There’s no blue, and no green, said the nun. This woman’s body was near to gone, but now everything is fine.
Saadeh grew calm and stopped shaking. But never before had Yusuf seen such tears. Saadeh’s tears collected on her cheeks, fell heavily onto her nightgown, and soaked her nakedness below. Yusuf stared at that morsel of flesh that through the years he had seen only as a darkened point that he would touch in search of the pleasure that God in His generosity had bestowed on human beings. He was interrupted by Nadra’s voice ordering him to leave the room.
No, let him stay here, said the nun in her reedy voice that seemed to issue from her nose. Leave him where he is, so he can see how much the woman suffers.
Yusuf had already turned to leave but the nun’s voice rooted him to the spot.
Don’t move — stay right here.
The nun ordered Nadra into position, squatting and ready to pull the baby out.
Yallah, Saadeh, my girl. Push hard, habibti, my dear, just one push and it’s done, said the nun.
Push! echoed Nadra in a low voice, and knelt on the floor, her hands reaching to find the little head in its descent.
There was utter silence in the room, as if Saadeh had suddenly dropped off to sleep. Her facial muscles went lax and a white glow washed over her body. Yusuf saw his wife’s face softly stretch and expand, floating in the white light, rinsed by the drops of sweat rolling across it.
Nadra cupped her palms to receive the baby as it dropped and slid into the waiting hands of the midwife. Nadra hugged the child to her chest, forgetting in her astonishment and emotion to grasp it first by the feet and turn it upside down.
Lift her up, bellowed the nun.
The midwife stood up heavily and held the baby by its feet. She could barely wait to cut the umbilical cord, and she had not yet given the baby a slap, when her lips were already moving in a loud and joyous trill.
Saadeh told her daughter that she had not cried at birth like normal babies. Nadra forgot to give you a slap on your behind, she chuckled. So the holy sister picked you up — and no one cries when they’re in the hands of saints.
Yusuf had a different view of it. The nun slapped her bottom, he said, and then she wouldn’t stop bawling. But you didn’t hear it, woman — I don’t know how it happens, but when that nun’s around it’s as if you’ve been hypnotized.
The nun grabbed hold of the baby, who was wet with blood, and held her high, and away from her own body, as if she were going to plaster the tiny girl high against the wall. Mabruk — congratulations! she remarked. Milia has arrived. She ordered Nadra to wash the baby in water and salt.
Salt? Why salt? asked Nadra. We don’t wash with salt.
Water and salt, answered the nun firmly.
She turned to Yusuf and ordered him to fetch a jar of olive oil. Nadra washed Milia in water and salt, whereupon Sister Milana rubbed oil into the baby’s skin, swaddled her in a length of white cloth, and raised her above the bed with both hands as if — once again — she meant to attach her to the rough-plastered white wall.
Mabruk, Milia has come. May God help her grow, May He preserve and protect her and keep all evil far from her, intoned the nun. She placed the baby girl on her mother’s bosom and left the room. Yusuf ran after her and kissed her hands in gratitude, the flavors of salt and oil imprinting themselves on his lips, before returning to bend over Saadeh and give her a kiss on the brow.
Milia has come, said Saadeh, staring at the wall where she saw an image on the white plaster in exactly the spot where the hands of the nun had raised the baby girl.
What’s this name — Milia? asked Yusuf. No, no. I want to name her Hélène.
Her name is Milia. She had her name from the moment she was created. You saw what the nun did; you heard her say the name. Yaani, khallaas, that’s that, Saadeh concluded resolutely.
Precisely twenty-four years after that day Saadeh would stand perplexed before the image that Musa had just hung on the wall in that very room, and in the exact spot where the nun had held Milia’s body aloft, cleansed with water and salt and olive oil. The mother would say to her son that she had seen that very image on the day of her daughter’s birth. Musa would stare back at her, a look of bafflement in his eyes, and he would lower his eyebrows in an attempt to silence her. But Saadeh would not tell the whole story until a year later, when the photograph was all that remained for her of her daughter.
When the nun raised her high against the wall, the girl became an image. This is the same picture! exclaimed Saadeh. I saw it — I saw it when Milia came into the world, and beneath it I read these words you are writing down now: but she sleeps. I saw it all then, just as it is now. Ya Allah! Why didn’t I understand? Everything was already drawn, already written, in black, and the nun was murmuring the words written beneath the picture.
The photo Musa hung on the wall in the room they called the liwan stayed where it was. It did not drop from that wall until Musa decided to raze the old house and erect a new building on its ruins. That house, which looked like two houses side by side, and its big garden: it was the image Milia carried with her, in her waking hours and in her sleep, when she left for the Galilee. She had brought the scent of the place with her, she said to Mansour, and every morning she breathed in the old house, which sat on a rise of ground commanding the slope that led downward to the Convent of the Archangel Mikhail. The lilac trees protected the house from the swarms of gnats that invaded in summertime. Their intensely green leaves sent out a sharp odor that shielded the house from all manner of insect.
But the old house was only half of a house, and the whole structure was not completed until Yusuf married. The original house purchased by Salim Shahin, Yusuf’s father, consisted of a spacious open room, or dar, separated from the smaller liwan off to the side by arches and glass windows. There was a small dark kitchen, and a bathroom at the end of the corridor linking the kitchen to the garden, shaded by a fig tree so old and so large that its enormous trunk was split into three. From it Musa and Milia suspended a long wooden plank, making a swing that could send them soaring upward into the sky.
For the sake of Saadeh’s happiness, Yusuf had to add on to the house. He built a bedroom, dining room, and kitchen, constructed of concrete blocks, so that the house looked like two separate properties stuck together — the airy old house, built of yellow sandstone, and the new, smaller quarters of concrete. The roof of the older house was wood layered with earth covered by a thin coating of white plaster, while the new section was roofed in cement. The house really was two distinct structures next to each other: one house through which the breeze played in the summer while in winter the rooms stayed warm; and another house that was hot and close in summertime and ice-cold in the winter. The four boys lived in the new concrete space while Milia stayed with her parents in the old liwan, and then shared it with her mother after the father’s death. This new family geography took place after the death of the grandmother. Hasiba had lived in the liwan with all of her children. After her death, Saadeh decided on major changes. She gave the boys the concrete room and moved with her husband into the spacious liwan. No one could find a solution to the dilemma of Milia, though. The mother proposed that the girl sleep in the liwan with husband and wife, but Musa was insistent on Milia staying on in his room. So Milia ended up nowhere, her mother summoning her to sleep in her room and Musa calling her to sleep next to him or on a small sofa placed in the boys’ room. Milia would have preferred to unroll her bedding on the floor of the dining room but in reality she remained nowhere, sleeping here on the sofa and there on a metal bed her mother had put in the liwan, carrying her dreams from here to there, and living her nightly vagabond life. The problem remained unsolved until the father died and she occupied his bed.