Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

“Why aren’t you eating, Qais?”

She used to call me Qais: “You know I’ll treat you the way Laila did her Qais. I’ll drive you crazy.”

But Qais, I mean I, would only eat a little. Once I told her I didn’t eat because I was in love? And do you know what her reaction was?

“What an absurd notion! ‘Seduction requires strength.’ Eat, eat! Love needs food.”

I was incapable of eating even though I was hungry. I was like someone who couldn’t chew food. It was enough for me to keep her company and look at her devilish eyes stealing glances at me and apologizing for her insatiable appetite.

But maybe not. Maybe the reason I didn’t ask her to marry me was that I was afraid of her. Strange. Tell me; don’t you think it’s strange? Not you — it’s impossible to make a comparison with you because Nahilah was your wife and that explains everything. I don’t want to trespass on your life.

But why didn’t you do what Hamad did?

Like you, Hamad was a fighter in the Sha’ab garrison — don’t tell me you don’t know him. Umm Hassan told me his story. She said his sister refused to hold a wake for him after he died in her house in Ain al-Hilweh, so the wake was held in Umm Hassan’s house in Shatila.

Umm Hassan said they were complete fools: “They say he is Israeli. What does that mean? When we’re humiliated and imprisoned for the sake of our children and our land, does that make us traitors?”

I won’t tell you the story of Hamad’s return to his village in Galilee because I’m sure you know it. I just wanted to say that maybe you also were afraid of love.

Take any love story, Brother. What is a love story? The story we call a love story is usually a story of the impossibility of love. People only write about love as something impossible. Isn’t that the story of Qais and Laila, and Romeo and Juliet? Isn’t it the story of Khalil and Shams? All lovers are like that; they become a story of unconsummated love, as though love can’t be consummated, or as though we fear it or don’t know how to tell about it, or, and this is the worst, we don’t recognize it when we’re living it.

What did Qais Ibn al-Mulawwah do? Nothing. They stopped him from seeing his sweetheart Laila, so he went mad.

Didn’t you make me a promise, heart,

You’d give up Laila if I did so too?

Behold — I’ve given up my love for her.

How then, when her name is said, you swoon?

Nice words and lovely poetry, but the man was crazy and his beloved married another man.

And Romeo, what did he do? He killed himself.

And what about all the other lovers? All of them loved at a distance and lived their love in separation, so they became impossible stories.

Don’t you agree?

Is it because love is impossible that every time Shams left me, my mouth would become as dry as kindling?

Was it because I couldn’t stand to be parted from her?

Do you know that beautiful verse from the Koran? “They are a vestment for you, and you are a vestment for them.” How are we to become vestments for one another — I mean, how are we to become one?

That’s what love is, which is why we can’t talk about it. We talk only about its impossibility or its tragedy, its victims and its fatalities.

And when lovers are together, it’s impossible to describe. In fact, it may be that none of us lives it and that’s why we invent reasons why it’s kept from us.

It might be that love has no language. It’s like a smell. How can you describe a smell? We describe it in terms of what it’s not, and we don’t give it a name. Love’s the same. It has a name only when it isn’t there.

I don’t mean to belittle the importance of your love for Nahilah. I know that you loved her and that your infatuation was great. I know that she dwelled in your bones. I know that you’re dying today because of her.

But why didn’t you go back, the way Hamad did?

How was it that Hamad went to prison and succeeded in returning to his house and his wife, and such a possibility never occurred to you?

Don’t tell me you sacrificed yourself for the revolution, I don’t believe it’s that.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want to denigrate your history. Your history is my history, and I respect you and honor you and hold you in the highest regard.

But tell me, wasn’t there an element of fear of Nahilah in your decision? Didn’t you prefer — unconsciously perhaps — that she be where she was and you where you were? That way your story could continue and survive across space and time. Every time you went to see her, you put your life in danger. Every time, you purchased your love at the cost of the possibility of your death. Isn’t that extraordinary? Isn’t that a story like no other?

Tell me, when you were walking the roads of the two Galilees, of Palestine and of Lebanon, did you feel that your thorn-lacerated feet bore a love story like no other?

As for me, though, what a letdown!

I know my story doesn’t deserve to be put alongside yours. I’m just a duped lover; that’s what everyone thinks. But no, Shams isn’t so simple; you can’t sum her up by saying she betrayed me. And “betrayed” isn’t accurate. I wasn’t her husband, so why did she come to me? If there hadn’t been love, she wouldn’t have come; if there hadn’t been love, her presence wouldn’t have bewitched me; if there hadn’t been love, I wouldn’t have hidden like a dog in this hospital out of fear of revenge. I confess I was afraid and I believed the rumors about the people of al-Ammour vowing to take revenge on their daughter’s killers. But that time has passed.

If they’d wanted to kill me, they’d have killed me. I live in the hospital because I’ve gotten used to it, that’s all. I could go back home if I wanted to, but my house is near the mosque and I don’t like cemeteries.

None of Shams’ family put in an appearance except Khadijeh, her mother. She came to the Ain al-Hilweh camp, took her daughter’s things, and went back without making contact with anyone here. I heard that nobody visited to pay their respects. She didn’t stay in the camp more than twenty-four hours. She went into her daughter’s house, shut the doors and windows, and came out in the morning carrying a large suitcase. She spoke to no one, and at the Lebanese Army barrier at the camp entrance, the one we still call the Armed Struggle barrier, she turned around, spat, and left.

There’s nothing to fear. The woman came and went, and I’m here not out of fear but out of habit.

Plus, I want to review my life in peace and quiet.

You want the truth, right?

I’ll try to tell you the truth, but don’t ask me, “Why did you accept?” — I didn’t accept. No, I didn’t. And no one consulted me. I found myself in the maelstrom and I almost died, and if Abu Ali Hassan hadn’t been there, they would’ve executed me. That’s right, executed.

No, not Shams’ relatives, the Ain al-Hilweh camp’s militia. They supposed, wrongly of course, that I was the one who instigated her murder to get rid of Sameh and have the woman all to myself. They didn’t believe what everybody was saying — that Shams killed her lover herself. They assumed someone else had been involved, and arrested me.

I was too embarrassed to tell you about my arrest. The only thing about it that sticks in my memory is their insulting references to “horns” and the way they treated me as a nobody. But that was what saved me, and it only happened after Abu Ali’s intervention. Can you believe it? He intervened on my behalf to make sure that I was humilated. There was no other way out — humiliation or execution. Abu Ali saved me; if it hadn’t been for his intervention, they’d have killed me as they killed Shams.