As Though She Were Sleeping (46 page)

Silence seized the room, as if Salim’s words, though not very loud, had swept a storm through this space where they sat.

You! What exactly did you say to Salim, Mother? asked Musa.

Me! No, not me, I don’t remember saying anything.

Yes, you! You turned the girl’s life into misery and sent her off to a land that was going up in flames! said Musa.

Saadeh began to cry and the quarrel intensified. Abdallah cursed his mother and his oldest brother. They had destroyed the life of his sister for nothing, he sobbed.

Now, and very promptly, the symptoms of illness made their appearance. Saadeh’s face grew florid and she had trouble breathing. Abdallah ran to get the doctor. Musa went into his room and shut the door and decided he would never speak to his mother again.

But these sorts of irrevocable domestic rulings are liable enough to peter out before long. Salim returned to his Aleppan home and once again all news of him ended. And here was Musa helping his mother pack her belongings so that she could move to the house where she would die. Milia’s portrait would remain hung on the wall in exactly the same space because the wall refused to give it up.

Come, Musa,
habibi
, come sleep next to me and don’t cry.

She could see him. Musa was turning restlessly in his bed and the shadows of his dreams hovered close around his eyes. He sat alone on the shore of Lake Tiberias. Suddenly the waves leapt up to eye level. The Sea of Galilee rose and white froth swallowed the horizon. The waves pushed higher and
farther, and the restaurant began to collapse under the fierce pounding of the water. Musa was in a tiny boat, rocked by the waves and the wind. In the distance Milia stood erect. Little Milia walked on the waters of the lake. She strode over the water and stretched out both arms. From this distance she looked like a little bird spreading its wings to fly. But the bird was knocked about in the waves, rising and falling. It appeared and vanished, came nearer and then moved away. Little Milia staggered atop the waves, beads of water washing over her. Mansour grabbed the oars and tried frantically to row with both hands, wanting to reach her. But she moved farther away, the water swallowed her, and Musa’s voice could not command the sea to grow quiet. Musa sat alone in the Seaside Inn’s restaurant on the deck built of wood planks that extended like a tongue into the lake, allowing restaurant customers to think that they were in a boat lacking only sails. The place was empty, and the only sound was a light crashing of waves beating against the wooden supports that held the restaurant aloft. Musa took a big bite of fish seasoned with lemon and salt and began chewing. His head spun as he saw his teeth fall out. He had felt nothing; he believed at first that he had taken in a mouthful of fish bones. He bent over his plate and spit but his cheeks felt like they were plastered together and his mouth was hollow. Looking down at his plate, Musa saw that all of his teeth had fallen out. He picked up the teeth and began trying to return them to his mouth but it hurt. His mouth was an explosion of pains and he wanted to scream but couldn’t. He stared out at the lake, wanting to tell his sister that he was in terrible pain, but the lake was not there. The waves had disappeared and he was in total darkness. Everything was drowned in the darkness of night and the night clung to his body. He tried to open his eyes but could not. They were sealed closed with wax or something like it, and he smelled incense. The man shook himself, made the sign of the cross on his forehead, and started from his bed as he used to do as a small boy, going on tiptoe to sleep next to his sister.

Don’t be afraid, love, I’m right here beside you.

She wanted to tell her brother that Father Tanyous had gone away leaving no trace. Was it true that the body of the Lebanese monk had been found near the Virgin’s Wellspring? When she asked Mansour what had happened, the man denied any knowledge of it.

But you told me, love.

Me!

Yesterday you told me they found the body and they don’t know what they should do with it. The monk was lying there as if he had been crucified. Someone shot him in the mouth and nailed his hands to the ground, and the French nun, the Mother Superior, ordered that it be kept quiet. She had the monk wrapped in a white sheet and said he would be buried in Lebanon, and there would be no more talk about the incident.

Me!

Yes of course, you – do I ever see anyone else in this town?

I told you, let’s go, we’re going to Jaffa where we have plenty of family. You said you wouldn’t move an inch from here before the baby arrives and I’m waiting. So don’t complain that you don’t see anyone. This is what you wanted!

But that’s not what I’m talking about, she said.

She wanted to return to Musa’s side to help him put his teeth back in his mouth. Milia knew what this was about. Her grandmama Malakeh had told her of the two dreams that warn of death. Cutting or losing hair and teeth falling out. All other dreams, Malakeh said, are journeys to faraway worlds, because a person’s soul cannot endure staying interminably in the body. When the body sleeps, the soul leaves it; when the spirit returns, made lighter and happier by all it has seen, the body metes out a terrible beating. Sleep is like a space of struggle – a battlefield – between soul and body. Milia’s grandmother reminded her that when they are awake, people are not
conscious of their souls, but when the angel of sleep descends and the soul rises to float above time and place, a person can divine the separate parts of the self united by the will of the Creator. This is the miracle of life; think about it, said Grandmama: how can fire and water meet? A human being is the meeting place of two completely incompatible elements, earth and air. Our bodies are dust to dust, our souls are the air. But the only way we ever become aware of our spirits’ abilities to rise above the body is when we dream. When the soul travels, leaving behind the soil that awaits its return, we finally realize what life truly means. But the soul is practicing to abandon the body, and as it does so it discovers its own distinct, unique existence.

You mean, there are two of me, Grandmama? Milia’s voice came out timid and breathless.

Of course there are, my dear! Didn’t you dream of your aunt Salma before she died? And in your dream, you saw her dreaming – and flying.

I did?

That’s why your aunt did not really die. Her soul realized that there was no longer any need for her body. But, you see, the body can’t accept this without a struggle. So the body creates problems and causes so much pain that the soul is in agony and gives up hope of leaving the body behind.
Ya haraam
, poor Salma, what agony she went through! Do you remember, Milia, how much your dear aunt suffered?

I don’t know, answered the trembling girl. She sensed her soul making preparations to leave her body and it left her in terror. She stared into her own eyes in the mirror offered by the little pond in the garden where she spent most of her time, splashing in the water. She wanted to ask her grandmother if her eyes were part of her body, or whether they belonged to the spirit.

Eyes belong to the human soul, declared the nun. Look at the eyes of Mar Ilyas. See how his eyes gleam with fire? Why, why did you go to sleep,
my girl?! I brought you to Mar Ilyas’s grotto so that you would see him and he would see you, and then he would remember you always. My daughter, I will die, and I will not be able to intercede for you anymore. Look directly into his eyes and tell him you love him.

The eyes of the prophet who had never died abandoned their sockets to suspend themselves on the sloping arched wall of the grotto. Milia saw their gleam everywhere in this domed grotto, which was large enough only to accommodate one human body lying full length. The prophet would not have been able to stand up straight in his low-ceilinged cave; he would have had to drop to all fours and crawl into the space where he would rest his head. His eyes came out of the red and blue icon set beside the rock that he had made his pillow. Those eyes were everywhere. Milia was afraid, seeing so many eyes. She wanted to thank him because he had rescued her from her illness, and she was on the point of asking him not to forget her when suddenly she saw an eagle in the grotto. How could the eagle have come in here, from the single tiny aperture in the cavern’s ceiling? Milia saw him as though her eyes had acquired the ability to pierce walls and spaces and rove the broad and empty firmament. There far above he circled, his great wings spread to catch the thin strands of cloud streaked across the sky like a diaphanous sash. He spiraled across the sky, sharp eyes searching for the grotto’s opening. Suddenly the bird folded his wings and began to drop. Milia screamed at him to open out his wings. You will die! Please, please don’t do that – who will bring food to poor Mar Ilyas?

But the plummeting eagle did not hear her and she thought he had decided it was time to die. But just above the cavern’s opening he suddenly pleated his body until he was no more than an ordinary little bird as compact as any human fist. He sailed into the grotto’s interior and only then did he unfurl his tremendous wings, beating them against the cavern walls as if determined to widen the interior space. Milia sat in Mar Ilyas’s tiny pit
unable to move. She felt herself drawn with irresistible force toward the eagle’s talons, which were closing around her, ready to lift her into the open air. The ascent made her dizzy and she could not have been more frightened. She saw her aunt Salma’s face appear like a vision in the distant sky. Salma asked her about Ibrahim Hananiya. She was crying.

Auntie, why are you crying? The dead don’t cry. They mustn’t cry.

Milia did not hear her aunt Salma’s answer; the woman had disappeared. The little girl saw herself lying on the wide pavement in front of the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. Her belly was swollen and her hands were stretched out cruciform.

And then she saw the two of them, standing exactly opposite. She could not tell them apart. The saintlike nun held Tanyous’s hand as if they were a pair of elderly men, their faces attacked so vigorously by wrinkles that it was difficult to tell who they were. She heard a faraway voice instructing her to push. A hand gripped her hard and shook her by the shoulder. Open your eyes, girl, and
push
!
Yallah
, let’s finish up here, you have already gone a long distance and there isn’t much further to go.

Milia opened her eyes slowly and there was light. A dazzling sun had come out, now that the downpour had stopped, and the brilliance of it pierced every corner. Behind the light stood the aged Italian doctor, telling the woman lying on the birthing bed to help him bring her baby out. My girl, everything is fine and
inshallah
we are almost there but you have to help us out a little.

Milia gave him a little smile. She felt a towelly roughness as one of the nurses swabbed away the cold sweat falling into her eyes, and she asked for Mansour.

Mansour stood next to her. They were in the vast reception hall of the Hotel Massabki, where the photographs were lined up along the wall. He wanted her to stand beneath a photograph of Shaykh Bishara el-Khoury,
president of the independent republic of Lebanon, with Jamil Mardam Bey, the prime minister of Syria. This wall of photographs, Mansour explained to her, was a summary of the history of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Strange, he said, it’s as though our history does not exist except on this one wall in a very small city on the Beirut-Damascus road, a wall that is here for the purpose of recording the tale of the Arabs’ defeats.

Please – I don’t like politics. From the moment we stepped inside this hotel, all you have talked about is King Faisal and the Battle of Maysalun and such things, and it’s giving me a headache.

She extricated herself from his grip and turned to another portion of the wall where two framed poems hung side by side.

Mansour went up to them and read out loud.

This is by the Egyptians’ Prince of Poetry, he said. Ahmad Shawqi always stayed in this hotel. He came with Muhammad Abd el-Wahhab, the musician, carrying his lute. Abd el-Wahhab was forever putting verses of Shawqi’s together and setting them to music. Over here is a photograph of Khalil Mutran, who was called the poet of the two lands since he lived in Egypt but was from these parts. He came here, too.

But the Messiah, why bring him into this? And I don’t like this poem much.

Mansour went up to the second framed poem.

What is the Messiah doing here, in the middle of all of this? No, this isn’t real poetry, my dear.

It was on that day – the second day of their marriage – that Mansour realized he would never be able to grasp this woman who had now become his wife. He had told his mother that he had fallen in love with her for her womanliness: her tall and nicely filled-out figure, full hips, small waist – and her clear, soft pale skin, which reminded him of the beautiful pale-white figure, Daad, in
The Orphan Pearl
. The lines of her graceful body inhabited his imagination with the help of ten, twenty, one hundred poems singing the praises of love, in which Arab poets cataloged the innumerable desires and longings and inclinations attaching to the body of the beloved woman.