The Patience Stone (7 page)

She rests her head back on the man’s chest, and continues. “Yes, I thought that maybe I felt relieved because I had finally been able to desert you … to leave you to die … to rid myself of you!” She huddles into the man’s motionless body, as if cold. “Yes, rid myself of you … because yesterday, all of a sudden, I started thinking that you were still conscious, quite well in mind and body but determined to make me talk, to find out my secrets and possess me completely. So I was scared.” She kisses his chest. “Can you forgive me?” She looks at him tenderly. “I left the house, hidden beneath my chador, and wandered the streets of this deaf, blind city in tears. Like a madwoman! When I went back to my aunt’s house in the evening, everyone thought I was ill. I went straight to my room to collapse into my distress, my guilt. I didn’t sleep all
night. I was sure I was a monster, a proper demon! I was terrorized. Had I lost my mind, become a criminal?” She pulls away from her man’s body. “Like you, like your cronies … like the men who beheaded the neighbor’s whole family! Yes, I belonged to your camp. Coming to that conclusion was terrifying. I cried all night long.” She moves closer to him. “Then, in the morning, at dawn, just before it started raining, the wind opened the window … I was cold … and afraid. I snuggled up to my girls … I felt a presence behind me. I didn’t dare look. I felt a hand stroking me. I couldn’t move. I heard my father’s voice. I gathered every ounce of strength, and turned around. He was there. With his white beard. His little eyes blinking in the darkness. The worn-out shape of him. In his hands he was carrying the quail I had given to the cat. He claimed that everything I told you yesterday had brought his quail back to life! Then he embraced me. I stood up. He wasn’t there. Gone, taken by the wind. The rain. Was it a dream? No … it was so real! His breath on my neck, his calloused palm against my skin …” She rests her chin on her hand, to keep her head upright. “I was thrilled by his visit, lit up. I finally realized that the cause of my relief was not my attempt to abandon you to death.” She stretches. “Do you under stand what I’m saying? … The thing that
was actually releasing me was having talked about that business of the quail. The fact of having confessed it. Confessed all of it, to you. And then I realized that since you’ve been ill, since I’ve been talking to you, getting angry with you, insulting you, telling you everything that I’ve kept hidden in my heart, and you not being able to reply, or do anything at all … all of this has been soothing and comforting to me.” She grasps the man by the shoulders. “So, if I feel relieved, set free—in spite of the terrible things that keep happening to us—it is thanks to my secrets, and to you. I am not a demon!” She lets go of his shoulders, and strokes his beard. “Because now your body is mine, and my secrets are yours. You are here for me. I don’t know whether you can see or not, but one thing I am absolutely sure of is that you can hear me, that you can understand what I’m saying. And that is why you’re still alive. Yes, you are alive for my sake, for the sake of my secrets.” She shakes him. “You’ll see. Just as my secrets were able to resuscitate my father’s quail, they will bring you back to life! Look, it’s been three weeks now that you’ve been living with a bullet in your neck. That’s totally unheard of! No one can believe it, no one! You don’t eat, you don’t drink, and yet you’re still here! It’s a miracle. A miracle for me, and thanks to me. Your breath hangs on the telling of
my secrets.” She gets to her feet with ease and then stands over him, full of grace, as if to say: “Don’t worry, there is no end to my secrets.” Her words can be heard through the door. “I no longer want to lose you!”

She returns to refill the drip bag. “Now I finally understand what your father was saying about that sacred stone. It was near the end of his life. You were away, you’d gone off to war again. It was a few months ago, just before you were hit by this bullet, your father was ill, and I was the only one looking after him. He was obsessed by a magic stone. A black stone. He talked about it the whole time … What did he call that stone?” She tries to think of the word. “He asked every friend who visited to bring him this stone … a precious, black stone …” She inserts the tube into the man’s throat. “You know, that stone you put in front of you … and tell all your problems to, all your struggles, all your pain, all your woes … to which you confess everything in your heart, everything you don’t dare tell anyone …” She checks the drip. “You talk to it, and talk to it. And the stone listens, absorbing all your words, all your secrets, until one fine day it explodes. Shatters into tiny pieces.” She cleans and moistens the man’s eyes. “And on that day you are
set free from all your pain, all your suffering … What’s that stone called?” She rearranges the sheet. “The day before he died, your father called for me, he wanted to see me alone. He was dying. He whispered to me,
Daughter, the angel of death has appeared to me, accompanied by the angel Gabriel, who revealed a secret that I am entrusting to you. I now know where this stone is to be found. It is in the Ka’bah, in Mecca! In the house of God! You know, that Black Stone around which millions of pilgrims circle during the big Eid celebrations. Well, that’s the very stone I was telling you about … In heaven, this stone served as a throne for Adam … but after God banished Adam and Eve to earth, he sent it down too, so that Adam’s children could tell it of their problems and sufferings … And it is this same stone that the angel Gabriel gave to Hagar and her son Ismael to use as a pillow when Abraham had banished the servant and her son into the desert … yes, it is a stone for all the world’s unfortunates. Go there! Tell it your secrets until it bursts … until you are set free from your torments
.” Her lips turn ash-gray with sadness. She sits a moment in the silence of mourning.

Her voice husky, she continues. “Pilgrims have been going to Mecca for centuries and centuries to circle around that stone, praying; so how come it hasn’t exploded yet?” A sardonic laugh makes her voice ring
out, and her lips regain their color. “It will explode one day, and that day will be the end of the world. Perhaps that’s the nature of the Apocalypse.”

Someone is walking through the courtyard. She falls silent. The steps move further away. She carries on. “Do you know what? … I think I have found that magic stone … my own magic stone.” The voices emanating from the ruins of the neighboring house prevent her once more from pursuing her thoughts. She stands up nervously and goes to the window. Opens the curtains. She is petrified by what she sees. Her hand goes to her mouth. She doesn’t make a sound. She closes the curtains and watches the scene through the holes in the yellow and blue sky. “They are burying the dead in their own garden,” she exclaims. “Where is the old lady?” She stands quite still for a long moment. Overwhelmed, she turns back to her man. Lies down on the mattress, her head against his. Hides her eyes in the crook of her arm, breathing deeply and silently, as before. To the same rhythm as the man.

The voice of the mullah reciting burial verses from the Koran is drowned out by the rain. The mullah raises his voice and speeds up the prayer, to get it over with as quickly as possible.

The noise and whispering disperse across the sodden ruins.

Someone is walking toward the house. Now he is behind the door. Knocking. The woman doesn’t move. More knocking. “Is anyone there? It’s me, the mullah,” he shouts impatiently. The woman, deaf to his cry, still doesn’t move. The mullah mutters a few words and leaves. She sits back up and leans against the wall, keeping quite still until the mullah’s wet footsteps have disappeared down the street.

“I have to go to my aunt’s place. I need to be with the children!” She gets to her feet. Stands there a moment, just long enough to listen to a few of the man’s breaths.

Before she has picked up her veil, these words burst from her mouth: “
Sang-e saboor!
” She jumps. “That’s the name of the stone,
sang-e saboor
, the patience stone! The magic stone!” She crouches down next
to the man. “Yes, you, you are my
sang-e saboor
!” She strokes his face gently, as if actually touching a precious stone. “I’m going to tell you everything, my
sang-e saboor
. Everything. Until I set myself free from my pain, and my suffering, and until you, you …” She leaves the rest unsaid. Letting the man imagine it.

She leaves the room, the passage, the house …

Ten breaths later she is back, out of breath. She drops her wet veil on the floor and rushes up to the man. “They’ll be patrolling again tonight—the other side this time, I think. Searching all the houses … They mustn’t find you … They’ll kill you!” She kneels down, stares at him close up. “I won’t let them! I need you now, my
sang-e saboor
!” She walks to the door, says “I’m going to get the cellar ready,” and leaves the room.

A door creaks. Her steps ring out on the stairs. Suddenly she cries desperately, “Oh no! Not this!” She comes back up, in a panic. “The cellar has flooded!” Paces up and down. Her hand to her forehead, as if rummaging through her memories for somewhere to hide her man. Nothing. So it will have to be here, in this room. Determined, she snatches the green
curtain and pulls it aside. It’s a junk room, full of pillows, blankets, and piled-up mattresses.

Having emptied the space, she lays out a mattress. Too big. She folds it over and scatters the cushions around it. Takes a step back to get a better sense of her work—the nook for her precious stone. Satisfied, she walks back over to the man. With great care, she pulls the tube out of his mouth, takes him by the shoulders, lifts him up, drags the body over, and slides it onto the mattress. She arranges him so that he’s almost sitting up, wedged in by cushions, facing the entrance to the room. The man’s expressionless gaze is still frozen, somewhere on the kilim. She reattaches the drip bag to the wall, inserts the tube back into his mouth, closes the green curtain, and conceals the hiding place with the other mattresses and blankets. You would never know there was anyone there.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she whispers. She is in the doorway, leaning down to pick up her veil, when a sudden gunshot, not far away, rivets her to the floor, freezing her mid-movement. A second shot, even closer. A third … and then shots ringing out from all directions, going in all directions.

Sitting on the floor, her wails of “my children …” reach no one, drowned out by the dull rumblings of a tank.

Bent double, she makes her way to the window. Peeks outside, through the holes in the curtain, and is filled with despair. A tear-soaked cry bursts from her chest, “Protect us, God!”

She sits against the wall between the two windows, just beneath the khanjar and the photo of her mocking man.

She is groaning, quietly.

Somebody shoots right next to the house. He is probably inside the courtyard, posted behind the wall. The woman chokes back her tears, her breath. She lifts the bottom of the curtain. Seeing a shape shooting toward the street, she moves sharply back, and cautiously makes her way to the door.

In the passage, the silhouette of an armed man makes her freeze. “Get back in the room!” She goes back into the room. “Sit down and don’t move!” She sits
down where her man used to lie, and does not move. The man emerges from the dark passage, wearing a turban, with a length of it concealing half his face. He fills the doorway, and dominates the room. Through the narrow gap in his turban his dark gaze sweeps the space. Without a word, he moves over to the window and glances out toward the street, where shots are still being fired. He turns back toward the woman to reassure her: “Don’t be afraid, sister. I will protect you.” Once again, he surveys his surroundings. She is not afraid, just desperate. And yet she manages to act serene, sure of herself.

Sitting between the two men, one hidden by a black turban, the other by a green curtain, her eyes flicker with nerves.

The armed man crouches on his heels, his finger on the trigger.

Still suspicious and on edge, he looks away from the curtains toward the woman, and asks her, “Are you alone?” In a calm voice—too calm—she replies, “No.” Pauses a moment, then continues fervently, “Allah
is with me,” pauses again, and glances at the green curtain.