by Nihad Sirees
“‘I’m yours,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘Come, take me.’
“I didn’t understand what she meant. She started kissing me. I couldn’t understand what was happening. She didn’t even wait for me to get involved. I was hypnotised, in a dream state. She let me lie there. Then she got on top of me and took me inside of her.
“She was angelic. I clung to her body. Life surged through me afresh. I could hear myself panting as she gasped for air. She was kissing me and weeping. But she was defiant, gentle with me and extremely stern with all those people we’d decided to stick our tongues out at. Her breathing grew faster until she cried out and then cooled off again, quenched at last. She lay down next to me. I held on to her so she wouldn’t turn into a fading dream that would be forgotten in a few days. We remained silent, bound to one another. I felt both awakened and depleted. She stood up, put on her clothes, and left the room. She said something to Khadija and then came back inside. A few minutes later she took the serving tray from Khadija. I was so hungry I ate out of her hand. She began to feed me even as she kept on kissing me. I had been saved from the clutches of death for a second time.
“As she fed me, Widad told me everything. She told me it had been the Khojah who betrayed us to my uncle’s wife, that my uncle had pronounced his unjust ruling and thrown me into my prison until his daughter Jalila came of age. She asked me to come back to life if I truly loved her, to come back as powerful and handsome as I had been before. I promised her I would. She promised me she’d do whatever she could so we could be together all the time and said we could meet at Khadija’s house. Then she put the shawl back on in preparation for going back outside. But she kissed me for a few minutes before she finally left. I heard Khadija take her downstairs. Then the outer door slammed shut.”
The old man grew quiet. He leant his head against the headboard and closed his eyes. After he had finished his lunch, I helped him into bed. I started to monitor him. Sometimes he would squeeze his eyelids shut. I convinced myself that he was remembering what had gone on between him and Widad when they were in bed together. I let him reminisce about that state of passion and told myself I’d wait there for him, even if he fell asleep. I drew closer to him. I wanted to watch his skin twitch as he remembered the event. His breathing was laboured and feverish; beads of sweat bloomed on his temples. I could tell how relaxed he was, how much he was enjoying himself.
I moved to the window to observe what was going on outside. It was sunset. The day had ended quickly. I noticed that I could no longer hear the sound of rain. How had it escaped my notice until just then that it had stopped pouring? First I opened the window, then the shutters. Rain was falling softly, the last remaining drops. I took a deep breath. The horizon was clearer now that the low, heavy clouds had dispersed. All that was left were some high clouds which were likely to dissipate in the air at any moment. It seemed we would get some sun tomorrow. I closed the shutters and the window. Was it possible that the rain might stop and the sun might come out in the morning before the story was finished? I was anxious and distressed. I hurried over to switch on the light. I saw Shaykh Nafeh’s expression clearly. He was smiling now. I crouched beside the bed and studied the soft creases in his face. He must have been a handsome young man when Widad first decided to give herself to him. He had retained those good looks until that very moment, despite his advanced age. He opened his eyes and saw me there. He was happy. It seemed as if he had been having a pleasant dream that he was afraid might slip away from him. He closed his eyes again and gently nodded his head. I noticed his convulsing hands slowly going slack.
“Hey, Shaykh Nafeh… Are you awake?” I asked him in a near whisper so I wouldn’t disturb his pleasant mental state. He reached his hand out towards me and I held it close. It was warm, wrinkled and soft.
“Thank you, my dear boy, for listening to me,” he said. “You’ve allowed me to relive those moments. I’m so grateful that my last days brought you to me.”
“I’m so happy that you’re happy, but I’m sorry to inform you that the rain has stopped. Tomorrow the sun is going to shine. The end of the story must be upon us. I’m nervous about that.”
“Don’t worry. You’ve heard most of it now anyway. I’ll try to wrap it up quickly. I wouldn’t have any regrets at all if I were to die tomorrow.”
“But what about the end of the story? I want to know everything. And what about Ismail?”
“I’ll try, but you have to understand something. My whole life I’ve been trying to recall what happened that day between Widad and me but I always failed. I needed to tell someone like you just so that I could remember. You have no idea how relieved I am right now.”
I told him I was afraid for him to go to sleep.
“I know, Shaykh Nafeh, I know. Again, I’m delighted about your happiness, but what happened after she gave herself to you?”
As he drifted between dreaming and wakefulness, he said, “We started meeting at Khadija’s house every week, then every three days, then just about every day.”
“But what about your uncle Ibrahim Pasha?”
“He was happy for me. But when he saw the splotch of blood on Jalila’s underwear, they decided to marry us.”
“You didn’t run away?”
“Widad recommended that I go ahead and marry Jalila. She said there was no point in my missing out on the inheritance. At first I refused, but she insisted. She said I came from a good family and she was just a dancer, other things like that. Even though she knelt before me and cried, she told me it would make her happy for me to own my father’s house and workshop. She believed my uncle was capable of the worst, either forcing me to marry his daughter Jalila or else killing me out of humiliation. She was worried about me and convinced me that she’d wait for me.”
He began to speak more calmly, his words halting, as if he were drifting away from me. He spoke with his eyes closed. At first I shook him gently, then more and more forcefully.
On the verge of tears, I asked him, “What do you mean she would wait for you?”
“I had to travel to Paris with my wife in order to go to law school…”
“Why would you agree to that?” I asked aggressively.
“That was my mistake,” he replied as though in pain. “I didn’t have to get married and go like that, because…”
He started to cry.
“Because what? Tell me, Shaykh Nafeh, I beg of you.”
He began to disappear into his own kingdom. His hands were hardly trembling at all anymore. What was happening to him? I began shaking him again. With one hand I wiped away his tears and with the other hand I wiped away my own.
“Because… I…” he said, his words spaced further and further apart. “I wouldn’t… ever… see her… again… I lost her… for… ever…”
“Why? What happened?”
“Now… let me go… please…” he said, as if tremendous pleasure were washing over his entire body, as if he were back in the arms of his beloved, as if he were reaching orgasm. “I don’t want to lose this pleasure. I’m reliving those moments… I spent in her arms.”
“Just tell me what happened to Widad,” I said hurriedly, sensing that he was about to depart. “Please, I’ll kiss your hand.”
“Because… she… ran away… from… Khojah Bahira.”
Then he exhaled one last time and lost consciousness.
I held his hand and stroked it, tried to rouse him once again but his hand was limp and heavy. The hairs on my neck stood on end. I held his wrist and searched for a pulse. Time passed while I searched, but there was nothing. I drew away from the bed in horror. I muttered, “Shaykh Nafeh… Shaykh Nafeh!” I placed my ear against his chest, where his heart should have been. I didn’t hear a sound. Shaykh Nafeh was dead. I cradled him, then started to shake his body as I called out in a hushed voice, “Shaykh Nafeh… Shaykh Nafeh…”
I was overwhelmed by lethal panic, afraid I was going to die. I sat down on the ground, placed my head in
my hands. Could death come so easily? Just a few minutes before he had been talking and shuddering from his illness. He wanted to relive those moments of pleasure so he could die inside them. What a horrible thing. Had I helped him to die? My body quaked as I started to weep. He had only wanted to rediscover that forgotten pleasure so he could die in peace. I had been so captivated by his story that I was almost willing to die if I didn’t get to hear the ending. Then there was Ismail. He’d threatened to kill me but he hadn’t followed through on his threat because of the old man. Yet now the old man was dead, no doubt he would try. I told myself not to be afraid. I had a rifle. I could defend myself. But I was a man afraid of his own imagination. I’d rather die than kill another human being.
I heard the sound of Ismail’s footsteps tiptoeing upstairs. He was bringing dinner. I stood up and moved closer to the door. I wiped the tears from my eyes and placed my ear against the wooden door. I heard his footsteps getting closer. Then he placed the dinner tray on the ground and picked up the lunch tray. I heard him curse me as he walked away, his footsteps receding. I heard him go downstairs. Then silence again. I inhaled deeply, sat with my back against the door and spread my legs on the floor. I had to think. How and when was I going to get out of there? The best time would be at dawn, which meant I would have to spend the entire night with the old man’s corpse, and it also meant that Ismail couldn’t find out what had happened. If he knew his master was dead he would come straight in and kill me. He knew I wasn’t going to use the rifle because I was a coward. He told me as much when I caught him standing on the wooden ladder spying on us from outside the window. But why did the old man have to die? Why now? I had started to care about him and everything connected to the world he’d told me about. I loved Widad as much as he did. I began to love dance and the Khojahs and the kamancheh Suad used to play. I loved the handkerchiefs he had used to wipe away the sweat from Widad’s hand. I thought about taking them with me to Aleppo. I couldn’t live without the traces of Widad, especially the smell of sweat on her hands and the photograph of her standing just above the hat of the French High Commissioner Monsieur de Martel.
But what about the story? Would I lose it now that Shaykh Nafeh had died without finishing it? I couldn’t ask Ismail to finish it even though he was the only one who possibly could. He despised me because I had heard the story. Either I would have to give in to him or figure it out for myself. But could I do that? Could I understand why Widad would run away from the Khojah? Or figure out who Ismail actually was and what had happened to Widad and Jalila, his wife? And what about all the other questions that didn’t even occur to me as I sat there on the floor, leaning up against the wall?
I looked up at the photographs hanging on the wall, arranged to cover every last inch of the wooden surface. I could use them to deduce the end of the story; that’s what I told myself anyway. I’d spend the whole night studying them, until dawn if I had to. Then there was the trunk. It contained piles of folded documents. I’d take them with me to Aleppo. Ismail didn’t need them. He hated everything that had to do with the story and its characters. I might find something in there that could unlock all these riddles.
I stood up. I had spotted an old suitcase in the cupboard when the old man had asked me to take out the trunk. I pulled out the suitcase, then the trunk and placed them both on the couch. I brought over the photograph of Widad at the train station and opened the suitcase to put the picture frame and contents of the trunk inside. I discovered that it was filled with documents.
CHAPTER SIX
The Rest of the Story, as Far as I Could Piece it Together; How I Got Away from Ismail; and, Finally, The End
I SPENT THE ENTIRE NIGHT with Shaykh Nafeh’s corpse. I laid him out in such a way that made it look as if he were sleeping, and then I sat on the floor, rifle by my side, facing the door and the window as I searched through all the papers and photographs and the armoire for any traces that might shed some light on what had happened. I used to say that I have an analytical mind, which is to say that just by glancing over a string of numbers from the Agricultural Bank, I could figure out how well the season had gone, which harvest was better than others… and many other things that are of no interest whatsoever to the reader right now. I’m also good at gathering data, classifying it, and deriving the appropriate interest rates for the Bank in the coming rainy season. Once—and please excuse this additional detour into professional matters—based on the forecasted figures, I expected the following year to be a lean one. I predicted that the volume of rainfall would be low, so I advised my Bank against offering loans as they would only have led to a headache when it was time to collect the monthly repayments from the peasants, who were sure to lose much in that season. As a result, they rewarded me at the Bank by promoting me to Vice-President of the Agricultural Planning division.
With that same desire to analyse data and make sense of it, I sat there working in the departed Shaykh Nafeh’s room. In the briefcase were two travel documents for the married couple Nafeh al-Aghyurli and Jalila al-Aghyurli produced by the French authorities in Aleppo and dated 24th April, 1937, which is to say they had already been married by that point and were travelling together from Beirut to Marseille by steamship on 13th May, 1937. Both documents indicated that they were married, mentioning the name of the wife or husband. The journey by steamship from Beirut to Marseille lasted seven days. The French customs stamp was also unmistakable: 20th May, 1937. Nafeh matriculated at the University of Paris and began studying law. He neither visited Syria nor sent his wife back there throughout his time at the university. They spent their holidays travelling around France instead. There were a number of photographs of them in front of the Eiffel Tower and in the French countryside. But the reader must not surmise that this meant the two of them were doing well. There were also a number of letters in the briefcase from Uncle Ibrahim Pasha encouraging them to reconcile, and on every one of those there was a note scrawled by Hamideh Khanum (who was for all intents and purposes illiterate) offering her daughter advice on how to make peace with her husband and be patient with him. I couldn’t find a single negative word about Nafeh, probably because his uncle and his wife knew all too well that he would eventually read all the letters. One thing that grabbed my attention in the later letters was the uncle’s wife obliquely asking whether or not Jalila was pregnant, although it seemed the answer was always no, because the last time the matter of pregnancy was mentioned her mother had advised her to go see a specialist in Paris.
The final letter was the real bombshell. It was in practically illiterate Hamideh Khanum’s handwriting. She wrote to tell the two of them about the tragedy that had befallen her, had befallen them. Uncle Ibrahim had passed away suddenly. They woke up one morning to discover that his soul had surrendered to the Creator, as she put it, and she asked them to come back home to Aleppo immediately, even if that meant Nafeh would have to abandon his studies. What good would studying law do for him anyway now that he was going to inherit the workshop? A few tears had dropped onto some of those words, smudging them, and it wasn’t clear to me whose they were—those of the widow Hamideh Khanum or Jalila? An autopsy report by the French coroner who had inspected the corpse was laughable, and made me smile. Under cause of death the doctor indicated that the deceased had died in his sleep: by suffocation. He suspected that my uncle’s obese wife had rolled over in her sleep onto his neck and had crushed him. The man had a hernia on his left flank, which was taken as proof that this man had been lifting his overweight wife without the assistance of any servants.
The young couple left France in May 1940, just one month before the Nazi occupation of Paris, which means that they departed the country while Europe was burning during the Second World War, and as the inferno raced towards France with lightning speed. Nafeh dropped out of law school before even sitting his third-year exams. As soon as he got home, he took over the soap workshop and oversaw the division of the inheritance, leaving him with a controlling share in the wo
rkshop, the remainder being left to his wife and his uncle’s wife. At the same time, it seemed he was also searching for Widad, having learnt, as he told me before he died, about the story of her flight from Khojah Bahira’s house. But where had she gone? Nobody knew. In the chest I found a few tickets from the Roxy Cinema dated 1940 and 1941. Apparently he got into the habit of going to the cinema, hoping to run into Widad there, or maybe it was simply so he could remember her—I’m inclined to believe the latter because he would always reserve a seat in the same section where they used to sit together on their dates.
The wheel of death kept on turning. There was a death certificate stamped with the hospital insignia attesting that Jalila Ibrahim al-Aghyurli died during childbirth in November 1945. The document confirmed the death of the foetus as well. According to the report, the cause of death was morbid obesity, which had resulted in elevated blood pressure, leading to cranial haemorrhaging. So Nafeh was already a widower at the age of thirty. I didn’t find any pictures hanging on the walls from after that date. I didn’t find the division of an inheritance following the death of his wife; apparently he had been in no rush to produce one, and Hamideh Khanum passed away the following June. Ownership of the soap workshop devolved in its entirety, all 2,400 shares, to Nafeh al-Aghyurli.
