Elias Khoury - As Though She Were Sleeping

Me, drunk!

She stayed silent.

You think I’ve gotten drunk on the arak but that isn’t true. Arak doesn’t make me drunk.

She said nothing.

Darling of mine, if I’m drunk, it isn’t the arak. It’s your eyes. Your eyes intoxicate me and I see a strange color.

You too? she said, and immediately bit her lower lip in regret. Apparently Mansour did not hear her, though. If he had, she would have had no choice but to tell the story of her photograph and the odd green film that Musa had noticed immediately.

One person must know, she muttered, standing in front of the Virgin’s image in the Church of the Annunciation. He will. She stared at her rounding belly and begged the Mother of Light to let the boy know the color of his mother’s eyes, even if it remained concealed to all others.

That evening Mansour, who did not know this secret, recited the most beautiful poetry Milia had ever heard. The lines he offered told her that only the prophets were privy to the secret cementing the relationship between night and day. He told her of the famous poet Abu el-Tayyib el-Mutanabbi. He was the only prophet whose prophecies emerged in poetry. Prophets before him had been either incapable of composing poetry or afraid of it, though they might make up stories and proverbs. But then came the poet who inscribed his prophethood in incomparable verse. Speakers of Arabic one thousand years ago were captivated by his magic and today they still were. Mutanabbi visited Tiberias, he told her, and even stayed in Palestine for a period of time. That’s where he was when he wrote lines describing the lion as no one before him had.

Did he walk on water like the Messiah? asked Milia.

No, he walked on words, Mansour answered.

Meaning, he wasn’t a real prophet.

Why not — did all the prophets walk on water?

How would I know?

Listen, Milia, Mansour began insistently, but then stopped, uncertain of how to go on. He wanted to tell her that words were that poet’s water and the music of his words the waves. Mutanabbi brought together wisdom and rhythm, and he balanced the two of them. His poetry flung open gates to emotion, and when he died he shut those gates behind him. For an entire thousand years no one could open them again, or at least not as widely.

But if he couldn’t walk on water, he wasn’t a prophet, she said. Listen!

What mortal has not embraced the earth’s passions

but no road to union can one find or keep

Your earthly share of a dearly beloved

Is your grip of a phantom, long as you sleep

Milia had only to hear the lines of poetry once and she had them memorized. But when reciting them, somehow she reversed the final hemistich and it became something else.

Your earthly share of a dearly beloved

Is the grip of sleep phantom dreams let you reap

Milia was in her third month of pregnancy. As she grew rounder her beauty was almost too much to bear. Mansour did not know how to express the full measure of his love or the weight of his awe. She did not listen to him when he spoke of love. She lowered her head and the blue halo visible above it would veil her as she sank further and further into silence. He resorted to poetry, trying now this poem, now that one, all for her ears. Head still bowed, her eyes sparkled as she listened intently. When he came to the end she remarked that poetry is like prayer.

She saw vapor rising over the table as though the words had turned themselves into incense. Her head spun with the fragrance of incense spreading across them and winding around the words that floated downward from this man’s lips.

She had dreamed the incense, she said. When she recounted her dreams to him, it often happened that she halted abruptly midstory and would not go on. She saw fear in his eyes. Only that one dream: she did tell that one to the end. Three months before she had told it, at the moment when Mansour saw his wife’s body inscribed with circles, curves upon curves and swirls upon swirls. It was morning then, and he stared, marveling at how her shoulders slipped roundly from the loose neckline of her blue nightgown. He was stunned by how beautiful they were. He followed her into the kitchen, where she had begun to make coffee and set out breakfast. He came up to her and from behind he hugged her tightly to his chest. There was no sound of the uneasy protest that invariably greeted his attempts to embrace her. His body pressed into hers and desire rippled from his pelvis to his shoulders. As he tried to lift her nightgown the dazzling whiteness of her seemed to explode before his eyes, the brilliance knocking him nearly blind. He closed his eyes, his hands pressing in at her hip bones, and he arched forward over her. Her body bending with his, she was soft and warm and her tenderness flowed over him.

Suddenly she cried out and whipped around. She pushed him away gently and told him she was pregnant.

What?!

I dreamed it. I’m pregnant.

He smiled and stepped toward her again but she pushed him back.

I’m pregnant.

Since when?

Since today.

She put the little coffee ewer down on the table and began to talk. She stood in the sunlight streaming through the window, her face growing rounder as he stared and her eyes getting larger. The man felt his legs weaken and he sat down. He let his eyelids drop and darkness swept over him.

Sitti. .

She told him about her grandmother Malakeh. My grandmama Malakeh came and sat down next to me on the bed, here. I was sleeping. The bed seemed endless, as though I slept on a bed of water, it was everywhere, the water, and Sitti sat with me. She was a young woman — Ya Latif she looked so much like my mother! At first I thought she was my mother, and I said, Mama, what are you doing here? She said, I’m not your mama, your mother is in Beirut and I came here to tell you a story. I said, Sitti, is this the time for stories? Don’t you see where I am? How I’m living on my own now, and no one is here with me? She said she had come here to awaken me but first I must accept a gift from her. She put her hand into her cloak and took out a tiny icon of the Virgin. It has to stay with you always, she said, to keep you safe. I took the icon from her but I did not know where I should put it. Set it on your belly, she instructed. I laid it on my belly and felt myself sinking. I called to her. Sitti, I’m sinking, I’m going to drown, what should I do? Hold my hand, she replied. I held out my hand but I couldn’t reach anything. I tried to scream but my voice wouldn’t come. I was drowning. I was underwater and I couldn’t breathe. Suddenly a woman in a blue veil was there. She held me. I saw myself on shore. I saw a lot of fish. The fish were poking their heads out of the water, opening their mouths to breathe, and diving under again. The blue woman was beside me. She was whispering to me but I didn’t understand a word of it. She talked and talked in a soft voice. I didn’t catch any of it except for one word: Tiberias. So then I knew I was at Lake Tiberias. The blue woman closed her eyes and I longed for sleep. If I went to sleep, though, nothing in the world could awaken me, I knew, and I was afraid. I remembered what my grandmama had said about sleep and death. Khallaas , I told myself. It’s all over for you, Milia. You are going to die in this water. But I was no longer fighting for breath. I was breathing underwater and seeing a rainbow of color. The blue woman was with me. She reached out and placed her hand on my stomach and I felt my belly start to swell and my body grow rounder. She took her hand away. I turned and saw my grandmama, here with me, but now she had no teeth. I used to be afraid of Sitti when she took out her teeth and put them in a glass of water. I didn’t understand why her set of teeth looked so strange. It wasn’t two sets of dentures, up and down, but four or five. The glass would become something frightful — water all around the dentures and the teeth looking as though they were trying to bite the glass. Why did you take out your teeth, Sitti? I asked. So I can talk with you better. No, no, Sitti, please, go back and put in your teeth so I can understand you. She said she could not, because in a dream one shouldn’t fiddle with one’s teeth. But you’re dead, Grandmama, I told her. It’s not important, I don’t matter, my dear — the important thing is you, she said. But you’ve been dead a long time, I protested. She laughed, that mouth of hers wide open, and she began saying things I didn’t understand. I caught only one word. She was talking in a very faint voice and I only understood a single word. Sabiyy . I said to her, What sabiyy ? You’ll find out later on, she told me. But I’m afraid now, I told her, and I put my hand out to pull her dentures up and out of the glass. She slapped my hand and I started to cry. When my grandmama Malakeh died I cried a lot. Everyone thought I was crying so much because Sitti loved me so much. But that wasn’t true. Well, of course I cried because I loved her too, but the truth is that I cried especially because they didn’t put the teeth back inside of her mouth where they belonged. I asked my mother where they were and then I ran into the kitchen. She followed me and said, Don’t be upset, dear, take it easy. I didn’t answer. I just started searching like I’d gone mad. I went under the table, looking everywhere, opening the cupboards. My mother said to me, Stop. They aren’t here, we got rid of them.