Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

“That’s a delusion,” you’ll say.

There, I agree with you, but I told Shams when I fell in love with her that I wanted nothing more than to have a child with her. A brown-skinned child that looked like her. No, it’s not true that I was involved in her murder. I swear I had nothing to do with it. The problem wasn’t with me but with Sameh Abu Diab. They killed her to avenge Sameh. I did nothing to hurt her. She told me she loved me and then left to kill Sameh. I loved her the way one loves, but she left and got herself killed. She killed him and then was killed, and that was that. I don’t want to talk about her any more.

I’m worried about you. You’ve settled into death, it’s as though you’ve turned your temporary coma into a permanent state.

Would you like to know what happened to me after you settled into this state of withdrawal?

To begin with, I was overwhelmed by a criminal impulse. I was obsessed with only one thought: of placing a pillow over your face and pressing down until you died of asphyxiation – that I should just kill you, cold-bloodedly and calmly. I felt real hatred for you. I pretended that I hated the world for what it had done to you, but that wasn’t true. I didn’t hate the world, or Fate, or God, I hated you – Yunes, Abu Salem, Izz al-Din, or whatever name fits you best as you lie here in this bed.

No, it’s got nothing to do with wanting to murder my father, as the psychologists would claim. You’re not my father. I already killed him long ago – and his image – after they killed him in front of our house. And I lived with my grandmother, who slept on her amazing pillow. I promised you I’d bring you the pillow, but I forgot. I’ll bring it tomorrow. My grandmother’s pillow doesn’t look like a pillow anymore. It’s turned into a heap of thorns. The flowers inside have faded and dried into thorns. My grandmother used to stuff her pillow with flowers, saying that when she rested her head on it she felt as though she’d returned to her village, and she’d make me rest my head on it. I would lay my head on her pillow and smell nothing but decay. I joined the fedayeen when I was nine years old to escape the flowers of al-Ghabsiyyeh that my grandmother would pick from the camp’s dump. I hated the perfume of decay and ended up connecting the smell of Palestine with the smell of that pillow. I was convinced then – I still am – that my grandmother was afflicted with floral dementia, a widespread condition among Palestinian peasants who were driven from their villages.

The day her long final illness came, she summoned me to her side. I was in the village of Kafar Shouba in southern Lebanon, where the fedayeen had set up their first camp, when my uncle came and asked me to go to Beirut. In her house in the camp, the woman was dying on her pillow. When she saw me, her face lit up with a pale smile, and she gestured to the others to leave us alone. When everyone was gone, she asked me to sit down next to her on the bed. She whispered that she didn’t own anything she could leave me but this – and she pointed to her pillow – and this – and she pointed to her watch – and this – and she pointed to her Koran.

She squeezed my hand tightly, as if holding onto life itself. She told me she missed my father. Then she closed her eyes and her breathing became irregular. I tried to pull my hand away, but I couldn’t, so I yelled and the women came in and started weeping. She didn’t die, however. I stayed for three days waiting for it to happen, then went back to Kafar Shouba. Two weeks later, I returned to Beirut for her funeral.

I don’t know where I put the watch, the women in the camp decided to bury the Koran with her, but I still have the pillow. I thought of it because I was going to kill you with a pillow. Tomorrow I’ll bring it to you before I throw it away; I must get rid of that pillow of flowers that reeks of decay. The strange thing is that no one who comes to my house notices the smell. Even Shams didn’t smell it. I’m the only one who can smell that secret odor that nauseates me.

I wanted to kill you with the pillow because I hated your incredible insistence on clinging to life, but I hesitated and became afraid, and that was the end of it.

Tomorrow I’ll bring you my grandmother’s pillow and open it so I can see what’s inside. My grandmother used to change the flowers at the beginning of each season, and I think she expected me to continue the tradition. I want to open the pillow to see what happened to the flowers. Why does a person turn to dust when he dies, while an object decomposes and yet remains an object? Strange. Didn’t God create us all from dust?

Tomorrow I’ll open the pillow and let you know.

I wanted to suffocate you and then the desire faded. It was a passing feeling and never recurred, but I did feel it. How can I describe it? It was as though there were another person inside me who leapt out and made me capable of destroying everything. Whenever I became aware of that other person, I’d run out of your room and roam around the hospital. This would calm me down. Now I’m calm. Feeling that things around you and me are moving slowly, I’ve decided to kill some time by talking. Have you heard that terrifying expression “to kill time”? It’s time that kills us, but we pretend it’s the other way around!

So as to kill time and stop it from killing me, I’ve decided to examine you again.

At the beginning, that is, after you’d settled into your lethargy and the fever had left you, you smelled odd. I can’t explain what I mean, because smells are the hardest things to describe. I’ll just say it was the smell of an older man. It seems there are hormones that set different ages apart from one another. The smell of older men differs fundamentally from the smell of men in their prime, and especially from that of thirteen-year-old boys who start to give off a smell of maleness and sex. The smell of older men is different, quiet and pale. Like my grandmother’s pillow, it’s a disturbing scent. No, I wouldn’t say it disgusted me – God forbid. But I was disturbed, and I decided I ought to bathe you twice a day – but the smell was stronger than the soap. Then the smell started to go away, and a new one took its place. No, I don’t say this because I’ve become accustomed to your smell. It’s a medical matter and has clearly to do with hormones. And I believe that – I don’t know how – you’ve started a new life phase that I can’t yet define but that I can discern through your smell.

And because one thing leads to another, as the Arabs say, I want to tell you that you’re wrong, your theories about age and youth are a hundred percent erroneous. I remember I met you one rainy February morning when you were out jogging. I stopped you and told you that jogging after sixty was bad for the heart and lungs and that you should practice a lighter form of exercise, like walking, to lose weight and keep your arteries open. I told you older men should do older men’s sports.

That day you invited me to have coffee at your house and subjected me to a long lecture on aging. “Listen, Son. My father was an old man – I knew him only as an old man. Do you know why? Because he was blind. A person will grow old at forty, not sixty, if he loses the two things that can’t be replaced: his sight and his teeth. Being old means having your sight go and your teeth fall out. At forty, gray hair invades your head, your teeth start to rot, and your vision becomes dim, so you look like an old man. But inside you’re still young; your age consists of how other people see you, it comes from your children. Yes, it’s true: In addition to eyes and teeth, there are the children. We peasants marry early. I got married at fourteen, so just think how old my children and grandchildren were when I was forty. There’s no such thing as being old these days, for two reasons. The first is the invention of glasses, so weak eyesight is no longer an issue, and the second is dentistry, so people don’t have to have all their teeth out by the time they’re seventy or eighty. Here I am today, with all my own teeth and glasses that let me read, so how can you call me an old man? Old age is an illusion. People get old from the inside, not the outside. So long as there’s passion in your heart, it means you’re not an old man.”

On that occasion I meant to ask when you’d last seen her, but I felt shy. I stood up and started looking at the pictures on the wall. Seven sons, three daughters, and fifteen grandchildren, and in the middle the photo of Ibrahim, who’d died as a baby. Twenty-five people, the first fruits of the adventure you forged.

You told me about Ghassan Kanafani. ^*

You told me he came to you with a letter of introduction from Dr. George Habash asking you to tell him your story. He would write it down. It was you who trained George Habash and Wadi’ Haddad and Hani al-Hendi and everyone else in the first cadre. Why didn’t you tell me what that first experiment was like? And also why you joined Fatah? Was it because of Abu Ali Iyad, as you told me, or because you were against plane hijackings? Or because you liked change?

Ghassan Kanafani came, you told him your story, he took notes, and then he didn’t do anything. He didn’t write your story.

Why didn’t he write it? Did you really tell him your story? You never used to tell anyone your story because everyone knew it, so why bother?

Writers are strange. They don’t know that people don’t tell real stories because they’re already known. Kanafani was different though. You told me you liked him and tried to tell him everything. But he didn’t write anything. Do you know why?

It was the mid-fifties when he came to see you, and your story hadn’t yet become a story. Hundreds of people were slipping across from Lebanon to Galilee. Some of them came back and some of them were killed by the bullets of the border guards. That, maybe, is why Kanafani didn’t follow up on the story – because he was looking for mythic stories, and yours was just the story of a man in love. Where would be the symbolism in this love that had no place to root itself? How did you expect he would believe the story of your love for your wife? Is a man’s love for his wife really worth writing about?

However, you became a legend without realizing it, and I want to assure you that if Kanafani hadn’t been assassinated in Beirut by the Israelis in ’72, if the car bomb hadn’t ripped his body to shreds, he’d be sitting with you now in this room, trying to piece your story together.

Times have changed.

Then, you would have to have died in this cold bed to become a story. I know that you’re laughing at me, and I agree – the important thing is not the story but the life. But what are we supposed to do when life tries to force us out? The important thing is life, and that’s what I’m trying to get at with you. Why can’t you understand? Why don’t you get up now, shake death from your body, and leave the hospital?

You don’t love the moon, and you don’t love the blind singer, and you can’t get up.

But moonlight is true light. What is this solar culture that’s killing us? Only moonlight deserves to be called light. You told me about moonstroke. You said that in your village people feared it more than sunstroke, and you’d seek cover in the shade from the moon, not the sun.

The fact is, master, your theories on aging are faulty: It’s not teeth and eyes, it’s smell. Aging is that implacable death that paralyzes body and soul, and it always comes as a surprise. Of course, I agree that in your case the psychological factor was decisive: You became old in one fell swoop when Nahilah died – though, in fact, her death doesn’t explain everything because other women still love you. Nevertheless, you got away.

Don’t put your finger to your lips for silence. I can and will say whatever I like. You don’t want me to talk about Mme. Nada Fayyad? Very well, I won’t say a word – but she came yesterday and stood at the door to your room and wept. A woman of sixty, she came and stood at your door and refused to enter. This is the fourth time she’s come in three months. Yesterday I ran after her and invited her in. I stopped her in the corridor, lit a cigarette, and offered it to her. She was weeping convulsively, mascara running into her eyes.

She said she didn’t go into your room because she didn’t want to see you like that. “Unbelievable!” she said. “How can it be? To hell with this world!”

I was surprised by her accent.

She told me she was from al-Ashrafiyyeh, in Beirut – her name was Nada Fayyad – she’d known you for a long time and used to work with you in the Fatah media office on al-Hamra Street.

Did you work in media? What did you have to do with media and journalists and intellectuals? You always used to say you were a peasant and didn’t understand all that nonsense! Or is Mme. Nada lying?

She asked me if I was your son and said I looked a lot like you. Then she kissed me on the cheek and left. You must have seen her when she came in but didn’t want to talk to her. Why don’t you talk to her? Does she know about you and Nahilah? Or did you hide that story from her and give her a different account of your wife and children and journeys to your country?

Tell me the truth, confess you had a relationship with this woman. Maybe you even loved her. Tell me you loved her so I can believe the story of your other love. How do you expect me to believe you were faithful to one woman your whole life? Even Adam, peace be upon him, wasn’t faithful to his only wife.

You had the habit of hiding your truth with a smile. When I asked you about other women, you had only one response: No. A big nowould emerge from your lips. Now the secret is out: Amna and Nada and I don’t know who else. One after another they will come, as though your illness has turned into a trap for scandals. I’ll sit here with you and count your scandals.

Please don’t get upset – I’m only describing the facts. Shams taught me to do this. She said she’d never lie to me. She said she’d lied to her husband and felt there was no reason to lie to me. She said she’d learned to lie after the long torment she’d lived through with him and had relished it because it had been her sole means of survival. Then she started to get sick of it. She said that when she lied successfully she felt she was disappearing. In the end she decided to run away so the lying and disappearing would stop. She said she wanted an innocent relationship with me. Then I discovered she was lying.

When I fell in love with her, she said she hated sex because her husband had raped her. I believed her and tried to build an innocent relationship with her. But, of course, I was lying to her: I used the phrase “an innocent relationship” so I could sleep with her. Then I discovered she was raping me.

I say she was raping me, but I’m lying. We lie because we can’t find the words; words don’t indicate specific things, which is why everyone understands them as they wish. I meant to say she enjoyed sex, as I did, which doesn’t mean she raped me. On the contrary, it means we loved sex, reveling in it, laughing and frolicking. She would yell at the top of her voice – she said her husband had forbidden her to yell, and she loved me because of the yelling. She’d yell and I’d yell. I’ve no right to call that rape, so I withdraw what I said and apologize.

I’m certain Nahilah was different. You don’t want me to talk about Nahilah? Very well, I’ll shut up. With Shams, it was not a question of sex; I lost myself in that woman. And I wasted all those years of my life only to discover I’d been deceived. I don’t concur with Shams’ theory of love, that every love is a deception. She dominated me completely, and she knew it. Once, after disappearing for two months, she turned up as though she’d never been away, and instead of quarreling with her, I dissolved into her body. That was when I told her I was a lost cause, but she already knew it. She would disappear for days and weeks at a time, and then appear and tell me unbelievable stories that I believed. Now I’ve found out what a fool I was. Love makes a person naïve and drives him to believe the unbelievable.

The woman was amazing. After we’d made love and screamed and moaned, she’d light a cigarette, settle on the edge of the bed, and tell me about her adventures and her journeys. Amman, Algiers, Tunis. She’d tell me she saw me every day and heard my voice calling to her every morning. She’d ask me to repeat her name over and over again; she’d never get tired of hearing it. I’d sound her name once, twice, three times, a dozen times, then I’d stop, and I’d see her face crumple like a child’s, so I’d start again, and we’d start making love again.

Then I discovered she was lying.

No – at that moment, when I was repeating her name, I knew, but I used to relish the lie. That’s love – enjoying a lie, then waking up to the truth.

After the killing of Sameh Abu Diab, I looked everywhere for her. My first feeling was fear. I was afraid she’d kill me as she’d killed him. I told myself she was a madwoman who murdered her lovers. Instead of feeling jealousy or sorrow, I found fear. Instead of looking back over my relationship with this woman, I began shivering in my sleep.

Then she died.

No. Before she died, I went looking for her so I could warn her of her fate.

Do you believe me now? I know that the day her death became known you looked at me suspiciously and said, “Shame on you! That’s not how a woman should be killed. A woman in love must never die.”

I told you she was a killer. She killed the man she loved and then claimed she’d done it to revenge her honor because he’d deceived her. He’d promised to divorce his wife and marry her, but didn’t do it.

I told you, “Shams is lying. I know her better than any of you.”

“And why should she lie?” you asked me.

“Because she loved me.”

You told me then that I was naïve, that we never could understand the logic of the heart, and the point of her relationship with me might have been to rid herself of the ghost of her love for Sameh. You explained to me that a lover takes refuge in other relationships in order to escape the incandescence of his passion. You despised me because I was the “other man,” and you didn’t believe I’d had nothing to do with the killing. It’s true I appeared before the investigating committee in the Ain al-Hilweh camp, but I didn’t participate in the massacre.

Now I call Shams’ killing a massacre rather than an execution, as I used to. It was terrible. They tricked her, asking her to go to the Miyyeh wi-Miyyeh camp to be reconciled and to pay blood money, and they were waiting for her. A man with a machine gun came from each family; they hid themselves behind the mounds lining the highway, and when she arrived – you know what happened. There’s no need to describe the shreds of woman stuck to the metal of the burned-out car.

Why am I talking about Shams when we’re supposed to be talking about Mme. Nada Fayyad? Was Nada your way of escaping the incandescence of Nahilah?

You don’t want me to talk about Nada? Okay, suggest another subject then.

I know you don’t like talking about these things, and I never meant to end up here. I just wanted to tell you a story you didn’t know. I must concentrate because one thing leads to another.

I was describing your physical condition to you. After they pulled out the IV needle, they put the feeding tube into your nose. Yesterday I decided to add a drug called L-Dopa that’s used for epileptics and has proven effective for the comatose. This is something I should have done earlier. Why didn’t I think of it sooner? Never mind. We’ll have to wait a few days before we’ll notice its effects.

I know you’re in pain, and I can sense your rigidity in this white atmosphere. Here you are – wrapped in white, surrounded by dust and noise and incomprehensible murmurs.

I know that your back is hurting you. I promise you that will change; I’m rubbing your back with creams that will improve your circulation. I won’t allow poor circulation to give you sores. There’s no way around the pressure sores; we just need to deal with them quickly. Whatever we do, however much we massage you, we’ll never be able to prevent the sores that come from lying motionless in bed.

We’ve inserted a permanent catheter. It has to be there or you’d be poisoned by your own urine, because instead of wetting yourself, as Nurse Zainab had expected, you are retaining everything. The catheter will most likely lead to an inflammation of the urethra. That’s why we take your temperature every day. I know you hate it, but I have to do it. Please let me use the suppositories three times a week – even the milk is converted into shit. God, how horrible we discover our bodies to be – a feeding tube at the top, a tube for waste below, and us in between.

Please don’t despise yourself, I beg you. If only you knew how happy I was when I discovered it wasn’t over, that your cells were still renewing themselves even in the midst of this death.

I’m cutting your hair, clipping your nails and shaving your beard, but the most important thing is your new odor, an odor of milk and powder almost like a baby’s.

I’ll describe how I spend my day with you, so you can relax and stop muttering.

I enter your room at 7 a.m., empty your catheter and clean your nails. Then I mop your room. After that I give you a bath with soap and water, for which I use an expensive soap that I bought myself, because here at the hospital they refuse to buy “Baby Johnson” claiming that it costs a lot and is supposed to be for babies. Then I change your white gown and call Zainab to help me lift you and sit you in the chair; she holds you up while I change the sheets. I don’t want to give you more to worry about, but the sheets were a problem. What kind of hospital is this? They said they weren’t responsible for sheets, so I had to buy three sets. I’ve asked Zainab to wash them, and I give her a small amount for the service. That way I don’t have to worry anymore about changing the sheets every day. Next, I put you back in bed, get the mucus extractor (because you can’t cough now), extract the mucus from your windpipe, clean the extractor, and rest a little.

At eight-thirty, I get your breakfast ready and feed it to you gently through your nose. At twelve-thirty, I prepare your lunch and, before feeding you, tip you a little on your side and wipe your face with a damp towel.

At five, I make your afternoon snack, which is a bit different because I mix honey into the milk, farm honey from the village of al-Sharqiyyeh in the south.

At nine, I rub your body with alcohol, then sprinkle talcum powder on it. When I find the beginnings of a bed sore, I stop rubbing and bathe you again. The evening bath isn’t mandatory every day.

At nine-thirty, you eat dinner.

After dinner, I stay with you a while and tell you stories. Sometimes I’ll fall asleep in my chair and wake up with a start at midnight. Or I’ll leave you quietly and go to my room in the hospital, where I sleep.

My room is a problem.

They all think I sleep there because I’m scared and on the run. To tell you the truth, I am scared. Amin al-Sa’id came to see me three months ago. You know him: he was a comrade of mine in Fatah’s Sons of Galilee brigade and now lives in the Rashidiyyeh camp near Tyre. He told me they’d decided to take special security measures because Shams’ family had sent a bunch of their young men from Jordan to Lebanon to avenge their daughter, and he asked me to be careful. I told him I didn’t care because I had a clear conscience. But, as you see, I’m stuck in this hospital and unable to leave.

The surprising thing, master, is how much you’ve changed. I won’t tell you how much thinner you’ve gotten, since I’m sure you’re aware of that. And your little paunch – which you hated so much you’d run five kilometers every day hoping to get rid of it – is gone. I think you’ve lost more than half your weight.

Zainab thinks that your new smell is the result of the soap, powder, and creams I use to massage you, but that’s not true. You smell like a baby now because you eat what babies eat. Your smell is milky – a white smell on a white body.

I suspect you’ve started to shrink a little; maybe tomorrow I’ll bring a tape measure. Don’t be frightened, it’s just your bones contracting because of the lack of movement or the cells not renewing themselves due to your age. Your bones are getting shorter and you’re getting shorter, but so what? Don’t get upset: Soon, when you get up, I’ll organize a special diet full of vitamins for you and everything will be as it was, and better.

Do you hear me?

Why don’t you say anything?

Didn’t you like the story?

I know what you want now. You want me to leave you alone to sleep, and you want the radio. The bastards stole the radio. Last night I left it on all night. I thought it would keep you company while you were on your own, but they stole it.

I know who they are. They haven’t forgotten their status and wealth during the revolution. Don’t they know I’m the poorest guy here? True, I’m a nurse and a doctor, but I’m also a beggar. The golden days are over, but they haven’t yet digested that we’re back to square one – poor.

And you, have you forgotten those days?

Have you forgotten how Abu Jihad al-Wazir, ^*God rest his soul, would take a tattered scrap of paper and use it to disburse unimaginable sums to people in need of money? Indignant, I mentioned it to you, but you didn’t agree with me. I told you so I could make the point that money had corrupted us and would destroy us, but you explained everything to me then and asked me not to say anything about Abu Jihad that I would regret later. “Two men, Son, represent all that’s best among the martyrs – Abu Ali Iyad and Abu Jihad al-Wazir.” Could you have had a premonition of his assassination in Tunis? Did you know about it then, or did you just see it coming? You said Abu Jihad used a tattered scrap of paper to disburse money to show his contempt for it, because money is nothing.

I’ll buy you a new radio tomorrow.

What?

You don’t want one?

You don’t like listening to the news any more?

I’ll buy you a tape player and some tapes. You love Fairouz, and I’ll buy you some Fairouz songs, in particular the one that goes, “I’ll see you coming under the cloudless sky, lost among the almond leaves.” Tomorrow I’ll bring you the cloudless sky and the almond leaves and Fairouz, and all the old songs of Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab. I’ll bring “The wasted lover is spurned by his bed” – how I love Ahmad Shawqi, the prince of poets! Tomorrow I’ll tell you the story of his relationship with the young singer Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab.

He was my lord, my soul was in his hands.

He squandered it – God bless his hands!

How I love love, Abu Salem! Tomorrow we’ll sing and relive our loves. You’ll love and I’ll love – you and I, alone in the only hospital in a corner of the only camp in Beirut.

Recite this Surah with me:

Say, “I seek refuge in the Lord of men,

the King of men,

the God of men,

from the evil of the slinking prompter

who whispers in the hearts of men,

of djinn and men.” ^*

Say the verse. The Koran will comfort your heart.

I’m going now. Goodnight.

^*Liquidation by Jordanian forces of Palestinian troops based in Jordan.

^*Abd al-Qadir Husseini, major figure in the Palestinian National Movement, died in combat in 1948.

^*Considered the greatest of Classical Arabic poets. (915–965)

^*Palestinian writer and spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Assassinated by the Israeli secret service in Beirut in 1972.

^*Fatah leader, assassinated by the Israeli secret service April 15, 1988.

^*Koran, Surah CXIV.

WHY DON’T you answer?

Why don’t you want to tell me where the goodis to be found?

Why would you believe me, anyway?

Last night I said goodnight, but I didn’t go to sleep. Every night I say the same thing and don’t go. I said goodnight because I was tired of everything. I sit with you and get upset. I sit and get fed up. I’m sick and tired of waiting. And I still can’t sleep. I yawn, exhaustion fills my body as if all I need to do to drop off is put my head on the pillow, but I can’t sleep.

Sleep is the most beautiful thing.

I lie down on the bed and close my eyes. The numbness that comes before sleep steals into my head. . and then my body convulses, and I’m jolted awake. I light a cigarette, gaze at its glowing end in the dark, and my eyelids start to droop. I put out the cigarette, close my eyes, and let the phantoms take over. I think about Kafar Shouba; for ages now Kafar Shouba’s been my sleeping companion. I lie down, and I go there and see the flares.

I was seventeen when I saw flares for the first time. At the time, I was a fedayeen fighter, one of the first cadre that came through Irneh in Syria to southern Lebanon to build the first fedayeen base.

I heard of Kafar Shouba on my way there, and the name stuck in my mind. In fact our base wasn’t in Kafar Shouba but in an olive grove belonging to a neighboring village, al-Khreibeh. All the same, when in my drowsiness I travel back to those days, I go to Kafar Shouba.

I was the youngest. Actually, I’m not completely sure anymore, but in any case I was certainly too young for the job of political commissar that Abu Ali Iyad had handed me.

I was scared.

A political commissar has no right to be scared. I covered up my fear with a lot of talk, and the military commander of the base, a twenty-eight-year-old blond lieutenant named Abu al-Fida, used to call me the talk-a-lot-ical commissar.

I talked and talked because I wanted the fedayeen to acquire political consciousness: We wanted to liberate the individual, not just the land.

During those days – July of ’69 – the Americans made it to the moon, and Armstrong walked on its white face.

That day, I remember, Abu al-Fida got very angry with me and punished me. Is that any way to deal with people – punishing a political commissar in front of his men for expressing an opinion?