by Sinan Antoon
I walked toward the little stone grotto enclosing a statue of the Virgin Mary in the courtyard behind the church. Two women stood reverentially to one side. I took out a few bills from my wallet and placed them inside a wooden money box on which were painted
in white the words Association of Our Lady of Deliverance for the Aid of the Poor. I lit a taper from the pile stacked next to the box, and anchored it on the tray next to six others that were already burning. Then I lit one more on behalf of Saadoun, as I had promised, and looked toward the statue. A sudden gust of wind ruffled the flames and I had to relight a candle that had gone out.
I heard the rustling of the palm fronds above my head and felt happy that a palm tree was in the courtyard to protect Mary inside her grotto. Hinna and I had had an argument on the very subject some twenty years earlier. We’d been sitting having our tea in front of the television one evening when Abdel-Basit began chanting Surat Maryam, a splendid calligraphy of which was displayed on the screen.
And the pangs of childbirth drove her unto the trunk of the palm-tree. She said: Oh, would that I had died ere this and had become a thing of naught, forgotten!
Then (one) cried unto her from below her, saying: Grieve not! Thy Lord hath placed a rivulet beneath thee, And shake the trunk of the palm-tree toward thee, thou wilt cause ripe dates to fall upon thee.
So eat and drink and be consoled.
Hinna began muttering the way she did when she was irked.
“What I’d like to know is where Muhammad got this palm tree story from? There’s nothing of the sort in the Gospels.”
“There is actually . . . but not in the version you read.”
I had recently read about the Gnostic Gospels and the historical details had impressed me.
“And what gospel would that be?” she asked, puzzled.
“The story of the palm tree and Jesus speaking from his cradle occurs in two gospels the church rejects.”
“So why haven’t I heard of it?”
“How could you? The church isn’t going to tell you about gospels it won’t recognize.”
“If they were authentic, we would’ve heard about them long ago.”
“What do you mean authentic? They recount stories from the life of Jesus just like the other gospels do. There’s a gospel written by Judas and one by Mary Magdalene.”
“A gospel written by Judas? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s a historical fact, but the church doesn’t want it to be known.”
“And what I’d like to know is what business you have with the church? You never set foot there and won’t have anything to do with it!”
“Alright, alright, don’t get upset. But honestly, why won’t you let the Virgin Mary have a few dates?”
Now she was really angry—to her such words were tantamount to blasphemy.
“Honestly, I tell you, Youssef, sometimes you just go too far,”
she said, getting up and leaving the room.
I felt remorseful because I liked needling her for no reason. I wasn’t pious or devout the way she was, but I had faith in my own way. I just didn’t put much store by obligations and teachings. I considered them signposts on the path to God for those who needed them—a code of conduct that they felt was necessary, but I felt no such need. I knew that God existed, that the universe and all it encompassed weren’t just random occurrences that had no rhyme or reason—even though I still had many questions to which I hadn’t found any clear answers. Questions about the universe, about mankind and nature. The question that bothered me in particular was how God could allow all the evil there was without punishing its perpetrators, despite being omnipresent—not just in holy books, prayers, and houses of worship, but in nature, in beauty. It didn’t matter to me which of the many paths to God people followed. The path itself was no guarantee of the seeker’s purity, in any case. People, both good and bad, trod the path to God, and some thought theirs was the only true way.
I made the sign of the cross and turned around. A young woman in her twenties, with deep black eyes and a gorgeous face, wearing a blue dress and carrying a black purse to match her shoes, was leaning against the trunk of one of the tall palm trees. She had slipped off one of her shoes apparently to relieve a painful foot. She looked down at her reddened heel and then said to an older woman who could’ve been her mother but who wasn’t as nicely dressed, “Go on in ahead of me . . . I’ll be there in a minute.”
The older woman headed toward the church entrance, and I followed suit.
I went up the three wide steps and entered. I dipped my index finger in the glass of holy water and made the sign of the cross on my face. I walked down the aisle between the wooden pews toward the altar. The chandeliers hanging from the ceiling hadn’t been turned on yet, there was enough light coming in through the large windows high up on the walls. Engraved in gold Kufic script, the words of the Credo glowed on the wooden molding that framed the arcade of columns running the entire length of the nave. I
had learned the words by heart when I was a child, repeating them and hearing them repeated at every church service.
I believe in one God,
the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only begotten Son of God,
begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light,
very God of very God,
begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made;
who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man;
and was crucified also for us
under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried;
and the third day he rose again
according to the Scriptures,
and ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
The columns seemed to be carrying a heavy burden. In addition to the Credo, each pillar bore the weight of the bricks, cement, plaster, and ceiling on top of it, as well as a scene from the
Stations of the Cross reproducing the various stages of the Passion, when Christ carried the cross to Golgotha and thence to his fateful destination.
Some twenty people who’d arrived before me were already seated in various places. About six rows from the front, I slipped into a pew on my right, claiming the space nearest the aisle. I made the sign of the cross one more time, and sat down in contemplation.
The hushed silence inside the church was broken only by the young man testing the microphones that had been set up for the choir, and by the sound of occasional footfalls, throat clearing, or benches creaking as someone sat down. I took out my phone and saw there were no messages. I had been expecting Maha to call or text me. I turned off the phone—it really bothered me when cell phones rang in inappropriate places and times—and put it back in my pocket.
I looked up at the large paintings hanging on the wall in front of me, right above the altar and directly under the dome. In the center painting, the Blessed Mother, donning a golden crown, extended her hand to all those looking toward her. From a halo of light on her bosom, the child Jesus looked out innocently, clutching his own glowing heart in the left hand while his right hand lay open, palm facing up. To the right of that painting was another in which Mary, dressed in her blue robe and with a white veil on her head, knelt in prayer as a flight of angels circled above her in the sky. To her left knelt an angel larger than the rest that didn’t look like an angel at all but more like a man in a white robe with two wings. My gaze moved to the third painting in which the figure of Jesus stood in the center of the heavens in a white tunic and blue robe. Rays of light radiated from his face and dozens of angels hovered nearby. The vaulted cei
ling and sides of the dome were covered in frescoes of celestial spume mingling with ocean waves. Two cherubs holding a crown hovered above the head of the Virgin Mary who was seated inside the sun’s orb. She seemed unaware that she was being crowned, her attention directed at the swaddled Jesus lying in her lap.
Even though my attendance was lackadaisical, I appreciated the aesthetics of the church and was moved by its liturgies and rites, especially when the deacon or priest had a melodious voice. The chants, the incense, the bells, the lavishly embroidered vestments, and the prayers all moved my spirit, quite possibly for other reasons than those of most worshippers. For me, the chants in Aramaic and Syriac that the priest intoned issued from the dawn of time, from unknown beginnings. I considered mass a celebration of life, of birth, of death, and of resurrection, not only Christ’s, but all of humanity. To me, Christ was an immortal sacred tree that withstood storms and floods and came back to life every spring. I stopped myself because these were the very things that provoked Hinna’s fury—
such views were anathema, in her opinion, the worst sort of absurdist philosophy, and here I was bringing them to mind at this service in her memory. I remembered how furious she’d been
when I once voiced the opinion that Mary’s suffering had been greater than Christ’s, because she saw her own son being crucified and there was no greater grief than a mother’s. Then I started thinking about Maha and her sorrow. I wondered whether my words, and my ‘objectivity,’ had been too harsh. I needed to avoid such arguments with her in the few remaining months before her departure. The church was getting full and I turned around several times to look for her and Luay but didn’t see them anywhere.
Mater Dolorosa
Shake the trunk of this moment
And it will provide death in abundance
—An Iraqi Mary
1
I entered the darkened bedroom, kicked off my house shoes, flung myself on the bed, and buried my face in the cold pillow. It wasn’t really our bedroom at all but more of a way station. Just like the rest of the house, and our entire life by that point. My grief quickly rose to the surface and spilled out as it had for the whole of the past year, at first a soft keening, and then the tears came in heaving, rhythmic, sobs. I’d forgotten to close the door behind me and they were sure to hear me!
Soon enough, I heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
They got closer, the light was switched on, and Luay’s voice repeated my name gently.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked.
“Please, please, turn it off!” I cried. The light’s harshness felt unbearable. “Please, I’m begging you, turn the light off.” I repeated through my tears as I clung to the pillow and covered my eyes to block out the glare.
“As you wish, my love.” He switched the light off and closed the door.
He came over to sit on the edge of the bed and I felt his hand on my right shoulder. I didn’t move. I was curled up in a fetal position, with my back turned to him. He reached over to wipe the tears from my face, but I just wound myself in more tightly. Even though I felt bad doing it, I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t bear being touched. He withdrew his hand and I felt him lie down against my back. He put his arm around me diffidently, without saying anything. As I wept, I wondered whether he was getting fed up with me. He didn’t say much anymore, and never uttered a word when I’d get upset or fly into a rage. He just held me in his arms quietly. Silence was all I wanted, it was less painful that way.
All that could be heard in the silent room were my sobs. How could he not be fed up with me when I myself was weary of all the sorrow dragging around my heart like a dead weight? However exasperated or weary he may have been, he never said anything that might hurt my feelings.
“Everything’ll be fine once we leave,” was the only thing he’d say, and the words turned into a mantra in the months following the miscarriage. I would agree and say after him, “Yes, once we leave, everything will be okay.” We repeated and clung to those words like an invocation but our faith in them was quite different. There were days when I was wracked by doubt and the invocation vied against a nagging question: would everything really be ‘fine’ after I finished my studies and we left this hellhole? Or would I always be plagued by this constant feeling that I was falling over and over again into a dark and arid pit where not a drop of moisture was to be found besides my tears?
I am alone in the pit; Luay hasn’t fallen into it with me, although he can see where I have landed. He can see with his own eyes that I am crouching at the bottom, he can tell how bad my fall was, and I watch him above ground trying to pull me out with his hand extended, but unable to do so. The pit is so deep no one can get down inside it. And it’s so narrow, there’s only room in it for my own sorrow. This is no fantasy, it is something real that I experience in a constantly recurring nightmare.
I see myself lying on the bed in a clean hospital room. The ceilings are high and white, like the walls. The doctor’s coat and hijab are also white as are the uniforms and hijabs of the nurses standing around the bed. In the nightmare, I’m not a doctor but a patient. I feel as though I have rocks in my head.
Their glances travel to the right of the bed; I turn with difficulty and see my swaddled baby lying in a crib with his eyes shut. His hands and feet twitch like a fledgling trying to fly. My heart flutters and soars toward him. I want to hold him in my arms and kiss him. I stretch out my hand but I can’t reach. I tell them I’d like to hold him in my lap but I have no voice and they don’t respond. The doctor smiles and she gestures to me to come closer. When I try to get up, everything spins around and around and my head starts pounding. The nurses are smiling but none of them move to try and help me. I sit up on the edge of the bed with my feet dangling in the air. They all disappear, the doctor as well as the nurses. Looking down, all I see is pitch-black darkness, and like a hot, rolling tear, I drop to the bottom of the pit. I hear myself screaming and crying as I fall. When I hit the bottom, I hear an explosion. I crouch down and hear a baby crying. I know it’s my baby, even though I can’t see him. My hand reaches out and I scream.
Then I wake up, soaked in tears and sweat, clenched up in a ball like a child crying for its mother, not like a mother crying over her child.
2
Holding me in his arms, I’m sure that Luay is thinking, “When are things going to go back to normal?”
He had hoped that I would get pregnant again and that it would somehow make up for our loss and erase our sorrow. That’s what everyone trying to comfort us said: “Don’t give up hope. Yalla, by the grace of God, you’ll be rewarded with another baby.” I didn’t mind, even though the idea of being pregnant and studying at the same time seemed much harder than the first time around when I was able to do both without difficulty. My mother was always alluding to the subject, as was my mother-in-law. I guess they’re entitled to want grandchildren. I would invariably respond by saying all in good time, but it seems as if a miracle might be needed. Since the miscarriage, we have only had sex three or four times, and not once did we finish. I really wanted to be aroused and the first time we did it, I responded to his kisses and caresses. But a strange mix of feelings I’d never had before began to stir inside me. When he took my nipple in his mouth and began nibbling and tugging on it, I burst into tears, and couldn’t stop crying for an hour. He held me close in his arms and apologized, saying he’d probably gone too quickly. I told him I was sorry, and he was understanding and gentle. The second time, my body was completely unresponsive even though I felt I wanted it. Tears were the only thing my body produced, as if it were mourning what had been rent from it by force. I wondered whether the body had a will of its own and was able to refuse the dictates of the conscious mind? That is what I began to believe.
He tried to fool around a few more times after that but I always found excuses to put him off, saying I was tired or not in the mood. When he slept by my side and got aroused, he tried to guide my hand t
o his hard-on but I just wasn’t interested. He got tired of my stalling tactics and repeated rejection, and gradually he stopped even trying to approach me. I’m not sure, but I suspect that he’s just come to rely on himself in the bathroom every day.
Maybe even in bed. I woke up one night as the bed was shaking but he must have stopped when he heard me moan in my sleep.
3
I feel terrible about erupting like a volcano in front of Youssef. I appreciate his generosity and kind-heartedness in hosting us all this time, and I will be indebted to him as long as I live. But I can’t stand his pontificating, his oversimplifications, and a sort of bleeding heart that borders on naiveté. I want to be able to watch the news, comment, and express my opinion freely without getting into long drawn-out debates that make me uncomfortable because I have to respect my host and his viewpoints. I want to curse and criticize whomever and whatever I please, even if “that’s not objective,” as he keeps telling me. But I’m not in my own house, and I can’t go
back home because I don’t have a home anymore. Of course, I could stay upstairs in our apartment and watch the news there. It’s not like I watch a whole lot anyway, but it wouldn’t be polite to use the house like a hotel and not keep him company when there is an opportunity to do so. Youssef welcomed us with open arms and wouldn’t hear of us paying rent.
Once my tears had ebbed and my sorrow subsided, I wanted to ask Luay what Youssef had said after I’d left the room and how upset he was, but I could tell by the way he was breathing deeply that he had fallen asleep. He’d had a long and tiring day at work, as always, and that made me feel even more guilty. I vowed to apologize to Youssef before leaving for school the next day and to make him tabsi badhinjan, his favorite dish, as soon as I had the chance. He would forgive me, I was sure, he knew how much I loved and respected him, even if we disagreed strongly about the fate of our community and the intensifying sectarianism in the country. All of creation was close to his heart, and that included me.
