What Will Survive Read Free Page A

put his case patiently.
    â€˜All right,’ she said in the end, feeling too sticky and uncomfortable to argue any longer, ‘but I want an early night when we get to Beirut — no dinners with tourist officials, OK?’ She retied the box of cakes, asking one final question as Mahmoud ground out his cigarette and flopped heavily into the driver’s seat:
    â€˜You’re sure this is safe, Fabio? Even I know South Lebanon is still occupied.’ He turned and gave her a quizzical look, his good humour restored. ‘Yes, it is safe — except when the grape-pickers are shelled by the Israelis.’ She began to speak and he grinned.
    â€˜I am teasing you, Aisha, it is not yet the time of the grape harvest. Anyway, do you think our friend here’ — he lowered his voice and indicated the driver with an inclination of the head — ‘would take risks for two foreigners?’ Mahmoud gave Fabio a sour glance but started the engine and the journey continued in silence for a while.
    Aisha had been reading earlier but now she couldn’t concentrate and stared out of the car window, surprised by the realisation that after ten days on the road she had absolutely no insight into Fabio’s personal life. If he had interests outside war and photography, he kept them to himself; he hadn’t even talked much about his experiences in Beirut during the civil war, although it was a photograph taken on the Green Line that made himfamous outside Italy. On one of their first evenings, after Aisha overheard a fluent conversation in Arabic between Fabio and a waiter, she asked if that was when he had learned the language and received the unexpected reply that he’d picked it up when he was stationed in Lebanon with the Italian army. This was a period of his life she knew nothing about, although it explained his appearance — military bearing, neatly-trimmed beard and an apparently endless stock of freshly-laundered khaki shirts. The thought that a travel iron lurked somewhere in his luggage, like a stylist on a fashion shoot, made her smile. Most evenings, he excused himself after supper, presumably to go off to drink in bars on his own or in search of more congenial company — whatever that might be.
    According to her Lebanese guidebook, which Aisha opened as they reached Kefraya, the Bekaa valley was really a plateau, a thousand feet above sea level, planted with wheat, vines and orchards. The vineyards around the village were a welcome change from the arid Syrian landscape and she got out of the car each time they stopped, taking pictures with her own camera as Fabio searched in a rather desultory way for cannabis and cattle. Neither materialised but he photographed Aisha as she picked plump white mulberries from an ancient tree, with Mount Lebanon in the background, and with a couple of children — dirt-poor immigrants from Syria, according to Fabio, although the girl was wearing an embroidered dress for which some English mothers would pay a fortune. The child offered Aisha a red flower, which she pinned in her hair, offering in return a couple of the brightly-coloured felt-tip pens she always carried in her shoulder bag on foreign trips.
    When they reached mountainous country at the lower end of the valley Aisha expected Mahmoud to turn back, but Fabio exclaimed over the landscape and told the driver to keep going. They continued travelling south-west, stopping next to a precipitous drop where Fabio spent some time setting up his tripod, leaving Aisha to stare across the pinkish hills, suddenly reminded of Greece. It was at this moment that the helicopter’s long shadow swooped over them for the first time, drawing a casual glance from Fabio before he returned to what he had been doing.
    â€˜The UN, Syria, maybe the Lebanese,’ he said carelessly when Aishaasked about it. ‘They will not bother with us — tourists,’ he added, gesturing towards his