White Masks (13 page)

After Mahmud died, she wouldn't go back to Kantari, she doesn't know anyone there, and he didn't tell her where he'd hidden the money he had gotten from selling that woman's bracelets. No money, no relatives, no war. In other words, everything just the same as before: Basheer al-Harati and his capricious ways; the protection of Professor Nabeel; the children, of course; and Hussein, who disappears for days at a time without coming back. She wonders where he goes ... With Zeytouneh destroyed, there aren't any whores to be had these days! She really doesn't know where he goes and she dare not ask.

And now, here she is standing next to this strange man sitting on the sidewalk and talking to himself. Fatimah invites him in. His only response is to raise his eyebrows.

“What are you doing here, why are you ripping all the posters up?” she asks him. So he starts to tell her about the white sheets.

Fatimah saw him only a few times before he disappeared. Though she never asked, she heard that the
shabab
had taken him in for questioning. The fact is he disappeared, and anyhow, he never said very much.

“The white sheets,” he says to her, “First, the bed has to be painted white, then we put a white sheet on it, cover ourselves with a white bedspread, and go to sleep. We must pull the covers right up over our eyes, so that all we can see are tiny white speckles of light.” He tells her he is going to buy a sheet and sleep in it, with Ahmad by his side.

“Little Ahmad, chasing me chasing him, I hoist him up high and he flies . . . he flies through the air, and soars like a bird into the stratosphere . . . there . . . no higher than that . . . A man comes along, then two, then three, a thousand, a million men come . . . The man points his rifle skywards, he takes aim, he fires. The flames leap up toward him, but Ahmad soars, the flames licking all around him as he tries to escape, and he circles around and around, then crashes down and the fire devours him. The bird is on fire, its feathers are ablaze, it's nothing but a big fireball, and I will burn the sheet.

“I am white. I want a white sheet to sleep on, with a white bedspread over the sheet, and a naked light bulb hanging in the middle of the room. Peering through the white fabric I can see the light refracting, nothing but little white specks. My teeth are white, and the walls . . . even the walls are white.”

Propped up against the curb, he goes on and on like this as Fatimah listens. He talks endlessly. The war is over, and this man is all alone, just like she is. And Hussein is never home, just like his father, forever leaving her by herself... she feels frightened, all by herself, standing before this man, staring at ravaged walls and ripped-up pictures. She turns on her heels and goes back
inside. She's scared, but this man seems fearless, he doesn't seem afraid of anything. She feels as if she's somehow always known him.

Gradually, she begins waiting for him. One day, she goes and stands on the sidewalk across the street, but he doesn't come by, so she decides to go and do the day's shopping. After setting off, she realizes that she's left her money at home, so she hurries back to the room, tucks a little knotted handkerchief into her bosom, and goes out once again. She's still on the lookout for him, but no one is there. And then, all of a sudden, there he is, plodding along slowly, hugging the walls, with his back stooped, in his lime-soaked shoes and his pith helmet, carrying his little bucket and his paintbrush, hugging the walls. Fatimah approaches him, but he just keeps going, so she falls into step beside him; he doesn't turn toward her but she knows he can see her . . . He halts, and then sets off again, going on his way without acknowledging her. Stopping in her tracks, she decides to head back home, but then out of the corner of her eye she catches him turning toward her, moving in her direction. People are rushing by, car horns are blaring, the city is humming with city noises. The man pauses, and then moves on again, while she heads home - she doesn't need anything today. She steps inside and waits.

That evening, he's back: he lies down on the sidewalk across the street and she takes a glass of tea out to him. Holding the glass with a trembling grip, he takes a sip, and smacks his lips, as though chewing on something. Fatimah notices his dirt-encrusted fingers and his overgrown nails. She asks him whether he would like something to eat.

“No, but thank you for asking, my dear ... No, my dear, I don't want anything. I'll just sit here.” Then he starts telling her about boxing.

“I am a boxing and weightlifting champion. You know, like on television?
You can ask them about me at the television station if you like, I'm the king of TV.” He falls silent, looks up at the sky, and then goes on. “But I don't like appearing on TV anymore, the screen is so small and narrow I feel suffocated. I feel it pressing against my head. So I quit. I gave up everything and decided to buy a white sheet, but sheets are expensive these days.

“The city's empty,” he goes on. “The city's empty, all its citizens are under the sheet, you're under the sheet, and I am too . . . come and get in under the sheet.”

Fatimah doesn't know what to say.
He must be delirious, but what if he's right? Maybe he's right . . . he doesn't seem like anyone I know,
she thinks,
no, not like Fadee or Mahmud or Ali, or anyone else for that matter, with that little beard of his - that little white goatee of his doesn't look like anything I know.

“Come and get under the sheet with me. Go and fetch your children, and all of you come under the sheet. The city's all white, I'm painting it ... Did you know that? That's work, real work.”

“But you seem so poor . . . are they paying you?”

“Naturally I'm poor. No, they don't pay me. Of course not, because we won't take payment. I am the sole remaining volunteer in this country. I volunteer my services, it means I work and don't get paid because I have volunteered. All the walls will become white . . . And the hands . . . Hands are the most important thing in the world.”

Fatimah looks down at her hands and fingers, while he stares into space.

“The most important things in the world are hands: everyone's hands will become white, fingers, fingernails, walls.” And then he bursts out laughing. “I was a boxer once. No, no, I didn't get married. I can't stand women. I'm a boxer, and when I pull on my black boxing gloves and strike
my opponent, the blood runs. But I gave up.” He hoists himself up with both hands. “Even the sky's white, look.”

Listening to him, Fatimah smiles. She feels just as she used to when she gazed at the little picture - the one Sitt Huda had given her long ago - of a woman with huge wide eyes, cradling an infant in her arms . . .

“That's our sacred Lady, the Virgin Mary, peace be with her. It's our Lady Mary with Jesus.”

Fatimah loved looking at the picture of the woman with the Christ child, and those eyes of hers ... she'd hung it above her bed in the tiny room they'd given her in that huge house, sometimes she'd talk to it, and when Sitt Huda caught her once, she smiled. Fatimah knew the little icon wouldn't answer, but such a sweet little infant he was, she dreamed of having one like him and of cradling him in her arms like Our Lady Mary . . .

Except that Mahmud threw it away. It disappeared with him one day. He said there was no need for Our Lady Mary or for this picture anymore and started cursing. Fatimah was sure the Virgin was going to abandon her, she told him as much when he tried to snatch the picture from her hands. Fatimah wept, she told him the Virgin was walking away, she was leaving the picture, walking out of it - still tiny like in the picture, a miniature Virgin in orange hues holding the sleeping infant in her arms, turning this way and that, with Fatimah walking by her side. But Mahmud just swore and snatched the picture away. Fatimah felt sure they were all going to suffer some terrible misfortune. She thought of getting a new one but Sitt Huda was so far away. Mahmud said that Fadee had become like “them” - he wants us dead, he told her.

Fatimah knows neither how nor where, but somehow this man resembles the picture, even though he doesn't at all. She leaves him and goes back to her room while he sets off, slowly talking as he walks, addressing everyone that passes him, talking to people he doesn't know. No one answers him and she wonders why the man is doing this to himself.

“What kind of a city
is
this?”

Mahmud Fakhro stands alone in front of the heavy metal door . . . The streets are deserted, they've simply emptied, there's nothing left but sandbags and distant gunfire ... shattered glass of every color is scattered across the asphalt, and the remains of gutted cars look like corpses strewn along the street. There's not a living soul around. Mahmud ponders what he's doing here, but thinks maybe he'd better stay on . . . true, the militiamen have taken a lot, but there's still so much left. He needs to make ends meet and how else to do it? He's got the gun, which provides some protection. They gave it to him finally, after he'd talked himself hoarse arguing with them. Yes, the building is quite empty now, but there's still a lot to be found in it.

So Mahmud Fakhro stays on over there, where's there nothing but the street, the remains of the shelling, and his solitude. When he goes up to the third floor, which he moved into after the gunmen left, and opens the fridge, it smells. There's no electricity. It's as though he were the only living being in a city of specters and ghosts.

It was on that street that he met her. He wasn't looking or anything, she happened to walk by one day. When he first saw her, making her way alone down the street, he thought she was a pretty woman. Although she
must have seen him squatting in the broken glass in front of the building, she didn't turn to look his way. She just kept going, while he followed her with his eyes.

No, she wasn't pretty, and she didn't take the slightest notice of him. And what was she doing there alone anyhow? On an impulse, Mahmud jumped to his feet and started to follow her. Her footsteps rang down the deserted street, and he walked behind her, but she didn't turn around. Then, she veered off to the right, entering a narrow alley that stank of burnt paint. Or so he thought. She reached a metal gate, opened it, and was about to go in, when she turned and looked at him. He thought she was going to say something, at any rate that's what her lips suggested, so he smiled and said hello. The word slipped out so quietly that most likely the woman didn't hear it. At any rate, she didn't answer, and then slowly turned and entered the building.

Realizing he was all alone again, Mahmud left. But the woman remained on his mind.

Sitting alone in front of his building, fondling the pistol grip, he kept thinking about going back there and up those stairs . . . What could she do to him, a woman by herself? But he didn't go. He was afraid there'd be other men in her household, or that she might have some disease. And he didn't see her again after that.

Alone on the deserted street, Mahmud occasionally sought the company of the fighters and went with them on forays to the old downtown
souqs.
But mostly he spent his time sitting in front of the building.

“I'm not scared,” he'd tell the gunmen. “I'm on your side, honestly, but I can't leave the building.”

The thing is he didn't want to die. Dying was serious business, as far
as he was concerned. He didn't understand how those young men went to their deaths so easily. Dying was no easy matter, he thought. So he sat there, alone.

And then he saw her again. He was sitting on the steps in front of the building, eating canned beef, bread, and a tomato, when he saw her coming down the street all by herself. She was walking slowly.

“Please join me,” Mahmud said.

She thanked him and continued on her way. No, not exactly - she slowed her pace, so he repeated his invitation. She halted and turned toward him, and leaned against the iron railing between the street and the steps where he sat.

She asked him what he was eating. “Meat,” he said, his mouth full. And then again, “Please join me.” Entering the perimeter of the building, she told him she didn't eat canned meat, and stood there as he carried on chewing. Looking at her, Mahmud noted the tattoos, like rings, around her eyes. She's pretty, he thought, and asked her what her name was.

“Bahiyya,” she replied. “Bahiyya Agha.”

“Pleased to meet you ... Mahmud Fakhro.”

“
Ahlan wa sahlan.
”

He asked her what she was doing in this deserted neighborhood. She told him she worked as a maid for Mr. Ahmad Rustom.

“They went to France, and I am here by myself, watching the house for them.”

“But it's dangerous here, it's a war zone.”

She told him she placed her trust in God, and that her sons visited her from time to time. When he inquired further about them, she recounted that her husband had died of a heart attack three years earlier and that her
sons worked as laborers on construction sites. She told him she felt scared living on this street all by herself and that she'd better be on her way.

Mahmud wasn't sure what to do but he didn't stop her. The days passed. She didn't return, nor did Mahmud dare try to visit her.

One rainy morning, Mahmud Fakhro woke up early with a bitter taste in his throat. At first he thought he'd go home and visit Fatimah and the children. But then he quickly changed his mind. He stretched, had something to drink, and ate an orange, singing some old tunes from his childhood. Then he shaved, dressed, and went out.

He walked down the deserted street, turned off to the right and stopped in front of her building. He pushed open the wrought-iron gate, noting its loud squeak, and slowly padded up the stairs. He wondered what floor she lived on. Reaching the first-floor landing, he found an open door. When he went in, there was nothing there - the apartment was completely empty, not a stick of furniture in it, nothing but the floors and graffiti on the walls. So he hurried up to the second floor, where he came to a closed door. He knocked, no one answered, so he went on to the third floor. There, an acrid smell wafted out to the landing from an open door, so he continued on and reached a closed door. He knocked once, and then again. He heard a commotion inside and then a woman's voice: “Who's there?”