Where the Streets Had a Name (2 page)

With three-month-old Mohammed nestled close to her chest in a makeshift sling, Mama delegated. She sent me to the bread section. Baba, holding the hand of my seven-year-old brother, Tariq, was sent to toiletries. Jihan, my older sister, was sent to household cleaning products.

Mama dealt with the rest.

Baba bought five tubes of 2 in 1 shampoo, a dozen packets of soap, disposable shavers, sanitary pads, nappies, toothpaste and toilet paper. In his panicked rush (Tariq wanted to play), he forgot a new toothbrush for me. I didn't complain. After all, the nappies were one size too small. Mohammed had it worse.

Abo Yusuf stood behind the cash register with his wife and son, trying to cope with the mass of people falling over the counter with their goods, pushing and shoving to be served first. Jihan and I giggled at Abo Yusuf, whose face was flushed bright red as he jabbed at the keys of the cash register while yelling out orders to his son and answering people's questions about where to find lemon-scented detergent and three-ply toilet paper. Two women started yelling at each other, claiming first right to be served.

‘Order!' Um Yusuf cried out wearily. ‘When will we ever learn to stand in a queue?'

‘When hell freezes over,' Baba muttered, rolling his eyes at me.

Mama approached us, her arms overflowing with goods. ‘Why aren't you at the cash register?' she shrieked. ‘We don't have much time left!'

Baba shrugged with such lack of concern that Mama looked as though she might clobber him with the jar of pickles she held.

‘Look at them,' he said, gesturing at the mob of shoppers. ‘We will be trampled and I'm wearing my best suit. I picked it out especially. You never know who you will meet when a curfew is lifted.'

Mama snorted. ‘Trampled? Better flattened here than be out on the streets when the curfew is back on.'

Jihan's eyes met mine. I could tell that she found it as difficult as I did to believe that anybody, even a crowd, could flatten Mama. Sure enough, Mama pushed and heaved her body through until she reached the counter.

‘Hell is as hot as ever,' Baba whispered in my ear.

As I brush my teeth with Jihan's worn, bristly toothbrush I look in the mirror and I'm startled by my reflection. It always seems as though a stranger is looking back at me. I stare at the twisted, contorted skin around my right cheek, the scarring that zigzags across my forehead. I raise a hand and cover the right side of my face. The left is mostly smooth. Normal. Slowly, I lower my hand and I am a stranger to myself again.

I spit the toothpaste into the basin. Then I gargle three times, clean my nose, wash my face, pass water over the crown of my head, rub water on my arms, up to my elbows. Over the scab with the texture of tree bark that decorates my right elbow. A scab earned when I fell from the windowsill in my eagerness to meet my friend Samy's dare. Samy had thought I'd be too afraid to sneak into the staffroom and pinch some sweets from the platter the teachers had left out on the table. But I wasn't scared – although when I tumbled off the sill on my way out, I did drop the baklava. Samy still ate it though. He just dusted off the dirt.

I look down at my socks, sticking out from under the red nightgown which used to be Jihan's. I'm too lazy to wash my feet, the last action required to complete the ablution before prayer.

God is forgiving of children, I say to myself.

Sitti Zeynab isn't so forgiving. But then again, she need never know.

Sitti Zeynab farts. A lot.

She shares a room with Jihan, Tariq and me. My sister, brother and I share a double bed. I wet the bed the other night, after another nightmare. Jihan was, understandably, furious. She helped me change the sheets, though, and swore under her breath, rather than at me. The next morning she argued with my parents that she wanted her own bed. But according to Mama and Baba, a new bed is ‘not a priority'. When the Israelis confiscated our land in Beit Jala we moved to a small apartment in a poor neighbourhood in Bethlehem. We went from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom apartment, and we're living off Baba and Mama's savings. Baba walked away from the argument with Jihan, and Mama warned her to hold her tongue. ‘Baba does not need to hear you whine,' Mama scolded. In Jihan's defence, I pointed out to Mama that she had only the night before complained to Baba that the hallway carpet needed replacing. She sent me to the bedroom with a basket of washing to fold. I'm sent to my room quite regularly.

Sitti Zeynab sleeps on the single bed. It has a pine headboard decorated with glossy magazine stickers of Amr Diab, Nancy Ajram, Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Jackson. Sitti Zeynab complains that the pouted lips, plastic bodies and gyrating hips will repel the angels. She once woke up with a yelp having opened her eyes to find Amr Diab's permanently frozen twinkling eyes and dimpled grin staring down at her.

Sitti Zeynab goes to bed at ten o'clock every night. After she has performed the last prayer and read some pages of the Koran, she attempts to lift her large body up onto the bed. It's difficult for her to raise her legs. Of course, that's because she's old and inflexible, but Jihan and I think it's also because her boobs are so heavy that they get in the way. When Sitti Zeynab finally manages to lie down, her head sinks into the pillow and she bellows, ‘
Ya Rab!
Oh God!' Her chest heaves and wheezes with the effort of movement; a fart is often a welcome relief for her.

They are almost always loud. Not necessarily smelly. Jihan and I have perfected our defences. Heads under the blanket; laughs stifled. The occasional spray of cheap deodorant over our pillows. Tariq never holds back, though. ‘I'll ask the Israelis for a gas mask, Sitti Zeynab!'

Sitti Zeynab is sitting on the edge of the bed as I walk back into the bedroom to put on my school uniform. Jihan is still asleep, the blanket drawn over her face, a few strands of her hair spilling over the top. The corner of a picture of her fiancé, Ahmad, protrudes from under her pillow. Jihan's feet are squashed in Tariq's face. His mouth is wide open, his hands tucked close to his chest.

Sitti Zeynab smiles at me and says: ‘Your hair is long and beautiful,
Masha Allah
. God be praised. You have hair other girls can only dream about.'

‘Too thick. I want fair hair.'

‘Ahh, but the one-eyed is always a beauty in the land of the blind.'

I think for a moment and then shrug. ‘I need a toothbrush.'

‘And I need a hip replacement. That is life.' She stares back at me, lifts herself an inch off the bed and farts.

‘Yaa! That
mansaf
. Oof! It always makes me windy.'

I help my grandmother to the lounge room. She carefully edges her behind onto a chair.

‘Oh God!' she cries. ‘Ease these bones of mine.'

‘Do you want to eat some breakfast, Sitti Zeynab?'

She pats her stomach with both hands. ‘Too early,' she says, her face scrunching up at the thought. ‘Maybe later . . . yes, maybe later . . . Oh! But you eat!' She's suddenly agitated. ‘Strength, my darling, you must eat. You're so thin.'

‘Yes, Sitti Zeynab,' I mutter.

‘You must fill your stomach with food before school. Otherwise your brain will stay asleep. You need to wake it out of bed with some cheese and bread! How else will you become a doctor? Or was it a university lecturer? I can never remember . . .'

As my ambitions don't extend to either profession, I refrain from responding.

‘Why are you still standing there?
Yallah!
Go eat!'

I hurry into the kitchen and hear her praise God as the refrigerator door creaks open. I make myself a cup of sweet mint tea and eat a slice of fetta cheese and some pitted black olives wedged in a chunky piece of bread.

While I'm eating, Mama walks into the kitchen and kisses me on the forehead. She's a heavy woman, with shelves of soft fat around her stomach and hips. She's also a chain-smoker. When she's not eating, she's smoking. Sometimes she does both simultaneously. Mama is always breathless. She shares her mother, Sitti Zeynab's, misfortune and has a chest like a tank. It presses up against her, so she always sounds breathless when she talks. This morning she speaks as though time is chasing after her and she can't waste a single word.

‘Good morning, ya Hayaat. Did you sleep well? Make Sitti Zeynab a cup of tea. Mohammed's poo is a funny colour today. Did you hear him crying last night? Oh, school is closed; there is a curfew. We will need to rearrange our supplies. Go easy on the toilet paper. Your father didn't buy enough. Thank God I have my cigarettes. Wipe the crumbs off the bench.'

I think about the pros and cons of the curfew. On the one hand, there's the boredom. Always the boredom of being stuck at home. Home means chores and dealing with Mama and Baba's boredom. ‘Clean your room. Help me rearrange the kitchen cupboards. Do your homework. Go inside and study. Stop fighting with Jihan and Tariq. Would you peel the potatoes, please, ya Hayaat? No? Did you say no? Peel them now!'

Then there's the important matter of meeting Samy's latest dare to stick a potato in the exhaust of Ostaz Hany's car. Not one of the peeled potatoes. Any potato will do.

Maybe this seems obnoxious and cruel but Ostaz Hany picks his nose and teaches us Mathematics so it's not such a bad thing to have a potato in the exhaust of his car.

On the other hand, I'll have a break from school, and this is also not such a bad thing. ‘I won't see Khader for a while then,' I whisper to myself.

‘Who is Khader?' Mama asks.

Tariq runs into the kitchen and grins up at me. ‘Khader is a pig. He is the poo of a pig. He is the insect that feeds on the poo of a pig.'

I smile at him. His moral support is endearing.

‘Don't use such language, boy!' Mama yells.

‘But he calls her potato mash face! He is poo.'

Mama hits Tariq on the nape of his neck. ‘Enough! Where did you come up with such filthy language?'

‘Yesterday you told Khalto Samar that the bathroom smells like poo because—'

‘Enough!' Mama fixes him with her death stare and he walks out of the kitchen, a puzzled look on his face.

‘Oh God!' Sitti Zeynab cries from the lounge room. ‘How can Hayaat learn when there is so much disruption?' For such an old woman I marvel at her hearing sometimes.

‘
Yaama
, don't make it worse.' Mama rolls her eyes and lights a cigarette. She slumps down onto a kitchen chair, stretches out her legs and inhales, closing her eyes and throwing her head back. ‘These wretched curfews,' she mutters to the ceiling. ‘Being trapped with family for longer than is humanly possible. I will be stuck with your whinging father, my annoying mother, a crying baby, an energetic son and a lovesick, dieting daughter. God only knows how long they will decide to keep it going this time.'

‘Baba isn't a whinger,
Yaama
.'

Mama looks closely at me. ‘Do you know what he did this morning, Hayaat? I was simply trying to explain to him that there is an efficient way to extract toothpaste from a tube and he sighed and walked away! “I am not having a conversation about toothpaste,” he muttered! Ah! But he didn't understand that it was a conversation about toothpaste being squirted out of a tube and splashed down onto a basin
I
will inevitably have to clean!'

I switch off. I'm used to Mama's rambling complaints about my father. When Mama's tirade against Baba has finished, she turns to me and says: ‘
Habibti
, you are my precious one. May God find you a good boy one day who will ignore your scars and love you for who you are on the inside.'

Mama sucks on her cigarette and smiles affectionately at me, then walks into the lounge room to join Sitti Zeynab.

I make Sitti Zeynab a cup of tea and take it to her.

‘God reward you and heal your face,' she says.

I grit my teeth and plonk myself down into a chair. Although the curfew is only hours old, I'm already bored – and if I hear one more reference to my face, I'll scream.