Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury Read Free Book Online

wanted nothing more than to have a child with her. A brown-skinned child that looked like her. No, it’s not true that I was involved in her murder. I swear I had nothing to do with it. The problem wasn’t with me but with Sameh Abu Diab. They killed her to avenge Sameh. I did nothing to hurt her. She told me she loved me and then left to kill Sameh. I loved her the way one loves, but she left and got herself killed. She killed him and then was killed, and that was that. I don’t want to talk about her any more.
    I’m worried about you. You’ve settled into death, it’s as though you’ve turned your temporary coma into a permanent state.
    Would you like to know what happened to me after you settled into this state of withdrawal?
    To begin with, I was overwhelmed by a criminal impulse. I was obsessed with only one thought: of placing a pillow over your face and pressing down until you died of asphyxiation – that I should just kill you, cold-bloodedly and calmly. I felt real hatred for you. I pretended that I hated the world for what it had done to you, but that wasn’t true. I didn’t hate the world, or Fate, or God, I hated you – Yunes, Abu Salem, Izz al-Din, or whatever name fits you best as you lie here in this bed.
    No, it’s got nothing to do with wanting to murder my father, as the psychologists would claim. You’re not my father. I already killed him long ago – and his image – after they killed him in front of our house. And I lived with my grandmother, who slept on her amazing pillow. I promised you I’dbring you the pillow, but I forgot. I’ll bring it tomorrow. My grandmother’s pillow doesn’t look like a pillow anymore. It’s turned into a heap of thorns. The flowers inside have faded and dried into thorns. My grandmother used to stuff her pillow with flowers, saying that when she rested her head on it she felt as though she’d returned to her village, and she’d make me rest my head on it. I would lay my head on her pillow and smell nothing but decay. I joined the fedayeen when I was nine years old to escape the flowers of al-Ghabsiyyeh that my grandmother would pick from the camp’s dump. I hated the perfume of decay and ended up connecting the smell of Palestine with the smell of that pillow. I was convinced then – I still am – that my grandmother was afflicted with floral dementia, a widespread condition among Palestinian peasants who were driven from their villages.
    The day her long final illness came, she summoned me to her side. I was in the village of Kafar Shouba in southern Lebanon, where the fedayeen had set up their first camp, when my uncle came and asked me to go to Beirut. In her house in the camp, the woman was dying on her pillow. When she saw me, her face lit up with a pale smile, and she gestured to the others to leave us alone. When everyone was gone, she asked me to sit down next to her on the bed. She whispered that she didn’t own anything she could leave me but this – and she pointed to her pillow – and this – and she pointed to her watch – and this – and she pointed to her Koran.
    She squeezed my hand tightly, as if holding onto life itself. She told me she missed my father. Then she closed her eyes and her breathing became irregular. I tried to pull my hand away, but I couldn’t, so I yelled and the women came in and started weeping. She didn’t die, however. I stayed for three days waiting for it to happen, then went back to Kafar Shouba. Two weeks later, I returned to Beirut for her funeral.
    I don’t know where I put the watch, the women in the camp decided to bury the Koran with her, but I still have the pillow. I thought of it because I was going to kill you with a pillow. Tomorrow I’ll bring it to you before I throw it away; I must get rid of that pillow of flowers that reeks of decay. The strange thing is that no one who comes to my