As Though She Were Sleeping (22 page)

Is this brother serious about killing his brother? asked Sister Milana.

Saadeh confirmed it.

What a man! said the nun. He ought to have been your firstborn son. If Salim really wants to be a monk, he should go to Mount Athos in Greece. The monks there are the real thing – true Orthodox monks, praise the Lord!

So you want to send my son off to Greece, God forgive you!

Wouldn’t that be better than seeing him die?

Why would he die?

Didn’t you tell me his brother Niqula means to kill him? Niqula should give him a bit of a scare to get him to change his mind, and meanwhile I’ll see to what we need to do.

What if he doesn’t change his mind? asked Saadeh.

Then he dies, said the nun.

He dies!

What can we do about it?

You mean, you’d approve?

No, I didn’t say that, but these things are the will of God.

And I lose my boys!

You won’t have lost more than you’ve lost already – is there anything more fearsome than unbelief like this? Leave Niqula alone to say what he wants and don’t put any pressure on him.

You mean, you don’t have any problems if a brother kills his brother?

Of course I do – Thou shalt not kill, says the Commandment. But that doesn’t mean a person knows how God’s will is going to work out. The Commandment says: Thou shalt not kill, and the Commandment said it a very long time ago, but people did not stop killing each another. Anyway, all people are brothers. Saadeh, that means when people kill, they are always killing brothers. But of course I’m against killing.

The nun pulled Saadeh forward by the hand and they knelt before the
icon of Mar Ilyas. The nun murmured her prayers in the presence of the saint who stood erect in a fiery chariot holding up a flaming sword.

He is the one who will deliver your children to safety, Saadeh. Don’t be afraid.

Saadeh cried for most of the day. This woman whose solace was to spend almost all of her waking hours in the Convent of the Archangel Mikhail felt profoundly shaken and lost. Yes, in her prayers and her fasting and her devout hope for brotherly love, she believed in the power of true faith. But she despised the Jesuits because they spoke in Jesuit-speak and prayed in the Latin language, which she did not understand.

But it’s just like you, Mama – you pray in Greek and you don’t understand what the words mean, Salim protested.

No, we do understand, or even if we don’t understand the words, Greek touches the heart as it is spoken, and the heart is where we understand everything.

It’s not necessary that we understand the words of the prayer, said Salim. The Pope is the only one who truly understands. That’s why someone has to know seven languages – at least – to become Pope.

Shut your mouth and don’t say a word about that man! She made the sign of the cross as if seeking Satan’s protection from the fellow.

The storm Salim had set off dispelled quickly enough. After Niqula announced his intention to kill his brother, Salim never returned to the topic of entering the monastery. Milia was convinced that one day her eldest brother would simply disappear without a trace, having been swallowed up in a black robe in one of the Jesuit monasteries somewhere outside of Lebanon. That way the original sin would not really be committed and so Abel would not seek revenge on his brother Cain. For what was the meaning of the story if it became mere revenge? Had it been a matter of simple revenge,
and had it worked, then no one would remember Abel and the story would have died a swift clean death.

No one knew why Salim changed. Was it the relationship with Frère Eugene or was it failing to pass his courses at the law school, or was it something else entirely?

Salim’s relationship with the Jesuit brother began with the Sunday school and the films and continued for a very long time. Salim started going to the summer camps which Eugene organized for the youth of the area. And then suddenly Salim came and announced that he had gotten a scholarship to study law at the Jesuits’ university and it would not cost his family a penny. But Salim seemed unable to bring his study of the law to a conclusion. He remained at the university for years, and whenever he was asked when he would become an
avocato
he would respond by saying that he was working and studying at the same time, and that had delayed his graduation. As for what he worked at and where, no one knew. It seems he failed at the law or was distracted by other activities. And then when he came to them with his Jesuit bombshell, everyone realized instantly that he had not been simply studying law after all. Probably he had even joined study sessions in Catholic theology. He told Musa that Frère Eugene had promised to get him a travel bursary to Rome so that he could continue his studies there, but only on condition that he would enter the monastic life.

Ten years had gone wasted, while Niqula and Abdallah worked in the father’s shop and then switched to the coffin business, and Musa went on with his studies, and Milia left school to become a homemaker. Salim just went on playing around with theology, as their mother said. Then he had the goodness to come and inform us he was going to become a monk! she groused. Thank God Haajj Niqula threatened him, said Milia – and she heard her mother’s voice coming out of her own throat, as if she had had no part in forming those words. There’s no doubt Frère Eugene was the
root of this disaster, but we rid ourselves of one calamity only to fall into a new disaster.

The
new disaster
was the buried tale. Mansour listened carefully to the unfamiliar fragments that came his way. He became convinced that he had been in the wrong. Now he must give the story another burial out of fear for Milia’s neck, which had filled up with razor-thin red lines.

It didn’t bother me all that much, said Milia. A bridegroom, they said to me. Oh, a bridegroom, I said, and I accepted because what they said to me was
accept
. Then he disappeared and we understood that Salim had dragged him off so that he could marry Angèle. Exactly how it all happened no one seems to know. What did I have to do with whether Salim could marry his girl? I certainly don’t know! All I know is that Angèle had a sister, an older sister, named Odette, and that their father wouldn’t hear of Angèle marrying until her older sister was married. So, Salim convinced my fiancé to agree to the scheme, and the two men disappeared and went to live in Aleppo and got work in the woodworking shop owned by the girls’ uncle Jacques Estefan. So, instead of a brother killing his brother, a brother killed his sister. In a word, it seems the blame for it all falls on my brother – everyone said so. I said, No, maybe it is Najib’s fault. Maybe he’s the one who made it all happen. Najib was smarter than Salim and he didn’t fear his Lord. My brother’s just a poor simple fellow trying to get along, I’m sure of that. But no one believed me and all of them went on saying it was Salim who was to blame. So I believed them – what could I do? And I started saying the same thing they said. Then the nun came and said, It’s time to put this business to rest – one scandal but it’s the size of two. The girl’s exposed and so is her brother. The scandal over the girl is nothing unusual. She was engaged and the engagement was broken off.

So, Milia went on, at this point the nun raised her voice loud enough for the neighbors to hear her next words: And she’s as much a virgin as Our
Lady Maryam, peace be on her name! And that won’t change. Then the nun lowered her voice again to say that Salim had gone and married into the Roman Catholics and he’d become one of them. Well, with him, out of the frying pan into the fire, she commented.

Lower your voice, shrieked Saadeh.

It was the only time Saadeh ever raised her voice to the nun. In fact, no one had ever even heard Saadeh’s voice in the presence of the nun. Saadeh always made herself as inconsequential and obsequious as she could before the nun, slumping over, swallowing her voice as though she had developed laryngitis, and speaking only when necessary and in a nearly inaudible murmur. But on that disastrous day Saadeh’s emotions were fixed on her daughter, dreading to think what Milia’s future might be. The business of Salim was not so earthshaking, after all, nor the two women whom he had married. That’s what she said – that he had married two women – and then she hastily retracted it. See – look what I’m saying! But it’s my heart talking, it’s as if he kidnapped his sister and killed her. People are despicable!

Milia told her little brother about the two look-alike sisters – two girls of medium height, round faces and fair skin, long noses and lips so thin they seemed to have been erased and teeth so tiny the gums seemed to swallow them up. Salim had taken the thinner one and given Najib the plumper one, and that was that.

Where did you see them? asked Musa.

They were with Salim at Bourj Square. I was dropping in on my brothers in the shop at the Souq of the Carpenters, and then I walked toward Souq Tawile and saw them. Salim was trying to hide behind the women. No – that wasn’t it. I was walking down the street in the dark. It was raining. I slipped and fell and my dress got completely soaked. I got up and began shaking off as much water as I could, trying to recover, and that’s when I saw them. Najib was strutting along arm in arm with the fat one, and Salim was scampering
along behind as if he were trying to catch up with them but couldn’t. And then Salim slipped. They looked back and saw him, but they just left him there. He was lying on the ground completely soaked. I started to go over to him – I wanted to help my own brother. And then Najib did turn back. I jumped and then I ran. I looked back and saw Najib kiss the fat one and they started laughing, and I started crying.

Musa closed his eyes and said he didn’t understand anymore. As far as my brother Salim goes, he said, he has died and that’s that, I have to forget him. And you as well – you have to forget.

Milia’s tears slipped down her cheeks. Musa bent over his sister, touching his fingers to her eyes. He saw a little girl and saw himself kissing eyes wet with tears. He stepped back and heard his sister asking him not to cry. It’s not worth it, she said. Anyway, it is better this way. It never would have worked. But if he and my brother were failing at university and wanted to become carpenters, fine, then why didn’t Salim get work in the shop here with his brothers? And what does that other one have to do with being a carpenter anyway? Salim we can understand – he is the son of a carpenter, after all. But Najib? Since when is he carpenter material? And then, who is this father who wants to marry off his daughters at any price? And what are they doing in Aleppo, anyway – soon enough they’ll regret it.

Did Milia tell the story the way it happened? Of course not, because no one can know how to tell a story exactly the way it happened and in the order it happened. If that were possible, people would spend their whole lives telling a single story. Milia passed over a number of things. She said nothing about her love for Najib, the way his anecdotes and experiences attracted her, the obscure feelings that took over her spirit and her body, the like of which she had never felt before. Not, at least, until finding out yesterday that she was with child.

But she told him, and she said it had nothing at all to do with her.

But,
yaani
, you loved him? You were in love with him? Mansour asked her.

I’ve not been in love with anyone.

And me?

You’re something else.

What does that mean – something else?

It means, you’re my husband.

And so I’m asking you if you love me?

Can you be married to someone and not love him? Of course I do!

On that day when she became pregnant and gave her body the freedom to become as big and as round as it wanted, Milia began to feel that she no longer had any need for anyone else. There was a new soul inhabiting her, and she no longer felt like one lone human being.

I didn’t mislead anyone, she said. He misled me – he deceived me. My brother deceived me, and so did my mother, and I didn’t understand any of what was going on. What do you think I could have done?

In the third month, when Milia entered the sovereign realm of the dual, she regained little Milia through her dreams. She discovered then that the melancholy solitude she had been living through had not been a question of longing for her mother or for her brother Musa. No, she had been aching for the tawny-skinned little girl who had filled her nights with movement and her life with light. She allowed Milia to see the world through the brilliance that shone from her eyes.

Milia did not cease falling asleep whenever Mansour came near, but she did begin to have dizzy spells, and somehow inside the dizziness the waters inside of her would flood over her surfaces. Mansour claimed once to have seen her smile but she did not believe him. The room had been dark; there was not moonlight enough to filter through the windowpanes near her bed. She had chosen this bed for the window. She could not sleep without a
window nearby, she said. Mansour was left with the farther bed, parallel to hers. She closed her eyes upon the colors of the darkness, having refusing to hang curtains over the window. Curtains blot out the hues and tones of darkness and she wanted to have them there with her. Mansour didn’t mind.

Whenever they entered the bedroom at the same time, invariably she told him that she was exhausted. In quick succession she pulled on her long nightgown, dove into her bed, pulled the covers up to her neck, and fell asleep. He waited. Mostly he dozed off and reawakened sometime later. Slipping out of his bed, he tiptoed over to hers. Milia would be plastered against the wall, her back to her husband’s bed. He would lie down beside her and one hand would begin its slow voyage upward to her shoulders and then down her back, wrapping itself finally around each of her breasts in turn. He would listen for a first moan and when he heard it, he turned her over, so she was lying on her back. He pushed her gown up and entered her. Her breathing would grow deeper and it was interrupted by short, half-suppressed sighs. Her hands dangled loosely and her head was submerged in the long chestnut hair covering the pillow, though he could see her closed eyes and the half-parted lips from which he managed to glean an occasional kiss. Those little sighs and the soft relinquishing contours that this woman’s body gave, as it floated on the darkness, drove Mansour a bit wild. Even after finishing, he contended with the flames of his desire. He would come out of her quietly, go into the bathroom and wash himself, but he would feel as though he had not yet slept with her, his loins still on fire. Returning to the bedroom he saw immediately that she had turned her back. Trying to lie down again next to her, he found no room. He would push her gently but she did not budge. In disappointment, he went back to his own bed.