The Book on Fire Read Online Free Page B

the other, and describe wounds she’s made. “Wounds are not
all the same,” she says, slicing bright segments out of the candlelight. “We
must strive for beauty in this, as in all things. Your blade must be impeccably
honed, sharp enough to cut a window in a wall, sharp enough to whittle glass.
The line of the wound must harmonize with the position of the limbs. You’re a
painter, the blade’s your brush, the skin’s your canvas. Mark it with scarlet
ribbons and gestural spatters. Use the blood sparingly. A single pretty cut is
more charming than a dozen reckless gashes. The first painters were hunters.
They fell in love with the marks on the hide, and painted to replicate that
emotion. Are you listening, Koujour?”
    Of the denizens of the Kanisa she seems to get along best with
Makarios. She mocks Amir and Karim (both in love with her, though Amir insists
she’s a boy), she ignores Nura, she’s cordial to Koujour, sassy with me, but
she and Makarios have bawdy, rollicking conversations.
    “Back from your sacrifices, Nephthys?” he’ll say, tearing into a
loaf.
    “At least I don’t eat them, you cannibal.”
    “Ah yes, if I’m drunk enough I can sometimes feel the
transubstantiation taking place on my tongue. Wheat to meat. Try some.”
    “I don’t drink.”
    “Just the body, not the blood.”
    She took a bite. “It’s bread.”
    He guffawed. “Listen, sweetheart: ‘To any vision must be brought an
eye adapted to what is to be seen.’”
    “Don’t call me sweetheart.”
    “Virago.”
    “That’s better.”
    ****
    After
midnight, Zeinab and I sometimes went strolling like a courting couple along
the corniche, through the alleys of al-Atariin, beneath the art nouveau lions
and angels. I never ate out with Zeinab, never went with her to a nightclub,
but there were a couple coffee shops in the old quarter where men and women
could sit in a back corner unharassed, and it was in these places that we ended
up in the hours before dawn.
    One night, the east was already glowing by the time we entered the
café. We ordered an apple-tobacco waterpipe and tea steeped with mint, extra
sugar in hers. The coffee shop boy adjusted the ember of the waterpipe and
puffed through the mouthpiece to clear it. Zeinab slipped the velvet hose under
her veil and the water churned and clouded. Smoke seeped through the blue
gauze. She handed the mouthpiece to me. I loved the first rush of cool, sweet
smoke, but even more I loved the imagined taste of her saliva on the glass
nozzle. I know why the desert poets extolled above kisses and caresses the
saliva of their lovers. Outside, the tram screamed and gasped and sparks rained
across the doorway. Oum Koulsoum’s rough, lovely voice, singing “al-Atlal,” was
nearly submerged in radio static.
     

     
    “Why am I still alive?” I asked.
    “I have hope for you, book thief. I’m taking you under my blue
wing.”
    “Are you going to burn more of my books?”
    “You’ll have to give them all up for what you desire.”
    “And then what?”
    “Then you’ll be free.”
    I sipped the tea, the furry mint leaves like a woman’s downy upper
lip against my own. “How did you know I had the book? The one you burned.”
    “By the look in your eye.”
    “And what look is that?”
    “The look of someone who’s just eaten a baby. And found it
delicious.”
    “You have no way of knowing what that book meant to me, what I had
to go through to acquire it.”
    “You have your wardrobe, book thief. And I have my wardrobe. Which
contains the greater treasure?”
    “Let me into your wardrobe, Zeinab. Tell me your tale.”
    “Like all tales, it comes at a price.”
    “Name your price.”
    But the mosque call sounded and she was gone. The ember on the
waterpipe was cold. The coffee shop was empty. The boy began to sweep the
sawdust into dingy heaps.
    ****
    To pass the time before two a.m. I sometimes stroll
up Sharia Nebi Daniel to the street of booksellers, between the quarter