Startled by a foe in the grasses, a cat leapt off the low wall that ran around the playground in an awkward backward twist, as though pulled by a string from its neck. Rashid looked over at it instinctively, without thinking, looked to see whether it was the ginger tabby of that afternoon and by doing so he saw, and was seen, by the fighter, the lookout.
He had expected the lookout to be younger than the boy, or at least smaller. He had not expected him to be the man with the Stalin moustache from the day of Abu Omar’s arrest. ‘You,’ said the man, who was far closer to Rashid than the boy had led him to believe. ‘You?’ and despite all that Rashid had not expected, he had at least expected it more than this man had and it was this advantage of shock – a two-second, perhaps a five-second advantage – which had allowed Rashid to think, ‘But this must be how you do it,’ and to pull down the trigger, aiming the implement at the man’s gut protruding like a question mark towards him. That had been all that was needed before something jumped away from Rashid with a bloody-minded resolve and then whipped back at him with an awful thwack that made him stumble. He was thrown against the car, a side mirror cracking at his hipbone and the lookout was down.
One second, maybe two, the jacket was off and thrown into the car, the gun too. Inside with the door open, he cranked the window down, down. The beating pulse coming now from his face; it was rushed with blood; his head centred his world. The shot would have been heard. Beyond the rushing layer of sea about his head there were voices coming from the houses. Rashid closed the car door and leant in through the window. It was a question of the boy, the question of the reliability of the boy, the triggering of the device with the boy’s phone. He turned the key in the ignition to make it more real. Now! his body and his head screamed, running towards the corner, heading away from the car, down towards the small alley, to somewhere tight and secret. Now! it screamed again as he reached the turn. Do it now, boy. Press it! And then the blast came like the door of heaven slamming behind him and he was lifted off his feet like a cat, thrown forwards, headlong, like an inanimate thing, on to broken paving stones, wet leaflets and fragments of glass.
Chapter 53
The silly fucker had got him right there, in the heart, and he was done for, the lookout knew it. He had fallen on to one leg and then the other one just closed in all by itself. It was as though the raft he had been standing on had been tugged from under him away from where he was leaving life to rush up and down his body under his skin in waves like a sheep with a slit throat, rush up and down and out of him until it left him all together. It was all dark below and wet with a stickiness that he didn’t expect and it is only his son that the fighter thinks of now, not the other fighters and the meetings and the jealousy of that man Ayyoubi who had it all so easy and had never wanted for a thing in his life. He does not think of his mother or his father or the tent he had been born into, which had been so low that you could not step into it without lowering your head, or his father’s second wife who had made sure his father left them there when he had moved out of the camp. He does not think of these things, but just of his boy for whom he had wanted it all to be better, for whom no act was too small or too low for him to carry out. He thought only of the boy’s soft-skinned arm on his neck and the swoop of his trusting eyelashes, for that was what it was all for, but he thinks no longer as he is turning now under these waters, caught by a current in these new depths that let his body rock back and forth giving him only the consolation they can afford.
Chapter 54
And how wonderful it was then to run, to feel the mechanism of his body moving how he wanted it to, finding within it a fuel and propulsion that he had not known he had. The synchronicity of mind and body amazing him as he hopped from side to side, along alleys creviced by a run of water in their centre: how he could do this while barely slowing himself down, how he could leap at the end of it all over the cut-up earth, fallen pillars and tent strings of the wasteland that was theirs, how he could feel his heart propelling him forwards with a love of chance, of risk, of the opportunities for tomorrow. And he loved it alclass="underline" the light of the moon on the sea, the blinking, blackness of the water with the gunboats turned away for the night, for it was his night and their presence in it was not required. And he’s running in such long strides now – a beat, a beat and another – that he is flying high above it all, up, over, out of it all; flying all the way until he reaches the sea.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following friends, relatives, writing professionals and institutions for taking the time to read my work and to provide advice, encouragement and support over the years: Ghassan Abu Sitta, Layla Al Maleh, Omar Al Qattan, Mitchell Albert, Lorraine Bacchus, Samia Bano, Shameen Bashir, Brenna Bhandar, the British Council, Gaenor Bruce, Emily Burnham, Clem Cairns, Caroline Cederwell, Cathy Costain, Steve Cragg, Amy Cramer, Claire, Dina, Hani, Hassan Salah, Nadia, Salma, Samira and Taysir Dabbagh, Wafa Darwish, Mick Delap, Khaled El Ali, Azza El Hassan, English PEN, Bernardine Evaristo, Fish Publishing, Emanuel Garboua, Haris Gazdar, Vanessa Gebbie, Carlo Gebler, Maggie Gee, Zeina B. Ghandour, Jo Glanville, Francisco Goldman, Katia Hadidian, Annie Hickson, David Holmes, International PEN, Randa Jarrar, Mike Jones, Frederic Joseph, Dina Kasrawi, Kavi Kittani, Rahat Kurd, Maha Ladki, Daniel Machover, Eloise Marshall, Lena Masri, Scott McGaraghan, Abdullah, Lulwa, Linda, Naser, Samir and Jumana Mutawi, Nadia Naqib, Tessa O’Neil, the late Harold Pinter, Christine Pohlmann, Adil Rahman, Caroline Rooney, Jacob Ross, Dana Sajdi, Tope Saraki, Stacy Stobl, Tales of the Decongested, Catherine Viala, Sue Said Wardell, The West Cork Literary Festival, Sarah Leah Whitson and Josh Zimmer.
Special thanks to the following friends and relatives who provided particularly thoughtful and detailed comments on earlier drafts of this noveclass="underline" Paloma Baeza, Nadia Capy Osgood, Felicity Cunliffe-Lister, Claire Dabbagh, Nadia Dabbagh, Izzat Darwazeh, Christine Habbard, Graham Harfield, Elias Nasrallah and James Richard.
I am also greatly indebted to the enthusiasm and support that I had from Kate Jones, whose sudden death in February 2008 was a shock and a loss to so many. Many thanks also to Amanda (Binky) Urban at ICM and to Margaret Halton for their advice and encouragement.
I have a stupendous agent. Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown could not do more in terms of understanding and furthering my aspirations for both the style and subject matter of my work. Her editorial comments on Out of It were incisive and invaluable. This book would have been a lesser one without them. She has always believed in me and always protected my interests and for that I am extremely grateful. Many thanks, Karolina, for everything.