Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

She laughed and said she was hungry.

I suggested we make something at home and asked if she wanted me to make her some pasta as usual.

She yawned and said, “Whatever you want.”

She stretched her hand behind her back and the sheet fell away from her brown breasts, still wet from the bath. I leapt toward her, but she raised her hand and said, “No. I’m hungry.” I ran to the kitchen and started frying cauliflower and making taratur sauce.

“You’re the champion at taratur ,” she used to say, licking the last of the white sauce, made from sesame paste, limes, and garlic, from her fingers.

She said she didn’t like fried cauliflower, but the taratur was fantastic.

I didn’t say. . well yes, in fact, I did repeat that sentence of mine for her ears. I said I felt that I had to stay because we couldn’t leave the people here. She laughed again and said she’d eaten enough and wanted to sleep. She pushed the tray to one side, put her head on the cushion, and slept.

At that moment I told her I wanted to stay because I wanted to impress her. But now, no. I feel there’s no reason for me to stay. I stayed here without rhyme or reason, just to stay. I don’t know where you were those days. The truth is I didn’t ask about you. I was like someone who’d been hypnotized. I picked up my bag, took my Kalashnikov, barrel pointed to the ground, and made my way to the municipal stadium in Beirut to leave with the rest. And there, in the middle of the crowd and the long, wan faces, I made up my mind to go back to the camp.

You’ll remember how the fedayeen left Beirut during the siege.

You said you were against leaving. “Better death!” you told me. “Leave under the guard of the Americans and Israelis? Never!” But you were the first to set off. You went to that Christian village and hid yourself there and made up that story about the priest who thought you were a Christian who hid you in his house. I believed you at the time. At the time I, too, claimed to have refused to leave — “Shame on you, my friend! Like the Turkish army? Never! We can never leave Beirut!” But, at the same time, I was convinced that we had to leave. We were defeated, and we had to withdraw as defeated armies do. On my way to the stadium, I imagined myself part of a Greek epic setting out on a new, Palestinian Odyssey. I’m not sure if I imagined that Odyssey then or I’m just saying that now because Mahmoud Darwish wrote a long poem about such an odyssey, even though he didn’t get on the Greek boats that would carry the Palestinians to their new wilderness either.

I put on my military uniform, picked up my small pack, took my rifle, and went. It felt like I was ripping the place from my skin. I turned around and saw the camp looking like a block of stone. Suddenly the camp became a mound of ruins, a place unfit for habitation, and I decided to leave it forever. What would I do in the camp after the fedayeen had pulled out? Would I end my life there, meaninglessly, the same way I’d lived all those years doctoring the sick when I wasn’t really a doctor, loving a woman I didn’t really love? At that time I was on the verge of marrying plump, light-skinned Nuha, who worked with us at the Red Crescent. The only thing Nuha wanted was to get married. She’d take me to her parents’ house at the camp entrance near the open space that later became the common grave, and there we’d eat and I’d see in her mother’s eyes a phantom called marriage. I don’t know how I came to find myself half-married without realizing it. Then came the Israeli invasion and the decision to move us out of Beirut.

I looked back and I saw the heap of stones called the Shatila camp, and I started running in the direction of the stadium. I was afraid that Nuha would come, persuade me to stay, and take me to her parents’ house. I reached the stadium convinced she’d be there. I ducked down, blending in with the crowd so she wouldn’t see me. I didn’t want her, and I had no desire to stay or to get married. I would raise my head from time to time and steal a look, so I could spot her before she saw me and could run away. But I didn’t see her. Instead of relaxing, setting my concerns aside, and looking for my friends, however, I was seized with anxiety, as though her absence had struck terror in me. I didn’t want her to come, and she didn’t, yet I found myself searching for her.

You remember those days — women and tears and rice and shots fired into the air. I never saw anything like it in my life — a defeated army withdrawing like victors! That burning Beirut summer was cooled with tears; August scorched the earth, the people, and the tears with its savage sun. And I searched for Nuha. I thought, it’s impossible — Nuha’s given up her life’s best bet after all that? She was bound to come and ask me to promise to marry her, and I’d agree, and then forget her. But where was she? I walked through the crowds like a stranger, because if your mother doesn’t come to say goodbye, it’s not a real goodbye. Mothers filled the place, and the young men were eating and weeping. Food and tears, that was the farewell. Mothers opening bundles of food wrapped in cloths and young men eating, youyous and bullets.

At that moment, Abu Salem, I thought of my mother. At that moment I loved her and forgave her and said I wished she were there. But where was she? At that point I didn’t know she was in Ramallah. At the municipal stadium, I was sure my mother would come, that she’d suddenly appear at Nuha’s side and unwrap a bundle of food in front of me, and I’d eat and weep like everyone else.

I stood there alone, and nobody came.

Then I don’t know what happened to me — I looked at the people, and they seemed like ghosts.

I already told you about the siege, about the hospital, and about death — how we lived with death without taking it in. I stayed in the hospital for a month treating the dead, eating eggplant, and watching the Israeli planes launch bombing raids like they were competing in fireworks displays. I lived with death, but I couldn’t absorb it. They all died. They came, and as soon as we’d put them in beds, they died. Strange days. Do you remember how we used to talk about the walking dead? Did I tell you about Ahmad Jasim? The man was hit in the throat near the museum, but he kept going. He fell to the ground, then got up like a chicken with its throat slit and, to the astonishment of his comrades, set off in the direction of the Israeli army positions. After about ten meters, he fell down dead, motionless. They picked him up and brought him to the hospital. I examined him and ordered them to take his body to the morgue. “The morgue?” shrieked one of his comrades. “Why the morgue?”

“Because he’s dead,” I said.

“Dead? That’s impossible!” the man cried.

I ordered Abu Ahmad to take him to the morgue.

Then the yelling started. They seized the body, picked it up and left. I tried to explain that he was dead and that walking after being hit didn’t mean anything because it was just an involuntary reflex, but they called me names, wrapped him in a woolen blanket, and went off with him.

We lived three months with death without believing it. But in the middle of the stadium, I finally believed it. They all seemed dead, eating and firing into the air and weeping.

Just as I came to the stadium running, so I left it running.

I won’t tell you how I looked for Nuha like a madman. God, why didn’t she come? It was just that my tears wouldn’t flow. I hated this farewell of theirs — why were they eating and weeping and shooting? There shouldn’t have been a farewell. At that instant I was ready to buy a farewell for myself at any cost. I wanted to weep as they wept and shoot as they were shooting.