War's like the Devil, he thought as he hopped barefoot across the cold crinkly dew-wet grass. Sometimes it just gets tired of tormenting you. Those are the times called peace.
40
MOHAMMED STEPPED FROM his father's house into the sun-bright street. The air was cool, down from the ice sheets of the mountain and perfumed with the spring herbs of the valley, the warm smell of charcoal in the village hearths, the fur and dung of animals, the onions hung on stone walls to dry in the sun. “Cover yourself,” he said, turning to check that Rosa had hidden her hair completely under her scarf, that the veil covered all but her eyes and that the gown fell to her feet.
A boy and two little girls passed, holding hands; he did not recognize them, nor the crippled old man driving goats down the street, waving a bent stick. He went into the shop's cool spicy shadows but did not know the woman behind the counter. “Good morning, young man,” she said; he realized she was the sister of a boy he'd gone to school with, up the hill.
“You're the shopkeeper now?” he said.
“Yacoub's dead – you don't remember?”
“Of course...”
“And you're still fighting.”
“Perhaps soon we can stop.”
She was cutting the stems of garlic bulbs and tossing them into a basket. “Don't believe it.”
“I need a ride to Baalbek and Beirut.”
She looked up from the garlic, the curved knife in her hand. “You're not of here any more, are you? You belong to Beirut, the war.”
“Nothing owns me but God.”
“That's what you all say but look what you've done to us!”
“God owns us all.”
“No God would do this to those He loves!” She let the knife clatter to the counter. “The farm by the lake, they're sending a truck to Beirut with vegetables. You and the Mother of the Revolution, there, can ride with them.”
“She's not –”
“It doesn't matter. They'll be happy to send you both back to the war.”
THE MADNESS RETURNED and André couldn't stop his hands from smashing at the concrete, his spine from trying to arch, pry it up. Finally beaten and exhausted, he lay gasping, head twisted to one side.
She was hitting a rock steadily against the wall behind her. Tunk, it went, tunk tunk. “I had friends in Rue de Mexique,” she said. “Their building fell in on them and they were caught in a basement like this, curled up in a shower stall, the caved-in floor on their shoulders. It took three days to find them. All the time they kept signaling, like this.”
He licked sweat off his lips, couldn't bring his arms up his sides.
“If you fight it,” she said, “you won't last.”
He listened to the steady cadence of her knocking, like an arrhythmic heart. “How are the kids?”
She said something in Arabic, one answered. “Fine,” she said.
“I don't know how they stand it.”
“They already have ten years of war behind them.”
“What do you tell them?”
“Pray to Allah.”
“You're Muslim?”
“They are.”
“You're not their mother?”
“Their teacher. The shelling started while I was running them home. We ducked in here. You live here?”
“I live in Paris. Down on a visit.”
“Must be nice, Paris. Peaceful.”
“We had a bombing last month – Muslims.”
“One bombing a mouth – that's Paradise.” She cleared her throat. “We shouldn't talk so much.”
“You thirsty?”
“A little.”
“You have to drink each other's urine. You can last a day longer –”
“That's silly.”
“It's true. They told us that, the Army. They wouldn't lie.”
She kept up the steady knocking. “When we get out of here, I'll buy you champagne.”
“If we get out of this...” He did not finish, not knowing what to say. What had happened to the dog?
“How old are you?” she said.
“Twenty-seven.”
“Married?”
“No. You?”
“Twenty-two. I was married but my husband died.”
“Wait! Stop! That sound!”
She stopped. There was nothing but the dullness of the great weight leaning down on top of them. Then in the distance tick tick like the sound of someone's watch in another room. “It's them!” she said. “I told you!”
MOHAMMED got down with Rosa from the vegetable truck and watched it rattle away, holding his breath against its last burst of sooty exhaust. In front of them, Beirut seemed the same under the dark clouds of war, making him hunger for the dry cool air of Yammouné.
Rosa had taken off her veil and gown; seeing her breasts outlined beneath her dress made him excited and ashamed. “I'm going home,” he said.
She smiled, like the sun. “Run to her, after I've saved you.”
“They're my family, they'll be worried.”
“Not enough to come after you like I did.”
“I still don't know why you did.”
“Nor do I.” She shrugged. “A mistake.”
He took her hands, the gesture seemed to shock her. “Anyway,” he said, “I thank you for this new life. This chance for peace.”
She glanced up at the contrails of fighters far above. “If I'd known that's what you wanted I would have left you.”
Feeling strangely alone he climbed the crest of Beirut toward the apartment on the Rue Maalouf that he had commandeered from a Greek Orthodox family to lodge his own. Seeing the church of Saints Peter and Paul on the corner made him wonder at his aloneness, at why humans bothered to fight. We don't love life at all, he thought, we just love to destroy it.
THE TINY TICKING noise had vanished but the teacher kept beating her rock against the concrete wall till the rock broke into pieces and then each of the pieces crumbled. “I can't see my watch,” André said. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Mine's broken.”
“Must be day outside.”
“They'll be coming. They always do.”
André tried to envision this mysterious they who would at great danger to themselves dig down in shattered buildings to retrieve survivors pinned under sliding tons of concrete and stone. “Unless there's new shelling. Anyway, they'll have lots of people to dig out, after last night. It'll be a long while till they get to us.”
“Do you remember what street this is? Were there any buildings knocked down, blocking it?”
“It's off Basta. They hit every building on this street. Never have I seen such bombing.”
“It was much worse in eighty-two. Every time they got some Palestinians cornered, they'd drop a vacuum bomb.”
“Last