As Though She Were Sleeping (49 page)

Milia tried to open her eyes and she saw him. He was sitting directly beneath her image in the
liwan
, studying the half-erased face and filling the emptinesses in and slipping in words between words in a miniaturistic hand. He was young, his face dark and hair short and curly, and he sat in the red-orange patch of sunlight beaming in from the window. He was writing intensely. She wanted to ask him who he was and why he was sitting beneath her picture. Wearing the longish brown dress that covered her knees and looking up at the high brass bed, she approached him. The little girl gazed at that boy who couldn’t have been any more than fourteen years old, as he
leaned nearer to the image hanging on the wall and studied an inscription set inside a black frame just beneath it. The inscription, penned in an elegant calligraphic script, was composed of two lines of equal length, between them a white space that the young man sought to fill in with his pen.

The young woman in the picture has her eyes closed and the boy sitting below her hears the voice of his father summoning him to the table. Musa enters the room, his head entirely gray-white and his eyes shaded by thick white brows. He sits down next to the boy who resembles him. He points to the words written beneath the picture and reads them in a quiet voice. Milia comes nearer and listens to his words but cannot hear them. She tries to read the story the boy is writing between the lines and the curves of the fancy
naskh
script. She cannot read them. She decides that she will open her eyes and leave this dream alone. She will return to the bed in the Italian Hospital where her son awaits her. She reaches down and her hand collides with another hand, this one cupped with water. An unfamiliar hand takes Milia’s and raises it, and a voice like that of the nurse says something she does not hear.

She saw the lamb. A lamb rising from the sun, coming toward her, scaling her chest and putting out its tongue. A little lamb standing over her as if to embrace her; she sees tears in its half-closed eyes. She tried to push him away a little and he opened his eyes. Why were they screaming? Tanyous stood in the orange light flooding the room, wearing a muddy black abaya. He came toward the bed, raised his palms high as if in prayer, and opened his mouth. A vapor something like incense wafted out.

Now, Lord, You can release Your servant in peace, as You have said, for
mine eyes have seen Your salvation, made ready before the countenances of all peoples, a light announcing Your glory to the nations, and a glory to Your people.

The orange light faded and white light covered everything. Tanyous blended into the whiteness, appeared to step back, and disappeared.

Milia gasped that now she knew the story.

There, when they suspended him on the cross and gave him vinegar to drink; there, when they pierced him with a dagger; there, when his mother and his two Maryams stood waiting, fog veiling their faces; there, he lifted his eyes, looking for the lamb. But the lamb did not come. His eyes searched for his father, and the father did not come. He shut his eyes to remember, but his memory betrayed him. He saw nothing but white.

Musa lifted Milia’s image from the wall and wrapped it in white paper and put it in the drawer. Black dots and tracings on the wall formed an image out of dust. The boy with the green eyes and the short curly hair picked up his brush and painted the wall white.

Everything was drawn in white – white over more white, layers of white. Milia tossed in her bed and was suddenly thirsty. Reaching her hand for the water she did not find it. She lifted her arm to rest it on the wall behind her but there was no wall. The lamb crept up her chest. She closed her eyes and saw small, dark Milia leaning over another Milia, the pale young woman lying on the hospital bed groaning in pain. Little Milia leaned over the pregnant woman and kissed her clammy forehead. Little Milia took her hand and whispered, Come with me.

Push! shouts the doctor.

Push again! shouts Nurse I.

Push more! shouts Nurse II.

Milia lifts her arm to shove the lamb away. She hears something like a ululation. The sound of a cry and the word
congratulations
. Doors opening,
doors clapping shut, but where is the air? She wants to tell them to open the window. She asks little Milia to help her awaken from this long, long dream.

She hears their voices. What is Mansour doing here, and why is he calling her in a hoarse voice? Where did little Milia go, and why, when she tries to open her eyes, can she not see anything?

I must wake up from this dream.

It’s over, she whispered.

She tried to open her eyes.

The little lamb lay on her chest and the photograph turned black.

She tried to open her eyes.

She tried harder.

The little lamb was on her chest and she heard a child crying in the distance.

She tried to open her eyes but the dream would not end.

She tried to open her eyes but could not, and then she knew that she had died.

Translator’s Note

This novel is deeply embedded in the spiritual and institutional world of Greek Orthodox Arabs in 1940s Palestine and Lebanon. I therefore have chosen to retain the Arabic names of prophets and saints, and to use Mar – the Orthodox title for saints – interchangeably with Saint. I retain Arabic terms of address at times: Haajja (used as a title of respect for older women, literally one who has gone on the pilgrimage), sitti (“my lady” or “ma’am” but used to address one’s grandmother), ustaz (professor, teacher).

I am grateful for the help of several expert colleagues. I want to thank Tony Gorman and Alex Kazamias for aid with Greek Orthodox terminology and practices; Marwa Mouazen for helping with some Levantine colloquial usages; and Richard Todd for checking my poetic flights (and occasional earthly thuds!). And finally I want to thank Jill Schoolman for her patience, cheer, and light and respectful editorial hand.

archipelago books
is a not-for-profit literary press devoted to
promoting cross-cultural exchange through innovative
classic and contemporary international literature
www.archipelagobooks.org