Gate of the Sun (46 page)

Is it true, Father, that I deceive people?

Have I been deceiving you?

You, too, would prefer things to be solved by Salim As'ad's methods, with a little bottle containing a liquid made of soap and herbs. But where am I going to find a liquid that will restore consciousness to your paralyzed brain?

No, no, don't believe Salim.

Salim is just a game, just a play, just a show. The real thing is hiding here, in these two rooms. You're here, and Dunya's there. Dunya's dying, and you're dying. She can no longer tell her story, and you can no longer stand yours since Nahilah's death.

And I'm a play actor.

I'm the real actor, not Salim. I'm acting out your story, and Dunya's story, and Salim's story. I'm acting out all your stories.

If Salim had understood what goes on in this room, he wouldn't have gone away. I'm convinced that the story about him marrying his cousin isn't true; I bet he'll come back the first Thursday of every month to perform his play in front of the mosque so he can purchase an imaginary old age with his youth to help him face these times.

Salim left, and I didn't look for him.

I'm here, and I have a lot of work to see to. I've returned to you, as you see. I'll come three times a day and spend most of my time in your room. I'll supervise the distribution of morning tasks before coming back here, just like before. I'll tell your story, you'll tell mine – and we'll wait.

I
'LL TELL YOU
everything, from the beginning.

We're back at the beginning.

At the beginning, I see my father. I see him and I don't see him, for Yasin Ayyoub died before I could set eyes on him. I see him as a photograph hung on the wall, a big photograph with a brown frame. He stands in the frame, against the wall, looking into the distance. His tie with its vague intertwined patterns hangs down like a long tongue. Above it are his stern face, his sculpted chin, and his tired eyes. I'd like to ask him about his death. My mother went away and never told me, and my grandmother died before I could find out.

Why did they kill him in '59? Why did they throw him down in a heap in front of the house, after his white hair had become stained with blood?

That was when everything came to an end: The civil war that had set Lebanon on fire in '58 had subsided, the reconciliation was concluded between the Christians and the Muslims, the U.S. Marines withdrew, and the commander of the Lebanese army, Fouad Shehab, was elected president of the republic. Everything went back to the way it had been before, except for us. Everyone was celebrating peace and life, while my grandmother celebrated the death of her son!

You're the only one who knows his story, so why don't you tell it to me?

Before you – that is, before this endless illness and coma of yours – I wasn't interested in him, I didn't love him. I'd look at his picture without seeing it, and if my grandmother hadn't been so obstinate, the picture would be dead.

Shahineh, Yasin's mother, had a theory about photos. She thought they died if we didn't water them. She'd wipe the dust from the glass over my
father's photo with a damp rag and place a container full of flowers and sweet-smelling herbs beneath it, saying that the picture lived off the water and the nice scent. She'd pick basil and damask roses and put them in vases underneath the picture. Bending over it with a damp rag, she'd talk with her son. My grandmother would talk to the man hanging on the wall and hear his voice, and I'd laugh at her and fear her.

“You'll understand when you grow up,” she'd say.

I grew up and didn't understand.

Maybe the picture died because I didn't water it. Maybe it died the day my grandmother died. Maybe it ought to have been buried with her. I was young and didn't care; even her death happened without my feeling it. I didn't shed a single tear for her. I arrived after they'd buried her, so I returned to my base in southern Lebanon, and it was there that the pain struck me. Can you imagine, I waited a month to feel the sorrow? On the day itself, I didn't feel any sorrow – it was as though I'd been hypnotized. I remember sitting. I remember that I took the pillow and the watch. I remember that I put the watch on my wrist and discovered it was broken. I tried to wind it but the spring wouldn't move. So I took the watch off and threw it in a drawer and forgot about it.

Can it be that my grandmother wore a broken watch all those years – as though she'd killed the time on her wrist? Did she occasionally look at her watch?

I don't know because I didn't see her during her last days. I came and stayed for a stretch of her suffering, then came again after she was dead; I threw her watch into a drawer before returning to my base.

It was there, at the base, that fierce sorrow hit me, and I didn't dare tell anyone why I was sad. How could I? You're living in the midst of young men who fall in battle every day and you mourn for an old woman who waters her son's picture, tells delirious tales, and sleeps on a pillow of flowers?

The sorrow struck me fiercely. Her voice came and went among dreams filled with horror and empty picture frames. At the time, I didn't admit to myself that my sorrow was for her.

Today, faced with your perpetual sleep, I understand my sorrow.

There at the base we built in the olive grove at al-Khreibeh, death came and spoke to me. My sorrow was indescribable, as though I'd lost the meaning of life, as though my life had been dependent on this woman who'd departed, on her tall tales and memories.

On that day I was possessed by an intimation of death, and I became convinced I was going to die because she had died. However, it was my duty to come back to life – that's what I told myself then, and that's what I told myself after the massacre of the camp in '82. I didn't go to Tunis with the others because I was afraid of the death I saw on the faces of those who were saying goodbye. I stayed here and lived death. Then along came your illness to bring me back to the beginning. When I'm with you, master, I feel as though everything is still at its beginning, my life hasn't started yet, your story is still before me to try to unravel, and my father has come back to me, as though he'd stepped down from the picture on the wall and is speaking to me.

Do you know what I did yesterday?

I let you sleep and went home. I lit a candle, took a wet rag, and wiped the picture, telling it I'd come back tomorrow with flowers and basil. I didn't go back, however. It was an absurd thing to do, don't you think? There, beneath the picture, I understood why my grandmother said I was like him, because in fact I really do look like him. I don't know why I used to hate myself when my grandmother told me I was like him. Perhaps because I was afraid of dying like he had.

Where is my mother now?

Even her photos have disappeared from the house. My grandmother said she'd run away and taken her pictures with her. Maybe my mother was afraid of what my grandmother might do to them. Maybe she was afraid the old woman would find a way of talking to the pictures and somehow compel her – Najwah, wife of Yasin – to come home. Or no, maybe my grandmother tore the pictures up so all that would be left to me would be his picture, which spoke to her. My grandmother would say she heard him order this or that to be done, and I believed her. She'd attribute all her
orders to him. Which is why I detested the picture and detested her and detested my father.

I told you I looked like him, and I hated myself because of that. No longer. But in those days, when the white was starting to invade my hair, I felt a terrible hatred for that man, and for myself, but I didn't dye my hair. I don't possess Salim's degree of irony. Maybe if my life had started like his, with the Shatila massacre, I'd have become an actor like him. But let's slow down – I also started my life with a massacre; what else would you call my father's murder? True, I was young and can hardly remember anything, but I can still imagine the scene. What my grandmother told me about his death turned into images that haunt me.

I sit and talk to you and hear that man's voice coming from my heart. What does one call that? The first sign of old age? Maybe. I stand at the crossroads of my forties, and at this crossroads the image of that man who left me so he could die still imposes itself on me, and always will.

Shouldn't he have given some thought to his son's fate, which was to be decided by two women – one who'd run away and another who'd collapse under the weight of her memories? Shouldn't you all have given this some thought?

Before going on about my father, and before getting to the beginning, I want to tell you that the temperature you've had isn't a cause for concern. Don't be afraid and don't fidget about on the feather pillow I put under your head. The miracle finally has occurred: I've managed to buy you a waterbed. I bought it with my own money, with Salim As'ad acting as the intermediary. It was the last job he did at the hospital before he took off for who-knows-where. He went and bought the waterbed, brought it to the hospital and gave me back twenty thousand lira.

“From you, Doctor, I'd never take a commission,” he said.

He took a hundred dollars from me and gave me back only twenty thousand lira, and everything was settled.
^*

This bed will help. Your bed sores will heal because waterbeds don't stick to people's bodies like ordinary beds do. In the beginning, I substituted a cotton mattress for the hospital mattress, which is made out of foam. Cotton is more comfortable, but it's soft. As soon as you start sleeping on cotton, the mattress fills with lumps. I thought of cotton because I was afraid of the heat of the wool we normally stuff our mattresses with.

And look at the result.

I left you for three weeks only to come back and find you covered in sores. Then I thought of the waterbed, and Salim As'ad solved the problem. He said he could rustle one up, and he did. Nothing to worry about from now on. The cause of your fever this time is the ulcers, not the catheter. All the same, I've decided to give you a rest from the catheter for a while – I can't do more than that. I left you for four hours without one so you'd feel your freedom again. But more than that means blood poisoning so I put it back, in spite of your objections. I expect your temperature to decrease gradually with the ointments and the antibiotics I've mixed into your food. Don't be afraid, we'll start over, like before. I'll bathe you twice a day, apply the ointments, put powder on your ulcers and perfume you. Rest easy, Father, and don't be afraid. I say
father
and think of how you used to call me
nephew
. When you came to visit us at home or dropped in on the cadets' camp, you used to hug me and say, “This one's a champ, a champ like his father.” Now you've figured out that I'm not a champion like my father. I'm just a semi-unemployed nurse in a hospital suspended in a void. Also, I don't resemble him in any way except for my prematurely white hair, my stooped shoulders, and my height. My mother used to say: “Poor boy, he'll grow up short. He'll be no taller than a water pipe.” And my grandmother would rebuke her and shout, “No. He's like Yasin. Yasin was that way, then suddenly he shot up and became as tall as a spear.” She'd talk of the
Nakba
: “The
Nakba
shortened our lives and stunted our growth, too, all except Yasin. Suddenly the short boy became like a spear. We got to Lebanon after all that torment, and there I suddenly noticed, God knows how I'd failed to see it – I opened my eyes and there he was, tall and beautiful.
Amazing how he grew up like that. This boy's like his father, you know nothing about our family!”

My mother knew nothing and would curse the luck that had brought her here and say she hated Beirut, and hated this camp, and hated al-Ghabsiyyeh and its people, and didn't know why she'd married man who was destined to die.

Should I tell you how my father married her?

Or maybe these things don't interest you. You prefer stories of heroes and heroic deeds. You'd probably rather hear the story of how the man died on the threshold of his house.

But I don't know that story.

Listen. I'm going to tell you a story I don't know. My story isn't beautiful like yours, but I'll tell it so we don't get bored.

I know you're fed up with me. This way we can save some time and kill it before it kills us. I'm certain you can hear and are laughing to yourself and want to say lots and lots of things. Never mind, Father, say what you like, or say nothing at all; what matters is that you arise from this sleep. I'm certain you'll wake up one day and discover that I bathed you in words, and washed your wounds with memories.

Fine words, you'll say, but I don't like them.

You like words when they're like a knife's edge. You used to make fun of people's speech, of how instead of stating their opinions directly they take refuge in euphemisms and metaphors. “Words must wound,” you'll say. But where do you want me to find you words that wound? All our words are circular. From the beginning, which is to say since Adam, our language has been circular. No matter how hard we try to break its circles, we find ourselves falling into new ones. So bear with me and play the game. Come, let's circle with our words. Let's circle around the sun, let's circle around the camp, let's circle around Galilee, let's circle around Nahilah and Shams and around all the names. Let's circle with names, let's circle without names. Let's circle and come back to the beginning. Come back with me to the beginning, so we can get to the opening of the story.