consumption in the hours before sleep. But what really happened was that he grew accustomed to the rhythmic shaking, which did not seem so pronounced now that he knew its cause.
Mornings were the more common occasion for intimacy with Fatima, particularly after a night apart, he in Jerusalem or along the coast, she at one of the Nablus istiqbals. Midhat believed the spark was most likely the change in routine, which made each a little stranger to the other, and revived some nostalgia for the early, more mysterious days of their marriage. Returning home from an evening abroad he would find his wife softened by the breath of change and released from her customary irony, which he assumed she had expended in great quantities of wit the night before. In addition, she seemed pacified by the taste of society which reassured her that the rest of the world, by which she always meant the rest of Nablus, was not better off than they. At these times, desire was tangled with an awareness that other people had seen their spouse, had seen and judged what they now saw, lying on the bedsheets in the sifted morning light. And each welcomed and coaxed the jealousy this thought summoned from the dark, because, in this instance, jealousy was a rise to desire, which by bringing the whole world into the bedroom made it easier to be alone.
November 1935. Midhat heard voices as he approached the kitchen. His shoe clicked on the terracotta tile, and the voices stopped.
A morning haze curtained the farther mountain from the kitchen window, and under it the things of the garden—trees, furniture, bushes, wall—were the colour of ash. Fatima was at the table, knees bent to her body, heels balanced on the edge of the seat. Her neck was stringed with tension, which suggested she had only just rested back against the wall. Beside her, Nuzha was leaning over something flat on the table.
Though younger than Fatima, over the past fifteen years Nuzha had aged much faster than her sister had. She could not be more than thirty and yet the hair around her face was already greying and the sides of her mouth were lined. Behind her back, Fatima often called her sister a simpleton; but Nuzha was not simple. She had only remained carefree, in a way Fatima never had been.
“Look here,” said Nuzha. “We found this among my mother’s things.”
Two bony fingers rotated the picture so Midhat could see it the right way up. It was a photograph, faded with age, showing two rows of women in party dresses, a few kneeling in the front. Most of the faces were blurred, mouths and eyes smoky lines and holes, but here and there part of a dress or a jewel was caught perfectly. In the background, the engravings of foliage on the flowerpots were pristine. Above them drifted a blotchy mist of real leaves.
Midhat pointed his little finger at a figure in the second row, one of the only perceptible faces. “There’s you,” he said. A girlish Nuzha looked dead at the camera. Beside her stood a grey smudge.
“Yes that’s me. Doesn’t it look like we’re dancing?”
Midhat studied the figures, trying to see them in motion.
“Where are you? Where was it taken.”
“I don’t know. Isn’t that funny? People didn’t really have cameras in those days, so I can’t think …”
“Atwan istiqbal,” said Fatima, in a jaded voice. The window light polished her nose and forehead.
“Oh,” said Nuzha. “Yes, Atwan. But why are we moving like that?”
Midhat said, “It must have been the—”
“Must it?” said Fatima.
He looked over at his wife’s strained neck, then picked up the photograph and drew it close to his eyes. He examined the plant pots.
“It’s raining.” He put it back on the table.
Of all his wife’s habits, the one that irked Midhat most was the effort she put into not appearing interested. It was an aristocratic trait that he abhorred, and towards which she had a natural advantage, being able to express boredom simply by keeping her face immobile. When the muscles of Fatima’s face were slack the corners of her eyes and mouth drooped south, as though she could hardly bother to keep her eyes open. Sometimes he liked to provoke her, and for this reason he had placed the photograph far away from her on the table. But, as usual, Nuzha blithely interfered and handed the picture to her sister, so that Fatima did not need to move for a view.