Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

Part Two: Nahilah’s Death

I WANT to apologize.

I know that nothing can excuse my leaving you on your own these past two weeks. Forgive me, please, and try to understand. I don’t want you to think for a moment that I’m like them – certainly not, Father. I despise positions of responsibility, and my new one is of no importance. I don’t know what came over me the other night. After leaving you, I went to my room to sleep. And when I was in bed, I began to suffocate – all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. I lay down on my bed, and, without realizing what I was doing, started searching for the oxygen bottle I’d put in your room in case of an emergency. While I was sleeping, everything became constricted. I woke up, my heart was racing, I was bathed in sweat, and the air. . the air wasn’t sufficient anymore. I started breathing heavily, gasping for air, but there was no air. I felt a tingling sensation in my head, in my left hand, my belly, and my back. I tried to get up. I raised my head, managed to sit up, and tried to turn on the light, but there was no electricity. I supported my head with my hand. There was the dark. A thick darkness was drawing closer. I raised my hand to push it away, but my right hand was completely paralyzed. Everything was murky, and there was no oxygen. I thought, “I’m going to die.” But instead of lying on my back and waiting for the angel of death, I leapt out of bed like a madman, ran toward the window, threw my head out and started gulping down the air. I ate all the air in the world, but the world’s air wasn’t enough. I dressed quickly and left my room. I walked down the corridor and down the stairs to the ground floor and then climbed back up. It was what one might call the Night of the Stairs. I jogged up them and down them, panting and running, as though I wanted to prove to myself that I was still alive. Imagine the scene: a man on his own in the darkness running and panting and gasping, running up and down the stairs dozens of times so he wouldn’t die. And it was just at that moment when my decision came to me. I went back to my room and lay down on the bed.

So, at last, Khalil Ayyoub – the same one who stands before you – has become head nurse at the Galilee Hospital. I accepted Dr. Amjad’s proposition and went to tell him the next morning.

Forgive me.

These two weeks flew by. I swear I couldn’t find the time to scratch my head. I asked Zainab to look after you, but I don’t know why I couldn’t do it myself. I’d get to the door of your room and instead of going in I’d hesitate, as if a wall had gone up in front of me.

It has nothing to do with my new position; I’m not like that, as you know. But I somehow felt I was floating, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, my fear would come to an end and I could go home. I miss my house and my grandmother’s cushion and the smell of decayed flowers. I told myself I would go back, but I didn’t. I swear it was only when the French delegation came that I dared go out into the streets of the camp. I found Salim then – and I’ll tell you more about him – but my uselessness and my fear drove me back to the hospital.

Will you forgive me?

I came back to you, organized everything, and convinced myself that leaving the hospital wasn’t worth it. We’re back to our old routine: I bathe you and perfume you and take care of you. I’ll tell you the entire story from the beginning, just as I promised I would two weeks ago. That was when I left you, sure that I’d see you in the morning, but the oxygen night happened. In the morning, I went to see Dr. Amjad in his office. I knocked on the door, went in, and stood there. As usual he had his feet up on the desk and was reading a newspaper, and, as usual, he pretended he hadn’t noticed me.

I stood there like an idiot and coughed, the smoke from his pipe rising from behind the newspaper, obscuring his face.

“I accept, Doctor,” I said. “Dr. Amjad. . Dr. Amjad. . I. .”

He moved the paper aside.

“Hello, hello! Please do sit down. I didn’t see you.”

“I accept the job,” I said.

He removed his feet from the desk, folded his paper, lifted his finger and raised his voice: “You’ll assume your duties immediately.” Then he rang the bell on his desk and Zainab came in.

“He’s responsible for everything from now on,” he said.

Dr. Amjad hid behind the newspaper again and Zainab stood there nailed to the spot, with no idea what to do.

“But, Doctor. .” she said.

“You’re still here?” he asked from behind the newspaper.

I asked him to brief me a bit on my new job.

“Later, later,” he said. “Go with Zainab and take over.”

So I took over.

You might think that I took over the administration of a hospital! It’s true that I am, practically speaking, the hospital’s director, now that Dr. Amjad has found that by appointing me he has an excuse to absent himself from work on a permanent basis. So, just like that, I’m back to being a doctor, the way I used to be, but. . This butsays it all. I’m a doctor, but Dr. Amjad’s the real doctor! I examine, diagnose, and prescribe medicine – everything, but the patients say they’re waiting for the doctor’s opinion. And when the doctor comes, he doesn’t have an opinion. He agrees with my diagnosis and my prescription, but the patients wait for him just the same. One would think the only thing they have faith in is a diploma. I swear he knows nothing, but never mind, it’s better this way: I make the decisions without assuming the responsibility.

I took over the administration of the hospital and am in charge of three nurses. Zainab – you know her; Kamil, who stole the radio but who’s a nice kid (he has a beautiful voice and knows all the songs of Abd al-Halim Hafiz by heart) and who’s waiting for a visa so he can leave the country; and the Egyptian, Hamdi, who’s not a nurse, but we say that he is so the hospital won’t seem empty. Can you imagine an enormous hospital with more than forty beds and only two nurses! Hamdi’s also started helping us move patients and take care of them, even though basically he’s a guard. And there’s Kamelya the cook, who’s told me she’s decided to leave the hospital at the end of the month. We added Kamelya to the nurses’ list, too, and I’ve begun teaching her the basics.

So things were moving along.

I’d managed to get things under control to a certain extent, and that was my mistake, because when things are under control we discover what’s wrong – and here everything is wrong. There’s no medicine, no serums, nothing. It’s as though we aren’t in a hospital, and, in fact, we aren’t. We’re in a white building suspended in the air, and I’m its head nurse and its director. As I attempt to organize things, I am becoming more and more aware of the impossibility and precariousness of the task. When I accepted my new duties, I thought I’d find a solution to my problem, but now my problem has become part of the hospital’s.

Hamdi, the Egyptian, was shown the door. Dr. Amjad threw Hamdi out without warning and replaced him with a Syrian youth called Omar. Poor Hamdi was crying as he got his things together.

“What are you crying for?” I asked him. “Go and look for work. You barely earn enough to eat here.” He said he’d gone back to Egypt and that they’d thrown him out because he didn’t have a work permit.

“I don’t have a work permit either,” I told him.

He explained that he’d been here three years and that he’d come to Beirut through a smuggler in Damascus since Egyptians don’t need a visa to get into Syria. He’d coughed up seven hundred dollars for the Syrian smuggler who got him to Beirut. He’d thought that Beirut would be a stop on his way to Germany. He said he didn’t want to leave because he needed two thousand dollars to procure a visa for a European country from which he’d then slip into Germany. Now he’d be deported back to Egypt and return to his village penniless, so how would he get married?

The Syrian, Omar, talks to no one. He’s supposed to work as a guard and custodian but he doesn’t guard anything and he doesn’t clean. He has a little car that he traipses around in all day, and he returns to the hospital only to sleep.

Dr. Amjad told me to leave him alone.

“Don’t bother him. He’s free to do what he wants. You must understand, there’s no need to explain these things. We have to accept them and that’s all. They made me get rid of the Egyptian and dug up this fellow to keep an eye on the hospital. So you’ll just have to keep your mouth shut and swallow the rest.”

“The rest” means that we live in a place filled with security services, each of which is keeping an eye on the other, and we’re supposed to deal with them as though we don’t know. I don’t have any dealings with Omar, and practically speaking it’s Kamelya who guards the hospital at night. She stands at the entrance, lets people in, writes down their names, and that’s all.

We don’t need much of a staff. True, we have fifteen patients, but their families take care of everything. They change the sheets, bring food and clean the rooms. I don’t understand why they bring anyone to this hospital; they’d be better off at home. But they feel safe here, or they use it as an excuse to get out of the house. All we offer is free medicine; any cure is in God’s hands.

I’ll spare you the details of this strange world that I find myself in because you’re tired and need your rest.

I’ve come back to you now, and everything’s going to be as it was. Your condition isn’t great because of the ulcers. Zainab looked after you while I was away, but she didn’t do everything I used to do. She gave you a bath every two days, which is why the ulcers on your back have gotten so bad. Don’t worry, they’ll go away in less than a week, and you’ll be my spoiled child again. I’ll bathe you twice a day and won’t forget your ointment – everything will be fine.

Will you forgive me?

I swear you’re better company than any of the others. I see them roaming and muttering as if they were dead. We aren’t dead though, we’re seeking the aroma of life and are waiting.

I know you’re waiting for the end, but I assure you, as I have in the past, that the end can only be a man disappearing into the cave of Bab al-Shams.

I’m optimistic, Salim As’ad has promised to find a waterbed for you. By sleeping on water, you’ll find that your body will return to you.

I forgot to tell you about Salim As’ad.

The kid is driving me insane. I met him by chance, and now he’s coming to my office every day asking for work. He’s a good-looking guy, and strange, always on the verge of flying away. When he gets up to say goodbye, I feel that he’s not going to walk away but fly off. He stands in front of me holding out his hand; I hold out mine, shake his quickly, and then step back.

“Any work, Doctor?”

“I’m not a doctor, and I don’t have any work.”

He smiles, stands up, shakes my hand again, gets ready to fly off, and leaves.

The young man fascinates me, and I’m prepared to do anything to find him a job. What do you say I appoint him to look after the records? We need someone to put the hospital’s files in order. I know Amjad will never agree, but I’ll make him give in, in spite of himself.

Why am I telling you about Salim As’ad?

Because he dumbfounds me and has convinced me that anything’s possible?

Salim As’ad has taught me that deception is life.

Listen. I was in my office (I now have my own office and a telephone) when Zainab came and announced that there was a group of foreigners asking for the doctor. Amjad, as usual, wasn’t around. I told her to bring them in. Why not? Foreigners wanting a doctor, and I am one.

There were three of them, two men and a woman. They spoke to me in French, so I answered them in my Chinese-English, so they switched to French-English, and we understood one another.

The tall, bald one, who seemed to be their leader, said they were a group of French artists who’d come to Beirut to visit Shatila. They said they’d met Abu Akram, the Popular Front official in the camp, who’d advised them to visit the hospital. They wanted to learn about the camp.

Zainab offered them tea, they lit cigarettes, and I was caressed by the toasty aroma of French tobacco.

Their leader said they were members of a theater troupe and were getting ready to put on a play by a French writer called Jean Genet – Quatre heures à Chatila. Before starting rehearsals they’d decided to come to Beirut to acquaint themselves with Shatila. He introduced me to the French woman, who was going to be the sole actress in the show.

“It’s a monodrama,” he told me.

The woman smiled and said her name was Catherine. She had light skin and her short black hair could hardly keep still on her head. Everything about her seemed to be on the verge of coming apart, as though her limbs were joined together artificially. She shot glances at me, and all around her, with dancing eyes.

“The actress,” said the tall bald guy.

“It’s a play with just one actor,” he said, pointing at Catherine. “She tells the story alone on the stage.”

“A play without actors?” I asked.

“Just one. We wanted to preserve the spirit of the text; we wouldn’t want to do violence to the work of Jean Genet. You know Genet, I’m sure.”

I nodded, though it was the first time I’d heard the name.

“He’s the French writer who lived with the fedayeen in Jordan and wrote a beautiful book about them called Un Captif amoureux. Did you ever meet him?”

“No, I never met him, but I’ve heard a lot about him.”

“Have you read his books?”

“No, I haven’t, but I know the sort of thing he wrote.”

“He’s a great writer,” said the bald man. “He wrote a stunningly beautiful text about the Shatila massacre.”

“I know.”

“And he was a supporter of yours.”

“I know.”

“So that’s why we’re asking for your help.”

“For myhelp?”

“Mr. Abu Akram suggested we begin our tour with the hospital. He said that talking to Dr. . ” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and read the name: “Dr. Amjad. You’re Dr. Amjad?”

“No, I’m Dr. Khalil.”

“And you’re in charge?”

“More or less.”

“And Dr. Amjad, will we meet him? Mr. Akram said he was a knowledgeable man.”

“Tomorrow, if you come by at the same time, he’ll be here.”

I said tomorrow even though I knew he wouldn’t come either today or tomorrow because he’d managed to get himself a job at Dr. Arbid’s hospital in Beirut, where he would be paid a real salary, not like here – but what was I to say? We don’t hang out our dirty laundry in front of foreigners!

The tall bald man said he wanted to ask a few questions, but the actress got up and said something to him in French with a commanding air.

The man apologized and asked me, if it were possible, to accompany them on their tour. “Catherine would rather we see things for ourselves before asking questions.”

“But I can’t leave the hospital.”

“Please,” he said.

He said pleaseknowing that I’d agree. These foreigners think that just visiting us is such a big sacrifice that we’ll agree to anything they ask. I don’t adhere to that school of thought, but it occurred to me that it would be an opportunity to get out of this godforsaken hospital. I’d been a prisoner here for three months, and it was about time I got out to try my chances. It would be a kind of protection to be with three French tourists: No one would dare kill me in front of them. So, I bolstered my courage and agreed. I asked them to wait so I could take care of a few things. I rang the bell, Zainab came, I asked her to bring them some coffee, and I left them. I felt like a little boy going on an outing. I took a shower, put on clean clothes, and went back to them. The girl smiled at me; it seemed she’d noticed the change in my appearance and could smell the scent of soap my white hair gave off.

“Let’s go,” I said. “But what do you want to see?”

“Everything,” said the girl.

The bald man said he’d like to speak to families of the victims if possible. I understood him to mean the victims of the massacre of ’82, not the ones that came later.

“The cemetery,” said the second man, whose name I learned, when we lost him in the alleys of the camp, was Daniel. He was the set designer and spoke a little Arabic.

“The cemetery,” said Daniel.

I explained that the victims’ mass grave no longer existed because it fell outside the boundaries when the camp was made smaller during the War of the Camps. I also explained that the grave of the martyrs who were killed after the massacre was now inside the mosque. I asked them which one we should start with.

“You decide, and we’ll follow you,” said their leader.

We left the hospital. I’d made up my mind to walk in the middle of them; Daniel was in front while the short, curvaceous girl kept moving around, walking around us and raising the pen she was holding to her lips as though she wanted to say something. When we got to the main street, I said, “In this street, the bodies were piled up, in the surrounding alleys, too.” The girl came up close to me, raised her pen to her lips and repeated, “In this street.” Then she leaned against me, put her head on my shoulder, and held the pose. I tried to move away a little, for that sort of thing is frowned upon in the camp, but she didn’t move. I thought she must be weeping because I could feel her shaking against my shoulder. I turned toward her, and her head fell onto my chest. Then I took her by the shoulders, pushed her back, and said: “Let’s go.”

Daniel asked me about the “vertical” bodies: He said that Jean Genet had described the bodies as being “vertical.”

“Of course, of course,” I answered. “That happened here.” I didn’t tell them about the flies; I couldn’t bring myself to. I didn’t say anything, even though I’d been determined to tell them the story. While I was taking my shower, I’d told myself that the story of the flies would be the high point of the visit. I’d tell them how I left the hospital and how the flares fired by the Israeli army had lit up the night, turning it into a day of blood and fear.

I TOLD THE armed men who broke into the hospital that I was Turkish. I spoke English to them and told them I was a Turkish doctor and couldn’t permit them to violate the sanctity of the hospital. And they believed me! You know what they did to the Palestinian nurses, but me they believed, or forgot about. So I ran away from the hospital. I know I should have stayed, but I left crazed into that night illuminated with fire. Dear God, all I remember of that night are the shadows. I ran, and the houses would emerge from the darkness into the light and then fall back again into darkness. I ran to Umm Hassan’s house, trembling with fear. I’m telling you now, and I’m ashamed of myself. A man can become, in an instant, what he truly is and then forget. I’ve forgotten those tears that turned me into drops of water at Umm Hassan’s. Umm Hassan cried, too, but she never reminded me of my weeping and my fear, not even on the day when we finally succeeded in building a wall around the mass grave. You remember how the women congregated and wailed, and how Umm Hassan upbraided them, saying: “No tears! Let’s thank God we were able to bring them together in death as fate had brought them together in life!”

She said it was forbidden to weep, and everyone fell silent.

Then Umm Ahmad al-Sa’di let out a long youyouand cried, “We won, everybody. We won, and we have a grave.” Umm Ahmad al-Sa’di, who was trilling and leaping about, had lost her seven children, her husband, and her mother in the massacre; all she had left was her daughter, Dunya. She trilled and leapt, and the tears started. Everybody left the grave and gathered around the woman.

Umm Ahmad al-Sa’di held more sorrow than the grave. She said that her belly was a grave. She said she could smell death in her guts, could smell blood.

The people gathered around Umm Ahmad, whose daughter was standing there, leaning on her crutches. I saw Dunya again today. She was just a pair of eyes suspended in an oval, wan face, eyes that looked as though they’d fallen from some distant place and got stuck in that sand-colored face. A yellowish ochre shade of sand. Leaning on her crutches, she stood wide-eyed, looking around, hoping someone might speak to her. I went over and asked how things were. She said she was looking for work, and I suggested the hospital, but she said she’d spent two years in hospitals and couldn’t stand them. She said she wanted to go to Tunis and asked if I could do anything.

At that point I didn’t yet know her story. For me she wasn’t much more than a lump of bloody flesh thrown down in the emergency room. I tried to treat her, before proposing that she be moved to the American University Hospital because we didn’t have the means to treat her. She was a wreck. Fractures in the chest and pelvis. Blood and holes everywhere. They moved her to the American University Hospital, where she stayed for about two years, and it never occurred to me to visit her; like all the others, I was flabbergasted by her mother’s loss. Umm Ahmad was the story, and the strange thing is that the woman never mentioned her daughter, as though Dunya had died along with the others.

Dunya was standing next to the wall. I asked how things were, and she asked about the possibility of going to Tunis to work in one of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s offices.

When I left, she joined me.

She said, “I’ll walk with you to the hospital.”

“I’ll walk with you to your house,” I responded.

She smiled and said she was strong now. I asked about her injuries, and she said she didn’t remember anything, or rather, she remembered running through the street, and when she woke up, she was in the hospital.

She told me how the men from the Lebanese Red Cross had discovered she wasn’t dead. They were at the entrance to the mass grave, sprinkling quicklime on the bodies, when a fat man discovered her, picked her up, and rushed with her to the hospital. He stood in front of me sobbing like a child.

“Doctor, doctor, not dead. Still alive, doctor.”

They threw you down in the emergency room, and that fat young Lebanese man – his white gown almost busting at the seams – begged me to go with him, saying we had to dig around at the grave site: “We may have buried people who’re still alive. Please, Doctor, come with me.” I went with him, and there was the smell and the flies. All I remember are the flies. I didn’t see the bodies. They were sprinkling quicklime over the piled-up, puffed-up corpses, and the flies were buzzing and making insane sounds. The man in white led me by the hand and I doubled over frightened of the flies. They were like a cloud or a woolen cover of black and yellow buzzing. I bent over and let him guide me, jumping over the corpses. I jumped, too. I let go of his hand and fell down and rolled over in that white stuff and got up again clinging to the ground and to the lime and ran toward the hospital. I ran turning and looking back afraid that he might have been following me. I ran with the quicklime dripping from me. I wiped my eyes with my hands so I could see. The flies were creeping into my hair and taking up residence in the depths of me. I wiped my hair and my face and I kept running. When Zainab saw me enter the hospital, she fled. In those days, Abu Salem, we used to fear the dead. We didn’t fear those who killed them, but we feared the people who’d been killed. We feared the quicklime. We were afraid they’d rise up and come toward us, covered with quicklime, shaded beneath their cloud of flies.

That’s how the camp lived, and the people died. We covered them with quicklime to kill the germs and wiped away their features before throwing them into the hole, which later became a soccer field.

I didn’t tell these stories to Catherine and her group, and I didn’t tell them about Dunya. I walked with them through the streets of the camp and took them to the mass grave, which is outside the camp borders now, and there they saw three children playing soccer. Catherine went up to the fence and laid her head on it. I thought she was going to cry, but she didn’t.

“Is that really the grave?” she asked me.

I nodded, but her dancing eyes and short black hair seemed not to believe me. The tall man, whose name I’ve forgotten, asked me about the numbers.

“Fifteen hundred,” I said.

I told them about the wall and said we’d built one around the grave, but that it had been destroyed during the War of the Camps and replaced with this fence.

The tall man said he wanted to talk to people.

“Of course, of course,” I said.

We went back to the main street and took the first turn on the right. We found children running through the alleys and women sitting in front of their houses washing vegetables and talking. We stopped in front of one of the houses.

“Come in, come in,” said the woman.

“Thank you,” I said. “I have a delegation of French actors with me, and they’d like to talk with you a little.”

“Welcome, Dr. Khalil. It’s been ages! How are you? I hope your mind’s at peace.”

Oh no, I thought, what I was afraid of is happening. Now she’ll ask me about Shams, and I’ll have to lie. But she didn’t, thank God; I ignored her words and explained that the French visitors wanted her to tell them about the massacre.

When the woman heard the word massacre, her face fell.

“No, Son. We’re not a cinema. No.”

The woman went into her house and closed the door in our faces.

I was embarrassed because I’d told the French group that the people here loved guests and spoke naturally, and that we only had to knock on the door and go in.

After the first door was closed in our faces, all the others were, too, and no one wanted to speak to us.

The fourth and last woman whose door we knocked on was very kind, but she, too, said she had nothing to tell us.

“My story? No, Dr. Khalil. I don’t want to talk about my children. Come and talk to me about something else. Not my children.” Then she came up close to me and whispered, “Don’t tell them what I’m going to tell you now, it’s a secret. Can you keep a secret? Every time I talk about them, or say something to them, they come to me at night. I hear their voices speaking like the wind. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but I know them from their voices. I know they don’t want me to talk about them. Maybe whenever I talk about them they remember the massacre. The dead remember, and their memories hurt like knives.”

“You’re right, Sister. Do whatever you like,” I told her and made a sign to the visitors to leave.

“No, please. Have some tea!”

We drank tea in a living room whose walls were covered from top to bottom with photographs banded with black ribbons. Catherine got up and bent over the sofa to examine one of the photos close up. It showed a girl of about ten standing with her short skirt riding up a little on her left thigh. She was wearing sandals and playing with her braid. Catherine bent even closer until her face was almost touching the picture, but the woman pulled her back and said, “Sit down.” Catherine almost fell over, but she sat down silently. When we left, however, the tall man asked me what the woman had said to Catherine. I told him she’d asked her to sit down and keep away from the picture.

“Why?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“We’re bothering them, I can understand,” he said.

“We shouldn’t have come,” said Catherine.

Then Daniel disappeared. We left the house, walked on a little, and he was no longer with us.

“Where’s Daniel?” I asked.

The tall man said Daniel was like that; he had to explore places by himself.

“Do you want to wait for him?” I asked.

“No need,” said the tall man. “He’ll figure out how to get back to the hospital on his own.”

“Is that all?” asked Catherine.

“There’s the mosque that was turned into a cemetery,” I said, and explained that during the long siege we’d turned the mosque into a cemetery because the original cemetery had been occupied and destroyed.

“I don’t want to go. Nous sommes des voyeurs,” Catherine said to the tall man, who tried to translate what she had said, to the effect that it was the tragedy of intellectuals and artists that they had to go and look and react, and then they’d forget. When he read Jean Genet’s text on the massacre, he said, he felt as though he’d been struck by lightning; he said he hadn’t read the words, he’d seen them – the words emerged from the pages and moved around his room. That was why he’d decided to come here: “I had to see the people so the words would go back into the book and become just words again.”

I didn’t get into a discussion with him because I couldn’t understand what lay behind all that finickiness of his. I understood the meaning of voyeursand said one didn’t have to be an intellectual to be a voyeur; we’re all voyeurs. Voyeurism is one of the human race’s greatest pleasures; uncovering what others want to hide justifies our own mistakes and makes life more bearable.

Catherine said the people were right. “Why should they talk to us? Why should they give us information? Who are we to them? It’s not right.”

I didn’t tell them what the fourth woman had said to me; I felt I had no right to reveal her secret. I also felt a certain pride, believe me, for when we suppress pain it shows we know its meaning. Nothing equals pain as much as the suppression of it.

On our way back to the hospital, we met Abu Akram, and he invited us to the Popular Front office, where I was introduced to Salim As’ad.

You agree that holding your tongue is a noble stand to take, don’t you? They were right not to talk. How could they, after all? We don’t tell these tales to each other, so why should we tell them to foreigners? What’s the point? And those voices – is it true that the voices of the dead flow through the alleys of the camp?

And Dunya? Why do I keep seeing Dunya, with her wide eyes, in front of the tall French man, speaking to him?

I don’t know Dunya. Behind the cemetery fence, I encountered her eyes, suspended in her face. I’d promised to try to work something out for her in Tunis, and then forgot the matter. Later I discovered that Dunya wasthe matter, all because of Dr. Muna Abd al-Karim, professor of psychiatry at the Lebanese University. Professor Muna works with the Association for the Disabled in the camp, and Dunya was a regular visitor. We thought Dunya had found a job for herself, but she hadn’t been working, she’d been talking. Foreign journalists would come and Professor Muna would take them to his office, where Dunya would tell her story with Professor Muna translating. Dunya had become a new kind of storyteller, one who tells stories only to foreigners, and she had become a story herself. I don’t have any objections – everyone’s free to do as they please – but a month after the Carlton Hotel Women’s Conference, they brought her here to the hospital and Dr. Amjad refused to receive her. He said that there was nothing he could do for her, that she was untreatable, but Salim As’ad and I admitted her by force. She’s living now in a room on the second floor, close to yours. Her situation is precarious because her pelvis has been shattered again. I think there must be some problem with her bones because they’re disintegrating. Today Dunya looks like a corpse and needs a private nurse. Her mother visits her every day but instead of helping us, she weeps. And Dunya says nothing. Her eyes, suspended in her thin, wan face, look without seeing, silent.