Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 36 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

“Tell me where his house is. I need to deliver a letter from his wife.”

I said I didn’t know. I told her that she might have mistaken the place; this was the Shatila camp.

“I know, I know,” she said. “I’ve come to Shatila from far away. His wife in Ain al-Zaitoun gave me a letter for him. I have to deliver it and go back because it’s already night and I’m a stranger here and know no one.”

“I’m afraid that I can’t help you, Madame.”

I continued on my way toward your house.

I heard her voice behind me, so I went back to her.

“What did you say?”

“Where are the people of the camp?” she said. “Can’t we ask one of them? Where’s the headman?”

I told her people didn’t leave their houses in the evening.

“Why?”

“Because they’re afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes, afraid. Things aren’t too good, as you can see.”

“What am I supposed to do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have to deliver the letter and go back. If you could give it to him, I could leave it with you and go.”

“But I don’t know the man.”

“Ask about him.”

“I assure you, Madame, there’s no one by that name in the camp. The camp’s small, and I’m a doctor. I know everyone.”

“What’s your name, Sir?”

“Khalil. Dr. Khalil Ayyoub,” I said.

“Please, Doctor. Help me.”

“I’m at your service.”

“It seems I’m going to spend the night here. Take me to one of the hotels in the camp.”

“You’re looking for a hotel in a refugee camp! Impossible. You can go into town. Beirut’s full of hotels.”

“I don’t want to go into town,” she said. “I don’t have time. I want a hotel here.”

“I can assure you there aren’t any. I don’t know what to say.”

“Can’t I spend the night here?”

“Of course,” I said, “but where? You can sleep in my house, if you like.”

“You’re married?”

“No.”

“You live with your mother?”

“No.”

“Sleep in the house of a bachelor who lives alone? Impossible!”

“No, you’ve misunderstood me. I’ll take you to my house, and then I’ll go back to the hospital. I’m a doctor, as I told you. I’ll drop you off and go.”

“Agreed,” she said.

And she set off.

She walked ahead of me to the house. The truth is I didn’t want to take her to my house; yours was closer. I’d take her to your house, get the photos together, and go. She could sleep there.

She walked ahead of me as though she knew the way to my house, and when we arrived, she stopped in front of the door. I got out my keys, opened the door, and we went in. It was dark, and there was a smell of mold. I struck a match, because the camp’s electricity was cut off, and lit a paraffin lamp. Then I saw her. She was sitting on the sofa, her case beside her, her head in her hands, and the slope of her shoulders extended like a shadow that danced on the floor of the room.

“Please make yourself at home,” I said. “I’m going. Good night.”

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To the hospital,” I said.

“But I’m hungry,” she said.

I put the bag I was carrying on the table and said, “Please help yourself.”

She opened the bag and saw the bread and halva.

“After all that distance, you’re going to feed me halva? No. I’ll make dinner. Where’s the kitchen?”

I picked up the paraffin lamp and led her to the kitchen.

“I hate the smell of paraffin,” she said. “Don’t you have any candles in the house?”

“Yes, yes.” I went to the bedroom to look for the pair of candles I’d hidden in a drawer in case the paraffin ran out. I lit the two candles, placing one in the kitchen and one in the living room.

She opened her case and pulled out a plastic bag.

“Wait,” she said.

I sat in the living room to wait for her, thinking the situation over. No, I had nothing in mind: The woman was wearing a long black dress that covered her from head to toe, and her face was half-hidden by her scarf. I can say that I didn’t see her. So how?

No, Abu Salem, I had nothing like that in mind.

Then I saw her with a dishcloth knotted around her waist. She started cleaning the house. I tried to help her, but she waved me off. In a matter of minutes – I swear it was minutes, not more – everything was sparkling clean. She was like a magician: She went around the house upending things and cleaning them, and the smell of perfumed soap emanated from every corner.

Then she said she’d make dinner.

“There’s nothing in the house. Do you want me to go out and buy things?”

“There’s no need,” she said. “I have everything.”

I was sitting in the living room waiting for the meal when she came out of the kitchen. “You go in and take a bath. I’ve cleaned everything up for you, but you’re not clean.”

I picked up the pot of hot water that she’d prepared for me in the kitchen and went into the bathroom. When I came out, she was waiting. Then she disappeared for a few minutes in the bathroom and came out again with her long hair hanging down loose over her shoulders. Black hair, brown skin, large green eyes, a small mouth, a long face, finely sculpted hands, and long, thin fingers.

Beyond description.

I’d never seen a woman so beautiful, or with such presence – it was as though she’d drawn a circle around me from which I couldn’t escape.

The strangest thing is that I didn’t ask her who she was or what she wanted. At that point I realized the whole story of the letter had been a pretext. Even so, I didn’t ask. I was like one possessed, like one revolving in the circle of the Sufi ceremony of remembrance, as if all language had left me and I only knew how to repeat the words, God! God!

We sat down at the table, across which she offered me a platter of fried fish.

I couldn’t smell oil. How had she done it?

It was a fish banquet – red mullet, sea bass, and black bream – there was also taratursauce and parsley.

“Do you have some arak?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said.

I brought over the bottle of local arak and poured two glasses, added water, and offered her one.

“Where’s the ice?” she asked.

“Where am I supposed to find ice?” I said. “The electricity’s shut off, as you can see.”

“On Jebel al-Sheikh,” she said, smiling, “he who drinks arak should know where to get ice.”

She said she didn’t drink arak without ice.

I drank though. I drank my glass and hers and poured myself several more and wallowed in the fish, taratur, and arak.

She ate slowly, watching me.

“Good health, good health!” she said.

“Drink!” I said.

“No, I don’t like arak.”

And I drank until my pores opened and my sinews loosened up. I drank until I felt that my soul had come back to me.

She got up, took the dishes into the kitchen, came back with two glasses of mint tea, and took two small aniseed cakes out of her case.

“Eat one of these,” she said. “There’s a saying of the Prophet’s that goes, ‘If you eat fish, eat something sweet afterwards. The one is made for the other.’”

I ate, but I wasn’t satisfied. Then I opened my brown bag and brought out the halva and devoured it all.

Then all I remember is her arm around me and me being with her, around her, in her. Revolving and rising and tasting nectar such as I’d never tasted in my life.

How can I describe how she was – her breasts, her waist, the slope of her thighs, her knees, the water that sprang from inside her, her whispers, her kisses, her tongue. It was her, not me. I inhaled her and drank her. I drank her drop by drop and she drank me drop by drop. I’d stop and start, rise like waves and descend with the waves, and never end. The waves were inside me, renewing and reshaping themselves. I was above the wave and inside it and beneath it, and she was the wave and the sea and the shore.

I didn’t sleep at all.

I didn’t speak. Yes, I spoke – and she put her hand on my lips and silenced me and took me. . Then how can I. . Brown-skinned, not white, green eyes, not honey-colored, long hair, not short. I don’t know.

That woman, who came from nowhere and stood like a photograph in front of your house, with her black scarf over her head, entered my house and took off her scarf so I could see her hair was pinned up in a bun and thought she must be past sixty, then came out of the bathroom and was transformed.

Her hair was long, her skin dark, her eyes green.

We finished eating the fish, and her skin grew light, her eyes large and black, her dark hair hanging all the way to her knees.

As we drank tea, her body became full, with small drowsy eyes and a complexion the shade of ripe wheat, and she took me.

She started to shimmer and change as though she were a thousand women.

Now I understand.

I want to weep. Please forgive me. I didn’t. .I swear I didn’t. .

The light rose over us. She was still stretched out on the bed, her eyes closed. I got up and put on my clothes. I said to her, “A few minutes. I’ll be back in a few minutes. There’s a patient I have to check on and then I’ll be back.”

She whispered, “I know, I know,” and held out her arms as if calling me back to her.

“No. I’m going to the hospital for a moment and then I’ll bring you back kunafawith cheese for breakfast.”

I left her and went to the hospital, and there at the door was Zainab. She hugged me, wept on my shoulder, and grasped my hand to take me to your room, where you were waiting to be washed for burial.

I pulled my hand from hers and told her I’d be back in a moment.

I left the hospital and ran to the kunafaseller and asked for two platters. The man looked at me with astonished eyes.

“Condolences,” he said.

“May God be with you,” I said and snatched the platters from his hand and ran toward the house, imagining her brown arms and her wide eyes and her full lips and her murmurs.

I entered the house, and she wasn’t there.

She wasn’t in the bedroom, or in the living room, or in the bathroom. The bed was made and everything was in its place.

The kitchen was clean. The smell of mildew filled the house, and the bag of halva was in its place on the table, untouched.

I thought of the suitcase.

I raced through the house, I looked under the bed, I opened the drawers, I searched everywhere, for everything.

I left the house without closing the door behind me and ran through the streets of the camp, peering into the faces of the women, not daring to ask. What could I have asked?

I stopped in front of the halva seller’s shop.

The shopkeeper asked me, “What time is the funeral?”

“Now,” I said.

“How can it be now? Aren’t you going to wait for the noon prayer?”

“Yes, yes, of course we are.”

“What time is it?” I asked him.

“Eight in the morning,” he answered.

I asked about Elias. “Do you know a man who lives here in the camp called Elias al-Roumi?”

“An Elias – a Christian – here in this camp? Have you lost it, Brother? May God help you, they say you took very good care of him. God will reward you, I’m sure. Go and rest now, then come back for the burial.”

I went back to the hospital, and I saw Dr. Amjad wiping away his tears. There were men everywhere, an uproar of lamentation. Amjad said they’d finished washing you, and that the procession would start from the hospital. There was no need to take you to your house.

I left them.

“Where are you going?” asked Amjad.

“I’ll be back,” I said.

I left them and ran through the streets of the camp. I peered into all the faces, then went back home and looked for her again in the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room.

I sat on the chair in front of the table where the bag of bread and halva still was. I opened the bag and ate a whole loaf with halva, then went to the funeral.

Afterwards, I didn’t go back to the hospital.

Zainab told me that Mme. Wedad would be coming to the hospital in the afternoon to inform me of the decision to transfer me to Hamshari Hospital in the Ain al-Hilweh camp because Galilee Hospital was going to close. Zainab said she’d refused a transfer to Tyre: She preferred to stay here, even without work, because anyhow, she was just waiting for the visa from her son.

I said fine, and didn’t go back to the hospital.

I wanted nothing, except to find the woman.

Why had she taken me home and fed me fish?

I’m in love.

I burn like a lover, and I die like a lover.

Three days I was alive in death.

Three days before I despaired of death.

And today, Father, I was lying on my bed and I saw her phantom image and I went toward her but she waved me away.

Once upon a time, I saw, as a dreamer sees, that I was in your bed. I was in your room lying in your bed and the photos were swaying on the walls around me, and I saw her. She stepped out of the wall and approached me. I tried to embrace her but she retreated, and then flattened herself against the wall. I looked at the photograph for a while. It was my wife, who’d been in my bed – what was my wife doing in this photo? What was this woman whose name I didn’t know doing inside the photo of Nahilah?

I woke with a terrified start and wept.

I didn’t weep for Shams as I’ve wept for you and for this woman.

I didn’t weep for my father as I’ve wept for you and for her.

I didn’t weep for my mother as I’ve wept for you and for her.

I didn’t weep for my grandmother as I’ve wept for you and for her.

I left my house barefoot and ran to your grave.

I’m standing here. The night covers me, the March rain washes me, and I tell you, no, this isn’t how stories end. No.

I stand. The rain forms ropes that extend from the sky to the ground. My feet sink into the mud. I stretch out my hand, I grasp the ropes of rain, and I walk and walk and walk

^*Al-Roumi: The Roman.