A Girl Made of Dust. Nathalie Abi-Ezzi

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СКАЧАТЬ one side we have the Palestinian troublemakers, and on the other the Israelis come to remove the problem.’ The red stain on his forehead was wrinkled, like a healing burn. ‘So long as they give us back Beirut, let them come.’

      ‘Yes, let them come to remove one problem and put ten in its place,’ replied the Rose Man sharply. ‘There'll be no end that way – none that we want anyway. Blame them if you like – every Christian does, I know – but—’

      ‘So, are we to let them overrun our country?’ interrupted Papi. It was always this way, with Papi blaming the Palestinians.

      I noticed that even the hair on the Rose Man's chest was white: it stuck up over his shirt, like the hairs on a corncob. He said there was nowhere else for the Palestinians to go, and that in any case they and the Muslim militias were controlled by Syria.

      But Papi was coiled tight as a spring. The Palestinians attacked northern Israel, he said, and the reply always came back ten times as strong, and always aimed at civilians. We were stuck in the middle, watching our own people being killed. ‘So now let Israel fix it. Let them do whatever they can to get rid of the Palestinians. They're taking over our country like rats.’

      ‘Nabeel,’ tutted the Rose Man.

      ‘Like rats, I said,’ he repeated. ‘They've set up a state in Lebanon the same as they tried to do in Jordan.’

      ‘You're unreasonable, Nabeel. So much hate. Too much.’ And I wondered as I left the kitchen why Papi hated the Palestinians so bitterly.

      It was busy in the living room, and when Mami told me to take my presents to my room, Karim followed me. Although he was in my class, I didn't really know him and, besides, everyone thought he was weird. Earlier, his light blue suit had made Naji goggle. ‘And look at his hair,’ Naji had hissed. ‘It's been stuck down with glue!’ But his present had been ping-pong bats. There was no ball and we didn't have a table, but Naji's whistle had told me he thought it was the best present too.

      ‘I want to be an astronaut.’ Standing in my room twisting his neck round uncomfortably in his collar, Karim announced it as though I'd asked him a question. ‘I want to fly and wear a helmet and grow five centimetres taller, because you grow five centimetres taller in space.’

      When I admitted grudgingly that they were good reasons, a crescent moon smile opened in his face, and I saw he'd recently lost a front tooth.

      ‘If you were standing on Mars and looked up, the sky would be pink.’

      ‘How could it be pink?’ Pink. A pink sky. Maybe it changed colour every day so it was always a surprise when you woke up. Everything else would be different too: trees would grow sideways and shed feathers instead of leaves, the wind would tell you secrets as it blew, roses would grow big as houses, and there would be no war.

      ‘How come your father's sitting in the kitchen? Doesn't he like children?’

      ‘It's not that. He's just different from other people because he had a curse put on him. He wasn't always like this,’ I explained. ‘He used to be happy and laugh.’ Then I told him how I'd gone up to the witch's house with Naji that summer. ‘And we were so close we could see the broken fountain outside.’

      Karim's eyes were wide. His hair was unfurling from his head, and his ears stuck out like handles.

      ‘How are you going to go up into space in a giant firework if you're scared of an old witch?’ I asked.

      ‘I'm not scared!’

      #x2018;Okay.’ I stood up. ‘But everyone thinks you're weird.’

      He didn't say anything, and I felt sorry to have said it. Besides, I was starting to like him.

      ‘Where do you live?’

      ‘Up the hill.’

      ‘Do you want to come over and play ping-pong sometime?’

      He frowned. ‘Do you think I'm weird?’

      I shrugged. ‘Maybe. But you can come anyway.’

      We went back into the living room to rejoin the others, and were in the middle of Musical Chairs when the Rose Man left. Behind him, Papi's face was taut. ‘All this noise!’ he barked. ‘Can't you shut up for five minutes?’

      The laughter faded. No one spoke, only the music played on.

      Teta went up to Papi. ‘Son, they're children. It's Ruba's birthday. Let them enjoy themselves.’

      ‘My head's throbbing, and all I can hear is their shouting and squealing. Haven't they had enough yet?’

      Teta tried to soothe him, but he swung round to face us. ‘That's enough, do you hear? Enough!’

      Mami switched off the music. One of the girls had begun to cry.

      ‘All right, son, all right,’ said Teta. ‘We'll send them home.’

      Mami stood staring, her hand still on the radio. Teta was gathering the party bags to give out as everyone left. My birthday was over.

      Bursting into tears, I ran out of the living room – past Papi and the remainder of my cake, past the Rose Man's present in its glass of water, and through the kitchen door. My face was hot with crying, but at the bottom of the hill the forest was cool.

      The dry stony paths rose and fell to follow the side of the valley. A fistful of devil's snot floated past, thin wisps of cobweb carried on the breeze, white scratches against a blue sky, and then I was under cover.

      There must have been a thousand pine trees, and rock-roses and large anemones that made splashes of colour among the thorny bushes. A centipede wriggled under a stone as I passed, a butterfly flashed yellow, and I heard a thousand buzzes, whirrs, chirps and rustles. Beneath that though was a silence deeper than the one in church. Here time stopped and the world went away.

      I crouched. An ant climbed over my sandal, over my toes and back onto the ground. A tear dripped into the dust.

      A giant moth with an eye on each wing landed on a rock beside me. I watched it open and close its wings. It was like blinking, as if it was looking at me. I put out a finger to touch the large wing-eye but the moth fluttered away.

      Then something made me look up. Amal was watching me, her arms wrapped round a thin tree-trunk. There was that questioning look on her face that she often wore, as though everything were a puzzle.

      ‘What do you want?’ I screamed. ‘Go away!’ But she didn't.

      I couldn't stop my sobs, so I covered my face to shut her out. The light glowed pinkly through my hands, and all around, I knew it even though I couldn't see them, hundreds of brown eyes peered at me from between leaves, from holes in tree-trunks, from behind rocks.

      At last I stood up. ‘What do you want?’ I yelled. ‘Stop spying and go away!’

      Amal's arms fell to her sides. She stared, and for an instant I had the strangest feeling, as though I'd cut her. But before I could say more, she turned and left.

      Later, when Naji came to find me, I asked him if he remembered when Papi was happy.

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