“Please make yourself at home,” I said. “I’m going. Good night.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To the hospital,” I said.
“But I’m hungry,” she said.
I put the bag I was carrying on the table and said, “Please help yourself.”
She opened the bag and saw the bread and halva.
“After all that distance, you’re going to feed me halva? No. I’ll make dinner. Where’s the kitchen?”
I picked up the paraffin lamp and led her to the kitchen.
“I hate the smell of paraffin,” she said. “Don’t you have any candles in the house?”
“Yes, yes.” I went to the bedroom to look for the pair of candles I’d hidden in a drawer in case the paraffin ran out. I lit the two candles, placing one in the kitchen and one in the living room.
She opened her case and pulled out a plastic bag.
“Wait,” she said.
I sat in the living room to wait for her, thinking the situation over. No, I had nothing in mind: The woman was wearing a long black dress that covered her from head to toe, and her face was half-hidden by her scarf. I can say that I didn’t see her. So how?
No, Abu Salem, I had nothing like that in mind.
Then I saw her with a dishcloth knotted around her waist. She started cleaning the house. I tried to help her, but she waved me off. In a matter of minutes — I swear it was minutes, not more — everything was sparkling clean. She was like a magician: She went around the house upending things and cleaning them, and the smell of perfumed soap emanated from every corner.
Then she said she’d make dinner.
“There’s nothing in the house. Do you want me to go out and buy things?”
“There’s no need,” she said. “I have everything.”
I was sitting in the living room waiting for the meal when she came out of the kitchen. “You go in and take a bath. I’ve cleaned everything up for you, but you’re not clean.”
I picked up the pot of hot water that she’d prepared for me in the kitchen and went into the bathroom. When I came out, she was waiting. Then she disappeared for a few minutes in the bathroom and came out again with her long hair hanging down loose over her shoulders. Black hair, brown skin, large green eyes, a small mouth, a long face, finely sculpted hands, and long, thin fingers.
Beyond description.
I’d never seen a woman so beautiful, or with such presence — it was as though she’d drawn a circle around me from which I couldn’t escape.
The strangest thing is that I didn’t ask her who she was or what she wanted. At that point I realized the whole story of the letter had been a pretext. Even so, I didn’t ask. I was like one possessed, like one revolving in the circle of the Sufi ceremony of remembrance, as if all language had left me and I only knew how to repeat the words, God! God!
We sat down at the table, across which she offered me a platter of fried fish.
I couldn’t smell oil. How had she done it?
It was a fish banquet — red mullet, sea bass, and black bream — there was also taratur sauce and parsley.
“Do you have some arak?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said.
I brought over the bottle of local arak and poured two glasses, added water, and offered her one.
“Where’s the ice?” she asked.
“Where am I supposed to find ice?” I said. “The electricity’s shut off, as you can see.”
“On Jebel al-Sheikh,” she said, smiling, “he who drinks arak should know where to get ice.”
She said she didn’t drink arak without ice.
I drank though. I drank my glass and hers and poured myself several more and wallowed in the fish, taratur, and arak.
She ate slowly, watching me.
“Good health, good health!” she said.
“Drink!” I said.
“No, I don’t like arak.”
And I drank until my pores opened and my sinews loosened up. I drank until I felt that my soul had come back to me.
She got up, took the dishes into the kitchen, came back with two glasses of mint tea, and took two small aniseed cakes out of her case.
“Eat one of these,” she said. “There’s a saying of the Prophet’s that goes, ‘If you eat fish, eat something sweet afterwards. The one is made for the other.’”
I ate, but I wasn’t satisfied. Then I opened my brown bag and brought out the halva and devoured it all.
Then all I remember is her arm around me and me being with her, around her, in her. Revolving and rising and tasting nectar such as I’d never tasted in my life.
How can I describe how she was — her breasts, her waist, the slope of her thighs, her knees, the water that sprang from inside her, her whispers, her kisses, her tongue. It was her, not me. I inhaled her and drank her. I drank her drop by drop and she drank me drop by drop. I’d stop and start, rise like waves and descend with the waves, and never end. The waves were inside me, renewing and reshaping themselves. I was above the wave and inside it and beneath it, and she was the wave and the sea and the shore.
I didn’t sleep at all.
I didn’t speak. Yes, I spoke — and she put her hand on my lips and silenced me and took me. . Then how can I. . Brown-skinned, not white, green eyes, not honey-colored, long hair, not short. I don’t know.
That woman, who came from nowhere and stood like a photograph in front of your house, with her black scarf over her head, entered my house and took off her scarf so I could see her hair was pinned up in a bun and thought she must be past sixty, then came out of the bathroom and was transformed.
Her hair was long, her skin dark, her eyes green.
We finished eating the fish, and her skin grew light, her eyes large and black, her dark hair hanging all the way to her knees.
As we drank tea, her body became full, with small drowsy eyes and a complexion the shade of ripe wheat, and she took me.
She started to shimmer and change as though she were a thousand women.
Now I understand.
I want to weep. Please forgive me. I didn’t. .I swear I didn’t. .
The light rose over us. She was still stretched out on the bed, her eyes closed. I got up and put on my clothes. I said to her, “A few minutes. I’ll be back in a few minutes. There’s a patient I have to check on and then I’ll be back.”
She whispered, “I know, I know,” and held out her arms as if calling me back to her.
“No. I’m going to the hospital for a moment and then I’ll bring you back kunafa with cheese for breakfast.”
I left her and went to the hospital, and there at the door was Zainab. She hugged me, wept on my shoulder, and grasped my hand to take me to your room, where you were waiting to be washed for burial.
I pulled my hand from hers and told her I’d be back in a moment.
I left the hospital and ran to the kunafa seller and asked for two platters. The man looked at me with astonished eyes.
“Condolences,” he said.
“May God be with you,” I said and snatched the platters from his hand and ran toward the house, imagining her brown arms and her wide eyes and her full lips and her murmurs.
I entered the house, and she wasn’t there.
She wasn’t in the bedroom, or in the living room, or in the bathroom. The bed was made and everything was in its place.