Gate of the Sun (71 page)

On that day the words died, Yunes, and we entered a deep sleep from which we didn't awaken until the
intifada
of the people at the interior of the country. Then the papers published the photo of the child with his slingshot and you said to me, “It seems it's begun again.” It did indeed begin, but where was it going?

You've never liked this kind of question, even when the self-rule agreement was signed at the White House and we saw Rabin shaking hands with Arafat and we thought everything was over.

You were sad, but not me. I was like someone watching someone else die. And now I can tell you that deep inside I was happy. Death isn't just a mercy, it's happiness, too. This language has to die, and the world manufactured from dead words has to become extinct. I was happy as I watched the end, all while wearing a false expression of sorrow on my face.

Do you remember?

I was at home, we were sitting in front of the television, and you were pulling every last bit of smoke from your cigarette down into your lungs and listening to the American talk. Then you turned to me and said, “No. This isn't the end. There was one end and we got past it. After what happened in '48, there won't be an end.

“During that time, it was the end, my son, but we survived. What's happening now is just a step, anything can change and be turned around.”

Your words broke up in front of me and scattered in all directions. Then you went out. You left me alone in front of the television tuned to the American talk. I waited for you until the program came to an end, then I turned it off and went to sleep, feeling that psychic confusion that compelled me to mask my joy with a simulated sorrow.

And now, tell me: How long are we supposed to wait?

Here am I, waiting for your end – forgive me, your beginning – in spite
of everything, in spite of the smell of powder that emanates from your room, and in spite of your face, which flows over the pillow like the face of a baby still unformed. I'm here, waiting for the end. No, I'm not in a hurry, and I don't have the slightest idea what I'll do after they close the hospital.

They say they're going to demolish the camp anyway, because the camp isn't the camp any longer – its borders have shrunk, and its inside space, at this point, is up for grabs. I don't know who lives here now – Syrians, Egyptians, Sri Lankans, Indians . . . I don't know how they get here or where they find houses. Soon the bulldozers will come. They say the plan is to demolish the camp and turn the land into part of the expressway linking the airport to central Beirut.

Anything's possible here. Maybe we should start our exile over from scratch. I don't know.

I told you I'm waiting for nothing except the end, and then I don't know. Anyway, it's not important. I asked you about speaking the truth so I could understand why Mr. Sinounou lied about things that didn't happen and then believed his own lies.

N
O
. N
OT
S
HAMS
.

I haven't told you anything about her, not because I don't want to, but because I don't know anything. A man only knows the woman he's loved when the talking ends; then he discovers her all over again and rearranges her in his memory. If she dies before that happens, she remains suspended in the fog of memory.

Shams remained suspended because she disappeared in the middle of the talking and left me on my own to discover the infinite senses of things. Shams disappeared into the jungle of her words and left me alone. I don't think all that was an illusion, that I was just a parenthesis in her life, but I don't understand how anyone could be such a chameleon.

My problem with that woman was that I never knew. After having made love, she'd turn into another woman, and it was always up to me to search for the woman who'd been in my bed.

Patience. I'll explain everything. Shams would disappear. She'd be with me, her love too, and then she'd disappear, would take off I don't know where. I'd wait for her and she wouldn't come. Then, when I'd just about given up hope since I had no way of contacting her, I'd find her in my house, a different woman, and I'd have to start all over again.

I'd get lost searching for her. I'd walk the roads, my heart thudding whenever I saw a woman who looked like her. And suddenly she'd knock on my door and come in, her long hair cut short like a boy's, her eyes full of wonder as though she were discovering a place she'd never been in before, reserved, wrapped in modesty as if I were a stranger. She'd start talking about politics, saying that she this and she that . . . I'll spare you her lectures on the necessity of reorganizing ourselves in Lebanon, etc.

When I approached her she'd pull back, shy again. I'd try to take her hand and she'd draw back as though she weren't the same Shams who only a few days earlier had been whinnying in my bed. I'd take her slowly and watch her approaching slowly; then, when I had her in my arms, I'd feel the need to be sure she'd truly returned to me, so I'd whisper in her ear and ask her to say her
ay
that would sharpen my desire, and she'd draw back again.

“I don't want to say it . . .”

She'd move away, sit on the sofa and light a cigarette. I'd wait a little before I'd go back to her. I'd take her hand and start the journey once again, and then I'd hear that
ay
seeping from her lips and eyes. When I took her in my arms, as a man does a woman, she'd twist a bit to one side, hide her face in my neck, let out an
ay
and pull me toward her.

When she was with me I'd forget that she'd disappear in the morning and that I'd have to start the adventure all over again.

My question is, Yunes, where's the sincerity in this relationship?

Is Shams Shams?

Is this woman that woman? Do I know her? Why did the smell of her body cling to mine and the sound of her voice hum in my head?

And by the way, Yunes, why doesn't the lover feel he's a man like other men? Why to prove our masculinity are we forced to take refuge in lies and
pretense, stuffing our days with idle talk and boasting of fictitious adventures and then, when we approach the woman we love, we become like women?

Why does something like femininity awaken within us?

It's true, the lover becomes like a woman.

I confessed. Yes, confessed. I tried to explain it to her, but she didn't understand, and even if she had . . . what good would it have done? Even if she'd loved me – and she did love me – or if she'd betrayed me – and she did betray me, then what?

Come to think of it, why did she want to marry Sameh? Why didn't she say she wanted to get married? I was prepared to marry her. I was I don't know what. It's true . . . why didn't I ask her to marry me? I can say now that I didn't dare, that the story she'd told me about her former husband blocked my ability to think, and that her troubles with her daughter, Dalal, stopped me from thinking about marriage.

How do you propose to a woman whose sole concern is to organize the abduction of her daughter? She said she'd have no peace in her life till she'd taken Dalal from Amman and brought her to Beirut, and that she needed a man to help her. And when I said I was at her disposal, I saw a trace of pity in her smile.

“You, my dear, are a doctor, and are of no use. I want a real man. I want a fedayeen fighter.”

Was Sameh the man she was looking for?

Didn't she tell me in a satisfied moment, “You're my man”? How could I be her man and not be a real man? And how can you ask a woman to marry you as she's telling you she's looking for another man? But no, I'm not sure, I don't believe she talked about Dalal with anyone but me. She'd forget her most of the time; her daughter would only come alive for her after we'd made love. I'd light my cigarette and take my first sip of cognac, and along would come Dalal and set up an impenetrable barrier between us. Words would die and Shams would become a knot of tears – a woman who'd tell stories about her daughter and curse life and fate. Then suddenly she'd
jump up and say she was hungry. I don't know how she didn't get fat. She devoured enormous quantities of food in my presence.

“Why aren't you eating, Qais?”

She used to call me Qais: “You know I'll treat you the way Laila did her Qais. I'll drive you crazy.”

But Qais, I mean I, would only eat a little. Once I told her I didn't eat because I was in love? And do you know what her reaction was?

“What an absurd notion! ‘Seduction requires strength.' Eat, eat! Love needs food.”

I was incapable of eating even though I was hungry. I was like someone who couldn't chew food. It was enough for me to keep her company and look at her devilish eyes stealing glances at me and apologizing for her insatiable appetite.

But maybe not. Maybe the reason I didn't ask her to marry me was that I was afraid of her. Strange. Tell me; don't you think it's strange? Not you – it's impossible to make a comparison with you because Nahilah was your wife and that explains everything. I don't want to trespass on your life.

But why didn't you do what Hamad did?

Like you, Hamad was a fighter in the Sha'ab garrison – don't tell me you don't know him. Umm Hassan told me his story. She said his sister refused to hold a wake for him after he died in her house in Ain al-Hilweh, so the wake was held in Umm Hassan's house in Shatila.

Umm Hassan said they were complete fools: “They say he is Israeli. What does that mean? When we're humiliated and imprisoned for the sake of our children and our land, does that make us traitors?”

I won't tell you the story of Hamad's return to his village in Galilee because I'm sure you know it. I just wanted to say that maybe you also were afraid of love.

Take any love story, Brother. What is a love story? The story we call a love story is usually a story of the impossibility of love. People only write about love as something impossible. Isn't that the story of Qais and Laila, and Romeo and Juliet? Isn't it the story of Khalil and Shams? All lovers are
like that; they become a story of unconsummated love, as though love can't be consummated, or as though we fear it or don't know how to tell about it, or, and this is the worst, we don't recognize it when we're living it.

What did Qais Ibn al-Mulawwah do? Nothing. They stopped him from seeing his sweetheart Laila, so he went mad.

Nice words and lovely poetry, but the man was crazy and his beloved married another man.

And Romeo, what did he do? He killed himself.

And what about all the other lovers? All of them loved at a distance and lived their love in separation, so they became impossible stories.

Don't you agree?

Is it because love is impossible that every time Shams left me, my mouth would become as dry as kindling?

Was it because I couldn't stand to be parted from her?

Do you know that beautiful verse from the Koran? “They are a vestment for you, and you are a vestment for them.” How are we to become vestments for one another – I mean, how are we to become one?

That's what love is, which is why we can't talk about it. We talk only about its impossibility or its tragedy, its victims and its fatalities.

And when lovers are together, it's impossible to describe. In fact, it may be that none of us lives it and that's why we invent reasons why it's kept from us.

It might be that love has no language. It's like a smell. How can you describe a smell? We describe it in terms of what it's not, and we don't give it a name. Love's the same. It has a name only when it isn't there.

I don't mean to belittle the importance of your love for Nahilah. I know that you loved her and that your infatuation was great. I know that she dwelled in your bones. I know that you're dying today because of her.

But why didn't you go back, the way Hamad did?

How was it that Hamad went to prison and succeeded in returning to his house and his wife, and such a possibility never occurred to you?

Don't tell me you sacrificed yourself for the revolution, I don't believe it's that.

Please don't misunderstand me. I don't want to denigrate your history. Your history is my history, and I respect you and honor you and hold you in the highest regard.

But tell me, wasn't there an element of fear of Nahilah in your decision? Didn't you prefer – unconsciously perhaps – that she be where she was and you where you were? That way your story could continue and survive across space and time. Every time you went to see her, you put your life in danger. Every time, you purchased your love at the cost of the possibility of your death. Isn't that extraordinary? Isn't that a story like no other?

Tell me, when you were walking the roads of the two Galilees, of Palestine and of Lebanon, did you feel that your thorn-lacerated feet bore a love story like no other?

As for me, though, what a letdown!