from The Stone of Laughter

It had not been a long time, but Khalil convinced himself that it was enough time to go back over what had happened and to believe it. He had seen the corpse. He had not seen it. He had seen it wrapped up inside a gray woolen blanket, quivering, on the stretcher. Held in place by leather straps to stop it from slipping. But that was not enough at all.

Youssef’s mother had not seen the corpse either. But people everyone who know them will help her to see it, even to touch it with her hand. She will wear black and see people who will confirm to her what has happened and repeat their confirmation. The women will wear black for her, and they will receive her and sit near to her, encouraging her to weep more. At a particular time in the day, for a number of days, she will go accompanied by them to Husseiniyeh. Her daughter will sit there next to her and they will sit in a circle around her. One of them, known for being active, hands out tissues to the women there before anything begins, she will hand out three or four to every woman because the dead man is a young man who was snapped in two. A woman, whom they all know, will go up to a platform that is a couple of steps or more above the rest of them and then sit down, clearing her throat to polish her beautiful voice, to read the condolences from the biography of the great martyrs. She will recite and sing and receive the rest of them at the table of tears and the tears will pour forth and flow over. They will all weep for the dead man and for those they knew who died before him. They will skin their eyes when they hear the mournful sound of the sighing voice, they will invite each other to tears as if to a delicious fruit because they know that the dead man has to die and be buried and that what buries him is not dust, but the water of eyes. They will prop each other up and help each other to stand in line behind the beautiful voice of the woman who recites, like chicks behind a hen . . . the voice of the woman who recites walks along the road of death leaving behind those who have died, waving to them, drawing away from them. The mourning women walk like chicks along the long line of weeping behind their mother, death, to weep for one death which is repeated over and over again. The voice distributes death to people so that they can weep until it comes back and gathers it up into the death of the greatest of martyrs . . . when it merges with this it seems a small death, a trivial death and so it will be forgotten, in the way that minor points and details are forgotten when they catch up with the center of their gravity.

Women, thought Khalil, moaning in envy alone in his room . . . all the wisdom is given to women. Wisdom of life and death and wisdom of what is farthest from it . . . they’re in touch with the world, they have a secret communication with it which makes anything that doesn’t belong to them nothing but a flurry of dust . . . they weep for the dead man and they bury him because they know this clay and all its fields of gravity, they know the turning of the planets and, if they do not, how is it that their periods stop, regularly, keeping time with the heavenly bodies and the moons and how is it that they have done so for millions of years, like the ebb of the tide and its flow, like the night of the heavens and their light, like the seeds of the earth and its harvest . . .

They tame death, instinctively. They make it dismount and make it sit by them, shyly but with the confidence of mastery. They feed it, they give it coffee...