What Will Survive Read online

  Later, when she returned from a dingy toilet at the back of a supermarket on the Lebanese side of the border, Aisha glimpsed a wad of grubby Syrian notes changing hands. Fabio was blocking her view with his broad shoulders and she saw him pat Mahmoud conspiratorially on the back before turning to offer her a sandwich made of flat bread and salty cheese. It tasted better than it looked, perhaps because Aisha hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and afterwards in the car she opened the pretty box of cakes she had bought from Daoud Brothers in Damascus that morning. She offered them round — Fabio shook his head and Mahmoud grunted, then got out of the car to smoke another cigarette — and was biting into the sugary pastry when Fabio remarked casually that there had been a slight change of plan, which involved driving down into the Bekaa valley instead of carrying on across it to Beirut. When Aisha asked why, Fabio said he’d heard that the Americans were paying local farmers to raise cattle imported from Texas instead of growing hashish as they had before the war.

  ‘Great picture, huh?’ he demanded, holding his hands at the sides of his head like horns. When she did not laugh, he tried to cajole her:

  ‘Aisha, when we went to Bosra you were worried — remember you said we cannot make a whole book of Roman ruins?’

  Aisha pointed out that at the time they’d seen nothing in Syria but temples, theatres and triumphal arches; since then they’d spent three days in Damascus, where she had loved shopping in the souk and Fabio had photographed her in old workshops where silk was still being woven into bolts of figured fabric on Jacquard looms. They’d also stood in the vast courtyard of the Ummayad mosque, almost blinded by sun reflected from the bone-white pavement, and marvelled at its astonishing mosaics of streams, orchards and palaces. If a detour was on the cards, Aisha protested, they should have left Damascus straight after breakfast, instead of having to prolong their journey at the hottest time of day. She could not recall a previous occasion when Fabio had had to struggle to conceal his emotions but she could tell from the shape of his mouth that he was irritated, even though he continued to put his case patiently.

  ‘All right,’ she said in the end, feeling too sticky and uncomfortable to argue any longer, ‘but I want an early night when we get to Beirut — no dinners with tourist officials, OK?’ She retied the box of cakes, asking one final question as Mahmoud ground out his cigarette and flopped heavily into the driver’s seat:

  ‘You’re sure this is safe, Fabio? Even I know South Lebanon is still occupied.’ He turned and gave her a quizzical look, his good humour restored. ‘Yes, it is safe — except when the grape-pickers are shelled by the Israelis.’ She began to speak and he grinned.

  ‘I am teasing you, Aisha, it is not yet the time of the grape harvest. Anyway, do you think our friend here’ — he lowered his voice and indicated the driver with an inclination of the head — ‘would take risks for two foreigners?’ Mahmoud gave Fabio a sour glance but started the engine and the journey continued in silence for a while.

  Aisha had been reading earlier but now she couldn’t concentrate and stared out of the car window, surprised by the realisation that after ten days on the road she had absolutely no insight into Fabio’s personal life. If he had interests outside war and photography, he kept them to himself; he hadn’t even talked much about his experiences in Beirut during the civil war, although it was a photograph taken on the Green Line that made him famous outside Italy. On one of their first evenings, after Aisha overheard a fluent conversation in Arabic between Fabio and a waiter, she asked if that was when he had learned the language and received the unexpected reply that he’d picked it up when he was stationed in Lebanon with the Italian army. This was a period of his life she knew nothing about, although it explained his appearance — military bearing, neatly-trimmed beard and an apparently endless stock of freshly-laundered khaki shirts. The thought that a travel iron lurked somewhere in his luggage, like a stylist on a fashion shoot, made her smile. Most evenings, he excused himself after supper, presumably to go off to drink in bars on his own or in search of more congenial company — whatever that might be.

  According to her Lebanese guidebook, which Aisha opened as they reached Kefraya, the Bekaa valley was really a plateau, a thousand feet above sea level, planted with wheat, vines and orchards. The vineyards around the village were a welcome change from the arid Syrian landscape and she got out of the car each time they stopped, taking pictures with her own camera as Fabio searched in a rather desultory way for cannabis and cattle. Neither materialised but he photographed Aisha as she picked plump white mulberries from an ancient tree, with Mount Lebanon in the background, and with a couple of children — dirt-poor immigrants from Syria, according to Fabio, although the girl was wearing an embroidered dress for which some English mothers would pay a fortune. The child offered Aisha a red flower, which she pinned in her hair, offering in return a couple of the brightly-coloured felt-tip pens she always carried in her shoulder bag on foreign trips.

  When they reached mountainous country at the lower end of the valley Aisha expected Mahmoud to turn back, but Fabio exclaimed over the landscape and told the driver to keep going. They continued travelling south-west, stopping next to a precipitous drop where Fabio spent some time setting up his tripod, leaving Aisha to stare across the pinkish hills, suddenly reminded of Greece. It was at this moment that the helicopter’s long shadow swooped over them for the first time, drawing a casual glance from Fabio before he returned to what he had been doing.

  ‘The UN, Syria, maybe the Lebanese,’ he said carelessly when Aisha asked about it. ‘They will not bother with us — tourists,’ he added, gesturing towards his equipment, but the chopper returned and circled over them again as he was folding the tripod into the boot.

  Shortly afterwards Aisha dozed off, waking with a start to find the car stationary as Fabio and Mahmoud talked with men in uniforms at the side of the road. Spotting that she was awake, one of the soldiers strolled towards the Volkswagen and stared at her through the glass. He was not wearing a blue UN helmet and when he tapped on the window she rolled it down, instantly nervous. ‘Eeng-lish?’ he asked, breaking into a smile that showed a chipped front tooth. ‘Eeng-lish, good,’ he added, holding up his thumb and giving her a lingering look before strolling back to join his colleagues. On his return to the car Fabio assured her that the soldiers were Lebanese and friendly.

  ‘But where are we?’ Aisha demanded. ‘How long have I been asleep?’ Fabio brushed away her questions, blaming Mahmoud: the driver had taken the wrong road, he said, and the Lebanese captain had just shown him where they were on the map.

  ‘I’m starving,’ Aisha said plaintively, reaching for a bottle of warm mineral water. ‘When will we get to Beirut?’ Fabio moved his head from side to side, as though he found the question difficult to answer, and finally admitted they were near a town called Nabatiyeh, which meant nothing to her.

  To Aisha’s astonishment, he went on to say they had ended up, completely by chance, about ten minutes’ drive from a village where an old friend of his lived. And, as if he were doing her a favour, Fabio suggested they look up this friend, who was called Marwan Hadidi, and see if his family could offer them something to eat before they continued north to Beirut. Now fully awake, Aisha began asking for more details about this mysterious friend and received a disarming reply: Marwan had been Fabio’s fixer in Beirut during the war and had actually saved his life on more than one occasion.

  ‘If you knew him in Beirut, how do you know he’s even going to be in this village?’ she objected, realising she had lost another argument. Fabio said confidently that Marwan had always intended to return home when he finished his degree. He had been a law student when the war started, Fabio added, but had started working for foreign correspondents in the city when conditions became too difficult. Irritated and hungry, Aisha sat back and only half-listened as Fabio spoke with Mahmoud in Arabic, tapping the map a couple of times to make a point. A few miles along the road, they passed a deserted-looking UN
compound, and shattered buildings began to appear on exposed hillsides. It was almost a relief when the sun set in a blaze of rosy light, cloaking these relics of the civil war in shadow.

  In Marwan’s village, Mahmoud stopped an elderly man to ask the way and was directed — after some suspicious glances, Aisha thought — to a house halfway up a hill. Mahmoud parked opposite a high wall, on the right-hand side of the rutted street, and Fabio threw open the front passenger door, suddenly full of energy. Aisha got out of the car more slowly, stretching her arms and legs, and followed him to the gate.

  Inside the dark courtyard, a young woman in jeans and a faded sweatshirt emerged from a door to the left, light from the room behind her framing her wavy hair. Fabio spoke to her in Arabic, gesturing towards himself and Aisha, and the girl listened impassively until he mentioned Marwan’s name. Then her body became rigid and she backed away, disappearing inside the house and leaving Aisha and Fabio to exchange perplexed looks. ‘Are we in the right place?’ she asked, but before he could answer the door opened again and the girl returned, this time with a baby in her arms. With her was a much older woman, wearing a headscarf, who took over the conversation as the girl stood to one side, rocking the infant.

  The older woman poured out a torrent of words, seeming fearful at first but rapidly becoming angry. Fabio interrupted from time to time, asking questions, and the woman replied as best she could while feeling for a handkerchief and wiping tears from her eyes. Aisha gripped Fabio’s arm.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded. ‘Isn’t he here?’ Thinking about the almost perpetual bad news from Lebanon, her stomach contracted and she began to worry that Fabio’s friend might be dead. He seemed barely to hear her. Soon all three of them were speaking at once, making so much noise that they woke the baby, whose thin wails added to the hubbub in the enclosed space.

  Her head beginning to ache, Aisha retreated to the gate and glanced towards the car, where Mahmoud appeared to be asleep in the driver’s seat. She crossed the road and climbed into the back, where she fished a strip of paracetamol from her bag and swallowed two with the last few drops of warm mineral water. Her mobile rang, prompting a series of grunts from Mahmoud, and Aisha answered it to find a reporter from an English broadsheet looking for a comment for the next day’s paper on a speech by the Foreign Secretary. After a slightly surreal conversation about the dangers of linking trade and aid, Aisha felt steadier and made up her mind to find out what was going on. Returning to the courtyard, she discovered Fabio in conversation with a middle-aged man, each of them holding the edge of a map, while a curly-haired child of nine or ten clung to the older woman’s arm.

  ‘Fabio,’ she began, and he turned to her with what she realised later was a guilty look. Folding the map, he handed it to the stranger and drew Aisha to one side, speaking in a low voice.

  ‘Listen, cara, these people — Marwan’s family, they have a problem. I will explain everything later, trust me.’ Startled, Aisha looked up at him. ‘What kind of problem? What’s going on?’

  Once again it occurred to her that Marwan was dead but, if that were the case, surely Fabio would come out and tell her instead of behaving in this mysterious way? He made an impatient sound. ‘Aisha, this is Lebanon, you would not understand.’ She tried to interrupt and he talked over her. ‘Sorry, sorry, of course you would understand but there is too much history.’ He squeezed her arm and repeated what he’d already said: ‘Please, Aisha, trust me and I will tell you everything later.’ Turning towards the little group, all presumably Marwan’s relatives, he beckoned to the young woman with the baby. ‘Go with Amal,’ he told Aisha. ‘She will bring you something to eat — you said you were starving, cara.’ He spoke in Arabic to the girl, then to the middle-aged man, who pointed impatiently at his watch. Fabio nodded and moved towards the gate, his face set in a grim line.

  Aisha heard her own name, spoken softly, and turned to see Amal gesturing towards a door opposite the gate. ‘What? You want me to come?’ she asked. ‘Aywa,’ the girl confirmed, handing the baby to the older woman — her mother? mother-in-law? — and ushering Aisha towards what was clearly the family’s best room. It was brightly lit, with a low seat running round the walls, piled with colourful kelim cushions. In the centre of the room was a circular wooden table, inset with ivory, and in one corner a modern wall unit, draped with the Lebanese flag. Aisha saw row upon row of photographs, flanked by vases stuffed with artificial flowers, and was still taking in her surroundings when Mahmoud appeared with her overnight bag, and dumped it at her feet. ‘Why do I need this?’ she asked. ‘We’re not staying.’ The driver muttered something about Fabio and turned his back on her, almost colliding with Amal on his way out. The young woman spoke sharply and followed him out of the room, leaving Aisha alone. She perched on the edge of the seat, stabbed Fabio’s number into her mobile phone and exclaimed in annoyance when it went straight to voicemail. She lifted a hand to her head and pushed her hair back, closing her eyes for a few seconds, before trying another number which also went straight to voicemail.

  When Amal returned she was carrying a tray, which she set down on the table. It contained flat bread, meatballs in a sauce on one plate, aubergine purée on another, a deep bowl of creamy sheep’s yoghurt and a jug of water, which Aisha was at first reluctant to drink. But hunger and thirst got the better of her and she soon cleared the plates, even though the meatballs were lukewarm and she hated to think what might be incubating in them. Piling the empty dishes on the tray, she got up and paced the room, stopping after a while to examine the photographs. They stretched back across several generations, the oldest portraits in sepia or black and white, showing men, women and children with a strong family resemblance — heavy eyebrows, long faces which tended to look solemn — in formal poses. The later ones were in colour, including several wedding photographs, and the most recent featured a strikingly handsome man who looked to be in his late twenties. In most of the shots he was facing the camera, instinctively seeking it out, looking, in contrast to the rest of the family, as though he might break into laughter at any moment. His graduation photograph, in which he wore a suit, seemed to confirm Aisha’s idea that this was the absent or dead Marwan, and she bit her lip at this troubling thought. Someone had tucked a smaller picture in the corner of the frame, in which the same young man grinned widely, his arm slung across another boys shoulders.

  Aisha heard footsteps approaching and looked up, ready to speak as soon as Amal appeared in the doorway. ‘Is this Marwan?’ she asked, lifting the picture in its frame. ‘Aywa,’ the girl said, averting her eyes. ‘Is he –’ Aisha stopped, frustrated by her inability to converse. She tried asking in French but Amal looked at her blankly, no more familiar with the language than she was with English. There was no reason why she should be, Aisha reminded herself as the girl cleared away the remains of her meal, returning shortly afterwards with a torch, which she used to guide Aisha to the washroom. Later, when a couple of hours had passed and Fabio still hadn’t returned, Amal showed Aisha to this bare room where she had tossed and turned all night.

  After she had read for a while, Aisha put down her novel, sensing that the air was growing warmer. Looking at her watch, she saw it was still very early in England but decided to risk sending a text to Ricky. ‘Message sent’ flashed up and she speed-dialled an international number, holding her breath until she was connected to an answering machine. ‘It’s me,’ she said, ‘I hoped your voicemail was on. I still don’t know where the hell I am — hang on.’ She listened for a few seconds. ‘Sorry, I thought the helicopter was coming back, I can’t imagine what it’s doing in the middle of nowhere ... Listen, my battery’s low so I’ll call again when I get to Beirut. I can’t wait to have a hot shower.’ She laughed. ‘Love you, darling.’

  She heard a noise at the door. ‘Come in,’ she called, once again forgetting she was not fully dressed. ‘Oh, thank you. I mean, choucran.’

  Amal, who blushed when she caught sight of Aisha’s
underwear, was carrying another tray, this time loaded with coffee, and yoghurt sprinkled with dried herbs. Aisha took it from her: ‘Is Fabio here? Fabio,’ she repeated, and although the girl replied in Arabic, Aisha thought from her tone that Amal was confirming his return. The young woman smiled and retreated, pointing across the courtyard to a closed door. Aisha was not sure whether she was pointing out the washroom or where Fabio had spent the night. She nodded to show she’d more or less understood, her spirits lifting at the thought that the mysterious events of the previous evening would soon be explained; her intuition, which she could not explain, told her that even if something had happened to Amal’s brother, it was unlikely that he was dead. ‘Choucran,’ she repeated cheerfully, and Amal left her to get on with her breakfast.