Gate of the Sun (60 page)

The funeral rites came to an end, earth was thrown over the sheikh, everybody dispersed, and Yunes returned to his cave, where he stayed for a week, never leaving it. Then Nahilah came and took you to the house. You walked behind her like a sleepwalker, and when you arrived you were a little nervous and said you shouldn't go in, so she dragged you inside. In the courtyard, the children were playing, but you didn't go to them. You went
in and sat down in the living room; your mother came and sat down beside you, took your hand, and said nothing.

You were sitting next to your mother when you heard Nahilah's voice calling the seven children into the house. She'd call to each of them by name, then say, “Shoo!” as though she were herding chickens rather than children. They came in and saw you. None of them came over to you, and you didn't open your arms the way a father who sees his children is supposed to do. They came in and you stayed where you were. They came in and drew back and stood in a single row, pressing against the wall as though they were afraid of you. Silently, you got up, approached them, knelt, and kissed them one after the other. Then you stood up and left. Noor, who was fourteen, cried “Dad!” as you went away.

That was your only meeting with your children, and when you recalled it, you spoke of it as a dream – “as though it never happened.” When you told me about your father's funeral and how you'd taken part, you said that the barbed wire and the electric border fences hadn't stopped you from bidding him farewell.

A
ND YESTERDAY
, I stood in your room, under the avalanche of pictures – I saw them all. I saw your children and your grandchildren with their backs to the wall, waiting for you to get up and approach them on your knees and kiss them. I heard Noor's voice and saw your mother's death-inhabited eyes. You told me your mother died two months after your father and that you didn't go to her funeral.

That day, after you'd kissed them, you returned to Lebanon. You came back once more on a short visit before disappearing for more than a year because of your preoccupations and the tense situation on the border. In the meantime, everything had changed. Salem had started work with his brother Mirwan in Mr. Haim's garage in Haifa, and Noor was about to announce her engagement to Isa al-Kashif, who worked as a construction worker before becoming a contractor in the Arab villages, and Nahilah was exhausted.

“I'm worn out with poverty and the daily grind,” she said.

You were together in the olive grove next to your cave, sitting beneath the summer moon that shed its light on the green leaves, giving them a blue shimmer. You waited for her there because she'd told you, “Beneath the tree.” You tapped on the window and were about to leave when Nahilah appeared behind the glass and said, “Beneath the Roman tree.” You thought she meant the enormous old tree with the hollow trunk, the one that yields a small fruit with a special taste.

You love olives.

All of us love olives, especially those little green ones Nahilah used to cover with coarse salt in a cloth bag and recommend you place – the moment you reached your house – in a glass jar filled with water so the salt would melt and rise, white and raw, to the top, and into which you were to throw a few bay leaves, leaving the jar for a month before eating them.

You kept those olives for celebrations. You'd celebrate with your olives in Shatila, taking a handful from the jar and steeping them in garlic, lemon, and oil, and drinking a glass of arak while listening to Saleh Abd al-Hayy singing, “My beloved, he tells me what to do,” taking your ritual to its pinnacle. You called those moments the ultimate prayer. You'd . . . no, I won't say the truth now so that I don't spoil your memories, which you construct to please yourself. But when I listened to you talking about those Roman olive trees, planted before the time of Christ, saying they had an irradicable hidden bitterness, a bitterness that gave one an appetite for life, and then going on at length about those huge trees with the hollow trunks which they called Roman because they're as old as the Romans, I'd imagine you with another woman. Please don't get upset. You know I'm telling the truth, or what would the visits of those two women mean? The first I told you about. She came, and then disappeared. The second would come every Thursday at four in the afternoon. She still has a certain beauty, especially in her fine jaw and the two creases that crossed her cheeks. Her name is Claire; she introduced herself as Claire Midawwar. She came into your room and sat down. I was cleaning the mucus extractor. She didn't pay the least bit of attention to me. She made me feel out of place, so I left the room, and when I came back an hour later, she was gone.

She continued to come at her regular time and I continued to leave her alone with you. Last week, however, she was late. Do you know why I haven't spoken of her until today? Because she'd become a part of our life here in the hospital, a routine one pays no attention to until it stops. Last week I became aware of her because she was late, and I decided to wait for her to ask her who she was. I put on a clean white gown and thought to wear my glasses, which I usually forget in my pocket since I haven't gotten used to the idea of putting on glasses. As soon as she entered the room, I went over to her to shake hands.

“I'm Dr. Khalil Ayyoub.”

“Pleased to meet you, Doctor,” she answered, sitting down again.

“I haven't had the pleasure of making your acquaintance,” I said.

“I'm a friend,” she said. “An old friend.”

I got into a stop-and-go conversation with her about conditions in the city, but she didn't seem to want to talk, as though I were stealing the time she'd set aside for you. Despite her irritation with my questions and her abrupt and evasive answers, I decided to be impertinent. I sat on the second chair and leaned forward a little as if to follow what she was saying. As soon as she saw me sit down, she put her hand on her hip as though she were about to stand up. Before the gesture could be transformed into the arch of the back that precedes the moment of rising, I got a question in. I asked her, point-blank, what her relationship to you was.

“When did your relationship with him start, Madame . . . ?”

I left my question hanging in the air, and the shock took the wind out of her sails. Looking at me with startled eyes, she said, “Claire. Claire Midawwar.”

“Have you known him for a long time?”

“A very long time,” she said and got up.

“Tell me about him,” I said.

She picked up her bag and said she was going. “Look after him, and may God make him well.”

Mme. Claire didn't come that week, and it's possible that she'll never come back again. It's my fault, but I couldn't help but ask her. I saw her coming
once a week and I imagined her with you, eating Roman olives dripping with lemon juice and oil.

Eating Nahilah's olives with another woman!

I don't understand anymore.

You'll ask me about the French actress, I know. But no, I swear there's nothing between us. I just felt a strange tenderness.

You'll ask me about my visit to her at the Hotel Napoléon on Hamra Street.

I didn't mean to visit her. I was feeling stifled here, so I went. I'm not going to tell you any more now. I'll behave like Claire Midawwar, who went away without telling me a thing.

Tell me, is Claire the woman you sought shelter with during the Israeli invasion of '82?You claimed that you'd fled to a priest's house! Was she the priest? Got you! I've got you now, and it's up to me to decipher what you said. Everything needs translating. Everything that's said is a riddle or a euphemism that needs to be interpreted. Now I must reinterpret you from the beginning. I'll take apart your disjointed phrases to see what's inside them and will put you back together again to get at your truth.

Can I get at your truth?

What does your truth mean?

I don't know, but I'll discover things that had never crossed my mind.

“And you?” you'll ask.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. What about you?”

“Nothing.”

“And the French actress?”

“Nothing.”

“And Shams? Where is she?”

Please don't say anything about Shams. I promise, I'll forget about Claire and the olives dripping with lemon juice and everything else, but please, not Shams.

So let's close this chapter and return to the summer moon and Nahilah.

That night, the moon was bright in the skies of Galilee. Yunes tapped on the windowpane and left, but he heard her whisper. He turned and saw her standing at the window, the moonlight pouring down onto her long black hair. He went closer and she said, “The Roman tree. Go on ahead and meet me at the Roman tree.”

He went to the tree, wondering why she didn't want to go to the cave, guessing that she might be indisposed, because at that time of the month, she'd come to him at Bab al-Shams and ask him to go out with her into the fields, and he'd stubbornly refuse. The game would end with him kissing every crevice of her body while she screamed at him, “Stop it! Stop it! It's a taboo!” and he'd give way before this taboo and be content with expending himself between her small breasts.

He went to the Roman tree, but instead of waiting for her beneath it, he got inside its huge, hollow trunk, which was wide enough to hold more than three people, and the idea rushed into his head that he could possess her there. He hid in the trunk, held his breath, and heard her circling the tree looking for him. She was like a small child lost in the fields. His love caught fire. He waited until she was close to the opening of the trunk, pulled her to him and brought her inside, while she trembled with fright and called on God for protection. He drew her to him.

“It's me. Don't be afraid.”

She yielded to his hands, and kisses, and his hot breath that enveloped her, while saying: “No, no.”

He pulled her closer, his back against the trunk, and tried to lift her dress. She pulled back, and her head struck the trunk. The pain made her groan. He tried to take a look, but she pushed him away with both hands and slipped outside. He followed her, reaching out like a blind man searching for something to grope.

“Listen,” she said and sat down.

“Sit there,” and she pointed.

He asked about her head.

“It's nothing. Nothing.”

She spread the provisions she'd bought out in front of them. “I brought you some chicory and
midardara
.”

“No,” she said, escaping his grasp. “Today you have to listen.”

He listened as he ate, the femininity of the moon creeping inside him and chilling his body. She talked and was born through her own words. That day the seventh Nahilah was born.

The first Nahilah was his young wife that he didn't know, because he was in the mountains with the fighters.

The second Nahilah was the beautiful woman who was born in the cave of Bab al-Shams as she trod the grapes and married her husband.

The third Nahilah was the mother of Ibrahim, the eldest who died.

The fourth Nahilah was the mother of Noor that Yunes clung to in the cave and called Umm Noor, Mother of Light, whenever she came to him with light shining from her eyes.

The fifth Nahilah was the heroine of the funeral who came out of prison to announce the death of her husband and lamented in front of everybody.

The sixth Nahilah was the mother of all those children who filled the square at Deir al-Asad.

And on that night, the seventh Nahilah was born.

Beneath the olive tree whose branches were drenched in the green moon of Galilee, the seventh Nahilah was born. She was approaching forty, wrinkles ran down her long neck, and sorrow extended from her eyes to her cheeks.

The seventh Nahilah had grown exhausted with all there was to exhaust her. A woman alone and poor.

“You know nothing at all,” she said. “Sit down and listen. I'm worn out, Yunes, you have no idea. You know nothing at all. Tell me, who are you?”

Did she ask him “who are you?” or was it enough to recount her torments? Did he see himself mirrored in her words?

Yunes sat down and discovered he knew nothing. He'd been concerned only with his Nahilahs, as though he'd married seven women who were different in every way but united by one thing: waiting.

All of a sudden, Yunes saw his life as scattered fragments – from Palestine to Lebanon, from Lebanon to Syria, from one prison to another.

He had lived for his long journeys to Galilee, when he had to get through the barbed wire, past the dangers and the Border Guard and the machine guns that mowed down border crossers.

He'd built up political and military cells composed of the tattered remnants of men who wanted to get back to their land. He'd joined various organizations. He'd started as an Arab nationalist with the Heroes of the Return and the Youths of Revenge and moved on to Fatah after meeting Abu Ali Iyad, and there, he became an official in the Western Sector.

“I was living in a no man's land,” he told Nahilah, “as though I weren't living, and you were here on your own, and I did nothing for you. Come with me to Lebanon.”