The Distance Between Us. Masha Hamilton

      UNBRIDLED BOOKS

      Denver, Colorado

      Copyright 2004 Masha Hamilton

      Originally published as an Unbridled Books hardcover. First paperback edition, 2005.

      All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

      Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

      Hamilton, Masha.

      The distance between us / Masha Hamilton. p. cm.

      Hardcover edition ISBN: 1-932961-02-X

      Paperback edition ISBN: 1-932961-14-3

      1. Women journalists—Fiction. 2. War correspondents—Fiction.

      3. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Middle East—Fiction. I. Title.

      PS3558.A44338 D+ 2004021387

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

       Book design by SH • CV

      FOR KEVIN CARTER

      AND JOURNALISTS EVERYWHERE

      WHO PUT THEIR BODIES AND THEIR SOULS

      ON THE LINE TO COVER WAR

       Acknowledgments

      To Dan Gilmore, Steve Hanson, Bernadette Steele and Nancy Wall for fiery discussions as the sun went down and for being fantastic midwives to this manuscript, and to Rebecca Lowen and Jennifer Stewart for always thoughtful reads.

      To Fred Ramey, for treating Caddie as real from the very first (does anything warm a writer’s heart more?) and for allowing her to live between these covers and for pushing me, with tact and wisdom, to be a truer writer.

      To Marly Rusoff of amazing energy, for her belief in The Distance Between Us and her determination to get it published.

      To Yaddo and all the people connected with it for the incredible, breathtaking gift of time and space.

      To Heidi Levine, for two decades of friendship, for being out there every day, for sharing so much of it with me.

      To Wendy Orange for being an unparalleled reader and cheerleader who always knew Caddie, and who would have hand-delivered this story to God if she could have found a way.

      To Rupert and Arra Hamilton for unconditional support and the wisest of conversations, and to Matthew Hamilton, from my heart, for the gun stuff.

      To David Orr, for believing even when I don’t and seeing when I can’t, and for always saying yes.

      To Briana, Cheney and Daylon for making my life—and thus my writing—richer. And for giving it more attitude.

      And to those met along the way, in the field and on the street, whose actions and words touched me and contributed to my understanding of war and love.

      Thank you.

      ANYONE WHO HAS WATCHED people crowding around the scene of an accident on the highway realizes that the lust of the eye is real. Anyone who has watched the faces of people at a fire knows it is real. Seeing sometimes absorbs us utterly; it is as though the human being becomes one great eye. The eye is lustful because it requires the novel, the unusual, the spectacular. It cannot satiate itself on the familiar, the routine, the everyday.

      —J. GLENN GRAY, THE WARRIORS

       One

      THE WHOLE OF HEAVEN IS OFF-BALANCE as they rumble out of the city: clouds one moment, darting sunlight the next. A dust shroud swirling around the Land Rover prevents Caddie from seeing where they are going or where they’ve been. Far behind them, a mosque wails its hellfire summons to those who believe. It’s noon, then, and men of conviction are submitting their foreheads to the ground in a graceful wave, while she barrels forward into the formless, blind middle of a day.

      The Land Rover rattles like a crate of scrap metal. Her shoulders ache, she’s inhaling cupfuls of powdered dirt and they have at least another ninety minutes to go. But those are only irritants. Her real worry is the driver, a complete unknown. Rob and the hotel concierge rounded him up when the regular chauffeur, the one Rob assured her was “the best in Beirut,” didn’t show. A driver is their lifeline in dusty, uncharted territory. This guy, well—she catches her breath as he swerves sharply and clips a roadside bush, aiming directly for half a dozen desert larks. The birds scatter and arc overhead, their fury sharp enough to be heard above the thrash of the engine.

      “Christ,” Caddie mumbles. In the rearview mirror, the driver gives her a squinty glare. Cobwebs form at the outer corners of his eyes, and dried grime thick enough to scrape off with a fingernail is caked behind his right ear. “Who the hell is he?” Caddie mutters to Marcus, next to her in the backseat. “Should we really be—?”

      “Cautious Caddie,” Marcus says. “He’s okay. Rob wouldn’t use him otherwise.” He leans over Caddie to address Rob, who’s on her left. “Right-o, Rob?”

      “He’s fine. Told you. Checked him out.” Rob is focused on adjusting his tape recorder’s input level. With his scruffy hair and taut energy, he looks like a street tough instead of a network radio reporter. Here, that aura serves him well.

      “See?” Marcus says to Caddie. “Anyway, what’s our choice? Sit on our bums all day?”

      She smiles at him saying “bums” in his refined British accent. Something in him—his inflection maybe, or his humor, or his experience in the field—unknots her, and relieves her of the responsibility of having to control everything. Anyway, he’s right. This story is too hot to pass: a Q-and-A with Musaf Yaladi, fiery-eyed, Princeton-educated thug-darling of the West, in his south Lebanon lair. The elusive Yaladi is a Lebanese crime king, dabbler in terrorism and chief distributor for weapons, bogus American one-hundred-dollar bills and the raw materials for heroin produced in the Bekaa Valley. With a couple punchy quotes from him, the piece will write itself. She’ll be the only print reporter to have it. Page one for sure.

      They’ll be fine, just fine. Caddie would prefer fewer variables, but she’s done her usual checking, narrowed the risks to a pinpoint. She’s confirmed that they aren’t traveling through disputed territory, that Yaladi knows they are coming, that he wants to do the interview. The only drawback is that she doesn’t know this particular minefield very well. With Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, it would be different. She’s worked that territory for more than four years now, she and Marcus, and those back roads are carved in her mind.

      Marcus fingers the leather band on his left wrist, a gift from an Arab mother he once photographed and managed to connect with, he would say. Caddie would say charm. He stretches his arms, the muscled forearms tapering to delicate wrists, then widening to broad hands, and smiles sideways at her in a way that excludes Rob, the driver, all of Lebanon. She imagines licking lemonade from his lips, its bitter taste undercut with tangy sweetness. She rotates her shoulders to loosen them.

      In the front passenger seat, Sven pats the video camera on his lap and chats to the driver in sunny, Swedish-accented Arabic. Long-limbed, he seems as comfortable as he would in his own living room. He’s the most easygoing and polite of journalists, with an uncommon ability