Shatila is far from the glittering downtown and the galleries of Mar Mikhael, far from Cornichen and the university. Shatila is poverty and permanent impermanence, a fifty-year-old refugee camp that’s turned into a neighbourhood.
The taxi drops him off at the Embassy of Kuwait, near the edge of the camp, and Jacob stumbles on through winding, narrow alleys, between walls covered with flaking graffiti and spray-painted stencils of Arafat. As he looks up at the gritty, decaying buildings, he sees Hamas flags and Fatah emblems hanging out of the windows. The sun is setting, and he can feel eyes staring out at him from small, improvised kiosks and shops. He tightens the backpack around his shoulders.
Nobody will find him here, but he also knows he shouldn’t be alone; he should have calmed down and waited to enter with a guide. Most of all, he should have called Alexa first, despite the risk, and asked her to meet him.
Reflexively, he puts his hand in his pocket and reaches for his phone, but then remembers that he doesn’t have one any more. He tossed it in the garden.
The alley he’s walking down bends slightly to the left and narrows, and when he rounds the turn he sees two men in leather jackets staring at him without expression and his mistake dawns on him with full force.
Jacob stops. He glances around and sees another man blocking the path behind him. He raises his hands with open palms to show that he’s unarmed, that he’s not a threat, that his intentions aren’t bad.
The men say nothing at first – they just stand there with unreadable eyes. Jacob opens his mouth and closes it again, takes a step backwards. He doesn’t know what to say or what’s required in a situation like this. Something flashes in the sunlight. A gun at one of the men’s belts.
‘I’m a friend,’ he says in his faltering Arabic. ‘I’m looking for the youth centre.’
It rings so hollow, and he can feel the man behind him getting closer. The two other men also move slowly towards him. Jacob swallows hard, panic pounding in his chest.
‘I’m looking for the youth centre,’ he tries again.
The men stop and look at him. The echo of stories of robberies, disappearances and kidnappings bounce around inside his head. What is the actual name of the centre where Alexa is working? Why did he come in here so unprepared? What the hell was he thinking? He should have gone to the Four Seasons or some other Western hotel, tried to disappear into the crowd. This is folly and naivety, nothing else.
‘Who are you?’ asks one of the men.
‘My name is Jacob,’ he says, but his mouth is so dry the words barely make it over his lips. ‘I’m a Swedish diplomat.’
It’s not exactly the truth, but perhaps it might function as a shield of some kind. The expression of the man who asked doesn’t change, but he nods almost imperceptibly to the man standing behind Jacob, who slowly closes a hand around Jacob’s upper arm.
He gestures with one hand to the man behind him and then turns around and heads into the alley. Jacob is dragged in the same direction, his feet moving without choice, following the two men, deeper into the labyrinth of Shatila.
Is this a kidnapping? He tries to memorize the path they’re taking, that’s all he can do. Past some kind of workshop, a mural in the PLO’s honour, a small opening between houses that are barely more than hovels; he sees four children kicking a ball in the shadows. But it’s useless.
‘Where are you taking me?’ he says to the man holding him by the arm.
But the man just glances at him without answering and quickens his steps. Suddenly, the two men in front of him head to the door of a concrete building, which seems more substantial than most. One knocks.
The other man turns to Jacob. He no longer seems threatening; he’s almost friendly, almost harmless. He points to a sign above the door. It’s slightly illuminated by a fluorescent lamp that sways in the chilly breeze.
Palestinian Recreational Youth Centre, PRYC, it says on the sign. In English and Arabic.
‘This was where you wanted to go?’ the man asks. ‘The Youth Centre?’
Jacob swallows again. He can’t believe it’s true. They’ve taken him where he wanted to go. This wasn’t a kidnapping; they just wanted to help.
‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know…’
He doesn’t get further before the door opens and he sees Alexa’s worried eyes in the gap. She looks at him, trying to place who he is for a moment.
‘Jacob?’ she asks. ‘What are you doing here?’
*
They sit down at one of several long tables with linoleum tops in a room that’s used both as a cafeteria and a classroom. A woman is wiping down another table on the other end of the hall. Alexa puts a cup of tea in front of him.
‘So tell me,’ she says. ‘What made you come all the way out here without even calling first? You were lucky to run into those guys; you could have been robbed. You know that, right?’
Jacob nods and feels the wound on his back start to ache again. For a while he’d almost forgotten it.
‘So much has happened,’ he begins. ‘I don’t even know where to start.’
Then the dam bursts, finally, and tears start coursing down his face. Everything washes over him: Yassim and Myriam and the gunshots at Hamra. The kidnapping that never was.
He’s expecting Alexa to put her arm around him, try to comfort him, tell him everything will be okay, and that she’ll take care of him. But she just puts her hand on his and stares deeply into his eyes.
‘There, there,’ she says. ‘Pull it together now, Jacob. Men don’t break down around here. Do you understand?’
*
It takes him fifteen minutes to tell his story. Alexa doesn’t say anything, just sits there completely still, listening. Half the time she doesn’t even look at him, just stares at the wall without expression. When he’s done, he takes a deep breath and buries his face in his hands.
‘I don’t know what I got caught up in,’ he whispers.
Alexa turns her face to him and looks at him calmly: ‘Beirut,’ she says. ‘You got caught up in Beirut.’
She stretches out a hand and puts it on his back, runs her hand slowly between his shoulder blades until she finds the little bandage that covers the stitches and the chip.
‘You can almost feel it through the skin and the bandage,’ she says. ‘If you know it’s there.’
Jacob just nods.
‘And what happens now?’ Alexa says. ‘You have something under your skin that you’ve promised to get out of Beirut. You’re being hunted by the Swedish and probably US intelligence services. You can’t exactly buy a ticket and fly home. What are you going to do?’
Jacob removes the thick envelope the bookseller gave him and slides it across the table to Alexa. She opens it and extracts the contents. Flight tickets to Brussels via Istanbul. A MasterCard. And finally, the most shocking thing of all: a Swedish passport, for one Patrik Andersson.
‘Lordy,’ Alexa whispers.
It’s the first time she shows any kind of reaction. Apparently, her limit is at counterfeit passports.
‘They’re quite serious about all this,’ she says, flipping through the passport. ‘This Yassim – I don’t know him. I know he was at my party, but he arrived with someone else. Do you trust him? Or are you so blinded by love that you’ll do anything for him?’
‘I don’t know,’ he whispers. ‘I do think I love him.’
‘Blind it is,’ Alexa says drily. ‘But it doesn’t really matter.’ She sighs and leans towards him, puts the passport back in the envelope again, lowers her voice. ‘Either you have information about war crimes beneath your skin, which the Americans, or somebody else, don’t want made public. Or you have instructions for a terrorist attack or network or something like that. Either way you’re fair game, Jacob. Either way, you’ll be hunted and imprisoned.’
He sobs and puts his forehead on the table. The extent of what he’s got himself into is finally coming into focus. ‘I know,’ he whispers.
‘In other words, there is no help for you,’ she says. ‘But you know that. There is no state or institution that you can trust.’
Jacob tries to nod, still with his forehead to the desk. It doesn’t matter what’s on the chip, or if he trusts Yassim, or if what Yassim says is true. He will be on the run or locked up; he’ll be in danger no matter what he does.
‘Is there anyone else who can help you?’ Alexa’s voice sounds distant, barely able to penetrate his self-pity. He shakes his head so that his cheek lies against the table as he looks at her.
‘What do you mean, anyone else?’ he asks. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Someone at the university? A politician. Any journalist? Anyone really, just someone you trust who has the power and influence. Wasta. Do you understand?’
Wasta. Always this wasta, these patrons. Always someone you can call when the police stop you or when you’re denied some permit, or when you want your daughter to get into one of the French schools. A distant relative who’s the mayor of a small town. A godfather whose brother is chief of the police. The connections are complicated, and the paths between people often laughably long. But Jacob has nobody. No one at all. He just shakes his head.
‘Not here,’ Alexa says. ‘I mean in Sweden.’
‘Sweden doesn’t work like that,’ he mutters. ‘It doesn’t matter who you know.’
‘I get that it’s not like here,’ she says. A slight note of irritation in her voice now. She doesn’t have time for the obvious. ‘But someone who’s independent. Someone you trust and who trusts you?’
‘I don’t know anyone,’ he says. ‘I don’t have those kind of contacts.’
As he sits up in his chair and opens his eyes again, he remembers something he caught a glimpse of. Someone he read about. It’s not much. Almost nothing.
‘Can I borrow your computer or phone?’ he says. ‘I want to check something.’