Elias Khoury - Broken Mirrors

“My mother’s the most honorable woman in the world. Careful now — don’t start being offensive and making insinuations about Salma!”

“I’m not talking about honor,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“I’m talking about talking, but it doesn’t matter. You may be right, you probably are, but I’m here and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Ghazala disappeared. She melted away as though she’d never been, and when he badgered his brother for the reason he got a mysterious answer about a major problem between Ghazala and her husband. When he sought greater clarity his brother said he only knew what Matrouk had told him. Nasim said Matrouk had told him he’d been on the point of killing her but hadn’t done so out of pity for the children.

“Why did he want to kill her?”

“Really I don’t know,” answered Nasim. “Anyway, why are you so interested? I hope you haven’t fallen in love with the maid too.”

“God forbid! What a thing to say! I just wanted to know.”

Karim didn’t know what his brother meant by “too.” Had Nasim had an affair with her as well, or did he mean the deceived husband?

“Why didn’t he kill her?” asked Karim.

Nasim didn’t hear, or perhaps ignored, the question. He told him he’d be sending him a Sri Lankan maid. She’d come to him once a week and “that way your problem will be solved.”

Three days later he got an unexpected phone call from Matrouk, Ghazala’s husband. The man’s voice was hoarse and hesitant. He introduced himself as “Ghazala’s husband — you don’t know me, doctor, but I’d like to come and see you tomorrow and have a cup of coffee.” The man said he’d come at one p.m., during the lunch break at the hospital site, and though he didn’t want to take a lot of the doctor’s time it couldn’t wait.

Karim didn’t sleep well that night. He felt he was in a trap and facing possible disaster all on his own. Why should the husband want to meet him? Had she told him? Had something made him suspicious? Also, he didn’t know what to say. Should he admit the truth or deny it? And what if she’d confessed? Wouldn’t his denial just be a confirmation of his bad faith?

Before going to bed he found himself phoning his wife. He didn’t know what impelled him. Was it loneliness or was he looking for a refuge now that he felt everything was closing in on him, as though he were in a darkened cell? He asked about the girls and said he missed them and heard Bernadette’s voice asking him tenderly to “come back to Montpellier because we’ve missed you and Nadine and Lara ask about you every day.” Why didn’t he come back, she asked, and what had he been thinking of to endanger his job and his position at the hospital in Montpellier? He said he’d be back soon but couldn’t abandon the project just then. He heard her kiss on the phone as she told him, before hanging up, that they’d be waiting for him.

He slept intermittently. In fact he didn’t sleep properly until dawn, so didn’t open his eyes until ten thirty in the morning. He phoned the architect to reassure himself that the work was progressing but couldn’t get hold of him. He dressed and walked the streets aimlessly. He walked to kill time. He didn’t like just waiting about.

He reached Sassine Square, took a seat at the sidewalk café, ordered a cup of coffee without sugar, swallowed down the bitter catch in the throat à la Ghazala, and contemplated the memorial to Bashir Gemayel and his comrades killed in Ashrafieh on the Feast of the Cross in 1982. The Phalangist militia leader was portrayed as a young man bursting with vitality, which was etched on his face in lines of shadow. He thought about the absurdity of the moment that had brought him — a former fighter in the leftist Palestinian Joint Forces — to sit opposite the image of the man who had once been the embodiment of the merciless enemy. He smiled when it occurred to him that only the dead can embody the vitality of life, for had Bashir lived to be sixty and died of an illness he would probably have committed additional horrors that no intercession could have erased.

He smoked three cigarettes, then began to feel hungry. His watch showed twelve thirty. He thought he’d better go home because the hour of his appointment with Matrouk was near. He decided to buy a grilled chicken sandwich from Abu Esam’s, next to his building. He walked in the direction of Sofiel, reached the Tabaris roundabout, turned right, entered Haramiyyeh Lane, and started the descent toward Gemmeizeh.

Thick dust in the air? Where had it come from? Borne on hot winds the dust formed a cover over the city, but Karim felt a shiver of cold. Since receiving that phone call from Matrouk he hadn’t known whether he was cold or hot. Everything had got mixed up with everything else. He felt he was about to faint; he leaned against the wall, rubbed his eyes, and continued on his way like a blind man. He reached Abu Esam’s place, saw grilled chickens turning on spits in front of the shop, fire surrounding them on all sides, and, instead of asking for a sandwich, as he’d decided to do at the café, he ordered a whole chicken. He could smell the arak Abu Esam was drinking to go with his salted chickpeas and decided he’d drink a glass of arak with the chicken. He took the grilled chicken, which Abu Esam had wrapped in a flat loaf of white bread before putting the whole in a plastic bag alongside two small tubs of finely mashed garlic in olive oil. The smell of the garlic wafted everywhere and the man began salivating as he took the bag in his hand and set off for the apartment.

He reached the entrance to the building, remembered his refrigerator was empty, and instead of climbing the stairs to the second floor, where he lived, walked about fifty meters to Emile the greengrocer’s. He bought a kilo of large mountain-grown tomatoes and a kilo of cucumbers. He looked at his watch. It was one. He hurried back to the building, took the stairs at a run, and on reaching his door gave a start, as though he’d received an electric shock. A man was standing there, waiting for him. He retreated a little, apologizing for being late; this tall brown-skinned man had to be her husband. He opened the door to the apartment and asked him to go ahead, but the man hesitated and said, “That won’t do — after you, doctor.” They entered more or less abreast, their shoulders bumping as they entered. The man pulled back and Karim turned slightly. “Sorry, sorry,” the man said, smiling. His white teeth showed. Karim patted him on the shoulder and asked how he was, and how Ghazala was.

The man went into the living room while Karim went to the kitchen, washed the tomatoes and cucumbers, prepared two glasses of arak, took the chicken out of the bag, and put two plates, two knives, and two forks on the Formica table. Then he invited the visitor to join him for lunch.

“You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble, doctor. There’s no need for lunch. I just need a couple of words with you.”

“It’s no trouble, you’re most welcome,” said Karim. “I was passing Abu Esam’s, fancied a chicken, and thought we could have lunch and drink a glass of arak together.”

The man thanked him, then breathed the smell in deeply, relaxing his thick lower lip and closing his small eyes, which looked as though they’d been gouged into his face. He said garlic called for arak: “I only have to smell garlic to think of arak.” He said he’d learned a lot about garlic from Madam Salma, Khawaja Nasim’s mother-in-law, and was always seeing her sitting in her daughter’s apartment peeling garlic and eating the cloves because garlic was good for blood pressure. “She eats raw garlic, with nothing else, and she told me about its health benefits. Madam Salma says that a clove of garlic in the morning opens the heart just like the sun opens the day, even with fried eggs. There’s nothing better than fried eggs with garlic. That’s how we eat eggs in the Jabal. We fry them with garlic and that’s it. I don’t know where Ghazala learned to do them with sumac, I like just garlic. It reminds me of the way my mother used to smell.”