About the Night (51 page)

1973

Five months passed from the time that blue spots began to appear on George Riani’s arms before he relented and agreed to have a checkup. Another few days passed until the results were available. His doctors predicted that leukemia of this variety gave him, at best, half a year to live. But a virus roaming the hospital found a weakened George and got him first. As Nadira said, “Death wanted to take him now, without delay.”

And that was how the six months given to him were cut short, and Elias’s father died waiting for cancer treatments at Saint Joseph’s Hospital, not far from his home. He had been told it was impossible to get into the Hadassah Medical Center because of all the wounded from the Yom Kippur War, only recently ended.

The funeral procession left from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and made its way to the cemetery on Mount Zion, where human life had existed for thousands of years and the dead of three major religions were buried. From up high, it was nearly impossible to differentiate between the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim graves scattered like dominoes around the same holy valley. Elias took consolation in the fact that all the dead basked in the same sun and were drenched by the same rains and buffeted by the same winter winds and exposed to the same birdsong.

Focused, sober Elias, so restrained and reserved, came undone. His whole body was a cell of grief; his eyes burned with bitter tears. He was completely unprepared for this, angry at this death with no proper farewell.

During the mourning period, Elias returned to his parents’ home, where he could be alone with his pain and make life easier for his mother while feeling close to his father—his armchair, his reading lamp, his bookshelves, his radio. There was no better reminder of George’s passing than this tiny, abandoned kingdom of his.

On the fortieth day after his death, the family went to his grave, which had in the meantime been topped with a yellow-brown desert slab of marble. Elias considered his father’s wishes and had the stone engraved with George’s name, dates of birth and death, and the words “Rest in Peace.” Elias’s sisters, who lived with their families in Saudi Arabia, were not present, denied entry visas as a result of the recent war and because they were Saudi citizens. Nor were Elias’s children summoned from abroad; he preferred to leave them where they were, far from the war only now having abated.

The doctors had promised six months, and although that was paltry compensation, it was at least something to hold on to. Time to prepare for his death, time to part properly, to send him off with a feeling of completion. Elias had planned to spend a few hours of every day of those six months with his father, reading books to him, keeping him informed about what was going on in the world, describing his grandchildren’s progress at school, even just holding his hand and making tea for him and keeping his mind off his approaching demise. On sunny days he would be able to sit with him in the garden and give him back a little of the feeling of safety and confidence his father had always given him and make him feel there would always be someone looking after him.

And perhaps, in a moment of closeness, he would put aside his awe of his father and his fear of death and speak frankly with him of his secret love, the love that had been so miraculously restored to his life. “You see, Father,” he would say, “that whole war in 1967 that involved four countries, with tanks and fighter planes and maps with shifting borders and cease-fires and superpower talks—all of that happened so that she could be brought back to me. You yourself taught me that mistakes were created so that we might fix them.”

What, after all, was Elias hoping for? To alleviate his father’s worries, to provide him with comfort, and perhaps to receive some of his wisdom in return. And had George been granted more time, he might have given his son a lesson in errors and disappointments, shared his philosophy of life with him, given him direction; on one’s deathbed, a person knows how to live life. It was not his father’s blessing that Elias sought but his understanding that this was the way things were and that there was no point in fighting them.

On the other hand, he knew he could not speak with his father about such matters. He did not wish to plant worries in his heart that would accompany him to his death. He would not tell him that the woman he stood with in front of a priest pledging to care for her was not the love of his life, that every day of their conjugal life caused him to lose a little more of his joie de vivre and energy, that his achievements waned. He did not wish to live life at her side, and he did not wish to die at her side.

At the same time, Elias was fully aware that he had shattered Nasreen’s dreams and handed her a bitter disappointment. He knew that she saw that this husband of hers, who had promised to love, honor, and cherish her, barely noted her existence. The aristocratic fantasy that had brought her to this marriage had long since evaporated, replaced by empty chatter about property expropriated by the Jews that might one day be returned to them. The untold wealth of the Riani family existed only on pieces of paper and in iron keys that opened doors to buildings in the Katamon and German Colony neighborhoods of West Jerusalem. The illustrious tea merchant who had once traveled as far as India and Ceylon and Turkey and China to roll select tea leaves between his fingers could barely maintain his shrinking business in a period when everyone wanted iced coffee and milk shakes and soft drinks.

And as the glamour and grace of tea was disappearing from the world, so too was it disappearing from Elias. Instead of going out and seeking new sources of income he buried himself in his books, took walks that lasted many hours, or sat beneath his favorite tree.

The beautiful house had a view of the turret of the Notre Dame pilgrim center, which had once been looked after by roofers and gardeners and painters and carpenters and was now only tended to when something broke or fell apart. The riches that Elias and Nasreen enjoyed in the early years of their marriage were gone, so that now they made do with whatever came their way. The office building brought in some rental money, and, with no choice, Elias tried his hand at commodities trading—cacao and sugar—but these were markets controlled by hardened businessmen who had no intention of letting an outsider gain a foothold in their business and take a bite of their profits. The Riani daughters lived with relatives of their mother in England and managed on scholarships and savings. Nasreen wanted to be near them. The look on her face and the fact that she no longer sang were two indications of just how tragic her marriage to Elias was.

He imagined she could see that his mind was not preoccupied with matters of making a living but with something else. He went to the Jewish side of town each day, returning only late at night, and he did not ask her to prepare food; in fact, all he wanted from her was peace and quiet and that she stop following him from room to room of their home.

He knew what she must be thinking: If he went, day after day, to the Jews, then why were they not returning the property they had taken from them? What did they have in West Jerusalem that did not exist in East Jerusalem? And why did her husband load the trunk of his car with meat after she went shopping at the butcher’s? Where did he go in his suit and cuff links, returning sated and consoled, acting in his own home like a guest, distracted and in need of quiet? What was in his heart and soul? For whom was he saving his broad smiles?

It was too late for him to start over at fifty-three, to change professions. Elias would not sell the office building, his last property in Jerusalem, nor would he stop employing Munir. This was not an age for upheavals, not for Arabs, anyway. In Elias’s society, this was a time for downshifting, working fewer hours, and letting ambition take a rest. Still, he had hopes for change, as always he wanted to be with Lila, and living with her would bring him tranquility. Each day he very nearly left home and moved in with her. Each day he rediscovered why leaving home was justifiable, and he felt that each day brought him closer to doing it. He was merely waiting for a sign that the timing was right.

Elias had the feeling that he had closed his eyes for only a moment but had fallen asleep for weeks. Suddenly, winter was biting at the days and nights. The Israelis were stunned and full of sorrow as young men failed to return from the war. Just as Elias began to emerge from his mourning, the war with Syria and Egypt brought about a global energy crisis. A war that had begun as a whim meant to return the lost honor of the Egyptians had spilled over to the entire region, and now the world.

It was over by late October, but no one yet understood that this war had been the toughest in the nation’s history. Jerusalem had come perilously close to being divided once again, and Elias had very nearly been separated from Lila.

He thought, I cannot die without living by her side.

Then one morning, without anything particular happening, without having received a sign or reaching a significant date, Elias got into his car and made his way from his home in East Jerusalem to the western side of the city. He knew he was doing the right thing, even if he did not know why he was doing it at that moment. On the seat next to him was a travel bag with a few clothes and other items that a person takes with him on a trip, knowing he will not need anything more, and if he did, it did not matter. He did not recall what was playing on the radio or what the news was. He had no special pictures in mind, felt no magic as he drove from one side of the city to the other, because it was a perfectly ordinary day and his decision was perfectly ordinary and the way he carried it out was perfectly ordinary as well. He climbed the stairs to Lila’s flat, stood in the doorway, and looked at her.

In his eyes, she could see that he had done what he had wanted to do many years earlier, even though there was no drama to his movements or the expression on his face.

He placed the travel bag on the floor in silence. They stood facing each other for a long moment, their eyes locked, until he opened his arms and gathered her to him, all the while both of them silent.

Then happiness came to reside with them, folded itself gently into their lives. Elias placed company matters in Munir’s hands and made appearances at the office once a week just to see if his presence was needed. The tea business was sluggish, even though a teahouse with large throw cushions opened in Jerusalem, because everyone wanted coffee with steamed milk or tea in bags, which was a far cry from the special blends offered by Riani. Only the Arabs continued to drink strong, sweet tea, though even they had adopted the custom of using tea bags, to Elias’s chagrin.

Elias’s income came from the rental properties he maintained in the eastern part of the city along with the sale of the family’s summer home and orchards in Jericho. He figured that all man’s possessions are only given to him on loan; when they are his, they are his and when they are taken away, they are not—proof that they were never his in the first place. He thanked God for what he had even when it was taken away from him.

Nasreen continued to live in the house in Sheikh Jarrah that he had abandoned. She had been scooping the flesh from zucchinis in order to stuff them when he came to the kitchen wishing to speak with her, and while he spoke, she continued to fill them with rice. He told her only what was necessary, and nothing hurtful. He said he was going to live in West Jerusalem, that this would be good for both of them and would spare them both the constrictions of their life together. He asked for her forgiveness, that she be neither bitter nor bear a grudge. He said he would never turn his back on her or on their children. The zucchinis were now standing on the stove in a tart sauce. In the end, Nasreen said only one thing: that she knew it would happen, but she never knew when.

To his joy, she soon joined a choir and filled her life with song. She was healthy in mind and body, and she continued to look after the house so that the children could return during school holidays.

Elias’s mother died the year after her husband. On the day of her death, Nadira prepared a large meal to commemorate a year since George’s passing. Guests came and went, and at the end of the evening, the only people remaining at the table were Elias, Nasreen, and Elias’s sisters and their families visiting from Saudi Arabia. Nadira, in her bay-leaf-colored dress, was clearly the head of their tribe, the one who brought them all together and whose strength was worthy of admiration. George’s death had not broken her; of course Elias knew she was not sleeping well at night, but during the day she managed fine on only three hours of sleep.