Read Online As Though She Were Sleeping by Elias Khoury - Free Book Online Page B

three days and three nights altogether until she was cured. They said the mother was cured, but she was not. She’s become another woman, said Yusuf to the nun, who gave him a somber look, cleared her throat, and said, For shame, Mr. Yusuf! And, indeed, the shame sat visibly over the gray head of their father, like a halo that all of his children could see. The nun’s words formed into a ring that stuck to the hair of the man and remained there until its erasure at the moment of his death. When his sons bent over their dead father’s brow to give him a final kiss, Milia saw the halo fade. The man slept in peace during the last journey he ever made, to the land where his fellow carpenter dwelled.
    You and the Messiah, the same work you both did! wailed Saadeh between sobs as they lifted the dead man into his coffin.
    Such words – for shame! clucked the nun.
    But he was a carpenter, and the Messiah was a carpenter.
    Ayb! Shame on you, saying that. The Messiah loved fish, too, and he was a fisherman, said the nun.
    But he was a carpenter too, said Saadeh. God forgive you, Yusuf, how could you leave me? But do say hello to my father.
    Milia did not actually see her father in that final dream of him. She lied to everyone when she said she had seen him in the dream, carrying carpenters’ tools and walking next to a fine-looking bearded youth, the two of them entering together into a black cloud that enveloped them as it dropped a veil over the daylight. When she approached to kiss him, she fell. The nun picked her up and carried her out of the room.
    When the nun said it – For shame, Mr. Yusuf! – she all but proclaimed Saadeh’s eventual recovery from the strange ailment that had sent her to bed.
    No one knew the nature of the illness that had fallen upon the mother. She could barely walk. Getting up in the morning, she would do her best to set her feet on the floor but instantly she would feel too dizzy to stand up. She would call out in anguish and one of her sons would hurry over to help her out of bed. She could walk only by supporting herself against the wall and when she reached the kitchen she would start retching, soon to collapse again.
    Hannah came to them because of that illness but she did not remain long. Saadeh improved through the nun’s miraculous intervention and there was no longer any real need for a maid. But still, Saadeh was not exactly well. True, she was able now to rise from her bed without anyone’s help. But she began to abandon the housework. More and more, little Milia was expected to cook and dust and wash clothes and clean house.
    The mother’s illness entered the family story as if it had begun after the father’s death. Or because of it. Yusuf died when Milia was nine. Hannah came when she was four. As for Milia’s transformation into the undisputed mistress of the house, that did happen after the father’s death. Familiesinvent their stories and then believe them. The story Milia lived placed the illness of her mother after Yusuf’s death, and that is what she believed. But Hannah did not seep into her consciousness through the cracks in her memory until she found herself alone beneath rays of sunlight that were vanishing in the white clouds covering the sky. She reached her hand into the cavity of water to extinguish the fire in her fingers, and that is how she saw Hannah exposing her breasts beneath the olive tree, squeezing them as she cried and the milk spurted out. Hannah was short and round, her face broad and pale, her eyes deep set beneath lush eyebrows, and her lips very full. Hannah sat down under the olive tree and shoved her breasts back inside her loose black gown, and saw Milia standing nearby, her eyes scared and confused. Hannah waved Milia closer. The girl came, stumbling over her feet, and heard Hannah say in a broken voice that she longed for her son.
    The little girl did not understand much of the fragmented story told by the servant girl who had come from a