Bone Ash Sky by Katerina Cosgrove Page B

ceilings, flaking pink-papered walls, the concrete balcony that was beginning to crumble in the sea mist that sprayed over it every evening in fine silver beads. A pearl necklace just like her mother’s, kept in a flat blue satin box. Tiny bubbles, like the faint sheen of sweat on Selim’s upper lip when he grew passionate, when he made his pronouncements on politics and women, women and religion, when they made love.
    She made some tea, drank it gazing at the horizon, now milky white, indistinct, heat haze emanating from the city like sleeping breath. The tulip-shaped tumbler sparkled with refracted light. Hadiya always insisted on drinking her chocolate milk from one, entailing many refills. Yesterday morning she had pointed to the chandelier in the dining room and said she was drinking from the very same glasses that held those tiny electric candles. Little glasses filled with light. Little Hadiya, loved more with each passing day, loved more desperately because she was in so much danger. Her uncle Issa, out in the streets, fighting with Hezbollah against the PLO, against the Christian Phalange, against his own Shia comrades in Amal, and the Sunni Mourabitoun militia. Hand to hand for an alley or gutter, a few square inches of rubble to make the futility worth it for a while.
    Sanaya shaded her eyes, peered closer, stood up. Planes. Planes arcing into the city, making for the Corniche, whirr and buzz of machinery flattening sound. Planes. Another bombing. She stood still at the rail, not daring to move. All around her, daisy-yellow pieces of paper dropping from the sky, so fast and thick she bowed her head and shut her eyes until the fluttering ceased and the silence was replaced by familiar sounds: horns honking, screech of tires, sough of sea, neighbours below exclaiming, leaflets in their clammy hands. She picked one up from the balcony floor: ‘10 June 1982. We shall capture the city in a short period. We have committed a large part of our air, naval and ground forces for the area of Beirut—’
    She looked up. A series of quick taps at the door. Rouba came running in with more leaflets and the morning paper, already smudged by the sweat pouring from under her arms.
    â€˜Sanaya, did you see what those Israelis—’
    She didn’t finish. Sanaya ran to the bedroom and closed the door on Selim, carefully, so as not to wake him. She turned to Rouba.
    â€˜My little cousin is sleeping here. Her mother had to work overnight in the factory and couldn’t look after her.’
    Rouba nodded slowly, keeping up the pretence.
    Sanaya crumpled all the leaflets and threw them in the kitchen bin, grabbed the newspaper and spread it out in front of her, reading the blurred headlines. She thought she might be reading the same line over and over but couldn’t be sure. Her breath caught in her throat, a lump she pushed down with the heel of her hand. Her eyes filled. Was it fear? It couldn’t be. Anger? Nostalgia for the city that she knew now – knew in the quiet unshakeable way of the dreaded truth – would be destroyed again and again? Operation Peace for Galilee . Rouba grabbed one of the balls of paper and smoothed it out behind her back. Sanaya looked up.
    â€˜Tea, Rouba? Would you like some tea?’
    â€˜I need to go downstairs in a minute. Hadiya might wake and will be scared if I’m not there. Give me half the paper; you can have the rest.’
    When Rouba divided the paper, Sanaya turned to the back pages and read the atrocities of the day: kidnappings, bombings, torture, interrogations. Two hundred dead in a single Israeli air strike. Another day in Beirut. Except for one piece of news confirming those floating missives: the Israeli land army was sweeping north to Beirut and would reach the outskirts of the city in four days. She stood, shaking. Her voice when she spoke was unrecognisable.
    â€˜Send her upstairs when she wakes. I have some fresh eggs.’
    She