Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

On that day the words died, Yunes, and we entered a deep sleep from which we didn’t awaken until the intifada of the people at the interior of the country. Then the papers published the photo of the child with his slingshot and you said to me, “It seems it’s begun again.” It did indeed begin, but where was it going?

You’ve never liked this kind of question, even when the self-rule agreement was signed at the White House and we saw Rabin shaking hands with Arafat and we thought everything was over.

You were sad, but not me. I was like someone watching someone else die. And now I can tell you that deep inside I was happy. Death isn’t just a mercy, it’s happiness, too. This language has to die, and the world manufactured from dead words has to become extinct. I was happy as I watched the end, all while wearing a false expression of sorrow on my face.

Do you remember?

I was at home, we were sitting in front of the television, and you were pulling every last bit of smoke from your cigarette down into your lungs and listening to the American talk. Then you turned to me and said, “No. This isn’t the end. There was one end and we got past it. After what happened in ’48, there won’t be an end.

“During that time, it was the end, my son, but we survived. What’s happening now is just a step, anything can change and be turned around.”

Your words broke up in front of me and scattered in all directions. Then you went out. You left me alone in front of the television tuned to the American talk. I waited for you until the program came to an end, then I turned it off and went to sleep, feeling that psychic confusion that compelled me to mask my joy with a simulated sorrow.

And now, tell me: How long are we supposed to wait?

Here am I, waiting for your end — forgive me, your beginning — in spite of everything, in spite of the smell of powder that emanates from your room, and in spite of your face, which flows over the pillow like the face of a baby still unformed. I’m here, waiting for the end. No, I’m not in a hurry, and I don’t have the slightest idea what I’ll do after they close the hospital.

They say they’re going to demolish the camp anyway, because the camp isn’t the camp any longer — its borders have shrunk, and its inside space, at this point, is up for grabs. I don’t know who lives here now — Syrians, Egyptians, Sri Lankans, Indians. . I don’t know how they get here or where they find houses. Soon the bulldozers will come. They say the plan is to demolish the camp and turn the land into part of the expressway linking the airport to central Beirut.

Anything’s possible here. Maybe we should start our exile over from scratch. I don’t know.

I told you I’m waiting for nothing except the end, and then I don’t know. Anyway, it’s not important. I asked you about speaking the truth so I could understand why Mr. Sinounou lied about things that didn’t happen and then believed his own lies.

NO. NOT SHAMS.

I haven’t told you anything about her, not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t know anything. A man only knows the woman he’s loved when the talking ends; then he discovers her all over again and rearranges her in his memory. If she dies before that happens, she remains suspended in the fog of memory.

Shams remained suspended because she disappeared in the middle of the talking and left me on my own to discover the infinite senses of things. Shams disappeared into the jungle of her words and left me alone. I don’t think all that was an illusion, that I was just a parenthesis in her life, but I don’t understand how anyone could be such a chameleon.

My problem with that woman was that I never knew. After having made love, she’d turn into another woman, and it was always up to me to search for the woman who’d been in my bed.

Patience. I’ll explain everything. Shams would disappear. She’d be with me, her love too, and then she’d disappear, would take off I don’t know where. I’d wait for her and she wouldn’t come. Then, when I’d just about given up hope since I had no way of contacting her, I’d find her in my house, a different woman, and I’d have to start all over again.

I’d get lost searching for her. I’d walk the roads, my heart thudding whenever I saw a woman who looked like her. And suddenly she’d knock on my door and come in, her long hair cut short like a boy’s, her eyes full of wonder as though she were discovering a place she’d never been in before, reserved, wrapped in modesty as if I were a stranger. She’d start talking about politics, saying that she this and she that. . I’ll spare you her lectures on the necessity of reorganizing ourselves in Lebanon, etc.

When I approached her she’d pull back, shy again. I’d try to take her hand and she’d draw back as though she weren’t the same Shams who only a few days earlier had been whinnying in my bed. I’d take her slowly and watch her approaching slowly; then, when I had her in my arms, I’d feel the need to be sure she’d truly returned to me, so I’d whisper in her ear and ask her to say her ay that would sharpen my desire, and she’d draw back again.

“I don’t want to say it. .”

She’d move away, sit on the sofa and light a cigarette. I’d wait a little before I’d go back to her. I’d take her hand and start the journey once again, and then I’d hear that ay seeping from her lips and eyes. When I took her in my arms, as a man does a woman, she’d twist a bit to one side, hide her face in my neck, let out an ay and pull me toward her.

When she was with me I’d forget that she’d disappear in the morning and that I’d have to start the adventure all over again.

My question is, Yunes, where’s the sincerity in this relationship?

Is Shams Shams?

Is this woman that woman? Do I know her? Why did the smell of her body cling to mine and the sound of her voice hum in my head?

And by the way, Yunes, why doesn’t the lover feel he’s a man like other men? Why to prove our masculinity are we forced to take refuge in lies and pretense, stuffing our days with idle talk and boasting of fictitious adventures and then, when we approach the woman we love, we become like women?

Why does something like femininity awaken within us?

It’s true, the lover becomes like a woman.

I confessed. Yes, confessed. I tried to explain it to her, but she didn’t understand, and even if she had. . what good would it have done? Even if she’d loved me — and she did love me — or if she’d betrayed me — and she did betray me, then what?

Come to think of it, why did she want to marry Sameh? Why didn’t she say she wanted to get married? I was prepared to marry her. I was I don’t know what. It’s true. . why didn’t I ask her to marry me? I can say now that I didn’t dare, that the story she’d told me about her former husband blocked my ability to think, and that her troubles with her daughter, Dalal, stopped me from thinking about marriage.

How do you propose to a woman whose sole concern is to organize the abduction of her daughter? She said she’d have no peace in her life till she’d taken Dalal from Amman and brought her to Beirut, and that she needed a man to help her. And when I said I was at her disposal, I saw a trace of pity in her smile.

“You, my dear, are a doctor, and are of no use. I want a real man. I want a fedayeen fighter.”

Was Sameh the man she was looking for?

Didn’t she tell me in a satisfied moment, “You’re my man”? How could I be her man and not be a real man? And how can you ask a woman to marry you as she’s telling you she’s looking for another man? But no, I’m not sure, I don’t believe she talked about Dalal with anyone but me. She’d forget her most of the time; her daughter would only come alive for her after we’d made love. I’d light my cigarette and take my first sip of cognac, and along would come Dalal and set up an impenetrable barrier between us. Words would die and Shams would become a knot of tears — a woman who’d tell stories about her daughter and curse life and fate. Then suddenly she’d jump up and say she was hungry. I don’t know how she didn’t get fat. She devoured enormous quantities of food in my presence.