off the gate. ‘Let's go and tell Teta.’

Standing in the doorway with Jesus's sun-head blazing above her, Teta smiled, laughed. Her eyes almost cried. A minute later she hurried across the road to our house, her bare heels peeling off her slippers with each step, shlupshlup-shlup through the still air. And a little before one o'clock, a shiny cream Mercedes pulled up underneath the large fig tree across the road.

Plenty of old, dusty brown Mercedes passed up and down the hill during the day, their exhaust pipes exploding every now and then, their rears hanging low to the ground, but this one was new and gleamed, like a sucked sweet.

The man who stepped out of it looked as though he'd been polished too. For a moment I was nervous, but then he held out his arms. ‘Is this pretty young lady my niece?’ He laughed, lifting me up to kiss me.

His neck smelt of hot wood and brown spices, and his pale yellow jacket was crisp against my arms. When he put me down, I couldn't help asking, ‘Weren't you taller before?’

‘No, stupid,’ said Naji, ‘you were smaller.’ For that he got a slap on the shoulder and a ruffle of the hair, something that would usually have annoyed him, only today he didn't seem to mind.

‘Yalla, let's go and see your parents.’

It was only then that I looked properly at Uncle Wadih. He had heavy-lidded eyes, a sleek, well-fed air that made me think of a rabbit, and his shoes were mirror-clean. We jogged on ahead of him, and when I glanced back I noticed how calm he seemed, how there was a neat line down the front of each trouser leg, and how he moved at the same pace the whole time, like mercury.

Teta was waiting. She disappeared into his chest and came out with wet eyes, her face squashed in joy. Then Mami came out. She had on her best shirt, a brown silk one with pink trimming along the neck and waist – a shirt that usually hung in the back of her wardrobe, but was hardly ever worn. She mustn't have wanted Uncle to crease it because when he reached out, she took a step backwards. In the end, though, he laid a hand on each of her arms and they kissed three times on both cheeks, as adults did.

‘How are you, my brother?’ Uncle beamed as Papi came forward, and the brothers hugged each other hard the way Naji and I did when we fought. When they drew apart, Papi's face seemed tauter and younger. ‘Did you think you'd got rid of me?’ Uncle asked as we stepped indoors.

‘Don't joke, Wadih,’ replied Papi. ‘They're fighting all round your building down there, and still you don't come up.’

Naji stopped in his tracks and shot me a look as Uncle settled himself into Papi's chair.

Papi hesitated, but a moment later sat down on the sofa. ‘Tell us what's been happening. What's your news?’

‘What can I tell you?’ Uncle shrugged. ‘Life continues as always, only worse.’ He gazed round the room – at the old sofa, the table with its tray of cigarettes, the vase of plastic flowers, the wall with its single picture of a small boat far out to sea. And Mami sucked her bottom lip and lowered her flushed face to examine her fingernails.

Naji and I helped to carry Uncle's two cases to Teta's and watched him unpack. One case was full of clothes, perfectly folded, which he removed and smoothed out with his long hands before hanging them up in the empty old wardrobe. The clinking of the spare metal hangers sounded like bells as he closed the door and turned to the second, heavier, case that still lay on the candlewick bedcover. When he opened it there was nothing inside but books, written in Arabic, French and English.

‘Are they all poetry?’ asked Naji, flicking through one with his thumb.

‘Not all. Some are plays, some philosophy.’

‘What's this one?’ I picked up a book with dozens of naked figures on its cover, all crammed so close together that they were nearly falling off the page. Some were tied and injured. Others pushed boulders up slopes or struggled out of coffins or drowned in blood. And everyone in that strange, cruel place was trying to get out. I looked to see if snipers were shooting from the top of a building anywhere.

Uncle glanced over. ‘You see those people? They're in hell.’

I studied it more closely. ‘Is that what hell looks like?’

He shrugged. ‘No, maybe not.’

We went back to our house for lunch. It was true that Mami's cooking had improved lately: there was boiled chicken with rice and nuts, stuffed aubergines and a dish of hummus as well. When she finally carried in the rice, though, it smelt burnt.

Papi brought out the bottle of arak and poured a little for himself and Uncle, then added some water so the clear liquid turned to a thin milk. After the first sip, the aniseed scent came light on his breath.

Teta watched each mouthful of food Uncle took. ‘I don't know what you eat down there in Beirut,’ she muttered. ‘I don't know who cooks for you or looks after you,’ but Uncle only smiled. As he ate, he moved as though his joints were well oiled.

When he was full, he wiped his mouth and fingers carefully with a napkin, leant forward to let out a soft belch, then sat back. ‘What's all this cooking? Are you trying to make us fat?’

Mami turned red and started clearing up. Papi never said anything about a meal, whether it was good or bad.

‘Her touch is good for food,’ said Teta, smiling.

Mami shook her head. ‘The rice was burnt and the chicken was tough. The hummus had too much lemon in it.’

Uncle tutted. ‘We don't give compliments easily, do we, my mother? And it is a compliment. A mean person can't cook well. You have to have a big heart, a generous hand and an honest eye to make good food.’

Mami stopped, holding a bunch of knives and forks like flowers, and her face was suddenly full of light. Perhaps her shrunken fig-heart was swelling again.

We moved to the sofa, and I inspected Uncle Wadih. He looked younger than Papi, even though he wasn't. Teta said there were three years between them, yet it was Papi's hair that was greying, his face that was pulled in all the wrong directions, and his eyes that seemed to see everything and nothing. Uncle had slick black hair and an unlined, easy face.

‘This uncle of yours,’ said Papi, looking happy, ‘you see his shiny car out there? Well, the summer he bought his first banged-up one, we used to go down to Beirut in it. You remember, Wadih, how you used to drive slowly and not let me roll down any of the windows? The temperature was in the thirties, the sweat pouring off us, and still you wouldn't open them.’

‘Why not?’ asked Naji.

Papi smiled. ‘So the girls would think his car had air-conditioning. There we sat like idiots, smiling and sweating.’

Naji hooted with laughter.

‘You weren't interested in other girls for long, ha, Nabeel?’ said Uncle. ‘You see, Ruba, your mother was so beautiful your father fell in love with her almost in a second.’

I leant against Uncle Wadih on the sofa and the heat of him came through his clothes. I couldn't remember whether Papi was this warm or not because I couldn't remember ever having leant against him.

‘Was she the most beautiful one?’ I saw a pretty girl running and laughing, but the girl wasn't Mami.

‘Yes,’ said Uncle Wadih, as Mami came back in with a rakweh of coffee. ‘But, then, all women are beautiful in one way or another. Your mother's a good woman – and a good wife, which is rarer. And at least there are still such women. Pearls among rubbish, ya Nabeel?’

Gazing at the shimmer of her silk shirt, I imagined Mami made of pearls: smooth polished face, smaller pearls for her eyes, and a row for her toes.

Over coffee Uncle said there was no hurry for him to be back at work, and he would stay awhile. Everyone looked pleased except for Mami, who stared into her tiny cup.

‘What do you work as?’ asked Naji, settling himself on the other side of Uncle.

‘I work in a wood factory,’ Uncle explained.

‘What kind of things do you make?’ asked Naji.

‘Oh, all sorts of things. Beauuuutiful things.’ Uncle's arms rose and fell so that his jacket crunched lightly.

‘Do you make them?’ Naji wanted to know.

‘Stop bothering your uncle,’ said Papi.

Naji glared at him. ‘He doesn't think I'm a bother.’ He looked up at Uncle. ‘I've made things from wood – from sticks and things, just like you.’

Uncle laughed softly – a low drumbeat. It was a strange sound in our house, where grown-ups never laughed. ‘No, I don't make them. The factory isn't in Beirut. Down in the city I deal with the business side.’

Business. The word reminded me of the dead man.

The following day Uncle Wadih went to visit the dead fat man.

‘What? Even though he's dead?’ Naji asked Teta.

‘He's gone to see the man's family.’ Sitting down on her bed, she handed me a hairbrush. ‘Here, scratch my back with this, habibti. A thousand ants are dancing on it.’ She lifted the back of her shirt to reveal it, broad, and pale, and I scratched.

‘Now all over.’ Teta's shoulders drooping and her head falling forwards.

When I finished, the brush went back on the table beside the blonde Virgin Mary with the bottle-top crown, but as Teta pulled down her shirt, her eyes were glistening.

‘Did I brush too hard?’ I peered at her. ‘Did I, Teta?’

‘No, my soul.’ She took hold of my hand. ‘You could never brush my back too hard.’

Leaning against the bedpost, Naji chewed his lip. ‘Why are you crying? Did you know the dead man?’

‘Yes.’ She sighed and, taking a tissue out of her sleeve, dabbed her eyes. ‘But I didn't like him.’

‘Why are you crying, then?’ asked Naji.

But Teta only sighed, pulled herself up and went out of the room.

As we crossed the road to go home, a heat-haze was rising from the engine of the parked cream Mercedes, and I heard the high-pitched laughter of little girls. Except it wasn't little girls.

The Rose Man's daughters were standing on the far side of the veranda with Uncle. Ghada, the younger one, had her hand over her mouth and laughter was escaping from beneath it. She was gazing at Uncle Wadih from under her eyelashes and holding her head at an angle that made it look as if it wasn't screwed onto her neck properly.

‘What's she doing?’ I asked, peering round the corner with Naji. But now Uncle leant down to say something in Samira's ear, and although she was the sensible sister, she unseamed into giggles too.

‘What joke is he telling?’ I started to go forwards, but Naji pulled me back.

‘We mustn't. He wouldn't like it.’

Then Uncle started on something else. '“Se trouva fort dépourvue, quand la bise fut venue: pas un seul petit morceau de mouche ou de vermisseau.” He was using a different voice, one he only used when he was talking to women. He had another for when he was talking to us.

Samira's arms were wrapped round herself, Ghada's fingers picked at the skirt of her blue dress, and both were gazing at Uncle as though he were Jesus.

Suddenly Uncle put up his hands the way people did when a gun was pointing at them. “Elle alla crier famine chez la fourmi sa voisine. La priant de lui prêter quelque grain pour subsister jusqu'à la saison nouvelle.” He bent his head towards the sisters. ‘That means the grasshopper was suffering with hunger.’

‘Look!’ giggled Naji. ‘They're grown-up and they're still listening to the ant and the grasshopper!’

The two women were entranced. Samira clutched at her neck. ‘That's beautiful. Did you hear how beautiful that was, Ghada? Did you hear the poetry?’

Ghada smiled the way unmarried girls smiled. ‘Yes.’

‘But that poem … The way you recited it was beautiful,’ Samira declared.

Uncle gave a slight bow, and we went inside to wait for him. The weather was still sticky. Since yesterday it had felt as if the clouds must split like cloth and let out their load, yet still no drop fell from the dark sky.

Mami had gone out to buy food, but drinking cordial in the kitchen, we listened to the faint voices of Papi and the Rose Man in the next room.

‘Maybe that's why Uncle's out on the veranda,’ said Naji, suddenly angry. ‘So he doesn't have to be in there.’ He jerked his thumb towards the living room.

‘What's wrong?’

Naji glared at the closed door. ‘Him. He's always talking about the war. Uncle's not like that. He laughs and jokes and … knows how to be with people.’

We were finishing our second glass of cordial when Uncle Wadih came back inside. I clutched his jacket so he couldn't get away again. ‘You were out there for ages.’

He looked surprised. ‘They're lovely ladies.’ It was the voice he used for me and Naji. ‘Don't they deserve to have me talking to them?’

‘How long are you going to stay?’ I demanded.

Uncle glanced at the nearly empty glasses, then checked his jacket for fingermarks. There were none. ‘I haven't been here a couple of days and you're thinking of me leaving already?’

‘Will you stay till Christmas? Or are you going to marry Ghada and Samira and stay for ever?’

He laughed. ‘Not for ever, my love. Not even till Chrismas.’

We followed him into the living room, where he told stories about life in Beirut. The sniping had got worse on the Green Line, he said. The young ones were bored and sat in shelled buildings looking out onto the other side and practising their shooting. He told the story of an old woman who had come out to buy bread; one of the soldiers took aim, then hesitated. His friend encouraged him but, with his finger on the trigger, the other couldn't shoot.

‘Why not?’ asked Naji.

‘Because she reminded him of his grandmother.’

The Rose Man whistled softly. The taste of the cordial was sickly in my mouth, and I saw Teta picking her way through narrow streets between shelled buildings carrying a bag of bread. Did the old woman who wasn't shot make delicious sandwiches like Teta, or sling her carpets over the balcony railings and thump them with a beater of plaited willow till the dust jumped out?

‘Now, if you're a Christian and die in West Beirut,’ said the Rose Man, ‘or a Muslim who dies in the East, they have to convert you before you can be buried. Imagine, you spend your whole life fighting for your religion, and the moment you die they convert you.’

‘I don't like you living down there,’ said Papi. ‘Not any more.’

But Uncle brushed it off, settled back on the sofa and began another story. ‘I had to cross Beirut for business the other week. But let's make this clear, my friends, I wasn't going to go in my car. They'd have stopped me for sure, and if they had … well … I took a taxi.’

He leant back, resting his arms along the top of the sofa so that he looked like a lilac-winged bird. His black hair gleamed and the heavy-lidded eyes glanced between Papi and the Rose Man.

‘But, you know, each one of those old brown Mercedes taxis is packed with a whole tribe: a man, his wife, the wife's cousin, the cousin's great-uncle, a nephew twice removed, his goat and the goat's fleas. The back bumpers are kissing the ground, the roof-rack's balancing a tower of luggage, and the boot has to be tied shut with a rope. These are the taxis of Beirut.’

He pinched my cheek and continued. On his way back, a checkpoint had sprung up where there had been none that morning, with Muslim militia guards checking cars. Everyone knew it was safer to travel by taxi – the guards know the taxi drivers and the taxi drivers know the militia – so Uncle's taxi was full, with two other men, a woman and her child.

He rubbed his hands round each other as if he were soaping them. ‘So there we are, sitting targets, and nothing we can do. And the queue moves on by millimetres, the checkpoint draws nearer, and there's nothing to do but sit and smell the stink of humanity. When we draw up, the Kalashnikovs start waving in our faces and, of course, the soldier wants to see our cards.’

I waited to see what Uncle would do, how he would defeat them all. The Rose Man crossed and uncrossed his legs, and Naji cracked his knuckles. Only Papi, eyes fixed on Uncle, didn't move. His dull trousers and flecked grey jumper gave the impression of a boulder overgrown with moss. Fine tendrils and knotted vines of muscle climbed up his neck beneath the skin and vanished, twisting, beneath the too-long hair.

‘What's on an identification card?’ asked Naji.

‘They take a man's life and reduce it to a couple of inches of paper,’ scoffed Papi. ‘It tells them not only that you're Christian or Muslim, but whether you're Maronite, Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Sunni, Shi'a or Druze.’

‘So this guard starts to check the cards, his rifle hanging into the car. He checks the man in front, but the woman's fumbling and taking her time – God knows where in that handbag she's got it – and the child's getting in her way, so the soldier moves on to the second man. After him there's only me and, I tell you, I'm squashed in there, my back stuck to the seat I'm so scared. I sit in the back of that car knowing that when he gets to me, maybe that'll be it. When he sees I'm a Maronite …’

Naji had cracked all his knuckles and they wouldn't crack again.

‘The man beside me produces his card, and the guard nods. Now there's only me. And what am I to do? I'm fiddling about with my wallet to buy time, and just when I can't delay any longer, the woman finds her card and puts it into the guard's hands. Then he leans in with his eyes fixed on me. And I swear it's by the grace of Allah, by the grace of God Himself, that her child hears the gun tapping against the car. And, ohhhh, how he starts to cry – not just a mewling, but screaming at the top of his voice the way only a child can. That sound – unbearable! So the guard stood up, waved us on, and that was the end of the story.’

Everybody in the room softened and relaxed.

Soon the Rose Man left, and Papi fetched two bottles of beer. Thunder rumbled far off as he poured them. ‘You didn't get it sorted out?’ he asked Uncle Wadih.

‘No. They tell me he might have lost everything: the whole business. I'll bet that was why his heart stopped beating.’

Papi took a gulp of beer. ‘They buried him two days before you came.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘We saw his funeral,’ I piped up, but they weren't interested.

‘And your shares?’ Papi asked.

‘Gone. That's what I get for trusting the man. Blight his life, he probably ate his way through my profits.’

‘Never mind, my brother, never mind. You're still working and the money's still coming in.’

‘You're right, that's business. You put money into a company and you may end up rich or you may never see it again. But work's bad in Beirut. No honest man has much money. Except the coffin-makers – they're the only ones who make an excellent living nowadays.’

Naji jumped onto the sofa beside Uncle. ‘What did you do all morning?’

Uncle brightened as he put an arm round Naji's shoulder. ‘You know what I did? I was near some woods where there were some big birds flying over – a hundred, maybe.’

I squeezed onto the sofa too. ‘What kind?’

‘Flamingos, they call them. They're big and bright pink – pink as your bum!’ His face relaxed into an easy smile.

‘Did you see them, Uncle?’ I asked. ‘Pink birds?’

‘Of course I did! There were some fellows in the woods hunting and—’

‘Not hunting the birds!’ I'd seen men come out of the forest at the bottom of the hill sometimes with long gleaming rifles, strings of shiny bullets slung round their shoulders and limp bundles of small birds hanging from their belts, feathery brown bouquets that dangled as they walked.

‘Of course hunting the flamingos,’ Uncle replied, tugging my hair. ‘What else? It's the migration season, and young men like that sort of thing.’ He turned to Papi. ‘Michel's boys. They were heading off as I left, so I went down with them for a while.’

He poured the rest of his beer. ‘It's like the neck of a bottle,’ he explained to Naji. ‘There are narrow straits through the mountain ranges here, and the birds get channelled through them. There's no other way.’

‘Did the men shoot any?’ asked Naji, eagerly. ‘Did they? Did they kill any?’

‘They did.’

There was a distant crackle of lightning.

‘Didn't you shoot too?’ Naji wanted to know. ‘You got some as well, didn't you?’

Uncle's body throbbed with laughter. ‘It's been years since I went hunting, but they insisted so I had a go.’

Naji whooped, but I felt suddenly squashed tight between Uncle and the sofa arm.

By evening the thunder had passed. It hadn't rained and the clouds had cleared, leaving a clean sky dotted with the first stars. I wanted Mami to sit on my bed until I felt sleepy, and searched the house for her. But with the passing of the thunder she had vanished.

I stumbled, breathless, from room to room, but when I peered out through the net of the kitchen door, I found her. She was on the veranda, clutching the metal railings with both hands, while behind her Teta stood unmoving in the blackening twilight. They were staring across the road at the glowing white shape that was Uncle's Mercedes. It seemed to throb palely in the gloom, the grille on the front of the bonnet like bared teeth, the headlights large watching eyes.

I was about to push open the door and join them when I noticed the tears streaming down Mami's face. Deep sobs pumped her chest in and out, and the dip in her throat was quivering like a leaf.

Teta shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. ‘What do you want with such things, my girl?’ she asked, her voice thick with pity. ‘Such things …’

As her chest shuddered, Mami's shirt fluttered in the dying light. Palm upwards, she stretched out a hand towards the dimly shining car.

‘It's so beautiful,’ she sobbed, swallowing in great gulps. ‘I don't think … I don't think I ever saw anything so beautiful.’