Elias Khoury - As Though She Were Sleeping

She vanished inside. She fell onto the sofa, her entire body shaking. The bitter taste beneath her tongue mixed oddly with the strange odor spurting from her broken leg. She closed her eyes and saw him. His laughter bared white teeth gleaming in the nighttime darkness. The trees shook off water as if they had just finished bathing in the dew clinging to their leaves. He came to her. He took her hand and lowered it to his trousers, engorged with desire.

Here, here, put your hand right here, Allah yikhalliik , please, see, it’s like a bird, a little hamama . You’ve never held a bird in your hands, have you? So you’ve never felt how a bird trembles.

In her hand the bird quivered. The liquid erupting from his trousers made her dizzy and she sensed herself spiraling into the pond. She felt spider threadings winding about her chest and neck and she was certain she would choke. Then, here was the nun. The Sister dangles the incense burner and the room is lit with candles. Abu Salim Shahin is stretched full length on the bed and around Saadeh’s husband the women wail. The nun brings the brass encensoir to Milia’s face. Embers flare up and the beads of incense melt. The nun blows on the embers and tells Milia to bring her mouth close, to blow on those coals with her. These coals must not go out, my girl, she says. All night long you must keep them going with your breath. The incense must be equal to the deaths it recalls. A person’s soul must reach our Lord shrouded in incense. Blow!

Milia blew. The ashes flew up and stung her eyes. She rubbed them but it was no use: the ashes punctured the whites of her eyes. Everything turned the color of ash. The little girl stands before the man with the gleaming white teeth, trying to hold on to a bird that exceeds the span of her hand. The nun has commanded her to blow on the ashes. She hears the dogs barking; she hears the sounds of night. Milia wakes up abruptly and finds herself sitting on the sofa, sweat beading across and down her back. With a shudder of cold she hears her mother saying, as she did before, The nun asked why you didn’t come to evening prayers.

Where’s Salim? Milia asked her.

I don’t know, I came in and there was no one here but you. Haajja Milana sent incense especially for you. She says you must burn incense every day until the engagement takes place.

What engagement?

Yesterday we were talking about Najib, your brother Salim’s lawyer friend. He says he intends to make it official. We all know — he loves you and you love him.

Me?!

Ayy, you, and inshallah now that he is around, your head isn’t busy thinking about Wadiie, that stingy baker! His game was clear pretty quickly. He wanted your share of the house before he would marry you.

The mother went into the liwan , leaving Milia behind and alone in the dar . Her chin cupped in her right hand, Milia gazed at nowhere in particular. She felt the trembling of the bird in her hand, immediately saw the two Armenian doctors, and smelled that smell again. The memory of the two doctors comes wrapped in black tones, a jumble of specters and indistinct shadows. A tall man, broad shouldered, the one bent over her broken leg who massaged it with his full and powerful fingers. His forefinger found the precise point where the pain was worst. Moaning with the pain of it, Milia felt a pair of firm hands on her shoulders, at the bottom of her neck. She heard the voice of the taller doctor telling her to lift her other leg to the chair. She extended her leg and felt the firm pressure of fingers. Pain; fingers; a smell; two men. She’s aware of the one, standing behind her grasping her shoulders as the other bends over her leg. The oil slinks along her flesh, down there. The fingers of the man standing behind her seem to lift her above herself. As if she has now been suspended between two trees; as if the fragrance of the leaves on the fig tree pierces her flesh. Closing her eyes, she is aware of the pain slowly retreating from her calf; she can feel how it rises on the touch of those fingers. The spicy fragrance rises too, as if they are cooking something or as if the air they are inhaling is composed entirely of spices, producing such a hot sharp scent that her eyes smart. She cannot wipe away her own tears. But the fingers reach for her and pluck the teardrops from her face. The doctor bending over her passes her a handkerchief. She blows her nose and the mountain of pain slides off her.

It feels like a mountain, she had responded when her mother asked what she felt in her leg. She said the same to the nun and repeated it again to the two doctors. The nun turned away and told her mother to take her to the clinic. The tall doctor smiled and told her he would lift the mountain off of her leg.

What happened during those three visits to the clinic?

When Milia tries to collect her memories she has the sensation of being in a very dark room. Why? And why had Niqula accompanied her on the third visit, his face grave? He had entered the room where the two doctors stood. This time, the ruddy-faced doctor standing behind her did not touch her while the broad-shouldered doctor did nothing more than undo the bandage around her calf and rub the flesh with a small towel moistened with oil and giving off the fragrance of saffron. When he told her to stand up, she stood up and walked.

It feels weak, she said.

But there is no more pain, and that’s the important thing, said the doctor.

There’s no pain, said Niqula tentatively.

Back at home, when Milia stretched her leg out on the bed Musa sat down next to her and massaged it gently. She had the sensation of his fingers holding her lightly on the surface of the sea and that the smell was fading to nothing.

Milia did not believe the tale of the two doctors as her mother, Saadeh, told it. The peculiar smell assailed her again and she saw herself in the gloom. That had been her second visit to the doctors after she had had the bandage on her leg for a week. She felt a hollowness deep in her belly. Her belly button seemed to be submerged in water. She observed the tiny belly button tightly gathered like a flower bud that has yet to open, water enveloping it and everything softening and turning to liquid.

The broad-shouldered doctor massages her leg and the slight doctor whose shadow stretches over her from behind grips her shoulders and holds her upper back rigid. She groans. The doctor smiles as he bends toward her. Moans sweep over her and she cannot hold in the sound; she feels like she must scream. But she claps her hand to her mouth to block the sound. Relax! says the doctor who is bent over her leg. Does it hurt? he asks her. She nods and instead of saying yes a scream escapes her lips. Ple-e-e-a-se, doctor, no! She hears her mother’s footfall and the commotion made by her little brother. The current of electricity that gyrates around her and lashes her stops suddenly as she sees her mother standing beside her.

What is it, doctor? her mother asks.

Khallaas , he says, it’s all done. He wraps the leg in white bandages. Bring her back in three weeks’ time and we will remove the bandage. Hamdillah a’s-salameh .

With that goodbye Milia returned home to find herself spinning inside a vortex of smells, caught in the sensation of leaning painfully for support on a pair of fused shadows that came to her in her dreams, one man with two heads, one bald and the other’s hair thick, entering her bedroom and placing four firm hands on her shoulders and her legs. Waking up she would find sweat rolling down her body from her face to her feet.

In this dream Milia sees herself as smaller than the palm of the hand that reaches for her upper back. She is in the darkness, lying on dry grass near a pond. Thorns push into her back and she smells fire somewhere in the distance. Suddenly the two men appear and as they come closer, and closer still, they become one man with two heads and two necks. One neck is long and the other is short, and the four hands stretch out toward the little body, the frail body asleep on the grass. There is pain; there are voices murmuring. The two men do not speak to her. They crowd close and begin to rub her shoulders. Pain sweeps over her and a scream she tries to keep back comes shooting out anyway. She opens her green eyes and finds herself in her own bed, engulfed in fear and panic.