The Patience Stone Read Online Free PDF Page B

closer to the house. Here is her broken shadow on the curtains’ migrating birds. She coughs and murmurs an inaudible name. She coughs. She waits. In vain. She moves off, murmurs the name again, and coughs. No response. She calls, she coughs. She is no longer waiting. No longer murmuring. She is humming something. Names, perhaps. Then she walks away. Far away. And returns. Her hum can still be heard, over the sound of the street. Over the sound of boots. The boots of men carrying weapons. The boots are running. Scattering. In order to hide somewhere—presumably behind the walls, in the rubble … and wait for the night.
    The water bearer doesn’t come today. The boy doesn’t cross the road on his bicycle whistling the tune of“
Laïli, Laïli, Laïli, djân, djân, djân, you have broken my heart
…”
    Everyone is lying low. They are silent. Waiting.
    Now night falls on the city, and the city falls into the drowsiness of fear.
    But nobody shoots.
    The woman comes into the room to check on the sugar-salt solution in the drip bag, and leaves again. Without a word.
    The old neighbor is still coughing, still humming to herself. She is neither near nor far. She must be among the ruins of the wall that, so recently, separated the two houses.
    A heavy, ominous sleep steals over the house, over all the houses, over the whole street, with the old neighbor’s hummed lament in the background, a lament that continues until she hears noise again, the noise of boots. She stops humming, but continues coughing.“They’re coming back!” Her voice trembles in the vast blackness of the night.
    The boots are near, now. Arriving. They chase away the old lady, enter the courtyard of the house, and keep coming. They come right up to the window. The barrel of a gun pokes through one of the shattered panes, pushing aside the curtains patterned with migrating birds. The butt breaks open the whole window. Three yelling men hurl themselves into the room. “Nobody move!” And nothing does move. One of them switches on a torch and points it at the motionless man, barking, “Stay where you are, or I’ll smash your head in!” He puts a booted foot on the man’s chest. The faces and the heads of the three men are hidden by black turbans. They surround the man, who continues to breathe slowly and silently. One of the three bends over him. “Shit, he’s got a tube in his mouth!” He pulls it out and yells, “Where’s your weapon?” The recumbent man continues to stare blankly at the ceiling, his gaze lost in the darkness where the spider may already have spun its web. “We’re talking to you!” screams the man holding the torch. “He’s fucked!” concludes the second man, crouching down to pull off the watch and the gold wedding ring. The third man rifles through the whole room—under the mattress and pillows, behind the plain green curtain,under the kilim … “There’s nothing here!” he complains. “Go and check the other rooms!” orders the other, the first man, the one with the torch in his hand and his boot on the man’s chest. The other two obey. They disappear into the passage.
    The one who is left lifts the sheet with the barrel of his gun, exposing the man’s body. Perturbed by its lifelessness, its total silence, he grinds the heel of his boot into the man’s chest. “What d’you think you’re looking at?” He waits for a groan. Nothing. No protest. Flustered, he tries again. “Do you hear me?” He scans the vacant face. Exasperated, he scolds, “Cut your tongue out, did they?” then snorts, “Already dead, are you?” Finally, he falls silent.
    After a deep, angry breath, he grabs the man by the collar and lifts him up. The man’s pale and disturbing face scares him. He lets go and backs away, stopping in the doorway, unsettled. “Where are you, boys?” he grumbles from behind the strip of turban muffling his voice. He glances into the passage, dark as blackest night, and shouts, “Are you there?”