I wake at sunset, sweating in dreams of D’Andrea’s hands and my father’s imagined voice. I must have slept all day in my dirty clothes and my mouth is dry. The dust of the Beirut day is rising, making my nose tingle.
As I rise from the bed my movements are slow and wooden, and in my mind’s eye I travel long and hard across desert wastes, across white sand so fine it looks like sugar, train tracks rusted and overgrown with the sharp, spindly stalks of thistle.
I pull off my clothes, stand and gaze at a ghostly face above my nakedness. Something in my own expression – dazed, passive, almost surprised – reminds me of my grandmother. Lilit looked like that in the days before I left. As if she regretted letting me go. Or was it more than that? There was so much left unsaid, so many memories untouched, left to moulder in chests like the poppy-embroidered veil – such fine woven silk – I once glimpsed under layers of goat’s hair blankets. Now I have it, swaddling Lilit’s Koran. I hadn’t asked Lilit about it then, knowing any more questions would only hurt us both. Was it given to her by the teenage sweetheart or the Turkish husband? Did she wear it because she wanted to, or because she was forced? I see her aging face in an unknown future, marked by war and work and the loss of everything familiar. Her shortened girlhood, its petty joys and loves.
I know all too well the details of the deportations, forced marches through the desert, the cattle trains that came out of nowhere like noisy harbingers of Hitler’s Final Solution. Who, after all, remembers the Armenians today? And who remembers my father? There’s nobody left alive who knew him.
I laughed and joked in the dimly lit restaurant last night with D’Andrea, drank four glasses of arak, meandered to the beach across the road together. It was past midnight, past two, past three, the time when identities merge and fall apart, when alliances are forged and broken. As the evening wore on, after I’d told him whose daughter I am, he’d become brasher, larger, less complicated. I began to like him more; his former affectations seemed funny rather than condescending. So I let him hold my hand as we clambered over the rocks in the dark, almost falling over and laughing at ourselves. His palm was alert and cool in the dark, and I felt safe. I was open to any experience, felt maybe that was why I’d come here. I let him stop me with a hand on my upper arm, then slowly kiss me, his tongue a swollen muscle in my mouth. But when we got to the sea my mood became more sombre.
The strip of beach when we got there was a grave: dark and narrow. Nobody else around. I sat close to him on the pebbles. It was nice not to care, not to strive. I wanted to lie there and fall asleep, his heavy arm over my hip. I lay down, then got up again almost straight away, thinking better of it. I think he noticed, and I could feel the affront in him. His voice changed. He started talking about the man who ordered the killing of my father, without mentioning any names. Said he actually knew who it was, but needed to know that I could be trusted with the information.
‘Trusted with information about my own father’s death?’ I blurted out. ‘You don’t need to tell me, anyway. I already know it was Islamic Jihad.’
‘Yes, but who?’ he shot back. ‘I know the name of the man who effectively pulled the trigger, who arranged the whole thing.’
He told me he knew the family from his work in the camps, knew who the dead man had been, and who his child was, a little girl. I closed my eyes, put my head on my knees. I didn’t want to hear it, not from him. Suddenly, I was scared. If I found out the name of this man, of his family, I would have to do something. I would have to befriend them, or make enemies of them. Either way, I would lose.
I think he felt my shutting-off, because then he licked his index finger – I could hear the wetness of his mouth in the dark – and placed it on my nape, leaning forward into my hair. I jumped.
‘I can have them taken care of,’ he whispered, his breath tickling my scalp.
I sat up, my hand still on the recorder in my bag, almost brought it out to show him how stupid he’d been. But he didn’t give me time. He lunged forward, his leg hard over mine. I heard the catch in his breath, almost a sob, the bitter excitement, but I turned away, tried to get up. He held me down, swiftly unzipped his trousers. I saw his white, baggy underpants, the limp penis. Now I was panicking. The black night that was so still a moment before seemed full of our loud, rasping breaths. We fought without speaking. He pushed me back onto the pebbles, grinding against me with all the weight of his middle-aged body. My tight lips, his soft paunch against my belly. The pebbles felt sharper now, dangerous. He took out his penis, nudged it against my mouth. I bucked. All I could think of was my father, floating somewhere above us, outraged, and I broke free, sprinting across the sand, toward the lights of the promenade.
Now I lie back on the bed with my eyes wide open. I can’t get up, can’t even shower. I can’t believe this has happened to me. Me, at my age. I think of how his unremarkable face looked, fuzzy around the edges from moonlight and arak, precise as a housewife when he unzipped his trousers. His eyes were open, searching my face for some intimation of what I felt. What did I really feel? Fear? Curiosity? Desire? Disappointment. I close my eyes and try to sleep again as the day’s light fades, my pillow pressed like a stone to my belly.