Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

She continued to come at her regular time and I continued to leave her alone with you. Last week, however, she was late. Do you know why I haven’t spoken of her until today? Because she’d become a part of our life here in the hospital, a routine one pays no attention to until it stops. Last week I became aware of her because she was late, and I decided to wait for her to ask her who she was. I put on a clean white gown and thought to wear my glasses, which I usually forget in my pocket since I haven’t gotten used to the idea of putting on glasses. As soon as she entered the room, I went over to her to shake hands.

“I’m Dr. Khalil Ayyoub.”

“Pleased to meet you, Doctor,” she answered, sitting down again.

“I haven’t had the pleasure of making your acquaintance,” I said.

“I’m a friend,” she said. “An old friend.”

I got into a stop-and-go conversation with her about conditions in the city, but she didn’t seem to want to talk, as though I were stealing the time she’d set aside for you. Despite her irritation with my questions and her abrupt and evasive answers, I decided to be impertinent. I sat on the second chair and leaned forward a little as if to follow what she was saying. As soon as she saw me sit down, she put her hand on her hip as though she were about to stand up. Before the gesture could be transformed into the arch of the back that precedes the moment of rising, I got a question in. I asked her, point-blank, what her relationship to you was.

“When did your relationship with him start, Madame. .?”

I left my question hanging in the air, and the shock took the wind out of her sails. Looking at me with startled eyes, she said, “Claire. Claire Midawwar.”

“Have you known him for a long time?”

“A very long time,” she said and got up.

“Tell me about him,” I said.

She picked up her bag and said she was going. “Look after him, and may God make him well.”

Mme. Claire didn’t come that week, and it’s possible that she’ll never come back again. It’s my fault, but I couldn’t help but ask her. I saw her coming once a week and I imagined her with you, eating Roman olives dripping with lemon juice and oil.

Eating Nahilah’s olives with another woman!

I don’t understand anymore.

You’ll ask me about the French actress, I know. But no, I swear there’s nothing between us. I just felt a strange tenderness.

You’ll ask me about my visit to her at the Hotel Napoléon on Hamra Street.

I didn’t mean to visit her. I was feeling stifled here, so I went. I’m not going to tell you any more now. I’ll behave like Claire Midawwar, who went away without telling me a thing.

Tell me, is Claire the woman you sought shelter with during the Israeli invasion of ’82?You claimed that you’d fled to a priest’s house! Was she the priest? Got you! I’ve got you now, and it’s up to me to decipher what you said. Everything needs translating. Everything that’s said is a riddle or a euphemism that needs to be interpreted. Now I must reinterpret you from the beginning. I’ll take apart your disjointed phrases to see what’s inside them and will put you back together again to get at your truth.

Can I get at your truth?

What does your truth mean?

I don’t know, but I’ll discover things that had never crossed my mind.

“And you?” you’ll ask.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. What about you?”

“Nothing.”

“And the French actress?”

“Nothing.”

“And Shams? Where is she?”

Please don’t say anything about Shams. I promise, I’ll forget about Claire and the olives dripping with lemon juice and everything else, but please, not Shams.

So let’s close this chapter and return to the summer moon and Nahilah.

That night, the moon was bright in the skies of Galilee. Yunes tapped on the windowpane and left, but he heard her whisper. He turned and saw her standing at the window, the moonlight pouring down onto her long black hair. He went closer and she said, “The Roman tree. Go on ahead and meet me at the Roman tree.”

He went to the tree, wondering why she didn’t want to go to the cave, guessing that she might be indisposed, because at that time of the month, she’d come to him at Bab al-Shams and ask him to go out with her into the fields, and he’d stubbornly refuse. The game would end with him kissing every crevice of her body while she screamed at him, “Stop it! Stop it! It’s a taboo!” and he’d give way before this taboo and be content with expending himself between her small breasts.

He went to the Roman tree, but instead of waiting for her beneath it, he got inside its huge, hollow trunk, which was wide enough to hold more than three people, and the idea rushed into his head that he could possess her there. He hid in the trunk, held his breath, and heard her circling the tree looking for him. She was like a small child lost in the fields. His love caught fire. He waited until she was close to the opening of the trunk, pulled her to him and brought her inside, while she trembled with fright and called on God for protection. He drew her to him.

“It’s me. Don’t be afraid.”

She yielded to his hands, and kisses, and his hot breath that enveloped her, while saying: “No, no.”

He pulled her closer, his back against the trunk, and tried to lift her dress. She pulled back, and her head struck the trunk. The pain made her groan. He tried to take a look, but she pushed him away with both hands and slipped outside. He followed her, reaching out like a blind man searching for something to grope.

“Listen,” she said and sat down.

“Sit there,” and she pointed.

He asked about her head.

“It’s nothing. Nothing.”

She spread the provisions she’d bought out in front of them. “I brought you some chicory and midardara .”

“No,” she said, escaping his grasp. “Today you have to listen.”

He listened as he ate, the femininity of the moon creeping inside him and chilling his body. She talked and was born through her own words. That day the seventh Nahilah was born.

The first Nahilah was his young wife that he didn’t know, because he was in the mountains with the fighters.

The second Nahilah was the beautiful woman who was born in the cave of Bab al-Shams as she trod the grapes and married her husband.

The third Nahilah was the mother of Ibrahim, the eldest who died.

The fourth Nahilah was the mother of Noor that Yunes clung to in the cave and called Umm Noor, Mother of Light, whenever she came to him with light shining from her eyes.

The fifth Nahilah was the heroine of the funeral who came out of prison to announce the death of her husband and lamented in front of everybody.

The sixth Nahilah was the mother of all those children who filled the square at Deir al-Asad.

And on that night, the seventh Nahilah was born.

Beneath the olive tree whose branches were drenched in the green moon of Galilee, the seventh Nahilah was born. She was approaching forty, wrinkles ran down her long neck, and sorrow extended from her eyes to her cheeks.

The seventh Nahilah had grown exhausted with all there was to exhaust her. A woman alone and poor.

“You know nothing at all,” she said. “Sit down and listen. I’m worn out, Yunes, you have no idea. You know nothing at all. Tell me, who are you?”

Did she ask him “who are you?” or was it enough to recount her torments? Did he see himself mirrored in her words?

Yunes sat down and discovered he knew nothing. He’d been concerned only with his Nahilahs, as though he’d married seven women who were different in every way but united by one thing: waiting.

All of a sudden, Yunes saw his life as scattered fragments — from Palestine to Lebanon, from Lebanon to Syria, from one prison to another.