The obsession with cleanliness, with twice-daily showers, and with picking everything up to wash made Dr. Said laugh. He saw in it repressed desires and told his wife to leave the girl alone, saying “when the well runs dry we’ll decide what to do.”
This woman of water and soap hated Lebanese food and found herself without a sense of taste. She’d learned to cook all the different Lebanese dishes but for herself she cooked her own food, mixed with spices, hot pepper, and the flavor of life. She couldn’t fathom the attitude of her mistress, who, as soon as she smelled the food that Meena was preparing in a corner of the large kitchen, would hold her nose and open the windows, screaming, “Windows! Open windows!” in the maid’s face.
When the doctor decided to go up to Brummana to escape the inferno of the Israeli invasion, Meena felt a terrible sense of estrangement. Something had changed in these Lebanese who fled the sounds of shells in Beirut for the mountain resort, which soon was teeming with people. She no longer liked leaving the house because the comments people made on the streets were full of racism, and in the eyes of the young men she could read hatred and rapine.
She told Khawaja George she was afraid.
In Brummana she’d begun to get to know George, the doctor’s only son, who kept to the house, read the newspapers, and never stopped smoking.
She’d thought she was alone in the house when she was surprised to find George entering the kitchen, carrying some pomegranates.
“What’s that strange smell?” said George.
“I’m cooking, mister.”
“It smells like Indian food and I like Indian food.”
He asked her to put a little of the food on a plate for him and said it tasted good.
He gave her the pomegranates and asked her to seed them.
“Be careful you don’t let a single seed fall on the floor because every pomegranate contains within it one of the seeds of the pomegranates of paradise,” he said. He said the people of that country had once worshipped the god of love, whose name was Ramoun and who lived in the pomegranate trees.
She finished seeding the pomegranate, put the red seeds into a glass bowl, and took it out to the balcony where he was sitting.
“That day, he saw me,” said Meena. She told Hend that she’d felt how his eyes had seen her and that he’d put his hand on her cheek and told her she was beautiful.
“And after that you slept with him?” asked Hend. “God, what a silly goose!”
“No-madam. After, nothing.”
She said he’d asked her what perfume she used and she’d smiled and answered that she wore water perfume. She asked him if he could smell the water and he replied that water didn’t have a smell and burst out laughing. Meena laughed too and said the scent of water could be detected only on people’s bodies, and that the only real scent was the scent of people. She said her grandmother had told her people were created from mud and water, and that their original smell was the smell of soil moistened with rain.
Meena said everything had happened at the Feast of the Cross. The Feast of the Cross that fell on September 14, 1982 arrived weighted down with the rain of sorrow. On that day Bashir Gemayel, leader of the Christian militia allied with Israel, who had become president of the Republic of Lebanon, was killed. Brummana looked haggard and black. People stood in the roads, stunned. She heard Dr. Said tell his son that he’d been expecting this outcome. George wept as he said that the dream was dead.
Three days later Lebanon was full of corpses. After seeing the pictures of the massacre on the television Meena said she wished she were blind because all she could see in front of her was dead bodies. The doctor had carried a copy of al-Safir and was beside himself. The pictures of the massacre at the Palestinian camps of Shatila and Sabra filled the front page of the newspaper, and that evening the whole family watched the news. Meena was sitting on the floor in a corner of the living room trying to understand what the television was saying, and when she started to understand some of the words that traced themselves over the bloated corpses she got up and ran to her room, where she burst into tears and started banging her head against the wall. George fidgeted in his chair and wanted to get up and go after her but Dr. Said was the first to enter her room and see the blood. The doctor took the woman in his arms, embracing her flowing tears. George reached the room and didn’t understand when he saw blood on his father’s shirt. He went over to them, led Meena by the hand to the bathroom, and washed the cuts on her head. The cuts weren’t serious, just grazes.
George spoke to her but she didn’t answer. She left him and went to her room.
That night George knocked on Meena’s door. She knew it was him but she hesitated. When she opened it he hugged her to his chest. The smell of alcohol wafted from his mouth and he looked like a lost child. He pulled her toward the bed. She said no, then yielded to his kisses.
Meena couldn’t remember what happened after that. She said George talked but she didn’t understand exactly what he was trying to say. She said he was angry because she hadn’t told him she was a virgin but he put his head on her neck and held her to himself for a long time before leaving her room at two in the morning.
Meena said she didn’t blame George. “It was my fault,” she said.
“That was it?” asked Hend.
Meena nodded her head.
“So you only slept with him once?”
The girl was silent and didn’t answer.
“You slept with him a lot. I bet he made a fool of you and told you he loved you.”
“No-madam. No fool. He never say the word but he say I make him crazy and he wish.”
“He wished what?”
“I don’t know,” said Meena. “I’m mistake. I loved him and I still love him but it’s over.”
Three and a half months later Meena went to the doctor to be sure her misgivings were right and that the interruption of her period was not due to psychological tension, as the social worker whom she met at the church had told her. She wasn’t unhappy. She immediately decided to get rid of the fetus and went back to the house.
She didn’t tell George she was pregnant, she just told him straightaway that she’d decided to get rid of the fetus and wanted his help in finding a doctor to carry out the abortion. George didn’t open his mouth. He put his head in his hands and said, “It’s wrong.” She asked him to get her an early appointment with the doctor, left him in the living room, and went to her room. She heard his footsteps outside the door but he didn’t knock. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
Two days later George came to her room at night and she was waiting for him. He sat on the edge of the bed and said he loved her. She said this wasn’t the time for being emotional and asked him about the doctor. He said he’d made her an appointment with a doctor who worked at the Greek Orthodox hospital and he’d take her there the day after next at nine a.m. “No,” she said, “I’m going to go alone. You shouldn’t have to go through that,” and she asked him the doctor’s name.
At Dr. Salim Hamid’s clinic the surprise that no one had expected occurred. The doctor was kind but after he finished the examination he said he was sorry but couldn’t perform the operation because the fetus was in the fourth month and it would be murder and a sin. “I can’t. I apologize. Go to someone else, maybe they’ll do it, but not me.”