Mansour told her that in the midst of war it was impossible, and he would take her to call out in celebration of Ruben the next year. But the short rotund woman did not understand. She wanted Ruben now.
You must not cry, said the Italian doctor. In a moment, give it another push and before you know it we will be done and everything will be fine.
The ship’s horn sounded and the ships of the Companie Gharghour left the harbor. The city was empty now. The sea had taken the people. Where were the people?
A tall man known as the Beiruti, Ataallah Beiruti, stands erect before the British general and an officer from the Haganah, proclaiming Jaffa an open city.
The ship sounds its horn and the Jews are ready to enter the city. The Mosque of Hasan Bey is in their hands. Ajami is in their hands. The city quarters stoop and bow, one against the next. The only sound is the wind knocking against the houses.
Don’t forget the key to the house, Milia shouts.
Mansour tosses away his rifle, hurries down from the roof, and runs toward the Greek packet anchored in the harbor. The smoke rises and thickens, the motor growls, and Mansour runs, waving his hands wildly and shouting at the captain to wait for him. He stumbles and falls, stops to shed the overcoat that is slowing his pace, throws it to the ground, and runs.
The ship is on the high sea. Mansour sits on the deck and Jaffa grows distant.
Why did you leave the city? a young Greek sailor asks.
Tents are everywhere.
What is this? asks Milia. Why did you put up the tents here?
They told her that the Prophet Ruben’s festival was approaching. They said that Jaffa erects its tents on the south bank of the river and everyone goes there.
Where is Ruben the prophet?
They said he would be sitting alone there, waiting for the people to arrive. The people picked up their tents and went, and all that remained was the smell of blood.
Blood in the streets. Mansour stands before his workshop, which lies in ruins, the machinery soaked in blood and wet with severed limbs. A terrible, lonely silence makes him shiver to the core. Where are you, Milia? Mansour cries out. I am dying, Milia.
Don’t cry, habibi, I’m here, murmurs the woman lying on the hospital bed.
He walks on, stooping low. Yasua the Nazarene stoops under the heaviness of the cross. He walks through the city’s narrow lanes, his body weak with fatigue. This thirty-year-old man has never felt such weariness. In his father’s shop he lifted thick tree trunks and never felt this sort of exhaustion. The slim boy with the greenish eyes and the curly black hair and the broad high forehead walked as though his feet did not touch the ground. He worked as though it was not work, as though a strange power nested inside his ribs; and when he tried to tell his story to his father, Yusuf didn’t allow him to finish it. No sooner would he start to relate his peculiar dream than his father would snatch the words from his mouth.
The same thing had happened with the fishermen at the Sea of Galilee. No sooner had he walked across the surface of the water and ordered the storm to die down, and then wanted to speak, than the fishermen began to talk, saying they understood the message.
And when he stood on the Mount of Olives addressing them they did not listen to him. They were bewitched by the light that came from his eyes and turned the earth into a never-ending orchard of olive trees.
When he told the people to leave the woman alone as she washed his feet in perfumed water and dried them with her black hair that was long enough to cover her back, they bent over his feet and did not allow him to tell them it was a question of love and the woman’s loose hair was the world’s pillow.
When he told his mother he was going to Jerusalem and she must not come with him, she did not let him finish what he had to say. She placed her hand on his head and said she was coming because she knew that he was the king.
When they tried him and he found himself alone and in the hands of the executioners, and he wanted to tell them his story, they slapped him with questions that were nothing more than answers.
He smiled at Maryam the Majdaliyya when she asked him why he did not talk. He was the Word, he told her. She asked for an answer to her question.
In truth I tell you that speech is like the grain of wheat in the field. No one owns the word for it is the mere echo of the Word carved into the cross.
He felt the terrible heaviness of the cross they forced him to bear and he was afraid. No, he was not afraid but he was confounded. It was as though his strength had gone, leaving him weak and fragile.
He fasted for forty days and when he called his disciples to supper and gave them the finest of Palestine’s wines he took only a single bite of bread. He wanted no food; his longings were for his father.
Amidst weakness and a sense of defeat, whipping, and humiliation, he remembered the lamb and smiled.
Why all of this light? Please, put out the light.
Pain through the eye sockets, and suffering. Why is Hasiba here and why has the clock stopped? White locks of hair are strewn across the pillow. The old woman tries to lift her head but she cannot. Little Milia stands at her grandmother’s side. Grandmama says that all the clocks in the house have stopped. She tries to lift her hand from the pillow but it falls before it is even lifted. Milia stands next to her and doesn’t know what to do.
The girl runs through the house. The house has turned into a sort of spiral and the girl whirls round and round. All the clocks in the house say that it is three o’clock in the morning.
Wind the clock, Musa, dear.
Musa comes at a run, his clothes covered in mud and blood oozing from his scraped knees.
Why this blood, habibi? I told you, the blood dream is no good. Why do you always force me to dream of you covered in blood? I have come from there to Beirut, yes, I traveled even with all of these difficulties. I told my son to wait, to stay in my womb. I told him it would be only a matter of a few hours. I must go to Beirut, I said, your uncle Musa is dreaming and it is a bad dream. I must go to him, and so now I have come to you. And you are here and are covered in blood. Enough blood, God save us from all of this blood! Isn’t this what the nun was always calling when she prayed? Remember, how she made us stand in front of the icon, Maryam holding her son, and she called, Almighty God, deliver us from the blood. O God of my salvation, deliver us, that my lips may sing your justice. She ordered us to repeat the prayers after her and we always did. Where is Haajja Milana? Why does she sit all alone with no one to answer when she calls? She said she always sees everything as black, and at the very heart of it was incense. She said she could no longer see human bodies but that she lived with their souls. Why is the nun all alone, and why can she not get out of bed, and where does the smell come from? Is it possible to leave the saint like this, no one taking care of her, no one cleaning and grooming her? Where are you, Saadeh, where are you, Mama?
Saadeh stands next to a metal bed in a darkened room. She puts on a light and the saint orders her to put it out. The light hurts my eyes and I can’t see, she moans. Saadeh does not extinguish the light though. She has come to this faraway convent to bathe the nun, she says, and she cannot do it without light. The vapor rises from a copper vessel filled with hot water and the nun shrieks because she does not want a bath. You have come to kill me just as you killed your daughter, Milana screams. Get out, turn out the light and get out!