I stood there not knowing what to do. Alone in the room, I was listening to the nurses’ voices in the corridor, taking in the smell. That was the first time I had really taken in the smell of Galilee Hospital. Why don’t they clean the place? And why hadn’t I noticed the smell before that day? I came to the hospital every day — it’s true that I didn’t really work, refusing the demotion from doctor to nurse — but I’d never smelled that horrible smell before. Tomorrow, I’ll clean everything.
But the next day I didn’t clean everything, and another day passed, and after it another without my taking action. It seems I’ve gotten used to it. The smell is not a problem. Smells work their way into us, we absorb them, which is why they only exist at the beginning.
Let’s return to the beginning.
I left your room in search of Dr. Amjad and found him sitting in his clinic, smoking, sipping his coffee, and reading the newspaper.
He invited me to sit down, but I remained standing.
“Please sit down. What’s the matter with you?” he asked.
I asked him hesitantly about you.
“Blood clot on the brain.”
“Treatment?”
“‘No hope for a stroke,’” he recited.
“I can’t believe it.”
“It’s in God’s hands,” he said. “Leave it, Dr. Khalil. It’s over. I wouldn’t give him more than seventy-two hours.”
“What about a blood thinner? Didn’t you give him a blood thinner?”
“There’s no point. We did a scan on him and found that the hemorrhage has spread to more than half the brain, which means it’s over.”
“And the fever?”
I asked as though I didn’t know, even though I did. It’s amazing how one can become ignorant. Standing in front of Dr. Amjad, I forgot all my medical training and found myself behaving like an imbecile, as though I knew nothing.
I stood there asking and asking, and he answered me tersely, impatient with my questions, as though I were keeping him from something important.
Dr. Amjad explained that you would die within three days and asked me to contact your relatives about arrangements for the funeral, but instead of trying to get hold of Amna I returned to your room and began my work.
You have brought me back to the medicine that I hated and had forgotten. Don’t be afraid of the fever. My opinion is that the clot occurred somewhere near the area of the fever in the brain, and the pressure is interfering with your body temperature, which means that the fever will disappear once the blood is drawn off.
Don’t be afraid.
I disagreed with Dr. Amjad when he said that the shivering was your death tremor. You were shivering with fever, and the fever would go. As you see, I was right. But do you remember what Nurse Zainab did? She started massaging your chest. When I asked what she was doing, she said that she was helping your soul escape from your body.
“Don’t you see how his soul is shaking?” she asked.
“That’s fever, you idiot,” I shouted, and chased her out of the room, locked the door and sat down, not knowing what to do.
During those first days I despaired. For three days I didn’t leave your room. I changed your IV and put antibiotics in it; Dr. Amjad made fun of me, telling me that the fever had nothing to do with any inflammation.
But I wanted you to live — not because I’m a nonbeliever, as Nurse Zainab had thought — but because I don’t want you to die in bed.
Do you remember what you told me when I visited to offer my condolences after Nahilah died? You received me calmly and offered me an unsweetened coffee. I asked you, as people offering condolences usually do, about the circumstances of her illness and her death, but you didn’t give me any details. You said she’d died in the hospital in Nazareth. Then you started murmuring some verses by al-Mutanabbi.*
You recited the poetry as though you’d composed it yourself, and you said you’d never die here. You’d go and die over there.
“And if I die here, try to bury me over there.”
“As you wish, Abu Salem,” I said.
But then you looked at me strangely and said it was impossible, because you knew that your end would be a grave in the camp that would become a soccer field a few years later. You were talking about the mass grave of the victims of the 1982 Shatila massacre, where children now play soccer and trash is scattered all over the place. Then you went back to al-Mutanabbi’s verses:
We make ready our swords and our spears
And the Fates destroy us without a fight.
We bury each other and the remains of those who came first
Are trampled on by those who came later.
That day — do you remember? — that day I suggested to you that you go to Deir al-Asad immediately and you said the time hadn’t come and that you’d return when you were good and ready.
For three days I did the impossible to save you in your room. You’d open your bloodshot eyes, and I’d close them for you, because leaving them open endangers the cornea. The eye is not a mirror, it’s a network of mirrors that must not be exposed to the air for too long or it’s ruined. I focused all my attention on your eyes so that you wouldn’t lose your sight. Because in those early days, I was certain that you would awaken from that sleep.
The strange thing is that, on the fourth day, when your temperature fell and you were lying quietly, I felt very afraid. I was certain the drop in your temperature would begin your return to consciousness. But stabilization led to lethargy. Now you never open your eyes. I’ve taken to opening them myself and passing my finger in front of them, but the pupils don’t respond. Glaucoma has begun. The redness has been replaced by a bluish whiteness.
“He’s entered a state of lethargy,” said Dr. Amjad.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but he’ll stay like that until he dies.”
“And when will he die?”
“I can’t specify the hour, but he will die.”
Dr. Amjad decided to substitute a feeding tube for the IV. At first I objected, but then I realized that he was right, the tube will put life back into your guts.
And I started to prepare your food for you myself. I replaced the hospital’s ready-made yellow potion with bananas, milk, and honey that I mixed for you. For the last three months, you’ve been eating nothing else, like a baby.
Is it true that newborn infants are as happy as they look, or are they like you, opening their eyes in pain, refusing to take part in the life we’re forcing on them? You’ve changed my thinking about being an infant. All the same, and despite the pain, I dream of having one, because a baby gives you the feeling that you’ll live on through other people, that you won’t die.
“That’s a delusion,” you’ll say.
There, I agree with you, but I told Shams when I fell in love with her that I wanted nothing more than to have a child with her. A brown-skinned child that looked like her. No, it’s not true that I was involved in her murder. I swear I had nothing to do with it. The problem wasn’t with me but with Sameh Abu Diab. They killed her to avenge Sameh. I did nothing to hurt her. She told me she loved me and then left to kill Sameh. I loved her the way one loves, but she left and got herself killed. She killed him and then was killed, and that was that. I don’t want to talk about her any more.
I’m worried about you. You’ve settled into death, it’s as though you’ve turned your temporary coma into a permanent state.