Fiction from The Literary Review
In only a short time, the Syrians dispersed the Druze and Shia factions and took control of Beirut. A few days after this relative peace had been imposed, some jeeps and a truck pulled into the lot at the top of Nayla's road, and soldiers unloaded sandbags into a semi-circle. They built a makeshift wooden hut behind the bags, hanging a tattered Syrian flag over the entrance, and jammed rocks under the truck tires as though it might roll away on the flat surface. Then they covered the truck with a camouflage tarp that stood out like a target in the bare dirt lot. Two tents, clearly sleeping quarters, were raised side-by-side near the truck, and a machine gun was rigged in the sandbag window. Then a soldier took up a position outside the enclave, pacing up and down the roadside.
Nayla's mother Mrs. Ayyash became upset. "Not only do they invade Beirut. We have to have them under our noses," she complained, but Nayla, despite her automatic disgust with the Syrians, found herself entertained by this new development. Every night the checkpoint glowed with lanterns, and the soldiers sat around on fold-out chairs with their machine guns across their knees, playing cards or backgammon until late. From her chair on the balcony, Nayla could hear the tac-tac of dice on wood, followed by the crack of a piece being slammed into its new position, and then the eruption of voices, either angry or triumphant. All this gave her something new to watch as she got stoned so she could sleep. When the off-duty soldiers tired and retreated to the tents, whose entryways were illuminated so she caught sight of the camp beds and boxes and sheets hanging between, Nayla would go to bed as well.
From her bedroom window there wasn't much to see, only an empty dirt lot scattered with refuse where children played soccer and other games all day. The office building on the other side of the lot was still occupied by Palestinian families, even though the men had been taken away a few weeks before, when the Syrians came in. The balconies were crowded with rows of sagging laundry, and all day the women shouted down at the children. The building had just been constructed when the war started, and it had been occupied by Palestinians for years.
That day when the Syrians came for the men, they blocked off the surrounding streets and parked a row of trucks in front of the building. Under the eyes of the mukhabarat, the plainclothes secret police, soldiers herded all the men into the trucks while the women leaned over balconies and ululated like they would at funerals. Several hours later, the Syrians pulled out, but only after a house-to-house search in the neighborhood that left people complaining for days for the dirt tramped everywhere, the rude questions, and even, in some cases, violence. Everyone had known these Palestinian men would be taken off to Syrian prisons, where they would be interrogated and killed, but there had been nothing to do about it except wait for it to be over. Nayla had heard that the women and children would soon be evicted, too, this time by the landlord, who saw in this Syrian peace an opportunity at last to use the building as it had been intended.
When the men were being taken away, the soldiers had shouted on megaphones for everyone to stay inside. Nayla, watching from the window, had decided to go onto the balcony. How could they shoot a girl on a balcony? So she had gone out. She had stared in horror at the screaming women and the men being herded into the trucks. They were only Palestinians, but still, better them than the Syrians. She had imagined firing a bazooka at the Syrians, blowing them all up at once. One of them gestured her inside with his gun. She pretended she hadn't seen him. Then he yelled, and still she stayed there, holding her breath. It was only when he pointed the gun at her that she broke down and ran inside. She'd sat on the bed, listening to all the shouting and wailing, irritated with herself for being so quick to cowardice.
In the weeks since the checkpoint had been set up, though, Nayla had come to know one of the soldiers. "My name is boring old 'Ziad,'" he said for days. "Your name is a mysterious flower-bud in my mouth; when I know its spelling, the petals will open and I will feast."
"Why don't you just ask for my documents?" she goaded the first time, repulsed by him. She had wanted to drive away, but she couldn't, of course, not until he let her.
He pretended great disappointment that she had not understood him. "I want you to give your name to me willingly," he said.
Almost every day it was the same until Nayla had come to see him as harmless, all talk. When she finally did tell him her name, he asked for her license to verify it. Now the turns of phrase he came up with daily had become something Nayla looked forward to, or at least had come to expect.
When Nayla was stoned at night on the balcony, the differences between her life and Ziad's became engaging. He was a lowly soldier in the Syrian army, which was a pathetic place to be at best, while she was a university student. That wasn't to say she was a top student, hardly the case, but still. He was probably from a poor family, otherwise he would be an officer, while she had had certain advantages due to her father's family name and the money he had saved before he died. Stoned, Nayla found these contrasts fascinating; they were the same age, and yet living in such utterly different worlds. She loathed him because he was Syrian, an occupier rather than a peace broker, and yet she had found it within herself to see him objectively.
The ironic difference, of course, was that his parents probably lived off his income, while she, her mother's only hope, was hopeless. She had already failed a semester. Her mother's plan to see Nayla independent and working so she could survive if anything, God forbid, happened to her, was tenuous at best. If Nayla came anywhere near this, it would be due only to her mother's determination. Sometimes, when Nayla was out drinking at a bar or a disco, she imagined a thread connecting them. The thread was white and thin and powerful, and one end was tied to Nayla's heart, squeezing it raw, and the other was wound around her mother's fist.
On Friday, Nayla and Raghida prepared to go out, as they did every week unless there was fighting. Mrs. Ayyash brought them tea as they dressed. When she came in, they were still putting on make up, wearing only lingerie and shoes.
"You look like birds," Mrs. Ayyash said. She pointed at their high heels. "Be careful you don't trip."
They put on lipstick and eye shadow and mascara. Mrs. Ayyash perched on the edge of the bed, watching. Their Indian perfume hung in the air. "Poof," she said, holding her nose.
The perfume was meant to make lips tingle, but they did not tell her that. "You can't smell much at the disco," Raghida explained.
Mrs. Ayyash asked, "How is your mother?"
"Fine."
"Oh, good," Mrs. Ayyash sighed.
Nayla made a face. She refused to organize a meeting between the two mothers, because they would never get along, and Mrs. Ayyash was continually upset about this.
"Why do you have to go out all the time?" Mrs. Ayyash complained. "Will Bassam be there?" Bassam was a friend of Nayla's from the university. Mrs. Ayyash respected him because he was a senior in Engineering, and his father was a famous architect.
"Yes, Mama."
"I'm glad. You need an escort. What will your father say?"
"Nothing, Mama."
Nayla's father had died when she was five, just before the war. Recently, Mrs. Ayyash had taken to threatening Nayla with things he would say, as if an afterlife encounter between father and daughter were a given. Nayla glared at her mother's reflection. "Don't you have things to do in the kitchen?"
Mrs. Ayyash's face smoothed until it became expressionless, her method of communicating pain. Only her eyes looked wounded. Nayla pretended not to notice. She lined her lips with a darker shade of red.
Nayla had a photograph of her father taken on a trip north before she was born. He was standing by the car, one of those old-fashioned ones, his hand on the hood, and his chin was up a little. She had his features. Her mother always said, "When I squint my eyes, like this, you are him." Nayla imagined her father had been like her, trapped by her mother; maybe he even died to get away from her. If they actually did meet in the afterlife, Nayla reasoned, he would hardly chastise her.
Mrs. Ayyash lingered with them, despite the awkward silence. She evened out the bedspread, wiped some dust here and there, her eyes secretly worrying the figure of her daughter.
Nayla snapped, "Mama, what's the matter with you? Do I look stupid or something?"
"You should be studying so you graduate."
Nayla rolled her eyes and began to put on rings, one by one. She had best enjoy her life for as long as possible; her mother would soon find out her latest grades since she was the registrar's secretary. Even with Bassam's tutoring, Nayla was unable to do well. She would probably have to repeat this last semester.
Mrs. Ayyash followed them onto the landing in her stockinged feet, jingling the bracelets that Nayla had decided not to wear at the last moment. "You won't be so late this time?" she asked. The girls were already a floor down, their hands trailing on the banister. Nayla called up, "No."
Raghida tripped on the stairs and Nayla caught her. They laughed with their fingers pressed against their mouths and their heels rang down the five flights. The week before, old Madame Rifai on the fourth floor had complained that their footsteps gave her migraines.
"From footsteps?" Nayla had exclaimed. "Your head probably blows right off when there's shooting."
They drove up the street and Ziad, who must have been watching their approach through the sandbag window, stepped into view. He waved away the soldier on duty.
"Listen to what he says," Nayla told Raghida. "He'll be a great Syrian poet if he ever gets back home."
Ziad took his time coming to the car. Nayla tapped the gas pedal a few times, and he lifted one eyebrow, stopped.
"He likes to play tough soldier," Nayla whispered. Raghida giggled.
"Nayla, Nayla." He leaned on the window sill. His hands formed two fists, one on top of the other, and he rested his chin on them. Ziad was far from handsome, marred by pocked cheeks and a skewed nose, but at night, with the light behind him, his large black eyes sometimes were romantic.
His voice filled the car. "Where are you going tonight?"
She told him, counting the places on her fingers. He was so close she caught the scent of olive and thyme on his breath. She said on impulse, and, vaguely, to impress Raghida with her daring, "I bet you wish you could have some fun."
His gold tooth shone as he grinned. Nayla had wondered how he paid for a tooth like that.
"Nayla," he whispered. "Listen."
"Yes?"
"I could be the water that wraps around you when you swim."
Done, he sighed and lifted himself upright again, as if it were a big effort to let her go. Nayla drummed her knees to the music on the radio. He flicked his hand to show they could leave.
"Thank you," Nayla said.
At the corner, Nayla looked in her rear view, but Ziad was already gone. The other soldier leaned against the sandbags, looking in their direction.
"I can't believe you said that," Raghida breathed.
Nayla was already regretful. "Why not?" she said belligerently. "I bet he's high all the time."
Raghida shrugged. "Still," she said.
Nayla glimpsed herself through Ziad's eyes, a pretty girl who went out and did who knows what. Suddenly, she was embarrassed by allowing herself to be flattered by him, and worse, by Raghida seeing it. He probably thought he could get some of whatever he imagined she gave out. She pictured him inside the hut with his gun and his dinner, and she hated it that she couldn't say something to make him feel like a fool, just for once.
Within minutes they got stuck in a traffic jam on the coastal road. They rolled the windows down all the way and hung their arms out, lowered the backs of their seats a notch. The palm trees between the two lines of traffic were ragged from gunfire. They stood at intervals like pathetic sentinels, and every now and then the pattern broke where there was only a stump. Nayla bounced her fist on the horn: bip-bip-beeep. A young man climbed out of the car in front of them and sat on the roof, smoking. The traffic inched forward.
Raghida said, "That boy's strange, saying all these things to you."
"He's just a stupid peasant," Nayla said quickly, relieved at the opportunity to redeem herself. "This is probably the first time he's even been in a city."
Raghida shuddered. "They're all animals."
Nayla turned up the music. She pictured Ziad as an animal. A lion. A lizard.
Raghida pointed at the old Phoenicia Hotel, whose walls were sprayed with bullets and in some places had been torn completely open by a shell. She said, "I just read that they used to throw fighters from the top."
"Really?"
"Whoever held the top floor, if they caught one of the enemy, whoosh, over the side." Raghida shuddered. "They'd shoot at them as they fell, for practice."
When Nayla was small, she had learned from a classmate that before the war, the Phoenicia was the site of important international conferences, and prostitutes from the Far East danced on tables and the stage, but also swung from chandeliers, clear across the audience halls. This was what men liked, to look up and see expensive women flying through the air. Her friend had said, It makes men go peepee.
"Beirut's really gone to shit," Nayla said.
At the pub Raghida and Nayla wound around the tables, holding their cigarettes above people's heads, and men turned and looked. Bassam, leaning on the bar, watched them approach with a lopsided grin. Nayla knew he wanted her. Some time before, on a drunken night, they had kissed, and she could tell he still thought about it. Bassam, Nayla had figured out, was doomed to fall in love with pretty girls who only wanted to confide in him about other men.
"Hey babies," he said. He lurched on the stool, then stood, imbalanced.
"You're drunk," Nayla said, surprised. Usually they teased him all night for not drinking enough.
Bassam squeezed Nayla's shoulder and she slipped just out of reach. She tapped his hand away, saying, "Down, boy." Bassam groaned, then said in a low, sad voice, "You always have to be so bitchy."
On the other side of the bar, a U.N. soldier caught Nayla's eye. His lifted eyebrows asked if Bassam was being a nuisance. Nayla looked at Bassam, at his big, friendly face with the glasses and the dimples, and she couldn't do it, so she shook her head and gave the soldier an I'm-stuck-with-him-but-oh-well smile.
"Flirting with the United Nations again?" Bassam turned around, gave the soldier a salute. He said, "What is it about foreigners?"
"You're saying that just because I don't want you," she retorted, but he did not rise to the bait, only raised his glass to the soldier and drank. The soldier looked confused. Nayla jiggled Bassam's chin. "What's the matter with you anyway?"
"I'm suffering from your rejection."
"Good."
"He's cute," Raghida whispered, peeking across the bar. "Bassam, Nayla, go away for a few minutes."
Later at the disco Raghida was telling the U.N. soldier, who had followed them there and had turned out to be Finnish, "It's one of the tallest buildings here but, you know, it's not that high. In America, they have buildings with hundreds of floors. If someone falls from them they can be blown around in the wind, that's how high up they are."
"They dropped people?" The Finn looked upset. "But it's a hotel."
Raghida slapped his arm. "Not normal people, silly. Soldiers."
Nayla wandered to the edge of the dance floor, moving slightly to the music. The multi-colored lights fleeing across the walls and tangle of dancers mesmerized her. Bassam pulled at her arm. She protested, appealing with her eyes to the Finn, who just winked and turned away. Bassam dragged her outside, forced her to sit on the edge of the rock garden in the circular drive.
"I've been trying to talk to you all night," he said.
"I don't want to talk. Talk to someone else." Nayla disliked it when Bassam got serious. It made her feel like she was supposed to love him.
"I have something to tell you."
"Is this your proposal?" She clamped her hand over her mouth and laughed. The lights above the disco entrance spun slowly. A doorman watched them woodenly, his hands behind his back.
"I'm joining Amal," he said. He lit a cigarette. She wiggled two fingers at him and he opened the pack again, held it out.
"So what do you want me to say?"
"Nothing." He lit her cigarette. "I wanted to tell you."
The embarrassment of thinking he wanted to propose sank in, so she looked at the ground and smoked. "You're not even Shia," she said. "It's stupid."
He dropped his cigarette, crushed it with his shoe. "All you think about is partying. All you think is everyone wants to fuck you. There's a war going on. Haven't you noticed?"
The ground veered away from her swinging feet. She gripped the railing, and then started to cry, faintly aware her tears were out of self-pity, but determined to come off as justly angered. "You shit," she said. "Shit, shit, shit."
He put his arms around her and she cried harder.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"There isn't a war anymore," she complained, her tears ebbing. "What's wrong with you? The Syrians are here. It's over."
"It's not that easy," Bassam said, but she waved this away.
"You just want to play soldier," she jibed. "You want to be tough. You're an engineer."
Bassam gripped her jaw, silencing her. "You're drunk," he said. "You're a girl. You have no idea what it's like for a guy."
"Oh, please," she snipped. Bassam merely adjusted his glasses, then looked at her, smoking. After a few moments, she touched his shoulder and said, "Sorry."
"I know," he replied.
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