Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

Times have changed.

Then, you would have to have died in this cold bed to become a story. I know that you’re laughing at me, and I agree — the important thing is not the story but the life. But what are we supposed to do when life tries to force us out? The important thing is life, and that’s what I’m trying to get at with you. Why can’t you understand? Why don’t you get up now, shake death from your body, and leave the hospital?

You don’t love the moon, and you don’t love the blind singer, and you can’t get up.

But moonlight is true light. What is this solar culture that’s killing us? Only moonlight deserves to be called light. You told me about moonstroke. You said that in your village people feared it more than sunstroke, and you’d seek cover in the shade from the moon, not the sun.

The fact is, master, your theories on aging are faulty: It’s not teeth and eyes, it’s smell. Aging is that implacable death that paralyzes body and soul, and it always comes as a surprise. Of course, I agree that in your case the psychological factor was decisive: You became old in one fell swoop when Nahilah died — though, in fact, her death doesn’t explain everything because other women still love you. Nevertheless, you got away.

Don’t put your finger to your lips for silence. I can and will say whatever I like. You don’t want me to talk about Mme. Nada Fayyad? Very well, I won’t say a word — but she came yesterday and stood at the door to your room and wept. A woman of sixty, she came and stood at your door and refused to enter. This is the fourth time she’s come in three months. Yesterday I ran after her and invited her in. I stopped her in the corridor, lit a cigarette, and offered it to her. She was weeping convulsively, mascara running into her eyes.

She said she didn’t go into your room because she didn’t want to see you like that. “Unbelievable!” she said. “How can it be? To hell with this world!”

I was surprised by her accent.

She told me she was from al-Ashrafiyyeh, in Beirut — her name was Nada Fayyad — she’d known you for a long time and used to work with you in the Fatah media office on al-Hamra Street.

Did you work in media? What did you have to do with media and journalists and intellectuals? You always used to say you were a peasant and didn’t understand all that nonsense! Or is Mme. Nada lying?

She asked me if I was your son and said I looked a lot like you. Then she kissed me on the cheek and left. You must have seen her when she came in but didn’t want to talk to her. Why don’t you talk to her? Does she know about you and Nahilah? Or did you hide that story from her and give her a different account of your wife and children and journeys to your country?

Tell me the truth, confess you had a relationship with this woman. Maybe you even loved her. Tell me you loved her so I can believe the story of your other love. How do you expect me to believe you were faithful to one woman your whole life? Even Adam, peace be upon him, wasn’t faithful to his only wife.

You had the habit of hiding your truth with a smile. When I asked you about other women, you had only one response: No. A big no would emerge from your lips. Now the secret is out: Amna and Nada and I don’t know who else. One after another they will come, as though your illness has turned into a trap for scandals. I’ll sit here with you and count your scandals.

Please don’t get upset — I’m only describing the facts. Shams taught me to do this. She said she’d never lie to me. She said she’d lied to her husband and felt there was no reason to lie to me. She said she’d learned to lie after the long torment she’d lived through with him and had relished it because it had been her sole means of survival. Then she started to get sick of it. She said that when she lied successfully she felt she was disappearing. In the end she decided to run away so the lying and disappearing would stop. She said she wanted an innocent relationship with me. Then I discovered she was lying.

When I fell in love with her, she said she hated sex because her husband had raped her. I believed her and tried to build an innocent relationship with her. But, of course, I was lying to her: I used the phrase “an innocent relationship” so I could sleep with her. Then I discovered she was raping me.

I say she was raping me, but I’m lying. We lie because we can’t find the words; words don’t indicate specific things, which is why everyone understands them as they wish. I meant to say she enjoyed sex, as I did, which doesn’t mean she raped me. On the contrary, it means we loved sex, reveling in it, laughing and frolicking. She would yell at the top of her voice — she said her husband had forbidden her to yell, and she loved me because of the yelling. She’d yell and I’d yell. I’ve no right to call that rape, so I withdraw what I said and apologize.

I’m certain Nahilah was different. You don’t want me to talk about Nahilah? Very well, I’ll shut up. With Shams, it was not a question of sex; I lost myself in that woman. And I wasted all those years of my life only to discover I’d been deceived. I don’t concur with Shams’ theory of love, that every love is a deception. She dominated me completely, and she knew it. Once, after disappearing for two months, she turned up as though she’d never been away, and instead of quarreling with her, I dissolved into her body. That was when I told her I was a lost cause, but she already knew it. She would disappear for days and weeks at a time, and then appear and tell me unbelievable stories that I believed. Now I’ve found out what a fool I was. Love makes a person naïve and drives him to believe the unbelievable.

The woman was amazing. After we’d made love and screamed and moaned, she’d light a cigarette, settle on the edge of the bed, and tell me about her adventures and her journeys. Amman, Algiers, Tunis. She’d tell me she saw me every day and heard my voice calling to her every morning. She’d ask me to repeat her name over and over again; she’d never get tired of hearing it. I’d sound her name once, twice, three times, a dozen times, then I’d stop, and I’d see her face crumple like a child’s, so I’d start again, and we’d start making love again.

Then I discovered she was lying.

No — at that moment, when I was repeating her name, I knew, but I used to relish the lie. That’s love — enjoying a lie, then waking up to the truth.

After the killing of Sameh Abu Diab, I looked everywhere for her. My first feeling was fear. I was afraid she’d kill me as she’d killed him. I told myself she was a madwoman who murdered her lovers. Instead of feeling jealousy or sorrow, I found fear. Instead of looking back over my relationship with this woman, I began shivering in my sleep.

Then she died.

No. Before she died, I went looking for her so I could warn her of her fate.

Do you believe me now? I know that the day her death became known you looked at me suspiciously and said, “Shame on you! That’s not how a woman should be killed. A woman in love must never die.”

I told you she was a killer. She killed the man she loved and then claimed she’d done it to revenge her honor because he’d deceived her. He’d promised to divorce his wife and marry her, but didn’t do it.

I told you, “Shams is lying. I know her better than any of you.”

“And why should she lie?” you asked me.

“Because she loved me.”

You told me then that I was naïve, that we never could understand the logic of the heart, and the point of her relationship with me might have been to rid herself of the ghost of her love for Sameh. You explained to me that a lover takes refuge in other relationships in order to escape the incandescence of his passion. You despised me because I was the “other man,” and you didn’t believe I’d had nothing to do with the killing. It’s true I appeared before the investigating committee in the Ain al-Hilweh camp, but I didn’t participate in the massacre.