Elias Khoury - White Masks

Since there are no tears in death, I didn’t cry. When I tried to sit up, however, I found I couldn’t move. . So I was in a grave! That was it! A grave is shapeless. . a grave is just, well, a grave. . nothing but blackness, you can’t see any colors. . but then I started seeing these little dots, black ones and brown ones and red ones, growing larger and then smaller. I could see the dots really clearly.

Then someone’s hand was shaking me. What was that? And there was a woman’s voice, it sounded really muffled, like it was wrapped in cotton wool. And then this hand touched my head.

“He seems better, Doctor.”

I tried to move, to say something, but the dots disappeared and the voice went away. That woman’s muffled voice was gone. Everything vanished! I tried to speak, and felt a hand on my lips.

“It’s alright, you’re OK.” I wanted to ask her where I was. Again, she repeated, “It’s alright.” And then, “You’ve only lost one eye. The other one is fine.”

She sat me up and started to feed me. . I wanted to talk to her, to say… but she gave me this hot drink, and said I should sleep. So I slept… no, actually, I didn’t. . I had been asleep all this time, it felt like forever. And then, it dawned on me: I was blind!

I began to howl in the dark. I had finally woken up, and all I could do was shout and scream. There were hurried footsteps and voices.

“A tranquilizer. . Give him a tranquilizer. . where are they?”

I screamed until I was hoarse. I don’t know how those screams came about, I don’t know where those sounds originated, but then something pricked my arm and everything became calm. The doctor explained in his quiet, steady voice that I had been hit by an “Energa” missile and that I had multiple burns on the face and eyes. He told me that they had operated on me, that only one eye was permanently damaged and that the other one was “perfectly alright.”

Then he said, “We’ll take the bandage off in two weeks, you must be patient. . you’re a fighter.”

“I don’t believe you,” I replied, now hoarse. I told him I didn’t believe him and that I was sure I was totally blind. He swore by every one of the prophets, he reassured me, he cajoled me, he tried convincing me, but I didn’t believe him. After that, I said nothing at all, I refused to speak. I just sat up in bed so they could feed me and let them hold my hand to guide me to the bathroom.

Lying in bed, I’d listen to every noise and try and picture my mother’s face. . Sitt Zakiyyah’s face. . so reminiscent of Jerusalem, with its maze of wrinkles like the streets crisscrossing the city… I had never been to Jerusalem, and I didn’t think I’d ever go there. But to me, the furrows on her face seemed like the narrow streets of Jerusalem that Kamal described to us before he left for the States. Kamal left without ever experiencing the taste of fire piercing his belly. After he left, I never heard from him, until I called him from Madrid that day. “I’m married!” he said, his voice brimming with laughter, just as it used to when we were kids at the American School of Saida together.

I told him about my eyes. And he told me about Lily’s. He said she had long hair that fell across her face and twinkling eyes. “The whites of her eyes envelop me as they stretch all the way from there to here,” he told me. “She lives here, in America, and I paint pictures of her every day. I’ll send you one.”

Lying in bed and picturing my mother’s face, I thought I saw it crumple as she embraced me. Like the streets of Jerusalem, old Jerusalem, with its warren of narrow alleys and painted crucifixes everywhere, its processions of bishops and clergy, and the Holy Sepulcher glows with light. That’s how Kamal had described it. “The sepulcher aglow with light,” he had said. And in my mind’s eye, I could see that light. .

One day, when I was little, I came home from school and told my mother about Cana. I told her our divinity teacher at the American School of Saida said that Jesus Christ had performed his first miracle here, in our village, when he turned jars of water into wine. “No, son, it wasn’t our village,” she said.

“Yes, it was. The teacher read from the Gospels, and he read the word Cana. I told him we were from Cana.”

“Damn these Americans,” she said, “and all their humbug about Jesus and the miracles — it just gives the Jews one more excuse to invade and occupy our villages!”

“No, mother, no. It just means that… that Cana is the best place in the world to make wine! Can’t you just imagine him standing there, in fear and trembling, with his mother saying, ‘Don’t be afraid, son.’ And despite his fear, Jesus goes towards the jars full of water, and the water turns into wine. He picks one up, tilts it slowly, and the wine begins to flow. All the wedding guests can drink now: they come up to Jesus one after the other and every time he picks up a jar and tips the liquid into their cups, the water turns to wine. Now, the bridegroom is drunk, and he struts up and down the alleys of the village, inviting everyone to join the wedding celebration, while Jesus stands by the jars, sleeves rolled up, a mass of curly hair framing his forehead, picking up one vessel after another, to fill every glass or even the naked hands of those surging toward him.”

That’s how Cana was. Now it’s razed to the ground.

And in my mind’s eye, I can see Jesus walking the streets of Cana, turning to each and every person he meets. I see him striding in his long, grey robe, gazing into the distance, a jar of wine on his shoulder. Dust is swirling in the air, around his head, around his long robe, and around the jars he holds aloft. And I see him as he bends down and drinks, and the water turns to wine.

Jesus is all alone. He could be in the hospital. . In this hospital, all by himself. Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve seen my mother! A year, maybe, or more. . She might be dead for all I know. Why don’t I go and visit her? She doesn’t know. . no, of course not, and I don’t want her to. How would I get there? Anyhow, she might be dead… no, she can’t be! She promised she wouldn’t die before she saw me married. . but I don’t want to get married. My brothers are — all three of them. They’re all civil servants, “public servants,” as we say. My mother is still waiting for me to tie the knot. But I’ve dropped out of university, I just quit. I told her I was still attending classes, but I’m not. I’m a combatant, that’s what I do. I want to reach for the sky and hold it between my fingers, like I’ve read about in books. . I want to ravish the sky. .

Then, I heard the nurse’s gentle voice. I couldn’t see a thing. I asked her why they didn’t take the bandage off my left eye since it wasn’t injured. “Doctor’s orders,” she said. “The doctor said that’s what we should do.”

“So I am blind,” I cried out. “Blind, that’s what I am!”

Then I heard the Yemeni who was in the bed next to mine.

“You know what they did to me? They removed my eye completely! I told them not to. They’d admitted me to the hospital with a bleeding eye and they took me straight into the operating theater. I was fully conscious and I told the doctor before he gave me the anesthetic, please don’t remove my eye, just leave it; I don’t want to become one-eyed! But he still took it out. . he put me to sleep and removed it,” the Yemeni said, gnashing his teeth and cursing.

Then the nurse came in and led me away by the wrist. The doctor fussed about, and then they took the bandage off my eye. And I could see! No, not see exactly. . everything was blue; their faces were elongated and bluish, and all the hands flitting around me looked blue. Then the blue gradually receded and the nurse had to steady me as I began to keel over. As the blueness continued to recede, she led me to the mirror and there I saw the crater that had been my right eye… But I could see! I was overjoyed and I ran to embrace both the nurse and the doctor! Then the doctor started to work in earnest: first he bathed the crater with antiseptics and then he sealed it off with white gauze.