Milia was my aunt, she wasn’t my mama.
Your aunt, your mama, whatever. Where were we? Yes, we were with the bishop. So with a lot of hard work he got to be a man, and like men he would pounce on me with his hallelujahs something fearful. No, he really frightened me. He called me his dinner table and he devoured me. What can I tell you, he smelled like incense and a little honey and he thought he was God. That’s how he acted, and anyway he was a big man and I was like you see me now, thin, but when I’d undress he would stagger back and ask me where I could hide all of this? My thighs are full but that doesn’t show under my dress. Maybe it was because I was afraid of him. No, I wasn’t — I was afraid for him and maybe that is why I felt so good with him. I went to him to confess; I knelt on the ground. He covered my head. I talked. I had never gone to give confession before. At Easter I went to church, but I was there with everyone; the priest would raise his hand and just bless us all at once. I don’t know what came over me on this day; I went very early, at dawn. I went straight to the bishop’s seat. He put his hand out thinking perhaps that I wanted to kiss it as worshippers do. I took his hand and kissed it. And then I came right to him and whispered that I wanted to confess. He gave me a very strange and full look, and I understood. I heard how his voice trembled as he said, You! He asked me to kneel to the left of the altar — and, well, then it went from there.
Iskandar Shahin wrote down everything Marika said about the bishop and Said el-Sabbagheh (with a judicious change of names, of course) and about the sainted nun who cured diseases, and how Marika had become infatuated with the nun and the bishop had gone over the edge and ordered Milana’s banishment to a remote convent away in Koura. And there in a half-savage place the nun had transformed herself into the patroness saint of the village of Bkeftayn. At first she had lived alone; and then three nuns from the Convent of the Archangel Mikhail joined her so that they could serve her needs. There the nun lost her sight and her miraculous powers began to show themselves. When she prayed the vapor of incense came from her mouth. She no longer had any need for cotton dipped in blessed oil to cure the sick, for the touch of her hand was enough to conjure the oil’s healing aroma and expel the demons from the invalids, as much as those devils shrieked in anger. In her final days, her miracles doubled. Though nearly paralyzed, she would move from one corner to another in the convent without need of anyone’s help. Three days before her death she agreed to accept the repentance of Bishop Gerasimos, who came to her in tears, seeking forgiveness and asking her to absolve him of his sins.
Marika told the young man that his grandmother Saadeh had gone faithfully to visit the nun in the Convent of Mar Yuhanna the Baptist in the village of Bkeftayn in the Koura region on a regular basis until her death. These visits were Saadeh’s sole consolation as she faced the calamity that had befallen the family.
Iskandar was stunned when Monsieur Said el-Sabbagheh took his article, slid it into a desk drawer, and said to the young journalist that he respected the immense effort he had made in writing his fine piece but that he would not be able to publish it since that would sully the memory of the bishop and thus might encourage sectarian rifts in a country like Lebanon. When Iskandar asked later to have the manuscript back he found out that that Monsieur Said had lost it — or that is what the editor claimed. So all that remained of Marika’s story was the echo of her name in people’s memories, whipping up desires and pleasant images of the past, especially in the bewitching relationship the memory of her created between the letters kaf and alif at the end of her name, so far apart in the alphabet but collapsing into each other when written together. Between them they could gesture to desires repressed inside and offer through their linguistic embrace a stark and lovely image of how disconnected forms might intertwine to love one another.
When the young man asked his father, Musa, about his aunt Milia and the stories of the nun and the bishop, tears sprang from the elderly father’s eyes. The dark-skinned old man, whose head was covered in the whiteness of old age, did not utter a word. Perhaps he had not heard his son’s question? But no — for his tears poured silently and his voice choked when he heard his sister’s name.
Saadeh gripped the hem of the nun’s robe as the saint prayed to the evening light. O Mother of God, Saadeh shrieked, deliver us! It’s Milia, O Mother of Light, please! Milia is dying.
The nun turned toward the source of the voice. She yanked the hem of her garment from Saadeh’s clutch and told her to go home. Milia’s time has not come yet, she declared. Woe is you, Saadeh, when the hour does come. Go home and I will come soon, and inshallah there is no cause for worry.
The nun’s words could be trusted. Milia crossed over the valley of death borne on that strange dream carved into her heart. Milia forgot the days she passed through, so ill that her mother and the neighbor women gathered around her bed weeping for the girl who was dying. She forgot the delirious words and the body that vanished to nothing and seemed a mere apparition. But the dream by which death passed her by remained suspended in her memory as though she had dreamt it only yesterday or had seen it times without number. This was the dream that now rose before her eyes as she listened to Mansour talking about Yusuf the Carpenter. Perhaps Mansour was right. This hallowed man who gave the Messiah his royal lineage — the line of King Daoud — had been marginalized completely by the Catholic Church. He had no feast day of his own, no miracles ascribed to him, and even the date of his death remains unknown. Did he die before the Messiah was crucified, and if so, when? If he died after the crucifixion, then why was he not there with Maryam beneath the cross? It was as though he were a mere implement — and a marginal one, at that — of the divine will. He was not a prophet or a true saint, but all the same Milia loved him because he had fled with his son to Egypt when he sensed danger, and he refused to sacrifice his son as Ibrahim had done — may peace be upon that holy man’s name. Most likely, had Yusuf the Carpenter been alive, he would have prevented Jesus from entering Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and announcing himself king, in that escapade that led him to the cross.