Elias Khoury - Broken Mirrors

When Matrouk started talking about eggs and sumac, Karim felt the fellow had come to the point and put him in the dock from the outset. Matrouk drank a little from the glass of arak in front of him. He picked up the grilled chicken and started breaking it apart with his hands. He looked at the doctor and said he was sorry but he could only eat using his hands. “Ghazala always laughs at me. She says I was born a peasant and I’ll die a peasant, but I can’t taste the food properly unless I eat with my hands.” He took a chicken thigh and put it on the doctor’s plate.

“I prefer the breast,” said Karim.

“ ‘Breast for the bereft,’ as they say,” answered Matrouk.

“The breast’s healthier because it doesn’t have fat.”

“Whatever you say, doctor,” said Matrouk. He took away the thigh and put a piece of breast in its place, saying food without fat had no taste.

They drank and ate in silence. Suddenly, Matrouk stood up, tugged at something at his waist with an irritated expression, pulled out a revolver, laid it on the table, and went on eating.

The doctor choked and found himself unable to swallow a morsel of food that had lodged in his throat. He picked up his glass of arak with a trembling hand and took a large gulp, feeling the blood drain from his face. Matrouk’s expression changed when he placed the revolver on the table next to the chicken breast, which the doctor hadn’t yet eaten. The anger that had creased his brow dissolved; it sagged down into his facial features, which lengthened with sadness. He stopped eating and looked at the doctor with eyes so dimmed with grief that he failed to notice the panic that had transformed his host into a wet rag. There was silence, through which they could hear each other breathing, and then Matrouk suddenly broke the silence, cleared his throat, drank a sip of water, and told the doctor that he’d come to consult him about Ghazala. And he started to talk.

He said that at first he’d decided to kill her. “I found out she was being unfaithful to me with another man and when a woman’s unfaithful to her husband, only blood will wash out the stain.” Matrouk lit a cigarette and said later he’d changed his mind. “How can I kill her? She’s the mother of my children and I love her.” He said he’d changed his mind, picked up the revolver and started fiddling with it, turning it over in his hands. He looked at the doctor and saw the terror that had seized him. “It looks like you’re afraid of guns.”

Karim had no idea what happened next. Did he just imagine that the man cried? Or had Matrouk’s tears really fallen onto his cheeks, so that he had to wipe them off with a napkin on the table and then blow his nose at length before saying he’d decided to kill her lover?

“What do you say, doctor? I thought I’d kill the man and get some relief. I oiled the gun, loaded it, and said to myself, ‘The second I see his face, I’ll empty six bullets into his head and get some relief.’ ”

Had the man come to torture him psycholo​gically before killing him? Karim didn’t know where he found the courage, but he picked up his glass and decided to drink it all in one go before telling Matrouk, “Get it over with then and kill me. You don’t have to cry for me before shooting me. Shoot me and leave me alone.” But he didn’t say it. And at the instant that he began drinking, Matrouk brought his fist down on the table and started to shake. He stood up, picked up the revolver, tucked it once more into his belt, and started walking about in the kitchen, talking. It came to Karim that he wasn’t the person accused. The man whom Ghazala loved, and on whose account she’d threatened to kill herself should her husband do him any harm, was some other man — a young man of twenty-five, a member of the Amal Movement militia. “Some runt of a kid five years younger than her. I don’t know what she sees in him, he’s an ugly little shit not worth a damn.”

He said he’d discovered her unfaithfulness because he’d sensed it. “It makes me embarrassed to tell you, doctor. I could see she was all rosy and happy and getting more beautiful all the time. I just had to get near her and I could feel she was hot as fire. She’d come back from seeing him all warmed up and rosy. Then, you know what I found out? Really, it makes me embarrassed, doctor. I found out she was giving him money and gold. I work like a donkey and the money just disappears, and when I found the gold ring wrapped up in a bit of cloth and stuffed at the bottom of the drawer I started to get it. I decided to follow her. I followed her. She got on the bus and set off for a shack in Shayyah, and before she could knock on the door of his house I grabbed her by the shoulder and told her, ‘I know you’re going to see someone. Give me the handkerchief you’ve wrapped the ring in.’ I pulled the handkerchief out of her hand and heard the sound of the ring as it fell on the ground. She knelt down, picked it up, and said, ‘I got this with my money. It’s none of your business.’ ”

Matrouk said at that very moment the door of the shack opened and a short, thin young man appeared. His black beard covered his face and he was carrying a Kalashnikov. “He looked at me, the fury flashing in his eyes, gestured with his machine gun, and I released her shoulders. She slipped from my hands and bent her head to pass beneath his gun and enter the house.”

Matrouk had found himself returning the way he’d come. He reached his apartment and smashed the plates and glasses. “In the evening she came home. I’d thought she wasn’t coming back but she came back like nothing had happened, like she’d been to see my mother. Her face was rosy and her eyes drowsy. She entered the house like normal and ran to the kitchen to make dinner. When she saw the plates broken and thrown on the floor, instead of behaving like someone who’s done something wrong she began screaming at me for breaking the plates. She’s the one who did something wrong, doctor, isn’t that right? What had I done? I should have cut her throat at the door to the house like a real man. She started wailing and the neighbors came. You know how Mar Elias Hollow has people from all over — Sri Lankans, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Syrians like us. The woman whose shame had been exposed exposed me to shame and everyone started telling me, ‘Shame on you, Matrouk! What kind of person beats his wife these days?’ Even the children stood in front of her legs and started cursing me.”

Matrouk said she’d cried and made her children cry and the neighbors had tried to make peace between the couple. “The metropolitan came. You must have heard of the metropolitan, his real name is Ramzi, and people in the Hollow would do anything for him. He’s Druze like us, from a village called Maasir el-Shouf. They call him the metropolitan because after the massacre in the village he went to the church and put on priest’s clothes and started walking around the village square singing in Syriac. He said he’d learned Syriac at the nuns’ school. He talked about things that happened in the war that no one should talk about, doctor, but I don’t know why, everybody loves him. The point is the metropolitan honored us with a visit and when he arrived everyone shut up. He looked at Ghazala and told her, ‘Clean the house quick!’ and she ran into the kitchen and set to work and then he looked at me and said, ‘Go and kiss your wife’s head, your wife’s an excellent woman.’ ”

Matrouk said that once all was quiet again and the children asleep, Ghazala had told him she wanted him to know she hadn’t stolen money to buy the gold ring for Azab. “The ring was a present from Dr. Karim and you can ask him if you don’t believe me.” When Matrouk answered her by saying he was going to kill the short ugly fellow called Azab she replied that she’d kill herself. “If you kill him I’ll pour paraffin over myself and set myself on fire.”