Elias Khoury - As Though She Were Sleeping

But that’s not what I’m talking about, she said.

She wanted to return to Musa’s side to help him put his teeth back in his mouth. Milia knew what this was about. Her grandmama Malakeh had told her of the two dreams that warn of death. Cutting or losing hair and teeth falling out. All other dreams, Malakeh said, are journeys to faraway worlds, because a person’s soul cannot endure staying interminably in the body. When the body sleeps, the soul leaves it; when the spirit returns, made lighter and happier by all it has seen, the body metes out a terrible beating. Sleep is like a space of struggle — a battlefield — between soul and body. Milia’s grandmother reminded her that when they are awake, people are not conscious of their souls, but when the angel of sleep descends and the soul rises to float above time and place, a person can divine the separate parts of the self united by the will of the Creator. This is the miracle of life; think about it, said Grandmama: how can fire and water meet? A human being is the meeting place of two completely incompatible elements, earth and air. Our bodies are dust to dust, our souls are the air. But the only way we ever become aware of our spirits’ abilities to rise above the body is when we dream. When the soul travels, leaving behind the soil that awaits its return, we finally realize what life truly means. But the soul is practicing to abandon the body, and as it does so it discovers its own distinct, unique existence.

You mean, there are two of me, Grandmama? Milia’s voice came out timid and breathless.

Of course there are, my dear! Didn’t you dream of your aunt Salma before she died? And in your dream, you saw her dreaming — and flying.

I did?

That’s why your aunt did not really die. Her soul realized that there was no longer any need for her body. But, you see, the body can’t accept this without a struggle. So the body creates problems and causes so much pain that the soul is in agony and gives up hope of leaving the body behind. Ya haraam , poor Salma, what agony she went through! Do you remember, Milia, how much your dear aunt suffered?

I don’t know, answered the trembling girl. She sensed her soul making preparations to leave her body and it left her in terror. She stared into her own eyes in the mirror offered by the little pond in the garden where she spent most of her time, splashing in the water. She wanted to ask her grandmother if her eyes were part of her body, or whether they belonged to the spirit.

Eyes belong to the human soul, declared the nun. Look at the eyes of Mar Ilyas. See how his eyes gleam with fire? Why, why did you go to sleep, my girl?! I brought you to Mar Ilyas’s grotto so that you would see him and he would see you, and then he would remember you always. My daughter, I will die, and I will not be able to intercede for you anymore. Look directly into his eyes and tell him you love him.

The eyes of the prophet who had never died abandoned their sockets to suspend themselves on the sloping arched wall of the grotto. Milia saw their gleam everywhere in this domed grotto, which was large enough only to accommodate one human body lying full length. The prophet would not have been able to stand up straight in his low-ceilinged cave; he would have had to drop to all fours and crawl into the space where he would rest his head. His eyes came out of the red and blue icon set beside the rock that he had made his pillow. Those eyes were everywhere. Milia was afraid, seeing so many eyes. She wanted to thank him because he had rescued her from her illness, and she was on the point of asking him not to forget her when suddenly she saw an eagle in the grotto. How could the eagle have come in here, from the single tiny aperture in the cavern’s ceiling? Milia saw him as though her eyes had acquired the ability to pierce walls and spaces and rove the broad and empty firmament. There far above he circled, his great wings spread to catch the thin strands of cloud streaked across the sky like a diaphanous sash. He spiraled across the sky, sharp eyes searching for the grotto’s opening. Suddenly the bird folded his wings and began to drop. Milia screamed at him to open out his wings. You will die! Please, please don’t do that — who will bring food to poor Mar Ilyas?

But the plummeting eagle did not hear her and she thought he had decided it was time to die. But just above the cavern’s opening he suddenly pleated his body until he was no more than an ordinary little bird as compact as any human fist. He sailed into the grotto’s interior and only then did he unfurl his tremendous wings, beating them against the cavern walls as if determined to widen the interior space. Milia sat in Mar Ilyas’s tiny pit unable to move. She felt herself drawn with irresistible force toward the eagle’s talons, which were closing around her, ready to lift her into the open air. The ascent made her dizzy and she could not have been more frightened. She saw her aunt Salma’s face appear like a vision in the distant sky. Salma asked her about Ibrahim Hananiya. She was crying.

Auntie, why are you crying? The dead don’t cry. They mustn’t cry.

Milia did not hear her aunt Salma’s answer; the woman had disappeared. The little girl saw herself lying on the wide pavement in front of the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. Her belly was swollen and her hands were stretched out cruciform.

And then she saw the two of them, standing exactly opposite. She could not tell them apart. The saintlike nun held Tanyous’s hand as if they were a pair of elderly men, their faces attacked so vigorously by wrinkles that it was difficult to tell who they were. She heard a faraway voice instructing her to push. A hand gripped her hard and shook her by the shoulder. Open your eyes, girl, and push! Yallah , let’s finish up here, you have already gone a long distance and there isn’t much further to go.

Milia opened her eyes slowly and there was light. A dazzling sun had come out, now that the downpour had stopped, and the brilliance of it pierced every corner. Behind the light stood the aged Italian doctor, telling the woman lying on the birthing bed to help him bring her baby out. My girl, everything is fine and inshallah we are almost there but you have to help us out a little.

Milia gave him a little smile. She felt a towelly roughness as one of the nurses swabbed away the cold sweat falling into her eyes, and she asked for Mansour.

Mansour stood next to her. They were in the vast reception hall of the Hotel Massabki, where the photographs were lined up along the wall. He wanted her to stand beneath a photograph of Shaykh Bishara el-Khoury, president of the independent republic of Lebanon, with Jamil Mardam Bey, the prime minister of Syria. This wall of photographs, Mansour explained to her, was a summary of the history of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Strange, he said, it’s as though our history does not exist except on this one wall in a very small city on the Beirut-Damascus road, a wall that is here for the purpose of recording the tale of the Arabs’ defeats.

Please — I don’t like politics. From the moment we stepped inside this hotel, all you have talked about is King Faisal and the Battle of Maysalun and such things, and it’s giving me a headache.

She extricated herself from his grip and turned to another portion of the wall where two framed poems hung side by side.

Mansour went up to them and read out loud.

In Massabki we savored what our bodies craved,

and the soft strains of strings and ever a glass!

The place was beauteous, amiable, and so warm

as if hosted by the quaffer Abu Nuwas

This is by the Egyptians’ Prince of Poetry, he said. Ahmad Shawqi always stayed in this hotel. He came with Muhammad Abd el-Wahhab, the musician, carrying his lute. Abd el-Wahhab was forever putting verses of Shawqi’s together and setting them to music. Over here is a photograph of Khalil Mutran, who was called the poet of the two lands since he lived in Egypt but was from these parts. He came here, too.