Free Bone Ash Sky by Katerina Cosgrove Page A

self kept asking, how could a man so ugly think I could even look at him? We posed for formal photographs on festival days; his pathetic hand – I can see him as merely pathetic now, and small, and frightened and sad – bunching up the slippery taffeta folds at my waist. I began to hunch forward when I walked, looking down at my feet and hiding my new breasts. Lilit chided me in the same way as when I was small. ‘Don’t be like that. Show him how grateful you are!’
    There was so much to be grateful for. I was issued with identity papers and a Lebanese passport, assured by Sarkis I’d be granted refugee status once I arrived in America. At a later date, I’d be allowed to apply for citizenship. I didn’t know at the time how Lilit had organised it. Maybe she bribed him. Or begged. Maybe he owed Minas a favour. Maybe they were children together in that mythical place called Van.
    I couldn’t suppress a shudder when he touched my elbow, leaned over to peck my cheek. I glanced at him sideways as he led me to the taxi. He looked young, for all that he was in his seventies. His curly hair fell boyishly into his eyes and was still black, so glossy he must have dyed it. His beard pointy and well-trimmed, emphasising the line of his jaw. Yet there was a smell about him, and I realised it wasn’t fish, or dirty money. It was the desperation of a man who couldn’t reconcile himself to his past.
    We were driven from the Armenian quarter to the airport through checkpoints that distinguished themselves from each other with posters of dead heroes, Christian or Muslim, and dirty-coloured flags. Each time we neared the telltale ramps, the driver slowed down and passed his identity papers through the front window. He too had draped a makeshift flag over his dashboard, the customary soiled white towel signifying neutrality. Surrender. Or simple fear. I shrank in my seat. Sarkis appeared calm. The gunman, either bearded or freshly shaven, Islamic or Christian, wrapped in a keffiyeh or sporting mirrored sunglasses, solemn or smiling, would study my face for a moment, an eternity, then with a flick of his hand allow the taxi to move on.
    We passed bombed shells of municipal buildings, entire flattened streets. A grim cityscape of wet soil and smashed glass, as if the city was returning to a primeval state, vegetation creeping thickly over to cover its nakedness. A final surrender to nature would be preferable to what I saw, all the sordid military-industrial waste: black smoke, chemical haze, slow-burning bonfires of clothes and cars. Without the plane trees once lining the kerbs, the boulevards were foreign and frightening, a mouth with no teeth. When I wound down the window, the stench of the streets made me itch all over. Weeds with tiny yellow flowers were the only luxuriance and they grew everywhere, from potholes and between mouldy bricks. Little children armed with paring knives flitted from corner to corner, gathering the hairy stalks in their hands.
    The American University campus was the only green space of any size left untouched in west Beirut. The driver slowed down for us to see it. One last time. The place I always expected would be my destiny. No picnics now, no cheap drinks at sundown, demonstrations over what seemed laughably trivial now – student fees, longer opening hours for the library. Sarkis let me slip out of the car to peer at the manicured lawns, ancient yews and swinging palms. All around me, Mercedes and BMWs with their tinted windows, militia warlords safe inside, their opulence standing out among the destruction.
    At the bombed-out airport, militiamen everywhere. They lolled about, eating bars of black-market chocolate, smoking Gitanes, rocking weapons in the crooks of their arms as if nursing babies. Cries of baksheesh drowned out the sound of scattered gunfire in the distance. I sat at the back of the plane next to Sarkis, trying not to cry, buried my face in the