The body of the fair-skinned woman shuddered awake. She got up, bent to the floor, picked up her nightgown and slipped it over her head, and sat down again on the edge of the bed. She heard her mother’s voice again, that dry raspy voice coming from deep in a throat lined with the smoke of the narghile. This voice would be at Milia’s side in Nazareth. It would be the last voice she would hear before she saw that young man sitting beneath her picture trying to copy words written in tiny letters inside the heaviness of the inscription in large Arabic naskh script.
Why was the honeymoon chamber like this? The man had his back to her. She opened her eyes on a dream completely at odds with her usual dreams. Where did her old dream go?
Milia lived inside the rhythm of her dreaming. She got up in the morning, washed the dreams from her eyelids, and continued the story. She dreamed that Najib was sitting with another girl in the garden of Milia’s home. Standing at a distance, she watched how the man put his hand on the young woman’s hair before stooping slightly to plant a kiss on her neck, and how they disappeared beneath the grand fig tree. When he came to visit the next day, she refused to sit with Najib and would not say a word to him. Things returned to what they had been only when a new dream came to erase the previous one.
What was wrong with you yesterday? asked Najib.
She smiled and gave no answer.
I don’t understand. What happened?
Ask yourself, she responded, and then burst out laughing. It’s not you. I had a dream that wasn’t very nice and it put me in a bad mood. Just forget it.
Najib didn’t understand. He went on insisting, wanting to know what lay behind it. When he heard accusations of unfaithfulness, hints of the story of his relations with a golden-fleshed girl whose name Milia did not know, he went off in a high dudgeon.
As Najib disappeared from her life — and married that same fleshy woman — she dreamed that he told her he was fleeing from her dreams. How can anyone live with a woman like you? he asked.
What I dreamed turned out to be right. I saw you and I had to leave you so that you wouldn’t leave me. So yes, it’s my fault.
She saw him standing beside that big woman whose broad shoulders filled the garden. Her brother Salim stood with them.
I hate you, she said to Salim. You make yourself out to be such a good person, so fair, almost a saint — but what shame you should feel! Ya Ayb ish-shoom aleek.
She saw herself on the steps going into a somersault and crying out. Musa stood beneath, arms spread, waiting for her. She hit the ground hard and felt her bones turn to powder.
Wayn ruht ya Musa? Where did you go and why did you leave me? You’re still angry over the money, aren’t you?
She had dreamed that Musa stole the few pennies she had hidden under her mattress. She woke up in the morning and didn’t find the money and when Musa came home from school she scolded him. The boy’s face went red and he tried to deny the accusation before crumbling in front of his sister and admitting his guilt. Milia planted a kiss on his eyelids and forgave him.
Milia played the dream game with herself. When she could not remember her dream she would keep her eyes closed on a pretext, as though she were sleeping; as though she knew she could anticipate seeing something to prop up her day. Her night began when she could sketch out her dreams before falling asleep. Well, no, it was not as clear and straightforward as that. But she did make decisions about where the dream would be located. Most often, her dreams occurred on the seashore or at the edge of the wadi, even if it was a dream set in midwinter. She would go to the seaside having wrapped herself in her bedcovering, closing her eyes to the blueness and suddenly finding herself in the water.
Every day in the summertime, the four brothers went swimming on the rocky Beirut shore. Sometimes she went with them, standing at the edge of the water to watch.
You’re a girl, and it’s shameful for girls to swim, said her older brother Salim. It would disgrace the family.
Why? Milia asked.
Because you’re a girl, Salim answered.
I’m not a girl, she said.
Why do you say that — do you have a hamama? asked little Musa innocently.
Shut up, you ass! Salim shrieked. And you, Milia, you stay right here and you just watch us swim.
One time she ordered Musa to take her to the sea. No one else was home. Their mother was at the convent licking the icons — Salim’s description of his mother’s constant visits there. Salim was at the Jesuit Fathers’, and she and Musa were in the house. She was twelve years old. She begged him, and then she ordered him, and off they went. She took off her clothes and pulled on the bathing trunks she had fished out of Salim’s wardrobe. She sensed Musa staring at her tiny breasts, which had just begun to round out. She was shivering, naked in front of the unending blue world. She stood there, preparing herself to wade into a small pool that stuck like a rocky tongue into the shore. She felt the sting of her brother’s eyes boring into her breasts, two tiny prickly pears planted on her otherwise smooth and unchanging chest. Never before had Milia been truly conscious of them, and she would try to forget them even after they grew into a pair of ripe apples with their tinges of violet, purple exploding across white, erect rosy nipples at the core.
In the dark and in his wife’s eternal drowsiness Mansour would discover these breasts and take them. Apples are sweeter than pears, he would tell her.
What are you talking about?
I’m talking about your breasts. I like the shape of apples best. Pears are fine, but apples are round and they fill my hands. Ya ayni, what beautiful apples you have!
Stop it, for God’s sake!
He would abandon her to her drowsiness when he despaired of convincing her that sex was not shameful or forbidden. The problem was that her refusals merely enflamed him. He would try to take her against her wishes but then, seeing her wet face, he would pull back. He came to fear her sadness, as she sat bent over on the edge of the bed, catching her tears on the hem of the white bedsheet.
Whenever he wanted her she took her time about responding. She warned him away from her bed. She turned over a few times, got out of bed and went to the bathroom, came back and turned out the light, and then asked him to put off that business until tomorrow. So he waited until she fell asleep. When her body was no longer moving at all and she seemed heavily asleep, he would take her. Her water would begin to spill out and spread, and he would drown. He could not stay hard: as if, taking him inside of her, she dissolved him in her world of darkness and closed eyes. Her body began to dwindle away in his hands. He extracted her breasts from her nightgown and began to kiss them, sucking in their taste, which mingled jasmine with the scent of apples. He heard her faint moan and began his journey, slipping inside of her only to dissolve in her waters. Spent, he would make up his mind to keep trying, but with a sharp cough she would expel him from her body, turn over onto her right side, and sink beneath the surface, deep in her universe of sleep.
In the morning he searched her face for any expression of what they had done but he never found a trace of it. Light poured off the pale features that were rounding out with her pregnancy. Had she waited for him to drop off to sleep so that she could go into the bathroom and wash herself, or had she truly been asleep, postponing her ablutions until early in the morning?
Only once did he commit a grievous error. They were sitting in the salon, Mansour listening to the radio and Milia knitting a woolen jacket for the awaited child. He got up and came over to her. He put his hand on her left breast and bent over, kissing her blouse. When he slipped his hand inside she erupted.