Free As Though She Were Sleeping by Elias Khoury

distant village called Jaj in the region of Jbayl. But she felt the blood leaping to her cheeks as she ran back to the house. Her fingers dipping in the water now and a bemused smile playing on her lips, Milia tried to repair the memory of that woman. She remembered being told of a baby dying three days after his birth, a husband who disappeared from the village, and breasts engorged with milk. Milia heard Hannah’s voice as if it came from a hidden niche inside of her. My breasts are hurting. She was conscious of the hoarseness in the woman’s voice as Hannah asked if she would like to try tasting the milk.
    No, it was not like that. Did Hannah really ask her this question? Pondering this, Milia did not know but she did sense the milkiness on her lips and recalled a vague fear propelling her to flee. Had she tasted the milk? If not, why had its sugary taste remained under her tongue so that whenever she was waiting for Najib she would be aware of that savor rising from her breasts to her lips?
    After that, Milia no longer dared to leave the house for the garden. Hannah might be standing beneath the olive tree, turning her back on the old house and baring her breasts, their milk dripping onto the grass. What was Hannah’s story? And why had the nun thrown her out of the house?
    The shadow-shape of the woman with the swollen breasts appeared over and over in Milia’s dreams. Yusuf’s brown face was there in the background, staring with fierce longing at the welling milk. Was . . . ? She didn’t have an inkling but she did know that Hannah had left her village and come to Beirut and worked as a servant in their home, and that her only child had died three days after his birth.
    Hannah spoke of a baby with yellow hair who had lived three days. She said that the hair on his head – which reminded her of the fluff on the bodies and heads of tiny birds – went dry and hard like thorns and she knew that he had died.
    But why had the nun thrown her out of the house?
    Was it because Milia told of the breasts? And was she the only one to see the woman suffering, her breasts swollen and hardened with milk? Here on the edge of the garden basin at the Hotel Massabki, Milia could feel the milk and the painful swelling of those breasts. As a gray stain traveled over the sky, she closed her eyes and remembered.
    She was alone, listless in the heavy heat, bare and taking a turn in the house’s garden. It was dark but not completely so. Why had she forgotten this intermittent dream amidst all the dreams that had crowded into her first night of marriage?
    Little Milia stands naked before the pond in the garden of the old Beirut house, with its large olive tree. Snow is falling, white fluff scattering across the water’s surface. Yet Milia feels heat so oppressive she thinks she is suffocating.
    Her short orange dress, which does not reach her knees, falls as though a hand has undone the long zipper stretching from the neckline to the lowerback. The same hand, reaching for her underclothes, has ripped them off and the little girl sees herself naked out in the pond. The snow is falling on her – hot snow – and she gathers it to her chest. She feels thirsty and puts her tongue out for the snow. Floating on the water, she eats the snow; she consumes it but it does not satisfy her, it will not quench her thirst. Swimming, she feels no cold. Here is a dream that does not end; a thirst that will not end; a never-ending sleep; an endless snowfall; and water. Everything is swimming through the water; and little Milia swims and eats and sleeps and the snow covers her and the heat radiates onto her skin from deep inside.
    As a shiver ran from her breasts to her belly Milia withdrew her hand from the water. She saw the face of her father, Yusuf, his eyes half closed. He was moving away from her and then coming closer, and she was trying to say something but her voice would not come out of her throat.
    To her breasts swollen with milk, Hannah