White Masks (14 page)

“It's me, Mahmud.”

It was her voice, he was sure she would open the door. He stood there expectantly, but the voice disappeared and the door didn't open. He knocked again and again, but still the door didn't open. Mahmud felt humiliated ... he'd been rejected. She didn't want to let him in. But then the door opened a crack, framing her face. She asked him what he wanted.

“Nothing. I was just dropping by . . .”

“But . . .”

“But nothing ...”

She opened the door all the way and he stepped in. He sat in the living room as she disappeared for a while and came back with a glass of tea. She settled down in a blue armchair across from him and Mahmud made conversation. He told her about the corpse that the “boys” had stumbled across in front of the clothing boutique down in the
souqs
- they figured it was an impatient thief who'd headed for the stores before the area had been secured.

Looking him in the eye, the woman bemoans the looting and the looters. Then, with her eyes still fixed on him, she falls silent, sips her tea, and clears her throat.

Mahmud doesn't quite know how to move closer. He feels that he's on fire, everything inside him is ablaze. He tries putting his arm around her but she won't let him.

“No,” she says, “I have children, shame on you.”

But from the tone of her voice and the glimmer in her eye, Mahmud senses that she too wants him. So he moves a little closer, and then, he takes her. He takes all of her, just like that. And oh, how different she feels! It's been so long since Mahmud tasted a “different” sort of woman. She isn't exactly pretty, he thinks, as he watches her undress and cup her hands to her brown, slightly rounded shoulders, but she is something else . . . she moans and she screams, she says things and takes all of him, she kisses his neck and writhes with pleasure, this way and that way . . . as he lowers himself into her, he can hear her panting breaths, and feel the shiver in her body, as if
she hasn't slept with a man for a hundred years. Making love to her, he feels as if he's known her forever, and he wants to cry; he feels a sob rising in his throat but it remains stifled, only the tears flow down his cheeks. Later, silently, he just listens to her moaning as she melts under his touch, like a piece of dough he is kneading, and wraps her body around his as he lies back in bed, smoking; then he rests his head against her belly, and listens to her telling him about the trouble with the children and her fear of living on this street.

And I, too, am afraid, he thinks, realizing now that he daren't go with the
shabab
anymore because he's really afraid. But he says nothing. He listens to her, cradles her under him and takes her once more, while she surrenders and quivers with pleasure. Oh, what a woman, a woman who quivers! Mahmud wants to tell her about little Fatimah, how he used to watch her going down the stairs and call out
mashallah
after her, and how she has changed ... she's like a stone in his arms now and he no longer desires her . . . how he still loves her, and loves Ali and, even though Ali's dead, he is still Abu Ali, even though Ali did himself in and seared everybody's heart.

But he says nothing. He just lets his body plunge into that warmth, into that wetness that fills every crevice, like the water from the spring over there, in the distant village. And then she tells him that's where she's from too.

“I'm a servant, born a servant and I'll die a servant.”

She gets up - no, she isn't pretty, but she
is
different - and pulls on her robe. She's older than me, Mahmud thinks, but she's lovely and sweet.

She asks him to leave. “The children will be here soon. The oldest one will be coming around and asking for money. He's not working, and even
though I have nothing to give him, he comes by every day. I told him to find himself a job, any job, even with a militia; but he won't, and he comes to me for money.”

Mahmud gets up and dresses, wraps her in his arms, and plants a kiss in her long curly hair, telling her he'll be back the following day.

“No, no, don't. I'll come to your place, I'm afraid of the children.”

He leaves. Going downstairs slowly, his thighs and groin feel pleasantly sore. When he reaches the street, the smell of the city hits him-a mix of garbage and rain and remains - but he feels strangely energized. When he gets back to his building, he climbs up to the third floor, where he now lives, turns on the radio and listens to the same old news. Feeling hungry, he decides to go and visit his wife and children - he'll see them and eat there.

He walks down the streets, long endless streets, and when he arrives, he kisses Fatimah on both cheeks before entering the house. He has something to eat, asks after the children, takes a walk around the neighborhood, and then goes back to Kantari. There, he sits and waits.

He waits a long time.

Mahmud Fakhro, otherwise known as Abu Ali, sat in front of the building and waited, his heart leaping in his chest whenever he heard footsteps. He'd swing around - no, it wasn't her - then he'd forget that he was waiting for her, and wait again . . . as though he were young all over again, in love and waiting. But she never came by. Ten whole days he waited, but she did not come by.

He resolved to visit her again: when he went and knocked on her door, no one opened . . . so he stood in front of her building and waited on the street. And along she came, with a young man by her side. For a moment,
Mahmud was fearful that it was her son, but she stopped and greeted him, and introduced him to the young man. Then, she invited him up for a glass of tea.

They went upstairs together. As she busied herself in the kitchen, Mahmud sat in the living room, across from the young man, who looked him over and asked after his health and spoke of the weather. Then she came in carrying glasses of tea and smiling. He drank his tea hurriedly and left.

He expected her visit, and sure enough she came by the next morning, but she wouldn't go upstairs with him. “No,” she said, “it won't do, it won't do at all. I've spoken to my son and he's OK with it if we get married . . . but not like this. I'm not a fallen woman, I have children, I'm a widow, and I don't want my name dragged through the mud.” And she left.

What to do, thought Mahmud. Should he marry her? No, he'd just go back to her place and make love to her again and that would be that! But what if the son was home with her? He decided to forget about it, and for the most part he did - except for that liquid fire blazing inside his groin.

He sat and thought. He couldn't go back home anymore, he didn't want to stay here guarding the building, and he didn't have what it took to join the ranks of the
shabab.
He told her he was lonely. She merely repeated what she'd said before.

“But I'm already married.”

“That's no problem.”

True, where
was
the problem?

Still, he sat alone and waited.

Out and about one day, he saw the
shabab
and decided to join them
around a fire they had lit in the Capuchin Church. And, suddenly, he saw it, the painting of Our Lady Mary: it was the same one, the very same Our Lady Mary that he'd taken from Fatimah and thrown away. There she was before him now, but bigger. He aimed his gun and fired. Then, he had a glass of araq with the boys and fell asleep under the ruined image.

When Fatimah saw him coming with that old woman by his side, she couldn't believe her eyes. She had heard - of course she had - but how dare he come to the house with her? Hussein had told her. He'd gone to visit his father and found an old woman there, with a white headwrap and tattoos around her eyes and across her face, acting like the mistress of the house.

And here she was now, walking by his side . . . Fatimah was stupefied - she stood there, transfixed, speechless, when all she felt like doing was running away and screaming . . . Yes, there he was, with his stocky little body, getting closer, turning this way and that, as though answering the greetings of passers-by, his stride self-assured, with that woman by his side!

Stepping inside, the woman extended her fingers to shake hands and Fatimah did likewise. They sat down, the children gathered around, and Fatimah went to the tiny kitchen to make coffee. She sensed him coming in behind her, and swung around angrily.

“I've married her, she's my wife now,” he said, patting her on the shoulder.

Standing before the sink, coffee pot in hand, a great burning sensation spread between Fatimah's shoulders and down her spine, but she said nothing. Mahmud wiped the tears from her eyes, then left her to it and went back to the other room.

The two of them drank their coffee as Fatimah sat with the children
clustered around her. That woman's manner was so different! She did all the talking and Mahmud went along with everything she said - it's as if
he
had turned into a woman! Every time he tried to say something, she would interrupt him, and he would fall silent! She looked the children over and asked imperiously why little Hassan's shirt wasn't clean, as Mahmud concealed his embarrassment with forced smiles.

Fatimah was stunned. This man was not the husband she knew! She was aware that men did this sort of thing, Sitt Huda had warned her. “A man is a man,” she had said, “he's free to do as he pleases.” But how could Mahmud go and marry this hag when they didn't have enough to eat - and then play wife to her!

With nowhere to go, Fatimah, who had waited and waited for him, now felt like a stranger in her own home, as this Bahiyya woman sat there one leg crossed over the other, brazenly smoking in front of everybody, flicking the ash from her cigarette with such an air of superiority, you'd think
she
was Sitt Huda ... and gesturing showily, making sure everyone saw those gold bracelets coiled around her wrist . . . Fatimah counted, there were six of them.

Why, oh why, did this have to happen? And look at him, smiling beatifically at her . . . this wasn't the same man, not the Mahmud who beat her, the Mahmud who made her quake and beg for mercy. How he had changed - damn, how this cursed life could bring a man down!

Fatimah doesn't know how she plucked up the courage to ask her husband where the two of them would live. The woman replied that they would stay in Kantari, in Khawaja Fadee's building, on the third floor. And she invited the children to come over and visit.

“We've redone the apartment, it's a proper home now, with three bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, three bathrooms, a small room for the maid, wall-to-wall carpeting - you know, the works! And if it weren't for the water and the electricity being cut off, we would have hot running water and central heating!”

Then the two of them rose to leave, and Mahmud said he'd be back the next day.

But he never did come back - at least not until the day they pumped all those bullets into his body. Actually, that's not true, he came back once before that, to tell her he'd divorced Bahiyya and thrown her out. But Fatimah didn't believe him. “You're lying,” she told him, “I don't believe anything you say anymore!”

And when he did come back, his body was bloody and riddled with holes.

Everyone said he was a thief. Even at the funeral, she heard people say he had stolen that woman's bracelets and then turned her out. But she never saw him with any bracelets, and he never said anything about them . . . No, he didn't steal . . . But then why did they kill him? Fatimah doesn't know, she's all alone now, and this Hussein of hers has become like his father, always gone from the house. Whenever he shows up, he asks for money, and when she tells him she has nothing to give him, he starts yelling that he wants his father's bracelets.

“But your father didn't have any bracelets, and anyway I don't know anything about it!”

So he hit her - the dog, hitting his own mother!

And then he disappears again, and Fatimah remains all alone, with that
damned landlord Basheer al-Harati - all by herself, her work is never finished, and they threaten to kick her out. Were it not for Professor Nabeel Assi, she doesn't know what would have become of them. You'd think they wanted her and the children to starve to death.

I was frightened, says Fatimah. No, no one else died. The war was over, but why was there still shelling? The fighting had stopped, but not the shelling . . . the war's finished, they said, and nobody's dying anymore. Everyone was carrying on as if nothing had ever happened, as if those who had died weren't gone forever, as if Mahmud . . . oh, poor Mahmud . . . how they killed you! And now there was this man, standing on the sidewalk, eating silently, and nodding his head whenever I asked a question.

“Why are you whitewashing the walls?”

Looking into her eyes, he tells her that it's on the way.

“Listen,” he says, “it's coming . . . things are coming. Death is on the way.” Pulling the navy-blue coat tight around his thin body, he drops his head. “The things that are coming, you don't know, no one knows ... but these walls . . . we must erase everything . . . everything must be whitewashed, every single solitary thing.”

Pulling out a little eraser from his pocket, he goes on. “You see this eraser? They're going to give me a bigger one.” Then he spreads his arms their full span and says. “It'll be this big.”

“And who will give you the eraser?”

“They will. You don't know, none of you does . . . it's a huge eraser, and it doesn't just erase what's written on the walls, it'll wipe everything out . . . all I'll have to do is put it, like this, against the wall, and boom, the wall itself will disappear. No, it won't blow up: there'll be no noise, no explosion, no
dust or debris, no rubble! I'll put it against the wall and the wall will vanish, it'll disappear just like that! Now you see it, now you don't . . . There'll be a thousand men, and a thousand women, we'll all go out, each with a huge eraser, and we will erase everything . . . wipe out walls . . . houses . . . faces . . . everything. There'll be nothing left, everything will vanish, you will vanish and I will vanish, the city will vanish, and the posters too, everything will vanish into white, white-as-an-egg white, white as the white of your eyes, white as white. Everything will be erased . . . things will fall apart, just like that, as if they weren't falling apart. Like the officers. I used to be an officer too, but I quit . . . I was the greatest officer, I'm sure you've heard about my exploits, how I used to kill . . . how I would ambush them at the crossroads and kill them. And now I carry around the eraser . . . Look! You're not really looking, your eyes aren't focusing ... but me, I can see, I can see it all, as clearly as the palm of my hand . . . my palm is white, I painted it with whitewash . . . Everything is like my palm, but you don't see my palm, no one can see it, because it's different. And here I am, the officer, my men all around me, soldiers standing to attention in silence. I march ahead of them, they dare not breathe, and then I strike one of them with the cane I carry in my hand. But you don't see my hand. The soldiers run away, and I laugh at them, poor wretches! They don't know and you don't know, no one knows the truth. And I don't know what the truth is. But they will give it to me, and we will be a thousand men and a thousand women, can you imagine how many we'll be? We will erase everything and die. Everything dies . . . it's as if we died, as if everything died, as if everything . . . No, marriage and women aren't for me . . . I don't go near women, but you're different . . . your cooking tastes good . . . your
hindbeh
is delicious . . . I hate food . . .
why don't you drink
laban? Laban
is the best thing in the world. I get by on nothing but
laban.
”