When he went to his room to sleep after that first night’s dinner that Salma had made, he’d noticed the room remained exactly as he’d left it on his departure for France. But he’d paid no attention to the brown bedside table, or hadn’t seen in it a window onto memories he’d left behind and decided to bury in oblivion. Nasri had told him once on the phone that nothing had changed. “Your room will still be your room even if you don’t use it, and the same goes for your brother’s. The maid cleans both once a month and she’s been told not to move anything. They’re your rooms, son, and anytime the two of you decide to come back to the house you’ll find the house waiting for you.”
“But I’m married, Father, and I’ve got two daughters. What do I want with the room? Use it any way you want.”
“And your brother’s married too and it doesn’t change anything as far as I’m concerned. I just pray God lets me live long enough to see the members of the Trinity back together again.”
When Karim hurried to the room where he slept, the bedside table and its two drawers took him by surprise. Why hadn’t he noticed it before, why hadn’t he seen something the eye couldn’t miss? He was sleeping on the same sheets, laying his head on the same ostrich-feather pillow his father had given him as a reward for passing his final exams. The see-through curtains were the same and so was the small brass ceiling lamp with four bulbs, the brown bedside table with two drawers, and on top of it the small transistor radio on which he used to listen to the midnight news from Radio Monte Carlo. He turned on the radio, which made a crackling sound, which then suddenly stopped. The batteries would have to be changed, thought Karim. He bent toward the bedside table, opened the first drawer, and was struck by the lightning bolt of memory. The first drawer was dedicated to Hend: pictures of her in her bathing suit, a picture of her next to him as they stood in front of the Saint George’s beach swimming pool, letters from Hend to him, and his letters — a flood of emotions flowing over the pages in dry ink.
Why had Hend loved to write letters?
It came back to him how Hend, at the end of their daily meeting, would give him a letter in a closed envelope and ask him not to open it till he’d reached home, and to reply to her the next day in writing. Karim hadn’t seen the point of it. He would read in her letters what he’d already heard from her the same day and was supposed to answer her with what he was going to say the next day. This epistolary relationship exhausted him. “It’s tiring studying medicine,” he’d tell her, “and it doesn’t leave me time for writing.” But Hend had refused his excuses and he was obliged to write her a few lines each night as he struggled to overcome his drowsiness. In this way their love became an enactment of what was in the letters and reading her letters became for him a form of memory exercise. But remembering is tiring. Karim stopped reading the letters. He’d open them, glance at them before throwing them in the drawer, and begin his suffering before the blank piece of paper. His surprise when he found letters he hadn’t opened was enormous. He picked one of them up and tore open the envelope. His lips curled into a stupid smile. He read about his hands: Hend had celebrated the tips of his long fingers and his finely formed thumb, saying she didn’t like round bulgy thumbs because they were a sign that their owners were disloyal. He went on reading and discovered that she wanted to kiss his hands. “Please, when you put cologne on your chin after shaving, wash your hands very well with soap and water because those are what I want to smell when I kiss your hands tomorrow, not cologne.” He tried to remember what had happened the following day, to discover what Hend had said when she kissed his hands and found out that he hadn’t carried out her orders, but he couldn’t.
The atmosphere created by the letters took him back to the evening when Hend gave him her last letter and said she was sad: she was going to stop writing letters because he no longer answered them. He tried to explain that he loved her without needing to write a daily letter and that they met every day anyway.
“I don’t know what you think,” she’d said, “but in my opinion love without words isn’t love.”
“But we meet every day and talk about everything,” he’d answered.
“No, no. Talking is like air. The only thing that lasts is what’s written down,” she’d said. “But whatever you wish.”
Karim didn’t try to hide his joy at the ending of the torment of the letters and put Hend’s last letter into the back pocket of his trousers. He ordered two glasses of beer so they could drink a toast to love.
“I’m sure you’ve thrown all my letters away,” she said.
“Certainly not. I have them all, in a drawer in my room.”
“Mind you don’t let anyone read them.”
“The drawer’s locked and I have the key on me,” he replied.
He hadn’t been telling the truth: the drawer wasn’t locked and it didn’t have a key. He had no idea whether Nasri had read the letters and laughed at the naïveté of his son’s love affairs, but Nasim had probably discovered them and read some of them. It was Nasim who’d discovered his father’s secrets and then put everything back the way it was, so it was difficult to believe inquisitiveness hadn’t led him to the drawer.
Why, though, had he not torn them up? Had his heart not burned with jealousy of his brother? Or had the jealousy had a different effect, the one Karim had felt when listening to Matrouk: the instant his fear of the revolver that the deceived husband had placed on the dining table close to the glass of arak vanished, his heart had ignited with jealousy and desire. He’d felt jealous of Azab and an animal desire for Ghazala, and he’d realized that Matrouk’s love for his wife had caught fire precisely when he’d seen her bend to pass under Azab’s rifle and enter his house.
Strange are the ways of the heart, for they resist understanding. Even a former lover cannot recall the idiocies of his heart without feeling embarrassed or confused, which is why people erase the stories of their loves that have ended: they don’t dare remember them, and especially not the jealousy which not only wounds the heart but makes it captive twice over.
Only once had Nasri spoken on the subject with his sons. Karim was gathering up his things to return to his home on Abd el-Aziz Street near AUB, where he was studying medicine, while Nasim was struggling to understand why he’d failed the first year College of Pharmacy exams a second time — meaning that he would now have to vacate the halls of academe and start work with his father as assistant pharmacist. That day, which Nasri considered his farewell to the Trinity, the aged pharmacist had drunk an incalculable amount of wine and seemed sad and tired. He looked at Karim and said, “Never fall in love with a whore.”
“What?”
“I know Hamra and Zeitouna are full of bars and you’re young and it’s what life owes you, and I don’t mind, but never fall in love with a whore because it’s a love that has no bottom. She’ll betray you and you’ll become more fiercely in love. She can’t not sleep with other men because it’s her job and there’s no way not to be tormented because you love her.”
Then he looked at Nasim and asked him for his thoughts on the subject.
“You know best,” said Nasim, laughing.