Milad

— Pressure breeds explosion. I have exploded, good people!

Then he began talking to himself, counting on the fingers of his left hand: Milad, feed the cow and the calf. Milad, turn out the goats. And — imitating his mother's voice — Milad, for my sake, cover the jar.

Then he sprang up and shouted: All that's left is: Milad, sweep the house; Milad, wash the dishes; Milad, wash the clothes... Milad, knead; Milad, bake... And where is death, then? I haven't a minute to scratch my head.

His sister Froseena burst out laughing, and his anger exploded and he bared his teeth at her threateningly... She laughed and said: Anyone who heard you talk would say you were Khoury Murqus, drowned among his books of theology and Syriac till he forgets his lunch and his supper.

This is the work of peasants like us, my dear. Am I sitting idle? And where is your mother? And where are your father and your brothers? All of them at work.

This talk fell upon the mother's ears. She threw the load of firewood off her shoulder and stood listening. Then she came in, forcing a smile to appease her seething son Milad, who said when he saw her: Here comes the she-demon — a woman without religion; she never rests and never lets anyone rest.

She said to him with fond tenderness: What was that you said, my soul?

Milad answered her, half in jest, half in mockery: Nothing, soul yourself. How sweet your tongue is, and how many your demands.

— Oh yes; I heard you talking.

No yes and no anything. A house like hell, a life as disgusting as your faces.

He said it and walked off, clattering. His mother walked at his right side, teasing him and humoring him, and she kept coaxing until his familiar laugh burst out and his boiling pot subsided. The mother went back, saying to herself: He is right — a life that is all toil and misery. Poor Milad has never seen a white day. Then a violent thought crossed her mind that blackened her face. And that black cloud soon broke when her neighbor appeared on the road and pelted her with talk from afar: All the boys have become like your son, Umm Said. The whole plague comes from Ighnatius's boy. He spent two days in Beirut and came back yesterday — and with news, Umm Said, news of every shape and color. Boys have little sense. Handle your son gently, or the loss will be yours, sister.

Umm Said went up to her neighbor to inquire, and the two stood at the edge of the road — in Umm Said's hand a basket with things in it, and the other woman's jar full upon her shoulder. The talk ran half an hour and more; and had the village's fault-finder, who decries this failing in its women, not chided them, Umm Said would not have withdrawn into her house, nor the jar-carrier gone off on her way.

The jar-carrier's news upset Umm Said, and her heavy lips did a gentle little dance. The news tied her hands, so that she no longer knew what to do. She would begin a task and drop it, and she stayed that way for more than an hour. At last she remembered that noon was near and that her husband would be coming home to eat. He is exacting, and will have nothing to eat but cooked food, above all the hearty kind... His motto: nothing carries the knees but the belly. So she set the pot on the fire and began picking over the lentils, but her neighbor's news went on occupying her mind. And while she was lost in thought, another neighbor happened past; Umm Said hailed her and, the morning greeting returned, said: Come in.

She came in, and the carpet of discussion was spread. The subject was the neighbors' son, back from Beirut, who had disturbed the quiet village. The talk ran long, and the scales of judgment were set up. The two women went over the houses of the village one by one, and then their minds settled on this: it was a state of things not to be borne. The grown men have gone off to America, and the young ones will drift down to Beirut — and to whom will the land and the houses be left?

Then Abu Said cleared his throat and coughed. The neighbor fled by the west door, and he came in at the other, snorting and grumbling; and before he could shout, Umm Said forestalled him: Health to you.

He answered from the tip of his lips, sighed, and sat down, his huge frame filling the mat. He said: Praise be to God. And Umm Said answered, as always: Every hour. When he had drunk a jugful of water he wiped his mustache with his hand and motioned to his wife, asking after her scowl. She said: Hush, man — very ugly news.

Abu Said took her meaning and said: For your life, tell me: when was your news ever good? I have told you a thousand times, don't carry the ladder crosswise. Sing another tune, Umm Said.

She was stung, but did not answer his gibe, lest a quarrel flare up. She said: The talk stays between us. He cut in: Don't say the talk stays between us and then have the talk all over creation. She was taken aback and fell silent. He said: All right — speak. She said: Our neighbor's Beirut boy has been playing with the lad's head; he has made the life of Beirut glitter in his eyes. He may go off with him.

Abu Said took it in and shouted: And you believed it, madwoman! And if he goes, he'll come back like the dogs. Let him go try his luck; when he's pinched he'll learn that he has been living in plenty. Umm Said stared at him with wide eyes, and he said: Eat me with your eyes, then. Owl! You have nothing but tidings of doom. And the mother's tears dissolved the talk.

And Abu Said was touched, for the first time in his life; he took another line and said gently to his wife: Let us be — let us live a couple of days like other people. Have you forgotten the proverb: my heart aches for my son, and my son's heart is set on stone. God keep you — up now, and give us our dinner.

The poor woman was appeased and rose; but she remembered that her boy Milad had not yet come back, and asked her husband to wait until his son returned. He refused, ate his dinner, and went back to his work. The weather was fit, and he had things that must be finished before the rainspout began to pour. The sky was troubled, and the lightning had been flickering for nights.

In the evening the mother wanted to broach the subject of Beirut with her boy, but Abu Said knit his fearsome brows, and she held back.

And on the morrow Milad went off to Beirut — a setting-out like Imru' al-Qays's. The boy vanished; they waited two days, three; at last they learned that he was in the city. A week passed, and two,

and Milad did not come back. Whispering crept through the village: Abu Said's boy is going round people's doors, hungry and naked... But the news never reached Abu Said's big ears, for he does not mingle with mankind. He believes in nothing but the field — and let him die of hunger who does not worship the earth. His creed: "Who does not sow does not eat his fill." As for Umm Said, she learned her son's news from the jar-carrier — nicknamed in the village "the Post" for her chattering — and she sat down to weep.

Two days before Christmas she said to her husband: Give me leave to go look for Milad. And before he could say no, she rushed on, her eyes fastened on his face: For your life, give me leave. How can Christmas pass with the boy away from home?

Abu Said scowled, and she said, brokenly: For your life, say to me: go.

— Go, and Godspeed, Umm Said. But sew up your dress; it has been half a year in the chest. And your shoes?

She answered: The dress we'll sew tonight, and I'll borrow Umm Habib's shoes.

He forced a laugh and said: Sew at your leisure. He'll be better brought up if we let him keep the feast in Beirut.

— No, no, no, no!

— All right... you're in the right. Run, catch up with him.

And fearing Abu Said might take back his leave, she sewed nothing; she borrowed everything, down to the shoes and the stockings — and on Christmas Eve she was in Beirut.

No door of livelihood had opened for Milad in Beirut. Boys like him are locusts crawling over the city: this one kills, that one begs, another picks pockets. Milad tried all of it and had no luck; portering and begging did not stop his hunger, and he withered until he had all but dried up. His clothes grew filthy and tore, till people shrank from him in disgust and he would slink off out of the way... Then the poor wretch heard that on Christmas Eve people give alms, and give of their best, and he girded himself for the battle. But the frogs of his belly were croaking, and his legs would not carry him. He remembered his father's saying: "Straw is the nails of the knees," and he sighed for one lick of food, and walked through the souk like misery made flesh. He saw the little Christmas trees set up at the doors of the shops and laughed at them — but they reminded him of their winter evenings at home, and he groaned. Then he walked on with a beaten eye, hunting for the loaf — and the loaf is a whole engine of labors for a worn-out wretch like Milad to come by. He turned and saw the turkeys laid out and hung up by their beaks, and took them for chickens, and cried out as he walked: "God's blessings! That's chicken!"

The whisper of spoons and the ringing of glasses, here and there, worked upon him, and he remembered his mother's breakfast on Christmas morning the year before, and sighed, and crawled on with resolve, making for Burj Square. The north wind drove its freezing cold at him; he shivered and chattered, and remembered the raids he used to make on the wine jar, and sighed for one sip. And when the rounds had worn him out, he flattened himself near the Cathedral of St. George, and stretched out his hand for the first time, and cried:

— Alms, kind gentlefolk! I throw myself upon you. Hungry!

The people passed, and not one stopped for him. A few half-piasters were tossed to him, but they would not buy a loaf; his crying grew hotter, and their number grew a little, and he put them into his ragged felt cap. He cried out and counted, and when he found he had the price of two loaves he praised God. And he remembered the Gospel verse that says: Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you — so he went back to his pleading and his moaning. He warmed to it, and worked so hard at playing the beggar that he mastered the whole eloquence of that art; but it profited him nothing, for the crowd at the springs of the "Nativity grotto" had thinned. So Milad held his tongue and set about a final reckoning of what was in the cap: supper was secured, and there remained something to wet his throat with come morning. So he put his trust in God and stood up. And hardly had he straightened when a street ruffian of his own age butted him, snatched the cap, and flew.

Milad let out a fearful shriek and made to chase him; but hunger turned his head, and he dropped in a heap where he stood.

A woman had been watching, from the opposite pavement, this struggle of two desperate alley boys over the loaf, and she rushed toward the fallen one, tripping over the hems of a dress longer than herself, hobbling and bunching her steps as though her shoes pinched; and she would have gone down in the middle of the road had she not braced herself. After a thousand pains she reached the spot where the beaten boy lay heaped, and stood over him, her eyes welling with tears; then they rolled down hot, all but scorching her cheeks. And after a moment's musing — who knows what memories came crowding in upon that woman's fancy — she found herself stirred to charity, little as the money in her pocket was; then her hand went out to the boy, and she said to him, half knowing, half unknowing: Get up, my son; come with me; I will give you your supper.

Milad tore his eyes open and cried: Mother!

Aley, December 5, 1947