White Masks by Elias Khoury Page A

Sitt Huda always said: “Why do you people have so many children?” And Fatimah wouldn’t know what to say. Sitt Huda had only two children, Fadee and Marie, who was studying in Paris, but she, Fatimah, had five of them, and she was pregnant again.
    Mahmud would sit outside the entrance of the building all day, while she cooked both upstairs and downstairs. He just sat there, chatting to the shopkeepers, doing nothing - even washing the stairs was her job now, and she didn’t dare ask for his help. He only ever took care of her during her confinements. He spent all his time with little Ali - of course, Fatimah loved Ali, she loved all her children - but all Mahmud ever did was sit there playing with Ali in front of the building. All day. Every day.
    And Fadee had stopped casting those sideways glances at her, maybe because she’d aged. “I look older than Sitt Huda,” she’d say to Mahmud. But he’d ignore her and keep humming. He’d say the lady wasn’t a real woman, anyway.
    â€œReal women bear children . . . But this Sitt Huda, she does nothing all day, while her poor husband toils away.”
    Fadee wouldn’t even glance at her when he came into the kitchen. Perhaps it was because he was older now, but he was still fair-skinned and had
those doe-like eyes of his that rekindled in her the memory of that strange sensation . . .
    She’d been sitting on the bed in her small room darning socks, and Fadee - who was the same age as her, as Sitt Huda liked to point out - had come in one day. He entered her little room just off the kitchen and asked her to make him a cup of coffee. She got to her feet.
    â€œBut you never drink coffee.”
    â€œI do now,” he replied, as he puffed on an American cigarette.
    She assumed that he was brazen enough to smoke and to drink coffee because no one was home. In any case, she got up. As she filled the coffee pot with water from the tap at the kitchen sink, she felt his hand tremblingly reach for hers. How soft his fingers were under the water! . . . Fatimah felt the blood rushing to her eyes. He stood so close behind her that she could feel his warm breath on her neck, but she didn’t dare turn around. She felt him draw closer and the burning sensation in her eyes sharpened. Not even realizing how or why, she drew her hand away and spun around, dropping the coffee pot into the sink. A shudder ran through his body as he stepped back.
    â€œWith just a hint of sugar, please.”
    And he left the kitchen.
    She refilled the coffee pot, lit the gas burner and stood watching over it: first, the bubbles rising to the surface as the water came to the boil, and then the coffee cascading down, mingling with the water, and finally dissolving. She stood there expectantly - with an almost liquid sensation of fear seeping from her belly - and waited for him, expecting him to come back. But he didn’t.

    She poured the coffee, set the cup on a brass tray, placed beside it a glass which she filled with water, and then carried the tray into the living room. He was sitting, one leg crossed over the other, reading the paper. He neither looked up nor turned to her. He did not say a word. She put the tray down on the table in front of him and stood there.
    â€œYour coffee, Khawaja Fadee.”
    He set the paper down very slowly, tapped a cigarette out of the white box of Kents, stood up, and came toward her.
    â€œCigarette . . . ?”
    He drew closer, placed the cigarette between her lips, his hand brushing against her face. He had stepped back and bent down to pick up the matches from the table when the telephone rang. Fadee dashed to answer. Fatimah put the cigarette down on the table and went back to her room to finish the darning.
    He didn’t come back. He was on the phone a long time: she could hear him, laughing and speaking in French. No, he didn’t come back. Then everyone came home, the master, the mistress, and the