“By the way,” called out Hoffman as Rogers was halfway down the hall. “How was your trip?”
Jane Rogers was sitting in the living room, reading to the children, when her husband returned home. She was wearing a tweed skirt and a pullover sweater. In the light of the reading lamp, her face had the stark contrast of a chiaroscuro: the hair black and deep in shadow, the skin white and luminous.
Jane was overjoyed to see her husband. Rogers hadn’t called to tell her when he would be coming home. He usually didn’t, for security reasons. She gave him a long hug and, when it was time to let go, she hugged him again.
“We were a little nervous the last few days,” she said when the children were out of earshot.
“I gather from Frank you’ve had some fireworks,” said Rogers, already beginning to feel guilty.
“We heard gunfire on the Corniche two days ago. The bawab downstairs said it was just a wedding party, but they always say that. Then Binky Garrett from the embassy came by and warned that we should stay indoors at night and stock up on food.”
“Binky is an idiot,” said Rogers.
Rogers noticed then that the apartment had the look of an air-raid shelter. The curtains were drawn tight and the pantry was piled high with canned goods. Stacked in the hall were three cases of mineral water.
“I probably overreacted,” said Jane.
Rogers tried to say that he was sorry, but no words came out. He was mute, silenced by remorse for leaving his family alone and in danger.
“Kids okay?” asked Rogers eventually.
“Fine,” said Jane.
“Mark?”
“He’s fine. He missed his daddy.”
“And Amy? How is Amy?”
Rogers’s heart was racing as he asked the question. The one thing on earth that truly frightened him was the health of his two-year-old daughter.
“She’s better,” said Jane. “The doctor says she’s doing much better.”
“Thank God!” said Rogers. He felt for a moment a sense of lightness, as if a weight had been lifted from his body. But he couldn’t quite believe the good news, and his doubt showed on his face.
“She’s in the other room,” said Jane. “Go see for yourself.”
Rogers walked toward the children’s playroom, brightly painted and cluttered with toys. He carried with him a bag of gifts he had brought from Kuwait.
“Daddy’s home,” called out Rogers in the direction of the play room.
“What did you bring us?” shouted Mark.
The boy raced toward his father. He was dressed in a Boston Red Sox baseball cap and a T-shirt that said “Amherst 198?”
Amy followed, more slowly. She was a beautiful child: curly blond hair, an easy smile, red cheeks, wearing a white summer dress embroidered with flowers. She ran with the choppy, bowlegged steps of a toddler. Halfway to Daddy, she tumbled on the carpet.
Rogers winced. He picked her up and gave her a hug.
“She’s not perfect yet,” explained Jane. “But better.”
“Amy,” said Rogers. “Here’s a present for you.”
He reached into the bag and gave her a handmade doll he had bought in Kuwait, dressed Arab-style in harem pants and a veil. The baby took the doll in her hands and began to remove its clothes. As she was removing the pants, the doll slipped from her fingers and dropped to the floor.
Rogers picked up the doll from the floor and handed it back to his daughter gently.
“You’ll see,” said Jane. “She’s really much steadier.”
Rogers gave his son a poster advertising the Kuwait national soccer team. It showed a camel kicking a soccer ball and bore the legend: “Our Camel Is a Winner!”
“Wow!” said Mark, who was already something of a soccer buff.
Rogers hadn’t the heart to tell his son that the 1970 Kuwait soccer team was one of the worst in the world. Bad even by the modest standards of the Persian Gulf. Their camel, in point of fact, was not a winner.
“So who’s leading the Lebanese Soccer League?” Rogers asked his son, who studied the league tables every morning in the paper.
“The Druse!” said the boy. “By one point.”
“What about the Shiites?” asked Rogers. When he left they had been leading the league.
“Third place,” said his son.
What a country, thought Rogers. Religion was so embedded in the life of the nation that it even dominated athletics. If you asked any soccer fan-even one in grade school, like Mark-he would break down the first division of the Lebanese Soccer League by religious sects: a Druse Moslem team; a Shiite Moslem team; two Sunni Moslem teams from West Beirut; three Maronite Christian teams from East Beirut; a Greek Orthodox team; a Sunni team from Tripoli; a Maronite team from Zgharta; and two Armenian teams, one leftist and one rightist.
Mark looked at his father apprehensively.
“Daddy, will they keep playing soccer if there is a war?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Rogers. “There isn’t going to be a war in Lebanon. Who put that idea in your head?”
“Nobody,” said Mark. He looked relieved.
When the children had gone to bed, Rogers gave Jane a bracelet he had bought in the gold souk in Kuwait. He put it on her wrist as tenderly as he could.
“Let’s have a drink,” said Jane.
Rogers returned with a glass of vodka and orange juice for his wife and a tumbler of whisky for himself. He sat down on the couch. Jane curled up next to him.
“I feel guilty about leaving you alone,” said Rogers.
“That’s good. You should. You were a shit to leave us alone.”
She frowned, and then kissed her husband gently on the cheek.
“Where did Mark pick up all this war talk?” asked Rogers.
“It’s everywhere. At school. In the market. That was the scary part, actually. As soon as the fighting started, everybody automatically seemed to think things would get much worse.”
“What did people say?”
“Rumors, gossip. You know the Arabs, how they’re always talking. Well, this time they really had something to gossip about, and they couldn’t stop. The flower man on Sadat Street said the Moslems in the Lebanese Army wouldn’t fire on the Palestinians if it came to a fight. He said they would refuse to obey orders from Christian officers. I asked him how he knew and he just winked. And the Christian ladies at Smith’s grocery were the same way. They all claimed to have friends in East Beirut who knew someone in the Christian militia. When I asked what was going to happen, they would cluck their tongues. What does that mean?”
“It depends,” said Rogers. “In this case, it probably meant they didn’t know anything but didn’t want to admit it.”
“They say the crisis isn’t over yet,” said Jane.
“Who says?”
“The ladies in Smith’s.”
“Ahhhh.” Rogers laughed. “Reliable sources.”
“It’s strange,” she continued. “I think of this country as so calm and friendly and modern. I didn’t realize there was so much tension under the surface, until these last few days.”
Rogers hugged her. This seemed to be a night for hugging.
“Let’s go to bed,” said Jane.
They made love tenderly, Rogers trying to express in bed the things he had wanted to say, but couldn’t. They were nearly asleep when Rogers spoke.
“What did the doctor say about Amy?”
“I told you,” said Jane drowsily. “She’s getting better. And in a few months she’ll be as good as new.”
“Do you believe him?” asked Rogers.
“This time I think I really do,” said Jane. She was warm against Rogers’s side, like a cat.
Rogers lit a cigarette and thought about Amy.
“Do you forgive me for what happened?” asked Rogers. There was no answer. Jane had fallen asleep.
For Rogers, what had happened to Amy was a metaphor for what was worst and most frightening about the Middle East. It started as a mysterious disease that nobody seemed to understand or know how to treat. Rogers had never in his life felt more helpless or scared.
It began one day in Oman, when Amy was nearly eighteen months old. She had been having trouble walking-she was much slower at it than Mark had been-and was only gradually learning to creep around the room. And then one day she fell down. She picked herself up, and fell down again. At first it seemed funny-helpless and cute-but it happened over and over again, and by the next day it was obvious to Rogers and his wife that something was wrong. Then Amy started to drop things. Cookies, toys, her bottle.