She turned back, facing him, gun at her waist as if she would shoot him, and he had an instant of fear, only half seeing her through the blowing snow. I don't know you, he thought. But you saved me. Why is that?
“Wrong way,” she said. “I'm getting lost in this snow.”
He was shivering, terribly cold. “Got to go down.”
“It's all mined. Both sides. Damn this snow. I never thought...”
He felt fury, wanted to shoot her. “What did you think coming up here would bring you?”
“I do what I do for Palestine. Not for you!” She shook snow from her shoulders. “Wait.” She slipped into the snowstorm, and he called but she didn't answer. Snow scurried round his ankles, wind carved his shins.
She came out of the blizzard. “Follow ten steps after me.” She moved to one side among the rocks, holding her hand above her as a signal, but he couldn't see it, got lost, and she came back for him. “Can't you do better?”
“Shut up and leave me.”
“These rocks are full of caves.”
He followed her tracks; crumbling and snatched by the wind, the fleeting white filled and erased them. “Where are you!” he yelled, glancing round, wind and snow in his face, at his back, knocking him down, coating his face, like death, he thought, like death.
“Found one!” She grabbed his arm.
It was body length deep, the front open to the wind, snow building against one side. “Go in first!” she yelled.
He squirmed in till his feet bumped the end. The ground seemed like ice but was only frozen earth. She squeezed in beside him. “We must wrap up together in both coats.”
The wind rose, grinding rock on rock, sucking the snow from the earth, fleeting veils across the night, raging white banners with cold razor edges. The whole world will be like this someday, he thought. He imagined his dust blown by the blizzard across the naked, frozen earth.
The snow built up against the far side of their hole, blocking the wind. The cold earth warmed to their bodies; inside the coat his hands were warm, touched hers. “Tomorrow, in the snow,” she said, “it'll be hard to know the way. To not step on mines.”
Something sharp bit into his back – a rock. Her breath was warm against his neck. He thought of the Christian doctor, his tired gentle hands, his kind and hopeless eyes. She moved her feet and he felt how cold they were, held them between his ankles. What if everything I've believed is false? he wondered. And only this is true?
THE ARMORED MERCEDES took André back down the mountain, now only one guard car ahead and none behind. A squall had come off the sea, wetting the windows, the headlights sparkling on the white-painted stones alongside the road. Rain here meant snow up in the mountains – good skiing, in the old days.
He wondered if the dog would be waiting when he got back. It hung around all the time now, tail between its legs at every sound of guns but getting fatter, some good food easing its worried mind. Leaping on the bed in the mornings to lick him awake – got him mad at first but then he realized it was good to be getting up so early.
The Arab girl kept flitting before his eyes. She moved on bare feet as if out of the past somehow, something he remembered. And Haroun screwing her only made it worse – like one small part of her was saved for Haroun and the rest was bared and hungry.
No, she'd have a guy somewhere, some skinny Arab with wild eyes, in a keffiyeh, all muscle and hate, a worn-out Kalashnikov and a dirty little knife. Fun to fuck her though. No one since Larnaca, the night he'd found the Jericho. A bad idea having the Jericho up front with the guard, but that was the drill. They'd give it back when they dropped him off. Naked without it. If Haroun wanted to deliver him to the French now would be the time. Then he'd never get to screw that girl. Not that he would anyway, she was Haroun's. What a name, Nadja. Makes you want to screw her just thinking of it. Just saying it.
I’m fearing the French, he realized, my own country. As if they're enemies when they're la France, for whom you've sworn to fight and die. But la France is all of us, Yves and all those other guys in the Beirut barracks who gave their lives for perfectly nothing. Every man who has died for France would agree: pay Mohammed back.
France is what we do. We are la France.
The rain had stiffened, pummeling the road and bouncing up wildly in the headlights. Going to be a nasty storm in the hills. He remembered Haroun and the others in the fight for Jabal Sannine, the great flank of Mount Lebanon in swirling drifts, fear and bullets, bright blood on the new snow.
31
FIRES GLOWERED in Shatila where Christian and Israeli shells were landing. Bright low comets of jet afterburners crossed from south to north, their thunder racing behind them. “They're not shelling Ras Beirut,” Saddam said. “We can go all the way.”
Neill leaned out of the VW's window. “Where are they hitting?”
“Can't see over the hill. Down by Martyres maybe. Along the Line.”
The back seat full of oranges rumbled and rattled as Saddam swung right into El Rachidine toward Rue de Rome. “Which side of the gardens are you on?”
“Drop me anywhere. I'll walk it.”
“I'll take you. Which side?”
“Arts et Metiers.”
A building had fallen, blocking the street, the red lights of fire trucks sliding through the rain and the steam and smoke and skidding off the buildings on both sides, people gathering and fedayeen holding them back, a bulldozer and more fedayeen burrowing at the ruins. “They don't care who they hit,” Saddam said, backing up. He braked, oranges rumbling backward. “Hey!” he called to a boy on the pavement. “Whose was it?”
The boy shrugged, looked up. “It just came down.”
“Where are you going?”
“Saroulla.”
'Get in. I'll drop you at Hamra.”
Neill put his suitcase up on his knees and squeezed against Saddam as the boy wedged in beside him, twisting sideways to shut the door. Neill had to bend his leg aside so Saddam could shift into second. “Let me out in a couple of blocks,” he said.
“You're brave enough to come here, try to tell the world what's happening, to help us, speak our language like you do – I take you anywhere you wanna go.”
“It won't help,” the boy said. “You just make it worse.”
“Probably I do,” Neill said.
“No!” Saddam shook his fists. “What we need is people knowing about this. What if the whole world,” he threw up his hands, making Neill want to grab the wheel, “worked together? And any time war started we stamp it out, like fire in the forest?”
“In my country,” the boy said, “for a century we had no forest fires because we put them out, but then when a big one came it was so hot it even burned away the soil.”
“See?” Neill said. “Now you'll have no more fires.”
Saddam stopped in the middle of Arts et Metiers, the garden on the right. The boy got out and then Neill; the boy got back in. Neill took four fifties from his wallet. “No, no!” Saddam waved them away.
A rocket sizzled over and Neill dropped to the street. It hit with an awful clatter to the east, by the Museum. Neill stood and handed the four fifties into the car, hunching his shoulders as the next rocket started in.
“No, I really don't want to,” Saddam insisted, shoving into first gear.
“You deserve it. Anyway, I get it back.” Neill dropped the notes on the dashboard and dived to the