Eliyya paused. He let the girl from New York go on talking, and for a period of time, for almost an entire hour, Eliyya appeared not to have anything to say. He just listened and smiled enough to assure her he was trustworthy, an impression he knew he gave to people who talked to him. She, in turn, wasn’t expecting any response from him, but after describing herself and her daily routine to him, she remembered that being a good conversationalist required showing interest in the listener, so she asked him if he was familiar with New York. At that point, the knot in his tongue was loosened and he started improvising, as he’d grown accustomed to doing, this time with a new story in which he said he lived in New York and had been born in Egypt. He supposedly had grown up in a Jewish family in Alexandria and had a half-crazy paternal aunt whose real name was Sarah, but they called her by the alias Jamila. His aunt claimed that the commander of the British Army, Colonel Roger Whittaker, who was stationed there during WWII and according to her was a hero in the Battle of Elalamein, was in love with her. Supposedly the British Intelligence asked her to collaborate with them in return for a large sum of money, but she refused. Whenever she had trouble finding anyone to listen to her stories, she would gather the children of the family together and tell them her stories of love and disappointment. Eliyya went on to say he had a younger sister who had fallen in love with a young and handsome Muslim. She had run away with him despite the family’s protests and accusations of betrayal. He was finishing up his story with his usual enthusiasm when he noticed that Suzanne, sitting there beside him, was shutting her eyes little by little and the magazine she was holding was about to slip out of her hands. A little baffled, he watched her a while until she had dozed off completely with her head resting on his shoulder. Eliyya continued his story as if Suzanne was still listening to him. He took advantage of her nap to tell her another story.
‘In a small town far, far away, on the western coast of the Mediterranean Sea, there was a place full of dense fir trees standing like sad women on the slopes of the high mountains; clusters of snow shimmered above them in the spring sun, and the plains were covered with olive trees; a place where the waters splashed and the mountain dipped its feet in the ancient sea…’
Eliyya told the story as if he were reading it from a book, with a monotonous rhythm that most likely helped keep Suzanne asleep.
‘… And there was a man who was forty years old. He’d married a girl he loved and who loved him, and for fifteen years they lived without the blessing of children. Then, on one hot spring night, his wife forced him to sleep with her. But it so happened that the next day the man was killed in a massacre that took place in a church. This was when, rather than coming to an end, all the problems began. Some of the townspeople insisted that in all the confusion the man had been accidentally shot by his own relatives; while friends of his from the enemy’s family said he’d been shot in the back intentionally. On Saturday, the 7th of March of the following year, his widow gave birth to a son. It was at least one week more than nine months later, assuming that the last time his father had slept with his mother before he was killed was the one that led to conception after fifteen years of futile attempts. In those days doctors did not have methods for inducing labour. And his mother had no way of getting to a doctor. So when she realised she was overdue, she sent a friend to get the midwife who lived in the area. The midwife spread his mother’s legs and took a look. The only medicine she could prescribe was to wait. She delivered him the next day, amidst the gunfire and family feuding and never-ending vendettas. He was a big baby, with a big body and a big head. At fourteen he could recite French poems by heart and learned to play the accordion and the clarinet. He knew it all — English, Arabic, French and Latin — though he hadn’t mastered any of it. He knew German philosophy but didn’t know the names of its pioneers. He knew music but couldn’t read musical notation. He was an expert in all the world’s cuisines, but couldn’t make an omelette. He lived an adventurous childhood but no one could be convinced that he was his father’s son, so they guessed other men to be his father, finally settling on the notion that his mother was his only parent. This was something that created a deep hole in his and his mother’s hearts. His mother couldn’t stand to have him near her, so she sent him away. He went to the other side of the world and told everyone he met there fabricated stories of his past, which no one believed. And here he is now, floating on his last flight to New York, carrying his burdensome Biblical name and that past of his, fraught with all its stubborn legends, trying to tell the truth about himself and his family for the first time in his life to a blonde American girl who isn’t listening…’
As soon as Eliyya stopped speaking, Suzanne opened her eyes and said reproachfully, ‘Why did you stop? I was enjoying your story very much… I usually don’t really like stories about fathers and mothers and sons, but it’s been a long time since someone told me a story while I drifted in and out of sleep…’
He paused a little, and then said, ‘It’s not a story…’
‘Doesn’t matter. You tell it the way my father used to tell me and my sister the story of Peter Pan. However much we resisted it would always send us to sleep… Go on. Please,’ she said, laying her head back on Eliyya’s shoulder to assure him she wanted to fall asleep to the sound of his voice again.
Eliyya finished his story before falling asleep himself on that long flight over the Atlantic. When the announcement to fasten seatbelts in preparation for landing came over the loudspeaker, Suzanne woke up and Eliyya cast out his hooks, as usual. ‘I know a French restaurant on…’ Suzanne didn’t seem to hear what he was saying. She was busy gathering her things.
He tried again. ‘Do you like French cuisine?’
He couldn’t get an answer from her. Things weren’t going his way as they usually did.
She preferred to change the subject. ‘Can you play it?’ she asked, pointing to the accordion.
Now it was his turn to keep silent and look out at the Manhattan skyscrapers.
At John F. Kennedy airport where the plane landed, Suzanne gave him her phone number and walked off into the crowd of travellers. He stood following her with his eyes until she disappeared into the distance, the whole time hoping she would turn just once to say goodbye to him. He tried calling her a week later and discovered there was no Suzanne to be found at that number and whoever it was who answered was very rude and angry. Whether it was her father or her husband or her boyfriend he didn’t know. Or maybe she had given him someone else’s phone number. He was forced to cut the call short and hang up.
Eliyya felt reassured having returned to his world. He smiled to himself. At the airport where Suzanne had left him standing among a group of Japanese tourists, he reclaimed his suitcase full of clothes. His mother had packed it with his baby clothes and shoes and added his school books and notebooks from his first years of school, along with the shiny metal bird standing on one leg with its wings spread. He took out the picture of his father that Davidian, the Armenian photographer, had had in his possession. He looked at it a long time. A man of medium build, with a look of self-assurance hiding some kind of sadness behind a smile he was forced to wear for the photographer. He tore the picture in half, getting rid of the other man standing beside his father. Eliyya checked the weather; it seemed cold so he took his black overcoat out of the suitcase, tossed it over his shoulder, shut the suitcase and left it behind him. He also left the bag of food and whatever still remained in it. He went outside carrying the wine-coloured accordion and the picture of Yusef al-Kfoury: unburdened, a traveller without bags. If anyone asked him — and who was going to ask him anyway? — he’d say his bags had been lost somewhere along the way in one of the three airports he’d travelled through.