A Girl Made of Dust

A Girl Made of Dust
Nathalie Abi-Ezzi

A rich and beautiful novel set during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980s, and based on the author's personal experiences of the conflict.Ten-year-old Ruba lives in a village outside Beirut. From her family home, she can see the buildings shimmering on the horizon and the sea stretched out beside them. She can also hear the rumble of the shelling – this is Lebanon in the 1980s and civil war is tearing the country apart.Ruba however has her own worries. Her father hardly ever speaks and spends most of his days sitting in his armchair, avoiding work and family. Her mother looks so sad that Ruba thinks her heart might have withered in the heat like a fig. Her elder brother, Naji, has started to spend his time with older boys – and some of them have guns.When Ruba decides she has to save her father, and when she uncovers his secret, she begins a journey which takes her from childhood to the beginnings of adulthood. As Israeli troops invade and danger comes ever closer, she realises that she may not be able to keep her family safe.This is a first novel with tremendous heart, which captures both a country and a childhood in turmoil.

NATHALIE ABI-EZZI

A Girl Made of Dust

For Jeddo

Table of Contents

Chapter One (#u68e8eb47-ff77-57d1-9a78-a3954a97e697)

Chapter Two (#uf523f847-ec2c-5cac-9880-97442f9cfe37)

Chapter Three (#ufc1f55b2-4b69-5165-a4a2-ab8bc9f9b2a8)

Chapter Four (#u12653e6d-2cfa-5b1f-af1a-712555befe06)

Chapter Five (#u53e37b23-d9b5-5d0c-8243-ff0b22c4fe78)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-three (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#u31eccefd-714e-5836-9b3a-560971efc537)

‘It's thanks to the 'adra that you didn't get killed today.’ Teta crossed herself, and her lips moved in a silent prayer as we sat on her bed folding clothes that were stiff and bent in strange shapes from the sun.

The room seemed darker and heavier than usual, with its old furniture, and the tired curtains that wanted to lie down if only the hooks would let them. Through the window, the tops of the pine trees dropped into the valley, where white stone buildings stuck out tall from between them like giant fingers; and further down still to Beirut, which lay stretched out beside the sea. The hot sky had bleached itself white and cicadas hummed back and forth, back and forth, as if they were sawing the trees. Teta had said once that each time they stopped a person had died, but they didn't stop often: their throbbing started early in the morning when the light came over the mountains and didn't stop till it went away again.

‘I fell all the way down from the ledge. The earth crumbled and it was so far, higher than the ceiling.’

‘What? Are you a half-wit, Ruba, to be playing in the forest next to a steep fall like that? Are you, girl?’ She touched my cheek. ‘In any case she's the one who saved you.’

‘The Virgin?’ I gazed at the little yellow-haired plastic woman in a blue dress standing on the dressing-table. She was really only a bottle filled with holy water that you could see if you unscrewed her crown and I didn't see how she could have saved me that morning.

Teta nodded. ‘You could have fallen as far as hell itself and you wouldn't have been killed. The Blessed Virgin wouldn't have let you die.’

‘Is that her job? Is that what she does?’

‘Does?’ Teta gave me a look. ‘She's not a belly-dancer, child, she's the Mother of Christ.’

I didn't really want to hear about the Virgin Mary unless Teta put her into a story and made her do something exciting like swim out to sea, or play hide-and-seek with God, or dig a tunnel all the way to Beirut and live in it.

The huge pair of grey-white pants I was trying to fold didn't want to be made small. They were grandmother pants; no one but grandmothers ever wore that sort.

‘But she couldn't have saved me because she wasn't even there.’

Teta smiled. ‘She was there.’

Maybe Teta was right. Perhaps the Virgin had wanted me to fall; she had made me fall so I could find the glass eye.

‘If only she'd help your father as well,’ Teta murmured.

I looked up from the pants, but she didn't say anything more, just carried on untangling, shaking and folding. A thin green blouse slid out from the pile, was laid flat and smoothed: Teta's hands were slow and heavy, and things obeyed them.

‘Does she really look like that?’ I pointed at the plastic bottle full of holy water. ‘Or like Teta Fadia? Teta Fadia looks like an angel.’ A photograph of Teta's mother, wedged into the frame of the dressing-table mirror, showed a woman older than anyone I'd ever seen bent over a walking-stick. Her white hair was parted in the middle and tied back, and she wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses; but behind them was a kind, soft face.