Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

In those days the Israelis didn’t have a particular way of dealing with women. The first charge against Nahilah was that she’d had two children, and the second charge was that she was pregnant. After three days in a solitary-confinement cell, they summoned her for interrogation.

There were three interrogators in the room. The first sat at a small metal desk and the other two on either side of him. Nahilah, handcuffed, stood.

The first one asked her her name.

“My name is Nahilah, wife of Yunes Ibrahim.” Then, she exclaimed, “Oh! It’s so nice!”

“What’s so nice?”

“The light,” she said. “The light, Sir. Glory be to God, three days in the darkness and then the light came. Praise God, praise God!”

The interrogator began questioning her in Classical Arabic and Nahilah stared out the window and didn’t respond.

“Can’t you hear?” yelled the interrogator.

“Yes, I can hear. I just can’t understand.”

“You’ve been charged, and the charges are serious.”

“What are the charges?”

“You’re pregnant, right?”

Nahilah burst out laughing, and the two assistant interrogators looked at her with fury in their eyes. One of them got up, slapped her, and started questioning her in Moroccan dialect. Nahilah couldn’t understand a word; the Moroccan words spewed from the interrogator’s mouth, fell on her ears, and wouldn’t go in.

The man sat down again, and Nahilah was left standing, the slap ringing in her left ear. After a short silence, the interrogator with the Classical tongue, sitting at his desk, said he’d been patient long enough.

“I’m at your service, Sir,” said Nahilah.

“You’re pregnant, right?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So?” asked the interrogator.

“So, I’m pregnant, you’re right. Is there a law against pregnancy in your state? Do we need a permit from the military governor to have children? If so we’ll ask next time. I didn’t know there was such a law.”

“No! No!” bellowed the interrogator.

“Okay, what do you want? I confess that I’m pregnant. Satisfied? Can I go home?”

“We’re asking about him,” said the interrogator.

“Who?”

“Your husband, Yunes. Is Yunes your husband?”

“What’s Yunes got to do with it?”

“We’re asking you, where is Yunes?”

“I don’t know anything about him.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How did you get pregnant?”

“The same way as every other woman on earth.”

“So it’s him, then.”

“Who?”

“Your husband.”

“. .”

“He’s your husband, isn’t he?”

“. .”

“Why don’t you answer?”

“. .”

“Answer and get it over with.”

“I’m embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed? Forget modesty and answer me.”

“Okay.”

“So Yunes is the father of your child.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ll only confess under duress. We have methods you can’t imagine, and we’ll force you to tell us everything.”

He looked to his assistants and said, “Take her.”

“No, no!” she screamed. “I’ll confess.”

“Excellent,” said the interrogator. “I’m listening. Please go ahead.”

“I’ve been pregnant for four months.”

“Fine. Continue.”

“That’s all, Sir. You ask, and I’ll answer.”

“Where’s your husband?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he the father of the child in your belly?”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“It’s not him? Then who is it?”

“No, it’s not Yunes.”

“Who then?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Right. I don’t know. Or at least I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure! What does that mean? You mean you’re a. .?”

“Yes, I am. I can do as I like. What’s it to you, Brother? I’m a prostitute. What, there aren’t any prostitutes in your respectable state? Count me in their ranks and let me go.”

The interrogator spoke with his companions in Hebrew; they seemed suspicious.

“I confess I’m a prostitute; I don’t know who the father is.”

“Do you know the child’s father?”

“No.”

“Who do you think it might be?”

“Everybody. Nobody. What kind of a question is that, Sir? Can a woman like me be asked who she thinks it might be? It’s shameful!”

“So it’s not Yunes?”

“No.”

“And how can your uncle, the respected sheikh, accept a fallen woman under his roof?”

“Go ask him.”

Nahilah sat down on the ground, cuffs on her hands, laughter fluttering across her face, in the midst of that bizarre interrogation, which took place in three languages. She sat and told them calmly: “After having destroyed everything, how dare you now attempt to defend honor and morals?

“You destroyed the sheikh’s house twice, Sir: once in Ain al-Zaitoun and again in Sha’ab. Here, it isn’t his house, it’s mine. This is my house, and I support him and his wife. I can do what I like.”

“Stand up, whore!” screamed the interrogator.

Nahilah rose sluggishly in the silence.

“Are there any more questions? I’m tired, and the children are alone in the house with the old people.”

“You won’t say where Yunes is?”

“I don’t know anything about him.”

“And you acknowledge that you work as a whore?”

“I’m free to do as I like. You can think what you like, but I don’t work and I don’t take money for prostituting myself.”

“Disgraceful!”

“Disgraceful! You stole our country and drove out its people, and now you come and give us lessons in morals? We’re free to do as we like, Sir. No one has the right to ask me about my sex life.”

The interrogator wasn’t convinced but he didn’t want to pursue the matter. What could he do with a peasant woman who stood in front of him and told him she was a prostitute? He spat on the floor and ordered her released.

When Nahilah got back to the house, she let out youyous of joy, and everyone gathered around her. That day, she told them, she’d become Yunes’ bride: “Before I was arrested, I didn’t deserve to be his wife. Now, though, I’m his wife and the mother of his children.” She told them what she’d said to the interrogator, and the villagers laughed until they cried. They laughed and wept while Yunes’ mother offered everyone glasses of sugared rosewater, and from time to time would trill with joy.

You told the story, but you didn’t finish it.

The story, Father, doesn’t end with a woman standing alone before the interrogator and protecting you in such an inventive way — a woman wrapping herself in disgrace to protect your life while wrapping you in her love.

You used to tell portions of the story and look at me to see my astonishment and admiration, and I was astonished and admiring — all our stories are like that: They make you laugh and cry and squeeze joy from sorrow.

But let’s look in the mirror.

I don’t want to rewrite our history, but tell me. You say you didn’t understand, and that in ’48 all of you slipped helter-skelter from your villages into the darkness. And Umm Hassan says she carried her basin on her head and went from village to village, from olive grove to olive grove, without ever knowing where she was going.

During that time — no, before that — when you were a young man in the Revolution of ’36 and afterward, tell me, did you know anything about them?

You were peasants and didn’t know anything, you’ll reply.

Where was Palestine? You’ll agree that Galilee wasn’t the issue. Galilee has its magic because it’s “Galilee of the Nations,” as they call it in books. Today we’ve become “the Nations of Galilee” — nations, the others , or the goyim , as the Jews call us.