Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

We sat down at the table, across which she offered me a platter of fried fish.

I couldn’t smell oil. How had she done it?

It was a fish banquet — red mullet, sea bass, and black bream — there was also taratur sauce and parsley.

“Do you have some arak?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said.

I brought over the bottle of local arak and poured two glasses, added water, and offered her one.

“Where’s the ice?” she asked.

“Where am I supposed to find ice?” I said. “The electricity’s shut off, as you can see.”

“On Jebel al-Sheikh,” she said, smiling, “he who drinks arak should know where to get ice.”

She said she didn’t drink arak without ice.

I drank though. I drank my glass and hers and poured myself several more and wallowed in the fish, taratur , and arak.

She ate slowly, watching me.

“Good health, good health!” she said.

“Drink!” I said.

“No, I don’t like arak.”

And I drank until my pores opened and my sinews loosened up. I drank until I felt that my soul had come back to me.

She got up, took the dishes into the kitchen, came back with two glasses of mint tea, and took two small aniseed cakes out of her case.

“Eat one of these,” she said. “There’s a saying of the Prophet’s that goes, ‘If you eat fish, eat something sweet afterwards. The one is made for the other.’”

I ate, but I wasn’t satisfied. Then I opened my brown bag and brought out the halva and devoured it all.

Then all I remember is her arm around me and me being with her, around her, in her. Revolving and rising and tasting nectar such as I’d never tasted in my life.

How can I describe how she was — her breasts, her waist, the slope of her thighs, her knees, the water that sprang from inside her, her whispers, her kisses, her tongue. It was her, not me. I inhaled her and drank her. I drank her drop by drop and she drank me drop by drop. I’d stop and start, rise like waves and descend with the waves, and never end. The waves were inside me, renewing and reshaping themselves. I was above the wave and inside it and beneath it, and she was the wave and the sea and the shore.

I didn’t sleep at all.

I didn’t speak. Yes, I spoke — and she put her hand on my lips and silenced me and took me. . Then how can I. . Brown-skinned, not white, green eyes, not honey-colored, long hair, not short. I don’t know.

That woman, who came from nowhere and stood like a photograph in front of your house, with her black scarf over her head, entered my house and took off her scarf so I could see her hair was pinned up in a bun and thought she must be past sixty, then came out of the bathroom and was transformed.

Her hair was long, her skin dark, her eyes green.

We finished eating the fish, and her skin grew light, her eyes large and black, her dark hair hanging all the way to her knees.

As we drank tea, her body became full, with small drowsy eyes and a complexion the shade of ripe wheat, and she took me.

She started to shimmer and change as though she were a thousand women.

Now I understand.

I want to weep. Please forgive me. I didn’t. .I swear I didn’t. .

The light rose over us. She was still stretched out on the bed, her eyes closed. I got up and put on my clothes. I said to her, “A few minutes. I’ll be back in a few minutes. There’s a patient I have to check on and then I’ll be back.”

She whispered, “I know, I know,” and held out her arms as if calling me back to her.

“No. I’m going to the hospital for a moment and then I’ll bring you back kunafa with cheese for breakfast.”

I left her and went to the hospital, and there at the door was Zainab. She hugged me, wept on my shoulder, and grasped my hand to take me to your room, where you were waiting to be washed for burial.

I pulled my hand from hers and told her I’d be back in a moment.

I left the hospital and ran to the kunafa seller and asked for two platters. The man looked at me with astonished eyes.

“Condolences,” he said.

“May God be with you,” I said and snatched the platters from his hand and ran toward the house, imagining her brown arms and her wide eyes and her full lips and her murmurs.

I entered the house, and she wasn’t there.

She wasn’t in the bedroom, or in the living room, or in the bathroom. The bed was made and everything was in its place.

The kitchen was clean. The smell of mildew filled the house, and the bag of halva was in its place on the table, untouched.

I thought of the suitcase.

I raced through the house, I looked under the bed, I opened the drawers, I searched everywhere, for everything.

I left the house without closing the door behind me and ran through the streets of the camp, peering into the faces of the women, not daring to ask. What could I have asked?

I stopped in front of the halva seller’s shop.

The shopkeeper asked me, “What time is the funeral?”

“Now,” I said.

“How can it be now? Aren’t you going to wait for the noon prayer?”

“Yes, yes, of course we are.”

“What time is it?” I asked him.

“Eight in the morning,” he answered.

I asked about Elias. “Do you know a man who lives here in the camp called Elias al-Roumi?”

“An Elias — a Christian — here in this camp? Have you lost it, Brother? May God help you, they say you took very good care of him. God will reward you, I’m sure. Go and rest now, then come back for the burial.”

I went back to the hospital, and I saw Dr. Amjad wiping away his tears. There were men everywhere, an uproar of lamentation. Amjad said they’d finished washing you, and that the procession would start from the hospital. There was no need to take you to your house.

I left them.

“Where are you going?” asked Amjad.

“I’ll be back,” I said.

I left them and ran through the streets of the camp. I peered into all the faces, then went back home and looked for her again in the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room.

I sat on the chair in front of the table where the bag of bread and halva still was. I opened the bag and ate a whole loaf with halva, then went to the funeral.

Afterwards, I didn’t go back to the hospital.

Zainab told me that Mme. Wedad would be coming to the hospital in the afternoon to inform me of the decision to transfer me to Hamshari Hospital in the Ain al-Hilweh camp because Galilee Hospital was going to close. Zainab said she’d refused a transfer to Tyre: She preferred to stay here, even without work, because anyhow, she was just waiting for the visa from her son.

I said fine, and didn’t go back to the hospital.

I wanted nothing, except to find the woman.

Why had she taken me home and fed me fish?

I’m in love.

I burn like a lover, and I die like a lover.

Three days I was alive in death.

Three days before I despaired of death.

And today, Father, I was lying on my bed and I saw her phantom image and I went toward her but she waved me away.

Once upon a time, I saw, as a dreamer sees, that I was in your bed. I was in your room lying in your bed and the photos were swaying on the walls around me, and I saw her. She stepped out of the wall and approached me. I tried to embrace her but she retreated, and then flattened herself against the wall. I looked at the photograph for a while. It was my wife, who’d been in my bed — what was my wife doing in this photo? What was this woman whose name I didn’t know doing inside the photo of Nahilah?

I woke with a terrified start and wept.

I didn’t weep for Shams as I’ve wept for you and for this woman.

I didn’t weep for my father as I’ve wept for you and for her.