Chapter Twenty-One

That night, lying in bed, Layla wished she could die. She longed to close her eyes and sleep; morning would arrive and she would not open them. She would go away, leave, escape whole and in peace—no problems, no roughness, no quarrels. But that is not how people die. They do not simply close their eyes and die. There has to be a cause of death. Illness? How about typhoid, for instance? Yes, typhoid was an easy sickness to have, a pleasant, lovely illness that anesthetized you. She could go to sleep, lose consciousness gradually, day after day, slipping off in calm and quiet. Around her bed would gather the tearful faces, trying to hold fast and hard to her as if they were barriers keeping her from slipping into her dreams. Then the faces would vanish and a cloud would envelop her, would thicken, would make those barriers disappear. Layla slipped off to sleep, to her dreaming. At first, she slept a peaceful sleep full of calm dreams. Here she was, stretched out on the deck of a ship afloat, with no idea of where she was going or whence she had come. She did not know who she was even; she had no past, no future. She understood nothing except that she was lying on her back, a lovely stillness in her heart, blue sea-like eternal space surrounding her, the sun’s rays dancing on the azure water, sparkling like diamonds, dancing across her body as it lay there, teasing it, subjecting it to a lovely numbness.

Now she was pushing on a door, entering a garden. She had never seen the like. It was a white garden; all the flowers were white and the trees were crowned in whiteness. It was a sea, widening into the distance, a sea of white flowers, strange flowers, tall, as tall as a human being. Tall and white, towering, beautiful, one leaning gently toward the next to pat it tenderly, to almost whisper to it as if it were a human being. Layla pushed her way through the flowers; they bent over her, waving, caressing her cheek, intoxicating her with their scent. She ran, laughing short, breathless laughs. She reached the garden’s end, refreshed, exuberant, filled with a bubbling happiness that she could barely endure. She sat on a bench surrounded by a jasmine tree whose petals fell on her head. She reached out her hand, and there was the jasmine, arranged of its own accord into a crown over her hair. She leaned back softly, the sea of flowers filling her eyes.

The blooms parted to reveal a child running toward her. Her child. Layla hugged her son eagerly and lifted him onto her lap. The furious joy in her body subsided, transformed into a lovely tranquility. In silent adoration she rubbed her child’s arm gently, his pale arm, translucent as if light shone from it. She yearned to spend the rest of her life sitting there, gazing reverently at her son as he sat in her lap. But the child did not want to sit still. He wanted to play, to run, to take off, to discover the beautiful world around him. She kissed him on his soft little mouth one last time, and let him go.

The son stood facing her, and an astonishing thing happened. Before her eyes, it happened. Her son was growing, older and taller, and changing into a man. A tall, brown-skinned man from whom light shone as it had from the body of her son. Who was this man? Who was he, this man who looked at her with a smile not to be resisted? She must know him; of course she did. But who was he? She knew them; she knew those black eyes, she knew them when they were full of strength and spine and readiness. She knew them, too, when that bold hardness melted and they became so soft and gentle, so full of sympathy. Whose were they? If only she could recognize them! Who was this man who gazed at her with an irresistible smile?

Layla strained her mind to figure out his identity, as if her life depended on the knowledge. A rumbling reached her ears, the sound of a storm, and sent a shiver into her hands. Darkness had come over the garden; her son had disappeared, swallowed up by the murkiness. Now a ray of light gleaming on the horizon was all that was visible of him. Layla sat there, tortured by a vague sense that she had done something wrong. The feeling grew, crystallized, floated on the surface. If she had been able to figure out who the man was, her son would not have been lost to her. The storm would not have risen; the darkness would not have descended. The wind grew stronger, stronger, a whip lashing the garden, the beautiful white flowers. They swayed and bent, clearing the way for the chastising storm but returning to their fullness, as tall as they had been, more beautiful, more defiant, until even the darkness could not drown them. The branches crowned with white cleaved that darkness as if they were the first signs of dawn, scattering the darkness. The storm died, and all was still.

Then the door swung open and a crowd of men and women came into the garden, led by a man in a black suit. In slow, measured steps they approached, their heads high, bodies taut with readiness as if they had come on a mission. Layla tried to slip away, to flee; she hid behind the jutting branches of the jasmine tree so that she could see them without being seen. From a distance she saw the man in the black suit motioning silently to the group. She saw the crowd break apart, moving with the same measured, firm steps, to form a circle that encased the white flowers. Amidst the flowers stood the man, and he gestured to them to begin. Suddenly there flashed in the gloom shiny new sickles that quivered in those figures’ hands. Where had they gotten them? There had been nothing in their hands a moment ago.

The men and women began to tear out the flowers one by one, rhythmically, purposively. Blow by blow, row after row, tall stalks fell to the ground, lifeless. Men and women moved forward, row by row, hard faces and sad eyes, as if performing a duty that weighed heavily upon them yet must be done. Every time one of them slowed down, the man in the black suit pointed and smiled, grimacing, an animal stalking prey as he watched each row of stalks fall, as if he could not rest until all of the flowers had fallen beneath his feet, to become cold, pale corpses.

In the distance a bird keened. A woman straightened up, the scythe gleaming in her right hand. With her other hand she wiped away a tear that had escaped from her eye before she bent to tear out another flower. Layla swallowed her scream. That woman—she knew her. She knew her. It was Safaa’s mother. It was Dawlat Hanim, Safaa’s mother.

Now Layla saw all the faces clearly. The men’s were close-shaven and the women’s gleamed with makeup. Among those many faces looking so alike, she could now make out some that had features she recognized. There was her father; there was her aunt, Umm Gamila. This man in the black suit, his back to her—it must be him. It must. Ramzi turned his face toward Layla, as if to confirm his identity. Layla compressed her lips so she would not scream; she held tighter to the jasmine tree that hid her. When the sea of white flowers lay like a carpet over the ground, the men and women tossed their sickles aside. The men arranged bricks in the shape of a big circle while the women bent over the flowers, gathering them into bundles. Every woman hugged a bundle to her breast as she would embrace her newborn and walked to the circle the men had constructed. Gently, they all let go of their bundles, putting them on the ground, and stepped back. The black-suited man lit a fire amidst the bundles. The men and women stood in a vast circle watching the flowers burn. In the brightness of the flames their faces appeared convulsed with pain; sweat stood out on their brows. It was as if a part of them burned. But not a single one moved. They muttered prayers, supplications; they seemed fixed to the ground, leaning on each other for support. The branches began to dry and splinter, they began to wail.

From behind, a woman with flowing hair broke the ranks and pushed forward, trying to throw herself into the fire. An angry murmuring rose from the crowd. Some men returned the woman to the circle and stillness prevailed, as if it was necessary to their peace of mind that no one move, that they stand like that, held to the earth, shoulder to shoulder, one supporting the next.

The flowers turned to ashes; the fire flared, trilling, and began to die. It could only be seen in scattered spots, a weak glow. But the smoke crouched in thick, horrid masses across the faces of sky and earth, pressing down on the earth’s breast to crush it. And Layla awoke, frightened and unable to breathe.