Oranges in No Man's Land Read online

  For Jehan Helou

  Preface

  I lived in Beirut during the civil war that raged in Lebanon thirty years ago. We stayed at first in a flat in the ruined centre of the city. There was no furniture. Some of the windows had been blown in, and lines of bullet holes ran round the walls of the bare sitting room. Our six-month-old son slept in a suitcase on the floor.

  Thousands of refugees, fleeing the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, had found shelter in similar flats. They crammed in wherever they could, several families sharing each room.

  Later, when we had a place of our own, we would watch the destruction of the city from our balcony, hearing the dull crump of the bombs and seeing billows of smoke rise from the buildings.

  I took my son out for a daily walk. The soldiers on the checkpoints would put their guns down when they saw him and lift him up in their arms, reaching inside their camouflage fatigues for a sweet to put in his hand.

  Once, when we were driving home, we realized that the streets were eerily empty. The market had been abandoned. A fruit stall had been knocked over, and bright golden oranges were still running down the street. The air crackled with the tension of the battle that was about to start.

  It was these and other memories that inspired this book. When I wrote it, I didn’t know that Lebanon would plunge back so soon into a nightmare. Caught up in that nightmare are children like Ayesha and Samar, whose lives political leaders so easily throw away.

  Elizabeth Laird, 2006

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Fastest Boy in the World

  Chapter One

  Chapter One

  I was born in Beirut. It had been a lovely city once, or so Granny told me. The warm Mediterranean Sea rolled against its sunny beaches, while behind the city rose mountains that were capped with snow in the winter. There were peaceful squares and busy shops and hotels bustling with tourists.

  My father and mother were farmers. They came from the countryside south of the city. They’d been happy in their little village. But they lost everything when Lebanon, our country, was invaded. They had to run away to Beirut. They had three children there, me first, and then my two brothers.

  My father built a little house with his own hands in the in the poorest part of town, where everyone was crowded together in narrow lanes. All our neighbours were like us – refugees from southern Lebanon – trying to manage on nothing, but thankful at least to be safe.

  But just after I was born, all that changed. A terrible civil war tore the city of Beirut apart. I pray that those years never come again! I can never forget the horror of them.

  And yet, in among all the sad things, the fear and destruction and loss, there are wonderful memories too, of kindness and courage and goodness.

  I’ll have to start my story, though, with the saddest thing of all.

  Ours was a house of women and children, my granny, my mother and my little brothers Latif, who was seven, and Ahmed, who was still only a baby. My father was abroad most of the time, looking for work. He’d been gone for so long we were used to him being away. I’d almost begun to forget what he looked like.

  When, on that terrible day, the bombs started to fall all around our house, my mother threw some clothes into a bundle and began to pack bags and cases.

  ‘There’s no time for that!’ Granny screamed at her, looking out anxiously into the street. ‘The gunmen are coming! They’ll be here any minute. We must take the children and run!’

  Mama went on packing. She pushed a big bag into my hands and a smaller one into Latif’s. Granny was already running down the street with Ahmed in her arms.

  ‘Go on, Ayesha,’ Mama said to me. ‘Go with Granny. I’ll be right behind you. Wait for me by the mosque on the corner.’

  And so we ran, Latif and me, racing ahead of Granny, who was hobbling along behind us with Ahmed in her arms. And a shell fell on our house just as we reached the end of the street, wiping out our little shack of a house and everything in it. I never saw Mama again.

  Chapter Two

  It was a bright morning in Beirut . . . No, I can’t begin there. I must think back a bit further, to the place we found to live in during those muddled, desperate weeks after Mama died. I don’t want to remember the first few days, the panic and confusion and the aching, aching loss.

  It was Latif who found the flat for us. Little brothers do have some uses, I suppose, although I didn’t often think so then.

  The four of us were sitting on a doorstep in a ruined street, feeling hungry and hopeless, after two days of wandering from place to place. All we’d thought about was how best to get away from the fighting. We had no food left, and no idea where we’d spend the night. Granny looked so old and worn and beaten I could hardly bear to look at her. I think she’d given up hope. Ahmed was crying.

  ‘There are people up there, in that window,’ Latif suddenly said, pointing across the road to the first floor of the building opposite. ‘Look, Granny, they’re waving to us.’

  That was the first kind, good thing that had happened to us since the disaster, and it was how we met Samar (who was ten years old like me) and Samar’s mother, dear Mrs Zainab, the best mother in the world, after mine.

  A few minutes later, we’d crossed the road, pushed open the broken street door of the building, gone up the dusty steps and found ourselves in what must once have been a beautiful flat, where rich people would have lived.

  I can remember standing in the doorway, looking round in amazement. I’d never been in such a place before. The windows had all been blown out, and there were gaping holes in the walls where shells had blasted through, but you could still see how magnificent it had been in the old days.

  Even the hallway was huge. The floors were made of marble, and there were big mirrors on the walls with elaborate gold-work round them. You could see beyond the hall into amazing rooms, all light and airy with high ceilings from which ruined chandeliers hung at crazy angles.

  The people who had owned this flat must have left long ago, and they’d taken their beautiful furniture and fancy clothes with them. But the rooms weren’t empty. They were full of people. Refugees. Squatters. Poor people from the bombed-out parts of town. People with nowhere to go. People like us.

  I could see through the open doors that they’d made corners of the rooms their own. They’d set up little homes, with their own mattresses and cooking pots, and strung up cloths on strings to make partitions so that each family could have a bit of privacy.

  Mrs Zainab came out into the hall towards us. She was comfortable looking, with smile-wrinkles around her eyes. She wore a long tattered dress, and had a scarf tied over her head.

  ‘You poor things,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t let you go on sitting there, with night coming on and all. Have you got somewhere to go? Are you lost?’

  It was then that Granny burst into tears, and Latif and I were so shocked we huddled up against each other, not knowing what to say. We’d never seen her cry before.

  Mrs Zainab took charge at once. She had found us a corner of our own, in what had been the sitting room, I suppose. She borrowed a mattress for Granny, changed Ahmed’s nappy and gave us some of her family’s s
upper to share.

  And so we bedded down that first strange night in the flat – Granny on the mattress, Latif and me curled up on a mat and Ahmed in our old suitcase, which was now his cot.

  That was how we found our new home, and that was where we lived, through the freezing cold of winter and the boiling heat of summer, until the old life with Mama in our little shack had begun to seem like a distant dream.

  Chapter Three

  One morning I stepped out of that crowded, overflowing, noisy flat. It must have been early summer, I suppose, because the night had been cool and the day looked as though it would be hot.

  There had been a ferocious gun battle raging in the streets around us all through the night. There was an invisible line across Beirut in those days. It was known as the ‘Green Line’ and it divided the city as surely as a wall, though there was no actual line to be seen, only a vast maze of bombed-out buildings, infested with gunmen and a few old people. The different groups controlled the opposite sides, and the battles were fought across it.

  Back then, I never understood who was who or what was what. I still don’t really know. What were they all fighting for? Religion? Politics? Was it the rich against the poor? Sometimes I wonder if the fighters themselves knew what they were doing.

  That night, they’d been hard at it. The whole city had echoed to the crash of exploding bombs and shells and the rattle of machine-gun fire. Vehicles had roared through the streets, their tyres squealing, and ambulance sirens had sounded in the distance.

  It was quiet in the street now. The fighting was over for the time being. The sky should have been a bright blue, but a light fog hung in the air from the dust of the ruins and the smoke from the burning buildings.

  There had been so much noise in the night I hadn’t slept much, and I was yawning my head off. I hadn’t wanted to go out at all, but Granny had insisted.

  ‘Go down to the checkpoint quickly now,’ she had said. ‘I heard the refugee truck’s coming today and they’re going to give out cooking oil. If you get there early you’ll have a better chance of getting some.’

  ‘Can’t Latif go?’ I’d said, frowning at Latif, who’d broken a cardboard packing case open on to the dust-covered floor, and was turning somersaults on it.

  ‘No, habibti. He’ll only get into trouble. Go on, now, there’s a good girl. The oil bottle’s nearly empty. How can I cook? You want to eat, don’t you? And take Ahmed with you. He’s been pestering to go out since he woke up.’

  So I’d picked Ahmed up and set off. He was a weight, I can tell you, ten months old and hefty with it. I carried him on my hip, but I kept having to move him from one side to the other.

  The street was strewn with rubble, and I was wearing rubber flip-flops, so I had to pick my way carefully to avoid the fresh splashes of broken glass.

  I can picture it clearly now, though at the time I hardly noticed the mess all around. There were twisted spikes of metal sticking up from the pavement. They had once been street lights. The gaping dark openings on each side of the road had been busy, crowded shops. The wooden stumps in the middle of the roundabout were all that remained of palm trees. Their lovely long green fronds had long since been shot away.

  All over the tarmac there were circles like you see on the water when you drop a pebble into a pond. They were where shells and mortars had fallen.

  The checkpoint wasn’t far. I slowed down as I approached it. You had to be very cautious with checkpoints. You had to take care and look closely to make sure that the men guarding them were from a friendly militia. To tell you which militia was running the checkpoint, each one had a little flag stuck up on a pole, or one hanging across the chain that they used to stop the traffic going down the street. Sometimes there were posters too, of the different political leaders. Our flags were green and black.

  There were four militiamen there that morning. They had built up two walls of sandbags on either side of the street and had run a chain across between them to stop vehicles going through. They all carried automatic weapons, slung casually over their shoulders. They didn’t frighten me though. I knew their flag was the right one for my sort of family. I recognized their accents too. They were the same as mine. They came from the far south of Lebanon. They were Shia Muslims, like us.

  Even so, I could never be really relaxed around the militiamen. They had guns, after all, and were very used to using them. I never quite knew what they might do next. Some of them had seen so much fighting and killing I wasn’t sure if they knew when to stop.

  My heart sank when I came round the corner and saw the checkpoint, because the little truck that usually brought supplies in for refugee families wasn’t there. I can remember standing awkwardly, not quite knowing what to do, pushing a stone around with the tip of one rubber sole.

  One of the militiamen had taken off his scarf and was retying it round his head. He saw me standing there feeling foolish and beckoned me across. Shyly I went over to him.

  ‘Looking for someone?’ he said.

  ‘The truck. My grandma said it was coming today. With cooking oil.’

  One of the other men heard.

  ‘You’ll be lucky. After last night’s bombardment? They haven’t cleared the roads yet. Tomorrow, inshallah. Come back tomorrow.’

  The light glinted on the gun he was cradling in his arms. Ahmed saw it, and reached out to touch it. I snatched his hand back, but the man laughed.

  ‘Hey, little tiger. A fighter already?’ He put his gun down on the ground and reached out his arms. ‘Here. Give him to me.’

  I didn’t want to. How would I know what he might do with a baby in his arms? But Ahmed was struggling and reaching out. He wasn’t scared at all. He wanted to pull at the militiaman’s headscarf.

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. He’ll be fine with me.’ The man had taken Ahmed already and was holding him gently, expertly ticking his tummy. I relaxed a bit. I could see he was used to babies. Ahmed wriggled. He’d gone red in the face and was laughing so hard he was gasping.

  ‘I love him, God save me,’ the man said. ‘When I see him, I see my own son.’ He seemed quite sorry to hand him back to me. ‘Come tomorrow and bring him with you. The truck’s sure to be here then. You’ll get your supplies. And I’ll get some extra milk for him if I can.’

  So I had to turn back then, and go home.

  Chapter Four

  Granny was cooking when I got back. She was squatting over a small kerosene stove she’d managed to get hold of, stirring a stew of chickpeas.

  I never thought about where our food came from. Somehow, there always seemed to be something to eat. Now I realize that Granny must have performed miracles to keep us all fed. There were handouts from the refugee organizations of course, but they were never really enough. Sometimes she used to leave Ahmed with me and tell me to keep an eye on Latif. Then off she’d go, a determined look on her face, holding one hand to her side to support her painful hip. She’d come back an hour or so later with some fresh vegetables, or a little piece of meat, or some cheese wrapped up in a cloth.

  ‘No oil,’ I said, dumping Ahmed down on the floor and easing my tired shoulders. ‘The truck wasn’t there. The soldiers on the checkpoint said to try again tomorrow.’

  ‘You didn’t hang about talking to them, I hope?’ she said with a disapproving frown. Granny was always fussy about me talking to strangers.

  ‘It’s all right, Granny. They were kind. One of them played with Ahmed.’

  She pursed her lips, but didn’t say anything more.

  Ahmed took off at a fast crawl towards the sound of toddlers playing beyond the cloth Mrs Zainab had hung up for us to give us our own ‘room’. I was about to go and fetch him back, but Granny gave me a smile, then put up her hand to wipe her forehead.

  ‘Don’t worry about him, habibti. Mrs Zainab’s there. She’ll look after him.’ She passed me the spoon she’d been using to stir the stew. ‘Watch this, will you? It’ll stick and burn if you’re not careful. I mu
st lie down for a minute.’

  I think that was the first moment when I realized that something was wrong with Granny. She’d always grumbled about her sore hip, and I’d always known she had to take pills for something or other, but I’d never thought about it much. Why would I? She’d always been there, as far as I was concerned. She’d always looked after us, even when Mama was alive. She would be there forever, or so I’d thought.

  Now, for the first time, I saw that she was pale and her face was puffy round the eyes.

  ‘Are you all right, Granny? Have you taken your medicine?’

  ‘I’m fine. Keep stirring. It only needs a few more minutes.’

  She limped over to the mattress. It looked quite odd, that bare, dusty old mattress, lying under the remains of what must once have been a beautiful mirror hanging on the wall above, but I’d long since stopped noticing. What worried me now was that Granny seemed to be shivering, and although it was warm since the chill of morning had worn off, she was covering herself with a blanket.

  Chapter Five

  I haven’t told you about Samar yet, and she needs to be properly introduced. To be honest, when I’d met her that first evening, and for days afterwards, I was scared of her. I didn’t know what to make of her.

  Samar didn’t speak. She made grunting, squeaking noises instead, and her hands flew about all the time, in complicated flicking movements.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Mrs Zainab said, seeing my alarm. ‘Samar’s not stupid. She’s deaf, that’s all. She can’t hear what you say to her, but she can read your lips. Just make sure she can see your mouth when you speak. She’ll understand all right.’

  She must have seen the wary look on my face, because she frowned as if I’d annoyed her.

  ‘Samar’s missing her friends,’ she said. ‘Before all this trouble began, she used to go to the deaf school. Top of the class, she was. They taught her sign language there. None of us can do it properly, and she gets really frustrated when we can’t understand. She’s lonely. You don’t have to be friends with Samar, Ayesha, but she’d love to be friends with you.’