Elias Khoury - As Though She Were Sleeping

Milia told her little brother about the two look-alike sisters — two girls of medium height, round faces and fair skin, long noses and lips so thin they seemed to have been erased and teeth so tiny the gums seemed to swallow them up. Salim had taken the thinner one and given Najib the plumper one, and that was that.

Where did you see them? asked Musa.

They were with Salim at Bourj Square. I was dropping in on my brothers in the shop at the Souq of the Carpenters, and then I walked toward Souq Tawile and saw them. Salim was trying to hide behind the women. No — that wasn’t it. I was walking down the street in the dark. It was raining. I slipped and fell and my dress got completely soaked. I got up and began shaking off as much water as I could, trying to recover, and that’s when I saw them. Najib was strutting along arm in arm with the fat one, and Salim was scampering along behind as if he were trying to catch up with them but couldn’t. And then Salim slipped. They looked back and saw him, but they just left him there. He was lying on the ground completely soaked. I started to go over to him — I wanted to help my own brother. And then Najib did turn back. I jumped and then I ran. I looked back and saw Najib kiss the fat one and they started laughing, and I started crying.

Musa closed his eyes and said he didn’t understand anymore. As far as my brother Salim goes, he said, he has died and that’s that, I have to forget him. And you as well — you have to forget.

Milia’s tears slipped down her cheeks. Musa bent over his sister, touching his fingers to her eyes. He saw a little girl and saw himself kissing eyes wet with tears. He stepped back and heard his sister asking him not to cry. It’s not worth it, she said. Anyway, it is better this way. It never would have worked. But if he and my brother were failing at university and wanted to become carpenters, fine, then why didn’t Salim get work in the shop here with his brothers? And what does that other one have to do with being a carpenter anyway? Salim we can understand — he is the son of a carpenter, after all. But Najib? Since when is he carpenter material? And then, who is this father who wants to marry off his daughters at any price? And what are they doing in Aleppo, anyway — soon enough they’ll regret it.

Did Milia tell the story the way it happened? Of course not, because no one can know how to tell a story exactly the way it happened and in the order it happened. If that were possible, people would spend their whole lives telling a single story. Milia passed over a number of things. She said nothing about her love for Najib, the way his anecdotes and experiences attracted her, the obscure feelings that took over her spirit and her body, the like of which she had never felt before. Not, at least, until finding out yesterday that she was with child.

But she told him, and she said it had nothing at all to do with her.

But, yaani , you loved him? You were in love with him? Mansour asked her.

I’ve not been in love with anyone.

And me?

You’re something else.

What does that mean — something else?

It means, you’re my husband.

And so I’m asking you if you love me?

Can you be married to someone and not love him? Of course I do!

On that day when she became pregnant and gave her body the freedom to become as big and as round as it wanted, Milia began to feel that she no longer had any need for anyone else. There was a new soul inhabiting her, and she no longer felt like one lone human being.

I didn’t mislead anyone, she said. He misled me — he deceived me. My brother deceived me, and so did my mother, and I didn’t understand any of what was going on. What do you think I could have done?

In the third month, when Milia entered the sovereign realm of the dual, she regained little Milia through her dreams. She discovered then that the melancholy solitude she had been living through had not been a question of longing for her mother or for her brother Musa. No, she had been aching for the tawny-skinned little girl who had filled her nights with movement and her life with light. She allowed Milia to see the world through the brilliance that shone from her eyes.

Milia did not cease falling asleep whenever Mansour came near, but she did begin to have dizzy spells, and somehow inside the dizziness the waters inside of her would flood over her surfaces. Mansour claimed once to have seen her smile but she did not believe him. The room had been dark; there was not moonlight enough to filter through the windowpanes near her bed. She had chosen this bed for the window. She could not sleep without a window nearby, she said. Mansour was left with the farther bed, parallel to hers. She closed her eyes upon the colors of the darkness, having refusing to hang curtains over the window. Curtains blot out the hues and tones of darkness and she wanted to have them there with her. Mansour didn’t mind.

Whenever they entered the bedroom at the same time, invariably she told him that she was exhausted. In quick succession she pulled on her long nightgown, dove into her bed, pulled the covers up to her neck, and fell asleep. He waited. Mostly he dozed off and reawakened sometime later. Slipping out of his bed, he tiptoed over to hers. Milia would be plastered against the wall, her back to her husband’s bed. He would lie down beside her and one hand would begin its slow voyage upward to her shoulders and then down her back, wrapping itself finally around each of her breasts in turn. He would listen for a first moan and when he heard it, he turned her over, so she was lying on her back. He pushed her gown up and entered her. Her breathing would grow deeper and it was interrupted by short, half-suppressed sighs. Her hands dangled loosely and her head was submerged in the long chestnut hair covering the pillow, though he could see her closed eyes and the half-parted lips from which he managed to glean an occasional kiss. Those little sighs and the soft relinquishing contours that this woman’s body gave, as it floated on the darkness, drove Mansour a bit wild. Even after finishing, he contended with the flames of his desire. He would come out of her quietly, go into the bathroom and wash himself, but he would feel as though he had not yet slept with her, his loins still on fire. Returning to the bedroom he saw immediately that she had turned her back. Trying to lie down again next to her, he found no room. He would push her gently but she did not budge. In disappointment, he went back to his own bed.

Not once after his lovemaking did Milia go into the bathroom to wash herself. But in the morning she would get up looking fresh and bright and smelling of soap. When he reminded her of what had transpired during the night her eyes would widen in an astonished stare as though this could not have been her. It could not have really happened.

When did she bathe, then? Did she wait him out, and then once he went to sleep hurry into the bathroom? Did she wake up very early and take a bath and then go back to sleep? Mansour got up at seven o’clock as his wife still slept. He made his coffee and sat at the kitchen table, lighting his first cigarette, and by this time he would see her coming. The few moments between his rising from bed and her arrival in the kitchen were not enough to dispel that fragrance of soap and laurel floating off her hair. She would come in glistening with water and he would ask her when she had bathed. She never answered.

I’ve thought about how much I’d like to watch you taking a bath.

She picked up the coffeepot from the table in front of him, added a touch of orange-blossom water, and put breakfast on the table: labneh, cheese, thyme paste, honey, and quince jelly.

What do you say — tonight before we go to sleep?