Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

The first is the gripping of the finger. We open the baby’s hand and put our finger on it, and the baby closes its palm. I’ve tried that, and it works.

The second is when we put our finger on the baby’s cheek close to its mouth, the baby will start to move its mouth toward the finger, grasp it with its lips and suck on it. I’ve tried that, and it works, too.

The third, I haven’t dared to try. I was afraid you’d fall, and your bones, which have become fragile and soft, might break.

I told Zainab about the two experiments, and she gave me a blank look and didn’t say a word. As for Dr. Amjad, you know better than I that he doesn’t give a damn. It’s a waste of time — medicine’s the least of his concerns now. The only thing that interests him about the hospital is how to steal the medicine we get as donations and sell them.

We all know he steals, but what can we do? He’s the director, so who can we complain to? Quis custodiet ipsos custodies , as they say. I’m not going to start bellyaching, this is the situation we’re in, and we have to accept it.

I can’t remember if I told Dr. Amjad about those two experiments, but I’m certain his reaction would only be scornful.

The important thing is that I’m happy, and I’m not going to allow anyone to spoil my good mood.

Today I decided to carry out the third experiment, and it was conclusive. I stood in front of you and placed my hands under your armpits and I watched you. Before I began, I raised you up a little, the way you do with babies, then I put you back in the chair and placed my right index finger under your left armpit and my left index finger under your right, and I watched you. I swear, you got up and your feet moved as though they were walking. I saw you walking with my own two eyes. Then I got scared. I grabbed you and put you back in the chair, and I saw pain invade your closed eyes. I picked you up as a mother would her baby — God, how light you’ve become — I picked you up and put you back on your bed and was overwhelmed with joy.

The third reflex occurred, which means that, from a medical standpoint, you’re a child again. You won’t progress from sickness to death, as they’d hoped; instead you’ve become a baby and are starting your life over again.

And that means everything can change.

I have to calculate how old you are now, in your new life. I’ve decided to calculate from the moment you fell into your coma, which means that as of four days ago, you entered your seventh month.

You’ve been in the womb of death for seven months, and I have to wait for your birth, which will be in two months.

So here we are at the beginning, like you wanted, and all the torments of childhood await you.

Let’s get started.

I spend my time with you, I bathe you, I feed you, and I see you changing before my eyes and feel at peace. I feel my body relaxing, and I sense that I can talk to you about what I feel and be free. You’re my son, and fathers don’t show fear in front of their sons.

Why, come to think of it, was I ever afraid?

How did fear come to possess me and make me its prisoner? I was afraid of everything, always looking over my shoulder, although no one was behind me. I’ve lived these long months in nothingness. For six months I’ve been with you, paralyzed by fear. Your new infancy has just liberated me from it. Fathers aren’t allowed to show fear in front of their sons.

My fear is gone.

Do you think I could get you out of here? Why don’t we go back to the house? No, we won’t go back now; we’ll be patient. We’ll be patient for two more months, until the birth.

I’m talking to you and I don’t believe my eyes.

I was leaning over you when, out of nowhere, Abu Kamal appeared at my side. How did he get in?

“What are you doing here, Abu Kamal? What brought you here?” I asked him to sit down, but he remained standing next to you as though he couldn’t hear me.

“What were you saying?” he asked me.

I told him I was treating you.

“Treating him with words?”

“I’m treating him. What business is it of yours? Please, sit down.”

But Samir Rashid Sinounou, Abu Kamal, wouldn’t oblige. He went over to you, bent over the bed and then drew back. I heard what sounded like a sob and I thought he was weeping, so I put my hand on his shoulder, but then I saw that he was laughing.

“What’s this? Incredible! This is Yunes Abu Salem? How the mighty have fallen!”

And he went on laughing.

I tried to grab him by the shoulders and push him out of the room, and I saw his tears. He was laughing and weeping. His tears were streaming around his gaping lips, and his choppy laugh was a sort of cough.

The bald man of about sixty, known in the camp as Eggplant because of his black skin and oblong face, seemed to have lost his balance and dropped his head as though he were about to fall to the ground. I calmed him and made him drink some water.

“How the mighty have fallen,” he said. “Is this how a man ends up? This is Abu Salem — God, he’s become younger than a suckling child. What kind of illness turns men into babies?”

I took his hand and led him out into the corridor.

“What has brought you here, Abu Kamal?”

Eggplant hasn’t visited you before, and I don’t believe you were friends; he inhabits a different world and cares only about marriage. He married three times and had ten children, and now he’s alone since his third wife died and his two divorced wives refused to come back to him. His children have all emigrated and his life’s over, as Umm Hassan said. Umm Hassan felt sorry for him and would visit him and send him food; he was from her village. Abu Kamal is from the Sinounou family, which left al-Kweikat when its people were expelled in ’48.

“What brought you here?” I asked.

“Poverty,” he said.

When I took him out of your room into the corridor, he stood leaning against the wall, but when he uttered the word poverty , he collapsed onto the floor and started his complaint. He asked me to find him a job in the hospital. He said Umm Hassan was a relative of his, he knew the esteem in which I’d held her, and he’d come to ask for work.

“I can do any kind of work. Things are unbearable.”

“But Abu Kamal, you know the situation better than I do. Things aren’t too good here.”

“I don’t know anything,” he said. “I don’t want to die of hunger.”

“And your job? Why don’t you go back to your old job?”

“What job, Cousin? Is there anyone left in the camp who reads newspapers?”

“Go to Beirut and get a job.”

He said he couldn’t work in Beirut any longer. The week before, a policeman had stopped him when he was selling papers on the Mazra’a Corniche and asked for his papers. When he saw he was Palestinian, he threatened him and said it was forbidden for Palestinians to work in Lebanon without a permit.

“Now you need a work permit to sell papers, Cousin! So he confiscated the papers and chased me away. He said if I hadn’t been an old man he’d have thrown me in jail.”

“What about the camp? Work in the camp,” I told him.

“You know that nobody here reads newspapers any longer. Anyway, no one has the money to buy them, and people have their television and video now. What am I to do?”

He started talking about his problem with videos, and about how he couldn’t see: Everyone else could see, but he couldn’t. “They sit around their televisions and run the tape, and they see things I don’t. That isn’t Palestine, Cousin. Those pictures don’t look like our villages, but I don’t know what’s got into everyone, they’re glued to their television sets. There’s no electricity, and they still play them, signing up for Hajj Ismail’s generator just for the video. They pay twenty dollars a month and go hungry so they can watch the tapes; they sit in their houses and stare at those films they say are Palestine. We’re a video nation and our country’s become a video country.”