In their own bedroom Milia insisted on two beds. Mansour did not understand why she was so determined on this particular issue. But he had purchased twin beds already. In fact, it had not even occurred to him that he might sleep with his wife every night in one bed. The wife’s bed, he proclaimed, has to be wide enough to embrace the child who will come, because this is our way. Milia bowed her head in assent and saw a blue halo forming. That was how she saw herself, head bowed in assent. When she became pregnant and began spending a lot of her time among the eucalyptus trees dotted around the house, the blue halo was her constant companion. She did not see the halo reflected in her husband’s eyes, and so she knew that she alone saw the blue cloud that hovered over her bowed head and protected the forming baby and his mother. In the shadow of this halo Milia lived for nine full months. The color blue clothed her through the day and at night it became a soft carpet on which she slept and across which her dreams flowed incessantly.
Mansour poured himself a glass. It made his head spin but it also sent him into his poetic state. They were sitting on the balcony in Nazareth. Between sips, Mansour was reciting poetry but there were spaces of silence within and between the lines. Milia was yawning. He had drunk so much, she said, that his recitation destroyed the music of the poetry. Well, no. . she said his drunkenness slowed the music of the poetry down until it was unrecognizable. Well, no, she didn’t say that, maybe she didn’t say any of it. Maybe she wanted to say it but said something else. She did tell him to stop drinking, because he was drunk.
Me, drunk!
She stayed silent.
You think I’ve gotten drunk on the arak but that isn’t true. Arak doesn’t make me drunk.
She said nothing.
Darling of mine, if I’m drunk, it isn’t the arak. It’s your eyes. Your eyes intoxicate me and I see a strange color.
You too? she said, and immediately bit her lower lip in regret. Apparently Mansour did not hear her, though. If he had, she would have had no choice but to tell the story of her photograph and the odd green film that Musa had noticed immediately.
One person must know, she muttered, standing in front of the Virgin’s image in the Church of the Annunciation. He will. She stared at her rounding belly and begged the Mother of Light to let the boy know the color of his mother’s eyes, even if it remained concealed to all others.
That evening Mansour, who did not know this secret, recited the most beautiful poetry Milia had ever heard. The lines he offered told her that only the prophets were privy to the secret cementing the relationship between night and day. He told her of the famous poet Abu el-Tayyib el-Mutanabbi. He was the only prophet whose prophecies emerged in poetry. Prophets before him had been either incapable of composing poetry or afraid of it, though they might make up stories and proverbs. But then came the poet who inscribed his prophethood in incomparable verse. Speakers of Arabic one thousand years ago were captivated by his magic and today they still were. Mutanabbi visited Tiberias, he told her, and even stayed in Palestine for a period of time. That’s where he was when he wrote lines describing the lion as no one before him had.
Did he walk on water like the Messiah? asked Milia.
No, he walked on words, Mansour answered.
Meaning, he wasn’t a real prophet.
Why not — did all the prophets walk on water?
How would I know?
Listen, Milia, Mansour began insistently, but then stopped, uncertain of how to go on. He wanted to tell her that words were that poet’s water and the music of his words the waves. Mutanabbi brought together wisdom and rhythm, and he balanced the two of them. His poetry flung open gates to emotion, and when he died he shut those gates behind him. For an entire thousand years no one could open them again, or at least not as widely.
But if he couldn’t walk on water, he wasn’t a prophet, she said. Listen!
What mortal has not embraced the earth’s passions
but no road to union can one find or keep
Your earthly share of a dearly beloved
Is your grip of a phantom, long as you sleep
Milia had only to hear the lines of poetry once and she had them memorized. But when reciting them, somehow she reversed the final hemistich and it became something else.
Your earthly share of a dearly beloved
Is the grip of sleep phantom dreams let you reap
Milia was in her third month of pregnancy. As she grew rounder her beauty was almost too much to bear. Mansour did not know how to express the full measure of his love or the weight of his awe. She did not listen to him when he spoke of love. She lowered her head and the blue halo visible above it would veil her as she sank further and further into silence. He resorted to poetry, trying now this poem, now that one, all for her ears. Head still bowed, her eyes sparkled as she listened intently. When he came to the end she remarked that poetry is like prayer.
She saw vapor rising over the table as though the words had turned themselves into incense. Her head spun with the fragrance of incense spreading across them and winding around the words that floated downward from this man’s lips.
She had dreamed the incense, she said. When she recounted her dreams to him, it often happened that she halted abruptly midstory and would not go on. She saw fear in his eyes. Only that one dream: she did tell that one to the end. Three months before she had told it, at the moment when Mansour saw his wife’s body inscribed with circles, curves upon curves and swirls upon swirls. It was morning then, and he stared, marveling at how her shoulders slipped roundly from the loose neckline of her blue nightgown. He was stunned by how beautiful they were. He followed her into the kitchen, where she had begun to make coffee and set out breakfast. He came up to her and from behind he hugged her tightly to his chest. There was no sound of the uneasy protest that invariably greeted his attempts to embrace her. His body pressed into hers and desire rippled from his pelvis to his shoulders. As he tried to lift her nightgown the dazzling whiteness of her seemed to explode before his eyes, the brilliance knocking him nearly blind. He closed his eyes, his hands pressing in at her hip bones, and he arched forward over her. Her body bending with his, she was soft and warm and her tenderness flowed over him.
Suddenly she cried out and whipped around. She pushed him away gently and told him she was pregnant.
What?!
I dreamed it. I’m pregnant.
He smiled and stepped toward her again but she pushed him back.
I’m pregnant.
Since when?
Since today.
She put the little coffee ewer down on the table and began to talk. She stood in the sunlight streaming through the window, her face growing rounder as he stared and her eyes getting larger. The man felt his legs weaken and he sat down. He let his eyelids drop and darkness swept over him.