Elias Khoury - As Though She Were Sleeping

Saadeh’s favorite ritual, though, was lunch. Sitting in her room, she basked in the fragrance of the stew Milia was preparing, her mouth watering, waiting. When the plateful of food arrived she swallowed it almost at once. Saadeh had discovered the virtues of her daughter’s cooking. With exemplary speed the girl had learned to cook all sorts of dishes.

If it weren’t for your stomach, you would have become a saint, the nun remarked more than once. Saadeh’s appetite for prayer could be compared only to her appetite for food. Between these two desires she lived inside the pain that crawled through all parts of her body. In the end, the aches settled in her feet, which swelled until they could no longer carry her. So her life ended there within that small space, in her bed, praying and eating. She died on a day in July in the year 1960 after wolfing down an entire bowl of kibbeh arnabiyyeh that the wife of her son Musa had sent to her with her very young grandson Iskandar. Facing his grandmother’s appetite, the little boy stood stunned. Sitti , you’re going to die! he said to her when she told him she would finish the entire bowl in one sitting.

Then I’ll die on a full stomach, she said.

Milia knew her mother would die of overeating and she took it as a fact of nature — simply one of many natural disasters. Milia never did understand her mother’s accursed illness. Truth be told, she believed her mother was not ill at all. She had feigned it, Milia was certain, and then had come to believe in her own lies.

Her husband had died suddenly at the age of forty-five. Saadeh felt lost, as the nun said. Saadeh had told the nun that she hated that business and could not stand the smell of the man, adhering to her body so obnoxiously whenever he approached her. Immediately after the weekly intercourse that she could not avoid or escape, she would take three baths, trying to rid herself of the feeling that she had sinned, of the fierce notion that she wanted to disappear from the face of the earth.

I wish, ma soeur , I wish I could just go through that wall and disappear and make the smell go away, she would moan.

My dear, what are you saying? You smell like bay laurel and soap, the nun would say.

But I can still smell it, said Saadeh.

You were created to be a nun and stay a virgin, Saadeh — if it weren’t for that stomach of yours. I’ve never seen a one who was as fond of the stomach as you are.

This exchange or something like it occurred two years after the death of Yusuf. Saadeh was complaining to the nun of her aches and whining about the smell of the man that still hung in her nose. She remembered Yusuf and cried, and said he had blackened her with the soot of misfortune, she and the children. But what were her tears for?

Shufi ya haraam — al-awlad! The poor children, look what’s happened to them. They work from dawn to dusk, through the heat, and if God hadn’t opened the gates to my son Niqula and started him making coffins, we would’ve all dropped dead from hunger by now. Salim the oldest went with the Jesuits, says he’s studying law and is going to be a lawyer, and then there’s little Musa still in school — it was Niqula’s and Abdallah’s lot to work from the start and support us all. And then there’s Milia, I don’t know what demon got into that girl, but one month and she was cooking up a storm. That girl left school though she’s always got her nose in a book. She cleans house and does the washing and cooks and gets it all done in a couple of hours, too! When I used to spend the whole day in that kitchen and my cooking still came out saayit as the late mister used to say, but she’s a different case.

They were devouring a platter of stuffed eggplant cooked in oil. Saadeh couldn’t not eat with the saintly woman even though she had eaten already at home. This isn’t lunch, Saadeh, this is a trial and temptation! the nun exclaimed without missing a bite. Don’t you bring any more of your daughter’s dishes over here. What an aroma — Lord preserve us from temptation!

Mansour would repeat the story of the aroma that was like making love. He had finished his dinner on the terrace at home in Nazareth. He was getting ready to refill his glass of arak when Milia snatched it from his hand and scurried into the kitchen.

Why are you doing that? he yelled after her.

Enough drink, it’s time for something sweet.

She came back from the kitchen carrying a platter of qatayif dipped in honey. The tiny sweet pancakes grilled over a very low fire until they were golden gave off the fragrance of pure Hama butter and glistened with pine nuts. Mansour took a bite and cried out at the sweetness of it. Shuu ha’l-tiib hayda! Milia explained that she had crushed the pine nuts with sugar and rosewater and orange-flower syrup. He took a second bite with his eyes closed and she heard something very like a moan of pleasure.

This isn’t dessert, darling, this is like love. Like I’m making love with you, not like I’m eating! Amazing! And he dove in, and the qatayif were gone.

You shouldn’t eat so many, you need to really appreciate the taste, she complained. She had invented this sweet by chance, she told him. Making qatayif , she discovered she didn’t have any almonds or walnuts in the old house, so she hit upon the idea of filling them with pine nuts. But pine nuts are tender and subtle and the taste isn’t there on the tip of your tongue right away. To get the flavor you have to wait, and I was afraid my brothers wouldn’t like them, especially Niqula, since he’s a bit rough and he likes his food that way too. But Musa — when Musa tasted the qatayif he closed his eyes and reacted just like you did, and then all of them loved it. Especially the nun. That one’s the patron saint of stomachs — I never in my life saw anyone eat the way she does, like her whole body is in a rapture, like the skin on her fingers and hands tastes it along with her mouth.

The nun ordered Saadeh to stop bringing her daughter’s cooking to the convent. But Saadeh would show up toting a paper bag in which she had concealed whatever dish she had taken furtively from the kitchen. The nun would become wholly engrossed in the dish Milia had prepared. Making the sign of the cross over the food, she would intone Byzantine hymns adorned with words in praise of the Virgin Mary, just for good measure.

The Convent of the Archangel Mikhail had become Saadeh’s refuge long since. There, even her bones eased and the aches retreated. Her spirit was liberated from the burdens of the body. And anyway, the house had become Milia’s territory. The three older brothers treated her as the woman she had so quickly become and they were not slow to practice their sense of masculine dominion on her. But her younger brother Musa looked upon her as his mother. She was happy enough with the two roles, which made her a woman and a mother and transformed her into the pivot and core of family life.

Two years after her father’s death Milia found herself out of school. Yusuf’s death had completely overturned the family’s life. Only the eldest son, Salim, preserved the accustomed rhythm of his existence, and that was only because of Niqula’s swagger. On the day of his father’s death Niqula put Yusuf’s tarbush on his head and decided then and there to quit school and go to work in the shop. Niqula was seventeen and had shown no sign whatsoever of academic success, but he did make the most of the talents he had.

If Niqula is going to sacrifice himself, then I will, too. I’ll leave school, declared Abdallah. Their mother smiled and said nothing. Everyone in the family knew that this had nothing to do with sacrifice. It had already been established that Abdallah would go to work with his father in the shop, since he had never flourished at school.