Elias Khoury - Broken Mirrors

“No problem — ‘May you do so too’ because God guides to the Truth whomsoever He pleases.”

Mokhtar started to laugh but his laughter was choked off in his throat, his face darkened, and he started fidgeting in his chair. Then he rose and looked in the direction of two men who had entered the premises.

He spoke with them in a low voice, pointing at Nasim. The men, on whose foreheads could be seen the dark mark made by frequent prayer, approached him.

“I’m Deyab,” said one of them, who, from the gray of his sideburns, seemed to be the eldest.

Nasim stood up and extended his hand in welcome, but the other man’s hand wasn’t extended to meet it so Nasim withdrew his and said, tripping over his words, that he brought a message to Deyab, Ahmad, and Mokhtar from Beirut.

“But we don’t have anybody in Beirut,” said Ahmad.

“The message is from your mother, Salma. I’m the husband of her daughter, Hend, and she wants to ask for forgiveness from her three sons before she dies and to see them.”

As soon as Deyab heard the first words he raised his hand and pointed toward the door. “Out!” he said. “We don’t have a mother.”

Nasim rose and began walking backward, feeling it could be dangerous to turn his back and leave. He saw Mokhtar coming toward him carrying the two boxes of pastries.

“Leave them here,” shouted Deyab. “We don’t want to sell to him.”

“But the man paid and they’re his,” said Mokhtar, giving the pastries to Nasim.

Nasim tried to say he hadn’t paid and wanted nothing but he saw something like supplication in Mokhtar’s eyes, as though he were pleading with him to take the pastries to his mother and tell her, “These are from your youngest son, Mokhtar.”

Hend told him her mother had diabetes and shouldn’t be given the pastries. “Even now when she sees the children eating chocolate I don’t know what comes over her. It seems she can’t resist anything sweet because when you have diabetes you can’t resist your cravings.”

Karim said the story was depressing and he didn’t know why Nasim had gone there. “There’s no pain worse than that. How terrible life is! But maybe it’s her fault, and now she’s paying for the mistake she made.”

“You’re calling love a mistake? If love’s a mistake, what’s right?” responded Nasim.

“Everything’s a mistake,” thought Karim as he sat in the back seat of the Volvo driven by Ahmad Dakiz, his wife, Muna, next to him.

Karim felt sure it was Muna who’d arranged things. When she phoned him he’d explained he was in two minds about going to Tripoli. He’d said he was supposed to go on the Friday morning to visit an old friend but wasn’t sure. He was exhausted by lack of work. “An idle mind fills with devils,” he said.

He’d decided against going because he felt Radwan was hiding something. His commanding tone and reference to the code name Sinalcol in a conversation that combined blackmail with jocularity had made him feel absolved of the need to carry out his promise to visit Khaled’s grave.

Muna had made him give in. After her last visit she’d phoned to say that their journey to Canada had been postponed because of complicated immigration procedures. When he asked if he could see her she refused and said their relationship had come to an end at his apartment, when they’d made love while she was still wet from the shower. She’d said she couldn’t do a repeat of the farewell scene but she would like to talk to him on the phone, if he didn’t mind. “Why should I mind?” he said. “But I swear I don’t understand anyone anymore and no one understands me anymore.” Then he told her about his delayed Tripoli project.

Karim was taken aback by a phone call from Ahmad Dakiz inviting him to Tripoli. “Muna tells me you’re a specialist in the Franks and crusaders so I’m inviting you to see something incredible.”

How had Muna found out about his old article on the Franks and his interest in their castles and what had become of them? He couldn’t remember telling her, and besides he’d never pretended to be a specialist in crusader history. All it came down to was that as a young man he’d written an article, lacking historical accuracy, on the topic, Abu Jihad had liked the article, and so on and so forth …

He couldn’t remember telling Muna. The only woman he had spoken of it to was Bernadette, at the beginning of their relationship, and he hadn’t said much even to her because he didn’t know much. He might have told Muna in bed without realizing it, or perhaps he got things mixed up in Beirut as much as in Montpellier. But he was sure he hadn’t committed here the error that he had in France when he’d called himself Sinalcol.

Ahmad said he was going to go with his wife to see his father before they migrated to Canada. “I suggest you come with us. We’ll have lunch and get back the same day. You’ll see something incredible. We’re not going to show you a castle or stones and ruins. You’re going to meet crusaders in the flesh.”

The trip was set up, with Ahmad Dakiz deciding that he’d drive Karim to his appointment at noon. They’d be waiting for him at two thirty at the Silver Shore restaurant in the port, where he’d introduce him to his father.

Karim phoned Radwan and told him he was coming to Tripoli the next day.

“Then I’ll be waiting for you at Hallab’s after the noon prayer.”

Ahmad Dakiz decided he’d take the old Tripoli road and avoid the motorway, which was full of trucks and pollution, and that would be an opportunity for the doctor to see the beauty of the Lebanese coast. In fact the doctor saw nothing, neither the sea which hugged the mountains, nor the magical sweep of blue undulating with white.

Karim had found the best solution: going with Ahmad and Muna gave him an illusory feeling of security, despite the fact that he had no desire to listen to the stories of Ahmad’s father, whom Muna had characterized as senile but sweet. Karim felt his heart had become like a vessel filled with stories and tales, and that he could listen to no more. For the first time, he thought of Montpellier with longing. There he would close his eyes, block his ears to the hubbub of Lebanon, cast into oblivion all these stories that had reclaimed him, and begin his life over again. He would return to his two girls, whose existence he had almost begun to forget, and restore his relationship with Bernadette.

Instead of seeing the Lebanese coast stretching on beyond the horizon, he imagined the beach at Palavas with its firm sand and gusting wind, and saw himself carrying Nadine and Lara and making them fly, and Bernadette running behind them, stumbling over her ballooning skirt.

He longed for the quiet of his home, for his cup of café au lait at the Grand Café on the Place de la Comédie, for the films at the Cinéma Diagonale, and the tobacco-stained mustache of Monsieur Roger, who used to come to see him at the hospital to beg off him the price of a bottle of wine and remind Karim of the days when they were friends, when the Lebanese medical student had stayed at Le Ponant hostel on Avenue Palavas, far from the university, because he hadn’t been able to find university housing during his first year. Monsieur Roger, the hostel concierge, had been his guide to the secrets of the small city and the tales of its women.

Instead of drawing up a detailed plan for his visit to Tripoli and what he wanted to see and do there, in the City of a Thousand Libraries, he curled up on the back seat of the car, giving his imagination free rein to summon up the French city as a lost paradise. He felt his affection flowing out and covering the small fine-featured face of his French wife. He could see her loving smile and realized that he was on the verge of losing the woman who he’d once declared was the love of his life. Would it be possible to begin his life over again with her, the woman who’d been his refuge during hard times? Paternal feelings for his daughters swept over him and he pulled out his wallet to contemplate his photo of them with their mother.