Bone Ash Sky Read Online Free PDF Page B

phone call, his death, my journey back. He told me what he knew about the manner of my father’s death, and who killed him, then the struggle was over. He was sick; he knew he was going to die. That’s the only reason he decided to tell me the truth. I realised soon enough that it wasn’t possible for me to listen to all the details. We’d arranged to meet in a restaurant, and I had to leave my seat and go to the bathroom to hide.
    Yesterday was my second day in Beirut, and I went to the tribunal. It’s already been underway for a few days, but once I got there I didn’t feel as if I’d missed anything. Like a soap opera with the same interminable plot.
    It was held in a provincial court building a long bus ride away from here – in an outer suburb of Beirut that may as well be another town. When I got there I took a seat in the back, not telling anyone who I was. My stomach was churning, I couldn’t even have a sip of water. Couldn’t swallow, couldn’t ingest the reality of what my father did to these people. I had the illogical fear, as I sat there, that someone would recognise me, that one of his victims would turn around and point the finger, scream in my face. I saw Lebanese–Palestinians mostly, relatives of the victims, and a handful of Israelis. Even a girl, about twelve, sitting with what looked like her grandmother. There were no bearded militiamen of my father’s generation there, no generals. Just a few tired-looking Belgian lawyers and two bored UN judges: one Dutch, one Swedish.
    On the way there, I’d had visions of standing up, telling them I was Selim Pakradounian’s daughter, confessing my part in their history. Atoning for my father. Asking their forgiveness. But what good would it do? I was worried I’d become emotional, that my memories of the massacre and my father’s role in it weren’t accurate enough to base anything on. So I skulked in the back and listened to Ariel Sharon’s name, Elie Hobeika’s name and my father’s name repeated over and over by lawyers, judges, victims. Elie Hobeika seemed to get the brunt of the accusations – after all, he was the supreme commander of the Phalangist militia during the civil war. My father was only second-incommand, merely following orders. But isn’t that what Eichmann said? I felt uncomfortable, itchy. That first day hasn’t illuminated anything for me, except how unnerved I have the capacity to become.
    Now there’s a whiff of burnt skin and rot, the smell of sinks on rainy nights when drains are full. My pillow is hot at my neck. My shorts have bunched into a thick, irritating wad. I take them off and throw them. I count the things I know, the few, slight things I’m certain of.
    One. I know there was a civil war. I was here for most of it, born in the midst of its paradoxes; as a child, understood no other life.
    Two. I know it lasted seventeen years.
    Three. The death count rose to two hundred and fifty thousand. And counting, though the war’s officially over.
    What I don’t yet know is my father’s part in it. His intentions. How he felt when he came home after a killing spree. His justifications. Did he lie in lumpy beds like this one and eat himself alive with guilt? I worry my past like the lucent amber beads Arab men play with in midnight cafes. The beads my father would have slid through his fingers, settling his scores. Same bed, same city. Not the same sector of the city, though his Muslim lover had a seafront apartment in west Beirut. He lived far away from Israeli bombs on the other side of the Green Line.
    I know that much from my grandmothers, from the man I called godfather. He made it his business to know everything about everyone. Nothing about Sarkis – not his money, his clothes, his laughter or sadness – was innocuous. Tonight I want to go back to Boston, forget about this crazy quest for truth. Old friends wait