Jabbour Douaihy - June Rain

I only want to know if your girlfriend has a mother waiting for her there in her hometown in America as I have waited for you here. Does her mother wake up like a madwoman at night? Does she run to the door barefoot because some voice called to her to wake up, a voice saying that her daughter has returned from her long journey, and is sitting on the threshold, dying of thirst, waiting for someone to open the door for her? Does her mother open the door the way I open it every night, with her hands trembling, only to find no one there and in turn sit on the doorstep peering into the darkness, broken hearted, listening for the slightest movement, hoping it might be an indication that her daughter has arrived? Does she run barefoot every night to open the door, hoping that the voice is real for once and that she will get to embrace her daughter in her arms until daylight? Does she have, this girlfriend of yours, a mother like me who has not seen her, not even once, for twenty whole years? And in spite of that she begins every day by kissing and sniffing her old clothes? Your clothes have become so funny looking, Eliyya. And your shoes so small. Does she make candied pears for her on Saturday afternoon? Her day off from school when she was still in primary school… does she only like candied pears? Does her mother prepare them for her and place them prominently in the middle of the table, looking at them and waiting? Then at the end of the day does she give them to one of the poor neighbour kids, because her daughter doesn’t come to eat them? Does she do it every Saturday afternoon? Yes, for ten years I kept on preparing candied pears for you, every Saturday, because I was afraid that if I missed one, something bad might happen to you and you’d never come back to me again.

Don’t worry about me, Eliyya. I will not cry. I stopped crying a long time ago. But give me your hand, my son. Give it to me so I’ll be encouraged to keep talking. I will not cry. Why should I cry over your absence? Wasn’t I the one who cleared the path for you to go? That is the true story of your mother Kamileh: her only child, who she fashioned with her own hands — yes I fashioned you with my own hands — she let him go, willingly. Don’t you remember that I said to you one day, ‘Things have gone awry, my son. This country is in shambles. Pack up your suitcase and go. You’re not staying here one more day!’

I asked you to leave the country after having begged thirty different saints to conceive you. There wasn’t a single corner in Lebanon that I didn’t visit, from the Church of the Virgin in Qbayyaat to an abandoned monastery in the furthest reaches of the south, near the Israeli borders. They unravelled the written amulet for me for fear someone had invoked evil against me to prevent me from having children, and they taught me all the right formulas. ‘Add extra salt to your food, Kamileh,’ they advised. ‘Sleep with your husband five days in a row.’ ‘Stay on your back and lift your legs up high.’ They taught me how to count on my fingers and to use the lunar calendar…

I walked barefoot to Saint Anthony of Quzhayya, down that long and difficult road overgrown with thorns. I arrived with my feet bleeding and with two gold pounds in my hand which I placed on the altar for him. I said to Saint Anthony, ‘Give me a son and you’ll be pleased with me. I won’t be stingy with you.’

Go ahead, laugh at me, Eliyya. You don’t believe in these superstitions. Whoever said I believe in them? But if I hadn’t done it, I would have kept on thinking I hadn’t fulfilled my duty. I lay down flat before the altar of Saint Anthony, inside his church, the one hewn out of the rocks. I spent the whole night there, until dawn. I almost died from the cold, and ever since that day my stomach starts to hurt with the first hint of cold weather.

I knelt a thousand times before the icon of the Virgin in the Lower Quarter and I beseeched her to give me you. Yes, the same old church. You went to visit it again, right? I knew you were going to go there to look at the icon and the little angels surrounding the Virgin. I used to go there at night, at a late hour when there was no one around, and I would close the outside gate so I could be alone in the church and raise my voice. I would cry and beseech her, ‘Why are you so selfish? Are you in need of all those little angels around you? Why don’t you be generous and give one of them to me?’ I would point to the little angel rising up with its wings over her right shoulder. I liked that one more than the others. Sometimes she would smile at me. I knew she wouldn’t forsake me.

I visited Saint Panteleimon in the Miryata region. He’s one of the Orthodox saints whose church is guarded by Muslims. I even secretly sought one of the Muslim sheikhs, but the neighbours found out and laughed at me. Your father never accompanied me, but when Saint Elias’s turn came, we were told that the saint only accepted visits from a man and woman together, and so I begged Yusef until he agreed. He was very embarrassed about these things. He agreed to accompany me, but only at night, so he wouldn’t be seen by anyone who knew him. He was afraid of their tongues. Saint Elias was the last saint we visited before your father was killed. That is why I decided to call you Eliyya. I feared for you. If I hadn’t named you Eliyya, I was convinced I would be exposing you to danger…

Deep down you’re laughing at me. Go ahead, laugh, but I don’t wish my life on anyone. The doctors got tired of me. I used to go on my own to see them. At Hôtel Dieu Hospital the French doctor made fun of me and said the same thing as Saint Elias. ‘Don’t come back here without your husband, because he also has to undergo medical tests. And if he’s already convinced you that the problem is you, tell him that men can be sterile, too…’

I didn’t go back to that doctor. The worst times for me were when I’d go out on the balcony and see the laundry hanging out on rooftops and balconies, especially when I caught sight of baby clothes, their little coloured shirts and little socks hanging there, each with its own clothes pin, and also their little towels and cloth diapers. In those days they used to wash the diapers and hang them to dry, not throw them away like today. Those were days of poverty and suffering.

Before I got pregnant, and when your father was still alive, I went down to the souk in Tripoli. I bought diapers and hid them well so no one could see them and make fun of me. Yusef was afraid I was going crazy. I bought baby clothes, little shoes and all the necessities. I had everything I needed for a baby. Sometimes when I was alone I enjoyed taking them out and looking at them. I would spread everything I had bought all over the bedroom and gaze at it. Finally I insisted on buying a cradle. I said to myself, if I don’t buy a cradle I won’t have a baby. It had to be a genuine wooden rocking cradle. It was difficult getting it into the house secretly because my husband didn’t want people to gossip, and so we waited until night to bring it in from the car. There it is right over there. Look. Near the door. You’ve grown up now, Eliyya, and you don’t have any need for it anymore, so I planted flowers in it.

My life became very difficult. I would pound my belly in anger. I would go crying to my mother and she told me stories about women who got pregnant after they had lost hope. This one was in her forties, and this other one was forty-five. ‘Don’t give up, Kamileh. Don’t let your husband run away from you.’

I started hating other people’s children, hating even the mention and the sight of children. My women friends, little by little, started avoiding all talk of children in my presence. Previously they would go on and on with anecdotes about their little ones whenever they came over. Funny stories about them at school and the difficulty of bringing them up, their first words, their many sparks of intelligence. They’d say all this as if they were upset. ‘No soul is brought to life unless another soul dies!’