I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops (14 page)

“Is it white?” inquired one of the aunts, provoking Farid’s mother to still greater anguish.

“White, black, what’s the difference?” she shouted. “It’s out of the question. Marisa has to make it. I promised her. She’ll be upset.”

“Upset!” remarked one of them, laughing. “She’s got more work than she can handle. She’ll be delighted.”

“I know you’re jealous because Marisa’s going to make it,” screamed back Farid’s mother.

For a moment I forgot where I was. The walls were
gray and the visitors’ chairs blocked out the tombstone and the palm leaves. We could have been in somebody’s sitting-room. Farid’s father and the third aunt’s husband interrupted the argument, coming to stand behind their wives’ chairs. “The clothes. Aren’t we going to give them to the caretaker?” asked Farid’s father, changing the subject.

“I forgot all about them,” she replied. “May death forget met” Then she whispered something in his ear. When he didn’t make any comment, she said, “Who’d like some tea?” She went over into a corner where there was a Primus stove I hadn’t noticed before. As she pumped it, she asked, “What do you think about building onto the tomb? Another room, a little kitchen, a bathroom?”

Nobody answered. They were all absorbed in their own private conversations. She repeated, “We need to extend the tomb. Farid’s father agrees. What do you say?”

“Extend it!” scoffed one of the aunts. “To hear you talking anyone would think a tomb was just like an apartment!”

“What I meant,” Farid’s mother corrected herself, “is that we should buy an old, abandoned tomb.”

Another aunt seized on her words: “And have our dead mixed up with other people’s? That’s madness!”

“I mean, we should buy a plot of ground, even if it’s a little way off.”

The voices rose and fell. Farid’s cousins and sister whispered scornfully to one another. Farid brought me a glass of
tea. Meanwhile, his mother continued to ask at intervals, “What do you say?”

“What do we say?” answered one of the aunts at last. “Nobody’s in a position to lay out money on tombs and suchlike, that’s what we say.”

Farid’s mother drew a triumphant breath: “Farid’s got a marvelous job, thank God, and …”

I looked with embarrassment at Farid, who was shaking his head like someone who wanted help. He said sheepishly, “Why do you need to mention that?”

His mother must have felt from this response that he was siding with his aunts against her, but she went on. “I mean God’s made you rich enough to pay for the new tomb.”

She seemed to gain strength from his silence, and had the look of a cat when the mouse is finally cornered. But the spiteful looks of the other women snatched victory from her grasp. “We know your stories,” they seemed to say. “You want to tell your friends that you’ve got a big new tomb. A villa! A three-story villa with marble stairs and wrought-iron gates!”

“Have you ever heard of anyone visiting the family tomb and sitting almost on top of the graves?” shouted Farid’s mother. “We must have a separate room to sit in.”

“We used to be able to use the one you gave the caretaker,” interrupted one of the aunts.

“At least there’s only him and his wife,” persisted Farid’s mother. “Surely that’s better than having a family taking it over, with children clambering over our tombstones like apes, and then not being able to get rid of them.”

“And what’s wrong with being buried in the garden?” continued the aunt in a superior tone. “You don’t have to be inside the room.”

“Your grandfather liked the idea of being buried in the garden—that’s his business,” yelled Farid’s mother. “I and my family want to be buried inside.”

In a whisper, as if divulging a secret, Farid’s father said, “Listen to me. Land prices are going to soar. People are going to start living in these buildings on a regular basis. And anyway, what’s wrong with our family having the very best?”

“I know,” answered his sister. “But is it reasonable to expect you to pay while we stand with our arms folded? You know, the children are at university and there are the monthly payments to keep up with and all our other commitments …”

“I’m ready to fall in with anything,” said her husband.

His intervention seemed to irritate Farid’s mother and she snapped back at him, “In any case, your wife won’t be buried here. She’ll go with your family.”

His wife ignored her and said, “Look. Just look around. This tomb’s big. You couldn’t call this a small area.”

But Farid’s mother came back at her with a reply that unnerved me like a physical blow. All along I hadn’t believed that the family’s scheming and arguing over a peaceful grave in its midst could be serious. I told myself it must be a family joke, and anyway it had nothing to do with me, even Farid’s helping to pay.

Standing in the middle of the room, Farid’s mother declared, “No. It’s not as big as you imagine. There’s me, my husband, and now Farid’s about to become two, and then there’ll be his children.”

Her words frightened me. Death wasn’t as distant as it had been to me. I didn’t think of it, as a child might, as something that wouldn’t happen to me. Trying to make a joke, I said, “Should we be planning for our afterlife when we’re not yet married?”

“We’re saying prices are going to soar,” intervened Farid’s father, seizing on the same pretext as before.

I knew that all eyes were on me, especially the aunts’, begging me to save them from Farid’s mother’s claws. But I lacked the strength even to save myself and abandoned myself to the terrifying thought that one day I’d be here in this room underneath a tombstone, with one for Farid and each of my children. We’d all end up here and our children’s children would sit like us now, sipping tea, arguing, eating dates.

The raised voices of the men, joining in with those of
the women now, brought me back to the present. Farid came to my rescue, taking my hand in his soothingly, and I mumbled, “It’s crazy to think about it now.”

I don’t know how Farid’s mother heard what I said; I hardly heard it myself, but she remarked smugly, “Our lives are in God’s hands.”

This angered me and, unconscious of what I was saying, like a child who wants to contradict for the sake of contradicting, I replied, “I don’t want to be buried here.”

“You don’t have any choice,” she said. “When you become part of the family, that’s what you have to do. Even your own family wouldn’t agree to bury you with them.”

I felt as though she were already shoveling earth down on top of me. “No!” I screamed. “No!” I jumped up and rushed to the door. Farid’s mother paid no attention even when Farid took hold of me and said reprovingly to her, “Are you happy now?”

“She has to understand, my dear,” she said to him, “that whoever lives with us must die with us.”

I broke free and ran. He came after me. Outside in the cemetery’s main Square I caught my breath and leaned against a tombstone while I fastened my sandal. Children were playing with a ball there, disregarding the comments of their mothers and the older women who sat resting from the labors of their cooking. “The dead must be trembling with anxiety down there,” remarked one.

I composed myself at last, perhaps at this spectacle of everyday life, or the glimpse of a bird abandoning itself to space, beautiful and oblivious to what was happening below. We stopped beside the car. I knew we would have to wait for his family. I felt I wanted to be free of his hand holding tightly onto mine. I turned my face away, contemplating the washing spread out to dry, the empty bowl resting against one grave, the cooking pot sitting on another, as if it were a table, and the owners of these objects going about their business—victims of the housing crisis, who had squatted in abandoned tombs, rented at the going rate, or simply occupied family tombs prematurely, and adapted them to suit their lives. I saw television and radio aerials in place; and yet Farid’s mother wanted a bigger space to house her graves.

When I saw Farid’s mother, father and sister appearing in the distance, I felt the breath being knocked out of me. So we were one family, living together, dying together?

Farid’s father must have told his wife to keep quiet, as she hadn’t uttered a word from the moment she entered the car. His sister tried to make peace with me, and told me about a friend of hers who was a social scientist and was doing a study of the people who lived alongside the dead. She said how the women would be trilling for joy at the birth of a baby, and would fall silent suddenly if they noticed a funeral procession approaching. Their noises of rejoicing
would turn to keening, while the men rushed to find which tomb the music was coming from, or the news broadcast, so they could silence it. As soon as the funeral was over, life would return to normal.

But I remained silent. Surrounded by their loud voices, I felt like the ant I’d noticed on the floor of the tomb. It had moved aimlessly along, not knowing that at any moment it could be trodden on and crushed to death. I realized I’d changed my mind about marriage, and I wanted to get out of the car straightaway before I was swallowed up by Farid’s mother. I had a vision of the aunts like three witches preparing to serve us all up to the Devil.

I thought I would tell Farid that the reason I’d changed my mind about marrying him wasn’t to do with the tomb or where I would be buried. On the contrary, I’d loved all the commotion, and the cemetery itself was like a funfair. Anyway, I didn’t like being alone even when I was alive.

Then I decided against this last sentence. I was haunted by the scene of the family in the tomb, and their voices were still ringing in my ears. I resolved to try and like being alone, alive or dead.

Yasmin stood
looking in astonishment at the white peacock. She had not known that nature produced such creatures. Every feather in its long tail had a decorated eye surrounded by a heart, then a bigger heart and finally long eyelashes. The feathers were patterned exactly like blue and green peacock feathers, but they were white. Why had no one thought of white peacock feathers when they wanted to describe the morning mist? She walked up to it, thinking of a way to make it flash its tail. She shouted at it, threw a
atone at it—a small one—and barked like a dog. The peacock, its head crowned with white like a fall of fresh snow, continued to move proudly and slowly, drawing its tail behind it, a cloud of fine white lace. She wanted it to come close to her and stand still where she could see it, but it moved on with its haughty, calm gait. Yasmin hurriedly took out a piece of bread that she had brought for her son to feed to the ducks and crumbled it in the peacock’s path. It approached, pecked up the crumbs and, failing to find anything else of interest, walked away. God had not forgotten a single ornamentation. She thought, as she followed it, that she would write to her friend in Beirut about it. Then she dismissed the idea guiltily: it would be unthinkable to describe the white peacock to her when she and the others left behind in Beirut were spending their days seeking refuge from the bombardments, trailing between the corridors of their apartment buildings and the underground shelters.

Her son, Ziyad, ran ahead of her, licking an ice cream. She was glad she had gotten him out of Beirut, because for the first time for months he was running about like a child. For two months he had been shut indoors, confined to his room and the kitchen and the passage in between. She looked down at her feet as if she were rediscovering them and began to run delightedly, watching them move. She did not notice that she and Ziyad were alone in the park and the sun had disappeared until the darkness came down suddenly.
She caught up with Ziyad and took his hand and hurried to the place where they had come in, but there was a gate barring the way and it was locked. She was both astonished and afraid: it had never occurred to her that parks and gardens had gates which could be locked. Her fear transmitted itself to Ziyad, and he asked anxiously, “Are we going to sleep here?”

“We won’t be long. We’ll soon be out,” she reassured him.

There had to be another gate. All parks had several exits. She walked around and failed to find one: Holland Park seemed to have been transformed into a dense, high forest. The autumn leaves had piled up on the ground and their feet began to sink into them. Although she was afraid, she could not help noticing the beauty of the silent park, visible through the darkness. She stopped, trying to decide which way to go. A few steps, and she was plunging into utter blackness. Sweat trickled from her armpits and her palms felt damp. Her tongue was dry. “Oh God,” she said dispiritedly.

She heard Ziyad imitating her: “Oh God.”

His voice set up a new current of alarm in her. There must be a telephone. She should make her way back to the first gate. She tried to remember where it was.

It was as if nature knew of her predicament: a man and woman embracing materialized under a tree a few steps
away from her. When they became aware of her they walked on. She ran after them, asking them to help her. She and Ziyad and the couple were soon walking together along a path she had not seen before, past a pond where a white goose floated. The man stopped at a wall and jumped over into the street and stood waiting to receive Ziyad. The woman went next and Yasmin found herself scrambling after her, not caring about the height of the wall.