A Girl Made of Dust, page 9
‘Is it because we’re poor?’ I asked Teta.
She gave a scornful grunt. ‘I’ve seen the way she goes into the shop, all dressed up in her fancy stuff, almost trailing a fur, and smiling as if the honey was dripping from her lips. And all the time talk talk talk, never stopping, like the bell on a mule’s tail, and gathering gossip wherever she goes. That woman knows when a bird farts!’
My laughter made Teta chuckle softly to herself in that way she had, as if it was somewhere deep inside her. Then she started pounding and stirring the pot again.
‘Teta, why do you wash that way?’
‘I don’t trust a machine to take the dirt out. In Africa the women used to go down to the river and wash their clothes there. They used a dried corncob to rub them. But this is the way my mother did it, and there’s never a better way than your mother’s.’ She laid down the stick and wiped her forehead. ‘Come, let me get you some food.’
She fetched a plateful of twisted cheese in syrup with a round of bread to the table. ‘Eat, my soul, before you starve to death,’ she said, pushing the plate towards me.
I pulled at a strand of cheese, which squeaked as I chewed it. A saucer of ash lay on the corner of the table. Another was in the kitchen and a third in Teta’s bedroom. ‘Incense,’ she explained when I asked. ‘I’ve been burning it every morning to cleanse the house. Maybe then the dreams will stop.’
Teta’s hand was on the tabletop, the fingers curled like a brown flower.
‘What kind of flowers were there in Africa, Teta?’
‘In Nigeria? There were flowers, but not like here. I remember your grandfather bringing me a large pink one with petals as thin as tissue paper. He’d been fishing in the river, and most likely been drinking too. For the rest of his life he never remembered giving me that flower. Ach, how life was difficult there.’
‘Why? Was there a war there too?’
‘No. But we had nothing at first, no one did. That’s why we went out there. We kept a shop, and then the children came and had to be looked after.’
Jesus gazed down at me from his dinner table, at which everyone except him seemed to be talking. It was hard to believe that the plastic Virgin Mary on Teta’s dresser was really his mother.
‘Why did you go to Africa?’
‘There was no work here. My brothers went first, God rest their souls, and they sent money so I could follow – all the way from our little village up in the north to Africa. We went in a boat. Fifteen years old, I was.’
‘Didn’t Jiddo go with you?’
‘No. I met him there, in Africa. He was only a boy. He’d come over the same as me, working on a ship to pay his way. But what did any of us know about life?’
I took another bite of squeaky cheese. ‘How did you get to marry him?’
She sighed. ‘They brought us to him, the only two Lebanese girls in the village who weren’t already married.’
‘And did you like him from the first?’
‘I liked him well enough – no more or less than I liked anyone else – but no, habibti, it was him who wanted to marry.’ She tutted. ‘What did I want with marriage? But there was no choice. A woman needs a husband, doesn’t she? Even if he was as young and scrawny as your grandfather.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘So they brought us to him. He looked first at me, then at the other woman, and shrugged. “Doesn’t matter which,” he said, but he looked longest at me, so that was it. We got married. After your grandfather had chosen, we spoke, that other woman and I. “God gave me big teeth,” she said, and she wasn’t wrong. “And so my life will be different from yours: difficult. Difficult because I have big teeth. That’s why the boy chose you and not me.” I don’t know whether it was true, but maybe it was.’
‘Didn’t she ever get married, then?’
Teta smiled. ‘Oh, she got married. There wasn’t anyone for her at first – there weren’t so many of us Lebanese out there – but later on others arrived. She married a man your grandfather knew from round these parts. Perhaps he didn’t care about her teeth. And of course he was poorer even than us. By that time your grandfather missed this country so much we came back, but she and her husband stayed. They didn’t come back till years later, and by the time they did, he was a rich man.’
‘Did he come back to Ein Douwra?’
‘Of course. Men never leave their village. They always come back. It’s only the women who must leave.’
She fell to smoothing the plastic tablecloth, running her hand across it until it couldn’t get any flatter.
‘Don’t you miss your village, Teta?’
Her hand grew still. ‘I think of my village and our house every day. Every day I think of my mother, who didn’t come to Africa with us.’
Outside, the snow had melted and the cold had begun to fade away. A breeze moved the branches of the trees.
‘Teta, that man, the rich one, where does he live?’
Her left arm rose. ‘They used to live up there, but that was years ago. He died. Now only his wife is left, up at the old house on the bend in the high road.’
‘The house on the bend?’
‘It was beautiful back then, with a garden at the front, and a fountain, the only house in the area that had one. The children used to come from miles around just to look.’
I thought of Amal: Amal who wasn’t so awful any more, just strange. Glancing up at the painting on the wall, I wondered what Jesus’s voice had sounded like. High-or low-pitched? Complaining like Samira’s, or soft and buttery like Uncle’s? Did Jesus whistle through his nose as he breathed the way the Rose Man did, or didn’t he talk much at all like Papi and Naji?
Teta shook her head. ‘We used to be friends once, that woman and I, and our children played together.’
‘Papi and Uncle Wadih?’
‘Yes, they knew her. And her daughter too, God rest her soul. But then…’ Teta stopped and her face darkened. ‘And look at him now. Look what kind of a life he leads. All because of her.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up.
‘You mean Papi?’ I asked.
‘Eat, eat, my heart,’ she said as she left the room.
But I couldn’t eat any more. Teta must have meant Papi. She knew who was responsible for the way he was, just like I did. She knew he’d been cursed, and that was why she had stopped being friends with the witch. But a minute later I thought of something else, something that made the cheese sit heavy in my stomach. I pushed back my chair and rushed off to find Naji. I had to tell him.
He wasn’t at home. ‘He’s gone to play in the forest,’ Mami said, so I ran down the hill.
The forest had changed. Apart from several new craters where bombs had landed, the leaves had fallen off bushes, and flowers had died away. Only the pines remained, upright and unchanged.
I was still searching for Naji when a bright colour between the trees caught my eye: Ali coming down the path, looking special in a red shirt. He wasn’t standing upright, though, but bent and walking slowly as if he was searching for something.
‘Is the roastery closed?’ I called.
His head snapped up. Then he grinned and came over. He looked big even for a grown-up as he clumped through the trees, his thick body topped by a solid head with sticking-out ears.
‘It’s my afternoon off.’ His scalp showed through wet comb lines.
‘What were you looking for?’
‘Looking for?’
‘Just then, over there.’
Ali stared at the ground. ‘Nothing.’ His hands burrowed deep into his pockets. ‘I… lost something before.’
‘What?’ I asked, but Ali sucked in his lips and wouldn’t say. ‘Do you come to the forest a lot?’ I went on. ‘I’ve never seen you here before.’
‘I come early in the morning before work, when the forest’s new.’
‘There’s Naji!’ I cried. Between the trees, I saw him whacking the earth with a stick, and ran ahead, bursting to tell him my thought. ‘If it wasn’t for her big teeth, the witch could have been our grandmother!’
Naji scowled. ‘What are you talking about?’
I explained quickly, but after scratching his head a little, Naji went back to hitting and poking the ground.
‘But she could have been!’ I insisted. ‘Don’t you want to ask her about it?’
‘No.’
I glared. ‘You never want to do anything any more.’
He continued flicking earth out of a hole, his face pursed tightly. ‘Don’t be such a baby, there’s no such thing as witches.’
It was as though he’d shoved me away. Why didn’t he agree with me any more? Suddenly I felt small.
Ali came up behind me. ‘They were talking in the shop about the witch,’ he whispered. ‘They said someone let her chickens out, and they got stolen or eaten by dogs.’
‘Good! She’s an evil old witch and she deserves everything she gets.’
‘Yes.’ Ali nodded seriously, then peered down at something. ‘Look,’ he said, squatting beside a cyclamen that had begun to push out of the soil. ‘God dropped it here.’
‘Can you see everything?’ I asked. ‘I mean because your eyes point different ways.’
‘I don’t see anything out of this one.’ A finger rose to his left eye and he shut the right, just to make sure. ‘No, nothing. But I can see everything I need to see. And from up in the roastery I can see the whole world.’ He touched the cyclamen gently with a finger. ‘It’s still too small to squeeze it so it pees on your hand.’
‘That’s not pee,’ Naji commented as he whipped the flaky bark off a tree. ‘It’s yellow powder.’
‘It is pee,’ said Ali. ‘Flower’s pee.’
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ said Naji, then stopped. ‘I didn’t mean—’ He flushed and Ali looked upset.
‘It is pee,’ I agreed, to make Ali feel better.
Naji snorted. ‘Fine. Then you’re as stupid as he is.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ whispered Ali.
‘He’s angry,’ I replied, because he was. He seemed that way a lot of the time now.
‘Yes.’ Ali nodded, chewing his thumb. ‘Angry.’
A rumble like thunder made Naji come alive. ‘Explosives!’ He leapt up.
Ali wiped his forehead the way he always did, even though he wasn’t in the roastery and there was no sweat there now. ‘Let’s go back,’ he said.
‘Don’t you want to see what that was?’ Quickly, Naji led us a different way through the forest until we reached a place where the trees sloped steeply into the valley. He jerked his chin towards the bottom of the mountainside. ‘They’ve got big diggers.’ Tractors lined the road below the forest, and clouds of dust rose from the earth. Beside the road, the mountain had been sliced away in red and white gashes.
‘Is that what the sound was?’ said Ali.
Naji nodded. ‘It’s for stones to make buildings with so the Beirutis can come up here and hide. They blow up the mountain.’
Ali’s face puckered. ‘Are they killing it?’ He took hold of my sleeve. ‘Are they, Ruba?’
But I didn’t know. ‘What if they reach here to our forest?’
‘Then it’ll all collapse!’ Naji’s arms rose. ‘Boom!’
‘It’ll be gone? Our forest?’
Ali put out his hand and started stroking my hair, his hand moving light as water over my head, but it didn’t help. I had a pain in my chest at the thought.
Chapter Eleven
There was silence in the house. School had been closed for two days because of the shelling, but now it was quiet. There had been an argument between Mami and Papi when she’d told him about the party, and she’d gone to open the shop. Naji was at a friend’s house, and Papi was asleep in his chair.
I tiptoed into the living room to watch him. He was slumped sideways, one hand holding his forehead. The other lay in his lap, its fingers pointing up like a dead thing on its back – pointing towards his face, which hung heavy with two creases between the brows, eyes squeezed shut as if he were making a wish. On the floor, his feet in their black leather slippers were still as rocks.
At first I watched from the doorway, then from the island of the rug, creeping along the pattern lines, toe to heel, toe to heel, until I was beside the chair nearest to his. One more step and I could reach him. A single hop and I was touching the armrest.
He was as soft and harmless as wet dough. The spiky thoughts that pricked him from inside had gone and left him full of dreams. Papi with his rigid nerves, tight muscles and craziness that had scared Karim was no longer in that floppy body: he’d flown out of the open hand and gone somewhere else. His head, usually so heavy with thoughts, drooped against the worn patch of fabric.
The window showed grains of light in the air around us, tiny glowing specks that floated at their own speed. I heard no sound but the bump of my heart, which seemed to have risen into my head, and everywhere there were brilliant full stops of light. It reminded me of Amal: the chair, the light, and the deep, deep silence.
There was no stopping now. Next to the hand on his forehead, the spilt vinegar mark was pulling my finger towards it. If it could only be wiped away. And he was asleep the way they slept in stories, for a hundred years, magical sleeps that nothing could shake. Nothing was going to wake Papi now: not a shout, a scream, a jump or a shake, and certainly not the touch of a finger. In the middle of the drowsy air he slept, a king on his throne surrounded by sprinkles of sun-gold. Even the room was asleep, corked up and stilled.
My finger moved through the silence towards him. And suddenly, in the hollowness of the house, it was clear that I was going to wipe off that mark and free him; wake him up into the person he used to be. He would move and rub his eyes, blink a few times, then with a smile he would get up and—
It was like pressing a button. The dead thing in his lap became a hand again, sprang up alive and bit me hard. It held my wrist so I couldn’t move.
The king had woken, his eyes popping open. Then Papi returned from wherever he’d been, rigid inside his body, his neck stiff, a thick red line dented into his head where his hand had been.
The light falling in through the window faded. The specks of gold were gone. I waited for him to grow crazy the way he had been when he saw the Burbara mask, and my wrist hurt as I tried to pull it loose.
‘What are you doing?’ His voice was curled up tight.
I pulled my hand again, but the fingers round my wrist were made of metal.
‘Nothing. I wasn’t doing anything.’
The black eyes searched my face, didn’t move, weren’t even a little sleepy.
‘I was… I wanted to touch the mark… on your head.’
His hand fell away from mine and he leant back. The creases between his eyebrows returned. ‘What for?’
The silences in the house whirled round us like water. It was strange standing so close to him. ‘To take it away.’
He looked surprised: not crazy, just surprised.
‘Papi?’
‘Yes?’
‘If you cut a salamander’s tail off, will it grow back again?’ The question came from the back of my mind where it had been hiding until this moment.
‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘A boy at school did it. Sliced the tail off one.’
For a moment the face in front of me was pained. ‘They mutilate animals the same way they do men in this country. You see the men who have lost their limbs – you see them in the streets, don’t you? But there are others, Ruba, others who have had their spirits and hearts and souls amputated.’
I watched the ropes on his neck. ‘What’s “amputated”?’
‘It means “cut off”.’
I thought a moment. Could someone’s voice get amputated? A voice, cut off. It would be floating out there in space where no one could hear it.
The black eyes searched mine. ‘And this boy, what he did, you saw this?’
I nodded, and he looked worried. ‘Children are resilient,’ he murmured. Then he looked up, his mouth more relaxed. ‘So you were going to take the mark on my head away, were you? And how were you going to do that, ha, Ruba?’
‘I was going to rub it off.’
The slippered feet unglued themselves from the floor. The chair creaked as he leant forwards. ‘Yalla, then. Go on. Rub it off.’ The forehead was in front of me, the spilt vinegar mark with its wavy edges standing out like a mistake on a page.
I rubbed with one finger, then two. Then I made a fist and tried with that. But the stain was still there.
‘Do you want to go and get your rubber?’ Papi sat back. ‘That makes you laugh, ha?’ He smiled at me, but soon the smile turned sad. ‘And if it works, your magic rubber that can wipe things from my head, you can lend it to me.’
‘Why?’ The house was still and full of nothing. ‘What do you want to rub out, Papi?’
No answer came, only the black eyes stared through me now at something else.
‘Papi, they’re breaking up the mountain down in the forest and taking it away.’
‘Fools without brains!’ He heaved a big breath. ‘They’re digging up forests all over Lebanon, Ruba, not only here, wiping out our land. They’re even quarrying the caves in Nahr el Kalb, destroying treasures of archaeology that will never come again. Using the caves at J’eeta as ammunition stores – caves that if they were abroad would be protected night and day for their beauty. And now our officials take bribes from foreign countries so they can bury their poisonous waste in our land or dump it in our sea. Do you think anyone cares about nature, about the future? All they care about is money.’
He sank into his thoughts.
‘Papi, there’s something else.’
He blinked. ‘What? More questions?’ The half-nod meant I could go ahead and ask.
‘Naji’s growing quiet. He doesn’t talk to me much any more. Is that the way people get when they grow older?’
‘What, silent?’
‘Yes.’ Then I remembered something. ‘Uncle said there’s no such thing as silence. He said that every silence says something: the silences between words, between notes in music and between people.’
