#KillAydaKhoury

Just Party Politics

       

Sacha Hamadeh

Beirut, Lebanon

I open my car door for Ayda, and Ali and I peel off in opposite directions. I run an elaborate high-speed SDR through the late-night Beirut traffic. This city parties, stays up all night, and the drivers around me maneuver like intoxicated club kids who've been up all day and all night. I'm not afraid to show the watchers I'm working an asset, and the way they hang back, I'm not sure they're Mossad at all, just North Ridge Consulting or Qatar, hands tied by friendly country bureaucracy that won't let them mount a rendition on friendly soil.

I think I see Farida's watchers once or twice, a glimpse of the same license plate in the glare of the headlights leapfrogging with us through Beirut, but by the time we can see the coast, close to the Qatari embassy where Ayda wants to run, we haven't seen them in miles. We catch glimpses of the wide sea wall, with benches and jogging trails. The Med is high tonight, splashing and foaming against the railings of the sea wall. The coastal sidewalks are marred by colorful piles of garbage bags against the beauty of the waves.

"I heard her podcast," Ayda says, shading her eyes against the glass to see better. "About the Naameh garbage crisis."

"Apparently Sweden and Norway want some for energy generation," I tell her. "If Parliament could get their act together long enough to sell something, we'd be rich. I streamed the podcast in Syria, a little lifeline to home. Sometimes Zara would get a little in-joke or two in there and I knew she missed me too.

We drive into Bir Hassan where the embassy burned, and park blocks away from our tall white apartment building with window units sticking out of most apartments. There are unrepaired bullet holes in the bottom walls from the invasion. Ayda puts her fingers in them and feels the texture of the broken wall.

"I thought I grew up in a dangerous neighborhood," she says. I think she's trying to make me laugh, but I'm exhausted in the adrenaline crash from the panic and all I manage is a fake smile. I open the main door and lets her into the hallway at the foot of the staircase, motioning her to climb.

The midsummer night is sticky, and I'm grateful for the A/C when we reach our apartment on the top floor. This is a home, not a safehouse. Why can't I sit still here? Zara's awake, stretched on her back on the couch with her computer on her stomach, looking at us over the armrest at her feet. "Oma and Baba aren't home yet."

"Why are you awake?" I ask her.

"You texted me and woke me up. Jerk." She points at the computer. "The U.S. is selling Israel Paveways."

Israel is implicitly threatening airstrikes if Iran takes revenge for the embassy bombing. It must be mid-afternoon in the States, and the Israelis are up late, saber-rattling.

Zara pulls her knees up to make room for me to sit at her feet, and I turn on the TV to watch late-night news coverage of the embassy bombing, cycling foreign channels for outside perspectives. Ayda sits on the area rug with her back against the couch and her hair brushing my toes, her computer in her lap.

Zara reads her media feeds for a while, then shoves me gently with her socked feet until I grab her exaggeratedly by the toes.

She squeals and kicks at me softly. "Want to watch the new Pixar movie tomorrow night?"

Zara loves those American animated films, even though Frozen was translated into Fusha instead of kid-friendly Egyptian Arabic, and she made fun of the pretentious classical sound of the translated lyrics for weeks after she saw it with Maryam and the kids, texting me that the snow did not maketh lugubriosity within her anyway.