Elias Khoury - White Masks

Nada happened to be at her parents’ home the day news of Ahmad’s untimely death arrived. People said her wailing and keening could be heard all over the neighborhood. Ululating and rocking with grief, she ran out to the street, her head uncovered and her feet bare. Her sorrow seemed inexhaustible, she spent all her time at her parents’ house and even slept there. To begin with, Nadeem Najjar didn’t mind. He’d never felt this sad either. Never before in his life had he felt like this.

“Poor Ahmad. . so young and innocent. . He’d gone to fight, not to die. . It was his destiny, that’s what it was… It was written,” he told Nada.

He wanted her to get a grip on herself and come home. But all she did was cry. So Nadeem left her at her parents’ and took care of the children; initially, he sent them over to his sister’s, in Ras el-Nabeh, but after a while it wasn’t feasible to leave them there any longer. The children should come home, he said, and so should she. But she wouldn’t.

Nadeem Najjar found her behavior puzzling. There she sat in her parents’ house all day, drinking coffee and chatting nonchalantly with visitors as if nothing had happened. . But no sooner than he said something to her, she started to cry.

One day he yelled at her, saying this really had to stop.

Nada had been sitting beside her mother, next to the blind sheikh who had just reached the end of the Qur’anic recitation, when all of a sudden she burst into tears. Just like that, out of the blue, with the living room full of people. Tears streaming down her face, she got up and went into her brother’s room and came out carrying pictures of him, sobbing.

This really had to stop. It was becoming contagious: the mother was starting up, and soon the other women in the room, none of whom Nadeem Najjar had ever seen before, were crying too. Her face puffy and flushed, Nada started keening. One of the women went and fetched a bottle of orange blossom water, and as she dabbed some across Nada’s face to soothe her, Nada’s moaning only intensified. A whole week had gone by since the boy had died, and she still wouldn’t come home or stop this endless wailing!

All the men in the room had their eyes on Nadeem.

Turning to him, one of them exclaimed, “Poor child!” and another enjoined: “As God is my witness, that’s a real sister! She’s got a sister’s heart. A gem of a sister she is!”

Then another chimed in: “ Ya Allah, such an emotional girl, she’s going to die of grief!”

And a fourth added, “It’s all over for the one who’s gone.”

Nadeem saw how they were all looking at him. He jumped to his feet, grabbed her by the wrist, and tried to pull her out of the armchair. As she clung on, he began shouting at her.

“Get up! Get up, damn you! Enough of your crying, enough of dying! Come on! Get off this armchair! You’re coming home with me, you stupid woman!”

The mother took no notice, she seemed indifferent. The father, Khalil Ahmad Jaber, carried on with a political discussion he was having with two other men. One of the mourners, a friend of Nadeem’s, remonstrated with him.

“No Nadeem, don’t do that… Leave her alone. It’s her brother. . come on, man, let her be, let her cry her heart out, it’s good for her; it’s cleansing.”

“This isn’t crying! This is idiocy! Get up, woman, get up! I said we’re going!”

“Leave me alone!” she screamed.

All eyes turned to Nada.

“Home, I said. We’re going home!”

“Good gracious, he won’t let the poor woman cry. .”

“I have nothing against crying,” Nadeem shouted back, “but brother, this isn’t crying. This is a torrent of tears, it’s a travesty of grief… This is haram! The woman has lost her senses.”

And he yanked her out of her chair.

Dazed, Nada stood up and followed her husband out of the room, as everyone looked on. And so it was that she went home. But ever since, she has felt totally estranged from “that man,” as she now calls him. .

How could he do such a thing, and in front of all those people? What did he expect, that I wouldn’t cry over my brother? Since when was crying forbidden? He was my brother, after all! Had it been his brother, I can assure you, the world in its entirety would have heard the crying. But he acted like that because it was my brother! And why wouldn’t he let me wear black? He says one shouldn’t for a martyr, a so-called war hero. . I’d like to know what that is anyway! What does it mean to be a martyr? Does it mean Ahmad’s not dead? Martyr or not, you’re dead, regardless. I didn’t agree, but he wouldn’t let me say what I thought, or anyone else for that matter. How, how could we leave the corpse in the hospital like that and not bring it home? They didn’t even wash him, they buried him the way he was! And we were made to feel like strangers. It was Nadeem who spoke with the shabab, as if he were Ahmad’s family, while my father stood there like a complete stranger. And after all that, he expected me to stop crying! The truth is, he was jealous of Ahmad. . Imagine, being jealous of a dead man! To think that I have a husband who is jealous of my dead brother! What a husband! Oh God, what a husband!

Well, of course I love him. . can a woman not love her husband? And he used to be such a fine husband, too; he was hard-working and life was good, al-hamdulillah! My mother had had her doubts, though. She thought a pinball arcade was basically gambling. “I’m not marrying my daughter off to a gambler,” she said. But it was Father who settled it — “He’s a good boy,” he told her, “from a decent family, and he’s also from the neighborhood.” I agreed with Father. Nadeem was a handsome young man, he was full of life. I’d see him driving about in his little car, and when he offered me a ride to school one day, he looked at me in that very special way, all smiles and charm. So I agreed. He was better than my father, a civil servant. Civil servants have such an insufferable life! All Father ever did was tell us about telephone exchanges and the new electronic systems the new minister had ordered. He was obsessed with telephones! And then there was no more work for him during the war. Whereas with Nadeem, business went right on, people didn’t stop playing pinball. Even when there was no electricity, business carried on-I don’t know how, we had no electricity for six months! He told me he’d bought an electric generator, and that he was also selling ice cream on the side. Things were even better than before, he said.

He was rarely home though. And when he came back late at night, he reeked of araq… and something else. . the Lord alone knows what! He was different somehow. I knew what he was like when he drank araq, but this smell that was on his breath, this was different. But I didn’t dare ask.

The truth is he was smoking hashish. When people said he was passing joints around with “the boys,” I didn’t want to know. According to him, business had improved, things were good, and he wasn’t going to be scared off by the war and the shells falling on our heads.

It was Ahmad who told me. He was back from the frontlines, he’d come home to a hero’s welcome.

“War is war,” he said “and it is our duty to fight.”

I told him I didn’t agree and that Nadeem was right. Why was it our duty to fight? We’re not fighting a war, we’re rushing to our deaths. I wanted to say something else too but he cut me off and gave me this little lecture. . I don’t know how he came up with it.

“That was true a long time ago,” he said, “in the days of our forebears, under the Ottomans, when Father’s uncles all perished in Safarbarlek — they died of hunger and squalor, not from the fighting. But all that’s over now, we’re no longer led to our death like sheep to slaughter. We are the masters of our destinies, we are fashioning our own future.”