An Unnecessary Woman by Alameddine Rabih Read Free Book Online Page B

sex is akin to believing that reading dark notes on paper can illuminate a Bach partita, or that by studying composition or color one can understand a late Rembrandt self-portrait. Sex, like art, can unsettle a soul, can grind a heart in a mortar. Sex, like literature, can sneak the other within one’s walls, even if for only a moment, a moment before one immures oneself again.
    I was intrigued enough by the strangeness of the situation that my memory retained a few palimpsests of the lovemaking, early images, when everything was technical or mechanical. Memory chooses to preserve what desire cannot hope to sustain. The images I retain, though, couldn’t have happened. In my memory, I can see myself with Ahmad, as if a part of me participated in the encounter and another floated high in the air, near the ceiling, and witnessed with disinterest.
    Aaliya, the high one—Aaliya with the bird’s-eye view, above the mud and muck and life’s swamps.
    What seeped through the mortar of my walls was not his technique (adequate) or his ardor (more than). I was on my knees facing away, he behind me still smelling of licorice and anise, engaged in an age-old rhythm. He slowed, and his fingers explored the topography of my lower back. I could feel his face descending, examining a tiny city on a map. His fingers squeezed gently before he removed them. At first, I tried to dismiss this interruption, considered it a possible sexual quirk, but his fingers resumed the exploration of the region, lower back and upper derrière. His fingers squeezed once more, and this time I realized what he was doing, I recognized the feel of a blackhead being extruded. When he removed a third, I looked back, and it was more likely that I’d have turned to butter than to salt. He apologized, begged my forgiveness. It had been unconscious. He couldn’t see a blackhead on his own skin without removing it and didn’t realize he was doing the same with me.
    I asked him not to stop. I loved it.
    His fingers happily reconnoitered my entire back, delicately, gently, and ever so slowly turned my skin into a smorgasbord of delicious feelings. I was touched. I buried my face in the pillow to hide my ecstasy and my tears.
    My heart had momentarily found its pestle.
    Ecstasy and intimacy are ineffable as well, ephemeral and fleeting. Ahmad and I didn’t repeat our interlude, never resumed the exploration. He won what he wanted, as did I.
    Yeats once said, “The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.”
    We lie down with hope and wake up with lies.
    When the warlords ended their interlude a few days after, I felt protected within the walls of my apartment, sat vigil with the Kalashnikov close to my bosom.
    Aaliya, the high one, the separate.
    I, Aaliya, the aged one, should get to bed—lie in my bed, call upon the gods of rest, instead of sitting at my desk remembering.
    The receding perspective of my past smothers my present.
    Remembering is the malignancy that feasts on my now.
    I feel tired and weary, my mind leaden, my hair still blue.
    And so the days pass.
    My bedroom is quiet except for the flapping of laundry in the breeze, sails of minor ships in soft gusts; the building behind me has verandahs on every floor (ours has none), and each has multiple laundry lines. I don’t mind these night sounds; I call them organic white noise. My bedroom has quieted over the years as Joumana’s family upstairs and Marie-Thérèse’s downstairs grew up and the rambunctious children departed. For as long as they lived below, Mr. Hayek had unidirectional screaming sessions with Marie-Thérèse at least once a week, throughout their marriage, until he died last year. I heard Fadia once say that you can tell how well a marriage is working by counting the bite marks on each partner’s tongue. Mr. Hayek had none. He held nothing back. You can’t do anything right. You always say the wrong thing. Why can’t you do what I tell you? You’re so