Read As Though She Were Sleeping for Free Online

listen to her, Milia would find herself unable to speak. Crying in pain, she would call out to the mother who had not saved her from her interminable dream.
    When she told her grandmother and her mother about her dream-meeting with Ibrahim Hanania, her mother hastily ordered her to stop.Enough talking, my dear! We’ve other things to do. We don’t have the time to always be listening to your dreams.
    Ibrahim Hanania in Beirut? The bastard, he came here but didn’t stop by to see us? He waits until the girl is dead and then he shows himself? exclaimed the grandmother to her daughter, wiping away her tears.
    What’s wrong with you, Mama? You don’t believe Milia’s dreams, now, do you? What are you talking about?
    Yes, yes, so he’s gotten short and round and he can’t even talk, but why didn’t he come and see the girl before she died? It isn’t right! Grandmama went on.
    What crazies there are in this family! was her mother’s only comment.
    You’re the one who’s crazy. Milia saw the man and I saw him too.
    What do you mean, Mama, you saw him? The fellow is in Brazil. His brother came here and told us that Ibrahim is very upset and sorry but he cannot come back to Lebanon.
    No, no! He was here in Beirut, but he did not come to see the girl and it broke her heart. Mine, too.
    Ibrahim told her he was afraid of death. And aren’t you, Salma? he asked her.
    No, I’m Milia.
    He said he had not dared to visit his fiancée on her deathbed. He began to cry.
    Khallaas, ya binti , that’s enough, said Saadeh to her daughter.
    Milia looked at her mother fearfully and closed her mouth. She went out to the garden, screwed the hose to the water spigot over the pond, turned on the water, and watered the greenery.
    Musa was seven when, clutching his sister’s hand, he stood by his dead grandmother’s bed. The boy did not understand what death meant. He did not know what it meant for his grandmother to journey inside her dreams. He heard the keening of the women gathered around the bed of the chalkyfacedwoman whose body was covered by white sheets, and his eyelashes filled with something like water although he did not cry out loud or even whimper. He stood waiting for his sister to brush her fingertips across his lashes and lean over to kiss him on the eyes. Whenever she sensed he was afraid, that was what Milia would do. Swabbing his lashes gently like this brought the little boy back to himself and took him out of his nighttime fears. Musa was afraid of the creatures of the night and the nighttime trees. Milia had told him that the trees of the night fill the sky after the sun goes down. Then the dreams come and build their nests on the branches of the night. So the boy was terrified of the night and its nests. When he woke up in the dark his bare feet brought him creeping into his sister’s bed. Milia would move slightly without opening her eyes and the boy would curl up against his sister. She would put out her hand and caress his eyelids with her fingertips and then she would give him a kiss on each eye. Only then would Musa fall into an uninterrupted sleep.
    Musa was twenty years old when he came to tell his sister that Mansour Hourani wanted to marry her. The young man stood before his sister, who was perched on the edge of her bed, her head bent over a sock she was mending. Before he could say anything she noticed that his eyelashes were damp with tears. He spoke about Mansour and she said nothing. She put the stocking down on the bed, the wooden darning egg still stuffed inside. She stood up to face him. She put out her hand and ran her fingertips along his eyelids. She leaned toward him and kissed his eyes, sensing the taste of his tears. She saw him once again in his boyhood, his eyes alarmed and his lower lip trembling. As she kissed his eyes, she said she would agree to everything he wanted.
    This is what you want, isn’t it? she asked him.
    The little boy regained his height and returned to his manhood. He