Selma Dabbagh - Out of It

‘ Shuuf! Sho helou! Look how nice!’ the boy said as he took the shoes out. They were brogues with pointed toes and punctured leatherwork. Wilson’s Bootmakers, London, since 1848 it said on the inside of the shoes. The tips had curved metal crescents underneath them but the heels were worn down, asymmetrically slanted by an uneven tread. Rashid picked one up and looked at the size. As he had suspected, they were one and a half sizes too big.

‘They were my brother’s.’

‘And he gave them to you?’ The boy appeared envious, awed.

‘He doesn’t need them. Just listen to this cat!’ Rashid had his fingers buried in the fur of the cat’s neck. ‘The whole street must be able to hear it!’ The cat rolled on to its back, its head still rubbing against Rashid’s leg, its white mussed-up stomach exposed. The boy was running his finger along the leatherwork, touching the metal beads at the end of the laces. ‘Try them if you want,’ Rashid offered.

‘ Aan jad? Seriously?’ and with his excitement the boy’s youth could not be concealed. He did not ask again, he placed his shoes to his side and slipped his scrawny feet into the brogues.

‘Too wide,’ Rashid said, looking over. Startled by the sound of the boy tapping the metal toes of the shoes on the paving stones, the cat sprung to its feet and disappeared around a corner.

‘No, they fit perfectly.’ The boy clipped the metal toepieces together and stood up.

Rashid remembered Khalil was due at their place. ‘Keep them,’ he said, handing the empty bag to the boy. ‘They’re yours.’

‘Hey, thanks!’ the boy shouted as Rashid moved off. ‘Thanks!’ he yelled again as Rashid turned to disappear behind the corner that the boy had come from.

Forget the wedding, Rashid thought as he stepped over the puddles and broken earth on the way to his house. Forget it, he was thinking as he heard a crack crack! The report of a gun somewhere to his left. A flurry of pigeons lifted up in panic and flapped around each other above their rooftop cages, as though they had been propelled upwards, forgotten how to fly, and were now caught in an invisible balloon tied to the roof and unable to leave. He stood and looked in their direction until they had settled back into their gridded cubes on the skyline. Nothing followed the gunfire. A car started somewhere. The sea roared then shushed itself quiet.

Sabri thought that he must have been getting soft. He was finding that he was quite enjoying this Khalil Helou’s company. He told Khalil about how his book had to be revised, and about how he had found out who the informer was who had been instrumental in the attack on him and his family. At least he said as much as he was allowed to say, how he had always had his suspicions. The TV was on and whenever the news turned to them – it was normally just anticipating that night’s attack, but sometimes there would be something new, a different angle on the recent violence, some fresh analysis – they had that to discuss, too. It had all been quite pleasant and he had been glad that Rashid had been kept tied up with whatever useless business it was that kept him out of the house, so that he could have Khalil to himself. Mama brought them tea and pistachio maamoul ; Iman came in and out with tape for the windows.

Sabri had just got on to the subject of his time in prison, when the news channel switched from a report from the south, where most of the demolitions were taking place, to an interview with the Western volunteers down there. They were about to form a human shield to protect some of the houses. Sabri had paused for a little, then continued as he, for one, had seen interviews like this before. But as the camera turned to one volunteer, Khalil stood up and quite abruptly indicated that Sabri should stop. No, worse, that Sabri should basically shut up . He had waved his hand up and down in front of Sabri’s face.

‘Eva!’ Khalil had finally said when the girl had stopped talking. And what a strange, androgynous girl she was, with her wispy hair and weak eyes all screwed up and twitchy in front of the camera. Her name with the description Medical Student, Volunteer ran in white letters across the bottom of the screen. Khalil had put his jacket on, wavered around his chair hopelessly, as though negotiating something with it, then said, ‘I’m getting her and bringing her back. They might kill her down there. The bulldozers. They don’t care any more what skin colour or passport these volunteers have; they’ll kill her down there. I’ll bring her here.’

‘You know her?’

‘From London. Yes. Yes. We met. We talked. Yes. I told her about the situation.’ Khalil opened the palm of his hand, removed the remains of the maamoul that he had mashed into it, placed them on a saucer and walked out of the room.

Sabri looked back at the TV screen where the girl who was the cause of Khalil’s distress could be seen lumbering (the woman walked like she had just crossed the Sahara on a donkey) over the remains of a bulldozed house in an oversized fluorescent overall. He didn’t know what it was with those boys and their girls from London; Sabri could not see it himself. He wheeled himself over to the window where he had left his notepad and binoculars in hopeful, but pointless preparation for the night’s attacks; he could only see smoke from the ground floor. He looked over the notes of the previous night and waited.

‘ Aaaay!’ he suddenly found himself screaming. ‘ Aaaay!’ with an outrage he didn’t know he had left in him, as a man climbed over the back wall and into their garden. The man – some kind of fighter, there was a gun on his back but he couldn’t see his face – bent himself double to less than the height of the bottom of the windows as he crept around the side of their house. ‘ Aaaay!’ Sabri screamed again.

By this time Iman and his mother were already calling. ‘What? You fell, Sabri? What is it?’ and came to find him jammed into the doorway (he had not had the chance to take the arms down on his chair and Iman had closed one of the double doors), swearing and cursing everyone to hell. He started trying to describe the man but before he had a chance to do so, they could make out the sound of someone knocking hard and fast at their front door.

‘Umm Sabri?’ said the voice behind the door. ‘Iman?’

‘Who is it?’ Sabri’s mother whispered at Sabri. ‘Do you know?’

‘No, but he climbed in over the back wall.’ Sabri looked at his mother and his sister’s faces watching the shape of the figure that they could see crouched down through the opaque panes of the front entrance. ‘He’s armed.’

‘I’ll go.’ His mother went to the door. ‘Who is it?’

‘Ziyyad Ayyoubi,’ the voice said. ‘Umm Sabri, sorry to trouble you. I’ve been shot. I need to come in.’

‘Mona and Khaled’s boy?’ Sabri’s mother asked, going to the door. ‘Is that possible?’

‘Ziyyad!’ Iman stood back as her mother pulled the locks across and the figure stumbled into their house.

‘This is not how I expected to meet my avenger,’ Sabri said looking at Ziyyad once they had him seated in the living room.

‘What do you mean, your avenger?’ Iman felt shamed and worried by Ziyyad being there, so close to Sabri, as though his presence alone exposed a secret union between them. ‘You know him? Avenger? Sabri? What are you talking about?’

‘I think Sabri is trying to tell you what I wanted to explain to you in London,’ Ziyyad began, ‘about Abu Omar.’

He was far paler now than he had been on the day of Seif El Din’s assassination. Iman’s mother indicated that they should move him on to a seat that she was hastily covering with an old bed sheet.