After a little while he surprised her with, ‘I want to visit Lebanon…’
Just like that, without any introductions as they walked across one of the city bridges.
‘I want to see the white almond blossoms in early spring…’
She smiled and he added, ‘I want to see my mother before she dies.’
He said it without showing much emotion and without a desire to affect her one way or another. He said it like someone saying he had to go to the train station at seven fifteen otherwise he’d miss the morning train to Pittsburgh.
This time around he wasn’t just making up an excuse to escape from his new girlfriend.
Chapter 12
Nishan never could have imagined himself pleading to save his soul and crawling on his knees that way, never could have imagined prostrating himself flat on the floor amidst a crumpled heap of women — nuns and girls from the orphanage — all dressed in black, as he prayed continuously to Saint Vasken inside a church dedicated to one of the Maronite saints. He muttered his cries for help, not knowing what he was saying because the sound of bullets being fired reverberated in his head and he couldn’t hear what was coming out of his own mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut like a child refusing to look when told, and knelt, huddled over himself, propped up by the women’s bodies, protecting himself behind them actually. No, he would not die with his eyes open. The sounds of the bullets clamoured in his head. He felt the shots in every part of his body. The sound of someone screaming, one man’s voice, called out with all his might, without stopping, ‘Hey all of you… for the fear of God!’
He couldn’t hear the wailing rising up around him — the moaning of a young woman shot in the shoulder who was bleeding profusely, and a nun struck with a bout of hysteria who was trembling and whose teeth chattered incessantly as she kissed the cross hanging at her neck. The nun’s fright was pushing him to the brink. He listened exclusively to the man’s voice, clinging with all his strength to the loud, angry voice as if it were a lifeline. If the man continued to scream, then Nishan Hovsep Davidian, the twenty-five-year-old photographer, would go on living.
He also held fast to the new Zeiss Ikon camera hanging from his neck and kept mumbling prayers to Saint Vasken, mumbling in the manner of his mother. He stowed the camera safely in his lap and curled over it. He could smell the women and the nuns — permed hair, the pungent odour of ammonia, and cheap perfume mixed with sweat from the heat and the fear and the church crammed full of God’s creatures. He didn’t want to die and he didn’t want the Zeiss Ikon to get broken because it was extremely expensive. He had been lucky enough to buy it for half price from a man who had barely used it one month and had been forced to sell it because he was leaving the country. Nishan would not be able to get another one. He’d only shot two rolls of film with it — a wedding and a graduation. He was bent on saving the Zeiss Ikon at any cost.
He braced himself, ready to take the fatal blow. The next one would strike him for sure. The important thing was to avoid getting hit in the head. A bullet in the head would be unbearable, he thought, fearing pain more than death. He thought of his father. He thought of his mother. They were sitting quietly, side by side most likely — his father reading the Armenian newspaper and his mother doing needlework and possibly mumbling quick prayers to Saint Vasken. And here he was under the bullets raining down like stones. As long as that man kept screaming and Nishan kept listening, he would be spared.
Suddenly everything cleared up and life returned. He opened his eyes and caught sight of the sun’s rays coming through the skylights. He felt his blood start to move again. The shooting died down as did the sound of the man who had been screaming in the church. Nishan Davidian was still alive. He let the tension leave his body a little at a time, starting with lifting his head. No one in the church dared stand up. The moans of the wounded rose up, interrupted by a piercing cry. Nishan started looking around at the dead. He wouldn’t find out who the screaming man in the church had been. He didn’t even ask about him. People recalled all kinds of details to him, but no one mentioned the voice or its owner. The only person he asked was Nazaret. He asked him later on, two or three days later, when he went to visit him at his house. He asked Nazaret whether he heard a voice booming over the sound of bullets in the church. Nazaret said he hadn’t heard anything. He had been crammed against the door to the sacristy, sandwiched between the priests who were fleeing the altar. Nishan didn’t repeat his question. He was afraid his countryman would make fun of him. Maybe there had not been a man screaming. Maybe Nishan had been the only one hearing that voice that echoed in his head.
Nishan had opened his eyes and saw the blood on his trousers. It was coming from his right leg. A black splotch on his blue pants. He didn’t feel any pain; he didn’t feel anything. He saw his wound before he felt it. He was still fully conscious and fully frightened, too. But he didn’t die. He had heard once that a person who gets shot doesn’t feel the pain right away. It comes later, once the bullet cools down. Death was still present, then, still possible, lurking below, threatening to ascend from his leg to his heart. He heard some pushing and shoving near the door to the church. He silently concluded that Nazaret had been killed; he prepared himself for that possibility. When the gunfire first started he had seen him standing taking pictures of the worshippers in the front row — dignitaries and the family of the deceased and the clergy. He, on the other hand, had stayed in the back with the women so he could take pictures panning the altar and the priests. When they developed their pictures of the incident they both smiled when they discovered that Nazaret appeared in Nishan’s picture and Nishan appeared in Nazaret’s. Two photographers holding their large round flashes. Nazaret was more exposed to the gunfire than Nishan had been.
Magnesium flashes were popular in those days. They flashed in people’s eyes, even outside in the bright sunlight. Hagop, his teacher, had advised him to use them on all occasions. They reduced the formation of shadows on faces, as he said. Nishan hadn’t known that Nazaret was going to come to Burj al-Hawa. If he’d known, he would not have come too. It was June, the peak of the end-of-school-year photo season. The teacher and his students on the wooden stage. Half an hour of quietening them down and lining them up from shortest to tallest. But schools paid well; plus, every student was required to buy a class picture, so it wasn’t bad.
He ran into Nazaret in the courtyard outside the church. Photographers attend funerals without an invitation. They spread out in the beginning here and there in the courtyard, targeting customers from among the men dressed in suits despite the heat. He knew them, too, and that they wore the suits to conceal their guns inside their jackets. Some men called to him. They got into a group, put their arms on each other’s shoulders showing their affection for each other, and as usual didn’t smile. He took pictures of them beside the store and then joined Nazaret in the procession of mourners going to the church. The two of them exchanged words and even some jokes in Armenian behind the backs of the frowning men.
He didn’t usually speak with Nazaret much, just a few necessary formalities. Nazaret was his competitor, who had followed him to Barqa and started copying him and stealing his customers. Of all the places in the whole wide world, Nazaret had to follow him to where he drew his livelihood. But there in front of the church door they’d both been afraid and went overboard speaking to each other in their own language. The men kept looking at them disapprovingly whenever they heard their chirpings in Armenian.