I am Tanyous.
Milia heard Tanyous’s voice coming from the nun’s body. Had this all been a delusion of some sort? Then why would Mansour have told her he had gone to the monastery; why would he make up an entire story, start to finish, about the Lebanese monk? Who, then, had told her about Yusuf the Carpenter? Had it been nothing more than a very long dream?
She got up heavily and walked home. She kept her head bent so that she would see no one and be visible to no one, and when she reached the dar she saw her image suspended upon the mirror. She wanted to ask Mansour why he had brought the photograph here and from where he had gotten it. She discovered, though, that she had lost her voice. She laid her head on the pillow and fell into a deep sleep.
Musa came because she wanted him to come.
She was alone in the house. December darkness spread over the room, settling onto the coldness of the house. She put on her blue nightgown and slipped between the whiteness of the sheets and closed her eyes. And she told Musa to come.
She needed him, she said, and she wanted to tell him the story. She did not dare tell him she had heard the story from the Lebanese monk. She was not certain of anything now, anyway. The monk had disappeared into Milana’s long black robe. She did not like the nun. She did not want Sister Milana.
Mansour sits alone in the dar waiting to see the first signs, those the doctor has described. Milia lies on her left side. She told Musa her belly had become as big as the whole world. It was not really Musa; she wished he were there. She wanted to tell the story and there was no one to listen. It was no longer a question of proving that what she had seen was true and really there. She was so tired out, and she needed her little brother, and so she asked him to come. Musa believed everything she told him. He always stared at her with an expression that blended melancholy with love, and he drank in her words. Even in those difficult moments when Najib had disappeared and the family split apart, Musa was the one who saw the grief in his sister’s eyes and believed every word she said or didn’t say. At the time Milia had not shared the mysterious story of her love with anyone. The mother told her she had been in the wrong. Why did you let him slip out of your hand? It’s the second time, my girl! Wadiie. . well, we realized how cheap and grasping he was, and how greedy, but this one — what’s the complaint about him? And now what? How will I ever find you a husband?
Milia had become ill. She came down with an inexplicable headache which no one could diagnose. Everyone was stymied and anxious. She bound her temples with a handkerchief soaked in water to lighten the pain. She peeled raw yams and put slices against her forehead tied in the damp cloth. Why did she forget the story of the voices that nested in her ears and made her incapable of speech? Why did she erase from memory the brief coma that, unbelievably, God had saved her from?
The story goes that Milia was alone in the house when she fell. She was standing in the kitchen stirring curdled milk in a large pot over the gas flame. Musa was the first to come home and he saw his sister lying flat on her back on the floor, as the smells of yogurt and simmering kibbeh filled the place. He tried to wake her up by throwing some orange-blossom water into her face. But she seemed too deeply asleep to awaken. He picked her up in his arms and carried her to bed and went out at a run to get the doctor. He came back with Dr. Naqfour to find that his sister had regained consciousness and the nun with her brass censer in hand was stalking around the girl’s bed muttering prayers.
The doctor did nothing at all. He simply kissed the nun’s hand when she told him all was well, and left. The nun bent over Milia’s ear and whispered something. Two days later Mansour appeared and that was the beginning of the love story that conducted Milia all the way to marriage.
That night, the story goes, Milia dreamed the dream that determined the future course of her life. Did she see the blue woman when she fell in the kitchen? Or did she see her amidst the cloud of incense? Or did the whole business occur through the machinations of the nun?
It was a story of love at first sight, Mansour would tell his mother and brother. As for the question of what Sonia Rahhal had to do with it, this was a mere trifle. After a tiring day spent in Souq Tawile choosing the right fabrics for his new shop in Nazareth, Mansour accepted a dinner invitation from his friend the merchant Samir Rahhal. Over dinner, the merchant’s wife, Sonia, drew him into conversation, urging him to get married. He must go out to the garden and see the prettiest girl in Beirut, she said.
That is how the story began. Milia stood canopied in the branches of the flowering almond tree. Her cream-white complexion mingled into the almond blossoms and enflamed the heart of the man who had come from Nazareth.
It doesn’t matter if Sonia was the nun’s friend. The sister had nothing to do with it. I didn’t even see her until the wedding. No, the nun wasn’t involved. I loved you from the first glance, and that’s all there is to it.
Milia closed her eyes and didn’t open them again until she felt herself submerged in water. She turned toward Mansour but he was not beside her in bed.
She screamed, here was the water, and she was aware of Mansour getting her up and helping her to dress and taking her to the hospital.
The Third Night
MILIA CLOSED HER EYES AND SAW.
Everything was white. Coming to her, the doctor’s voice was muffled in cotton.
She saw two nurses. One held her right hand and the other stood at the end, beneath her spread-apart legs. The first was older, the second one young, but otherwise, two unassuming women as alike as two drops of rain-water. The first was short and so was the second; the first was stooped and had bowed legs, and the second equally so. What had brought Wadiia here?
Twinlike, mother and daughter circled round Milia and issued orders in voices indistinguishable from each other. Now a voice coming from her right, now the same voice from below. The pregnant woman listens to a sound like waves swelling from deep in her belly, as if the child who has dropped his head ready to tumble into the world wants for one last time to use the language of the womb that he will forget so soon. Milia listens and wants to tell him not to be afraid.
Somewhere behind the two nurses’ voices coming to her in peremptory tones she sees a shadow-shape wrapped in fog. It’s the doctor. No — it’s Khawaja Massabki. What has brought him and his two Wadiias here?
Khawaja Massabki stands in front of the glowing stove rubbing his hands together over the flame. He narrows his eyes as if he is the bridegroom while the two women, mother and daughter, stand awaiting his instructions.
She remembers she was sleeping. She remembers her scream, crying out to him, The water! That is when the fog suddenly descended to wrap itself around her. Mansour, I don’t want to go to Shtoura! My love, I want to go home.
Carrying a lit candle, Mansour strides ahead of the car. Where did you find the story of the candle? True, I did get out of the car to walk ahead, but does anyone carry a candle in such wind and snow and cold? And then, if I had walked in front of the car, we would not have reached the hotel.
Milia does not feel like talking the story over with this man. She is weary of trying to fix her memories. Memories aren’t fixed — you remember things in one way and I in another, and in the end it doesn’t really matter. You want me to remember things as you see them. With all due respect, that’s not the way it goes. Please, please, tell the driver to hurry! I’m so tired.