A Girl Made of Dust. Nathalie Abi-Ezzi

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       Chapter Two

      The following Sunday, Mami tried to hurry Naji. As we waited for him, she undid her hair and re-coiled it, but it must still have been wrong because she frowned and did it again. ‘Nabeel,’ she said finally, to Papi, ‘won't you come to church with us?’

      Papi was still eating his breakfast. ‘Don't bring up religion, Aida.’

      ‘For my sake, Nabeel.’

      ‘I have no wish to see people and be stared at by them. To appear in church for the first time in years, like a fool.’

      ‘No one will look. And what do you care if they do?’

      Naji's Sunday shoes clacked down the corridor.

      ‘Do what you want, that's between you and your God, but there's no place for me in a church.’ He cut a piece of cheese and wrapped some bread round it. The cicadas in the valley throbbed on and on like blood pumping round an aching head.

      We went ahead of Mami and Teta. Outside, dust lay over everything. Cars passed, their engines noisy, their tyres sticking to the hot tarmac and squeaking round corners. Across the road from the church, a man was carrying crates of fruit and vegetables out of a dark store and setting them down in front: huge red apples and tomatoes, bananas, apricots, flashing pink pomegranates, hills of okra, beans and lettuce, while inside big bags of round flatbreads hung from hooks that shone as they caught the light.

      ‘Papi used to come to church,’ said Naji.

      ‘When?’ I asked, fingering the glass eye in my pocket; I'd decided always to carry it for protection.

      ‘Before. But everything was different then. Remember Jamila who used to cook for us?’

      ‘A little. She was soft and hot when she carried me, and her neck always smelt of parsley … and tiny balls of water popped out along her head where her hair started.’ I saw again the long cloth wrapped round Jamila's head and the long, thin black plait snaking down her back. ‘Did she make nice things?’

      ‘Nicer than Mami's food,’ he whispered, ‘and she played with us.’

      ‘Why did she go?’

      ‘Because of Papi. It was when he stopped working and we didn't have enough money. When she had to leave she cried, and kissed us so hard it hurt.’ He made smacking noises with his lips. ‘That's when Mami first started cooking.’

      ‘I remember.’ After Jamila left the house, Mami had stood alone in the middle of the kitchen squeezing her hands. It was around the time that she'd stopped going out so much. That was when the curse had begun. ‘The witch is still setting curses,’ I said. ‘The last time she went into the nut shop, they had a whole batch of bad ones. Ali said he'd never seen it happen that way before.’

      ‘Let's go and ask him,’ decided Naji, and we crossed the road and walked along it. My fingers touched everything on the way: rough leaves covered with the smallest white hairs, flowers that grew out of cracks in a wall, the ledge of the local shrine, the hot dusty bonnet of a car, a rough stone wall and, finally, the cool sharpness of peeling paint on metal railings.

      The shutters of Papi's shop were closed, and inside everything would be in the dark – the pots and frying-pans, glasses and knives, step-ladders and cloths, plates and smiling porcelain statues, some of which had been standing in the same place for years.

      As we went past, Naji gave the metal shutters an angry kick, but he brightened as we stopped in front of the nut shop. ‘If only Ali owned it,’ he said. ‘he'd always give us things.’

      The brilliant colours of sweets, chocolates and drinks made it the prettiest place in town. Naji sniffed the smell of hot nuts that drifted out before he called up to Ali. A moment later Ali appeared behind a metal grille above the door in his white cotton vest, looking out as if it was the first time he'd ever seen the world.

      ‘It must be so hot up there,’ I called. ‘You're soaked in sweat!’

      He waved. His round face was gleaming, the left eye pointing slightly outwards, the wide mouth a solid, straight line. ‘There's no one but me to roast the nuts. It's hot for them and it's hot for me: they're roasted and I'm roasted!’ He laughed at his joke and repeated it to himself.

      ‘Isn't it true about the nuts, Ali?’ I shaded my eyes. ‘Isn't it true the nuts got spoilt when the witch came in?’

      Ali nodded, eyes widening in fear. His hands were caked with salt, his face red from the heat of the fire. ‘Couldn't sell them. A whole batch.’ He shook his head sadly.

      ‘How did she spoil them?’

      ‘He wouldn't know that,’ said Naji. ‘I don't know what he thinks about, but not about such things.’

      ‘Ali,’ I called, ‘what do you think about up there?’

      Ali smiled. ‘Up here I can see everything so I think about everything.’ He vanished, then reappeared and threw down some sugared almonds for us to catch. Two purple ones came my way: he knew I liked the purple ones best.

      We stood beside the church, gazing down at the terraces of olive and almond trees. Naji said the Phoenicians made them, but when I asked who they were, he wasn't sure. Below and further away, Beirut lay spread out along the coast like grey and white Lego, the sea glinting beside it.

      A queue of traffic formed. A driver had stopped to speak to someone in the road. There was more hooting, and things shouted about one man's sister and another's mother.

      Mami and Teta had finally made it up the hill. Teta, in her best black, was huffing to catch her breath. ‘It's proof to God that I'm devoted, an old woman like me climbing all this way,’ she muttered as she went slowly up the church steps.

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