Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

“Please,” she said.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

As she got up, she said she’d be waiting for me in the lobby at ten.

And we left.

She went toward a man who appeared to be in his mid-forties, wearing glasses and carrying a black leather bag, and I set off with no idea where I was going.

I could’ve returned to the camp, and that’s what I decided to do in fact. But then I thought of the sea and decided to walk a little along the Manara Corniche before going back to the camp.

I got to the corniche and everything opened up. I saw the sea and filled my lungs and heart with the sea air. God, it was delicious! Only we, we who have been released from all the prisons of the earth, can take such pleasure in the taste of the wind. I walked and breathed and took it all in. The sea was every possible shade of blue and I almost wanted to throw myself into the midst of its palette. I ran and walked and danced. I bought some lupine seeds to snack on and sat on a stone bench and watched the people running and striding and strolling. Nobody paid any attention to me. I was alone among them, overhearing snippets of their conversations, which blurred as they drew away and which I’d be trying to continue on my own when new stories would steal into my ears.

Time flowed by without my noticing.

I wasn’t waiting for her. Perhaps I was waiting for her unconsciously, but I didn’t sit down and wait deliberately. I sat down to sit down, and then I looked at my watch and it said five past ten so I started walking toward the hotel. I walked at a leisurely pace because I was sure I wouldn’t find her. The writer would invite her to a restaurant, then woo her and sleep with her. That was their world, and I had nothing to do with it. I arrived at about half past ten to find her sitting on the sofa in the lobby with an empty glass in front of her. She got up and said eagerly, “I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” and sat me down opposite her.

“What will you have?” she asked.

“Whatever you’re drinking.”

“I’m drinking margaritas. Do you like margaritas?”

I’d never drunk one in my life, but I said I liked them.

The waiter brought two glasses, the rims coated with salt.

She said she wanted to ask me some questions.

I told her that I didn’t know anything about the theater, that I felt strangled inside an enclosed space. I also said the only time I’d seen a play — it was about the history of Palestine — I’d felt stifled by seeing the actors chewing up the Classical language like cud before spitting it out in insipid, repulsive phrases.

She said she’d decided not to take the part. The massacres of Shatila and Sabra couldn’t be performed on a stage. She said that she had been terrified when she visited Shatila, and that if she’d accepted the part, she would have felt implicated politically.

“You know, I’ve visited Israel,” she said.

“Really?” I asked coldly.

“Doesn’t that surprise you?”

“No,” I said.

“You’re not upset?”

“Why should I be upset? You visited my country.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, “I know. But I visited Israel when I was fifteen, and I lived three months on a kibbutz in the north.”

“In Galilee,” I said.

“Yes. In Galilee.”

She said she’d gone there because of the Shoah.

“The what?”

“ Shoah is a Hebrew word meaning Holocaust,” she said.

“I understand,” I said and asked if her background was German.

“No,” she said, “but all of us” — and here she made a gesture toward herself and me — “are responsible for the massacre of millions of Jews, don’t you agree?”

“Agree to what?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I decided not to take the part. I can’t. I can’t see the victim as someone turned executioner because that would mean history is meaningless.”

I downed my glass, and she ordered me a second drink.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“No. Not really.”

She said it would be better if we ate something. “Take me into Beirut and choose a beautiful restaurant.”

I said I wasn’t hungry and quietly started sipping my second drink, since I don’t know any restaurants in Beirut, and I didn’t have any money on me.

She said she didn’t want to perform in that play because reading wasn’t the same as seeing.

“You know, Jean Genet’s strange. His language is amazing, and there’s that ability of his to move from the most savage to the most poetic expression. But the reality’s different. I can’t do it.”

She looked at me with enigmatic eyes and asked where we were going to have dinner.

“I’m not hungry,” I said. “I’ll finish my drink and go.”

She raised her hand, the waiter came over, and she asked him about food. He said it was late and the kitchen had closed, but we could order sandwiches if we liked.

She ordered a club sandwich for herself and asked me what I wanted. I said, “Anything,” and she ordered me a ham-and-cheese sandwich.

For an instant, I imagined myself in a cops-and-robbers film. The lights in the lobby were dim, and Catherine and I were seated in the bar, where there was nobody else. At the bar itself there were three men in black suits who looked like intelligence agents.

I downed the ham sandwich quickly, and she asked me if I wanted another.

“Please,” I said.

She called the waiter and ordered another ham-and-cheese sandwich. I would have preferred a club sandwich like hers, but she’d assumed that I liked the first one, since I’d devoured it with such speed.

I ate the second sandwich and felt a little giddy, maybe because of the margaritas or maybe because of the kibbutz story.

I asked her the name of the kibbutz, but she said she couldn’t remember.

I asked her if she’d visited the demolished Arab villages in Galilee, and she said she hadn’t seen any demolished villages and hadn’t known we’d been expelled from our country.

She took a sip and said she was sorry but she wanted to ask me an embarrassing question.

“Go ahead,” I said.

She said she’d read something about Iron Brain in a book by an Israeli journalist.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Iron Brain is the name given to the operation to break into Shatila on the eve of the massacre.”

“What’s it got to do with me?”

“Nothing,” she said and fell silent.

She said she’d read in the Israeli journalist’s book that nine Jewish women married to Palestinians had been killed in Operation Iron Brain.

“How did you know it was called Iron Brain?” I asked.

“It’s in the book. The writer’s name is Kapeliouk. Have you read his book?”

“No,” I said.

“He describes the deaths of these nine Jewish women in the massacre.”

At this point, I felt I’d fallen into a trap. What was this woman saying, and what did Iron Brain mean? No, I swear I’m not paranoid about the intelligence services, and I don’t think that everyone who asks questions is in Intelligence. So far I’d understood Catherine, I’d even felt some sympathy for her; she couldn’t take the part because she felt responsible for the Holocaust — that was understandable. But this story of the nine Jewish women had a strange smell to it.

She asked if I’d like another drink.

I said I didn’t want the drink that was rimmed with salt.

“How about white wine?” she asked me.

“Okay,” I said.

She ordered a bottle of white wine, and the waiter came carrying it in a container full of ice. He poured a little into my glass and stood and waited. I didn’t know what he wanted, but Catherine gestured to me to drink. I drank and nodded my head, so he poured more into my glass and hers and left.