Note: Kristin Neubauer’s story is a work of creative nonfiction, based on the experience of Maya Husseini, Lebanon’s premiere stained glass artist.

Illustration by Margaret Wohler.

Tick.

The second hand on Maya’s watch moves six-tenths of a millimeter to the right, the click of the cogs lost in the space of cathedral’s soaring arches. In that same instant, Maya tips her face to the three celebrated windows gracing the cathedral’s western facade and she breathes in the light.  The window in the center is eight meters of radiance forged with hundreds of panes depicting the ascension of Christ into a golden sky.  To the left and right, angels glow in serenity and exaltation. Crimson and cobalt shimmer across Maya’s skin, muting her wrinkles, as the last rays of Beirut’s setting sun find the stained glass.  She is grateful for this rare moment alone in the cathedral, alone with her work.  Not since the earliest days of their restoration, when she sat with the battered pieces in her atelier and took brush to glass, has she shared a sacred solitude with these images, uninterrupted by the buzz of assistants and the shouting of workmen. 

Tick.

The second hand moves again and Maya throws her arms wide, a distant embrace of the jeweled tones in each pane.  They are as dear to her as her grown children. They came to her broken, battered over 150 years by the fire and bombs of civil war, by Mediterranean storms and trembling of shifting earth. For two decades she had labored over the fragments, first in her workshop, coaxing brilliance back into the turquoise heavens, the ruby of Christ’s robes, the topaz of the angels’ wings. Then, in the cathedral where she guided her staff’s every movement as they returned the 39 images to their positions of glory. Critics hailed her work at the cathedral as the piece de resistance of an illustrious career that made Maya the premier stained glass artist of the Middle East.  But for Maya, the labor over these images became more than a crowning achievement.  They united with her soul and spirit in a manner most sacred. 

Tick.

Maya turns to her special angel and smiles. Swathed in golden robes, the angel radiates a luminescence shared only with her creator.  She came to life over the year Maya had learned she was carrying her first child, taking form through the joys and sorrows of pregnancy, childbirth and first months of motherhood. Maya sketched out the angel’s face after returning from the appointment when the doctor confirmed the news. She painted the wings through daily battles with morning sickness. Firing the robes was interrupted by delivery. And after the angel was complete, Maya redid her face to reflect the peace she saw in her infant son as he slept. The child is a grown man now with a family of his own and Maya wonders if the angel knows. The whisper of a smile on her serene face, formed by Maya’s own hands and understood by Maya alone, holds sacred the bond between the two women across time and space. 

Tick.

Maya brings her hands together in prayer and bows. A gesture of reverence, of gratitude, of farewell. She is 60-years-old and has dedicated half her life to restoring these icons.  They have reclaimed their triumphant positions in the cathedral, dancing with the sun. At times, they blaze with the brilliance of a pink and orange sunset and at times they glow with an aura of gentle peace in a pastel sky. Maya knows they are no longer hers and that the time has come for younger artists to take up the work. The days when her fingers ache through the sketching and painting are becoming more frequent. Her knuckles swell in the rain. Her lower back, her knees, her shoulders protest after hours spent hunched over her work table.  Retirement is calling.  Maya resisted the signs at first but, in recent years, could not ignore the tremors in her fingers as she holds the brush, a slower pace of work and mistakes that sometimes require a pane to be fired multiple times.  Maya is now ready, but for a last private moment with the images that have merged with her and made her like fire and like light. 

Tick.

The second hand clicks again and a roar, as though the earth has cracked down its core, crashes through the city. Bomb. Maya has survived Lebanon’s 15-year civil war and is intimate with brutality in a way that chills her. The rumble and thunder of this moment bring back those days with terrifying clarity and she fears a suicide bomb or a Hezbollah cache. She has no way of knowing in that instant that it is not a bomb, but an accidental explosion of ammonia nitrate three kilometers away that will kill 200 people, destroy half of Beirut and most of her work across the city.

Tick.

In the second that follows, the pressure wave knocks Maya to the cold tile of the cathedral floor. Doors are ripped from their hinges, statues crash to the ground, pews are torn from their bases.  The windows explode.  It’s the shattering of glass that pierces Maya’s ears and freezes her heart. Instinct honed over the decades of war screams at her to scramble to the basement chapel, but it’s not even a question. Maya will die among the shrapnel of her windows.

Tick.

The second hand marches forward another six-tenths of a millimeter as Maya stretches her fingers into the dust, digging into the shards surrounding her.  She is oblivious to the sirens and the screams of “Ya Muhammad! Ya Muhammad!” beyond the cathedral’s sandstone walls. Jagged fragments frame the trio of windows where Maya’s special angel had joined her sisters in hailing the rising Christ.  Ash has obscured the setting sun, leaving the glass debris dull and lifeless. 

Tick.

On her hand and knees, Maya sweeps as many shards as she can into her arms, cradling them as a mother would a baby.  The splintered edges tear into the flesh of her hands. Rivulets of blood trickle down her bare arms, staining her shirt and and seeping onto the fractured glass. 

Tick.

The second hand moves again and Maya weeps.

Tick.

Guest Blogger Bio: Kristin Neubauer lives in Alexandria with her partner Brad and crazy dog Sally.  She is a journalist for Reuters and is also pursuing a Masters in Social Work.  She loves to write and sketch and spends as much time as possible riding horses in Haymarket. 

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