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Prologue

‘Allah ul Akbar! God is great!’

The coffin of her husband, Elias, began its descent into the Beirut soil, draped in the Palestinian flag. Lee followed it with her eyes as wailing women, standing at the graveside, opened their throats in the bubbling ululations of the zhagareet.

‘Ululululululululuh!’ they cried, not just the Christian, like him, but Christians and Muslims united, in recognition of this death.

A warm wind rolled in from the sea through the skeletons of buildings, sucking up the detritus of war and redistributing it, rendering every surface grey. It took up the voices of the women of the camps - women who encountered Death too often - and carried them south to the Occupied Territories. Tears tracked the patina of dust on the faces of the mourners, like flash floods in a desert wadi.

But for Lee there were no tears. Her very Englishness prevented them. She clapped instead, at first hesitantly, then with more assurance, as one by one the mourners joined her in the respectful goodbye.

The dead man’s brother’s wife put lilies in Lee’s hand and nodded towards the grave.

“This man, he loved you too much,” she said.

“No, not too much,” said Lee, as she dropped the flowers onto the coffin. “To love too much is to lose everything.”

Had she loved him, the man in the box? Not at first, perhaps, not at the exact moment in the Red Lion, Dubai, when she was with the British Council, he a big noise at the Foreign Ministry and he had proposed to her, in his inimitable way.

“Marry me, my dearrr,” he said, the post-vocalic trill almost the only trace of Arabic left in his otherwise impeccable English. “You have been going round in circles for too long.  Marry me and have a rest.”

“Marry you and be an embassy wife, you mean. I don’t think so. What if you take the London posting? What would I do – old hippy like me? Play the guitar and sing for the dignitaries? Take off my clothes and dance?”

“That would spice up the Ambassador’s balls, habibti,” he said, and they laughed. “Don’t forget, however, to my colleagues you are either my wife or my whore.”

Lee stopped laughing. 

They got married in London, the second time for both of them. The twenty year age gap provoked little controversy.

On the heels of the honeymoon in Egypt, before they had even settled into the flat in Fitzroy Square, Lee found herself caught up in the whirlwind of her new status - organising events, hosting receptions and accompanying her husband to first nights in the West End and on diplomatic beanos to Europe, the States, and the Middle East. The visit to Beirut, where the heart attack, which had been in the post, finally arrived, was the only time her teaching job took precedence.

She was watching a late-night movie on TV - Spencer Tracy as the defending counsel in Inherit the Wind - when the call came. She discovered Elias had collapsed upon arrival and, in a later call, that he had died. Between the calls she waited for two verdicts. Would Elias die? Would Spencer Tracy’s client get off? These two questions formed a connection in her mind. If his client was found guilty, she would see her Elias again; if the outcome was a happy one, Elias would die. The evolutionists would not prevail in Tennessee, she was certain and she was right. It was her twisted logic which failed; the verdict on the screen did not match her own case. She now knew Elias’ preferred option had been not to drag on.

They had been due to attend a Palestinian benefit at the Royal Albert Hall after he returned from Beirut. Elias was dead, dead and buried, but Lee went. Throughout the show she cast glances at the vacant seat, expecting to see the man she loved beside her.