Her eyes parted and the light shattered them. She saw herself in a bed that was not hers, lying on a pile of wood; she sensed the smell of blood. She reached over her belly and at its lowest point she felt blood gathering. She felt water. This is marriage, she whispered, and closed her eyes again.
When she saw him she understood that this bright yellow sun sweeping across her eyes, pressing them closed, beamed from the halo encircling his head. Thus she named him Shams el-Adl, the Sun of Justice. He was the sun and he was justice, walking hand in hand to their death. Yasua walks alone toward Golgotha and remembers his father. He remembers how the story had frightened him — overpowered him — until he was reassured that the true story was the lamb’s story: the tale of the lamb coming from the sun’s position in the sky to rescue the son from death. The whip lashes him from all directions and he walks on, the smile of victory upon his lips. He sees his face mirrored forever in the eyes of his two Maryams. He feels the pain of the ecstasy of being alive. He walks on and the lamb hovers near. No one sees the lamb but his mother, and when she approaches the gentle beast and puts out her hand to touch its head, she feels emptiness. She looks at her son, wanting to know that what she sees is not an illusion. He averts his gaze and says, Go, woman, for my hour has not yet come.
Blood in the streets. The city has put on a cloak of blood and has bejeweled itself with ruins. Where has the perfume of orange blossoms gone, that scent that had stretched the length of the sparkling shoreline?
One time only Milia had agreed to go to Jaffa with Mansour. He had said, Just come once and have a look. She replied that she had already gone and had seen the city and there was no need to go again. He told her that since she had gone for Amin’s funeral she had seen nothing, since at a funeral no one sees anything. She said she hated the city. But Jaffa is the Bride of the Mediterranean! he said. When you say Jaffa, he said, you think of the diligences, the sea, the white beaches, the Prophet Ruben, and Daadaa. The tastiest grills and the finest hummus ever, he said — they are right there in Master Daadaa’s restaurant on Shabab Street in Jbaileh. He told her he would take her to see the Mosque of Hasan Bey and the famous red hill and the quarter of Rashid, and he would feed her the delicious stewed fuul at Fathallah’s. He said, he said, he said. . and she listened to him, wanting to tell him that she was willing to move away from Nazareth but she did not want Jaffa. She wanted Bethlehem.
I know what will happen, she said. They want to take you away from me, and then they will take away my son, and then I don’t know what will happen. I smell war and death there. Yesterday, I dreamed –
Please, I beg you — none of those dreams of yours.
He said none of those dreams of yours to force her to accompany him. What had happened to the man? She wanted to explain to him that death was not the problem. That the dead are merely sleeping and dreaming, and that their dreams never end. But he was no longer able to grasp what she meant. Had he ever understood any of it? Or did he simply want to swim with her in bed? When he used that word — sibaha — he was reciting the poetry of Imru’l-Qays and telling her that the straying king had slept with a woman who was nursing her baby. Tomorrow, he said, that’s what I want to do, just like the poet — it must have been something tremendous. She did not answer, and then he told her that when he slept with her he felt like he was swimming.
She went to Jaffa with him. She breathed in the fragrance of oranges. Everyone loved that scent and grew intoxicated on the smell of bitter-orange blossoms. Milia loved this velvety smell as much as they did, but here in Jaffa what she smelled was blood. She told him his city resembled Tripoli in the north of Lebanon.
Jaffa is Tripoli’s sister, he said.
She had gone once to Tripoli, she said. Her oldest brother, Salim, took her there when she was seven. She didn’t remember much. But she did smell the bitter-orange blossoms. She remembered that.
It’s as if I’m in Tripoli, she said. The clock tower square here is like Tell Square there. But she did not like this place, she told him, because she smelled a strange odor here. She saw how Tel Aviv had turned its back to the sea and opened its mouth wide to gobble up Jaffa.
She told Mansour that Jaffa would drown in the sea. They were sitting together on the seafront eating grilled meat. Mansour was drinking arak and Milia stared at the endless blue sky, and she told him that she had dreamed the previous night of the sea sweeping over the city. The Ajami quarter was filled with people speaking Iraqi Arabic, she said, and boats sailed down King Faisal Street. People were gathering in Rashid where seawater had risen in the streets.
Milia is lying back in a car that has come to a stop in the middle of the street while everyone streams by, jostling fiercely, to reach the seafront. Lord! Mansour told me he would not take me to Jaffa before I had the baby. Mansour, what are you doing on the roof of the house in Ajami?
The roar of bombs exploding is everywhere. Asma carries a still-nursing baby and Umm Amin pulls two small children along, as human waves descend toward the harbor. People push each other, rushing forward, peering ahead with eyes that see nothing, for a dense cloud of dust covers everything. Men shove their bodies in amidst the crowds of women and tear off their uniforms as they disappear into the chaos. Mansour crouches on the roof of the house holding an English rifle.
Why are they running away? asks Milia.
They’re the Iraqi volunteers. They’ve tossed away their weapons because their commander has been thrown out and they refuse to take orders from anyone but Hajj Mourad el-Yugoslavi.
I was asking about the children, she said.
Wearing his long heavy coat, Mansour sways and bends in the high winds buffeting the city. She sees him walking along the roof edge holding a lit candle whose flame the fog dulls, and she feels the cold penetrating. The two Wadiias sit beside her in the backseat of the American car. Milia wants to open her eyes but the sun burns everything and she is burning and Mansour is burning. She hears the ship’s horn. The Greek ship sitting motionless in Jaffa harbor is getting ready to sail. Mansour stands beside an old man. The old man says that the Jaffa-Lod detachment has been decimated and the mujahideen who remained have all scattered around the harbor.
Where’s Michel Issa? Mansour asks.
A full pale-complexioned face, a black moustache so shaggy it covers his lips, and wet clothes — Michel Issa stood amidst the bombs hurtling down on the city from every direction and felt his voice disappear. When he and Mansour met on the Greek ship, he said he’d realized that he was no longer a general protecting his city once his voice refused to obey him. He knew that the battle was over. The two hundred men who marched here as a relief army to come to their rescue had dispersed among all the rest.
On the deck of the boat, wrapped tightly in his overcoat, Mansour listens to the final blast of the horn before the boat leaves for Beirut.
Asma stands in her black garb in the garden of the Jaffa house and screams to Mansour. Either take me to the Prophet Ruben’s festival or divorce me!
When did you marry her, Mansour?
Mansour had never taken anyone to the prophet’s festival, which he remembered from his childhood. He remembered the tents and the Sufi’s dhikr sessions and the white flag on which was written: There is no God but God and Ruben is God’s prophet. He remembered the joy erupting from the Great Mosque in the city center and sending its cloud of ecstasy all the way to Ajami. He remembered the women celebrating Ruben on the fifteenth of September but he did not know who this prophet was who had given his name to a small river south of Jaffa. He could not comprehend why the people of Jaffa would spend an entire month in Rubin’s tents preparing to welcome in the autumn.