The Woman From Tantoura (13 page)

Then he suddenly noticed that little Abed was sitting next to him on the map, asking for attention, so he said to him, “What have you memorized, Abed? Go on, tell us.”

Abed sang the anthem “My Homeland,”
Mawtani
:

My homeland, my homeland,

Splendor and beauty, majesty and magnificence

Are in your hills, in your hills.

Life and deliverance, pleasure and hope

Are in your air, in your air.

Will I see you, will I see you

Safe and sound, blessed in honor?

Will I see you, so sublime

Reaching the sky, reaching the sky,

My homeland, O my homeland?

Sadiq broke in, “‘Reaching the stars,’ not ‘the sky.’ ‘The sky’ is a mistake!”

“Hold on, Sadiq, go a little easy on Abed. Good for you, Abed, excellent!”

Abu Amin reached into his pocket and gave Abed three sugarcoated almonds. He had begun to make sure to buy them and keep them in his pocket when he had become a grandfather with young grandchildren.

14

Abed of Qisarya

He didn’t give me a chance to look at him. He didn’t allow me to stop and connect the little boy to whom I had bid farewell twenty-five years before in Deir al-Maskubiya in Hebron with the man who stood before me. He opened his arms wide and embraced me, to the surprise of the children and confusion of their father. He held me away a little to look at me. He said, laughing aloud, warmly, “Your eyes haven’t changed, and of course not the tattoo. I looked everywhere for you, I went to Sidon and to Ain al-Helwa, and when they said, ‘They went to Beirut,’ I asked in Sabra and Shatila and Burj al-Barajneh. If I had known your husband’s name it would have been easier for me. I went back to Sidon again and they said, ‘Are you sure that they are from Tantoura? The people from Tantoura live in Syria.’ I was there a whole week until I found an elderly man who said that he knew Abu Amin and who took me to him. He gave me your address in Beirut.”

Then came telegraphic sentences about Wisal, about his mother, about himself. He asked me about my mother. I said, “She’s passed, God keep you safe.” A moment of silence, then the talk flowed again,
naturally. It seemed natural. Then I left him with Amin and the children and went to make dinner. Abed had become taller than I am, how? I carried him to the sea when he was shivering and saying, “I don’t want to go,” and I kept saying, “We’ll swim together, you’ll love the sea, believe me.” The wave came and he held tighter to my neck, and then he began to cry. How could I connect the fearful little boy with this lean, handsome young man who came up unaffectedly and hugged me as if he were one of my brothers, come back from the dead? Had I forgotten him? I had not forgotten him but I had resigned myself to his absence. Or had I? He said, “I knew we would meet. The day I graduated from school, the day I graduated from the university I said to Wisal, ‘How will I send news to Ruqayya that I’ve graduated? I wonder if Ruqayya has married, and how many children she has?’ Wisal has married and she has five boys and one girl, what do you think, Sadiq, shall we ask for her for you?” Sadiq laughed, “If she’s pretty, I agree!” He said, “I’m working in Beirut. God help you, Abu Sadiq, I’m going to keep bothering you with my visits. Consider me Ruqayya’s brother or her firstborn son or an unwelcome guest, stickier than the best bandage. There’s no help for it.”

Abed descended on the food ravenously. He said, “It’s the most delicious food I’ve eaten in my life.” After he left, little Abed said, “He ate like he was famished, he didn’t leave us anything for tomorrow.” His father scolded him, and I laughed. I was in a good mood, as if I were happy, but I couldn’t sleep that night. Abed had brought the whole village with him as if he were bringing it to me, then he left it, secretly, and went away. What kind of present was that? Why hadn’t my mother thought about taking a little iron box with her, like Wisal’s mother, with our papers in it? There had been a picture of my father and brothers that had been taken of them in Haifa. I remember my father had on a kufiyeh and was wearing a qumbaz, with a jacket that showed the leather belt around his waist. On his right Sadiq was wearing what was appropriate for a young employee in the Arab Bank: a suit and a fez, and on his left Hasan was in shirtsleeves and pants. Why had Abed brought them to me, as if they
were his family and not mine? I didn’t look at them a lot; I knew they were there, carefully locked away in some corner of my heart, but Abed had let them loose on me like mad dogs. What kind of image was that? How could I compare my father and brothers to mad dogs? The memory perhaps, the memory of the loss was like mad dogs that gnashed mercilessly if they were let off the leash. How could I pluck the serene picture and the clear smile before the photographer’s lens from the three bodies there on the pile?

Did my father inspire respect because he was my father? Because he was strongly built and broad shouldered? Because he rode a horse that had a long neck, long legs, and a long tail, and a beautiful face? Or did the kufiyeh and the cords—he was rarely seen without them—inspire respect? (When he washed or made his ablutions or went to sleep he would take them off, and with his black hair loose he would look younger.) I look up at him, slender, his head high, seated on the back of his horse, holding the reins and guiding the horse, who sways with him because he’s nearing the house. I look up as he’s leaving, and I see his back and his shoulders and the kufiyeh from behind. The horse walks with him, gently and softly; then he runs, then he lengthens his stride and gradually settles into the run. I watch until my father and his horse become like a single, spectral body, going farther and farther away, until it becomes an indistinct point in space. Was my father forty? Forty-two? My mother would say that they were married when he was eighteen. Sadiq was the oldest, and he was twenty-two when they took over the village. He did not resemble my father; he was more like my mother, small in stature and less massive than his brother, who was younger in years. Despite his fez and his suit he seemed like a pupil in high school. As for Hasan, who was in high school, his knees had suddenly lifted him up, and he kept growing taller until he surpassed his father. Like him he was broad shouldered and strongly built. The faces are clear; when I summon them they come to me easily, and along with them the picture of them on the pile. Isn’t it possible to separate the two pictures?

My relationship with heaven became complicated, complicated to the point of being completely ruined since that moment when I saw them on the pile. There was no acceptable or reasonable answer for “why?” however much it rose up, loud and insistent. I did not ask “why.” I mean I didn’t speak the word, and perhaps I was not conscious that it was there, echoing in my breast morning and evening and throughout the day and night. I didn’t say a thing; I fortified myself in silence. And now this handsome young man arrives, laughing and eating too much, to say purely and simply, “Abed from Qisarya,” and open the gates of hell on me that I had shut long before. To let loose on me the dogs of memory. Why don’t you keep your distance from me, boy? Why don’t you leave me in peace? I had tried to forget until it seemed that I had forgotten. And then there were Sadiq and Hasan and Abed, others to stare at and busy myself with, as if they were the origin, as if I had forgotten the origin. What do you want from me, boy?

Amin said, “What’s the matter, Ruqayya? You’re tossing and turning, shall I give you a sedative?”

I did not answer. I left the bed and stayed on the balcony until the first streaks of daybreak appeared. I made myself a cup of coffee and went down to the sea.

I said to Abed on the next visit, “Tell me about Wisal.”

He said, “She’s still pretty, but she seems older than you. Maybe it’s the difference between life in the camp in Jenin and your life in Beirut.” I looked into his eyes—was it a criticism? His expression seemed normal. He said, “She married a farmer from Marj ibn Amir, a refugee like us living in the camp. The first years were hard, and then my mother bought a sewing machine on installments and began to sew for the neighbors. After that Wisal got married and I got a scholarship to the University of Jordan. Things were okay. I would study in Amman and go back to Jenin for the summer vacation, and if I could manage I would go every two or three months. When the West Bank was occupied I sneaked back to Jenin twice.”

He bound up a quarter century of life events in a kerchief and said, “This is what happened.”

Abed would visit us regularly, once a week at least, and I would invite him to lunch with us. Sometimes he would call and ask that we meet to have coffee in one of the coffee shops scattered along the shore of the sea. Amin said that he was a respectable young man, even though he seemed a little worried by a familiarity that he wasn’t used to between me and anyone else, man or woman. But he did not comment, leaving that to little Abed, who on any and all occasions made known his irritation with this guest who “popped up like a jack-in-the-box.” He would ferret out the negatives: he talked a lot, he laughed in a loud voice, he forgot he was a guest and that a guest should not stay too long or eat too much, “Didn’t you teach us that? So why don’t you say that he’s ill-mannered?” I scolded him, trying to camouflage the laugh that nearly escaped me when I noticed that little Abed was simply jealous of him, and annoyed that I had named him after him. Sadiq was not there, he was preoccupied with his adolescence and his studies and questions about being a Palestinian in Lebanon. As for Hasan, he became attached to him. Was it because he liked him purely and simply (for affection is God-given), or because the kind of work Abed did was interesting for a boy of fourteen who had questions and was looking for a field in which he could pursue them? I don’t know even now after all these years whether Abed influenced Hasan, so that he chose his field of work and his lifelong project, or whether it’s the opposite, and the young man became attached to the older because he found in his thinking and his concerns something that suited his own need.

It’s strange. The man bestows a drop of sperm and then a second and a third, he implants each of them in the same womb to grow unfettered in its closed confines. Then it emerges into the world, each resembling only itself in form and spirit. Strange! My older brother did not resemble his brother; perhaps a stranger might notice some similarity in the face, but they were different, this one small and lean and that one tall and broad. I remember them
laughing, I remember their eyes clearly, and their voices as well. There was a similarity in the voice but Sadiq’s eyes were a beautiful black, and his little brother’s eyes were like his father’s—an indeterminate color between blue and green. I remember Sadiq carrying me on his shoulders and running to the sea. I remember him keeping my mother from beating me because I had disobeyed her. I remember their love of Indian figs, how their faces contorted when the thorns would stick their fingers, how they would freeze like soldiers in ranks when they heard my father in the house, and then their uproar after my father left us and they were alone with us. I bring them to mind easily, walking next to each other as they left on their way to Haifa or as they were coming to the house on their return. I asked the older Abed, “Do you remember Sadiq and Hasan?”

He said, “I don’t remember their facial features, but I remember that the older one, Hasan … .”

I interrupted, “Hasan is the younger.”

“He was taller and bigger so I remember him as the older. Hasan picked me up from the ground once and spun around with me, and then said, ‘I have a better game.’ I don’t know how he put me on his shoulders; he took my hands and flipped me over, and put me down on my feet. In less than a minute I was standing on his shoulders, then here was my head near my feet, then here were my feet standing on the ground and my head was once again on top. I asked him to do it again and he did, several times. Every time fear would mix with pleasure and anticipation and shouts from us both. He was shouting to make the game more exciting and I was shouting because I was afraid, and maybe because I was imitating him. He left and I waited the whole week to play the same game. Every day I would ask Mother, ‘How many days are left until Thursday?’ I would count the days on my fingers, and then count them again, several times every day! The night before Thursday I would look proudly at the one finger remaining until Thursday, as if by dint of waiting I had gotten to the day I wanted. As if I were fasting, for example, and had borne it until I had reached the time for the iftar meal.”

He laughed loudly, until his eyes filled with tears.

“And I remember that the younger …” He corrected himself, “I mean the older, Sadiq, gave me five piasters and told me to buy chocolate with them from the shop. I gave the five piasters to Wisal and she bought five little pieces of chocolate which she passed out to us, to me and you and Ezz and Umm Sadiq and my mother. I divided the piece she gave me between us because she didn’t take anything for herself. When I ate the chocolate I found out that it was very delicious, so I went back to Wisal and asked her for the half that I had given her. She had eaten it. I cried so you gave me the chocolate that Wisal had given you.”

“Strange, I don’t remember.”

“I remember it clearly. I also remember that you would give me everything. You would carry me and I would put my arms around your neck. I would only go to sleep next to you.”

My face reddened in embarrassment. I changed the subject: “Do you remember how afraid you were of the sea, and how you would yell and cry when I was trying to teach you to swim?”

15

Wisal

Abd al-Rahman held out his hand with the telephone receiver and said, “Talk!”

I grasped the receiver and put it to my ear. I heard her voice and I knew it, even though I asked in confusion, “Wisal?” Then my voice was cut off. No, the telephone line wasn’t what was cut but rather my voice, as if I had returned to al-Furaydis and lost the power of speech. She filled the silence with words of welcome and with questions.

Abd al-Rahman took the receiver from me and said to Wisal, “Ruqayya is crying. I didn’t know she loved you so much. I wanted to surprise her—she didn’t know you were on the line, she didn’t expect it. Okay, better next time. I’ll call you tomorrow.”