My older brother joins me, and my younger brother decides to come along too. The rest of the family stays with my parents. It’s best that way. The front door of my house is broken, but not too badly, and I can still lock it. I just need to replace one of the handles. There are lights on everywhere. The house itself is filthy. The doors to the kitchen cabinets are open wide and all of the shelves are bare. They didn’t leave a thing in the refrigerator either. It’s wide open, and there’s a light on inside. My brothers and I close all the doors. There’s nothing missing except food. In the storeroom I discover they took the olive oil too and all of the containers of olives. Never mind. The faucets give off the same sound of air pressure, and the occasional spurt.
“It’s okay. Just a little dirt, that’s all,” my younger brother says, and asks for a pack of cigarettes and the lighter. I go upstairs. The bedroom is just the way it was before, as if my wife and I are getting up to another ordinary morning, another day of work. I turn off the bedroom light, then check the baby’s room and take a look at all her toys. We’ll go back to playing with her in here. I turn out that light too and walk up the stairs leading to the roof. First I bend a little to catch sight of the tanks to the north. I can hear them, but not as loudly as before. The sound of the return to normal in the village overrides the sound of the tanks which I kept hearing so loudly these past few nights. I look up slowly and see their headlights. They’re moving, they’re in motion, they’re on their way out of here, leaving a trail of dust behind. Now I really know it’s all over.
My younger brother follows me up. “They’re leaving,” I tell him. He smiles and looks in the direction of the tanks and the jeeps as they move away from the boundaries of the village. “What was it all about?” he asks.
“We’ll know that tomorrow,” I reply, and walk toward the water tank on the roof. “I suppose things will be much better now.” I bend over and look inside. It’s beginning to fill up with water. “I’m telling you, things will be much better than they were. You’ll see.” My younger brother waves at the family downstairs. “Everything okay?” he asks, and I can hear my older brother answer from below. “Sure, no big deal. They hardly took anything. How about you?”
“Same here,” my younger brother answers. “I’m watching the military tanks. They’re leaving. Salamat.” He says to me, “Give me another cigarette. Let’s celebrate a little before I go back home.”
3
It’s almost four A.M. I go into the bathroom and stand completely still under the stream of water. I lower my head and let the water land on my scalp and drip down over my whole body. A brown puddle forms at my feet. Slowly the brownness fades, but the layer of dirt clings fast to my body. I rub my head with a generous dollop of shampoo. My hair has never felt this way before — tangled and bristly. One rinse isn’t enough to soften it, and I squeeze out some more shampoo, working it into my hair and across my scalp. But even though it’s no longer dirty, my hair refuses to go back to its former state. I wash my face with soap. My wounds burn at the touch of the lather. I ignore the burning sensation and try to be more gentle. I can’t shave my beard off yet. I have to wait for the sores to heal first. It won’t take long, maybe two or three days. I use a brush to clean my hands, my stomach, my back and my legs. After every part of my body that I clean, I rest a little, lift up my head and let the water run down my face and over my closed eyes. I open my mouth and let the water in.
I won’t go to work tomorrow, but I can’t wait till morning to pick up the phone to one of the editors and find out if they’re interested in a story. If they are, I’ll write it from home and send it in by e-mail. Enough is enough, I’m not going to make a fool of myself anymore. I’m not going to go into the office just to sit around doing nothing, not after what I’ve been through this week, not with these sores. If I go in tomorrow, I’ll look like a beggar.
From now on, I won’t go in unless they ask me to, the bastards, and if they don’t want this story from me, I guess it means they don’t want to see me anymore at all. Normally the papers have a field day if a reporter of theirs experiences anything even remotely as incredible as what I’ve been through. Reporters who were involved in a car accident and emerged with a scratch have been given front-page coverage damn it, and headlines about what it’s like: “Look Death in the Eye — Our Reporter Was Involved in a Traffic Accident and Miraculously Survived.” If they don’t want my story, I’ll try to sell it to a different paper. I’ll tell them so. Maybe it will scare them a little, but then again, maybe they won’t give a damn. We’ll see tomorrow. Only over the phone — I’m not going down there.
My wife comes into the bathroom and looks at me, smiling. “She’s asleep,” she whispers, and starts to undress. “How I’ve missed water,” she says. “I’ll go straight from the shower to school. I’m going to spend at least two hours in the shower.”
I look at my wife and study her body. How pregnancy and childbirth have made it expand. I study her face and she looks bashful, delicate, still embarrassed as she stands before me naked. It’s like that day, the first day I saw her. “You’ll never find a wife like her,” my mother said. “She comes from a very good family,” my father pointed out, and after my parents spoke with hers and received their approval in principle, the three of us went to propose to her. We sat in the living room, the best-tended room in their house — a big, colorful room with black leather sofas surrounded by vases with plastic flowers. A painting of a waterfall and lots of green trees on either side of a lake adorned one of the walls. In the center of the table was a large bowl of fruit and next to it a big copper vessel for making coffee, standing there like a sculpture. She wasn’t there waiting for us, and only arrived after her parents had welcomed us and we’d taken our places on the sofas. She was wearing a green dress that rustled like the plastic bags at the supermarket.
I look at her and recall the girl I saw on that visit, her body disappearing into her dress, her head lowered as she took my hand with her fingertips, so delicately that I could barely feel them. I felt uncomfortable at having planned the usual kind of handshake, using my full hand. I liked her handshake, actually, I’d never had anyone shake my hand that way before, gently, shyly. She really was good-looking. I’d never sat next to such a pretty girl, and I’d never dreamed I’d marry anyone like that. She looked like a high school student, though she had graduated two years earlier. Thin body, white face. Everything about her was a tad too small. She reminded me of the good girls in the Egyptian serials, which thrilled me.
I couldn’t believe such girls really existed. Women who were actually little girls. I tried not to stare, and made do with quick, stolen glances. I knew I mustn’t behave like an animal, but I also knew I wanted to marry her. After a few days of waiting, the time came for the official consent. Our next meeting added up to a handshake and an exchange of greetings after reading verses of the Koran as part of the engagement ceremony. When I took her hand in order to put on the ring that my mother had bought in her size, I felt my erection, and was terribly embarrassed. Never in my life had I held such delicate hands in mine and such thin white fingers. Two months later, we were married. Ten months later, our daughter was born.
“Make room for me,” she says with a laugh, and her body touches mine under the water. She hugs me and I push her away.
“I’ve got to rinse myself off again,” I say, which she finds funny, even though I meant it seriously. I get out of the bath and wrap myself in a towel. “Where to?” she asks with an apologetic look in her eyes. “Stay here, I’ve missed you. How about you?”