things going over, the rattle of guns and thump of mortars. There was a line of overturned buses across Avenue Abdallah Yafi with two armored cars and at least one tank lurking in caves in the rubble, their snouts pointing into the street, and machine guns and rockets in the windows behind. Beyond the shell-shocked intersection, on the Christian side, it was the same.
Behind the overturned buses was a space with gleaming concertina wire and sandbagged positions with fifty calibers. A mujihadeen checked Rosa's papers and spoke on the radio while she sat quietly on a sandbag and it seemed as if the whole cool heavy night weighted down her neck and shoulders. She let it wash over her, told herself she would do this one last thing and no more. It would be enough and if it weren't, she'd tell them she'd given up.
The mujihadeen came back. “You really need to go?”
“My father's in a basement by the Sacre-Coeur.”
“There's surely people there...”
“The building's empty. He's confused, doesn't understand, won't leave.” She looked down, at the mujihadeen's dirty yellow-blue running shoes, how they wouldn't stand still on the ground littered with empty cartridges and cigarette butts.
“They're animals,” he said, “over there. Shot a Palestinian girl last night. Twenty-three, going over to look for food.”
“She looked up into his fair, troubled eyes. “You remind me of my brother.”
“How was he?”
“Very sweet.” She stepped round him past the barricade and down the middle of the wide, bludgeoned avenue. Now she was in Christian rifle range, a Muslim woman rushing toward them with a bundle of something.
She was almost running but it took forever, lugging the loaded bedspread, tripping on chunks of stone, shreds of metal, a dead cat, broken bricks.
The blasted chassis of a car crouched against the Christian curb like a chastised dog. The muzzles of the Christian guns followed her to the first line of smashed cars and concrete. Behind this barricade were Phalange who checked her papers and looked into the bedspread. The captain, younger than the others, with a burn scar across his cheek, took out the clock.
“It was my mother's,” she protested.
“You know I can't let it through.”
“It's for my father, to give him a sense of time.”
“Better having no time these days.”
“That's why he's so mixed up.”
“My mother won't eat,” he said, “because she's afraid we're running out of food. Things are hard but we have food … but she won't eat.”
“Make her exercise. We spend all day crouched in our basements –”
“If she'd just go up to Jounié. She has a sister there.”
“Can you lend me a flashlight? They took mine.” She pointed behind, at the Muslim lines.
He sucked in a breath. “I can't.”
“Please? As soon as I've seen my father I'll bring it back. And pick up my clock.”
“What about my batteries?”
“I'll charge your batteries.”
“How soon?”
She smiled, seeing his face light up. “Two hours?”
He unbuckled the flashlight from his belt. “I'll be here.”
She climbed the steep street past the Hotel Dieu Hospital and the Hotel Alexandre. It was so strange to see the buildings undamaged, cars in the streets, the fighting almost distant like a summer storm.
She went down l’Indépendence and across to Fouad Chehab at Tabariss. Now the guns were louder and she could hear the crack of individual shells against stone. The sky above the black buildings was pink, red, yellow. A rifle fired from a roof and she heard it hit on the Muslim side.
The big front gates of the Sacré-Coeur had been blasted open and there was nothing in the courtyard. She went up to the first floor and through the corridors till she found four nun's habits on knobs, stuffed one into the bedspread and went out through a side door into Youssef Hani, turning right toward the Life Building, the Place des Martyres three blocks on her left, across the Green Line, Mohammed and his men only three blocks further.
Unless they'd pulled back. If they had, it wouldn't matter what happened to the snipers at the Life Building. Mohammed would be beyond their range, beyond hers.
A Katyusha struck in the next block before she could cover her ears and the wham seemed to slice off the top of her head. She crouched on steps going down to a cellar, crying and clasping her ears till the pain dimmed. She took off her gown and put the black habit on. It was dark and confining, like wearing chains; her body couldn't breathe. She hid the bedspread under the stairway and went to Nahr Ibrahim, looking down it to the Place des Martyres where the gut-shot man had fallen, two hours ago, in the glow of the Amal tank.
Mortars were falling there now. She took the trench across Nahr Ibrahim, the habit cloying at her knees. There were Phalange in the basements going up to the Life Building and machine guns at both ends of the street. Bullets and rockets kept ricocheting down into the street. A Phalange grabbed her arm. “No more.”
“My father's in that basement, by the Life Building.”
“A 240 went all the way to the basement before it exploded. There's nothing there, sister.”
“He could have moved to the next basement … the Life Building. I've got to try.”
“I've been there. It's just storage.”
“Storage?”
“You can't stay here, sister. Please.”
She pulled the two halves of the crucifix from her habit. “See what they did? They broke the tree on which the Lord died. But we will join it back together. I swear to you, on this broken cross...”
He backed away a little, watching her, slightly raised the rifle. “I can't let you in, sister. You go home now. Back up to Sacré-Coeur.”
She scanned the Life Building, the other streets coming in, all guarded. With a chuckle another rocket left the top floor, swooshing toward Muslim lines. The key to Mohammed. She backed away. “You should have more pity.”
“Don't beat a dead horse...”
She went round the corner and halfway up the back street till she found a sewer manhole but she couldn't pry it open. At the corner of Nahr Ibrahim she was back in the view of the Phalange at the Life Building but here was an open manhole with steel rungs down into moldy cold darkness. At the bottom, ten feet below the street, tunnels led off in five directions. In one direction, toward the Life Building, was a tiny distant light. Not using the flashlight, she crawled toward it. Tendrils of mud and wire hanging from the ceiling dragged across her face, snatched her hair. The sandy muck at the bottom was jammed with plastic bottles and plastic bags in clumps of twigs and broken glass bottles and again something dead – another rat, she thought. Her fingers bumped a fat, soft, short stick that she tried to pull out of the way but it was someone's hand.
She pulled back in pure terror then realized it was swollen, dead. That was the smell. And the reason why she hadn't been able to see more light was that he was blocking it.
She lay trying to catch her breath, the top of the tunnel heavy on her back, cold muck soaking her chest. She could hardly breathe, her lungs wouldn't open.
She'd have to slow her pulse somehow and calm down but she was dying from no air. She had to breathe, let the thick cold air go slowly in and out. Slowly, she told herself, feeling the blood slacken, the arteries relax. It's just a bad idea that you're dying.
She crawled closer and tried to peer round the dead man. The light was from a wider tunnel beyond him, one that angled toward the Life Building. Taking a grip with her