Elias Khoury - As Though She Were Sleeping

I know what will happen, she said. They want to take you away from me, and then they will take away my son, and then I don’t know what will happen. I smell war and death there. Yesterday, I dreamed –

Please, I beg you — none of those dreams of yours.

He said none of those dreams of yours to force her to accompany him. What had happened to the man? She wanted to explain to him that death was not the problem. That the dead are merely sleeping and dreaming, and that their dreams never end. But he was no longer able to grasp what she meant. Had he ever understood any of it? Or did he simply want to swim with her in bed? When he used that word — sibaha — he was reciting the poetry of Imru’l-Qays and telling her that the straying king had slept with a woman who was nursing her baby. Tomorrow, he said, that’s what I want to do, just like the poet — it must have been something tremendous. She did not answer, and then he told her that when he slept with her he felt like he was swimming.

She went to Jaffa with him. She breathed in the fragrance of oranges. Everyone loved that scent and grew intoxicated on the smell of bitter-orange blossoms. Milia loved this velvety smell as much as they did, but here in Jaffa what she smelled was blood. She told him his city resembled Tripoli in the north of Lebanon.

Jaffa is Tripoli’s sister, he said.

She had gone once to Tripoli, she said. Her oldest brother, Salim, took her there when she was seven. She didn’t remember much. But she did smell the bitter-orange blossoms. She remembered that.

It’s as if I’m in Tripoli, she said. The clock tower square here is like Tell Square there. But she did not like this place, she told him, because she smelled a strange odor here. She saw how Tel Aviv had turned its back to the sea and opened its mouth wide to gobble up Jaffa.

She told Mansour that Jaffa would drown in the sea. They were sitting together on the seafront eating grilled meat. Mansour was drinking arak and Milia stared at the endless blue sky, and she told him that she had dreamed the previous night of the sea sweeping over the city. The Ajami quarter was filled with people speaking Iraqi Arabic, she said, and boats sailed down King Faisal Street. People were gathering in Rashid where seawater had risen in the streets.

Milia is lying back in a car that has come to a stop in the middle of the street while everyone streams by, jostling fiercely, to reach the seafront. Lord! Mansour told me he would not take me to Jaffa before I had the baby. Mansour, what are you doing on the roof of the house in Ajami?

The roar of bombs exploding is everywhere. Asma carries a still-nursing baby and Umm Amin pulls two small children along, as human waves descend toward the harbor. People push each other, rushing forward, peering ahead with eyes that see nothing, for a dense cloud of dust covers everything. Men shove their bodies in amidst the crowds of women and tear off their uniforms as they disappear into the chaos. Mansour crouches on the roof of the house holding an English rifle.

Why are they running away? asks Milia.

They’re the Iraqi volunteers. They’ve tossed away their weapons because their commander has been thrown out and they refuse to take orders from anyone but Hajj Mourad el-Yugoslavi.

I was asking about the children, she said.

Wearing his long heavy coat, Mansour sways and bends in the high winds buffeting the city. She sees him walking along the roof edge holding a lit candle whose flame the fog dulls, and she feels the cold penetrating. The two Wadiias sit beside her in the backseat of the American car. Milia wants to open her eyes but the sun burns everything and she is burning and Mansour is burning. She hears the ship’s horn. The Greek ship sitting motionless in Jaffa harbor is getting ready to sail. Mansour stands beside an old man. The old man says that the Jaffa-Lod detachment has been decimated and the mujahideen who remained have all scattered around the harbor.

Where’s Michel Issa? Mansour asks.

A full pale-complexioned face, a black moustache so shaggy it covers his lips, and wet clothes — Michel Issa stood amidst the bombs hurtling down on the city from every direction and felt his voice disappear. When he and Mansour met on the Greek ship, he said he’d realized that he was no longer a general protecting his city once his voice refused to obey him. He knew that the battle was over. The two hundred men who marched here as a relief army to come to their rescue had dispersed among all the rest.

On the deck of the boat, wrapped tightly in his overcoat, Mansour listens to the final blast of the horn before the boat leaves for Beirut.

Asma stands in her black garb in the garden of the Jaffa house and screams to Mansour. Either take me to the Prophet Ruben’s festival or divorce me!

When did you marry her, Mansour?

Mansour had never taken anyone to the prophet’s festival, which he remembered from his childhood. He remembered the tents and the Sufi’s dhikr sessions and the white flag on which was written: There is no God but God and Ruben is God’s prophet. He remembered the joy erupting from the Great Mosque in the city center and sending its cloud of ecstasy all the way to Ajami. He remembered the women celebrating Ruben on the fifteenth of September but he did not know who this prophet was who had given his name to a small river south of Jaffa. He could not comprehend why the people of Jaffa would spend an entire month in Rubin’s tents preparing to welcome in the autumn.

Mansour told her that in the midst of war it was impossible, and he would take her to call out in celebration of Ruben the next year. But the short rotund woman did not understand. She wanted Ruben now.

You must not cry, said the Italian doctor. In a moment, give it another push and before you know it we will be done and everything will be fine.

The ship’s horn sounded and the ships of the Companie Gharghour left the harbor. The city was empty now. The sea had taken the people. Where were the people?

A tall man known as the Beiruti, Ataallah Beiruti, stands erect before the British general and an officer from the Haganah, proclaiming Jaffa an open city.

The ship sounds its horn and the Jews are ready to enter the city. The Mosque of Hasan Bey is in their hands. Ajami is in their hands. The city quarters stoop and bow, one against the next. The only sound is the wind knocking against the houses.

Don’t forget the key to the house, Milia shouts.

Mansour tosses away his rifle, hurries down from the roof, and runs toward the Greek packet anchored in the harbor. The smoke rises and thickens, the motor growls, and Mansour runs, waving his hands wildly and shouting at the captain to wait for him. He stumbles and falls, stops to shed the overcoat that is slowing his pace, throws it to the ground, and runs.

The ship is on the high sea. Mansour sits on the deck and Jaffa grows distant.

Why did you leave the city? a young Greek sailor asks.

Tents are everywhere.

What is this? asks Milia. Why did you put up the tents here?

They told her that the Prophet Ruben’s festival was approaching. They said that Jaffa erects its tents on the south bank of the river and everyone goes there.

Where is Ruben the prophet?

They said he would be sitting alone there, waiting for the people to arrive. The people picked up their tents and went, and all that remained was the smell of blood.

Blood in the streets. Mansour stands before his workshop, which lies in ruins, the machinery soaked in blood and wet with severed limbs. A terrible, lonely silence makes him shiver to the core. Where are you, Milia? Mansour cries out. I am dying, Milia.

Don’t cry, habibi , I’m here, murmurs the woman lying on the hospital bed.