The day we left for Australia, Hamza’s colored photograph was still hanging in the living room. By talking about him, Nahil keeps his presence in the house strong. Sometimes I think that she’s making Hamza into a fairytale hero — a man everyone fears, especially my father. Nahil makes sure he’s ever-present in the house; she always recounts stories about him and keeps his portrait hanging in the living room.
After his death, Nahil took the original black-and-white portrait to Harut, the photographer, near our house in Zuqaq al-Blat, and asked him to color it.
At first Harut was perplexed by Nahil’s request. He told her that men never ask to change the color of their photographs, only women do. Nahil insisted, almost losing her patience, “Hamza entrusted it to me and died, how can you know what he would have wanted?” She took Hamza’s small cloth wallet out of her bag and gave all the money in it to Harut, saying, “If you don’t know how to color it, I’ll take it to Vicken.” Vicken was the owner of a studio near AUB.
She didn’t want Harut to choose only the colors he wanted for Hamza; she wanted all the colors. She stood in front of him with the picture in her hand and described the color of the shirt that Hamza was wearing in the portrait, the color of his trousers and his tarboush, though they all appeared to be the same color. She wanted to be sure of everything before she left the studio. Every time he made a colored photograph and took it from the black box behind the curtain, she would shake her head disapprovingly and ask him to redo it. Harut colored my grandfather’s cheeks red, and his lips too, so he looked like a clown dressed up in a fighter’s clothes. In black-and-white, the weapon Hamza bears looked frightening; in the new photo it looks like it’s made of plastic, the kind of toy children use to play war.
The male line in our house ended with my brother’s death. Nahil’s repeated complaint was no use — she wanted more sons for my father, but my mother Nadia refused to have more than two children: my brother Baha’ and me. She was afraid that another pregnancy would end in the baby’s death and so she refused to have a big family. She has carried this fear with her from her own childhood; it’s a fear she’s been living out from the first time she gave birth and it predates even her marriage to Salama.
Nadia is the only survivor in a family whose mother bore more than five sons, each of whom died at birth. Every time my grandmother, Nadia’s mother, gave birth, the baby died the moment he was born or a few days afterward. Not only did this mother suffer through the pains of pregnancy and childbirth, she then had to suffer the loss of her baby. This was enough to make her accept her husband’s accusations that she had rolled over onto the baby while she was sleeping and killed it.
Nadia was the only one who lived, despite her soft, delicate constitution. When Nadia was a small child, they took her to a shaykh in the Biqaa who was meant to help her mother bring boys into the world who would survive. They took her first to visit the Prophet Job’s shrine and fed her sweets and fruit. Then she got back in the car and was taken to a place near the house of the shaykh where he sat her in a big basket. The weather was cold and the basket had a long rope tied to it so it could be lowered into a dried-up well. Nadia was small and from the opening of the well she looked like a bundle of folded clothes forgotten in the basket.
When the basket reached the bottom of the well, the shaykh asked her to wish aloud for whatever she desired, and then, by God, all her wishes would come true. They had told her at home to ask for a brother and not to ask for toys or sweets or clothes. Everyone prepared her in advance to say the right words. “Ask for a brother, called Yusuf,” they told her, repeating it over and over again so that she’d memorize the name. The shaykh repeated his question, “What do you want?”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t answer, because she had started to think: What if she asked God to bring her a brother and then he died after he was born like the other baby brothers? What if her mother got pregnant again with another baby who was born and then died? And then another baby was born and died? She could see her mother’s face, her mother’s body rolling on the floor, moaning in pain. She could hear her crying. Suddenly she heard the shaykh’s voice descending toward her from the opening of the well. When she didn’t answer, the voice began to shout. She started to shiver, her teeth chattering from cold and fear. But she didn’t ask for anything, she stayed silent. The shaykh yelled louder. At the time, it felt as if it was her father screaming down at her. They seemed to have the same voice. Suddenly she raised her voice— soft, weak and frightened — from the bottom of the well. Her words were like a wail. Hesitant and fearful, she asked for only one thing. She asked God to make her father die and free her mother from him. Then she lost herself in disjointed, strangulated sobs.
When my mother’s only brother Yusuf was born, my maternal grandmother dressed him in little girls’ clothes for four years. She said this was the only way to keep the evil eye far from him.
My grandmother Nahil has died. I went into her room one morning and thought she was still sleeping.
I go to see Nour three days after I lose my grandmother Nahil. I want to see him, to see his face and eyes, to know that everything’s well with him. When I see him I relax. We walk together from his office to his house, a short distance that seems to take a lifetime.
When we arrive, he locks the door behind him. At that moment I understand the meaning of the expression “Your heart is shattering in your palm.” My heart plunges.
I don’t know what to do when I enter. I pick up the jacket that I had put on the back of the sofa when I walked in and put it on. I do exactly the opposite of what is usually done. What we’d wear to go out, I put on as we enter. It’s as if I’m hiding the passion bursting from inside me, preserving it, fearing it, pushing it back inside one more time — with my clothes. But as soon as I’ve put on the jacket I discover that nothing in the world, absolutely nothing, can keep my desire from escaping. I leave my arms around him. I leave my head, its sadness and desire, on his shoulders. I bury my face in the folds of his wine-colored sweater. I need to breathe in his scent. It enters my pores like an act of love. A force pushes me toward him. I forget my house in Kenya; I forget what brought me here to Lebanon; I forget everyone in the world. I want only him at this moment, powerfully. I want to be with him alone. The two of us alone together with the door locked behind us. I shut the door firmly. I leave the world outside.
I come close to him. He is familiar and friendly. His scent — the scent and fragrance of his skin — penetrates my every pore. He says that he’s nervous and afraid. I don’t say anything. He says that with every human death a little bit of God dies, that love and death can’t encounter each other, that he doesn’t like making love at moments like these. I don’t understand what he’s trying to say. I know only one thing: that during Nahil’s burial, a passion and desire for him swept me away. A vague force pushed me toward him as though nothing within me could resist death except a moment of love with him. My hands journey across his body, to discover him through touch.
He seems lost and anxious… His kisses were that way too, they slid from my face to my neck and my chest to my belly then my vulva. He’s quick and absentminded, his mouth doesn’t pause. I want him to come inside me, quickly. I feel that he’s bringing a deep pain out from inside me, a pain that resides there and has become part of my body. I hear myself moaning, my sighs increasing like the echo of a wounded animal in a forest. Then I start to cry. I couldn’t cry the day Nahil died. Only now can I cry for her. I start crying with Nour, who seems like a child, in how hard he’s trying to satisfy me.