Gate of the Sun (44 page)

Do you remember how many decisions you made and how often you swore you'd stay? You lived in caves. The earth, the rocks, the trees and the wild animals were your companions, and you said you'd never leave. And when you recovered from the shock of your son's death, you went back to Lebanon and began forging your own path as a permanent journey between the two Galilees. You'd go from Lebanese Galilee in the south to Palestinian Galilee in the north. You created your existence, like a story.

But we moved from war to war. We didn't fight a war, Father, we lived war. For us war became numbers added to numbers.

When the Lebanese war ended, I didn't realize it had. The war ended but didn't end, which is why I didn't pay any attention to the question of what and how our life would be afterwards.

My expedition to that restaurant in al-Ashrafiyyeh permitted me to meet my enemies, but unfortunately I didn't feel they were my enemies. At Rayyis' restaurant it was as if I were in front of a mirror and were seeing my own image. No, I'm not defending them. If the war began again, I'd fight them again. Despite that, I want to say that the real war begins when your enemy becomes your mirror so that you kill him in order to kill yourself. That's what history is. Can you see the sordidness and inanity of history? History is inane because it dislikes victors and defeats everybody.

Take yourself. When you told the tale of your journeys and your wars, when you saw that woman kneeling close to the Roman olive tree in the middle of the red sphere of the sun, you were designing your mirror. You saw your own image in their mirrors. No, I'm not equating executioner and victim. But I do see a mirror broken into two halves, which can only be mended by joining the parts together. Dear God, this is the tragedy: to see two halves that come together only in war and ruination.

I say these things to you, and you can do nothing nailed there to your bed, which has become your ship on the sea of death. I hear you saying no and telling me the story of Nahilah before the Israeli investigator.

“I'm a prostitute. Write that I'm a prostitute, what more do you want from me?”

Please tell me that story again, I like it so much. The first time you told it to me you didn't say the word
prostitute
. You said she said, “I'm a pro . . .” And when I asked what that meant you burst out laughing and said, “Prostitute. You've always been stubborn, you don't understand much, do you?”

I asked you, “What did she say? Did she say
pro
. . .or
prostitute
?”

“She said
prostitute
. She said the word the way it is. A mouthful, huh?”

Nahilah was pregnant with her fourth child: Ibrahim had died, Samir was two, Noor nine months, and Nahilah found herself pregnant once again.

Noor saved her. After the birth of her daughter, Nahilah recovered from her sorrow, and the chronicle of her never-ending pregnancy began: Her
beauty would round out, her long black hair flowed down her back, and she'd sway as she walked. When pregnant, it seemed as if she were filled with a secret light that radiated from her face and eyes.

You told me that your lust for her would explode whenever you saw her belly growing round. Nahilah would get as round as a ripe apple and give off a smell of thyme mixed with green apples. She would ripen. When she came to you pregnant at the cave of Bab al-Shams, she'd be overflowing with love and drowsiness.

The incident with the Israeli military investigator occurred nine months after Noor was born. Your mother went to register the girl and get an Israeli identity card for her. They refused to register her.

The Israeli registrar asked for the father's name, and the old woman said it was registered on the headman's document as Yunes Ibrahim al-Asadi.

The registrar said he wouldn't register the girl until he'd seen her father. This happened even though your mother had brought an official document from the headman of Deir al-Asad and had thought that registering Noor would be a mere formality. But the Israeli official insisted on the father coming, so the old woman took the document and went back home.

Nahilah told the headman and all the men of the village that she wouldn't register the girl. “Forget it,” she said. “I'm the one responsible for my children.” From that moment, Nahilah ceased to be an ordinary woman in the eyes of the villagers: She began to mix with the men and sit in their councils.

Soon after, some soldiers came and escorted her to an interrogation. They entered the house, turned it upside down, and found nothing except the blind sheikh, his wife, and two young children. They took Nahilah and put her in a dark solitary-confinement cell for three days before starting to ask her questions.

At the time the Israelis hadn't yet developed the art of torture with chairs; they invented that after invading Lebanon. This consists of tying the detainee to a chair and letting him sit there for a week with a black bag over his head. The detainee remains tied to the chair inside the darkness of the
bag. Soldiers lift the bag once a day to give the prisoner a crust of bread and a mouthful of water, and they take him, with his head still covered, to the bathroom once a day. Eventually the prisoner forgets who he is, his joints stiffen up, and he's crushed by the darkness. By the time he's taken to the interrogation, he's lost all sensation in his body, and his back feels like a sack of stones he's carrying on his spine. He stands before the interrogator staggering, on the verge of collapse.

In those days the Israelis didn't have a particular way of dealing with women. The first charge against Nahilah was that she'd had two children, and the second charge was that she was pregnant. After three days in a solitary-confinement cell, they summoned her for interrogation.

There were three interrogators in the room. The first sat at a small metal desk and the other two on either side of him. Nahilah, handcuffed, stood.

The first one asked her her name.

“My name is Nahilah, wife of Yunes Ibrahim.” Then, she exclaimed, “Oh! It's so nice!”

“What's so nice?”

“The light,” she said. “The light, Sir. Glory be to God, three days in the darkness and then the light came. Praise God, praise God!”

The interrogator began questioning her in Classical Arabic and Nahilah stared out the window and didn't respond.

“Can't you hear?” yelled the interrogator.

“Yes, I can hear. I just can't understand.”

“You've been charged, and the charges are serious.”

“What are the charges?”

“You're pregnant, right?”

Nahilah burst out laughing, and the two assistant interrogators looked at her with fury in their eyes. One of them got up, slapped her, and started questioning her in Moroccan dialect. Nahilah couldn't understand a word; the Moroccan words spewed from the interrogator's mouth, fell on her ears, and wouldn't go in.

The man sat down again, and Nahilah was left standing, the slap ringing
in her left ear. After a short silence, the interrogator with the Classical tongue, sitting at his desk, said he'd been patient long enough.

“I'm at your service, Sir,” said Nahilah.

“You're pregnant, right?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So?” asked the interrogator.

“So, I'm pregnant, you're right. Is there a law against pregnancy in your state? Do we need a permit from the military governor to have children? If so we'll ask next time. I didn't know there was such a law.”

“No! No!” bellowed the interrogator.

“Okay, what do you want? I confess that I'm pregnant. Satisfied? Can I go home?”

“We're asking about him,” said the interrogator.

“Who?”

“Your husband, Yunes. Is Yunes your husband?”

“What's Yunes got to do with it?”

“We're asking you, where is Yunes?”

“I don't know anything about him.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How did you get pregnant?”

“The same way as every other woman on earth.”

“So it's him, then.”

“Who?”

“Your husband.”

“. . .”

“He's your husband, isn't he?”

“. . .”

“Why don't you answer?”

“. . .”

“Answer and get it over with.”

“I'm embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed? Forget modesty and answer me.”

“Okay.”

“So Yunes is the father of your child.”

“I don't think so.”

“You'll only confess under duress. We have methods you can't imagine, and we'll force you to tell us everything.”

He looked to his assistants and said, “Take her.”

“No, no!” she screamed. “I'll confess.”

“Excellent,” said the interrogator. “I'm listening. Please go ahead.”

“I've been pregnant for four months.”

“Fine. Continue.”

“That's all, Sir. You ask, and I'll answer.”

“Where's your husband?”

“I don't know.”

“Is he the father of the child in your belly?”

“No. No, I don't think so.”

“It's not him? Then who is it?”

“No, it's not Yunes.”

“Who then?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?”

“Right. I don't know. Or at least I'm not sure.”

“You're not sure! What does that mean? You mean you're a . . . ?”

“Yes, I am. I can do as I like. What's it to you, Brother? I'm a prostitute. What, there aren't any prostitutes in your respectable state? Count me in their ranks and let me go.”

The interrogator spoke with his companions in Hebrew; they seemed suspicious.

“I confess I'm a prostitute; I don't know who the father is.”

“Do you know the child's father?”

“No.”

“Who do you think it might be?”

“Everybody. Nobody. What kind of a question is that, Sir? Can a woman like me be asked who she thinks it might be? It's shameful!”

“So it's not Yunes?”

“No.”

“And how can your uncle, the respected sheikh, accept a fallen woman under his roof?”

“Go ask him.”

Nahilah sat down on the ground, cuffs on her hands, laughter fluttering across her face, in the midst of that bizarre interrogation, which took place in three languages. She sat and told them calmly: “After having destroyed everything, how dare you now attempt to defend honor and morals?

“You destroyed the sheikh's house twice, Sir: once in Ain al-Zaitoun and again in Sha'ab. Here, it isn't his house, it's mine. This is my house, and I support him and his wife. I can do what I like.”

“Stand up, whore!” screamed the interrogator.

Nahilah rose sluggishly in the silence.

“Are there any more questions? I'm tired, and the children are alone in the house with the old people.”

“You won't say where Yunes is?”

“I don't know anything about him.”

“And you acknowledge that you work as a whore?”

“I'm free to do as I like. You can think what you like, but I don't work and I don't take money for prostituting myself.”

“Disgraceful!”

“Disgraceful! You stole our country and drove out its people, and now you come and give us lessons in morals? We're free to do as we like, Sir. No one has the right to ask me about my sex life.”

The interrogator wasn't convinced but he didn't want to pursue the matter. What could he do with a peasant woman who stood in front of him and told him she was a prostitute? He spat on the floor and ordered her released.

When Nahilah got back to the house, she let out
youyous
of joy, and
everyone gathered around her. That day, she told them, she'd become Yunes' bride: “Before I was arrested, I didn't deserve to be his wife. Now, though, I'm his wife and the mother of his children.” She told them what she'd said to the interrogator, and the villagers laughed until they cried. They laughed and wept while Yunes' mother offered everyone glasses of sugared rosewater, and from time to time would trill with joy.

You told the story, but you didn't finish it.

The story, Father, doesn't end with a woman standing alone before the interrogator and protecting you in such an inventive way – a woman wrapping herself in disgrace to protect your life while wrapping you in her love.

You used to tell portions of the story and look at me to see my astonishment and admiration, and I was astonished and admiring – all our stories are like that: They make you laugh and cry and squeeze joy from sorrow.