But she told him, and she said it had nothing at all to do with her.
But, yaani, you loved him? You were in love with him? Mansour asked her.
I’ve not been in love with anyone.
And me?
You’re something else.
What does that mean — something else?
It means, you’re my husband.
And so I’m asking you if you love me?
Can you be married to someone and not love him? Of course I do!
On that day when she became pregnant and gave her body the freedom to become as big and as round as it wanted, Milia began to feel that she no longer had any need for anyone else. There was a new soul inhabiting her, and she no longer felt like one lone human being.
I didn’t mislead anyone, she said. He misled me — he deceived me. My brother deceived me, and so did my mother, and I didn’t understand any of what was going on. What do you think I could have done?
In the third month, when Milia entered the sovereign realm of the dual, she regained little Milia through her dreams. She discovered then that the melancholy solitude she had been living through had not been a question of longing for her mother or for her brother Musa. No, she had been aching for the tawny-skinned little girl who had filled her nights with movement and her life with light. She allowed Milia to see the world through the brilliance that shone from her eyes.
Milia did not cease falling asleep whenever Mansour came near, but she did begin to have dizzy spells, and somehow inside the dizziness the waters inside of her would flood over her surfaces. Mansour claimed once to have seen her smile but she did not believe him. The room had been dark; there was not moonlight enough to filter through the windowpanes near her bed. She had chosen this bed for the window. She could not sleep without a window nearby, she said. Mansour was left with the farther bed, parallel to hers. She closed her eyes upon the colors of the darkness, having refusing to hang curtains over the window. Curtains blot out the hues and tones of darkness and she wanted to have them there with her. Mansour didn’t mind.
Whenever they entered the bedroom at the same time, invariably she told him that she was exhausted. In quick succession she pulled on her long nightgown, dove into her bed, pulled the covers up to her neck, and fell asleep. He waited. Mostly he dozed off and reawakened sometime later. Slipping out of his bed, he tiptoed over to hers. Milia would be plastered against the wall, her back to her husband’s bed. He would lie down beside her and one hand would begin its slow voyage upward to her shoulders and then down her back, wrapping itself finally around each of her breasts in turn. He would listen for a first moan and when he heard it, he turned her over, so she was lying on her back. He pushed her gown up and entered her. Her breathing would grow deeper and it was interrupted by short, half-suppressed sighs. Her hands dangled loosely and her head was submerged in the long chestnut hair covering the pillow, though he could see her closed eyes and the half-parted lips from which he managed to glean an occasional kiss. Those little sighs and the soft relinquishing contours that this woman’s body gave, as it floated on the darkness, drove Mansour a bit wild. Even after finishing, he contended with the flames of his desire. He would come out of her quietly, go into the bathroom and wash himself, but he would feel as though he had not yet slept with her, his loins still on fire. Returning to the bedroom he saw immediately that she had turned her back. Trying to lie down again next to her, he found no room. He would push her gently but she did not budge. In disappointment, he went back to his own bed.
Not once after his lovemaking did Milia go into the bathroom to wash herself. But in the morning she would get up looking fresh and bright and smelling of soap. When he reminded her of what had transpired during the night her eyes would widen in an astonished stare as though this could not have been her. It could not have really happened.
When did she bathe, then? Did she wait him out, and then once he went to sleep hurry into the bathroom? Did she wake up very early and take a bath and then go back to sleep? Mansour got up at seven o’clock as his wife still slept. He made his coffee and sat at the kitchen table, lighting his first cigarette, and by this time he would see her coming. The few moments between his rising from bed and her arrival in the kitchen were not enough to dispel that fragrance of soap and laurel floating off her hair. She would come in glistening with water and he would ask her when she had bathed. She never answered.
I’ve thought about how much I’d like to watch you taking a bath.
She picked up the coffeepot from the table in front of him, added a touch of orange-blossom water, and put breakfast on the table: labneh, cheese, thyme paste, honey, and quince jelly.
What do you say — tonight before we go to sleep?
What do I say about what?
About taking a bath. About you bathing and me watching.
Watching!
He said he wanted to see her in the bath because of Abu Nuwas’s poem.
Yallah, get yourself up and go to work! I have a lot of work to do today, too.
He didn’t ask her what she meant by a lot of work. He knew she took walks alone through town. Mansour was certain the fault was his. After two short excursions through the streets of Nazareth he had stopped going out with her. Even on Sundays he left her to go on her own to mass in the Church of the Annunciation while he would lounge about, alone in the house. He didn’t quite understand the meaning of this expression — lounge about — but he figured that it was probably a fair description of the way he frittered away time on a Sunday morning at home, waiting for noon to arrive. When it finally came, he promptly poured himself a glass of arak and began grilling the meat in preparation for a vigorous drinking session that usually ended in an argument between husband and wife. It started with Mansour insisting on sex in full daylight and ended when Milia left the house, returning two hours later when Mansour would be asleep and she could clean and straighten up.
How did she bathe and when? Mansour imagined his wife as the silhouette of the bathing woman in Abu Nuwas’s poem. He saw her, a form as delicate as the water, like water falling softly onto water. He would bring his glass of arak to his lips, sip the cloudy whiteness, and launch into his performance.
She faced the breeze, her body bare
a dainty figure, wind or air
Her hand reached rippling, water-soft
to nectar in a bowl unquaffed
She saw the watcher’s eye rove nigh. .
Mansour interrupted himself. No, no! It doesn’t go exactly like that.
Her wish attained, she made to leave,
So swift her cloak she would retrieve
She saw the watcher’s eye rove nigh:
she let fall darkness over light
No, the line with naddat comes first — that means she took off, or something like it.
Her gown she dropped, let water pour,
a bashful pink her features wore
She faced the breeze, her body bare —
and then (said Mansour) comes the rest of it. And this is how it ends:
Her morning dwindles after night
Water on water falls like light