Free Sabra Zoo by Mischa Hiller Page B

congregated in the bar of the hotel and headed for Liv’s room. We found the anaesthetist asleep on Liv’s bed underneath a Scandinavian airline poster of a fjord; she was one of Liv’s four roommates. She’d been on night duty. I was surprised to see Faris asleep in one of the other beds. Liv slapped him on the behind, causing him to sit bolt upright with a terrified look on his face.
    â€˜Poor guy probably thought they’d come to get him,’ said John, pouring Johnny Walker into plastic cups. Faris forced a smile. Liv apologised, offering an embarrassed grin and ruffling his already unkempt hair. I could see an old bullet scar under his right clavicle and wondered what the exit wound looked like the other side. Liv stripped to her underwear and got into bed with him. I removed my sneakers and lay on Eli’s empty bed, resting my drink on my chest. I studied a picture of Eli’s son on the bedside table, looking for a likeness, trying to remember what he was called. John was perched on the fourth bed; he removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. No one spoke. We drank our whisky and listened to the anaesthetist’s quiet snoring.
    Later that night Faris, Liv and I walked through the cooled streets towards my apartment. Samir had gone to pick up the late shift from Sabra, filling the Nissan with nervous-looking young foreign women for the night shift and shouting in Arabic (thankfully) as he left, ‘I may just go straight home with this lot.’ John had gone back to his billet, pleading exhaustion. The streets were darkened by a power cut and lack of moon; no light came from the buildings, not even the orange glow of a candle. There was an unspoken need to stay silent, and Liv whispered to ask me again whether it was OK for them to stay with me. I told her that I couldn’t be happier, that I didn’t want to be alone. To my embarrassment and Faris’s amusement, she stopped to give me a hug.
    â€˜We would never leave you alone, would we Faris?’
    I could smell the Johnny Walker on her breath as I returned her hug, pretending to sob.
    Faris laughed and patted me on the back. ‘You are like our little brother,’ he said.
    Back at the apartment they retreated to the spare bedroom, leaving me with the candle-lit vista of the bottle-strewn coffee table, the bottles’ shadows shifting together in response to the dancing flame. I watched candle wax drip down my Chianti bottle, the new soft wax finding the easiest route over the old hard wax, slowing down as it hardened. I found some music to put on, just to drown out the sound of Liv’s grunting from the next room, but remembered that the power was cut. Liv went silent and I heard a quiet knock at the door.
    I could see Eli smiling through the peephole, her face distorted by the small convex lens. I smiled then realised that she couldn’t see me.
    We sat together on the sofa, shoulders touching, feet on the table. I had poured her some wine; she rested the glass on her lap.
    â€˜That boy who came in today, he didn’t live through the surgery,’ she said. ‘Asha said he’d already lost too much blood when he arrived at the hospital.’
    I caught myself before I said anything trite, preferring to remain silent. I was sick of platitudes, sick of having to hand them out to relatives.
    â€˜What is the worst thing that has happened to you in this war?’ she asked. ‘Was it the dog in the stadium? You don’t have to tell me,’ she added quickly.
    I knew what I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her how I’d seen Karam run onto the balcony of a friend’s apartment and just keep going, tumbling over the railing, his little hand momentarily grabbing for the rail. I wanted to but I couldn’t. Instead I remembered something else I hadn’t told anyone.
    â€˜It was during the Civil War in the seventies. When the shelling was bad from the east we used to take