As Though She Were Sleeping by Elias Khoury Page B

and one kind of silence blended into another.
    She wanted to say to him that he, too, had plans for a last-minute flight in his head but she did not say it. Her lips held the shadow of a melancholy smile as her hand brushed away specters of memories that had crept into her eyes. For the very first time she was sitting alone in a half-dark room with this man who – a few hours from now – would become her husband. She sensed his fear. How could she say to him that she had known he would visit this evening to tell her that his family would not be coming from Nazareth?
    The route is blocked. It’s the English – their army shut the road three days ago, she said.
    The cup of coffee shuddered in Mansour’s hand. He imagined something like shadows huddled over the lilac trees. He did not ask her how she knew about what was happening in Palestine, nor how, in the kitchen, she could have heard him say that his family could not come for the wedding. He put the coffee cup down on the little pedestal table. Around its rim were carved Kufic script letters, which he tried to read but could not.
    What does it say?
    How would I know? You’ll have to ask Musa. I think it might be poetry. Musa told me one of his friends brought this table from Syria as a gift.
    Mansour stared at the table, trying to decipher the elaborate calligraphy. No, he said finally, this isn’t poetry. They are verses from the Qur’an.
    He rubbed his hands together against the cold. Milia got up, put some wood in the stove, and sat down again. New warmth surged through theroom and the words returned to Mansour’s throat. He brushed away his confusion with a wave of his hand, believing that this young woman could not have noticed his fear. He took her hand, kissed the turquoise ring on her finger, cleared his throat, and opened his mouth.
    She toyed with her ring, a woman as fair
as a full bright moon in a night of stars
    But whene’er I tried to slip that circlet
off her soft plump angelical finger
    she cast it between her lips! See, I said,
she has hidden the ring in the signet
    And he told her the tale of his love.
    Night. Trees leaning into trees, and the winds of December dampen the windowpanes with rain. A man of thirty-seven years sits in the large room that the Shahin family calls the dar and rubs his hands together getting ready to declaim. It is a high-ceilinged room and the pleasant wood tones of the ceiling reflect the flames of the stove in the corner. Against the somber colors of four small blue sofas striped in black, a woman of twenty-three glows in her yellow dress. The milkiness of her skin flows all the way to the tips of her slender fingers. The man stares at the floor and imagines those white forearms bare to the shoulders. Out of the corners of his eyes he follows the flicker in the gas lamp hanging from the ceiling and speaks in a low voice. Looking at him seated on the couch, his body leaning forward slightly, one would not notice particularly the modest belly bulging slightly over his leather belt. But one would see his sloping shoulders, his eyes shaded by thick black brows in a dark round face and his black moustache.
    When Milia saw him for the first time she truly thought she was looking at her brother Musa and her conviction moved her to accept him as a husband.Or that was what she would say to her brother. The truth was somewhat different. From a distance or in the dark Mansour did look very much like Musa. Even in this pale lamplight the resemblance was strong. But in full daylight the difference between the two men was plain for all to see. Musa’s features were gentler and more delicate. True, his eyebrows were thick but they did not descend so closely over his eyes nor did they shadow his eyelashes, across which Milia’s fingers had passed so many times. Musa was not overly tall but he had an athletic build and showed no trace of a belly. The contours of his arm muscles were visible, while there was a slackness to Mansour’s