Sabra Zoo (23 page)

When I opened the door to Samir he smelt of aftershave and cigarettes and I got a fleeting sense of Faris. As he drank his coffee he told me about the new falafel shop he was going to open in the camp, on the main street.

‘Even the poor and dispossessed deserve decent falafel with special sauce, my friend,' he said.

Lene gave an overenthusiastic cackle.

‘Are you coming into the camp?' Samir asked me.

‘I'll make my own way. I have something to do first.'

Samir shrugged and headed for the front door. Lene kissed me on the cheek and annoyingly ruffled my hair while Samir jangled his car keys impatiently in the hall. She didn't say that she'd see me later and I didn't ask her because I wasn't sure I wanted to see her. As I closed the door behind them I realised that I was in the apartment alone for the first time since I believed it was ‘blown' by Nabil, but now it didn't bother me. I knew what I had to do.

In the bedroom I rummaged in my duffle-bag and pulled out a battered address book. I put it in my back pocket along with Eli's letter and my passport and headed for the Commodore.

I found Bob sitting with a thin sweaty man in the hotel bar. They were at the table where Stacy used to write on her legal pads.

Bob gestured to the man after greeting me. ‘This is Peter – my replacement.' He turned to Peter. ‘And this is Ivan, the best interpreter in Beirut.'

I took Peter's limp and clammy hand. His hair was plastered to his forehead. His smile was nervous and brief, his gaze quickly shifting back to Bob, dismissing me as someone he didn't need to bother with. I wiped my hand on my jeans, turning to Bob.

‘I need a favour. I need to make an international phone call,' I said.

Bob didn't hesitate, he knew what I was asking. ‘You can use the agency phone.' He got up, saying he would take me there. On the way out of the lobby I processed what he'd said earlier.

‘What do you mean, replacement?'

‘Yeah, I'm going to Managua.'

‘Don't tell me: it's in Nicaragua.'

He looked at me to see if I was pulling his leg. ‘It's the capital, yes.'

‘Isn't Stacy there?'

‘She's somewhere in Nicaragua.' We went into a side office in the agency and he pointed out the desk and telephone. ‘I'll be in the edit room, in case anyone asks why you're here.' He grinned and closed the door behind him. I took out my address book and found my grandmother's number in Denmark. It would be early morning there, and at that time she would probably be making breakfast for herself.

She answered on the third ring. She wasn't gushing or emotional; it was as if we had spoken last week rather than six months ago. She told me that she'd spoken to my mother only two days before. My parents were worried and had been trying to contact me. No, she told me, I shouldn't go to them, my mother had said I should go to Denmark if I wanted to leave Beirut, because they didn't know what their plans were. They would be visiting Denmark at some point. That sounded like maybe they trusted me to make my own decision. My grandmother asked me if I needed money and I told her I didn't. I paused before telling her about Youssef. She asked me a couple of questions then she was quiet. I waited, listening to the crackles on the line.

‘Can you ring me the day after tomorrow?' she said.

‘Yes, I'll try.' I hoped Bob would still be here.

‘How are you, Ivan?' she asked. It was typical of her to leave this question until last. It was a real question and she wanted a real answer. I looked down, watching my tears pool on the metal desk. ‘I don't know who's paying the rent where I'm living,' was all I could think to say.

She laughed and it echoed over the line, like her voice was being bounced around the world.

The space was cramped and the walls pockmarked with bullet holes. Rubble and dust were everywhere. John, however, thought it was perfect.

‘This can be the reception area and the examination room could be in here,' he said, pointing into a room the size of a large cupboard.

‘There is no room for a desk,' Samir said. He was trying to brush dust from his shirt.

‘I'm a doctor, not a businessman. I plan to examine my patients, not write prescriptions for drugs banned in Europe,' said John.

‘
OK
, my friend, I was only saying.' To me Samir said, ‘You know he's taking Arabic lessons so he doesn't need you any more.'

This was to be John's new clinic, right in the heart of the camp. He no longer wanted to work in the hospital but was talking about being a step ahead, working with preventive medicine. He was tired of patients coming into the hospital demanding particular brands of pharmaceuticals. ‘Ask them', he would tell me, ‘if they've been trained as a doctor.' As ever, I resorted to selective translation. His partner in this new venture was Rima, a Palestinian paediatrician fresh from an American medical school. I'd only seen them together a couple of times, but they always seemed to be arguing about medical protocol. Rima had managed to raise the money for this place. In the wake of ‘the massacre', as it was now called, all kinds of help had been arriving, including a whole new staff of volunteers at the hospital to replace those who had left. A new set of peacekeeping soldiers had arrived as well, since the Israelis had withdrawn to the outskirts again, their job done. John, however, didn't think his job was done – as well as taking Arabic lessons he was looking for somewhere to live near the camp. Samir couldn't understand this at all; why would anyone want to live like a refugee if they weren't one themselves?

I had just come from speaking to my grandmother for the second time and I needed to speak to John. He was busy giving instructions through Samir to a group of volunteers (mainly elderly women) who had turned up to clean out the rooms. I took his elbow while Samir was giving orders, trying to keep his clothes clean at the same time.

‘Asha was mentioned on the
BBC
World Service,' John said. ‘She gave an interview in Cyprus, on her way to Paris. People are just waking up to what's happened.' He clapped the dust from his hands, took his glasses off to rub his eyes.

‘I need to talk to you about Youssef,' I said.

‘
OK
.' He shrugged, cleaning the lenses of his glasses with his shirt. We watched Samir digging something from the wall with one of his keys, presumably belonging to a car he no longer drove. I turned to John.

‘My grandmother knows a plastic surgeon in Copenhagen who can operate on Youssef. In principle, that is. He's an old friend of hers. The hospital needs his medical records, though. I could only give her a brief description. She's also contacted a charity that will pay for his flight and somewhere to stay but they need some details as well.'

John smiled at me, put his glasses back on. ‘Calm down, Ivan. Tell me what you need. But slowly.'

I took a breath.

‘Here we go,' Samir said, holding up a deformed bullet between forefinger and thumb, a triumphant grin on his face. ‘Kalashnikov,' he said.

I had decided, before coming to Najwa's, not to tell her about Youssef. I sat across from her at the dining table, sipping coffee and fiddling with my lighter. We were inside because of the heavy rain. This was the second time I'd seen her since the slaughter; the first we'd spent on her balcony looking out over the city, not talking much. She'd looked tired then, her limp more pronounced than usual. This time she brought up what she'd failed to before.

‘Ivan, why didn't you tell me that you never delivered the passports?' She sounded hurt. My face reddened; it was obvious that she would have found out they hadn't been delivered, yet I'd said nothing at our last meeting. I took a cigarette out of her pack on the table.

‘After the massacre I thought nothing would be the same,' I said. ‘Nothing seemed to matter any more. I didn't think life would carry on as normal, that people would just go back to work or school. I didn't understand how it was possible to carry on as if nothing had happened.' I studied my unlit cigarette.

‘Everything has to carry on, Ivan. You can either lie down and die or you can carry on. It's a choice you make.'

I nodded. I'd believed that anything pre-Sabra would be nullified, the slate wiped clean. But it hadn't been like that. University lectures had started on time, without me. People cooked and ate, had sex, drank, laughed, went to the cinema, made conversation about trivial things. As Najwa said, they carried on. Samir had carried on opening his new café. John and Asha had carried on, even though their paths had been altered by what happened. Asha now had a new purpose and so did John, with his clinic. Najwa was carrying on because she believed that you should redouble your efforts every time you have a setback. Even the survivors in the camp carried on, those that had seen it happen, watched their relatives and neighbours being slaughtered. They were rebuilding their homes, clearing the streets and opening their little shops. I put the unlit cigarette back in its case and picked up my lighter again, flicking it to make sparks.

‘I've arranged for this kid, a survivor from the camp, to go to Copenhagen for treatment,' I said. I put the lighter down and looked up. ‘I'm planning to go with him.'

She puckered her lips and I endured an awkward silence. It was worse than if she'd told me it was only to be expected, that they'd known all along I was shallow and unreliable.

Eventually she said, ‘I understand. He's your ticket out of here. You think that by choosing to help an individual you can be absolved from the collective struggle. The harder battle is helping everyone, coming up with a solution to the cause of injustice, not just fixing the symptoms.' She leant back and looked through the rain-streaked window. ‘Your father understands this.'

I stood up. ‘Well, I'm not my father.' I walked to the door and turned to look at Najwa once more. ‘He's probably right, my father, but you have to start somewhere, don't you?'

Her mouth formed a little smile.

‘The boy's name is Youssef,' I told her.

The smell hit me as I woke – sweet and cloying. I opened my eyes to see an
SAS
stewardess, her manicured hands placing a tray of food in front of me, giving me the lipstick smile she gave everyone. She had to lean over Youssef in the aisle seat and he nudged me as she left to attend the next row.

‘Danish women smell nice,' he said in Arabic.

‘She's Swedish,' I said.

‘They all look the same to me.' He stretched out his cleanly bandaged foot, taking advantage of the extra legroom I'd asked for next to the emergency exit. He tried to make sense of the compartmentalised food on his tray. I looked past the Danish man on my left through the oval window to see the Mediterranean sea beneath us. A tiny shipping tanker sat on the surface but soon disappeared from view. We banked to the right and the sea was replaced by sky, making my stomach lurch. The captain told us we were turning over Sicily, to begin our journey high over Europe before descending to Copenhagen.

I leant back in my seat and closed my eyes. Samir, John and Rima had seen us off at the airport. John and Rima were spending a lot more time together and I could see that their earlier jousting was just a prelude to the real relationship they were now embarking on. I imagined them driving back up the coast road to the camp, Samir working the wheel and gears of his yellow Mercedes like a man infatuated. Last week John had written out a medical report for Youssef, which I got the Danish consulate in east Beirut to fax to the Copenhagen charity funding his treatment. I also left them with a Lebanese passport for Youssef that Samir had hastily sorted out. I didn't know if it was genuine but it cost me most of the money Eli had sent. A few days later a bemused official at the consulate had given me a visa and tickets for Youssef and myself, mine paid for by my grandmother, his by the charity. And here we were, hurtling at 500 kilometres an hour towards a completely different world.

‘Make sure he comes back,' was the last thing John said at the airport, pointing to Youssef. ‘This is where he belongs. It's his home.'

Youssef was eating his dessert and main course together, taking alternate bites out of each. My grandmother would take to him, I was sure; she preferred children's company to that of adults.

The man next to me opened an
International Herald Tribune
, blocking my view of the window. The front page referred to an impending inquiry in Israel into what happened in Sabra and Shatila while the
IDF
had been in control of the city, although nobody in Beirut believed they would shoulder any blame. On the inside page was a small picture of Asha being interviewed in Paris; her first stop in a tour of European cities where she planned to educate the world, as she put it, through talks and interviews, giving her account of what happened in the camp. She was also planning to write a book. Her charity had dropped her because, in their view, she had become too political for them, their status compromised by her forthright views on the massacre and who was responsible. Charity people weren't allowed to take sides, they had to be balanced, she was told. John said that being balanced was a sham, that if you could see both sides equally then you were missing some vital fact. The stewardess returned to pour coffee. I declined, finishing the vodka from the miniature.

Youssef examined the small sachet with the moist towelette inside, asking me if it was food. I was going to have to explain a lot of things to him, a lot of trivial and meaningless things that didn't matter in his world and shouldn't matter in anyone's. He wouldn't elaborate on what had happened in the hospital before he was evacuated and I didn't press him, just as I didn't like to be pressed. Youssef, who'd suffered many times more than I could imagine, had less laughter than before, a new wariness in his eyes, a tendency to flinch at loud voices. I was glad to be getting out. It did feel like an escape, but I also felt like I was abandoning people. This went beyond my failed duty to the ‘cause'; it was like leaving horribly injured people at the scene of an appalling accident in the futile hope that if you couldn't see it then it wouldn't bother you. The trouble was this: I would always see it; the pictures were branded onto my retinas, the smell embedded in the soft lining inside my nose. Maybe Najwa was right, maybe Youssef was my way out of the broken city behind us. But Youssef was much more than that. It occurred to me (and here was a foolish notion) that my parents could adopt him and in doing so would heal their broken marriage.