Bone Ash Sky by Katerina Cosgrove Page A

massive, mahogany furniture, the leak from next door’s bathroom seeping into her hall. He never brought her Lebanese liras, worthless for anything but buying bread and newspapers. She conferred with him and nodded at his suggestions, but when he was gone she put the money away under the bed, separate from her own emergency stash. She had no heart for repairs and purchases. She knew Selim didn’t even notice each time he visited that the apartment hadn’t changed at all. She wasn’t sure what to do with the money, but continued to stretch her hand out for more. There was tangible security in so many bills, even if they were worthless.
    He eased her into his arms as she stood by the door and, further still, into a blanket of cologne. Under the green upland scent, something rancid as bacteria. She extricated herself from him and lit another cigarette, took some Valium from the packet he proffered.
    â€˜Sit down and stop pawing me. I need a glass of water with this.’
    â€˜I can paw you better in bed.’
    She let him lead her by the elbow to her bedroom, swallowed her pills dry.
    Selim, as second-in-command to the Christian Phalange leader, specialised in assassinations of key Muslims: rival militiamen, political subversives, intellectuals. The regiments within the Phalange sported religious titles evocative of the Crusades: Selim’s was called The Knights of the Virgin. Whenever he – rarely – went into battle against the PLO or any of the other factions, he wore an enormous rose-red crucifix embroidered onto his breastplate.
    â€˜So they know where to hit me,’ he told her. ‘Right over the heart.’
    He saw himself as a Crusader of old, defending Christendom against the bloody hand of Islam. His brand of idealism came with an essential pragmatism, his religion merely a sentimental exercise reserved for Sunday mornings and the lulling ritual of litany, requiring less a conviction of faith than a simple appreciation of the pleasures of incense and flowers. Certainty and absolution, strictly earthly concerns. The fact that Sanaya was born a Muslim didn’t seem to pose a problem in this rough reasoning of his. It was as though he saw women operating outside religion: featureless, fashioned by man not God, neutral bounty, unwieldy spoils of war.
    She didn’t want to marry a Muslim. This was partly why she continued to see Selim. Even with his early paunch, his bloodshot eyes, his drinking, he was a good catch. His legs and arms were strong; in summer, with his tan, he looked like a man of the land. She loved this about him, the thrum of sinew and muscle beneath his flesh. She loved his thick eyelashes. She loved his glossy hair. Or so she liked to tell herself. He had power in this upside-down world of war. And some of his tarnished lustre brushed onto her, however briefly, if only when she lay in bed with him before dusk, saffron circle of the late sun clawing its way through her blinds. His palms were soft on her belly, her cheeks, through her hair, his thighs hairless and vulnerable between hers. It was the Armenian in him, he said. Pliable, but steely beneath.
    Why should she marry a Muslim when she owned her apartment outright, bequeathed by her parents, in the family for generations? A Muslim husband would only take it for himself, depriving her of freedom. Why would she settle for a Muslim when she had an independent income? Old money hidden in tight rolls, withdrawn from the bank at the beginning of the war, still just enough, even with such inflation, for some luxuries. Gold and silver jewellery, her mother’s rings and necklaces and brooches to sell on the black market if things got really bad.
    But at the same time she knew there was no future for her with Selim. Their casual union was illegal, since civil marriages didn’t exist in Lebanon. Even if they agreed to take the final step, they’d have to make their way to Cyprus to bind it. So she kept