As Though She Were Sleeping (38 page)

Do not ask her – none of you, no one ask her – what she saw for she will not be able to tell you. This was the miracle she had awaited ever since the puzzling dream that had seemed more like a vision and that led her to her future fate in Nazareth. Did Tanyous not tell her that the Carpenter had lost his speech when he went in to his virgin wife and found her pregnant? He tried to ask her and his tongue turned to wood in his mouth. Rather than expressing anger or pain he went into a comalike state and that brought the angel. There he heard the beginning of the story which he would only fully understand beneath the olive tree, when the boy told it to him, years later.

Tanyous said that they used to call Yusuf the Carpenter the mute saint. True, he did utter words when his son told him the story but then he lived out the days of his life permitted to him on this earth in a more or less silent state, uttering the fewest possible words, as though he understood that whatever he had to say would be said only at the very end, when he would go in search of the boy before he was snatched away and taken above.

Was it true that Milia saw the sainted nun?

She sits, tired and faint, bent over her pain. She tries to speak but she cannot. The Italian doctor does not know what to do with this woman. And then he turns to the nurse and says something in Italian which the patient does not understand and she embarks on the voyage inside the secret world of childbirth.

Human voices faded and the nun appeared. She spoke in Tanyous’s voice and told this woman she must prevent Mansour from taking his son to Jaffa. Milia wanted to say,
I beg of you, Haajja Milana,
and she heard her mother’s voice edged with fear. What choice did the woman sitting on the brink of the Virgin’s Wellspring have other than to pursue her entreaties.
I beseech you, Haajja Milana, I don’t want to become like my mother,
she said in the same voice that she seemed to hear.

I beseech you, my sister, why is your voice like his?
Where is our Father Tanyous? He said he wanted to tell me the secret and then he disappeared, and
now you have come to me instead. I am afraid of you, ever since I was little I have been afraid of you, and I don’t want to live this whole story. I am not my mother. Mama was halfway to being a nun and that is not what I am. My fears are for the boy and all I want from God is to be left alone. I am going to Jaffa, fine, and I am so tired, but tell Tanyous that I want to see his face before I have the baby. I just want his blessing, that’s all, and then,
khallaas
, fine, whatever he wants can happen. Where is Tanyous?

I am Tanyous.

Milia heard Tanyous’s voice coming from the nun’s body. Had this all been a delusion of some sort? Then why would Mansour have told her he had gone to the monastery; why would he make up an entire story, start to finish, about the Lebanese monk? Who, then, had told her about Yusuf the Carpenter? Had it been nothing more than a very long dream?

She got up heavily and walked home. She kept her head bent so that she would see no one and be visible to no one, and when she reached the
dar
she saw her image suspended upon the mirror. She wanted to ask Mansour why he had brought the photograph here and from where he had gotten it. She discovered, though, that she had lost her voice. She laid her head on the pillow and fell into a deep sleep.

Musa came because she wanted him to come.

She was alone in the house. December darkness spread over the room, settling onto the coldness of the house. She put on her blue nightgown and slipped between the whiteness of the sheets and closed her eyes. And she told Musa to come.

She needed him, she said, and she wanted to tell him the story. She did not dare tell him she had heard the story from the Lebanese monk. She was not certain of anything now, anyway. The monk had disappeared into Milana’s long black robe. She did not like the nun. She did not want Sister Milana.

Mansour sits alone in the
dar
waiting to see the first signs, those the doctor has described. Milia lies on her left side. She told Musa her belly
had become as big as the whole world. It was not really Musa; she wished he were there. She wanted to tell the story and there was no one to listen. It was no longer a question of proving that what she had seen was true and really there. She was so tired out, and she needed her little brother, and so she asked him to come. Musa believed everything she told him. He always stared at her with an expression that blended melancholy with love, and he drank in her words. Even in those difficult moments when Najib had disappeared and the family split apart, Musa was the one who saw the grief in his sister’s eyes and believed every word she said or didn’t say. At the time Milia had not shared the mysterious story of her love with anyone. The mother told her she had been in the wrong. Why did you let him slip out of your hand? It’s the second time, my girl! Wadiie . . . well, we realized how cheap and grasping he was, and how greedy, but this one – what’s the complaint about him? And now what? How will I ever find you a husband?

Milia had become ill. She came down with an inexplicable headache which no one could diagnose. Everyone was stymied and anxious. She bound her temples with a handkerchief soaked in water to lighten the pain. She peeled raw yams and put slices against her forehead tied in the damp cloth. Why did she forget the story of the voices that nested in her ears and made her incapable of speech? Why did she erase from memory the brief coma that, unbelievably, God had saved her from?

The story goes that Milia was alone in the house when she fell. She was standing in the kitchen stirring curdled milk in a large pot over the gas flame. Musa was the first to come home and he saw his sister lying flat on her back on the floor, as the smells of yogurt and simmering
kibbeh
filled the place. He tried to wake her up by throwing some orange-blossom water into her face. But she seemed too deeply asleep to awaken. He picked her up in his arms and carried her to bed and went out at a run to get the doctor. He came back with Dr. Naqfour to find that his sister had regained consciousness
and the nun with her brass censer in hand was stalking around the girl’s bed muttering prayers.

The doctor did nothing at all. He simply kissed the nun’s hand when she told him all was well, and left. The nun bent over Milia’s ear and whispered something. Two days later Mansour appeared and that was the beginning of the love story that conducted Milia all the way to marriage.

That night, the story goes, Milia dreamed the dream that determined the future course of her life. Did she see the blue woman when she fell in the kitchen? Or did she see her amidst the cloud of incense? Or did the whole business occur through the machinations of the nun?

It was a story of love at first sight, Mansour would tell his mother and brother. As for the question of what Sonia Rahhal had to do with it, this was a mere trifle. After a tiring day spent in Souq Tawile choosing the right fabrics for his new shop in Nazareth, Mansour accepted a dinner invitation from his friend the merchant Samir Rahhal. Over dinner, the merchant’s wife, Sonia, drew him into conversation, urging him to get married. He must go out to the garden and see the prettiest girl in Beirut, she said.

That is how the story began. Milia stood canopied in the branches of the flowering almond tree. Her cream-white complexion mingled into the almond blossoms and enflamed the heart of the man who had come from Nazareth.

It doesn’t matter if Sonia was the nun’s friend. The sister had nothing to do with it. I didn’t even see her until the wedding. No, the nun wasn’t involved. I loved you from the first glance, and that’s all there is to it.

Milia closed her eyes and didn’t open them again until she felt herself submerged in water. She turned toward Mansour but he was not beside her in bed.

She screamed, here was the water, and she was aware of Mansour getting her up and helping her to dress and taking her to the hospital.

M
ILIA CLOSED HER EYES AND SAW
.

Everything was white. Coming to her, the doctor’s voice was muffled in cotton.

She saw two nurses. One held her right hand and the other stood at the end, beneath her spread-apart legs. The first was older, the second one young, but otherwise, two unassuming women as alike as two drops of rain-water. The first was short and so was the second; the first was stooped and had bowed legs, and the second equally so. What had brought Wadiia here?

Twinlike, mother and daughter circled round Milia and issued orders in voices indistinguishable from each other. Now a voice coming from her right, now the same voice from below. The pregnant woman listens to a sound like waves swelling from deep in her belly, as if the child who has dropped his head ready to tumble into the world wants for one last time to use the language of the womb that he will forget so soon. Milia listens and wants to tell him not to be afraid.

Somewhere behind the two nurses’ voices coming to her in peremptory tones she sees a shadow-shape wrapped in fog. It’s the doctor. No – it’s Khawaja Massabki. What has brought him and his two Wadiias here?

Khawaja Massabki stands in front of the glowing stove rubbing his hands
together over the flame. He narrows his eyes as if he is the bridegroom while the two women, mother and daughter, stand awaiting his instructions.

She remembers she was sleeping. She remembers her scream, crying out to him, The water! That is when the fog suddenly descended to wrap itself around her. Mansour, I don’t want to go to Shtoura! My love, I want to go home.

Carrying a lit candle, Mansour strides ahead of the car. Where did you find the story of the candle? True, I did get out of the car to walk ahead, but does anyone carry a candle in such wind and snow and cold? And then, if I had walked in front of the car, we would not have reached the hotel.

Milia does not feel like talking the story over with this man. She is weary of trying to fix her memories. Memories aren’t fixed – you remember things in one way and I in another, and in the end it doesn’t really matter. You want me to remember things as you see them. With all due respect, that’s not the way it goes. Please, please, tell the driver to hurry! I’m so tired.

She sleeps as the car sways and shudders in the snowstorm that pounds Dahr el-Baydar. The driver is begging her to help him convince this fool of a man that they must turn around and head back to Beirut.

Why do you say that?

The bridegroom is mad, madame! Please help out. Damn this crazy idea. Look, I don’t want to make this trip. Can’t a person get married without going to Shtoura! Now help me out, please.

What was this man saying?

Lord, where am I? I want to go home. Mansour, where are you?

She knelt in front of the door to the bathroom and heard his hoarse retching. She knocked and begged him to open the door. She said she would ask Khawaja Massabki to get a doctor.

But Mansour refused. From beneath the coughing his voice sounded haltingly, telling her to go back to bed and wait for him. It was the cheese,
he said. Don’t eat that cheese – it’s gone bad. Go on, go to sleep and I will be there. Don’t be afraid.

She did not say anything but she was afraid. She was dreaming of a different dream. Marriage, Najib told her, makes a woman soft and warm, just like perfect bread dough. I want to knead you, he said, and put you in the oven and bake you and watch you rise. Come closer.

They were in the garden. The evening shadows bumped against the pair of frangipani trees whose branches arced over the garden entrance.

I love frangipani: flowers of seduction.
Futna
. . .
fitna
. Do you know why it is called that? Because it is like a woman. It entices you, then seduces you; it twines a man in and makes him lose his mind.

. . .

Because on the outside, the petals, it’s white and the center is yellow, and it gives off two scents, one for each color, and when they blend they become seduction and chaos!
Fitna
. What do you think of my explanation?

. . .

Come closer so I can tell you what I think.

She pressed herself against the tree trunk, her back meeting its contours. Her right arm was raised against it and her hand brushed a branch thick with blossoms.

This is what drives me mad, he said pointing to her arm. I just want to put my lips here –

Watch out you don’t come any closer! Someone might see us.

I told you, you are like that yellow and white flower. Just one kiss! With one swift movement he grabbed her around her middle and pulled her to him.

Ayyy,
she screamed.

Scream if you want to, said the nurse.

Milia opened her eyes to see a white hospital screen. She was choking on the odor, she said. Why did the blossoms smell like this?

Close your eyes and breathe deeply. It’s chloroform to take away the pain, said the voice, coming from a direction she could not distinguish.

The whiteness vanished. Little Milia ran through the streets of the night. The voice piercing her nighttime no longer came steadily, and then it broke off and the only echo was a faint moan from the woman’s throat. As the sound faded she heard the doctor ordering the two nurses to step back.

Let her get some rest.

Where did the sounds of bells come from? It’s labneh in bread, Uncle. Take your hand away from me and let me eat.