Why does something like femininity awaken within us?
It’s true, the lover becomes like a woman.
I confessed. Yes, confessed. I tried to explain it to her, but she didn’t understand, and even if she had. . what good would it have done? Even if she’d loved me — and she did love me — or if she’d betrayed me — and she did betray me, then what?
Come to think of it, why did she want to marry Sameh? Why didn’t she say she wanted to get married? I was prepared to marry her. I was I don’t know what. It’s true. . why didn’t I ask her to marry me? I can say now that I didn’t dare, that the story she’d told me about her former husband blocked my ability to think, and that her troubles with her daughter, Dalal, stopped me from thinking about marriage.
How do you propose to a woman whose sole concern is to organize the abduction of her daughter? She said she’d have no peace in her life till she’d taken Dalal from Amman and brought her to Beirut, and that she needed a man to help her. And when I said I was at her disposal, I saw a trace of pity in her smile.
“You, my dear, are a doctor, and are of no use. I want a real man. I want a fedayeen fighter.”
Was Sameh the man she was looking for?
Didn’t she tell me in a satisfied moment, “You’re my man”? How could I be her man and not be a real man? And how can you ask a woman to marry you as she’s telling you she’s looking for another man? But no, I’m not sure, I don’t believe she talked about Dalal with anyone but me. She’d forget her most of the time; her daughter would only come alive for her after we’d made love. I’d light my cigarette and take my first sip of cognac, and along would come Dalal and set up an impenetrable barrier between us. Words would die and Shams would become a knot of tears — a woman who’d tell stories about her daughter and curse life and fate. Then suddenly she’d jump up and say she was hungry. I don’t know how she didn’t get fat. She devoured enormous quantities of food in my presence.
“Why aren’t you eating, Qais?”
She used to call me Qais: “You know I’ll treat you the way Laila did her Qais. I’ll drive you crazy.”
But Qais, I mean I, would only eat a little. Once I told her I didn’t eat because I was in love? And do you know what her reaction was?
“What an absurd notion! ‘Seduction requires strength.’ Eat, eat! Love needs food.”
I was incapable of eating even though I was hungry. I was like someone who couldn’t chew food. It was enough for me to keep her company and look at her devilish eyes stealing glances at me and apologizing for her insatiable appetite.
But maybe not. Maybe the reason I didn’t ask her to marry me was that I was afraid of her. Strange. Tell me; don’t you think it’s strange? Not you — it’s impossible to make a comparison with you because Nahilah was your wife and that explains everything. I don’t want to trespass on your life.
But why didn’t you do what Hamad did?
Like you, Hamad was a fighter in the Sha’ab garrison — don’t tell me you don’t know him. Umm Hassan told me his story. She said his sister refused to hold a wake for him after he died in her house in Ain al-Hilweh, so the wake was held in Umm Hassan’s house in Shatila.
Umm Hassan said they were complete fools: “They say he is Israeli. What does that mean? When we’re humiliated and imprisoned for the sake of our children and our land, does that make us traitors?”
I won’t tell you the story of Hamad’s return to his village in Galilee because I’m sure you know it. I just wanted to say that maybe you also were afraid of love.
Take any love story, Brother. What is a love story? The story we call a love story is usually a story of the impossibility of love. People only write about love as something impossible. Isn’t that the story of Qais and Laila, and Romeo and Juliet? Isn’t it the story of Khalil and Shams? All lovers are like that; they become a story of unconsummated love, as though love can’t be consummated, or as though we fear it or don’t know how to tell about it, or, and this is the worst, we don’t recognize it when we’re living it.
What did Qais Ibn al-Mulawwah do? Nothing. They stopped him from seeing his sweetheart Laila, so he went mad.
Didn’t you make me a promise, heart,
You’d give up Laila if I did so too?
Behold — I’ve given up my love for her.
How then, when her name is said, you swoon?
Nice words and lovely poetry, but the man was crazy and his beloved married another man.
And Romeo, what did he do? He killed himself.
And what about all the other lovers? All of them loved at a distance and lived their love in separation, so they became impossible stories.
Don’t you agree?
Is it because love is impossible that every time Shams left me, my mouth would become as dry as kindling?
Was it because I couldn’t stand to be parted from her?
Do you know that beautiful verse from the Koran? “They are a vestment for you, and you are a vestment for them.” How are we to become vestments for one another — I mean, how are we to become one?
That’s what love is, which is why we can’t talk about it. We talk only about its impossibility or its tragedy, its victims and its fatalities.
And when lovers are together, it’s impossible to describe. In fact, it may be that none of us lives it and that’s why we invent reasons why it’s kept from us.
It might be that love has no language. It’s like a smell. How can you describe a smell? We describe it in terms of what it’s not, and we don’t give it a name. Love’s the same. It has a name only when it isn’t there.
I don’t mean to belittle the importance of your love for Nahilah. I know that you loved her and that your infatuation was great. I know that she dwelled in your bones. I know that you’re dying today because of her.
But why didn’t you go back, the way Hamad did?
How was it that Hamad went to prison and succeeded in returning to his house and his wife, and such a possibility never occurred to you?
Don’t tell me you sacrificed yourself for the revolution, I don’t believe it’s that.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want to denigrate your history. Your history is my history, and I respect you and honor you and hold you in the highest regard.
But tell me, wasn’t there an element of fear of Nahilah in your decision? Didn’t you prefer — unconsciously perhaps — that she be where she was and you where you were? That way your story could continue and survive across space and time. Every time you went to see her, you put your life in danger. Every time, you purchased your love at the cost of the possibility of your death. Isn’t that extraordinary? Isn’t that a story like no other?
Tell me, when you were walking the roads of the two Galilees, of Palestine and of Lebanon, did you feel that your thorn-lacerated feet bore a love story like no other?
As for me, though, what a letdown!
I know my story doesn’t deserve to be put alongside yours. I’m just a duped lover; that’s what everyone thinks. But no, Shams isn’t so simple; you can’t sum her up by saying she betrayed me. And “betrayed” isn’t accurate. I wasn’t her husband, so why did she come to me? If there hadn’t been love, she wouldn’t have come; if there hadn’t been love, her presence wouldn’t have bewitched me; if there hadn’t been love, I wouldn’t have hidden like a dog in this hospital out of fear of revenge. I confess I was afraid and I believed the rumors about the people of al-Ammour vowing to take revenge on their daughter’s killers. But that time has passed.