“The story goes that the Beirut rain fell in ropes that stormy autumn evening and that Abu Sultan drowned in blood. He was searching for something like a madman and the people around him kept trying to calm him down, advising him to put his trust in God. But he paid them no attention and spoke to no one. He stuck his head into the mound of garbage and sank into it.
“Everyone said it rained blood that evening.
“They said they saw Abu Sultan raise his blood-smeared face from the mound of rubbish, hugging a pillow and dancing.
“They said the man burst out laughing as he danced with the pillow, screaming that he’d found his life’s savings.
“They said he lifted the pillow, which was stuffed with money, and ran in the direction of his shack, which he doused in paraffin and set fire to; and that he danced before the columns of flame, which rose upward, challenging the rain. Then he disappeared. He took the pillow, soaked in blood and water, and left behind him the ruins of his shack, a woman on her own, and a child.
“Was the money in the pillowcase ruined? Or did the man manage to dry the banknotes out and use them to start life anew elsewhere? Did he use the money with which he’d stuffed the pillowcase to find work or did he spend it on booze before returning to his old profession as a beggar and marry another woman to support him with the money she earned as a maid?
“No one knows what really happened,” Nasri told his two boys when they asked him about the Green Woman. He said he’d never seen her again after the incident. But people talk a lot. People need saints and victims and fill their lives with them, and Majda was a victim who asked for nothing because she was a saint.” It’s best when the saint is the victim. Then the story’s the way it should be. I know Abu Sultan and I know it wasn’t like that. He was a decent fellow. He worked at the gas station at Hajj Murad’s place washing cars and in the neighborhood they called him ‘Wadia the gas station guy.’ But his name wasn’t Abu Sultan — I don’t know where ‘Abu Sultan’ came from. Well, maybe it was from his first wife, who they say stole his money and ran off with an Egyptian building guard to Egypt. She was a widow and her name was Imm Sultan, I know that. Then Abu Sultan was hit by a truck at the gas station and crippled and Hajj Murad fired him without giving him a penny in compensation. I don’t know how Majda put up with him. It’s wrong to tell tales. He used to beat her a lot. I know because I used to treat the poor woman. Then I realized he was beating her because he had a problem and I got rid of the problem with a potion that I’d invented. I don’t know what to call it — a complex about women had turned into a practical problem with his wife — but I do know that everything was fine and there’s no call for all this gossip.”
Nasri’s words failed to convince his sons, who thought his story about Majda was of a piece with the ones about fairies and afreets that he told them. They named her “the Green Fairy” and saw her looming out of the ropes of rain and waving to them from afar.
What happened to Majda is wrapped in mystery. The woman didn’t return to the neighborhood. She left the hospital with her infant and people only saw her after that in her green apparitions — a Green Woman who appeared only after sunset, standing in the shadows and looking into the distance, bending over the remains of her shack and waving to people with her little green pocketbook, then vanishing into the dark.
Karim said he’d seen the Green Woman once in his life. “I was with my brother, Nasim. He said to me, ‘Come on, let’s go and see the Green Fairy!’ It was five in the afternoon, raining, and we got soaked. I told my brother, ‘Forget it. We’ll get sick standing out under the rain like this,’ but he wouldn’t agree. He said I was a coward. That was what he thought of me even then. So we waited and when it started to get dark we saw her. She was like a ghost or something and I started shivering with fear and the cold. She looked at me, raised her hand as though she was pointing at me, or as though she was asking me to go to her. I wanted to run home but I was rooted to the spot and couldn’t move. I screamed but no sound came out. I grabbed hold of Nasim and heard him say, ‘Let’s go closer.’ I saw him bend over, pick up a stone, and throw it at the woman, but it seemed as though the stone just flew and never landed on the ground and the woman disappeared.”
Karim said that when he thought of his encounter with the Green Woman, he saw a stone flying and not landing, as though the Green Woman had turned into a tree, and he didn’t know how he got back home, all wet with the rain and the darkness and the fear.
Had he told Muna that story? She’d asked him about the story of the Green Woman and he’d smiled and said he loved her green skirt. She’d said she was tired and wanted to sleep and had turned her back and begun to breathe deeply. Then suddenly she’d sat up in bed and said she had to go home: “Ahmad will be waiting for me now.” She ran to the bathroom and closed the door behind her and he heard the sound of the shower. He went up to the bathroom door and opened it. She yelled at him from behind the plastic curtain, telling him to go out and shut the door: “I don’t like anyone to watch me when I’m showering.” He shut the door, went back to the bed, closed his eyes, and slept.
Muna left the apartment while Karim was dozing. He opened his eyes and saw that the sun had colored everything green. The green sky was falling through the window onto his bed. He rubbed his eyes thoroughly to get the green shadows out of them. Had it been a dream? Had he seen the Green Woman beckoning to him to approach while he dreamed? What had his father been doing there?
The Green Woman pushed Nasri and the man fell to the ground, black blood ran from his forehead, and he died next to the remains of the drenched shack and the fire.
This dream would pursue the doctor throughout the six months he spent in Beirut. He decided not to believe Hend’s story. Could it really be true? Could Nasri have been murdered? And was the story of his father having fallen into a coma, as related to him by his brother, just a half-lie intended to cover over the blood that had been spilled?
All Karim could remember about his mother was her fear of blood. Even during her long illness she had trembled at the sight of blood on her sons’ knees and screamed, “O Lord, save us from the blood!” The disease had ravaged the woman until all that was left of her were her shining brown eyes. Her body had grown emaciated and she’d ended up the size of a little girl, but the brilliance of her eyes, which lasted until she died, concealed the life she hadn’t lived.
Karim remembered his father yelling at the priest, who had sat down at the dining table to prepare the announcement of her death and had written, “The late lamented Laure Tibshirani, wife of Nasri Shammas, departed this life having performed in full her religious obligations, etc.”
“No!” Nasri had screamed. “She didn’t depart this life!” And the priest had said, “You’re right, Mr. Nasri. We should write, ‘passed into the mercy of the Almighty.’ ” “No!” said Nasri. “She didn’t depart and she didn’t pass. Life departed from her. The pity of it! Those eyes of hers kept on shining even after she was dead. She didn’t depart and she didn’t pass. The pity of it, Laure!”
Karim didn’t remember what they wrote in the announcement because he was too young and didn’t understand that the clichés written at the important moments of people’s lives aren’t just clichés. They are complex figures of speech possessing a status in people’s souls so emotive it makes tears fall from their eyes. He did remember his mother’s eyes, though. The father had led his sons toward the bed of their dead mother, whom cancer had transformed into something more like a small child, and ordered them to look into her eyes, which shone with a brilliance like that of water: “You mustn’t forget your mother’s eyes, the way they stayed open gazing at life even after death.” The father went forward, placed his hand over his wife’s eyes and closed them. At that moment everything went white. All Karim could remember was the white that filled his eyes. It wasn’t a fainting fit because the child didn’t fall to the ground. He remained rigid where he was and didn’t move. The milky white surrounded him on all sides. Nasri led his sons to the living room, which was crammed full of people, and there they heard the wailing, and they cried. Karim said that the tears that fell from his eyes opened them, and he saw the people and felt the need to hide.