“Here,” she said, with brusque insistence. “Take this. Go on, take it!”
Colin was staring at her in stupefaction. As if in a slow-motion movie, his hand stretched out, fell back.
“It’s a gun,” he said, and she could see how stupid he felt at having stated something so obvious.
“Yes. It’s loaded; the safety catch is on.”
He shook his head. “Not my scene.”
She reached for his hand and pressed the gun into it. “If not for your sake, then for Robbie’s. Don’t tell them where you’ve been today; make sure the boy doesn’t say anything. Promise me that, promise
me. And take the gun.”
“I can’t.” He tried to force it back on Celestine but she resisted with greater strength than he’d have given her credit for. “I mean … suppose they found it, the police—”
“You fool, everyone in Beirut has a gun, everyone! Don’t you know where you’re living yet?”
The door opened, to reveal Robbie in the foreground and Azizza hovering uneasily behind him. “Daddy, what are you and Celestine doing?”
Colin had his back to the door, concealing the gun from the boy’s gaze. Now Celestine took advantage of his confusion to push his hand, the one holding the gun, into the pocket of his jacket. “I was just explaining the quickest route back into town,” she said slyly. “The road’s a bit hard to find if you don’t know it.”
“Oh.” He advanced into the room. “Do we really have to go?” His voice was doleful.
“Yes, darling. But there’ll be other times.” She picked him up. They had their routine, now; he settled into the crook of her shoulder as if he’d been doing it for years instead of minutes. Celestine carried him out to the Fiat and slid him onto the back seat, where he would be safer in the event of an accident—how the very thought made her shake with rage and trepidation—before turning to Colin.
“Wise up,” she all but snapped. “Look about you, stay alive.”
“I will.
We
will.”
“Give my love to Leila. Don’t forget what I told you.”
Colin got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “Thank you,” he said awkwardly. “For everything, I mean.”
“I know what you mean. Come back one day. Both of you.”
As she turned to enter the house, some macabre conviction assured Celestine that Colin would need the gun, and soon.
L
EILA
had ordered two of the doors to be opened. She sat alone in first class, enjoying a cool flutter of air through the plane. Behind her, the passengers were being allowed to use the toilets after a night spent strapped in their seats; they too would be glad of some ventilation. Captain Morgan had consulted her about the air-conditioning, which would not last long. She agreed with him: better to switch if off during the night and save fuel for the heat of the day. Not that the nights here were cool. At 3 a.m., the ambient temperature had registered 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
Morgan was good. He had begun, hesitantly, to talk to her. She knew this was what the anti-hijack manuals instructed him to do but did not care; he was an interesting person. He’d mentioned his “souls” and, when she queried it, explained that a plane’s full complement of people, crew plus passengers, was always referred to as so many “souls.” He was a fine pilot and a decent man too, because he understood that people had souls. Killing him would give her no pleasure, even though he was—he had to be—at the top of her death list. Fouad could do it, when necessary.
She remembered the first time she had taken life. Before then, she had never thought to do such a thing. It was like sex: as a girl, the notion of being mauled by a man was disgusting. Then, slowly, you came around to the idea that one day you might love a man enough to marry him and let him touch you. Later still, love became more important in that equation than marriage, so perhaps you could bring yourself to take a lover without marrying him. Finally, you went to bed with somebody, and after that it was all downhill. So with murder: the sin became first conceivable, then tolerable, and at last habitual. You scarcely noticed. If you did notice, you looked back at your young self, that other person who’d once expressed abhorrence at what was now your practice, and you laughed, ashamed to think you could ever have been so naïve.
As long as you knew the killing was in aid of a purpose, a cause that you yourself were prepared to die for, you got used to it.
Behind her, they were waiting. Passengers, crew, even the hijack team itself: all waiting. She could feel their impatience like a lethal wave overbearing her hunched shoulders, poised to come crashing down. Back there were loaded guns, grenades with their pins pulled, explosives wired to emergency hatches and doors. These objects seemed to her less dangerous than the human volatility that, for the time being, controlled them. She could make a pistol do her will, but people were not like that.
Her men ruled the passengers, and her job was to dominate her men. She could not use objects to do it. What she needed lay inside herself and had roots that went down deep into the past.
She sat in seat number 3B, on the aisle, where the movement of air through the nearby door was most perceptible. The sun had already risen over the horizon. It was light inside the cabin. She stared down at the passport in her hands, every so often turning the blue booklet over or opening it to scan a few pages before letting it fall into her lap.
Robbie had traveled a bit since 1982 and New York: the year, the place, when Leila had last seen her child. She’d held him in her arms and kissed him above the ear,
there
… how often had she relived those magic seconds? She could still smell the apple scent of his hair, his spine still curled inward under the pressure of her hands, his smooth skin nuzzling her own: all hostages of memory, intact, immaculate.
Leila jumped up and turned around, her gaze locking onto the curtain that separated the first class cabin from the plane’s business section. He sat just beyond it. Seat 13K. If she tore that curtain aside, his face would be the first thing she’d see. She took a step forward without willing it and grabbed the nearest seat, like a woman trying to save herself from being swept away by a flood tide.
He was there!
Her nails dug into the cloth until her fingers turned white. Now was not the time. She could pass through that curtain and ruin everything, or she could wait. So she would sit down. She would take the rest she so badly needed.
She fell to studying Robbie’s passport again. He had traveled to Russia. A school trip; she knew about that and had wanted to snatch him back then, but Halib had said no, because in Russia he could do nothing. Greece. Yugoslavia, in the same year as Greece … motoring holiday? Halib hadn’t said anything about it. Perhaps he hadn’t known. Taking Robbie back would have been so easy in Greece.
Robbie might have traveled, but it hadn’t been possible to find out about his trips at the time. Not like now. This journey to Malaysia and Australia had mysteriously found its way into the newspapers. Why? Law tutors went abroad all the time, without necessarily being profiled in the press.
There was something about this operation that made Leila’s flesh creep. A man had tried to keep her from entering the cockpit: a sky marshal employed by the airline, perhaps. But there was something almost familiar about him, something she couldn’t put a name to. Perhaps she had seen him before and couldn’t remember where. She would give details taken from the man’s passport to Halib. Halib would find out.
She glanced at her watch, glad of the way her thoughts focused and assumed new direction, with Halib suddenly much in her mind. Without him, what would have become of her? Death, madness?
She might have been happy, but for him. No, don’t think that….
Y’Allah,
let her brother be fit and well this day. There were things they must do together. He had radioed twice, during the night: the first time to tell her that, as expected, the Iraqis were disclaiming all knowledge of the six prisoners, the second time to find out how she was coping and to say he loved her.
She’d been abrupt, that second time, because every moment they stayed on the air gave the eavesdroppers a fresh opportunity to break their codes. But she forgave her brother. He knew that what he did was risky, but he also knew the odds, down to five decimal places. And besides, it was his way of saying that the two of them rode their course above the odds.
Leila stood up, keeping Robbie’s passport in her hands, and moved to the door. As she stared out across the gravel plain to the line of hills beyond, even now turning from black to deep purple as the sun swiftly rose, she wondered who would be first to break the code of discipline she’d imposed on the outside world, and how they would do it.
One helicopter, she’d said. One camera crew, to fly from the Iranian frigate off Socotra Island. No other aircraft, no vessels out to sea. But the “authorities,” those chess grand masters who always worked against hijackers, unseen and unaccountable, would choose a way to disobey. Reasonable, that’s how it would be designed to look: humanitarian, harmless. A forbidden act with which the world could empathize. If she showed compassion, forgave the error, that was weakness and the grand masters would smile, briefly, before continuing. But if she exacted punishment, the hijackers would forfeit sympathy for their cause.
Well. It did not matter either way, because they mistook the “cause"; they thought she was in this for the freedom of half a dozen crazy Iranians, when in truth she did not give a damn whether they lived or died.
She had to do whatever Halib said. First, finish off the business of the hijack, secure the prisoners’ release. Then Robbie.
Then
Robbie.
Leila stood in the doorway, watching, listening. Words from the Holy Koran drifted into her mind. They came from the sura known as “The Imrans”: “Allah is the supreme Plotter.”
She knew what the grand masters were going to do.
C
ELESTINE
had last seen Beirut in 1982, from the window of a Middle East Airlines 747 en route to Cairo, having finally reached the end of her tether.
She’d been able to cope with the Syrians, which was as well, because ever since 1980 they’d parked their tanks just down the road from the house at Yarze and acted like they owned the place. At least with the Syrians you felt safe. You knew that if street fighting boiled out of the eastern Christian enclave and threatened to come too close, or the Palestinians got above themselves, you could send Azizza down to the command post with a couple of chickens and a tin of coffee prominently marked
harrods
, and the major in charge would take care of things. On that basis she’d stayed put, more or less comfortably, while the city slowly disintegrated into factional bloodletting.
By the late spring of 1982, however, Lebanon’s Palestinian population had become a thorn in Israel’s side to the point where everyone knew their southern neighbor would invade, and soon. All that was lacking was the final provocation. Celestine arranged for Azizza to go to her sister’s place in the north and packed her own suitcases; shortly after she made her escape to Cairo, Shlomo Argov, Israeli ambassador to the Court of St. James, lay critically wounded in a London street, shot by terrorists, and Tel Aviv had its excuse. Within days, the elite Golani brigade was camped below the presidential palace at Baabda, whence their artillery could command most of the city. Lebanon, no longer independent, had become occupied territory.
Celestine embarked on a nomadic existence, restlessly declining to settle anywhere for long. Week by week she monitored the collapse of her homeland in airmailed editions of
L’Orient-Le Jour
that chronicled such miscellaneous events as the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, snow conditions on the slopes above Monte Verde, the massacre of Palestinian refugees in the camps, and gala night in East Beirut’s Jet Set Disco.
Celestine read everything, she listened to whoever broadcast in her vicinity, and sometimes she would meet up with her cronies from better days; drinking espresso on the Via Veneto or lunching at the Ritz in Madrid, these exiles lived pretty much as usual, with only the occasional personal horror story to highlight the broad picture of mass destruction seeping, like sewage from a broken pipe, out of Lebanon.
Her belief that things would come right in the end survived Israel’s smashing of Sidon, the destruction of the U.S. embassy, and the dynamiting of the marines’ four-story headquarters on the seafront; it lasted right up until the battle for the Chouf, and then it collapsed.
Early in 1984, President Amin Gemayel’s men fell upon the Shiites of West Beirut in an attempt to prevent them from aiding the Druze, who dominated the strategically important Chouf Mountains. By February, however, far from being defeated, Druze and Shiite Amal militiamen had actually wrested control of West Beirut from Gemayel. Many of those Shiites belonged to a newly formed, extreme, and pro-Iranian organization known as Hezbollah, the Party of God. By the time they had finished ransacking the bars and former brothels, not much of fashionable Hamra Street and its expensive shops, where Celestine had once delighted to spend her days, remained. Thereafter, outsiders—Palestinians, Syrians, even Israelis—were shunted off to the sidelines while the Lebanese got down to their real hidden agenda: murdering one another.
Celestine, although herself nominally a Shiite, knew then that her country was finished, and a part of her mind closed. She accepted, for instance, that she had seen the last of the house at Yarze. Yet it was 1984 and here she was again, at its gates.
Or, rather, gate. The left-hand wrought-iron portal lay on its side, wrested off its hinges but clearly visible through the weeds that had overgrown it. The other hung straight as a plumb line, despite a coating of rust. Celestine straightened her shoulders and marched through the gap.
She was glad to get around to the back of the house, where prying eyes would be less likely to notice her. It was noon, and the light spared her nothing. She had her keys with her but did not need them; every window in the place had been smashed, every door knocked down. Huge gray stains streaked most of the back wall where water had leaked from a broken cistern in the roof. The sofa swing lay on its side, springs showing here and there through the long grass. Everything spoke of dereliction and decay. It was enough to break Celestine’s heart. She dropped her suitcase, blundered through into the living room, and quickly out again, retching at the smell. Someone had used this place as a lavatory.
Hearing a sound behind her, she wheeled around to see a scraggy dog in the doorway to the kitchen. It stood there, panting, but made no move. Celestine was afraid of dogs. This one looked starving. Another one crept up behind the first. The two beasts gazed at her through beseeching eyes. She took a step in their direction and they backed away, licking their chops.
Celestine gathered all her courage. “Go on, be off with you!” she cried. When she raised a hand menacingly, they slunk out the back door into the garden. She heard them whining, but neither appeared again.
Despite those dogs, the kitchen was cleaner than the living room. She found a chair and sank into it, weeping, but instead of making her feel better, this just made her eyes red and sore, like her feet. She had walked a long way today. If it hadn’t been for the farmer’s wife returning from market she would have been forced to walk all the way from the port of Jounieh, where she’d disembarked from the Cyprus ferry three hours previously. As it was, the farmer’s wife took pity on what she thought to be a poor old peasant woman, laboring under the weight of a tatty suitcase, and gave her a lift in her truck.
Celestine had gone to great lengths to look unexceptional. No more pink leotards for her; this was not a country where a woman might wear such a thing and get away with it anymore. Last night, in Heathrow Airport, she had leaned against the side of the phone booth, cigarette dangling from her lower lip, while she worked her way through bags of loose change until at last she had everything set up and ready for her arrival: a safe house in Larnaca, cash, transport, ID, and, yes—old clothes. Celestine knew Lebanon, understood its requirements.
Riding in the truck’s cab next to the farmer’s wife,she’d passed through two roadblocks. Celestine knew real fear, then. Even though her ID card correctly showed her religion as Shiite Muslim, which was the best thing to be in Beirut just now, she couldn’t believe her luck when the young men in their green fatigues and black-and-white keffiyehs gave it scarcely a glance.
“They are not interested in people like us,” said the farmer’s wife, as if reading her thoughts. “They are looking for men, men like themselves who can fight. A female can pass anywhere, as long as she keeps her head covered and her eyes cast down.” It saddened Celestine to leave the comparative comfort of the truck and the human contact, however slight. Women, she reflected bitterly, could have saved Beirut, if they hadn’t always been condemned to spend their lives discussing the price of fish
She came rocketing out of her reverie to the realization that somebody was in the room above her.
She jerked her head up, as if she expected the ceiling to become transparent. A board had creaked when someone put weight on it. Celestine slowly rose to her feet, gaze still fixed on the ceiling. There was nowhere to hide. Whoever was up there had probably watched her come in; by that time she’d been so exhausted she hadn’t cared who might see her. How many? One, two?
The kitchen was dark. Shadows filled its recesses and crannies, contesting the noonday light outside. She heard another sound then, farther away this time but equally ominous: somebody on the stairs. They were at the front of the house, the kitchen was at the back; she still had a little time.
Celestine tiptoed across to the cupboard next to the sink. That was where they used to keep the knives. She raised her hand to the knob and pulled. The wood had warped; the noise of the cupboard opening was frightful. Celestine uttered a moan of frustration.
Because she could not bear to turn away from the door that led into the passage, she could not see what she was doing. Her hand groped along the cupboard’s middle shelf, where memory told her she’d find something sharp. But instead, her fingers met only a gummy substance that
moved.
She yanked her hand back with another whimper, shaking mites from her skin, trying to clean her hand against her dress with panicky slaps.
Celestine wheeled around, forcing her back against the sink, and held onto its lip for support. Somebody was walking down the hallway toward the back of the house; she still couldn’t tell how many of them there were. Sickly remnants of light filtered through the window, enabling her to see the doorway and no farther. Her heart wandered around inside her chest, lost for bearings. She had read of so many atrocities. Suppose they tied her up, doused her with petrol, and left a candle burning on the floor, where she could see it…?
She found herself talking to a God she’d much neglected over the years. Allah, she prayed; let it be one quick, clean bullet.
And it seemed her prayer was answered, because from the doorway a pinprick glimmer suddenly mushroomed into an explosion of light that blinded her; the bullet traveled behind the light, she knew, but faster than sound; you never heard the shot that killed you—
“Sayida!”
Celestine’s fingers ground into the edge of the sink. Now, hearing that voice, she felt the strength drain out of them; her knees turned weak. Somehow she was sitting on the floor and the back of her skull ached, telling her that she had banged it against the sink as she fell.
“Azizza,” she whispered. “Izza…”
Azizza ran forward, dropping the electric torch that had so confused her mistress with its sudden burst of light, and knelt beside Celestine.
“Sayida, sayida,”
she kept murmuring. “Is it really you? Can it be you?”
Celestine reached up to pat the old woman’s hand. “It’s me,” she said, with something of her usual businesslike manner. “No ghosts here, Izza.”
Azizza helped her mistress back into the chair before retrieving the big torch. Seeing the look on Celestine’s face she said, by way of fierce explanation, “This flashlight’s heavy enough to bash someone’s head in!”
Azizza found another chair and drew it up close to Celestine’s. For a moment the two old women sat in silence, confirming through their clasped hands that this was real, no dream. Then, simultaneously, they began to talk.
“It’s been so long—”
“I still can’t believe it—”
“You haven’t changed, you’re the same.”
“Nonsense! I’m an antique; they should stuff me in the national museum.”
Celestine gave Azizza’s hands a final squeeze. “All right, all right, let’s do this sensibly. Me first. I went abroad, I lived quietly—you got my letters?”
“Nearly all. Because you numbered them I knew when one didn’t get through. Thank you,
sayida.”
“Enough of this
sayida,
please. Celestine is who I used to be and who I am now. I came back, because of the plane Leila and Halib stole. You heard?”
“I heard.”
“We’ll talk about that later, but first I want your news. And I want to smoke.” “You’ll eat and drink first Then we can have the stories.” “But—”
“Don’t ‘but’ me, Celestine. I’m going to leave you for a short time. Will you be all right?”
“I… think so.”
As if reading her thoughts, Azizza said, “No one has ever come here since the Maribatoun left.”
“The Mari—but they’re Nasserite Sunnis! You mean
Muslims
did this? To
our
house?”
Azizza’s laugh sounded hollow. “There’s a lot to tell,” she observed dryly. “Don’t worry, I’ll soon be back.”
Even with Azizza gone Celestine didn’t feel frightened anymore. While in Cyprus she’d ditched most of her luggage at a friend’s apartment, so that now she was left only with a handbag and one case, both chosen for their tawdry appearance. She flung open the suitcase and found her perfume—some things you could
not
abandon. After a few puffs applied to her face and neck, she felt well enough to run through the downstairs rooms, treating each to a burst of Blue Grass. But even so, she was relieved to see Azizza come traipsing back with a basket under her arm.
“It’s not much,” she panted, as she lugged the basket onto the table.
“Did anyone notice you?” Celestine asked uneasily.
“I’ve told you, nobody ever comes here now. The nearest house with people in it is half a kilometer away.” She opened the basket. “That’s where I work.”
“You work near here?” Celestine was flabbergasted. “But I sent you home, to Tripoli.”
“There’s
tabbuleh.
Some wine and some mineral water.
Yakhni,
though the stew’s cold, I’m afraid.”
“Azizza!”
“Your favorite—
yusuf effendi.”
She proudly held up a couple of tangerines so that her mistress could see them.
“Azizza, sit down! And tell me what on earth’s been going on.”
The old servant sat opposite Celestine, resting one forearm on the table. “Let me see you eat first.”
She’d piled a plate high with real
tabbuleh,
that wonderfulLebanese salad. Celestine picked out a sprig of mint with her fingers and sniffed it. The sharp scent flushed out her sinuses, sparking her appetite. Slowly she put it in her mouth and chewed. A thousand shimmering summer days came flooding back into her mind: the table laid beneath the jacaranda tree, Ibrahim, her dead husband, holding court at one end, a napkin tucked into his shirt collar, the children and grandchildren, laughter, childish tears
She fell to and ate ravenously while Azizza talked.
“There was nothing for me in Tripoli. I had the money you sent me each month, yes, but no work. My sister and her husband were good to me, but I could tell I wasn’t wanted.”
“Your sister Yasmin?”
“Yes. She and Kemal had six children by then. Four boys, two girls. The eldest boy, Najib, was fifteen and political—he wanted to fight for Palestine. But Kemal swore the boy simply didn’t want to work, because he spent all his time in the refugee camps. The atmosphere in the house was very bad.”