chapter nineteen

THE night bombings intensify. Everyone says that the harbor is destroyed, and Mr. Ha sighs loudly when he hands us our passports. They look good, but he tells us that it’s impossible to board any boat now. Too dangerous! We have to wait!

“Be patient,” Gloria says when she notices my disappointment. “These are the hazards of life. We have to take them in stride.”

So we stay cooped up in the attic of the Matachine, watching the planes through the dormer window and hoping for a truce.

I’m not bored because I have my catalog of France to study. I pester Gloria with facts about the Romans, Vercingetorix, and Charlemagne. The catalog is in Russian, of course, except for the last pages, where there is some everyday French vocabulary in phonetics.

“Repeat after me,” I say. “Mercijevouzenpri.” Thankyouverymuch.

“Mercijevouzenpri.”

“Not bad. Uncafésilvouplé.” Acoffeeplease.

“Uncafésilvouplé.”

“Good. Pardonmeussieujevoudrèalléalatouréfel.” Pardonsiridliketogototheeiffeltower.

“Pardonmeussieuje … You’re tiring me out, Koumaïl. It’s too difficult!”

“OK, I’ll learn by myself. But don’t complain if you get lost in the streets of Montmartre.”

Gloria often goes down to the bar to talk with the man who opens the beer bottles. I’m not allowed to go with her because it’s none of my business. When she comes back up, she brings food with her. Then she presses her ear against Fotia’s radio and stays like that for hours, totally absorbed. She says she listens to the war news, but I think that all she hears are crackling sounds.

Then one evening the trapdoor opens and two heads appear above the floor.

“This is Nour and Fatima,” says the man who opens the beer bottles. “Squeeze up a bit, there’s no other way in.”

He unfolds two other camping beds, and Gloria puts coal in the samovar while I stare at Fatima.

She sits on the bed and undoes the scarf that covers her hair. I have never seen anyone so beautiful. For the second time in my life, I fall in love. That, too, I can’t help. These are the hazards of life, right?

Fatima is seventeen. She doesn’t look like Suki or Maya. Fatima is unique.

Her face is golden, her lips are very thin, and her voice fills me with sadness when she sings—which she does a lot of! She talks to me about her old life, when she went to the school in her town. Her favorite subjects were math and geometry. With her hands she draws figures—cones, triangles, diamonds.… It looks like a dance. I tell her about what I learned in our university for the poor, and Fatima praises me.

“You know so many things for your age, Koumaïl!” she says. “I’m sure that you’ll become someone very important!”

I turn red, but Fatima can’t see me because she keeps her eyes closed. She’s been like this since the militia killed her father somewhere to the east of the Caucasus.

Nour, her mother, tells us what happened:

“They came into our house with Kalashnikovs. They shot my husband. Fatima saw him fall on his prayer rug. Ever since, she refuses to open her eyes.”

Nour cries a lot, and Gloria pulls her to her bosom. She whispers words meant for adults—words about ethnic minorities, genocide, international tribunal—but it’s obvious that Nour has caught a despair.

Seated on my bed, I wonder what color Fatima’s eyes are. I’d also like to know what she sees behind the curtain of her eyelids. Is it the clear rectangle of light coming through the dormer window? I wonder. Images of her past? Her father’s blood? Just darkness? I don’t dare ask her any questions. We all live with our ghosts, and I know you can’t disturb them too much, otherwise the sorrow that lies in our chests will wake up. It’s better to concentrate on the present, on our refuge, with the boiling tea of the samovar and the desire to move toward other horizons.

“What are you reading?” Fatima asks me.

“How do you know I’m reading?”

“I hear the rustle of pages, silly. My ears aren’t clogged.”

I tell her about Mr. Ha and the catalog. I describe the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the Mediterranean coast, which looks just like Sukhumi before the war. Fatima smiles.

“You’re lucky to be going there,” she says. “My mother and I are going to Saudi Arabia.”

I consult my atlas. Saudi Arabia appears on page 80, south of the Caucasus. According to my map, it’s an immense desert of sand. I tell Fatima she should come with us instead, but she shakes her head. It’s simpler for her to go to Saudi Arabia because she has an aunt who works there, and because of the Muslim religion.

“France is not a Muslim country,” she explains to me. “It’s a Christian country.”

I am so disappointed about this religion issue that I go find Gloria.

“Is France a Christian country?” I ask her.

“France doesn’t have a religion, Koumaïl.”

“Oh? But are there Muslims in France?”

She says yes, there are some. In France you can believe whatever you want, say whatever you want, and do whatever you want because it is a country that believes in human rights.

“So if Fatima comes to France, will she be able to pray to Allah on her rug?” I want to know. “Will anybody bother her if she hides her hair under a scarf? Will anybody shoot at her with a Kalashnikov?”

“France stands for liberty, equality, fraternity,” Gloria says with assurance. “No one there is going to pass judgment on his or her neighbors because of a rug or because of their hair. It’s not worth it, OK?”

“OK!”

I hurry to repeat this to Fatima. I want to convince her to come with us. But she stubbornly shakes her head.

“We must each follow our destiny,” she says. “And, Allah willing, may peace come back to the Caucasus so that everyone can return home. Maybe then we’ll see each other again, Koumaïl.”

“But that might take a long time,” I say, getting upset. “And what if it never happens? Why do we have to wait for Allah’s will?”

Two small tears slide from under Fatima’s closed eyelids. There is no answer to such a question.

I touch her hand and we lie down on our camping beds, side by side, as timid stars shine through the dormer window.

“If Allah is willing, you’ll open your eyes,” I say, dreaming out loud. “Peace will be here. You’ll see people walk barefoot under Sukhumi’s palm trees. And I’ll be grown up and as strong and as muscular as Stambek. And then I’ll ask you to marry me. And I’ll take you wherever you want to go, to Vassili’s orchard or to Mont-Saint-Michel. And everybody will be there—Zemzem and Gloria, her five brothers, Emil and Baksa … everybody.”

I say all the things that go through my head—all stupid kid things. But Fatima doesn’t make fun of me. She holds my hand tightly in hers and she sings. She knows better than to shatter my dreams; I’ll just lose another piece of my heart. Then only crumbs of it will be left.