Karim had no idea what happened next. Did he just imagine that the man cried? Or had Matrouk’s tears really fallen onto his cheeks, so that he had to wipe them off with a napkin on the table and then blow his nose at length before saying he’d decided to kill her lover?
“What do you say, doctor? I thought I’d kill the man and get some relief. I oiled the gun, loaded it, and said to myself, ‘The second I see his face, I’ll empty six bullets into his head and get some relief.’ ”
Had the man come to torture him psychologically before killing him? Karim didn’t know where he found the courage, but he picked up his glass and decided to drink it all in one go before telling Matrouk, “Get it over with then and kill me. You don’t have to cry for me before shooting me. Shoot me and leave me alone.” But he didn’t say it. And at the instant that he began drinking, Matrouk brought his fist down on the table and started to shake. He stood up, picked up the revolver, tucked it once more into his belt, and started walking about in the kitchen, talking. It came to Karim that he wasn’t the person accused. The man whom Ghazala loved, and on whose account she’d threatened to kill herself should her husband do him any harm, was some other man — a young man of twenty-five, a member of the Amal Movement militia. “Some runt of a kid five years younger than her. I don’t know what she sees in him, he’s an ugly little shit not worth a damn.”
He said he’d discovered her unfaithfulness because he’d sensed it. “It makes me embarrassed to tell you, doctor. I could see she was all rosy and happy and getting more beautiful all the time. I just had to get near her and I could feel she was hot as fire. She’d come back from seeing him all warmed up and rosy. Then, you know what I found out? Really, it makes me embarrassed, doctor. I found out she was giving him money and gold. I work like a donkey and the money just disappears, and when I found the gold ring wrapped up in a bit of cloth and stuffed at the bottom of the drawer I started to get it. I decided to follow her. I followed her. She got on the bus and set off for a shack in Shayyah, and before she could knock on the door of his house I grabbed her by the shoulder and told her, ‘I know you’re going to see someone. Give me the handkerchief you’ve wrapped the ring in.’ I pulled the handkerchief out of her hand and heard the sound of the ring as it fell on the ground. She knelt down, picked it up, and said, ‘I got this with my money. It’s none of your business.’ ”
Matrouk said at that very moment the door of the shack opened and a short, thin young man appeared. His black beard covered his face and he was carrying a Kalashnikov. “He looked at me, the fury flashing in his eyes, gestured with his machine gun, and I released her shoulders. She slipped from my hands and bent her head to pass beneath his gun and enter the house.”
Matrouk had found himself returning the way he’d come. He reached his apartment and smashed the plates and glasses. “In the evening she came home. I’d thought she wasn’t coming back but she came back like nothing had happened, like she’d been to see my mother. Her face was rosy and her eyes drowsy. She entered the house like normal and ran to the kitchen to make dinner. When she saw the plates broken and thrown on the floor, instead of behaving like someone who’s done something wrong she began screaming at me for breaking the plates. She’s the one who did something wrong, doctor, isn’t that right? What had I done? I should have cut her throat at the door to the house like a real man. She started wailing and the neighbors came. You know how Mar Elias Hollow has people from all over — Sri Lankans, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Syrians like us. The woman whose shame had been exposed exposed me to shame and everyone started telling me, ‘Shame on you, Matrouk! What kind of person beats his wife these days?’ Even the children stood in front of her legs and started cursing me.”
Matrouk said she’d cried and made her children cry and the neighbors had tried to make peace between the couple. “The metropolitan came. You must have heard of the metropolitan, his real name is Ramzi, and people in the Hollow would do anything for him. He’s Druze like us, from a village called Maasir el-Shouf. They call him the metropolitan because after the massacre in the village he went to the church and put on priest’s clothes and started walking around the village square singing in Syriac. He said he’d learned Syriac at the nuns’ school. He talked about things that happened in the war that no one should talk about, doctor, but I don’t know why, everybody loves him. The point is the metropolitan honored us with a visit and when he arrived everyone shut up. He looked at Ghazala and told her, ‘Clean the house quick!’ and she ran into the kitchen and set to work and then he looked at me and said, ‘Go and kiss your wife’s head, your wife’s an excellent woman.’ ”
Matrouk said that once all was quiet again and the children asleep, Ghazala had told him she wanted him to know she hadn’t stolen money to buy the gold ring for Azab. “The ring was a present from Dr. Karim and you can ask him if you don’t believe me.” When Matrouk answered her by saying he was going to kill the short ugly fellow called Azab she replied that she’d kill herself. “If you kill him I’ll pour paraffin over myself and set myself on fire.”
Matrouk sat back down on his chair. He looked into the doctor’s astonished eyes and asked him if what Ghazala had said was true. “Tell me you gave her the ring, doctor, and set my mind at rest.” Karim didn’t know how to answer. He felt sympathy for Matrouk, as they had in common the fact that they’d both been made fools of. He felt like raising his glass and drinking a toast to betrayal, but the man’s confused glances and wandering eyes decided him against it and he contented himself with nodding yes.
The man looked as though a load had been taken off his mind, said he hadn’t told anyone else what had happened, and asked him to keep it a secret.
“So are you going to kill Azab?” asked Karim.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” answered Matrouk. “I love her and she told me she’d given it up once and for all and that it had been like she was possessed by some demon but now she was free of it and that Azab hadn’t done anything bad. He’d fallen in love with her and then when he saw you with me and lifted the Kalashnikov to protect me from you, he told me, ‘Go back, woman, to your house and children!’ Thank you, doctor. You’ve reassured me but I don’t know what to do. Whenever I try to sleep with her it feels like knives in my heart and bits of glass in my throat. What do you think I should do?”
“Ask the metropolitan,” said Karim. He stood up and began carrying the dishes to the sink.
“No, no, please, doctor — leave it to me,” said Matrouk as he began washing the dishes.
After Matrouk left, Karim sat alone in the living room. He closed his eyes in the hope of summoning up the drowsiness of a siesta. He felt he was the real dupe in the affair. “I was like the goose that laid the golden eggs for Azab and Ghazala’s passion for him. I’m just like the Yoyo. The Yoyo killed himself because the woman he loved was unfaithful to him but what am I supposed to do?”
Karim hadn’t been in love with Ghazala. Even if he had been and had told her some of his stories, all the love had flown away when he came face to face with Matrouk’s revolver and felt the terror it sent through his limbs.