Elias Khoury - Broken Mirrors

The question about the war was meaningless. The real question was, how could Nasim tell what couldn’t be told? What should he say to Hend? How should he explain to her that he didn’t know what was happening to him, that, without knowing why or how, he’d gone back to the life of the night, of which he’d been cleansed by the love she’d brought him, and that this had nothing to do with his love for her? How could he explain to her what he couldn’t explain to himself? How could he tell the story of the difference between the truth and its opposite? How could he say that though he didn’t know much he did know that his life at home with her and the boys was the reality and the rest was like the shadows of things; that the person whose behavior she found so upsetting wasn’t him but his shadow, and that he trod his shadow underfoot each day and felt no pain?

“That’s what you have to feel. As though what’s being stamped on is my shadow, not me. I stamp on my shadow so you can see me.”

Hend couldn’t get to the bottom of the mystery of her husband, especially after his father died. His life had been turned upside down. He’d decided to enlist his brother’s help in turning the page of the past once and for all and start anew from the point where everything had come to a stop.

He hadn’t invited his brother to Beirut to wreak vengeance on him or show him that it was he, the failed twin, who’d done well in the end. It was Hend — who changed utterly from the moment she heard of the hospital project — who had imposed this idea, which left its mark everywhere on his brother’s journey of return. She hadn’t been able to stamp her foot and say no, as she had when he tried to get her a Sri Lankan maid. This time he was ready with his excuses. He told her the past was over and done with, that he’d become disgusted with himself now that he’d repented and turned to the Lord, and that his business was going to change. From that day on there’d be no more smuggling, no more parallel life. “We’ll build the hospital. I’ll take care of management and Karim will oversee the medical side, and the war will be over.” He told her God had accepted his repentance but she hadn’t, and that she was being unfair; he had shown her he could change.

Nasim had wanted to tell his brother that he felt as though his eyes had been opened after his father died, and he had seen what before he could not. Strange, one’s relationship to life! He ought to have seen Nasri before he died, but the closing of the father’s eyes seemed to have been a condition for the opening of the son’s. He’d wanted to tell his brother he understood now why the ancients had worshipped their ancestors: it was because they, like us, felt guilty and failed to understand that a person’s relationship to life starts at the moment when death draws close, when he runs head-on into the possibility of absence. This is why the relationship between the living and the dead rests on a deep sense of regret.

Nasim understood this because at the moment his father died he’d felt death draw close to him too. He understood that he’d lost the chance of an encounter with the man because their bond had been broken the day he had fled home to go to Suzanne. Why hadn’t Nasri confided in his son that he had lost his eyesight? Had he been afraid of being treated with contempt? Or had he been wary of seeing a gloating look in his son’s eyes? The result was that his blindness had remained a secret he shared only with the dark.

“Things are their smell,” Nasri used to say, “and when the smell goes everything’s over.”

Karim had returned to a city that had lost its smell. Even the apartment no longer smelled of itself. Nasim had painted the walls, changed the curtains, and bought new furniture to replace the old, which had worn out. He’d put a large oblong mirror in the bedroom to replace the convex mirror that Nasri had stood in front of every morning before leaving the apartment, enjoying his rounded image.

“Why did you change all the furniture?” asked Karim, who was convinced his brother had used the family home to meet women.

“I changed it because it was worn out and so I wouldn’t have to hear Father’s voice ringing in my ears as he stamped over the carpet, spat on it, and said, ‘This damned carpet’s going to last longer than me. Screw life!’ I changed everything so that the things wouldn’t outlive the man.”

“But that’s wrong,” said Karim, and he asked where his brother had put the Persian carpet Nasri had inherited from his grandmother.

“Remember what Abu Sultan did?” said Nasim. “I did the same. Everything went to the rubbish tip, so that I wouldn’t see anything that reminded me of death.”

“I just hope you found the money in the pillow too!”

Nasim smiled and told his brother he’d never understood Nasri, and how the approach to death’s threshold had changed him. “After he died, I found out things and felt sorry, but what’s the use of feeling sorry? Salma’s the one to thank for everything. She’s the one who made me open my eyes, but what’s done is done.”

Hend too had wasted the opportunity to discover what had happened to her husband and how his life had changed. At first she couldn’t believe him. Then, when Karim came back to Beirut, she felt a sense of loss. The past came back to her with all its bitter memories but a strange feeling took possession of her: what she’d thought was hatred for that “monkey of a doctor,” as his brother used to call him, and contempt for that cowardice of his that had driven him to run away, had turned into a crushing sense of loss and an awareness of the need to recover her dignity.

When grief consumed her daughter upon Karim’s departure for France, Salma had told her that the feeling, which seemed so natural, was simply an illusion. “I know, my girl. Just ask me! A woman can’t accept that she’s not desired or loved. All she has to do to get men is to make her desire obvious. That’s why when she’s rejected she can’t take it in and is willing to do anything to recover her status. But it’s an illusion, my girl. It’s over, forget about him. He’s a dog and the son of a dog. It’s over!”

“But I love him! I’m not talking about desire, I’m talking about love!”

“To hell with love. Men don’t know what love means. It’s over.”

“And my father, who was ready to die for love for your sake?”

“Your father was different. God rest his soul, he put me through hell.”

“Put you through hell?”

“He put me through hell because he died. I left everything for him and for love and ended up with the dead. Don’t bother me with talk of love! Go see what you can get out of life! You’re a pretty girl and educated and a hundred men will want you.”

At the time Hend was convinced. She’d ripped Karim out of her heart and said, “It’s over!” But the moment she saw him on the night of his return to Beirut, when her husband brought him to their home, the feeling that a deep valley was being gouged out in her chest had returned, and she found she couldn’t breathe. She saw how Karim had preserved his slender figure, as though he were still twenty, while her husband’s belly sagged over his belt, and his face, on which black spots caused by overindulgence in alcohol had begun to appear, had gone flabby.

No one believed him, but Nasim believed himself. He’d taken his decision calmly, had phoned his brother, and had put to him the idea of building a hospital. He’d decided it would be called Shefa Hospital after his father’s pharmacy and would have attached to it the largest pharmacy in the Middle East. He’d started to reduce his trading activities, put an end to the import of timber and iron, and kept only the trade in petrol, which he would bring to a close with a huge import operation using the Cypriot tanker Acropol .