A Girl Made of Dust, page 11
‘They weren’t being mean on purpose. Those two older ones are already in the militia. They’re grown up enough to fight, and soon I will be as well.’ His face brightened, but only for an instant. ‘You didn’t tell Papi, did you?’
I didn’t answer.
‘You mustn’t say anything. You mustn’t tell either of them. Swear you won’t.’
‘They made fun of Karim, you all did; and that one with the funny eyes nearly killed me.’
Naji rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Don’t tell them.’
I thought about it. ‘Promise you won’t play with those boys again.’
His nostrils flared. ‘No!’
I stared out of the window again. ‘Fine.’
Daylight was fading, and across the street a light came on.
Naji spoke quietly. ‘If I promise, then you won’t tell Mami and Papi?’
I nodded.
He took a deep breath. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right, I promise.’
Chapter Thirteen
When I saw Karim at school, he wasn’t angry with me, only with Naji because he turned his back when he saw him. We didn’t talk about what had happened. Karim seemed to want to forget about it, and I didn’t care if he was a Muslim or not. To me he was just Karim. Besides, I had other things to worry about.
All week I dreamt of stump-tailed salamanders, snails with cracked shells and girls covered in dust. Most often, though, I dreamt of chickens. They limped and flapped their wings, squawking in pain, feathers flecked with blood. And their eyes, unblinking and surrounded by scaly red skin, looked at me accusingly. Each morning I felt worse and worse about what I’d done, until, after waking from another chicken dream, I decided to tell Teta.
She was on the balcony repotting young plant shoots into bigger containers, ‘so they can breathe’. When I told her I’d let those chickens out and Ali said they’d been killed, she looked at me hard until I squirmed. Then she handed me a container to repot, and I worked in silence, the soil black and bitter between my fingers.
Gathering the spilt soil on the floor into a mound, Teta scooped it up and patted it down round the young shoots, then pushed the tin into the corner so it could catch the sun. Her lips were pursed tight as she took up a broom and swept.
‘You can come up there with me and apologize,’ she said at last, banging the broom against the wall to release the soil.
‘What?’ My dirty fingers tingled. ‘We can’t! You’re not friends with her any longer.’
‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘we were friends once, and it’s time I let the skin heal over my anger.’
‘But we can’t go there! What about… what about the curse?’
Teta turned round. ‘What curse?’
‘The one she put on Papi.’
It took Teta a moment, then she gave a shuddering laugh.
‘But you said she did!’
‘Me? I never said any such thing, child.’
I stared. Teta never lied.
She gave the broom one last thump against the wall. ‘Go and wash your hands. We’re leaving in a few minutes.’
The further up the hill we got, the heavier Teta’s breathing became. By the time we turned into the narrow lane that ran further uphill past the nut shop, she was puffing like a runner.
The smell of hot sugar came from a fan in the wall, and I looked up to see if Ali was there to throw me down some sugared almonds, but today there was no face behind the metal grille.
The lane was longer and steeper than it had ever been before. A car came down slowly with a skidding of tyres, braking, releasing, then braking again. Finally we got to the top and walked along the dusty edge of the high road. I would have slowed as we drew near the witch’s house, but Teta had me by the hand.
The front yard was quiet. It looked different in the daylight: just a sandy yard, with a sad broken fountain in its centre. A watery shade was cast by the three trees Karim and I had crept under and, with a guilty pang, I saw there were only two white chickens scratching and pecking the ground now.
‘It used to be the richest house in the area,’ muttered Teta, shaking her head as we walked towards the mesh door.
We stopped on the step and Teta stood biting her lip and frowning. Finally she knocked on the wooden frame. Through the fine mesh, it was dark inside.
My sweaty hand slid out of Teta’s grasp as I half turned, undecided whether to run and save myself or stay and protect Teta. One of the chickens squawked softly. A leaf floated down and settled with a whisper on the dry ground.
A shuffling sound came from inside and Teta shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Then someone appeared in the square of light on the other side of the mesh door: a pair of feet in worn slippers, and the skirt of a dress with buttons down the front, the faded material scattered with small yellow and blue flowers. It stood there alone, half a body in the light. It was her.
The half a body had an old woman’s voice with a country accent. ‘Who’s there?’
The door creaked open. The top hinge was broken, making it hang out once it came away from the frame, like a loose tooth that needed just one good tug. The hand that held it open was old, and as wide and rough as the feet. Then the body grew whole: a head with a cotton cloth wrapped round it, a face hundreds of years old, older even than Teta’s, and eyes closed narrow against the sunlight. Below them, the mouth was crowded round with lines, a purse that had had its string pulled tight.
She looked at me, then at Teta.
‘Latifeh,’ Teta said. That was all; just the name.
‘You?’ The wrinkled face eased a little. The one good hinge creaked. ‘Is it you come to visit me after all these years ? After all this time?’
Teta nodded. ‘Our grandchildren play together now. They go to school together and the past is forgotten. And us: what do we want with the past?’
We were still alive on our side of the door, on that stone step in the sunshine with the two chickens scratching and muttering at our backs.
Then the thick body moved aside–‘Come in, ahlan’–and Teta pulled me with her. We were in a large kitchen, cool and dim with a stone floor. A lightbulb hung from the ceiling above a plastic-topped table with scorchmarks where pots had been set down, and scratches where a knife had cut. Paint flaked off the walls, like ancient skin, and there was a brown patch where the rain had come through.
‘Amal! Where are you, ya Amal?’
There was a bang from the back of the house, running feet, and Amal came in, stumbling to a halt beside the table. Her eyebrows closed together when she saw me, but then she smiled: a smile so big her face cracked open.
The witch’s hand ran over Amal’s head and rested on her shoulder. It was a strange thing, that old shaking hand lying on the clean red and white dress with its lacy collar. ‘Is this your friend, my soul?’
Amal came and took my arm, and we followed the grown-ups out of the kitchen and into an echoing room that had a sofa covered with a blue sheet, a table with four wooden chairs, a sideboard with a stack of plates in it, and two pictures on the wall. Teta and the witch sat on the sofa.
Beside me hung a picture of Jesus and angels shooting out light, and next to it, a black-and-white photograph: a man and woman leaning against a shiny car. The man’s moustache was curled up at either end, and the woman wore a fancy dress and jewels even though she wasn’t pretty. It was hard to tell whether she was smiling or not, she had such big teeth.
Amal let go of my arm and went to pick up a plastic doll from the floor. It had long ragged hair, and eyes that swung open and shut as it was tilted.
‘What shall I offer you?’ the witch asked Teta. ‘Coffee? Something to eat?’
‘No, nothing.’
The offer came again, but still Teta refused.
Amal fetched the doll and handed it to me. I took it, although I was too old for such things.
‘So many years it’s been. So many,’ said the witch. ‘But nothing’s changed, except birth and death. Life has been a circle, and here I am, back where I started, poor and alone, if it weren’t for this child. And what I remember is not my life but someone else’s.’
‘Someone else’s?’ asked Teta.
‘You see that picture on the wall? That’s my husband. And who’s standing next to him? You think that woman is me?’ The witch laughed drily. ‘No. Pockets weighed down with money suck the brains out of a person till they’re no longer themselves.’
I made myself look away from that creased face. Thinking about it would make it happen: she would suddenly be full of life, ready to jump up and catch me in her arms, in her mouth with its big teeth.
‘Ach.’ Teta sighed. ‘And here we are without husbands again, just like the day we met, and with even more troubles on our heads. When we were young we didn’t have such troubles, not before the men came.’
As I held the doll, Amal plaited its hair, left over right, right over left, and with each pull, the long-lashed eyes winked at me.
The witch spoke now. ‘Did he…?’
‘Yes, he passed away.’
She rubbed her scarved head. ‘That’s right, I remember now. I remember. How many years is it?’
‘Eleven, God rest his soul. We knew he had a weak heart, it runs in his family, but even when you know it’s coming, you’re never prepared.’
‘I don’t remember what happened yesterday – whether the sun rose and sank, whether I ate or drank – but him, standing there trying to pick out a wife, that I’ll never forget.’
‘He was a scrawny thing, wasn’t he? Scrawny as a half-plucked chicken, and so young it wasn’t certain whether it was a wife he needed or a straw to drink his milk through.’ Teta laughed inside her chest, and another deeper laugh joined hers.
‘God bless him.’
Amal had finished plaiting and, tossing the doll on the floor again, pulled me through the kitchen into the yard.
There I could breathe again. ‘Have you got any chalk? We can play hopscotch. Do you know hopscotch?’
She shook her head.
‘I’ll show you. Have you got a piece of chalk?’
She shook her head again. Then she thought a moment and ran back inside. I sat down on the stone step to wait. The sun seemed close and shone down in splintered threads of metal. The chickens’ claws raked through the sand, a lizard slipped down the house wall like water, and wavy patterns of light shifted on the ground beneath the nearest tree. Small fruit peeped out from among its leaves: white mulberries.
The screen door banged and Amal reappeared with a green wax crayon. I took it and drew hopscotch squares on the flagstones in front of the kitchen, then numbered them. ‘We need a stone now.’
Amal found one, and I showed her how to play. Soon we were hopping from square to square, and carried on until a call came from the kitchen.
‘Amal, where are you?’
We found Teta sitting at the table picking mint off the stem. There were two piles of stalks, but now the witch was standing near the sink making a sandwich. A moment later she rolled up the bread and cut it in half. ‘Here. Eat, eat.’ As she gave one half to me and the other to Amal, I noticed her hands were shaking. ‘What’s your name, my girl?’
The sandwich was squished tight in my fist. ‘Ruba.’
‘Ruba. Yes, Ruba.’
I glanced at Teta for some sign of what I should do about eating, but she was busy with her work. Amal took a great bite from her half, pulling her head back to tear the bread. She didn’t look afraid.
I closed my eyes before biting into mine. A second afterwards, sweetness flooded my mouth. Butter and fig jam. Another mouthful later, I was still alive, and the witch was talking.
‘How’s your other son these days? I forget his name.’
‘Wadih.’
‘Yes, yes.’
Teta snorted. ‘He’s flying somewhere between heaven and earth. Occasionally he lands and comes to pay us a visit.’ She chuckled. ‘He still has the face of an angel and the tongue of a devil.’
‘How he used to make me laugh. He would sit here in my kitchen and talk till the tears ran down my face. Yes, Wadih, that was his name.’
Uncle Wadih here in her kitchen!
‘Or was that my husband?’ She passed her hand across her eyes. ‘No, it was your son. I remember now. He used to come in his car in the summertime with watermelons in the boot and take us down to… to… that place, that place down there to have a picnic.’
Teta continued picking the mint. ‘Yes, with your daughter, God rest her soul. It makes my heart hurt to think of her. Why God should take the good ones…’
The witch was standing at the sink with her broad back to us now, the pattern of tiny faded flowers stretched tight across it like an ironing-board cover. ‘Each morning the sun rises and I blame myself. It sets and I blame myself again.’
‘She was a kind girl,’ murmured Teta.
‘Kind?’ The witch clutched a single fork with bent prongs. ‘My poor child.’ The cloth-wrapped head sank forwards. ‘My poor, poor soul.’
When we left, Teta took me straight to church, perhaps to keep off the evil of the place, and since we were there anyway, I prayed: that Papi would get better, and that Teta wouldn’t remember I hadn’t apologized about the chickens. I prayed too that Naji would stop being angry all the time without saying what about, and that Mami would be happier. And Teta prayed, her eyes closed, lips moving, body rocking lightly from side to side.
Walking back, I asked, ‘Where does she come from, the woman who used to be your friend?’
‘From a village a long way from here, just like me.’
‘Not the same village?’
‘No, not the same one.’
As we passed the bakery that was only a hole in the wall, the baker scooped out a man’oosheh on a wooden shovel and, wrapping it in paper, handed it to a waiting boy.
‘Teta, does she really know Uncle Wadih?’
‘Yes. She knew him when he was a young man.’
I kicked a stone and sent it rolling into the dust. ‘Why did you stop being friends?’
She gave a funny sort of a smile. ‘They were too greedy, her and that husband of hers. They wanted to get hold of as much money as they could. They had plenty, but their own money wasn’t enough for them, and they had to marry off their daughter to a rich man. Still,’ she continued, ‘God sees everything, and He sent them more than they deserved. More than anyone deserves.’
Chapter Fourteen
Teta said it always rained on Good Friday, and it did, a fine soaking rain as they carried the Christ-figure into the church on a stretcher covered with flowers. Then the school term finished early because the shelling grew worse. It started in Beirut, but quickly moved closer until the loud whistlings were overhead, followed by a moment’s silence, then a shuddering bang. Mami said that the silent moment was the most terrible because you didn’t know where the bomb was going to land. We weren’t allowed beyond the veranda, no matter how hard we begged, and soon ran out of things to do.
‘Can’t I even go to Karim’s?’ I asked Mami.
‘No.’
‘To the forest, then?’ The puffy green clouds of treetops were only at the bottom of the slope, but they might as well have been on the other side of the world because Mami said no.
Day by day, as spring turned to summer, the forest would be changing, its old skin peeling off like a scab to uncover a shiny new softness that was only there at this time of year. Down there, the whole place smelt as rich as a half-cooked cake. I wanted to see the rock-roses open their pink and white flowers with impossibly thin petals; to find the green and white lilies that still held the last rainwater, and hunt out the rarer ones, foul-smelling things with a single red petal wrapped round a black column. I wanted to see bees and caterpillars, squat to watch the march and scurry of ants. I wanted to be in the forest again, before it was gone.
Naji explained that Israel had invaded Lebanon, which meant that, ever since, the adults had been talking about it. Mostly it was Papi and the Rose Man, who sat perched on the sofa like a boy on a wall. Sometimes Teta was there too shelling peas or picking grit out of lentils, her half-moon glasses balanced on the end of her nose.
They argued about the invasion, about dates and places and who had done what. They talked of Begin and the plan for a Greater Israel, of American money and weapons pouring in for the Maronites who would help Israel invade. Of Bashir Jumayyil who was the people’s hero, and how he hated Syria, hated the Palestinians, and on top of that was an army man, a military leader.
When the Rose Man wasn’t visiting and there was no news to watch on television, the radio was the only thing Papi cared about. In the evening, he sat pointing the metal aerial first this way then that, turning the dial by a hair’s width to receive the station he wanted. Slowly, his fingers felt their way to the quiet places between the sizzles, his hunched body only loosening when voices spluttered into life. Then he would set the radio back on the shelf and sit in the gloom with his nose, cheeks and forehead lit by a candle on the table. The rest of him would vanish, and the only movement would be the sparkle of his eyes catching the light as they followed Mami round the room, watched her pick up a cushion, clear the dinner-table, come in with her sewing basket. The only sound would be the voices on the radio, the thunder of bombs falling in the valley, and the click of his new string of worry beads.
I thought about asking Naji about the dust girl, but he wasn’t the same Naji he used to be so I decided to ask the Rose Man instead. The Rose Man had been friends with Papi a long time. He might know what had happened.
The next time he came to our house, I waited outside the living room for his conversation with Papi to finish so I could follow him outside. The door was wide open. Teta sat working on a piece of crochet, but Papi and the Rose Man were arguing about the invasion again. Papi said it would solve the Palestinian problem. They were already naming their camps after Palestinian towns, he said, but the Rose Man didn’t agree. He pointed to Papi’s newspaper. ‘Haven’t you seen the pictures? The Israelis forcing their way along the coast, destroying towns and villages, leaving a trail of corpses?’
