Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury Page A

his heart never wavered. Yunes “withdrew” because he was a hero. I, on the other hand, am hiding in his room because I’m a coward. Have you noticed how things have changed? Those days were heroic days, these are not. Yunes got scared, so he became a hero; I’m scared, so I’ve become a coward.
    When Yunes returned to Bab al-Shams, he didn’t tell Nahilah about the revenge that never happened. But me – the crippled nurse looks at me with contempt because she’s waiting for me to justify my stay at the hospital. Shams was killed, and I’m expected to pay the price for a crime I didn’t commit.
    I don’t sleep.
    And you – could you sleep after you postponed your revenge?
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    * Koran, Surah III, 169.
    * A soft, yogurt cheese.

Y OU WANT A STORY!
    I know you’d like to change the subject, you don’t agree with my way of telling the story of your son’s death and your revenge. You’ll ask me to tell it a different way. Maybe I should say, for example, that the moment you got close to the barbed wire, you understood that individual revenge was worthless and decided to go back to Lebanon to organize the fedayeen so we could start the war.
    â€œIt wasn’t a war. It was more like a dream. Don’t believe, Son, that the Jews won the war in ’48. In ’48, we didn’t fight. We didn’t know what we were doing. They won because we didn’t fight, and they didn’t fight either, they just won. It was like a dream.”
    You’ll say you chose war instead of revenge, and I have to believe you. Everyone will believe you, and they’ll say you were right, and I’m trying to camouflage my fear within yours.
    You weren’t afraid that night of March 1951.
    And I’m not afraid now!
    When Yunes told how his son Ibrahim died in 1951, he spoke a lot about Nahilah’s suffering. He never spoke of his own suffering, only of his thirst for revenge.
    â€œDidn’t you feel pain?” I asked him.
    â€œDidn’t you want to die? Didn’t you die?”
    â€œI don’t understand, because I’m only afraid of one thing,” I once told Shams, transported by our love. “I’m afraid of children.”
    When we made love, she’d scream that it was the sea. She was next to me and over me and under me, swimming. She said she was swimming in the sea, the waves cascading from inside her. She would rise and bend and stretch and circle, saying it was the waves. And I would fly over her or under her or through her, flying above her undulating blue sea.
    â€œYou are all the men in the world,” she said. “I sleep with you as if I’m with all the men I’ve known and not known.” I’d soar above her listening to her words, trying to put off the moment of union. I’d tell her to go alittle more slowly because I wanted to smell the sky, but she would pull me into her sea and submerge me and push me to the limits of sorrow.
    â€œYou’re my man and all men.”
    I didn’t understand the expanses of her passion and her desire to control her body. She would massage her body and grasp her breasts and swoon. I’d watch her swoon and it was as though she weren’t with me, or as though she were in a distant dream, a sort of island encircled by waves.
    I didn’t dare ask her to marry me because I believed her. She said she was a free woman and would never marry again. I believed her and understood her and agreed with her, despite feeling that burning sensation that could only be extinguished by making her my own.
    I agreed with her because I was powerless and didn’t dare force her to choose between marrying me and leaving me, for the idea of not seeing her was more painful than death.
    Then I found out she’d killed Sameh because he’d refused to marry her. They said she’d stood over his body and pronounced, so everyone could hear, “I give myself to