As Though She Were Sleeping (35 page)

This is not how the nun told the story, however. What she said was that when she came running to the home of the Shahin family she saw the yellow hues smothering Saadeh and ordered the midwife to pull the baby girl from her mother’s belly immediately. In that moment she saw two women, the first bending over and drawing the child from its mother’s body while the second woman stood next to her, a shape draped entirely in purple and blue. She was the ancient Eve, the figure said, and from that blessed moment she had been the intercessor of midwives; indeed, she was the midwife whom the Holy Spirit sends to save women from dying in childbirth. Milana said that when she saw these women converge she was certain that God wanted this baby girl to live and be a witness unto Him.

But Tanyous scoffed at Milia when she told him that Mother Eve had attended her birth. This is nonsense, my girl! God sent Eve to observe, that she might see how the pains of birth can disappear if sin disappears. Fine, all right, I don’t want to argue with her version; maybe the nun was a saint and maybe she had a vision. But in the grotto at Bethlehem it did not happen like that. Eve herself – Eve in person – appeared and knelt down and pulled Jesus from his mother’s body. This was the decision taken by the father of Issa Himself, and it was this that forced Yusuf to say nothing for twelve long years. Eve herself uttered only one sentence. Who are you? Yusuf asked her,
and he tried to give her money. She refused the money with a brush of her hand and said to him, I am Eve, and then she disappeared. But the real story isn’t here. The real story is the one about the Messiah and the fish. When the Messiah, peace be upon him, walked on the face of the water the fish swam to him bearing a message from Mar Yusuf. People call the tilapia in Lake Tiberias the Mar Butrus after Saint Peter, but its true name is really Mar Yusuf. No one, however, knows this name except the fish, Mar Yusuf, and God. The fish hovered next to him and said, Do not go to Jerusalem, they will kill you there. The Messiah blessed the fish and told it, Have no fear. He said the fishes need not bother with this issue any longer. His father was going to send a sheep.

And this fish? asked Milia. All these words – did the fish really know how to say all of this in Syriac?

Of course. After all, fish do speak, but human beings have forgotten the language of the animals ever since the story with Ibrahim, peace be upon his soul.

What story?

. . .

You mean the story of the sacrifice, don’t you?

. . .

You mean, he would have slain his own son. Is there anyone who would kill his son?

. . .

True, he had to do it. God commanded him to kill his son, and he had no other solution at hand. Not without some anger . . . but what else could he do? It was either eat his son or the animal.

. . .

Do you mean to tell me that Ishaq sat there with his father and they ate the sheep? No, I am not going to believe this story.

. . .

Why do you say this? Do you not fear God?

. . .

Yes, two sons, that is what he had. The older one he cast into the desert along with the boy’s mother, Hagar, and the second he took to the mount to offer as a sacrifice.

. . .

My God, what am I saying? God forgive me! Maybe the story today has nothing to do with the past, yes, you are right. But then why was Amin killed in Jaffa? And what am I going to do there? Please, please, tell Mansour that Milia is sad and she wants to live by the olive tree here and she can’t bear this.

. . .

I don’t like these stories. Let’s go back to the story of the fish. Tell me, now, when the fish carried Yusuf’s message to the Messiah, what response did he give?

. . .

Allah
yikhalliik
, I want to go back to the house now. I’ve lost the way home. And now Mansour is worried, with me in this condition. Take me to the house.

When Mansour listened to her wail that she wanted to go home he felt utterly, devastatingly helpless. Milia had begun to cry out this way, in her sleep, ever since his brother’s murder in Jaffa. It seemed as though this woman had broken the customary rules of her sleep-time and entered into a baffling struggle with all of existence. The first time it happened, he wakened her to tell her that the route to Lebanon was rife with danger but he was prepared to contact the Red Cross to assure a safe passage to Beirut so that she could give birth there. I can’t come with you, though, he added. The situation is difficult and I cannot leave my mother alone. What do you think, my love?

Her drowsy eyes gazed at him, she turned over in bed, rolled onto her right side, and fell asleep again.

Mansour no longer knew how to deal with this woman, for her habits had changed since his brother’s slaying. She no longer got up early. When he left for work she would still be asleep; when he returned home from work he would not find her at home. He learned not to search for her in the town’s streets because if he found her, she would be furious at him. She would accuse him of treating her like a little girl. His new routine was to come home from work and sit waiting for her, anxiety gnawing at him. When she came in she behaved as if nothing had happened. She would go to the kitchen and warm up his meal and as he ate she sat silently by, neither eating nor talking. Whenever he tried to ask her a question her eyes filled with tears and she would say she was worn out and needed to go to bed.

But where do you go every day, God be pleased with you, Milia! This is not good for the child. You are in your final month and the doctor ordered you to rest.

But I’m walking for the child’s sake.

How is that?

How can I make you understand, when it really is not your affair. I don’t want to go to Jaffa, I want to stay here.

But you know why we have to go.

I know and I don’t know, but I’m afraid for my son.

This is crazy talk. You must see a doctor who can talk some sense into you.

He lifted his glass and looked into her eyes and began to recite.

You are right, Milia, and I’m in the wrong. I have changed and you don’t bear any blame for that. But, look,
we have walked a destined road, and what is destined to be, had to be where we strode
. Let’s go back to the good old days. Where’s the
laban immuh
? I am longing to have it – tomorrow, make me
laban immuh
! We’ll have a glass and recite poetry like we used to do.

He put out his hand to feel for the baby in her belly and she jumped back. No – please, no, she said.

But I want to hear his voice with my hands, Mansour said.

Mansour did not understand her fear. Hearing her wail in the night that she wanted to go home, he promised to arrange to send her to Beirut. But she started, as if that frightened her even more, and said no. She did not want to go to Beirut. She had come to Nazareth to stay. And, she told him, she had begun to fear
him
because he was hearing her dreams, and when a person can listen to another’s dreams the listener can control the dreamer.

Since the death of his brother, their mother, Umm Amin, had become a different woman. Suddenly and without any advance warning she became terribly attached to Mansour. In him, she declared, she saw the image of his brother; she had never really paid attention to how alike they were; why, they were as alike as two tears from the same eye!

Is this exactly the way Umm Amin had put it? Most likely not, for this was Milia’s manner of speaking. In the morning, when Milia had just risen from sleep, her speech was soft and pliable. Speech was like dew, Milia told Mansour. Dew appears in the moment that connects nighttime to day; getting up, her mouth held the fresh aroma of this moment. He said he loved to kiss her in the morning because her lips tasted like fresh basil. When
she spoke in the morning she used words that were sweet and fresh, words through which the breeze blew, words the like of which Mansour had never heard except in ancient Arabic poetry.

Why did Mansour mix up his mother’s speech with his wife’s? Was it because a man loves only one woman in his life – his mother – and then spends his entire life searching for her? Mansour was not any such man. He told Milia he despised his mother’s immoderate affection for his brother. He did not understand how the mother had been able to organize all of life to revolve around her, so that she was the pivot of the household and the engine behind the family business. Asma – Amin’s wife – was like a mere visitor in her own home. She could not do anything on her own, and if God had not made a woman’s breasts a fountain for the nourishment of children, then the woman would have found herself without anything to do at all.

With her beloved son dead, the older woman wandered aimlessly like a lost soul. The once-imperious eyes were broken and an uncharacteristic timidity came over her. The wife was another story, though. The woman who had kept to herself and had made her body and personality practically invisible, as if she were secluded from all eyes and veiled in bashfulness, became a new woman. The beauty of her black eyes was revealed and that beauty shone; and Lady Asma became the household’s presiding mistress. Between night and day roles were reversed. Mansour told Milia he had been taken completely unawares by Asma’s beauty. Where was all this loveliness hiding? he exclaimed. I mean, is it reasonable for a woman to become beautiful when her husband dies? They used to bury women with their husbands because a man’s death meant the end of her life, too. See how things have changed?

Now Mansour said to her firmly: I cannot leave my mother on her own.

So now it’s your love for your mother, is it? Fine, I don’t have anything to
say about this and everything will happen just as you want. But I am afraid for you – and for my son, too. I mean, we don’t have to put ourselves in the paths of death as your brother did.

Where had Mansour found this new language? He stood in the kitchen and spoke of the Persian poet Abd el-Rahiim Mahmoud, and quoted a verse of his:

That isn’t poetry, Milia said. I mean, would you ever claim that this can compare to the verse of Mutanabbi?

No, no – this one’s even finer – listen!

But I love
these
two lines:

Now isn’t the time for love poetry, said Mansour. Listen again!

Bring me poetry like this! Bring me a poet like Mutanabbi, and then I’ll go anywhere! Then the taste of war becomes the tang of poetry, and poetry’s flavor is the deliciousness of love. But this fellow who carries his soul in his palm, well . . .

He was a great poet, and it wasn’t enough for him to compose verse: he bore weapons into war and he died in glory and he named his son Tayyib so people would call him Abu’l-Tayyib, Father of the Good One – a father of goodness, if you like.

Martyrs are to be kept with reverence in our hearts, but a poet of this land has not yet been born. When his time comes all of you Palestinians will know immediately that this land has been created out of poetry. This land is not soil. This land is words kneaded patiently into stories, from the very time the Messiah walked on earth. The dirt here was a compost of letters and words.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God’s, and the Word was God
. He was the word; and poetry is the ultimate word. Tomorrow, my love – well, after something like fifty years when this soil, our soil, gives birth to a great poet, you all – you Palestinians – will know
that struggle yields victory only through the word, for it is stronger than weapons.

First, Milia, you are saying
you all
, why
you
? Aren’t you part of this?

You’re right, my dear, I’m sorry. Yes, I have become
us
and when I talk about
all of you
I’m really speaking of
all of us
.

Secondly, I don’t think we can wait fifty years to see the poet you speak of appear – and I don’t think we need to wait. We have to fight with the poetry we know how to compose now, and with that poetry we’ll win the fight.