However, her life’s détente wasn’t to last very long.
One month, no more.
Then the warning came and she returned to battle. The warning came from her own body, which she had thought was going to rest and allow her to rest, too. She started feeling more and more each day that something was waking up inside her, that her body seemed to be slipping from her. Her period was late. She’d get sudden headaches, every day at nightfall, sudden and severe headaches. She assumed it all had to do with her grief, or at least that’s what everyone said. More and more signs of pregnancy began to appear, but she didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t want it, full stop.
The first one to notice was Yasmeen, her married sister in Beirut. Every time she came to see her she would start with complaints. Her husband never wanted her to come; he’d send her by herself by taxi, and he didn’t want her to bring any of the children. ‘Yasmeen,’ he’d say to her, ‘staying far away from them all is for the best!’ By ‘them all’ he meant the town his wife was born in and all its people.
Yasmeen would retort that her heart filled with joy the moment the taxi went through the Chekka tunnel and she could see the north. She’d roll down the window and suck in a deep breath of air. But then the sorrow would come back to her once she saw her sister Kamileh.
‘Luck is for whores, my sister. It’s all in God’s hands.’
Then Yasmeen would chastise Kamileh to go fix her hair and take better care of her appearance and eat. She’d go on about women their mother’s age who hadn’t yet given up on looking elegant.
It was the cravings that gave Kamileh away. She longed for fruits that weren’t in season, in front of her sister. ‘I want fresh dates, Yasmeen!’
‘What on earth made you think of fresh dates this time of year?’
Yasmeen looked her up and down and after thinking about it a little she asked, ‘Are you pregnant, Kamileh?’
Kamileh laughed sarcastically. She wasn’t pregnant. But what exactly was happening to her?
‘How could I be pregnant?’
‘Why couldn’t you be pregnant, sister?’
Kamileh burst out, ‘Who could I be pregnant from?’
And so Yasmeen screamed in her turn, ‘Your husband… It’s been less than a month since he died hasn’t it?’
Kamileh was lost in thought for a moment.
‘No, no. Not possible.’
‘Tell me, when did you sleep with him? Tell me…’
Kamileh felt a burning sensation in her throat. ‘Saturday night. They killed him on Sunday.’
‘Shall I come stay with you, Kamileh? I’ll go home and get everything in order there and come back tomorrow.’
‘No, you go home,’ Kamileh refused. ‘I don’t need any help.’
A couple days later she threw up, for no reason. It was still morning before breakfast, and she was home alone. That was at the end of July. Weapons started arriving in town on mule-back, smuggled weapons. Strangers who were said to be army officers, camouflaged in civilian clothes, drove the mules. They crossed the river over wooden bridges that had been quickly built for that purpose in an area that was not in plain view. They unloaded the shipment near the flour mill where the men of the family tried out the rifles by shooting at the trunks of some nearby poplar trees. They whistled in amazement every time they went to inspect the marks the bullets made on the trees. People said weapons came from Syria to the other side, too. They arrived from inside the city, from the old souk where the fighters were hunkering down. They would load them up and take them up across the river, too. Before noon, war planes passed by flying low, keeping an eye on both sides, as they said.
Her period was two weeks late. She couldn’t ignore it any longer.
She went to see her mother. It was the first time she had gone out on the main road since her husband died. No, it was the second time in fact, because she took flowers one other time to the place in the almond grove where they had buried them so hastily, in one long row of little mounds of dirt. She brought him a bouquet of red roses and placed it beside his picture. Each little mound of dirt had a picture on top of it. His grave was the third one from the right. She stuck a stem of white lilies into the dirt.
Other Burj al-Hawa widows went out to participate in the elections. They carried posters of candidates and joined in the rallies. They were deliberately chosen as delegates inside the voting precincts; they argued and challenged and ululated and danced with joy and zeal when the election results were being announced.
Kamileh walked like a stranger, wrapped in black, trying to escape all the prying eyes. Evil’s hot wind scorched the roads and rumours were rampant.
‘Saeed al-Rami was killed.’
‘Where?’
‘He was reading the newspaper inside the pharmacy. They came in and killed him.’
‘Who killed him?’
‘Say hello to my brother if you see him there!’ That’s what one of them said just before shooting him in the head.
Everyone fled the scene and he remained there alone for two hours bleeding to death.
Kamileh told her mother what was going on with her. Her mother slapped her in the face for not listening to her from the start, the day they buried the dead. But her mother was not a woman who gave in. She tried to hang on to what was possible.
‘Go straight away, on your way home, hurry to Muntaha’s and have some coffee with her. Tell her about your cravings for dates and that your period is late. And tell her not to tell anyone. That’ll guarantee she’ll spread the word around to all the neighbours. She’s your friend. You know her better than I do.’
Kamileh changed the subject. ‘They killed Saeed al-Rami.’
Her mother didn’t show much dismay.
‘What’s going to happen, Mother?’
‘They’ll kill two in return.’
She turned towards Muntaha’s house. The streets were completely deserted and the tank that had been stationed in the middle of the square for the last month slowly circled around. The soldier who’d been outside its hatch ducked down inside and pulled the door shut. It moved along the road leading to Tripoli, preceded by a small military Jeep leading the way out. They heard on the radio the day before that the army wasn’t going to interfere in family feuds. The army commander was not taking sides. For a month the rumours had been flying, rumours of revenge and fear of what was to come. And all the while Kamileh hadn’t felt a thing.
She sat a bit at Muntaha’s but she didn’t dare tell her. She was afraid people would make fun of her if they thought she was imagining the pregnancy. Muntaha told her they had put up a barricade on the roof of the nuns’ school. They’d piled up sandbags that they watered every morning to make it harder for bullets to penetrate them. She told her that in his sermon after the gospel reading, Father Antonius said, ‘My children, pray many Our Fathers and Hail Marys so God will make us victorious over our enemies.’
She didn’t accept the truth until her belly began to show. Even then she said, ‘Maybe it’s bloated with water.’
‘Water?’
‘I don’t believe I am pregnant, Mother. I don’t believe it… How could that happen? What did you do to me?’
She was going to have a child. Her blood would bubble with joy and then just as quickly her stomach would wrench. She started getting scared. Every rumour she heard scared her, the sound of gunfire set her trembling. She was no longer alone.