Corniche el Manara

I heard the ambulances and the police sirens. Last year during the July War, I learned that explosions and sirens come like thunder and lightning. The first shakes and quakes your entire being, and the second hits your head like a surge in a migraine. Saleh, the Palestinian chauffeur, rang up and told me that there was a big bomb at the Sporting Club. I turned on the television and saw the alley next to the PERMANENT CHINESE EXHIBITION--battered, broken water pipes leaking (the sirens are still going), and a mangled car in the center in flames. Within minutes, everyone started calling. The death rate climbed from three to ten. Mama Hiam was on her way home, so I was fielding calls, giving people phone numbers from Hiam's number index.

The numbers are written in two scripts. The blue rollerball pen writes in all caps with a breath in between each letter. The pencil is faint, moves between Arabic and English. The pencil belongs to Hiam's dead husband.

Hiam stormed in like a red elephant. She had Emily lock the elevator in a heartbeat: no one was going anywhere.

I tried to explain to Emily where the bomb was:
"Remember when the Israelis hit Manara, the light house, last year--near there," I said knowing full well that she had no idea where Manara was or what light house meant.
"Yes, Israel last year," she replied.
Gesturing, I continued, "It's close: I used to go running by there, fifteen minutes running."
"Close? We didn't hear it."

They targeted a judge, Walid Eido. Hiam says through three languages, "He's one of the very near to Hariri. And he was deputy. He knows more about him than anyone else. Everyone knows that he goes to the Sporting Club to bathe. Wafiq used to go with him back in the day."

The fruit will enter and exit; we'll sit watching the firefighters douse the flames for the next couple hours.

I'll need to get an apartment of my own in August. I'm under house arrest tonight. But I find it absolutely imperative to be present in the city tonight, to have dinner at the Armenian restaurant as planned. Hoda Barakat's The Stone of Laughter is starting to bore me. Maybe I'll find some gold in it tonight.