As Though She Were Sleeping (3 page)

There was only fog at the top of Dahr el-Baydar, said Mansour. And it’s gone now, and everything’s going to be fine.

And me, where’ll I sleep? asked the driver.

I was afraid to fly, said Mansour, but by God I flew. He swiveled his head to see his wife, a bundle in a brown overcoat that quivered on her body.

The bride–, said the driver.

What about the bride?

She screamed
O Virgin, help me!
and the fog disappeared. She screamed and the snow stopped. The bride made a miracle.

Milia–, said Mansour, and began immediately to sneeze. A fit of shivering swept through him and his teeth began to chatter. Groans erupted from his chest and belly and entrails.

Rub your hands together, said the driver.

Mansour sneezed and moaned as if fighting off an implacable wave of dizziness. His body trembled and shuddered uncontrollably.

It’s nothing, said the driver. And anyway you have to get through it. You’re the one who wanted to keep going, so just pull yourself together.

Mansour tried to pull himself together, but his reserves deserted him. Tremblings bombarded the muscles of his chest and arms and thighs, and a choking feeling welled up in his throat leaving him barely able to breathe. The driver bellowed at Milia to attend to her husband because his face had gone blue and he could no longer speak.

Milia shifted position, put out her hand and stroked Mansour’s hair. Relax, my dear, we’ll be at the hotel soon now and we’ll warm up there.

The man began to calm down and his breathing grew more regular. He managed to tell his wife not to worry. Don’t be afraid, I’m strong, I’m better now, he said, and began to sneeze. When he asked for a handkerchief the driver handed him one but Mansour pulled his own hand back. His wife held out hers. It was the tatted white lawn handkerchief she had inherited from her grandmother, preserving it in her hope chest all this time in anticipation of her wedding day. He bent his head over it and sneezed into it, clearing his throat and spitting out phlegm.

Milia did not know how they reached the hotel, but finally and suddenly they were there. She remembered only the fog, the high winds and snow besieging them on the heights of Dahr el-Baydar. She remembered how she had seen her husband climb out of the car and walk forward, and how the fog had swallowed him whole. She remembered how the driver had pleaded with him when they reached the approach to the village of Sofar, swearing he could not go as far as Shtoura in this snow and ice. Mansour had insisted on continuing the trip whatever the consequences. She remembered the driver appealing to her but when she tried to speak Mansour’s eyes bored into her lips and she pressed them together instead. She had a vision of his
moustache thick and black and trembling over his upper lip, imagined a red tarbush on his head, and loved him.

There amidst the winds laying siege to the car and the driver’s pleading voice insisting he could not go on came the love Milia had awaited for such a long time. Love tumbled into her heart and she felt a stab of pain inside her rib cage as though her heart itself had plummeted. She could hardly keep back a cry of fear but she did not dare make a sound. She kept silent and told herself it was love. In the beginning she had felt no affection, no emotion at all toward this man whom she had seen standing beneath the palm tree in the garden next door. She would stare out the window and see him there, standing absolutely motionless, looking straight at her as he tried to conjure a smile from her lips. He was always smiling and he never lowered his eyes, never took his gaze off her except when she disappeared from sight, bashful and uneasy, her cheeks washed in red.

What does this stranger want? her mother asked her.

Milia knew nothing about the man and she was not disposed to fall in love with him. His hair always glistened as if bathed in oil, and his whitened temples suggested he was already some distance down life’s road. She did not see in him the portrait of a long-awaited and much-anticipated lover but rather the image of a father searching for his lost daughter. And when she said yes, she did not tell anyone the true reasons why she was accepting him as her husband.

She told her brother Musa that she had assented because the prospective groom resembled him. She told her mother that she had grown tired of waiting and wanted to get married. She told Sister Milana that she was leaving home to escape the stifling atmosphere that had enveloped the house after her brother Salim had moved to Aleppo and her mother’s illnesses had proliferated.

When she spoke to him for the first time she told him he was an old man.

Me?

She pointed a finger at the graying on his temples.

I started going gray when I was twenty! he responded. Do you know what gray hair means? It means we are lions. Among the animals, the only one who goes gray is the lion.

He told her he was thirty-seven. And that he would get married before the age of forty. The first age of prophecy has passed me by, he said. I was not married in time. I’m not going to let the second one slip by. If I do, it’s all over for me.

Milia didn’t understand what he meant but she smiled. Emboldened, the man said he loved her and wanted her, and then he asked her if she loved him.

How can I love you when I don’t even know you?

But look at me – I love you without knowing you. I feel you, who you are, from inside, and that’s enough. Do you have a feeling about me?

She nodded, not to say yes but because she didn’t know; but Mansour took her nod as a quiet
yes
.

So, it’s a possibility? he asked.

She looked into the distance and closed her eyes.

Milia did not understand what Mansour meant by the two ages of prophecy until they were in the Hotel Massabki in Shtoura. On the second night after their wedding, he moved closer to her. He wanted her.

No, she said. I’m tired. She rolled onto her side, turning her back, and slept. He left her to float downward, submerged in her deep breathing. Then he snuck toward her from behind and began to fondle her. He turned her over and then he was on top of her and had her. In the night Milia felt drenched and sensed the wetness of the sheet beneath her and she began to shake with cold. She wanted to get up and go into the bathroom but she felt her knees turn to jelly. She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep.

Wake up, wake up! This is no moment for sleeping.

She opened her eyes. She rested her head against the back of the bed. His torso was bare, a cigarette was between his lips and his eyes shone.

Look – how pretty you are! Look at yourself in the mirror. Love makes a woman beautiful.

She shut her eyes and heard him talking about the prophetic ages that so concerned him. The Messiah’s age had missed him, he said. But he would not let the same thing happen with Muhammad’s age.

Though Milia still had no idea of what he meant, she did not ask. She felt a burning sensation low in her body and she wanted something to drink. But with her nightgown so damp she was too embarrassed to get out of bed.

The Messiah was crucified when he was thirty-three years old. Muhammad’s prophethood appeared when he turned forty. Men have to become men at one of those two ages, Mansour said. If a man misses both, then everything will pass him by. I’ve passed the first age already. But I haven’t reached the second age yet, and now I’ve found you.

The driver was right, Milia whispered. You are mad.

In the car had come love. Milia closed her eyes and searched for the tarbush that her uncle Mitri had worn so that she could put it on Mansour’s head. She found it in the hollow that held her dreams. She saw Mansour draping her uncle’s white silk
qumbaz
across his shoulders, tipping a red tarbush forward on his head, and chasing after her with a slender reed cane. The cane brushed Milia’s brown feet and the man wearing the
qumbaz
shouted at her to eat her
arus el-labneh
. Milia in her short pants leapt and danced under the blows of the cane, fire inflaming her feet. The cane receded and the girl sat on the ground, swallowing her sandwich of labneh and olive oil, tasting the white onion and green mint.

Milia eats but the sandwich lasts and lasts. She turns to her uncle Mitri and invites him to share her food. The man comes nearer and devours the
sandwich in one bite. Milia snatches the cane from the man’s grasp and runs, and he hurries after her. Milia is in a garden of lush greenery, springing over hollows filled with water. The man’s voice pleads with her to stop and give him back the cane. She falls to the ground. Above her, the uncle breathes heavily. She opens her eyes. The uncle fades from view, the tarbush vanishes, and she finds herself in the car encased in the white shroud of fog.

The uncle has disappeared but he has left behind him the play of a smile on the woman’s lips and a red tarbush tilting forward on the head of a man she has decided to love. He has left a woman lying on the backseat of an American-make taxi. Milia gives herself up to this woman as she allows herself to sink into a shadowy dream from which she does not awaken until they reach the Hotel Massabki. Nor does she see Mansour’s darkly blue face – the blueness brought on by the cold blending into his dark skin color – until they are at the hotel, just before midnight. Mansour shakes her by her upper arm and she hears a voice.
Yallah
, we’re here!

Milia comes to as if emerging from a coma.
Shu . . . wayn?
What’s . . . where are we? It takes her a moment to remember that she is a bride arriving for her honeymoon. The car door opens and Mansour stands there waiting for her, hoisting the suitcase. He points to the hotel entrance and she walks beside him, then turns back and sees the bald head of the driver, who droops over the steering wheel, his hands slack, as though he is sleeping.

And the chauffeur? she asks.

We’ll see about him later, said Mansour, and led her to a high wooden door. He knocked for some time before someone appearing to be the hotel owner opened the door. George Massabki was in white pajamas covered partially by a brown abaya. Khawaja George’s small eyes peered at them, marks of astonishment reshaping his face as if it was completely beyond him to believe that this strange pair had landed here at his door, and at this hour of the night, for the purpose of savoring the honey of marriage.

Ahh, you’re the newlyweds, said the hotel owner then, trying with the sleeve of his abaya to mute a cough that swallowed half his words.

Mansour nodded before swiveling to indicate the car parked in front of the building.

Welcome, welcome!
Hamdillah a’s-salameh
, praise God you’re safe and sound after your journey. I told myself you wouldn’t be coming in this cold and snow. Please come in, welcome! The room will be ready in a few minutes.

He left them at the door, disappearing inside where they heard him shouting. Wadiia! Wadiia! The bride and groom are here. He rubbed his hands together in front of the glowing stove and said, as though he were speaking to himself, What a night! Then, louder, he called, Where
are
you, Wadiia, light up the stove in the newlyweds’ room and come here. You know, monsieur . . . He turned to Mansour but did not find him there. He saw Milia standing before him, still in her brown overcoat, which disguised the white wedding gown almost completely, her big eyes sleepy and color beginning to suffuse her cheeks.

What’s your name, bride?

Milia turned her head as if to seek out the person whom the hotel owner was addressing. Raising her hand abruptly and gesturing toward her chest she asked if the question was for her.

So who else would I be asking – aren’t you the bride? retorted a startled George Massabki before a wave of coughing engulfed him, doubling him over. He sat down on the sofa and waved his hand at the bride, inviting her to sit down next to him. Milia remained standing, though, waiting for Mansour to come back. She did not know why, but suddenly the thought seized her that Mansour was on the point of fleeing. She could envision him returning to the taxi, climbing in next to the driver, and telling him to drive off to Beirut.

Then what will I do? Milia asked herself in a barely audible voice.

Please, sit down and rest a bit, said Khawaja Massabki. Wadiia will come down now, and you two can go up to the room.

Milia covered her eyes with her hands and heard Mansour asking the hotel owner for a second room.

There were four of them now in the hotel’s large deserted reception hall. Near the front entrance a small black table sat in front of a board where the room keys hung. The board was full of keys, Milia noticed; the hotel must be completely vacant. Three couches upholstered in red plush formed a semicircle around the stove. A red-toned Persian carpet worked with animal motifs covered the floor almost entirely. On the facing wall some photos hung haphazardly. The three visitors stood still in the vestibule while Khawaja Massabki remained seated. He called again for Wadiia before getting to his feet and making his way to the stone staircase that led presumably to the rooms on the floor above.

The heat coming from the stove was finally beginning to penetrate the bodies of the two men and one woman who stood waiting for Wadiia. Mansour walked up to one of the pictures hanging on the wall and beckoned to his wife. Come over here, look, here’s Faisal, this is King Faisal the First.

Milia walked slowly over to where her husband stood. A gilded frame held a group of men in tarbushes who formed a close circle around a short, frail-looking man. His pale round face was set, and his eyes were fixed rigidly into the distance as if he could not see.