As Though She Were Sleeping (42 page)

The girl’s steps were hesitant. She was conscious of having to crouch down to enter, nearly crawling. Inside, she recognized him instantly, by the very long white beard that spread across his lower face to cover his chest. He stood facing her, his figure ringed in fire. She started to step back in terror at the live flames, and she heard the nun’s voice commanding her to stay where she was.

Sleep where he slept – lie down on your back.

Milia lies down and turns over carefully onto her back, and almost immediately she sees him turn away, striking his cloak against the rock, and go out. The rock fissures; water gushes forth and puts out the flame. Milia is in the water. A sweet cold gust of wind submerges her and the old man begins to sail upward. She reaches to grip the hem of his robe but, flying in the breeze, the robe slips from her grasp.

The old man disappears. The girl is afraid. She looks toward the door where she entered and sees that it is completely shut. The nun is nowhere to be seen.

Why did you go to sleep in there!? You were meant to pray. Mar Ilyas needed to hear your voice,
yours
, thanking him, once and again. That is why we allowed you inside, into the place where he slept in flight from the king. This very place is where a bird coming out of the heavens alighted to bring him food. And
ya lahwi
!! Instead of praying you slept.

What Milia wanted to say to the nun was that she had not slept for a moment. She wanted to tell her how she had seen the water gushing from the boulder and hundreds of birds spreading their wings to carry the old man aloft. She felt her body perfumed through and through with incense and wondered if now she belonged to another world. Yes, she had closed
her eyes but not in sleep. She had closed them for the sake of truly seeing. And she did see. There was one thing she wanted to say to this prophet of flame. She wanted to become a boy – that’s what she said. She heard him grumble in despair, and he grunted that all girls wanted the same thing. But it was only because they did not know. If only humans
knew
– then everyone would want to be a woman. He told her about the two Maryams: the Majdaliyya and the Virgin. Every woman can become either one or the other, he told her. And only women can truly feel, and own, the two fullest emotions, love and motherhood. And – he said – both will be fully yours, Milia. Do not worry.

She asked the nun to tell her about Mary Magdalene. Sister Milana averted her face sharply as if she had not heard Milia’s question. She carried Milia up the long stone steps, panting and grumbling all the way.

What are you thinking about? Mansour asked her, and she told him the story of her visit to the grotto of Mar Ilyas in Maarrat Sidnaya. She asked him what he thought was the meaning of the words she had heard.

Mar Ilyas told you that you would become the two Maryams? he asked, incredulous.

That’s what I heard him say.

Ohhh
, God help us! God save us.

From what?

From women.

I don’t understand anything, she said.

Me neither, he said.

She didn’t understand anything then or now, but here she was, half suspended on a sort of half-bed with Mansour standing beside her.

She said she saw the birds on the church rooftop and the bell that bore the weight of Mitri’s distended neck; she saw the bell and Mar Ilyas’s birds flocking around it. The birds had carried Mar Ilyas away, she told Saadeh,
and the nun was wrong. She
saw
it, she said. Look at the icon, Mama, those are not flames, they are birds.

Where had the birds come from, filling this place with the tolling of bells?

She wanted to say that she did not like to hear bells ringing; and she did not like birds. She wanted to say she longed for some poetry. Why had Mansour stopped reciting poetry to her? She meant to say to him that she thought differently now. She adored metaphors and similes. It was better to listen to words than to be those words.

It was not her fault. He told her he was very tired and could no longer withstand it. She wanted to understand but she could not. It was Asma’s fault: Asma, widow of his dead brother, Amin. Well, no, the fault was Amin’s. No, not his; it was the mother’s fault. His mother had never, ever liked her. His mother believed that Mansour had changed and it was Milia who was to blame. The reality was completely otherwise, of course. Mansour had found Milia because he had already changed. But how could he convince his mother that her son rather than her daughter-in-law had been the agent of change? The mother was blind because she would not see. Mansour had told her that his mother was blind. You have nothing to do with it, he said. But she refuses to see that I have been on the run from her and from Amin as well. Yet Milia also saw how, since Amin’s assassination, everything had changed.

The poetry, like the story of Mutanabbi’s death as he returned to his city, vanished. He returned because, as the poet fled from the uncle of his sweetheart Dabba who lay in wait for him in the desert, his servant said to him, It is not right that you flee when you have spoken like this.

You mean, his poetry killed him? said Milia.

What was he going to do? asked Mansour.

What an idiot. How can anyone believe his own words? Very stupid, if he did.

When you have come to the end, you have to believe. This is the whole meaning of death. It is the only instant when a person has to face everything with absolute honesty and clarity.

She wanted to ask him why he had disappeared from her nighttime. She did not voice the words but they sounded from her eyes and he heard them. Suddenly the poetry was no longer there and Mansour’s desire vanished. He drank his coffee hurriedly and said he was going out but he did not move. Instead, he came closer to her. He laid his hand gently on her cheek and reminded her of the doctor’s orders.

The doctor said, seventh month on, that’s it.

I don’t understand, she said.

It’s nothing, he said. I’ll be back later.

Tanyous told her that the death of children is the true sign. The monk with his disheveled hair stood in the distance and beckoned her over to him.

God keep you! What are you doing here? Leave! I am going to Jaffa with my husband, and that’s the end of it.

What’s in Jaffa?

She turned her face away and opened her eyes. She saw Mansour standing there, instructing her to calm down. Take it easy, love, the doctor said we need to give it another hour, and then everything will go smoothly.

Milia looked at him and asked about the baby.

Not yet, my dear, we must wait.

Then she understood it. She said she wanted her mother. She talked about pain. Everything inside was hurting, she said, and she began to shiver and her teeth were chattering.

Mansour ran to the two nurses and brought them into the room. The tall one took one look at the woman on the bed and said she would get the doctor immediately. It’s time, she said. The short one came over to Milia, held her hand, and with her other hand found a tissue and mopped the sweat from Milia’s forehead, reassuring her all the while.

You – go outside, she said to Mansour. And, you, my dear – speaking to Milia – help me out now and you’ll be helping yourself.

The waves of pain began to well up more forcefully. Her body was splitting, splintering, and she wanted to scream and scream. She felt utterly alone.

Mama – come, please come, Mama! Look what they’re doing to me, she screamed. Everything was whirling around her and suddenly darkness was everywhere.

He was there, his head bowed. I see the boy, said Tanyous.

Please – no. Please, don’t talk about him.

I love children, he said. I love a pregnant woman. The measure of a woman’s beauty is pregnancy. Don’t believe the stories women tell – they say a woman pregnant with a boy is ugly, and when she’s going to have a baby girl she’s beautiful. No, that’s not how it is. You got pregnant with a baby boy and you have only become more beautiful. A pretty woman becomes truly beautiful once she gets pregnant. Could the Virgin Maryam have possibly grown ugly, pregnant with the Messiah? I said to Mary, the nun, something is not quite right here. Remaining unmarried – for men that’s fine and it might even be commended since the Messiah died having never married. All of his women had the same name. He gave them the name Maryam so that he would not get confused over names and could talk to one of them as if he were talking to all. God forgive me – no – well, this is not what I was going to say, but . . . when I saw you standing there, just you, I said to myself, here
is the Maryam whom God has sent to me. I will have to go to Jerusalem, and so I said to myself, I will take her – I will take you – with me. But you – no, you will not. Your name isn’t even Maryam. I must give you a new name.

She watched as he came closer. No, I don’t want to change my name. Please, no.

He instructed the nun on how as a man it was perfectly acceptable to remain unmarried, for the Messiah (peace be upon him) begat no offspring. But women were something else. A woman who does not go through what our sacred Maryam went through – I mean, who does not give birth – will not understand the secret of life.

Milia wanted to ask him about the secret of life. He approached her, coming closer and closer. She wanted to say to him that she was married and this was wrong – and she was pregnant – but here he was next to her in bed.

Why does this monk come to her, and how and from where has this man invaded her night? She wanted to tell him that Mansour was right. You are a madman, she wanted to say. The nuns do not acknowledge you as a monk. Suddenly she was aware that she lay on a narrow bed in a cramped ancient house on the summit of a towering hill. Half asleep, she sensed the monk approach, sensed his drowsiness blending with hers, felt his hot breath mounting her neck. She saw her naked body and tasted the sweet saltiness of the world, and her spirit knew him. She told him this was not right. The doctor told you, Mansour – you told me,
habibi
, that the doctor said – and he silenced her with his black sleeve and she felt her waters swell and pour.

She opened her eyes to find the mattress drenched. She turned to Mansour’s bed and saw his form submerged in his deep breathing. She wanted to get out of bed to awaken him but she sensed the water still gushing out and felt too embarrassed to move. She closed her eyes again to go back to sleep and saw him coming to her, and climbing on top of her to lie in all his
heaviness on her chest. She cried to him to move off of her – he would kill her son, she cried – and she heard Mansour’s worried breathing next to her bed as he asked what was wrong.

The waters, she said. Water all over me.

It’s your water sac. We must go to the hospital immediately.

No . . . not today! she said. Tomorrow – I will have the baby tomorrow.

He got her up and told her he was going to get a car.

Today . . . no! she said. It will not be today. And anyway it’s raining.

Get dressed, hurry, and get yourself ready. I’m going to bring the car.

Milia was right. The rain was relentless. She knew that her baby would arrive on the night of the twenty-fourth of December. The sign would not be the waters from the water sac, but other waters.

This was what the doctor told them when they reached the Italian Hospital. He told her to go home and asked her to wait for the water.

But the water, doctor – there was a lot of water.

The doctor smiled and told Mansour not to worry. He warned Mansour not to sleep with his wife in her final days of pregnancy.

I swear, I haven’t done anything, Mansour protested.

The doctor showed his astonishment and said that the examination he had done indicated that her birth passage and uterus had been active during the previous night. It might have been nothing more than a dream, he said. Pregnancy does give women dreams. No need to be afraid.

She was in bed and already asleep when he came to her and kissed her on her forehead before going to his own bed. He saw her sit up in bed. Light shone from her hair and oil stood on her neck, even spraying the air around her gently.

Come here, come to me, she said.

He found himself getting out of bed and coming to sit down next to her.

Bring some cotton.

He got up and went over to the wardrobe, opened a drawer, took out a roll of cotton and came back to her.

Wipe the oil from my neck with the cotton and then put it away for the boy, she said.

He blotted the oil on her neck but it continued to seep thickly. Soon the entire roll of cotton was heavy with oil.

I’ll bring a towel, he said.

No need. But you must remember that this oil is for the boy. Rubbing him with this oil will protect him from sickness.

She saw his shadow figure in the gloom of the Jaffa house. Her mother-in-law had put her foot down; their residence in the family home was to be permanent. It’s his father’s home, she said. No one abandons his father’s home. She told Milia that Amin’s widow, Asma, would remain in Amin’s room with her children, who would be moved from Mansour’s room to their own father’s room. Milia and her husband and daughter would live in Mansour’s room. There was absolutely no need to build an additional room onto the house.