Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

We continued through the halls, which opened onto the patients’ rooms, and I noticed that they were all in pajamas. I wanted to ask why they weren’t wearing clothes, but I held back.

We went up to the second floor, and there I saw!

On the first floor the conditions were more or less humane. The patients’ rooms opened onto relatively large halls, and they could choose to stay with their companions in the hall or sit in their rooms, in each of which were four beds.

Upstairs was unbelievable.

We came first to a large ward full of cots with metal sides. “These are the incapacitated,” he said. Then we turned right and entered the hall of horrors. I saw thirty children tied to their beds, immobilized. “These are the mentally retarded,” he said with a smile.

“But this is torture,” I said.

“It’s better this way, for them and for us,” he replied.

He led me down the long corridor and said we were coming to the “dangerous” ward.

There I saw Adnan.

It wasn’t a ward, or a hall, or a room. It was a cluster of small, dark cells, and Adnan was tied with a metal chain to a bed fenced with metal bars. He was snoring.

The doctor went up to him and tried to wake him. “Adnan! Adnan!” he said.

The patient fidgeted and his snoring grew more staccato.

The doctor put his hand on the black metal siding surrounding Adnan’s bed and launched into a lengthy explanation of his case. He said they’d made a mistake. “It seems the doctor on duty didn’t read Adnan’s medical file carefully and had him tied down. You understand, the man had spent twenty years in solitary confinement under restraint, and when he saw the restraints here he went into convulsions, so the doctor was forced to give him shock therapy. Then he had him tied to his bed, and his condition began to deteriorate. He wouldn’t stop screaming and trying to attack the nurses, and he’s very lucky they didn’t kill him. These errors can occur, of course, but as soon as I got back, I took things in hand. As you can see, there’s not much hope and his condition’s getting worse.”

“But he’s still tied up!” I said.

“Of course, of course,” answered the doctor. “I was away, as I told you, and I had no choice but to tie him up so he wouldn’t endanger himself and the nurses.”

“You ordered this?”

“Yes, Sir, absolutely. As you can see, the physician can be forced to take harsh measures. What could I do? As soon as I undid his restraints, he started beating one of the nurses and fractured his hand. So I ordered him to be taken back to shock therapy and tied down.”

“But he’s half-dead now!”

“Precisely. That’s why I called you in,” replied Dr. Karim. “I don’t think he’ll get up again after the last shock treatment. I’d like you to get in touch with his family and explain the situation to them so they can come visit him before he dies. Maybe if he sees one of his children he’ll improve a little. Can you get in touch with them?”

That’s where Dr. Amjad wants to send you — to the place where they chained Adnan up, tortured and killed him; to the place where Adnan hovered on the verge of death for six months between the shock-therapy room and his cell before taking his last breath.

“Impossible!” I said to Amjad.

I told him I’d give the matter some thought, gave him the impression that I would accept, and then implored him to leave you here. I said it was a scandal. I begged. I insisted that it was out of the question.

I talked and talked and talked, I forget now what I said. I begged him not to transfer you to the home, and he promised to reconsider, so I felt better. I left his office in good spirits, but now I am sad.

I’m here before you confused, scared, despairing.

But in Amjad’s office I was pleased that he would reconsider the situation, which meant that I’d remain here, and if I stay you stay, or vice versa.

When he does reconsider, he’ll realize that he can’t expel you from the hospital because that would be shameful. True, the hospital resembles a prison, and true, we’re both prisoners here, but it’s better than dying.

But no.

I shouldn’t have given in to his conditions. I should have threatened him, don’t you think?

In your room I saw the scene with new eyes, and I imagined what I should have said and said it, or basically did.

It was 9 a.m. and I’d finished giving you your morning bath and was standing in front of the window drinking tea and smoking an American cigarette when I found Zainab in the room.

She said Dr. Amjad was expecting me.

I threw my cigarette out the window, put the teacup on the table and followed her. The doctor was reading the newspaper. He moved it a little to one side, said, “Please sit down,” and went on with his reading. I accepted his kind invitation, sat down, and waited. But he didn’t interrupt his reading, muttering in disapproval as he read. Finally he threw the paper onto the desk, greeted me, and fell silent again.

“Nice to see you,” I said.

“Can I do anything for you?” he said.

“Thanks. Zainab told me you wanted to see me.”

“Ah yes,” he said. “How’s the old fellow doing?”

“Better,” I said.

I told him about the drops, of your reaction when I pricked your hand with a needle, of the clear signs of improvement.

He took off his dark glasses — I forgot to tell you, he wears dark glasses when he reads. Strange. I’m sure this doctor doesn’t have a clue about either medicine or politics, but what can we do? “God’s the Boss,” as they say. He took off his dark glasses, blew pipe smoke in my face, and announced my new duties as a full-time head nurse.

I objected.

I explained the importance of my work with you and was getting up to go when he informed me of the decision to transfer you to the home.

I tried to say something but couldn’t. My tongue was as heavy in my mouth as a log. Then the words burst out. I said that transferring you meant throwing you onto the garbage dump and leaving you to die, and that I knew the place was neither a home nor a hospital but a purgatory for the living and the tortured.

Amjad, however, insisted on having his way.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” I asked.

“Of course, I’m doing my duty. The hospital isn’t set up for a case like Yunes’. People like him die in their own homes.”

“There’s nobody there,” I said.

“I know. That’s why we’ll be transferring him to Dar al-Ajazah,” he said.

“Impossible!” I yelled. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“On the contrary, I know better than you do.”

“You know nothing.”

“I’m doing my duty. There’s no room for pity in our profession.”

“Pity! You’re an imbecile. You don’t know what Yunes represents.”

“Yunes! What does Yunes represent?”

“He’s a symbol.”

“And how can we treat symbols?” he asked. “There’s no place for symbols in a hospital. The place for symbols is in books.”

“But he’s a hero! A hero doesn’t end up in a cemetery for the living dead.”

“But he’s finished.”

When I heard the word finished , everything tipped over the edge. I don’t remember exactly what spilled out of me — that you were the first, that you were Adam, that nobody was going to touch you, that I’d kill anyone who got near you.

The doctor tried to calm me down, but I got more and more excited.

He said he was the one who made the decisions here.

I said, “No. No one decides.”

I snatched the newspaper out of his hands and started ripping it into little shreds and putting them in my mouth. I chewed them up and spat them out and shouted. I kept on ripping and spitting away, and the doctor shrank back behind his desk until only his head remained visible. Then it disappeared and his body grew smaller and smaller in the chair until it vanished entirely as though the desk had swallowed it.