A Word For Love Part 28

The librarian didn't look up.

"Excuse me," Madame said again, reaching for the perfume, but she didn't need it, because a strange thing happened: as the librarian lifted her head, Madame started beaming. "Hunadi!" she exclaimed, and to my surprise, the librarian didn't tell Madame to lower her voice. She came around the front of the desk and the two women kissed on both cheeks. She asked about Madame's family, her mother and children.

After a few minutes, Madame came back to us, smiling.

"Come on, Bea. You're going to see the astonishing text."

I couldn't believe it.

"That's Hunadi. Why didn't you tell me she was the librarian? I know her from grade school. Her sister and I were best friends."

The librarian came over, too. "Who's going?" she asked.

"Bea is."

She looked at Madame and Nisrine, the other adults. "Do you want to go with her?" They each paused. Nisrine said, "I'll stay with the children," but Nisrine had taught me all I knew about love, and in these last few days, she and Madame and I had been doing everything together, our usual roles in the family had changed. I took her hand. "Come with me."

Madame said she would come, too, so the librarian got out three pairs of cotton gloves for us to put on, told the children to stay at the door where they couldn't reach to touch anything, and Nisrine and Madame and I followed her past the cage where scholars sat, past the empty shelves, through a small door, to a room full of books.

So, this was where they kept them! I looked around me. Books sat everywhere, in piles three high on the shelving, on top of vaults for old relics. I reached out to touch one; its corner came away like dust in my gloved hand. Layers and layers of books. Histories and maps and biographies; a map of the city when our apartment was a lemon grove; a map of the town where Madame grew up, when it was a grazing ground for goats. There were hundreds of books, and they seemed without order or plan, as if anyone who walked in would be equally happy with any of them, and standing there breathing in their worn-out smell, I thought anyone would be. I hadn't seen so many books since I arrived. Here was the autobiography of the president. Here was Aramaic, a biblical language.

Nisrine's eyes were bright. She looked around, taking in the t.i.tles the same way she had taken in the colors of this city's buildings.

"Bea, so this is why you like this place!"

The librarian told us to wait. She went into yet another, smaller room and came out a moment later, holding a thin leather case, which she cleared a s.p.a.ce for on one of the dusty tables.

"Go ahead," she said.

Neither Madame nor Nisrine nor I moved.

"Go on, don't you want your text?" She undid the casing, shook it once, and five perfect pages like light slid out.

In the great stories of Arabic writing, scholars often recount the moment they see a truly astonishing text. It changes them. Forever afterwards, they live with the memory.

Madame and Nisrine and I approached our text carefully. The writing was beautiful but simple, s.p.a.ced delicately over the center of the page. Painted vines ran along the sides, curving lightly in toward one perfect blue flower.

Madame said, "That's the flower of the desert. It blooms only once every hundred years."

Nisrine put out a finger to touch it. Adel had once called her this flower.

"It's lovely," she said, and I remembered the last time she said this, about Adel's first poem, leaning, a dishrag in one hand, against the counter. That had been the first text we'd shared.

What is the beauty of experience, if not felt with those close to you? I had once received a poem, and ran with it to Nisrine, and there may have been moments afterwards when I regretted it, when I saw how that poem led to love for her, and for me-what? But, I never regretted the actual sharing; two heads bent over the same bright pages, two hearts simultaneous in antic.i.p.ation, holding the same long breath. I always cherished that memory. I still do.

And even the writer, when she writes, isn't it, too, to share?

We began to read. Silently at first, side by side, faces squeezed close so we could see. I traced the lines with my finger, the perfect vines, the tightly spun letters. After a moment, I heard a low hum in Madame's throat; it grew, until she began to recite in a low, singsong voice, the way Baba used to pray, or recite the Quran. So, I stopped tracing the words, Nisrine stopped mouthing them, and instead, we followed along while Madame sang to us, an ancient love story.

The first page of the text was for Qais; we saw him in the letters, the light touch of gold in his breath and his poems; the love he gave Leila from afar, arms open, the edge of the page an unbearable distance between them, yearning like the layers of Leila's tent. Their love was sweet, it filled them with happiness; each in their separate world, it took only a glimpse, like the flash of a blue flower, to fill the rest of their hours with joy.

And as I began to read I, too, felt joy; I saw each word and met it, joyfully, with understanding.

But as we read on, sadness crept in. There was trouble; just like that, their love had changed. Glimpses were no longer enough for them-what was a glimpse of Leila, when she remained far away from him, when her eyes were so sad? The page became empty, the letters far apart, and we knew this marked Leila's leaving. All around were whispers of Qais's longing, the hamza a deep hole; the line's end a finality, like banishment.

We read on, now of Qais's wanderings. He was no longer called Qais, only Crazy for Leila. But though Leila was gone, we still felt her in the text; her essence was everywhere in the elegance of the letters, like a young woman's straight back. The fear in Qais, heavy as a policeman's boots.

And what I saw was how place didn't matter, and at first, this uplifted me. Leila was gone, but her essence remained, even in the word "leaving," or "banished," the small e like the sweet curve of her chin. Poor Qais, he would never forget her, she was his garden aflame, all red henna and raw wandering. Without her, he was only two sand-sore eyes, and I almost cried for this, but I didn't. I thought, Love is everywhere, it follows you, and at first this seemed a joyous thing, how we are able to love, even after the lover has left us, how memory can live on.

But, even as I felt joy, the words began to fall in on themselves, and I saw how painful love could be. Leila was everywhere, and Qais missed her after she left. And I saw, too, how missing does not stay in one place, but spreads out like snow; how it dusts everything, and changes the landscape. How it is what you carry with you, what you see and breathe, and so Qais no longer talked of Leila to his friends, or the shepherd, but she was everywhere with him, in his language, in the curve of the painted page, and of course, I saw this then, a breath of it, because of missing Baba. And I see it now, am destined always to see it, because of Nisrine.

Madame sang, her voice low and watery. Love blended with Qais's daily tasks, until it became his daily task, until there was no difference between the love and the missing and the daily task of minding a shepherd's sheep. Love is something you learn to live with, forever. It does not stop after death; it does not stop when someone leaves; it did not, has not, for me.

Nisrine turned to me. There were tears on her cheeks. "It's an impossible situation, Bea. Qais loved, but his loving couldn't help her."

There were tears in Madame's eyes, too.

"Don't cry, Bea."

"Don't cry, Nisrine."

"Don't cry, Mama."

I had come to cry for an astonishing text. But, as I leaned against Madame and Nisrine, feeling their tears in my hair, feeling mine on Nisrine's shoulder, I knew a truth about us three: we were not crying for the text, the way I had thought I would when I came here. I saw the words, and I saw Leila in the words, and then they blurred until I no longer saw their beauty, but it didn't matter. We were not crying for words, but because men whom we loved had gone, and they loomed large, and we missed them. And I have cried since, too, but never for a text; rather, because after Baba, Nisrine also left, and I know that even if I try my whole life, no amount of words will fill the hole that her leaving made.

So far, I have found this to be true. And yet, like the shepherd and like Qais, I have kept trying.

We read on.

The third page was the shepherd's. He came to Qais with thick frizzed hair and a smooth stick, and suddenly the letters of the text grew quiet. They contemplated the long silences of life in the desert. They contemplated the ease with which Qais talked and the shepherd listened. And as the words went on, drawing us forward with Madame's voice, the love story began to seem like a love story of three. I saw how the shepherd loved both Qais and Leila, and watched over them, and over Qais's poems, and I thought, Qais and Leila's romance ended, but their love did not, and neither did the shepherd's. And, I have since thought of the shepherd, how he loved, and watched both lovers, and I have come to see that this is the problem of the shepherd: how to stay behind and care for love when the lovers don't remain?

I have had to find my own way in this.

We read on. We three were together now, linked over the text, our hands and chests and eyes mingling.

What else did I notice? That it didn't use the words I expected. I had learned so many words in Arabic that meant love, and yet this text showed its love not through those words, but with simple ones, small actions-the way the shepherd held his staff when he listened to Qais. The way Qais took Leila's name.

I thought back to how I was called Baba.

I thought back to the word Madame liked about Baba that I didn't understand.

I thought back to all the moments without words that I held in my heart, and I thought, Of course. Why did I study words that meant love? Love is not in what is said, but what is done, what is felt and experienced, it is the intimacy of silent moments, of small meanings.

In the story, the shepherd knew this. He stayed beside Qais, and loved him, and loved Leila, but eventually, Leila left and Qais went crazy, and both were lost. I had first known the shepherd as the keeper of Qais's poems, and I had been drawn to him for this image, but now, I saw this was not the most important part of him. Rather, he was a man who felt deeply; sometimes, the only way to express deep feeling is through a story.

And so it is that I learned the astonishing text was not just a text of love, but also loss. Or, if it is of love, then it is only because the line is so fine between loss and love; because we almost never feel loss without first feeling love, and perhaps the opposite is also true.

I had been looking all along for a language of love, and I finally found that what drove the shepherd to write, what would drive me, too, was loss. Loss moved his beautiful words, and this was not a choice. He wrote, because he had nothing else left to do.

And, years later, I would sit in a room in a warm house, winter out my window, a box of poems and letters laid before me, and think, Since I left Madame's, since that day with the text, I have tried to run away from words, but in the end, for me, too, there is nothing else left. By this point, I knew that words were not the same as experience; that love is something you feel, not something you read. But, having felt love at Madame's and lost it, and having seen the world of those I loved come undone around me, I turned back to words. Imperfect though they are, they are still something.

And, perhaps in turning back, I can thank the shepherd. (And Adel, who grew tired of his poems, so sent them to me.) I read through the text that day feeling both joy and sorrow. Joy at the power of memory, sorrow at how all three of these-Qais, and the shepherd, and Leila-were powerless against what they felt.

Toward the end the shepherd began to give up, and in my heart, I, too, felt myself release, wallow in his hopelessness, think we are all done for, powerless against what we feel. But then, at the very bottom of the last page-a signature.

I turned to Madame. "What's that?"

She wiped her eyes. "It's the sign of the shepherd."

I had thought Qais was the poet. "The shepherd wrote this?"

"Yes."

So, he hadn't given up, he had kept trying. From loss had sprung the most beautiful words.

While I wrestled and keened before all this, Nisrine, who knew loss and love, whose family was far away, who had just lost a deep love, a constant ache in her heart, also learned her own quiet lesson.

She leaned over to me, her voice watery. "Qais loved Leila, and yet he couldn't help her."

I paused. This lesson was hers, not mine.

"Love does not always mean help. Sometimes, you have to be like the bird and fly yourself. Remember the bird in my story, Bea? How, all by herself, she flew away?"

The bird, who had followed her heart, who was neither Qais nor Leila, and so had learned to live on her own.

In the car on the way home, Madame and Nisrine and I were silent. The children felt our fragile mood.

Nisrine squinted at street signs, as if she were memorizing them.

We rode the elevator in silence, but it was a silence we entered together, and we were kind to one another; we took arms, held the door, helped with shoes.

In the kitchen, Madame told Lema and Nisrine and me to fold the laundry, while she put milk on to boil. Abudi came in as we were folding and took a shirt to put under his shirt, beside his belly.

"Look, I'm pregnant!"

"What did your mother-in-law say?"

"I left her celebrating. She was throwing rice off the balcony."

The phone rang. Madame answered it. She leaned against the stove, listening, then she hung up and came over to where Nisrine and Lema and I were, to help us fold.

"That was Moni," Madame said. "Ha.s.san's been charged, they know who informed on him, it was that tutor. He said Baba and his friends were at the Journalists' Club. You didn't tell your tutor Baba was at the Journalists' Club, did you, Bea?"

For a moment, I didn't say anything. Like Nisrine with the gas a long time ago, I wanted to blame Abudi. I had been so careful not to tell about Baba's doc.u.ment. But, I remembered us, locked in.

What about the father?

He's at the Journalists' Club.

Where the doc.u.ment was. The place police knew was for resisters. Where the resisters had signed.

Abudi knew better. Abudi didn't talk to strange men.

All day, I had been learning lessons about words, and perhaps here was my last one: that more important than all the words in Arabic is the ability to keep silent, to know when not to speak.

Lema was folding laundry. She'd made a neat pile of our shirts on the kitchen table, and another neat pile for our underwear. She took my shirt and balled it in her fist, to crumple it. She looked at Madame.

"She just stuffs them in her drawer, anyway. It's our work, and she messes it up."

The milk boiled.

Nisrine came over to me. She said, "It's OK, Bea. It was a slip, you didn't mean it."

Madame got up to turn off the gas. She spread dried yogurt and jelly on bread for the children, then handed Nisrine and me each a bowl with what was left.

"No, thank you, Mama, I'm not hungry."

"Finish it, Bea, we've all had our share."

I was the reason Baba was in jail and so I was deeply in debt. I didn't know how to make it right, so I pretended family debts were like money debts, with a finite number, and I looked for little forms of payment, to make it up in small, jelly-bowl-size increments.

"You finish it, Mama. I'm not hungry."

Madame pa.s.sed the bowl to Abudi, and my debt kept looming.

Lema said, "Go home, Bea. You must be tired of us."

"Yes, Bea, go home."

At Madame's, we were wary with strangers, so we were careless with one another instead. When Madame was angry, she hit Dounia. When I was upset, I closed the bathroom door and didn't care that others needed it. Abudi was the only boy. He ordered his sisters to get him his shoes and Nisrine to make him his snacks. He lay in waiting to kick them, and when Madame found out she didn't beat him. This was Abudi's privilege, kicking and not being beaten.

I also had a privilege: mine was carelessness with information. Because I was foreign and American, I met strangers in the street and talked openly to tutors and police, and I wasn't taken.