me that medicine, but what do you take yourself? How can your body stand it at your age? Anyway, I’m done with it. I’m tired of this body of mine that doesn’t feel like my own anymore.”
He told her he’d thought about it and maybe she was right, “but what does ‘right’ mean? There is no right in this world.” He also said that his medicine had proved that the body had no limits. “Desire is like time: it’s always there because it repeats itself endlessly.” She asked him about the other days of the week and he scowled and said there were no other days and asked her not to mention the subject again.
After two months of their meetings, which took place every Tuesday at five, she told him she wouldn’t be sticking to the time he’d set and would arrive whenever she felt like it because she’d begun to feel jealous. He told her sharply that the game of love and jealousy ill became one who had reached the last stage of life’s journey, and that if she was looking for love she’d have to find it elsewhere, “because I don’t have any room left in my heart.”
Did Salma break the agreement and arrive some other day to find the shop’s doors closed? Did she feel jealous, or was it that she’d had enough of “the love potion” game? And did the relationship go on for years, as Karim believed?
No one but Salma knew the true story and she revealed it to no one. She told her daughter, whose heart Karim had broken by leaving for France forever, to accept Nasim’s offer of marriage. She said life had taught her that “it’s all the same. What matters is for the woman to know how to make her soul hover above her body when she’s making love. Love, my dear, isn’t feelings. Love is practice.”
How had this woman, who had abandoned her village and her children for another man, come by such a capacity to philosophize? Is it true that once she went to Nasri without taking the potion and that when the man realized the woman wasn’t intoxicated with desire but was watching him, everything in him went soft and he couldn’t perform anymore? That he put his clothes on in a hurry and said, “It’s over”?
But it wasn’t over because Salma kept up her relationship with Nasri for the sake of her plants. The strange thing is that she didn’t feel the man had tricked her. She told him once she was grateful to him for his amazing potion, which had made her savor the taste of the lees, and he’d smiled and said nothing. The relationship would take another turn, however, when Nasri found himself obliged to accompany his son Nasim on a visit to Salma’s apartment to ask for the hand of her only daughter.
When Karim had heard the news of his father’s death, he’d drunk two bottles of red wine, then sat in the living room with a glass of cognac before him, swaying in ecstasy to the voice of Umm Kulthoum resounding through the apartment as she sang to the music of Sheikh Zakariya Ahmad, “I wait for you.” Bernadette had asked him to turn down the volume “because we’re living in a civilized country called France”; he’d cursed her sotto voce in Arabic. He’d felt the chasm opening inside him and heard Nasri’s voice, coated with wine, declaring that Man was an idiotic creature incapable of understanding that his death as an individual was of no importance except as a marker of time.
Had Salma’s relationship with his father been the impetus of his decision to leave Lebanon and never return? When Karim left for Montpellier, he was afraid, because of the savagery with which his friend Khaled Nabulsi had been killed. Had Nabulsi been his friend? He’d hardly known him and had no idea why Khaled had chosen him, of all people, to tell him of how he’d seen death in the General’s eyes. He’d seen death and died. What did death look like? Does everyone see his death before he dies?
Karim set off for the past, only to discover that he could no longer visit it. Things happen in a deluge and pile up
He told her he’d thought about it and maybe she was right, “but what does ‘right’ mean? There is no right in this world.” He also said that his medicine had proved that the body had no limits. “Desire is like time: it’s always there because it repeats itself endlessly.” She asked him about the other days of the week and he scowled and said there were no other days and asked her not to mention the subject again.
After two months of their meetings, which took place every Tuesday at five, she told him she wouldn’t be sticking to the time he’d set and would arrive whenever she felt like it because she’d begun to feel jealous. He told her sharply that the game of love and jealousy ill became one who had reached the last stage of life’s journey, and that if she was looking for love she’d have to find it elsewhere, “because I don’t have any room left in my heart.”
Did Salma break the agreement and arrive some other day to find the shop’s doors closed? Did she feel jealous, or was it that she’d had enough of “the love potion” game? And did the relationship go on for years, as Karim believed?
No one but Salma knew the true story and she revealed it to no one. She told her daughter, whose heart Karim had broken by leaving for France forever, to accept Nasim’s offer of marriage. She said life had taught her that “it’s all the same. What matters is for the woman to know how to make her soul hover above her body when she’s making love. Love, my dear, isn’t feelings. Love is practice.”
How had this woman, who had abandoned her village and her children for another man, come by such a capacity to philosophize? Is it true that once she went to Nasri without taking the potion and that when the man realized the woman wasn’t intoxicated with desire but was watching him, everything in him went soft and he couldn’t perform anymore? That he put his clothes on in a hurry and said, “It’s over”?
But it wasn’t over because Salma kept up her relationship with Nasri for the sake of her plants. The strange thing is that she didn’t feel the man had tricked her. She told him once she was grateful to him for his amazing potion, which had made her savor the taste of the lees, and he’d smiled and said nothing. The relationship would take another turn, however, when Nasri found himself obliged to accompany his son Nasim on a visit to Salma’s apartment to ask for the hand of her only daughter.
When Karim had heard the news of his father’s death, he’d drunk two bottles of red wine, then sat in the living room with a glass of cognac before him, swaying in ecstasy to the voice of Umm Kulthoum resounding through the apartment as she sang to the music of Sheikh Zakariya Ahmad, “I wait for you.” Bernadette had asked him to turn down the volume “because we’re living in a civilized country called France”; he’d cursed her sotto voce in Arabic. He’d felt the chasm opening inside him and heard Nasri’s voice, coated with wine, declaring that Man was an idiotic creature incapable of understanding that his death as an individual was of no importance except as a marker of time.
Had Salma’s relationship with his father been the impetus of his decision to leave Lebanon and never return? When Karim left for Montpellier, he was afraid, because of the savagery with which his friend Khaled Nabulsi had been killed. Had Nabulsi been his friend? He’d hardly known him and had no idea why Khaled had chosen him, of all people, to tell him of how he’d seen death in the General’s eyes. He’d seen death and died. What did death look like? Does everyone see his death before he dies?
Karim set off for the past, only to discover that he could no longer visit it. Things happen in a deluge and pile up
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