CAN YOU hear me?
What’s happening to you?
You know, you’re really starting to look like Na’im, Noor’s son. I know you’d rather look like Ibrahim, your first son and your twin, but unfortunately you don’t look like him; you look like one of your grandsons. When I went to your house I saw a picture of Na’im. I was shocked, it was as if I were seeing you in front of me! I didn’t go to your house because of Umm Hassan. I did search for the telephone number out of curiosity though, but didn’t find it. No, I went for the pictures. And there I saw you the way you really are. What a setup, my dear friend! Two rooms and a kitchen and a bathroom. The first room for guests, with a traditional carpet spread on the floor, three sofas, a small table, a radio, a television and a video player, and one photo on the wall. I went up to the photo and saw a group of children circled around an old woman. It’s her, I thought. I moved closer because I couldn’t distinguish the features. Their features were almost obliterated, as though time had wiped them away — or not time, the photographer. The photographer had taken the picture from a distance in order to get that throng of twenty-five children around the woman into the frame. The result was a crowd of indistinguishable children. I smiled at them. You don’t know them; to you they’re just numbers and names, these grandchildren of yours whose names you won’t tell me. Wait, you did tell me about Nahilah No. 2, Noor’s daughter; you told me you loved her particularly. Which one is she?
I WENT INTO the bedroom, and there I saw them all. It’s like a studio. Seven photos frame to frame on the wall and, above the bed, a large photo of Nahilah. An amazing number of small photos of children of various ages hung on the other wall. A world of photographs. A strange world. I don’t know how you managed to sleep amid all that life.
Tell me, did you sleep?
During the long nights of the Lebanese civil war, when there was no electricity, did you light a candle in your room and see them transformed into shadow puppets flickering on the walls?
Weren’t you afraid?
They frightened me, those photographs. I entered your bedroom in the early evening. The clock said five and it wasn’t dark yet, but there wasn’t enough light. I tried the switch — no electricity. I seemed to be floating with the photos in the dark. I went up to them, one by one, and discovered your secret world, a world of photographs hung from the cords of memory. The photographs seemed to move. I heard low voices emanating from the walls and was afraid.
Where did all those photos come from?
When you went, did you go for Nahilah or for the pictures?
Tell me how you could live with their pictures. How could you restrain yourself from going to their houses and breathing in their smells, one after another?
I hear laughter in your eyes, you’re telling me you did see them. You had gone into the house and kissed them one after another. It was the day that your father, the blind sheikh, died.
During that terrible winter of ’68, the likes of which Galilee hadn’t seen for a hundred years, Yunes arrived at his cave in the pouring rain, exhausted and soaked. The wolf arrived at his cave covered in mud and with every part of him knocking against the other. He lit a candle and searched for dry clothes in the caverns he’d made into his home, and all he could find were a shirt and a wool sweater. He undressed, put the dry clothes on over his wet body, and left the cave. He headed to the right, behind the hill that hid his cave from the village, and ran into the masses of mud that were sliding down with the rain, forming torrents of mud and water. He fell into the torrent, swallowing a lot of mud before getting back on his feet and continuing on his way. He reached his house, gave his three knocks on the window, and left. But she ran after him, grabbed him by the arm, and led him into the house he hadn’t entered for twenty years. The blind sheikh was laid out on the ground, dying. He saw his mother beside the sleeping man, whose mattress had been placed on the floor. When his mother saw him, a sort of scream emerged from deep inside her. She stood and opened her arms, tried to go toward him, doubled over and sunk down again onto the floor. Yunes went up to her and kissed her on the head. She took him in her arms and squeezed him, and the water started to run off him. The mother wept while the water dripped from his clothes, and Nahilah stood there.
“Now you come?” said the mother.
Nahilah took him to the bedroom, undressed him, dried him with a large white towel, wrapped his naked body, and fetched hot oil and rubbed his back, his belly, and all his limbs with it.
“You’re going to get sick,” she said. “What made you come?”
She rubbed him with the hot oil and left him to bring dry clothes, and when she returned she found the water exuding from his pores. He was naked, he was shivering. Droplets of water oozed from his limbs — water streamed onto the floor, a man enveloped in water as though it dwelt in his bones. She dried him again and told him how the blind sheikh had fallen into a coma three days before and how they’d given him nothing but a few drops of water dripped into his mouth, and that since the evening before he’d been shaking with fever.
Yunes left the room, drops of water clinging to his feet, and approached the prone man. He bent over Ibrahim, kissed him and left, saying nothing to his mother, who was reciting verses from the Koran, her eyes drifting in the emptiness.
Yunes returned to his cave, he was hungry but could find nothing to eat. He sat alone smoking. Then she came. She was wrapped in a long woolen blanket dripping with water that gave off a smell of mold. Nahilah cast the blanket aside and sat down. She said she’d brought him three boiled eggs, two sweet potatoes, two pieces of bread, and an onion. He took the food from her and devoured it. He’d tear off a corner of the bread, stuff it with onions, sweet potatoes, and eggs, and swallow the whole thing without chewing. By the time she’d made him his glass of tea, he’d polished off the lot. She told him the man had died and that she was tired and was going to go back to help his mother prepare for the funeral.
She stood up, wrapped herself in the woolen blanket, and bade him farewell. He grabbed her by the waist, threw her to the ground, and made love to her. At the time, Nahilah didn’t understand why he’d behaved that way. She’d come with the intention of bringing him food, informing him of his father’s death, and returning. He’d listened to her weep for his father without shedding a tear himself while he was busy eating. And when she got up to go, he threw her down on the soggy, musty blanket, and took her. He was like an animal mounting its mate. He was like he’d been in the beginning, an ignorant kid who didn’t know how to love. On that stormy night he mounted her. Nahilah tried to refuse, but he was on top of her. She tried to move so he could penetrate her, but he came. In an instant, the hot fluid spurted and spread across her dress. She tried to get up, but he clung to her neck and broke out into loud sobs. She stayed motionless and cradled his head, and his sobs grew even greater. “Let me go, my love,” she said. “I have to go to your mother. The poor woman’s alone with the dead man and the children.”