A Girl Made of Dust. Nathalie Abi-Ezzi

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       Chapter Four

      ‘You children, wasn't your uncle a friend of the departed?’ asked the nut-shop owner. He and another man with a bushy moustache had been talking about a funeral while Naji and I chose sweets.

      ‘I'm not sure,’ replied Naji.

      ‘Does he mean Uncle Wadih?’ I asked. It was the first time Uncle Wadih's name had ever been connected with something bad.

      Naji frowned at me. ‘He's the only uncle we have, isn't he?’

      The shop owner turned back. ‘I think the departed had business dealings with Wadih Khouri. Anyway, his wife has family. They'll help her sort out his affairs. Not like my neighbour – her son was killed last week, her only son, and she'd already lost her husband. Now she has no one.’

      The customer laid his hands flat on the counter. I noticed the long nail on his little finger, which I thought was for picking his nose but Naji said was to show he wasn't a manual worker. ‘The young Mansoor boy? What happened to him?’

      ‘What happened to him, my brother? What happens to any of them? He joined a militia, they picked a fight with some boys from the Lebanese Army and he was sprayed with bullets. When they're young’ – the shop owner tapped the side of his head – ‘when they're young they don't think.’

      The nut shop was lined with containers full of different sorts of sweets, biscuits and lollipops, while shelves along the back wall displayed large boxes of chocolates, most with pictures of green hills, lakes and cows on the front. Ali was humming and roasting upstairs, and behind the glass counter the bzoorat were separated by type: watermelon and pumpkin seeds, pistachios, almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, peanuts, in their shells and out, roasted maize, and chickpeas coated with sugar. We were still deciding what to buy.

      ‘Did Uncle really know a dead man?’ I asked Naji, but he shushed me. He was listening.

      ‘We could barely lift him,’ the customer was saying. ‘If his wife hadn't been such a good cook yesterday, maybe I wouldn't have such a bad back today. I'm telling you, a crane would have found it difficult to lift him. Don't think badly of me, I don't wish to speak ill of the dead, and I loved the man, but there was too much of him for his own sake as well as mine.’ He rolled his moustache between thumb and forefinger. ‘My spine was creaking the whole way – and his wife had her eye on us from start to finish.’

      Naji's elbow poked me in the ribs. ‘They're talking about that funeral – the one when we had to get off the bus.’ Some days ago the street had been black with mourners, inching their way to the church like a stream of melting tar so that we'd had to get off our school bus and walk. Women in the crowd had wailed, a pair of hands rising occasionally to the sky. And at the head of all this the coffin had moved silently along, like a boat with no sail.

      As we left, grey clouds were gathering on the horizon like dirty soapsuds. Autumn was coming. The leaves were turning yellow, and humidity built up during the day until steam rose from the sea in the afternoons that made the air thick and rubbed out Beirut so that only its ghost-lines were left. In the evenings people sat out on their balconies less often, closed their shutters at night, and Mami had climbed into the attic to bring down clothes that smelt of mothballs. And behind everything, the growl of shelling had become insistent.

      When we got home, Papi was reading his newspaper and the telephone was ringing.

      Mami answered. ‘Yes, I … I'm well. We're all well.’ Her free hand went to her hair first, then to her skirt, slipped to the edge of the dresser, then hooked onto the phone cord. She glanced at Papi and his paper sank to his lap.

      There was a little more talk, then Mami stopped moving, her fingers strangled in the coiled cord. ‘Of course.’ Her voice didn't change, it was still polite and cool, only her hand closed into a fist that made the cord quiver.

      After she'd put down the phone she stood quite still, and the black kohl that she pencilled round her eyes in the morning made them seem enormous now. Slowly, she unwound the phone cord from her fingers. ‘It was Wadih.’

      Papi looked at the phone, then back at her. ‘Why didn't he speak to me?’

      ‘I don't know.’ Her feet shuffled uncomfortably. ‘He's coming over.’

      ‘Uncle Wadih's coming?’ yelled Naji.

      Papi moved to the edge of his seat. ‘Coming here? When?’

      ‘Today.’

      Papi got to his feet. ‘Has something happened?’

      ‘No, nothing. All he said was he's coming. You know how he is. That's just his way.’ She frowned and laid a hand on top of her head, as if to stop it flying off. ‘And now I have even more to do.’

      ‘But what did he say?’

      ‘Didn't you hear me? Nothing!’ She clicked her tongue in annoyance.

      The nut-shop owner had asked us about Uncle Wadih not half an hour ago, and now he was coming.

      Naji and I didn't know СКАЧАТЬ