White Masks (3 page)

The war stopped, or subsided, I'm not sure how to put it . . . but anyway Khalil was going down to the central post office again, playing checkers at the café, and watching TV. I'm not sure why, but it seems his relationship with the “boys” began to deteriorate. He stopped dropping by for visits and then one day he asked whether I would go and collect the stipend. When I went, I didn't notice anything wrong, but he told me that the last time he'd been there, he had asked the cadre in charge to reprint the poster because we only had ten of them left. The rain and little fingers were ripping up Ahmad's pictures, he said, so he needed some reprints. The “officer” apparently didn't receive him at all well, and in fact started yelling at him, telling him the war was over, and three years had gone by since Ahmad's death. I could see the man's point of view, and I told Khalil, it's over for the one who dies. But he got all upset and said that they were dishonoring Ahmad's martyrdom, that he no longer felt welcome, and that they had changed their attitude. Truth be told, they weren't the same as before - in the early days, they visited us regularly, bringing little gifts with them, but now ... well, they were probably right, the war was over, and more than half of them had quit and gone back to their jobs. Some had even left the country to work in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf, and the “officer” had more important things on his mind now.

While it was Khalil who told me this, I knew it made him sad. He hung a poster of Ahmad up in our bedroom and carried on the same as before,
going to work and to the café, and then coming home and watching TV. He didn't say very much, but I certainly didn't sense there was anything wrong. That was about a year and a half ago, in 1979. Khalil seemed reconciled to the situation: there were still a few posters in the wardrobe and there was the one hanging in our room.

But then the fighting started - the war, it's started up again, I told him. There was shelling everywhere, but he didn't seem concerned. Even the newspapers had stopped coming into the house, as if he'd gone back to his old self. Only that smile of his was gone. Everything was the same as before, except for the smile and the white head of hair.

But then, how shall I put it . . . strange things began to happen whose meaning I couldn't grasp . . . I just didn't understand anything anymore. All of a sudden, Khalil started to change . . . it must have been about three months ago. He just completely changed. Nothing specific happened. Our daughter Nada had a little boy; he was happy about the boy and he went to see her. Nothing happened, but he changed, he became another man. I did everything I could to understand him but he wouldn't tell me anything. He simply said nothing. Then, one day, he left the house, saying he was going to work. He went and never returned. Whether they kidnapped him or murdered him, I don't know - all I know is that he never came back, and he was killed.

I'll have you know, son, we don't have any enemies . . . no one hates us, why should this happen to him? I swear I don't know. No, no, he wasn't the foolhardy type, even our visits to our daughter in Tripoli were few and far between. We're not the adventurous sort, and since the safe route to Tripoli was too long, we just didn't go.

Honestly, I don't know how everything happened, I really don't. I neither see nor understand, all I know is they killed him, they dumped him there, dear God, just like that, naked to the waist... and the garbage . . . Oh Lord, I can't understand it . . . I just don't know . . .

The story . . . ? There is no story. Everything happened so suddenly. We woke up one morning, and he wouldn't get out of bed. He told me he wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be going to work. I went out to buy a few things, and when I got back I found he'd locked himself in the bedroom. I knocked on the door, and when he didn't open, I started to scream, I thought something terrible had happened to him. But then I heard him speak, and he sounded quite normal, saying, everything's alright, I'm just a bit busy. So I left him there and went to attend to things in the kitchen. Then it was lunch-time. I knocked again, and again he didn't open. He said he wasn't hungry; then it was dinnertime, and he still didn't come out. I asked him to please open the door because I wanted to go to bed, but he asked me to sleep in the other room. I tried to peep through the keyhole to see what he was up to, but I couldn't make out anything. So I went out on the balcony - but all I could see from there was that the lights inside the room were switched off. What to do? I said my prayers, asked God to give him guidance, and went to bed in the other room - Ahmad's, I mean - but it still had his smell and I couldn't fall asleep there, so I went to the living room and slept on the sofa.

The next morning he came out to go to the bathroom. I went into the bedroom, cleaned and tidied it, and when he came back, he asked me for a bottle of water, and told me to leave. You must be hungry, I said, and told him I would make him a bowl of
foul.

He just shook his head to say no. I went and fetched him a bottle of water
and when I came back he was in bed. I asked him if he felt ill, whether he needed me to call the doctor, but all he did was shake his head and motion with his hand that I should leave the room. Then I heard the key turning in the lock behind me. It went on like this for about five days, with Khalil spending all day - and night - in bed, neither eating nor sleeping, and only coming out of the room to use the toilet. I was beside myself with worry, and though I tried to be helpful, I just didn't know what to do. I'd stand outside the bedroom door for hours pleading with him to open up and have something to eat.

Then, one day, he opened the door. It was dusk, almost dark but not quite, and there he stood wearing the same pajamas he'd had on for five days. “Alright,” he said, “I'll eat.” I went straight to the kitchen and got him a plate of rice and spinach stew, a loaf of bread, and a raw onion.

He gestured that I should leave the food at the door. I did as he asked, and went back to the living room, and there I slept soundly for the first time in days. I said to myself that if he was eating, the worst of the crisis was over.

In the morning, when he went to the bathroom, I discovered that he had eaten only the bread and had left the rice and spinach, and the onion. I removed the plate, took in some fresh bread and some cheese, and left again. When he returned to the room, he locked the door as usual. I felt completely lost . . . and I had no one to turn to . . . I was afraid of a scandal, and of him too. Abu Ahmad would surely get angry if I told anyone, and his condition would worsen, so I didn't tell anybody except our neighbor, Imm 'Imad al-Kaadi. She's an older woman, she's someone really special, and I was sure she'd keep my secret. So I went to see her. When I got
to her house, there she was sitting alone in the living room wearing her white headwrap with little wisps of gray hair escaping from underneath. She looked really concerned when I told her about Abu Ahmad. She sidled up to me on the sofa and dropped her voice.

“Listen, dear,” she said, “these things happen. Exactly the same thing happened to Hajj Abu 'Imad, God rest his soul and the soul of your departed. How old is your husband?” I told her he was about fifty.

“That's what it is, dear,” she went on. “It's the difficult age. May the Lord spare your husband, dear child. That's exactly what happened to Abu 'Imad. He was forty-seven and one morning, all of a sudden, he woke up and wouldn't get out of bed, he said he wasn't going to work. He stayed in bed for two weeks. He didn't lock the bedroom door, we could go in and see him, but he hardly spoke or ate. Then, God be praised, one day he got up. As far as I can see, my dear, your husband's case is very similar to mine. It's a difficult age, you know, men feel they're past it, that life has passed them by and that old age is around the corner. They feel they're no longer men, you understand what I'm saying, don't you? But it's just a phase, a short phase, and it'll pass,
inshallah,
with the help of God. My dear, you should be thankful. Other men . . . do you know what other men do? They go after cabaret girls. No, this is good. Still, my dear, you just pray the Good Lord to have mercy on him, and don't burden him with anything.”

I understood Imm 'Imad to be saying that Khalil was . . . But no! There was no doubting his manliness! That's not at all the case, I told her. She carried right on, as if she'd been expecting me to say that.

“Don't you worry my dear, it's a phase, just a little phase, it'll pass, with the Good Lord's help. Now, you be good to him, and don't you worry.”

I felt confused as I left her house, thinking maybe she hadn't understood. I called Nada, my daughter, and went to see her to tell her about it. She and her husband came around that evening, but as much as Nadeem tried, Khalil wouldn't speak to him. He had loathed his son-in-law ever since Ahmad had gone, and how likely was he to answer Nadeem when he wasn't even talking to me, his wife! All the same, Nadeem knocked at the door for the longest time, he really tried, and after expressing his astonishment, he said he'd come over with the doctor the following day.

The next day came, and the doctor with it. I described Khalil's symptoms to him, and we tried to get Khalil to let him in, without success. I begged the doctor to return in the morning, when Khalil normally opened the door to go to the bathroom, but this made him very angry.

“I'm not your servant,” he snapped. “And in any case, your husband is having a nervous breakdown.”

Then he started asking me all sorts of questions to which I didn't know the answers. He asked me about his situation at work, about our relationship and our financial circumstances. The truth is, I didn't answer him honestly, how could I! Telling him about such private matters, when I hardly knew him! In any case, the doctor handed me some pills to give him - to “calm his nerves,” as he put it - and he left.

I tried to persuade Khalil to take the pills but he just ignored me. All he would have was a little bread and some water. Oh, God, what was I to do. Nothing was helping . . . well, almost nothing . . . I have to admit, the doctor did write a sick report so that my husband wouldn't lose his job - what on earth would he do, if he no longer worked at the PTT? So we thanked our lucky stars, and thanked the doctor for his trouble.

To this day, I don't know how the story got out and made the rounds of the neighborhood. Maybe it was Imm 'Imad, or maybe even our daughter; whoever it was, I don't know. But I discovered that everybody was talking about my husband and his condition. Many people thought that he had cancer - God forbid - and that I wouldn't take him to the hospital because, the rumor was, I didn't want to spend the money! Shame on them for thinking that I would scrimp and save where Abu Ahmad was concerned! Shame, shame!

Then, one day, Sitt Khadijah appeared. You know, the famous Sitt Khadijah, the one everyone's heard about - she makes amulets and summons spirits, and can talk to djinns and demons. It turned out that she'd come at Imm 'Imad's insistence.

“It's only because Imm 'Imad has such a place in my heart that I've come, dear,” she said, adding that she didn't usually go to the homes of the afflicted. I told her I regarded Imm 'Imad very highly and expressed my profound gratitude to them both. She read my fortune in some coffee grounds and told me I had a long journey ahead. Naturally, I didn't believe her: how would someone like me ever get to go on a journey?

Then she drew up her legs beneath her and sat cross-legged on the sofa, like this, and started making strange sniffing noises, as if she could smell something. I asked her if something was wrong. No, she said, nothing. Then she pulled out some dried twigs from under her long baggy shift, struck a match and lit them. The smell of incense and other strange aromas filled the house.

And then, she started saying in this throaty voice: “Hmm . . . I smell something, my dear . . . I can smell . . . I smell . . . this house . . . I smell . . . I can smell djinns! This house is inhabited, my dear, your home is possessed . . .
the djinn . . . the Good Lord protect us . . . The djinn, he's in another room, such a strong smell he's got ... he's inside a man . . . it's your husband who's inhabited by the djinn! And it's an evil djinn . . . I've got to see the man and talk to him, then the djinn will leave, he'll have to leave him . . . Hmmm . . . Oh, the smell of the djinn . . . O-o-oh!”

By now, I was good and frightened. Djinns are terrifying, and it seemed that this one was right there before me, just like she was. She blew out the incense sticks, put them away inside her shift, and asked me to open the windows and air the room. I told her that it wouldn't be possible for her to see my husband, that he refused to open the door.

“The djinn, dear Sitt Noha . . . Oh, if you only knew . . . I see them, I can feel them, with my own hands, every day . . . It's as if Beirut were overrun with these evil and godless demons, Lord have mercy upon us . . . They have come here from the very ends of the earth, they don't know the Arabic language, and they speak in strange tongues that we don't understand . . . but, with God's grace, I shall overcome the djinn that is here. Go and tell your husband that I want to see him for five minutes - five minutes and everything will be alright. You know,” she went on, “this city is full of strange things . . . and now this demon, this alien, is in our midst . . . and we've got to find a way to get rid of it, or else we're done for! The very moral fiber of our society is at stake! Get up now and go to your husband, go on, go and tell him just five minutes. The djinn, oh my, the djinn . . .”

Even though I knew he wouldn't agree, I got up and went to his door. She came with me, and we stood there, together, knocking on the door, over and over again, but he wouldn't open. She started speaking to him in that throaty voice of hers, begging him to open and let her in just for five
minutes, but he wouldn't. She reminded him that he had once asked her to summon the spirit of our boy, Ahmad, and that she was ready to do so now, provided that he opened the door. Just five minutes, she insisted. There was absolutely no response, we couldn't even hear him: he was probably sitting up in bed, immobile. We went back to the living room. Sitt Khadijah was clearly disheartened.