As Though She Were Sleeping (6 page)

On a white metal bed set against the white wall where Musa hung his sister’s photograph, Milia was born at noon on Monday the second of July in the year 1923. The day was hot and humid. Beirut’s metallic sun pounded the streets with cords of fire. The midwife, Nadra Salloum, had hung yellow bedsheets over the sitting-room windows. They burned with the light that beamed through the window and turned the entire room into what seemed a mass of yellow flame. On the bed Saadeh lay moaning. Nadra – stocky and dark and plump faced, with a lit cigarette held eternally between her lips – chided and teased the woman whose torso stretched across the width of the bed, her face covered in heavy sweat and her white chemise spattered with a wetness tinted yellow by the imprint of the sun’s blaze.

Shhh, sister, this isn’t your first tummyful and there’s no need to scream, said Nadra, arms crossed, chewing the butt of her lit cigarette as she waited for the baby to appear.

It was Saadeh’s sixth childbirth. Of the previous five three boys remained: her firstborn, Salim; her fourth, Niqula; and the fifth one, Abdallah. Of the two who had died, the second child to be born to Saadeh had gone unnamed, his sobriquet becoming
the Blue Boy
because he had been born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and had choked on his
blueness. Number three, Nasib, had contracted jaundice a week after his birth, entering family lore as
Yellow Nasib
.

Saadeh lay across the bed awaiting her fourth boy, whom she had decided to name Musa. After the first two, she had given birth easily, as if the child simply had to slide directly from her womb. As soon as she felt the pains of labor, with Nadra hovering close, Saadeh would sit on the birthing chair, enveloped in the vapor rising from the pan of boiling water on the floor of the
liwan
. The gliding sensation always made her feel a bit dizzy and light-headed; she felt herself slipping downward in sympathy with the tiny being emerging from her entrails. Nadra would pull the child out, lifting him by the feet and slapping his backside to get him to squeal. When she saw the tiny penis between the thighs she would let out a long trill and Yusuf would know that a new boy had joined his family.

On that steaming July morning when the temperature reached 34°C, Saadeh lay flat and still on the bed, pain clubbing her body. She screamed louder and louder as the yellow hue spread across her face and hands. Always before, at the sight of the waters gushing out as the labor pains began, Yusuf had gone running to Nadra’s home. Opening her door, the midwife welcomed him with the same words every time: she could see another boy on Yusuf’s face. Thick smoke billowed in interlacing circles from the interior and Yusuf could hear Master Camille’s cough and his friends’ boisterous sounds as they filled the home with the popping and hissing of their narghiles and their noisy card games. He would scurry to the back of the house, pick up the birthing chair, and hurry home, Nadra following him with the inevitable cigarette in her mouth.

That day when the door opened there was no smoke. There were no sounds of narghiles or shouting of card players. Master Camille wasn’t there. Nadra was in the kitchen cooking the midday meal. Yusuf bent to pick up the chair but it wasn’t where he had always found it before. He froze,
not knowing what he ought to do. Nadra tugged at his arm and ordered him to follow her.

The chair broke, she said. From now on we’re going to have babies the way those Europeans do it.

He didn’t ask her what she meant by this cryptic declaration. He was close behind her as they ascended the long flight of stairs connecting Abu Arbid Street, where Nadra lived, to Zaroub at-Tawil Street, where his wife waited. When Nadra told her to lie down, Saadeh did so, but the midwife scolded her. Sideways across the bed, she ordered. Lift your legs. We have to be able to work.

Saadeh changed position, the pain squeezing her insides. She said only one word – Where’s – ? – but could not complete her sentence because she began to convulse with pain.

There’s no chair, said Nadra. Today we’re gonna do it the
mudirn
way. Lift your legs and push hard. Really hard.

But Saadeh began to cry. Nadra washed her hands with soap and water, came over to Saadeh and told her not to be afraid. Twisting on her mattress, Saadeh did not hear Nadra’s words. She needed air; when she pushed, the air seemed to get stuck in her lungs. She opened her mouth in desperate search of oxygen and felt Nadra’s hand behind her with a small towel, wiping away the sweat that had collected on Saadeh’s neck and brow.

Quiet, Saadeh, relax.

But the child refused to begin the voyage out into the world. Nadra knelt between the thighs of the woman stretched across the bed. She probed for the head, already in the proper position for its descent. Nadra tried to grasp hold of it but could not.

Push, push!

Air, let some air in, I’m choking, said Saadeh, shivering. A powerful tremor seized her and her teeth began to chatter.

I’m dying – air!

Don’t be afraid, nothing’s going to happen to you! shrieked Nadra.

Saadeh closed her eyes, no longer able to listen. The ringing in her ears got louder. She abandoned herself to the shivering that seemed to have taken over her entire body. The midwife scurried outside to fetch cold water, carrying it into the house in a small basin. She began laying cold compresses on Saadeh’s forehead. The trembling lessened and it seemed the pregnant woman had regained her ability to breathe.

I’m going ’neath you, said Nadra, and when you start feeling the labor pains pressing really hard, we’re going to push one time and Go’ willing that will be all it takes.

The midwife crouched down below Saadeh. The sweat began to spread across her short blue dress and she too felt as though she could not breathe. She wanted to swear – this whole f-ing business! – but she got the better of herself and simply called out,
Push!
Saadeh pushed with all the strength she had. Push, come on, again! But Saadeh’s body suddenly went completely limp.

A moment later the tremors once again seized the pregnant woman lying on the bed. The midwife could find nothing to do about it. She stood waiting and then began to notice a peculiar color that seemed to be hovering all around her. Saadeh was floating in the color green. A greenish hue spread over her cheeks and eyes and it seemed to erase everything Saadeh was. Green stains spread across her face and hands, her thighs and feet. Never in her long practice had Nadra seen the likes of this color. When she had entered the room and ordered Yusuf to take a pair of bedsheets and cover the pair of windows that looked out over the Rahhal family’s garden next door, the yellow color had convinced her that fire was shooting into the room.

What’s this color? Change those sheets!

But Yusuf didn’t move. That’s all we have, he said.

Out there – go on out, she ordered him.

It’s like we’re inside an oven, said Nadra to the nun sometime later, as she said goodbye at the front door.

Take that cigarette from your mouth, said Sister Milana as she left the house, raising her palms skyward as if to give witness to the world that she had been the one to handle this birth.

The yellow hue spread across the place like a fire consuming everything in its path. But then came the green: a bright, open green that slowly grew more intense until it was a dark green tint spreading in rings to encircle the hands and feet of the pregnant woman. Her limbs went slack and her tears mingled with the drops of sweat falling from her brow. She looked nothing more than a moaning heap of flesh. Nadra couldn’t believe her own eyes. She bent over Saadeh’s face, wiped away the sweat and heavy tears with a small white towel, and noticed the smear of yellow left by the sweat.

Nadra was afraid. Her heart dropped into an empty space between her feet. What was there to do now? The nun watched the scene calmly, then she began to issue commands, and suddenly it was over.

Standing before this green pockmarked miasma advancing like rot over everything, Nadra was certain that she could no longer do anything. The one idea remaining in her head was to open the door and escape from this hellfire.

On one occasion, years later, she told Milia that she had been so afraid of Saadeh’s color that she had been on the point of running away, leaving the baby girl in her mother’s belly.

You mean, I would still be in there? asked the little girl.

No, dear, that isn’t what I meant. It’s just the way we speak. It’s how we say what we mean when we’re telling a story to someone.

Milia nodded as though she understood, but she didn’t, not really. Long
afterward she discovered that
how we say what we mean
is meaningless. When that man left her for a reason she did not know, she understood that speaking had no meaning. People talk to fill the empty spaces that separate them. They fill their spirits with the noise of words to give themselves comfort.

Milia dreamed fragments of her own birth. This dream she refused to conceal in the hollow of her night. She saw the yellow color spread. She leapt up and her eyes flew open when she heard a scream that exploded deep inside her. She found herself getting out of bed and going to lie next to her brother Musa in his bed.

Nadra opened the door to the room and the dusty cloud rose. A tall thin man loomed in the doorway and asked her in a raspy whisper to reassure him that all was well. Nadra answered by ordering him to go quickly to the home of Dr. Karim Naqfour and to bring the doctor back with him immediately.

The woman is not doing well. She’s exhausted and she must see a doctor immediately.

What’s wrong? asked Yusuf.

Nadra’s arm shot out and she shoved her hand over his mouth. He tasted blood mingled with sweat and excrement. He leaned against the door to hide his dizziness.

What’s the matter with you, standing there like an idiot! shouted the midwife.
Yallah
– go get the doctor, now!

The man turned and ran to the doctor’s home. He knocked on the door but no one opened it. He was in a panic. He did not know what to do, and the taste of blood lingered on his lips as his dizziness grew worse. Loss. That was what he felt. The sense of loss collapsed onto him, falling heavily from all directions, and his legs could no longer carry him. He sat down on the front steps to wait for the doctor. Then he remembered that his wife was dying and it was up to him to do something. He picked himself up and
began to run beneath the burning sun, in the direction of the Convent of the Archangel Mikhail. Why the convent he did not know, for he had no love for Haajja Milana. He detested the magic she practiced on his wife. Many times he had cursed her and threatened to abandon the conjugal home if she continued resisting his desire to sleep with her. Repeatedly Saadeh had refused. Haajja Milana told me it is forbidden as long as I am fasting, she said. So he had to wait an entire fifty days: the duration of the sacred forty-day Lenten fast and then through the day of the Messiah’s resurrection just so he could lie with his own wife. On Easter morning he came to his wife and took her. She felt like a dried-out dead branch and he savored nothing. The fresh springs washing over him whenever he slept with her were gone. Now his moisture was sucked out without replenishment. He had not been watered; there was no pleasure. It was a sensation that would stay with him for the rest of his life. When Saadeh entered into the rituals of this eccentric nun she shattered his sex life. Now, whenever he approached her, intimations of discomfort and shame inhabited his wife’s eyes. She no longer allowed him to put his hands on her breasts and she fidgeted and balked if his mouth so much as came near her lips. Sleeping with her became merely a question of finishing and moving away. She would hurry immediately to the bathroom and wash as if to rid herself of the traces of sin.

It’s all the nun, he snarled at his wife, enduring the pain in his sex after their wooden intercourse. She’s the devil – she’s no saint. I hate that woman! I don’t want to see her ugly face around here ever again. Listen to me and listen well. From now on Haajja Milana is forbidden to set foot in this house.

Saadeh turned a deaf ear on Yusuf. She continued her daily visits to the convent and brought the nun home to sprinkle blessed oil over her children. She begged Sister Milana to intercede with God, entreating Him to forgive her husband the sin of failing to have any love for the saintly nun.

Now, and without knowing how it had come to pass, Yusuf found himself in front of the immense iron gate set into the convent wall. He saw his fist pounding on the gate and heard his voice shrieking. Open up, please Haajja Milana, open up!

As the nun opened the door and stepped out, she snapped, It’s Saadeh and her girl! Come, follow me to the house.

The shock of it tied Yusuf’s tongue. He wanted to remind her that he fathered only boys. But he found himself simply walking silently behind her, seeking shade in the enormous moving shadow that she made over the ground. The sun burned on the dirt lane that linked the Convent of the Archangel Mikhail to his home, and the odor of dry, cracked earth saturated the air. Yusuf breathed heavily. Sweat beaded on his back and rolled downward. His robe stuck to his body. This tall broad-shouldered nun’s massive rear waddled along swiftly in front of him in her long black habit. Yusuf kept himself inside the mammoth shadow that swayed and bounced over the unpaved track, broke against the rocks, shot upward to the garden of the Shabbua family, and dropped away to the olive grove below. The air he breathed in was burning the insides of his chest.