Elias Khoury - As Though She Were Sleeping

Tanyous took her to every quarter in Nazareth Town. He drew a line separating Nazareth of the Messiah from Nazareth of the Franciscans who had founded the city in the sixteenth century. He narrated stories from his near ancestor who had possessed the strange and astounding manuscript that revealed the secret of Yusuf the Carpenter.

You read the manuscript? she asked him.

No. The manuscript is written in Syriac, and I don’t know Syriac, but my grandfather spoke and read the language of the Messiah, and he told me everything.

So why did your grandfather abandon the Latin rites for the Greek?

Because he fell in love with a woman from the Houran region. He discovered that God reveals His truths only through love. When he went to the abbot and told him this, the fellow went mad with anger and began cursing women. He forced my grandfather to spend a month in detention, that he be purified of sin. But my grandfather did not sin. All he did was to see the girl by the spring across from the monastery gates and his heart was stolen. He could no longer think about anything else. He went to the Father to seek his advice and the response he got was imprisonment, torture, and flagellation. In that cell of imprisonment, he heard the voice of the angel and Mar Yusuf appeared to him. At first he thought it was Yusuf son of Yaqub, the handsome youth whom his brothers tried to kill and with whom every woman fell in love at first sight. This is God guiding me, he told himself. He knelt before Mar Yusuf to ask his pardon for the sin he had committed in his heart and mind, and he heard the saint whisper. The saint told him of the manuscript in the abbot’s treasury. If he read the manuscript, he would understand all.

A month later my grandfather came out of the detention cell and found a way to steal the manuscript. In that hour the truth was revealed to him. He decided to abandon his monastic habit and marry. He became Greek Orthodox.

But Mar Yusuf wasn’t –

What are you getting at? You can’t believe those outrageous tall tales certain repressed men of religion have invented! Hah — Mar Yusuf was impotent, because he had some sort of accident in his carpenter shop and lost his manhood? It’s a bunch of nonsense, there’s not a single saint who couldn’t perform, especially not the Messiah, glory be to him. Beware of this sort of stuff, my girl. Remember, the fellow was a widow and had five children. The story of his marriage to our Lady Maryam is beyond belief! Listen, my dear, listen.

The old man began to recite as though he read a text in front of him: Maryam was the daughter of Joachim and Hannah and had been consecrated to temple service since birth. She lived in piety, sewing the porphyry tent and performing her devotions. She grew in stature and grace. When she reached puberty the temple Elders deliberated, settling on the view that she must leave the temple and marry. Among the men of the temple was an old and pious man named Yusuf and called the Carpenter. Yusuf proposed to the men gathered in the temple that they pray to God and ask for a sign from Him. Emerging in the evening to take their canes from in front of the entrance, they saw that out of Yusuf’s cane had grown a lavender bloom. In unison they proclaimed, Him!

Me? said Yusuf, startled. How can I take this young virgin girl? How can I marry her when she is the age of my children and I am an old widower living my final days? He is wise who knows that a human’s life wilts like the flowers in the field, and the body dissolves into dust. Life is naught but the losses that follow upon one another as we await the great and final loss.

But seeing the cane’s miraculous flowering, the wise men of the temple would not rescind their words. So Yusuf took the woman and was betrothed to her. Before he consummated the marriage he discovered that she was pregnant and he broke down in tears. And then — well, I have told you the rest of the story.

What does porphyry mean? Milia asked.

Red, the monk said.

But why do you talk as if you are reading, you told me the book was in Syriac, so how could you memorize it in Arabic?

Instead of fingering his beard, eyes shut, before responding, he gave her a long and direct look. Blessed is the one who believes without seeing. Milia, I am afraid for you. Come with me, I am counting the days, waiting for you. I shall take you by the hand and you will cross that valley and no harm shall come to you. What do you say?

Before she could say anything the man vanished from sight as if lifted by a cloud of dust that whirled him away.

Milia told the Italian doctor she was afraid. The elderly man in a white medical coat was bent over between Milia’s legs that were held high on a medical bed where the nurse had ordered her to lie down. The doctor went out of the room and the woman was alone. The pain seemed to have lessened to the point of vanishing and she breathed deeply, as though she was no longer pregnant. Her light spirit returned to her and the black shadows faded from her eyes. She had just let her eyelids drop and was sinking into a doze when she saw him. But how had the monk gotten into the hospital room?

He was covered in dust as though he had just now arrived from a distant place. He came up to her holding an incense burner on a long chain that gave off a white smoke thick and acrid enough to blind one. Behind the smoke she could make out the shape of a little girl shimmying up through the air and dissolving into the whiteness. No, this is not my daughter, she said. I am going to have a boy, not a girl. But then she realized that the girl she saw there was herself. Ya Latif , Merciful God, this is not easy! Giving birth, O Mother of Light — now I understand how you suffered. A woman no longer knows herself. The girl dwindled to nothing inside the smoke and the white cloud of incense grew more opaque and only the old monk stood there now.

Get away from me, please go away! Allah yikhalliik . I want to have the baby now, I beg you. You should not be here.

She heard a voice coming out of the smoke.

O Virgin, please, I beg of you, tell him it’s enough.

But he went on with his words. The Blessed Virgin refused to intervene and Milia was left to her fate. She heard the story. This was not the first time she had listened to this story. Who had told her the story of Eve? She remembered scoffing at it but she no longer remembered when or where that had been. Yes — oh yes, Sister Milana. What brought her here, and why did the beggar monk appear to have taken on her image?

Was it? No. It could not be. But he was a beggar. The first time she saw him he left the goblet on her windowsill and vanished. But on the many occasions since then when they had met, she had fed him and given him coins — after all, he was only a beggar who claimed to be Lebanese so that he would have an excuse to approach her.

Go, please! Now! I will see you after I have had the baby and I will cook some truly delicious food for you. But I want to be by myself right now.

Her husband had been convinced that he was nothing but a swindler who was hoodwinking Milia in order to get her money. No one in Nazareth had heard of a monk of Lebanese origin calling himself Tanyous who lived alone in the city. Woman, use your brain, there’s no monastery for the Greek Orthodox in this area! There is the Muscovite monastery but the monks there are all Russians. How could this be — a monk living alone who knows where the Messiah’s home is? Take me to that house and I’ll strike it rich — it would be the most visited tourist site in the entire world. Come on, yallah ! Show me where the house is.

She wanted to tell him that it was a secret the monk had trusted her to keep, and she couldn’t reveal it to anyone at all. But she found herself walking through the narrow lanes in search of the olive tree and the adjacent ruins. She didn’t find either one. And where was Mansour? They had left the house together but now he had vanished and she was walking alone, stumbling as she searched for the dead olive-tree trunk where she would rest her tired head. But she had lost the place.