She watched his face while he got undressed and said she didn’t want him to talk because she knew everything and was amazed that he’d risk his life in the dead of the Beirut night with all its dangers for the sake of a woman of that sort.
“I told you, I had work and I want to go to sleep. Please, I don’t have the energy left to file a police report with you.”
She said she wanted to remind him that she could read everything in his face, that she didn’t need to listen to his lies and knew everything because her life with him had taught her how to smell other women. “You know something? You’ve made me forget what a man smells like. Whenever you come near me I smell women and right now I smell women and women are written all over your face. You know the worst thing about you now? The worst thing is that because of you I can’t get to sleep. Your supposed death made me sleepy and your infidelities have woken me up again. Keep away from me. I don’t want to hear a word.”
How was he to explain to her that he hadn’t been unfaithful to her, had never been unfaithful to her in his life, and that all this had nothing to do with him? It was as though the person who went out with women wasn’t him but another man. He’d wanted to say this, but he knew that words turned into wounds for this woman whom he loved.
He hadn’t told her that since marrying her he hadn’t been out with another woman. All the women he’d been out with were whores and a whore, though a woman, isn’t like other women: she has the shape of a woman but she doesn’t remain on the body or leave her traces on the soul.
Nasim knew this wasn’t true but “the war makes wrong right,” as Nasri used to say. Nasim’s double disappointment had been with Suzanne, whom he’d never abandoned even though she’d abandoned him as a result of his father’s stupidity and fear for his son — despite which he still dared to maintain that whores didn’t remain on the body or leave their fingerprints on the soul. Nasim hadn’t put his relationship with Suzanne in the same category as his relationships with prostitutes; she’d been a different story. He’d gone to her in the midst of the shelling to pluck her from the souk after it turned into a battleground and the Phalangist militia started raping women preliminary to issuing them with a warning that they had to get out.
Nasim had been sitting with several youths from the SKS, the Phalangist police, in the barracks in the Three Moons School in Ashrafieh, drinking arak with them, smoking hashish, and counting the shells when he’d had a vision of Suzanne. The boys were talking big and saying Boss Dib had begun to put his threat into operation. Ronny, who was nineteen, spoke about how the day before he’d been at the Ashrafieh roundabout and the scene had been like something from a horror film, and Boss Dib had put an end to it. He’d pulled the boys out by sheer force because it was a revolting sight and told the women they had to leave the place by six p.m. that day. “And he said, ‘Tomorrow at six p.m. I’m going to shell before launching a new attack and anyone who’s here and doesn’t die in the shelling will be killed by the boys. My orders are clear. Got it?’ ”
“Where are they supposed to go, boy?” asked Nasim. “They don’t have families.”
“Who gives a damn whether they go or not. The Bash has ordered the prostitutes’ market closed and Boss Dib thinks this is the best way — shelling and then attacking. I really wanted to go with the boys today but the boss said no. I don’t know what happened to me yesterday. After we’d done stuff to the women I started throwing up and turned as yellow as saffron.”
“Were you afraid?” asked Nasim.
“Don’t be dumb! What was there to be afraid of? A few poor women. They made out they were too proud to take our boys, so we were forced to rape them. Whoever heard of a prostitute being raped?!”
At that instant a vision of Suzanne appeared before his eyes. He saw her lying in the middle of the street moaning, the blood spurting from every part of her. Nasim stood, picked up his rifle, and set off toward his car.
“Where are you going in all this shelling?” Ronny asked, running after Nasim and trying to stop him before he could get to the car.
“I’m going to the souk. There’s a woman I have to get out of there.”
Nasim rushed to his car and drove like a madman, the shells flashing in Beirut’s empty sky. He reached the souk, parked his car near the shawarma restaurant, which was almost demolished, took his Kalashnikov in his right hand, and rushed up the stairs to the third floor. The shelling was all around and the door stood open. He went in calling her name, heard a low moan coming from the direction of the kitchen, drew closer, and saw her. Suzanne was sitting on the floor with her hands over her ears. He went up to her through the whining of the shells as they traversed the incipient darkness, held out his hand to her, and asked her to get up. Instead of turning toward the source of the voice, Suzanne hunched over herself in the corner of the kitchen and moaned louder.
“Get up and come with me,” said Nasim in a low voice.
“Get away from me. I can’t take any more. Please, I don’t have anywhere to go. Kill me but don’t come any closer. It’s wrong. It’s so wrong. Don’t you have mothers? Why are you doing this to us?” — and she screamed in a mighty voice, “O Jesus! Come and see what the sons of whores are doing to the Magdalens!”
“Stand up, mother. It’s Nasim.”
“Who?” she said in a hoarse voice.
“Nasim.”
“Nasim who?”
“Nasim the son of Nasri the pharmacist. Get up for me so we can get out of here!”
Suzanne took her head in her hands and began to cry. Her whole body shook with sobs that emerged from her chest and through her hands.
He grasped her by the arms to make her stand up and she cringed where she crouched. He bent over, pulled back, squatted at her side, and explained that he’d come to rescue her, that she had to go with him before the shelling stopped and the militia invaded the place. He said he’d take her to his house and shelter her the way she’d sheltered him when he was young. “Don’t be afraid. I’m with you. Get up and let’s get out of here.”
The woman pulled her head back and looked at the young man sitting next to her. “You’re Nasim, that’s for sure. What do you want with me, son? Go back to your family.”
Nasim sat down on the floor, took Suzanne in his arms, clasped her to his chest, and said in a whisper that she had to go with him and that if she refused he would stay and die with her.
The woman got up, went into her bedroom, and began gathering together her things. “Leave everything where it is, there’s no time. Can’t you hear the shelling? They’re coming now. Let’s get out of here.”
She stopped, hesitated, went to her bed, took a small icon of the Virgin Mary from beneath her pillow, placed it in her bosom, and left, leaning on Nasim.
Thus did Nasim win back the woman who had thrown him out. He took her to the small apartment in which he’d lived before marrying Hend and after leaving his father’s, and Suzanne lived with him there for about a week. Then he found an apartment in the Badawi district whose Muslim owners had been chased out and she lived in it for ten years until she died. During this period Nasim visited her once a week, at five p.m. every Friday, and every Sunday morning he sent her a platter of kenafeh-with-cheese.
He told Ronny that what had happened at the souk wouldn’t do — “What fault is it of the women’s?” — but his words fell on deaf ears, so he went deaf himself. Michel Hajji advised him not to get caught up in such things: “It’s a bigger issue than just that. We’re defending the Christian presence in the East and a few excesses here or there mustn’t put us off.”