Gate of the Sun (79 page)

That summer day, Yunes reached the house in a state of exhaustion and decided to spend the night there before continuing his journey to Bab al-Shams.

“I was in my room, the only one al-Khouri had completed before he died. Sleep wouldn't come. The August sun was burning the ice, and the ice was burning my face. I was cold and I was burning at the same time. I got up, wrapped myself in a wool blanket, and sat on the threshold above the dry ice. I could feel the worms moving over me. I must have fallen asleep. I awoke to find the ice worms, little white worms, emerging from beneath the crust of dry ice and spreading over my feet. I got up in fright and started stepping on them. On that occasion I didn't wait for nightfall to continue my journey to Nahilah; I traveled by day and God protected me. I don't know how I made it. Nahilah couldn't believe that the ice was full of worms.

“A peasant from the village of Kafar Shouba told me that the ice became wormy when it got old, and that the ice worms were very useful, because they turned water cold.

“I put the worm in the jar and drank, but Nahilah refused at first. Then she started asking me for worms from Jebel al-Sheikh and would distribute them to people in the village – in those days people were poor and no one owned a refrigerator; to cool the water, they'd put it out in jars overnight. Everyone started calling the ice worms ‘fedayeen worms.' The whole village knew that I visited my wife in secret. They knew, but Nahilah, God protect her, didn't tell even the children about the cave until the end of her life.

“Salem spoke to me by telephone – you know, over there they can call us, but we can't call Israel.

“Salem said his mother's health was improving and that she'd confided the secret and asked him to go to Bab al-Shams. She told him to visit the cave often to keep it neat and clean. ‘Don't let the sheets, towels, and blankets
get moldy. It's your father's village, ask him what he wants you to do with it. His home must be kept neat. And when I die, take everything out and close up the entrance with stones. We cannot let the Israelis in there; it's the only liberated plot of Palestinian land.'

“After her death, Salem called me to say that he'd gone into Bab al-Shams, and wanted to know what to do with the things he found. He called it Bab al-Shams on the telephone! No one knew the name of my village except the two of us. There we were on our own, like Adam and Eve, and now along comes Salem and blurts it out!

“He told me about Nahilah's death and then asked me about the cave. I couldn't breathe.

“He said, ‘May God compensate you with good health, Dad,' and then he asked me what to do with my things.

“I said I didn't know.

“He said he'd carry out Nahilah's wishes.

“I didn't ask him what her wishes were. I found out forty days later. Salem called and said he'd closed the ‘country' with stones. He said he'd gone at night with his son, Yunes, and Noor's son, Yunes, and Saleh's son, Yunes, and Mirwan's son, Yunes . . . they'd gone and closed the country. They'd taken everything out and had divided the things up among them.

“Salem told me, and I didn't manage to utter a word.

“At that moment, I felt my life had ended. Four young men had divided up my clothes, my blankets, my cooking pans, and my books, and closed the country I'd created for my wife.

“Salem said he'd asked the children to keep the secret of the cave.

“‘It's Yunes' secret. Leave Yunes in the whale's belly,' he told them, ‘and after three days, or three years, or three decades, your grandfather Yunes will emerge from the whale's belly, just like the first Yunes did, and Palestine will return, and we'll call the village that we'll rebuild Bab al-Shams.”'

“No,” said Yunes to those who came to pay him condolences, “she isn't dead.” But he knew deep within himself that the story was over.

In this last period, he recounted fragments of his stories about Laila, the Roman lady, and the Yemeni woman.

He said the Yemeni woman was wrapped in the red of the sun.

He said he saw himself, with his beard and his rifle that he carried like a prophet's staff, within the circle of sun stretching over the olive groves that extend from Tarshiha to the sea.

He said he became frightened when he saw her kneeling.

He said he hid in the trunk, and all he heard was the word
Elias.

He said he emerged from the belly of the olive tree and looked for her.

You are Elias, Yunes. It's a new name to add to your others.

I told you the story, my son, so you won't forget that Elias is one of your names. Elias is the prophet of fire, the one who never died. He is the only man to have ascended to Heaven without experiencing death.

Death, as you see, is not a requirement.

Please listen to me.

I know you're tired.

I know you want to die.

No.

You just have to look at yourself to know that your death would be as harrowing as the death of a child; there's nothing crueler than a child's death.

Do you want to die as Ibrahim did?

If only she were here! If only Nahilah were here, she would dress you in Ibrahim's clothes and keep you from dying the way your son died.

But Nahilah isn't here, and I don't know what to do. Still, please, try to get through this seventh month with me, and afterward everything will start anew.

But you aren't listening.

I know you never obeyed anyone but that woman called Nahilah. Where am I supposed to find Nahilah?

Salem told you that in her last days she couldn't lie flat or her lungs would fill with fluid. She'd sit with her basket of flowers and water next to her. Every day she'd ask Noor's son, Yunes, to go and pick fresh flowers. She'd sit him down beside her and ask him to write out names. She'd put all your names in her basket and recite from the Surah of Light:

“Don't forget, children. Recite the Surah of Light at my funeral. I always see him surrounded by light. Come, Yunes, and sit beside me. Ibrahim is waiting for me. We are all descendants of Ibrahim, children. Come, Yunes. Come, Ibrahim.”

Nahilah saw her son, Ibrahim, in the form of a man called Yunes, and saw her husband, Yunes, in the form of a child named Ibrahim.

You're his son, not mine, so why are you tormenting me?

Please. I'll go to your house now and will bring back the photos. I'll hang them on the walls of this room. We'll leave the drawing of the Divine Name in Kufic script in the center, and we'll arrange your photos around it. Your photos around the Name, and all of you around Yunes.

I'll go get the photos, and we'll tell the whole story.

The story will be different.

We'll change everything.

I'll hang all the photos here, and we'll live among them.

I'll take down a photo from the wall and will hand it to you, and you'll tell a story. Then I'll choose another photo and a new story will come. Story will follow story.

That way we can compose our story from the beginning without leaving a single gap for death to enter through.

^*
Literally: The People.

^*
Allusion to the Jordanian army, which would recruit heavily from the Bedouin tribes.

^*
Hope.

^*
Military allies of Syria that had split off in 1983, after the PLO's forces left Beirut.

^*
Priest.

^*
Koran, Surah XXIV, 35 .

N
OW
I
STAND
.

I'm alone and it's night.

I stand and speak my last words with you. Talk is no longer possible. The speaking's done, the talk's run out, the story's closed.

I stand, neither weeping nor laughing.

As though your death were in the past. As though you died long ago. As though you didn't die.

I stand, without sorrow or tears.

I stand before this grave. I stand before the mosque turned into a grave by the siege. I bear witness that you placed your head in the earth, closed your eyes to the dust, and left for a distant place.

What then?

Tell me.

Didn't I tell you? Didn't we agree that we had to get through this seventh month? I told you if we succeeded in getting through the seventh month, we'd have outrun death.

Didn't we agree to buy life with these long days and long nights spent in this hospital room, as we told stories and remembered and imagined?

I told you it would cost seven months, and we've made a dent in the seventh month, and your child-features are beginning to take shape. I told you it was the beginning: “We've reached the beginning, Father, and now you'll become a son to me.”

Why did you do this to me?

I never intended this to happen.

I decided to leave you for an hour to go get the photos so we could start the story over again. But I didn't make it back until morning. I saw Zainab waiting for me at the door of the hospital. She ran toward me, laid her head on my shoulder, and wept.

I asked her what was wrong, and she shook her head and said, “A heart attack.”

Zainab wept, but I didn't.

Amjad wiped his tears as he gave directions for the burial, and I stood there like a stone. As though it weren't me.

Please don't reproach me – you know what happened to me.

I walked in the funeral procession like a stranger, like any one of the dozens who were there. They put you in the hole, they covered you with earth, and no one came forward to say a word. They looked at me, and I lowered my gaze. I was incapable of looking, incapable of speaking, incapable of weeping. It was as though a veil had descended over my eyes, as though I saw without seeing.

I had to wait three days before I found within myself the courage to stand before your grave, in this rain, the night of the camp covering me and granting me speech.

Now I stand, not to apologize but to weep.

I swear the only reason I left was to go to your house and get the photos. I thought I'd go and get the pictures of you and Nahilah and your children and grandchildren, and we'd begin the story. I felt my memory had dried out and my soul had gone dead, and I thought that only the pictures could renew our story.

I'd go to the photos, put them in front of you in the hospital room, and we'd talk.

I thought instead of talking about love, we could talk about the children and grandchildren.

I thought we could tell their stories one by one. That way, with them, we'd make it through these two remaining weeks of our seventh month in death's company and make it into the pains of childbirth.

Isn't that the law of life?

Didn't we agree we'd try to reach the depths of death so we could discover life?

No, I won't leave you on this terrible night.

I thought I'd go for an hour and come back, and I didn't come back.

Forgive me.

Please forgive me.

I left you with the story of Nahilah in her last moments, as she spoke with you and with Ibrahim, calling you Ibrahim and calling him Yunes, her children and grandchildren around her, weeping.

No. I didn't mean to leave you with death, because it was your duty and Ibrahim's to guard Nahilah and accompany her on her final journey.

I wanted a different story.

I wanted to tell you that I believed you when you said you didn't stop going over there after the night of the Roman olive tree, when your wife sat you down and recounted her reality; when she told you that over there you'd become the Jews' Jews, and over here you were the Arabs' Arabs.

I believed you, I swear.

I don't want you defeated and discredited.

I believe you.

After the night of the Roman olive tree, you absented yourself for nine months. Then you resumed your old habits, continuing your journeys over there despite all the difficulties. You didn't stop going over until after 1982, or, in other words, until after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when movement inside Beirut became impossible and the trip from Beirut to Sidon a reckless adventure.

That was when you stopped going across Jebel al-Sheikh and they started calling you. You'd talk to them and promise you'd all meet soon in Cyprus or Cairo. That meeting, however, kept getting postponed, as if neither of you wanted it – as if both of you'd agreed, without a word, to avoid the danger of a meeting outside the place you'd created for your meetings. One time it would be you that put it off, another time it was Nahilah, and then she fell ill.