Elias Khoury - As Though She Were Sleeping

Do you smell pastrami, bridegroom, sir? asked the driver, guffawing.

Milia did not hear her husband’s response. She saw herself edging up the stairs on her arms and one leg. When she reached the kitchen door she shouted for her brother Musa. Just then her mother appeared from behind a large pot that sat steaming on the gas burner. The mother ran toward her daughter, who crouched outside on the steps, and even through the gloom of the kitchen she could see the blood oozing from Milia’s knee. She called Musa and ordered him to run to the convent and ask the nun to come.

Why the nun, Mama?

Saadeh bent over the wound and wiped it with a handkerchief she had dipped in water. Her hand probed the broken leg and Milia screamed at the pain of it.

Dakhiilak ya Allah, the mother muttered. She stepped back and asked her daughter to stand up. Milia tried. Rapiers of pain stabbed her leg bone and tore through her all the way to her eyes. Her tears flowed as she collapsed against the wall and slid to the floor. Her voice broken, she told her mother that she could not get up. The nun came, carrying her incense burner. The saintly woman bent over the girl’s leg and her short, fat fingers jabbed at it. Broken, she pronounced. Take her to the Armenian, she added, turning her back on them to leave the house.

Saadeh pursued her outside to ask her for the doctor’s address. She sought Musa’s help in getting his sister up and standing on her one remaining sturdy leg. Milia stooped between her mother and her brother, leaning on the small boy’s shoulder, and they made their way to a taxi, which took them to an isolated house on a narrow street in Bourj Hammoud. A short woman whose face was partially covered by a lock of brown hair laced with white received them and asked them to wait.

There Milia breathed in a peculiar smell. She would say that she had not taken in all that happened in that house, because she was in pain. She would say that in her second visit to the clinic she had realized that a strange sensation was sweeping over her, unexplained waves pulsing through her shoulders and chest, the smell of meat cooked with spices mingling with an odor that seemed to come from the bodies of the two men. The first one — tall and broad-shouldered — sat at her feet, probing the sole of her foot and then massaging her leg to the knee, a bar of soap in his hand. Milia felt the down at the tops of her thighs ripple as if awakening from a deep sleep, waiting for a hand that did not arrive. The shorter brother stood behind her, his hands gripping her shoulders, asking her to breathe deeply.

The first doctor had only to raise his eyebrows and stare for her mother and Musa to leave the room. They took seats in the sitting room, where the only light was given by whatever could filter in through the wooden shutters of a closed window. In the other room sat Milia, between two pairs of hands and the mingled odors that she found so strange. The meaning of that smell would remain mysterious to her until she fell in love with Najib Karam. It was his words she fell in love with — his manner of speaking, his ringing laugh, the way he mocked everything. With Najib in the garden, she breathed in that smell — and felt a pain shoot through her right leg. He had come close to her. The evening flung shadows about the garden and the voices of night creatures filled the air. Blind bats knocked into the trees and hovered over the frangipani at the center of the garden. Najib was telling her jokes that made her laugh. He said he would speak to her brother Salim.

This coming week, he said.

What do you mean?

I mean, getting you engaged to me, and then us getting married later on.

Me marrying you?

Of course, you marrying me — what, don’t you like me?

Of course, but –

But what?

But Salim might not agree to it.

Salim’s my friend, of course he’ll agree to it.

What do you mean?

I mean, I love you, he said, and he came very close. He put his hands out, caught her by the waist, and came even closer. At that moment, when Milia was in Najib’s arms, that smell assaulted her nose and she felt her right leg go numb. She stepped back to lean against the trunk of the lilac tree. Najib followed and pulled her to him. Her sharp intake of breath did not stop Najib. It simply made him more determined, as if something had caught fire within him. He yanked the girl to him and shoved his lips against her long pale neck. Milia froze, completely unable to move, because now the smell and the pain were twisted together, and because she felt dizzy, and because this youth who was teasing and fondling her began to shake as if he had suddenly contracted a fever. He staggered backward, carrying away the smell, and ran to the bathroom.

The two of them were alone in the house. Her mother was at church for sunset prayers with the nuns and her four brothers were out. When Najib came, she made him a glass of rosewater sherbet and they sat in the garden. He talked and she listened. She stood up to go inside and make him coffee, and that was when he was suddenly there very close to her. Immediately that odor that brought the pain back into her leg enveloped her. As soon as he took her in his arms he began to tremble and then he left her abruptly and loped to the bathroom.

He came back to see her leaning against the trunk of the towering lilac tree. Another embrace in mind, he came to her. She averted her face and said, That’s enough.

Do you love me? he asked her.

She said nothing.

Do you know what it means, us getting married?

She said nothing.

It means you want to take your clothes off and sleep next to me, it means I sleep with you.

She put out her hand to press his lips together. He seized the hand, kissed her palm and then her fingers one by one, sucking at them gently. When he licked them, a hot flame blazed through the girl and she thought she would topple over. She pulled her hand away, leaned heavily against the tree trunk, and said, her voice shaking, Please, go, you have to go. My mother will be coming back from church at any moment.

I’ll pull off your clothes. I’ll bathe you and I’ll sleep with you. You’ll be like a tiny samaka , a cute little fish.

The evening was abruptly pungent with an unfamiliar tang as the breeze dropped and the humid air unrolled a thick blanket of darkness and fog over the city. She felt hot and cold at the same time. The smell of the Armenian doctor assailed her. She felt a sudden light-headedness all of a sudden and was queasy in the pit of her stomach. The desire surging through her fingers held her shoulders rigid. Najib talked; Milia wanted to run away. He said. . and he said and he said. . but she no longer listened. She saw herself standing in a pool of water, flies buzzing around her ears. She wanted to come out of the viscous liquid clinging to her feet but Najib’s words rooted her in place.

He spoke about a pair of pomegranates. He described how he would pluck a rainbow of fruit from her orchard. Enough! she said. The garden was dark. How had darkness fallen so rapidly? The bats, flying blind, thudded into the trees, and at the sound she raised her hands, wanting to shield her head from the blind creatures and their excrement that thudded onto the walls as loudly as did the bats themselves. She wanted to tell Najib that he must go inside, must protect himself from the darkness and the buzzing and the bat droppings, but she was afraid of him and afraid of herself and fearful of the pond overbrimming with water. She fled inside. She heard his voice demanding to know where she had gone but she did not answer. She went into the house and before closing the door she said goodbye to him.

But I don’t want to go, he said. I’ll wait in the garden for Salim. You go inside if that’s what you want to do.