“The story’s over now. I’m in my forties, and my life’s changing. I’m getting ready to be a grandmother, and that’s enough. Shouldn’t that be enough to make me unhappy? I feel like weeping all the time, and my tears flow for no reason. My face is going numb, my shoulders hurt, my whole body is falling apart. I feel as though I’m separating from my body, and I’m alone.”
Yunes ate a last mouthful, which went down like a knife in his stomach. He put his hands on his legs folded under him and said that he was going to leave again.
“Where to?” she asked him.
“Lebanon,” he said.
“No.”
She took his hand, left the full plates and the pot of tea, and led him to the cave of Bab al-Shams. She took off her clothes and stood in front of him, waiting. Yunes didn’t dare look at her naked body, ignited by desire. She came over to him and started removing his clothes while he stood there, motionless. It was the first time that she initiated things; he felt as though he’d become her plaything, and his virility had disappeared. She made him lie on his back and she spread her hair and breasts and body over him, and when the water of heaven spurted from her, she began to cry.
She got up and put on her clothes; the first threads of dawn’s light had started stealing into the cave, and she told him to wait.
She returned at noon.
She returned with a banquet — kibbeh nayyeh — a meat pâté — with a topping of hoseh — soft cheese, tomatoes, and a bottle of arak.
She set the food aside, heated some water and bathed him. He was like a small child in her hands, playing around in the water, incapable of issuing his usual orders or of making remarks about how hot or cold the water was. She took him to the open space inside the cave, which became a bathroom, ordered him to take off his clothes, bathed him with water and bay laurel soap, dried him and dressed him in fresh, dry clothes. Then they sat down together at the table.
He poured two glasses of arak, drank from his glass and asked her to do the same.
She said no.
She said she didn’t like arak. In the past, she’d only drunk to keep him company. She didn’t like the smell of arak and the scent of aniseed that wafted from his mouth, especially when he slept with her.
“I used to drink so I wouldn’t smell it.”
She said she didn’t like arak and didn’t want to drink any.
He was taken aback. “What? You don’t like arak?”
“I hate it.”
“And all these years you drank it?”
“I didn’t want to upset you.”
“All these years you’ve been drinking something you don’t like!”
She nodded.
“I don’t understand anything.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t want to say anything?”
“What is there to say?”
Indeed, what was left to say, after she’d said everything beneath the olive tree? She’d told him she didn’t want him anymore, what more was there? His mind was clouded with only one thought: how had she known? How had she intuited that from now on his visits would be difficult, few and far between? Southern Lebanon was now full of fedayeen, the country was under constant Israeli bombardment, and the borders were almost impossible to cross. To cross the border now required fighting an entire battle. And then there was his age. The war had stolen years from his life, and now he was too old. He was in his late forties and his body was no longer a docile instrument that complied with his desires. He wasn’t able to cover those long distances any longer. She didn’t know what had happened this time. He’d arrived at the cave at night but didn’t go to her right away, as he usually did. He’d felt weak and decided to rest a little before knocking on her window. But, in fact, he fell asleep, awakened at ten the following morning, and spent the day in the cave, waiting for nightfall so he could go to her.
How had she known?
Women just know, thought Yunes as he listened to her. She’d known his visits would become intermittent before stopping, so she’d made her decision. She wouldn’t be an abandoned woman; she’d choose her new life deliberately. And now she tells him she doesn’t like arak!
Had she forgotten how he’d drunk arak from her mouth? And how after eating she’d washed her hands with arak? Or had she been putting on a show for him, as she had for the military interrogator, the village, her children, and everybody else?
She said she’d prepared this banquet to make up with him and ask him to forget the garage, the dollars, and her stupid requests. She regretted what she’d said the day before, because he was her husband and the crown of her life. She knew this was the only way he could live and was proud of him; she understood that people have to live their lives as they find them.
We walked the steps that were written for us,
And the one whose steps are written must walk them.
“You know,” she said, “even after your father had forgotten almost everything and had started living with his sister’s ghost, he never forgot his classical poetry. Whenever I wanted him to dig up something from the back of his mind, I’d start by saying the first half of the first line, and he’d sit up straight and recite the two lines without missing a beat, and I could see the words rising up from the well of memory that the years had filled in. His voice would regain its strength, and he’d recite with me:
Your errant heart from love to love walks
Never shall the first be worn away
Many a dwelling you shall make your own
But the love for your first home nothing can sever.*
You’ve taken your path, and I’ve taken mine. But you’re my husband, and I’m your wife. Please, I beg of you, forget what I said yesterday.”
Nahilah said she’d spoken that way because she was afraid for Noor who was about to get married — “May God protect her!”
Nahilah apologized. She said the black veil that had been fogging her vision had lifted. And Yunes, what did he say? Did he explain how difficult the situation actually was in the south? Did he apologize for all those years? Or did he say that he was trying to survive and create a country out of the rubble we call history?
He didn’t speak. He drained the last drops of arak from his glass, drinking without quenching his thirst, and let the drink take him. The image of the hero eclipsed the image of the lover, and one story led to another. He spoke of the prisons and the training camps. He spoke of operations in the Galilee panhandle and of the young men the bases were overflowing with and how they rush headlong into death.