Where the Streets Had a Name (22 page)

‘So next week we'll pick up my dress. Can you believe it, Hayaat? It's all happening so soon. Ahmad's mother keeps calling me. Tells me she can't wait for the wedding. She seems nice. I just hope she's not one of those interfering witches. Well, she hasn't interfered in any of our decisions yet. Huh! Maybe Ahmad will be the one with the problems, with Mama . . .'

I sit on Sitti Zeynab's bed helping Jihan sort the clothes she's taking with her and the clothes she's leaving for me.

‘Here, you can have this dress,' Jihan says, tossing it to me.

‘Thanks!' I exclaim, running my hands over the silk fabric. ‘Are you sure, though? You'll have lots of weddings and parties to go to when you're a bride.'

‘Ah, don't worry about it. It's too small for me anyway.'

Sitti Zeynab hobbles into the room and takes a seat on the edge of her bed. ‘What are you doing?' she asks Jihan.

‘Sorting out my clothes, Sitti.'

‘May God protect you. May you know happiness. May your new family treat you with love and kindness. May we see you often. Oh God, may we see you often. And may you have many babies.'

‘
Ameen
,' Jihan murmurs automatically.

‘God bless your mother-in-law and father-in-law and their brothers and their sisters and—'

I shoot Jihan a panicked look. ‘Quick,' I hiss, ‘this could go on for hours!'

‘Will you miss me, Sitti Zeynab?' Jihan interrupts, flopping down next to her. She slings an arm over Sitti Zeynab's frail shoulders and gives her an affectionate squeeze. ‘Who will give you trouble when I'm gone? Oh, this house will be empty without me!'

Sitti Zeynab breaks out into silent laughter, her shoulders jiggling up and down.

‘Don't worry, Sitti, Hayaat will be here. She's your favourite anyway. Travelling to Jerusalem on her own for a jar of soil.
I'd
never do that.' Jihan winks at me and I poke my tongue out at her.

‘God help your in-laws,' Sitti Zeynab says, making Jihan giggle.

‘What's the joke?' Mama asks as she walks in. Without waiting for an answer she continues talking. ‘Jihan, don't take
everything
with you. You don't even wear half your clothes. Have you packed all your new clothes? Oh, please don't take that awful pair of jeans. They're frayed at the bottom! And don't tell me it's the fashion!'

‘But it is!'

‘Hayaat, take them out of the suitcase. I won't have my daughter entering her new home with ripped clothes. What would your mother-in-law say? I'll tell you what she'd say. She'd say:
What kind of mother brought you up to wear torn clothes?
She'd say—'

‘Oh Mama,' Jihan scoffs.

Jihan skips over to the CD player and turns on the music. She dances around Mama, grabbing my hand and pulling me up with her. Tariq runs into the room and imitates our dancing, poking fun at us and pulling faces.

‘I'm getting married,' Jihan sings. Sitti Zeynab claps to the music. Mama starts to wail. Baba runs in and cries: ‘What's wrong? What's happened?'

‘She's leaving us for Ramallah,' Mama howls.

‘
Ya habibti
,' Sitti croaks. ‘That is life. Think how many children I have said goodbye to. First there was Saleem—'

Jihan throws her arms around Mama and laughs.

‘Oh Mama, it will be fine. I'll make you a grandmother one day! Huh! How funny! What a young
sito
you will be.'

Baba, embarrassed by the display of emotions, smiles shyly and then withdraws quietly.

Jihan skips around us. ‘Ahmad says we're going to dance all night. And Hayaat, you'll be the best
dabka
dancer there! Ahmad's hired a brilliant band!'

Mama makes Jihan promise that she'll call every day and only consult her for recipes. ‘Do that for me, Jihan,' Mama says. ‘Don't ask Ahmad's mother. Ask
me
.'

That night I turn over in bed and notice Jihan lying wide awake, staring at the ceiling.

‘Can't you sleep?' I whisper.

She shakes her head.

‘What's wrong?'

Her face seems to collapse then and she half giggles, half chokes. Then tears start to stream down her face.

‘Did you fight with Ahmad?'

Sniffling, she shakes her head. I creep out of bed, find a tissue box and return, handing it to her. As quietly as possible, she blows her nose and wipes her eyes. We lie side by side, our heads facing each other on the same pillow.

‘It just occurred to me. That's all.'

‘What?'

‘What if Ahmad and I end up bickering all the time? Like Mama and Baba? And what if he's messy and expects me to clean up after him?'

‘Oh, that's okay. You're messy anyway so what's the problem?'

She thinks for a moment and then smiles. ‘Yes, I am messy . . . Oh God!' Her eyes widen. ‘What if he's neat?'

‘He can clean up after you.'

‘Ha! Yeah right he would!' She muffles her laughter into the pillow. Then she looks at me with wide eyes. ‘Oh God. What if I need to, you know, go to the bathroom or fart?' She giggles. ‘How embarrassing, Hayaat. Oh, I couldn't. I'll never go to the bathroom again.'

‘Don't be silly. Mama and Baba fart in front of each other all the time and they're still married.'

‘I love him, Hayaat. Here, read this text he sent me this evening.' She reaches under her pillow for her phone and shows me the message.
You dance barefoot at the entrance to my heart
.

‘Did he make that up?'

‘No. It's a song. But it shows how romantic he is in choosing it!'

‘Oh. Nice.'

We lie there in silence for a few moments.

‘. . . Yes, I love him. But . . .' A tear rolls down her face and she wipes it away. ‘How stupid I am, crying like a child . . . I'm going to miss you all.'

‘We won't miss you. We'll have more room in the bed now. And longer shower time. And—'

‘You brat,' she says, hitting me on the arm.

‘Do you think anybody will ever love me?' I ask after a long pause.

‘Of course!'

‘Shh. You'll wake Sitti Zeynab.'

‘Of course,' she repeats in a hushed tone. ‘Why on earth . . .'

I raise my hand to my face, tracing the scars. ‘I'm like a shattered glass pane,' I murmur. ‘Even when you put the glass back together, the cracks still show.'

She grabs my chin in her hand and forces me to look her in the eye. ‘You're beautiful, you silly thing. I couldn't have survived a second . . .' Her voice falters and I look away, swallowing the sudden lump in my throat. ‘I look up to you, Hayaat. I'm an ungrateful wretch of a girl and sometimes I wonder what Ahmad sees in me.' A moment of silence passes between us, then she casually adds: ‘The poor guy, he doesn't know what he's in for.'

We giggle and, when we catch our breath, I snuggle into her chest and close my eyes. I'm tired of words. At that moment it's enough for me to sleep dreamlessly in my sister's arms.

 

 

Mama asks me to keep her company while she rolls the vine leaves for the next day's evening meal. I watch her spoon the raw rice, tomato and parsley into the vine leaves spread out on the small table. The kitchen is tiny compared to the cavernous space we had in our home in Beit Jala. Our kitchen there had a double-door that opened onto a balcony overlooking an orchard filled with orange and lemon trees. In the middle of the room was an oval beechwood table that sat eight people. On one wall was a long buffet for Mama's dinner sets and crockery. The kitchen in the apartment reminds me of a closet. Small and stuffy, it can't even fit the freezer, which has to be kept at the end of the hallway.

‘I was angry with you for going to Jerusalem,' Mama says, her voice uncharacteristically low. ‘How I worried when you didn't come home from school that day. You must promise never to do such a thing again.'

‘Yes Mama,' I mutter automatically.

‘It was very brave, Hayaat . . .'

Surprised by her compliment, I look up into her eyes and she smiles.

‘But it was still foolish.'

‘Yes Mama.'

‘Here, take a spoon and help me. You'll have your own house one day but you will only ever have one kitchen to learn from. But for the sake of my heart I pray you choose a boy from here. Or from Beit Jala, our real home town. Although it would be better he lived here, now that we're here. Don't overstuff the leaves,
habibti
, or they will be hard to roll. The smaller they are the better the compliments. So tell me, Hayaat. Did you see the Old City? Was it as beautiful as they say?'

‘Yes. But Mama . . . it isn't Beit Jala.'

‘Ahh, Beit Jala,' she says and smiles. ‘You were only nine when we came here. Were you too young to remember how good the hills smelled? The open landscape? I enjoyed breathing there . . .'

She glances at me. ‘You know, Hayaat, sometimes the past is so tangible I feel as though I can grab the memories with my hands, bring them up to my face and taste them.' She leans towards me. ‘Do you remember the day they came for our land?'

I nod and she continues. Her words, which usually run out of her mouth, decide to stroll this time, and I'm glad for the unusual calmness in her voice.

‘We were given a confiscation order. They were going to build a road to connect the settlements to each other . . . Your father came home from the field. I handed him the order . . . He tore it up and we sat down to eat. He refused to speak about it that night.

‘We lived in fear for two years, Hayaat, wondering when the bulldozers would arrive.' Her voice falters and her heavily kohled eyes fix on the vine leaf she's been rolling.

‘Mama . . . ?'

I'm not accustomed to seeing Mama like this. She's always had a no-nonsense approach to emotions. Unlike Baba, who I've regularly seen locked in his own reverie, Mama seems too busy to reflect on anything except managing the house and looking after us.

She contrives a smile and lets out a weary sigh. ‘I'm okay, Hayaat. I'm just surprised at how vivid my memories of those days are.'

‘I remember one day you told us we had to empty the house of everything and Jihan and I were arguing about who owned which toys.'

‘That was when we got the demolition notice – put more rice in that one, Hayaat — we had a week to move out. Some of our neighbours also had demolition notices. We were all in a state of panic, Hayaat, vying for first access to the few removalist vans in town . . .' She chuckles and shakes her head. ‘I had a big fight with Um Tamer about it. She had one lounge room and two bedrooms. We had one lounge, one family, verandah furniture, two dining table sets and
four
bedrooms. And she wanted the bigger van . . . I never liked that woman. She moved in with her daughter and son-in-law. Still, I feel sorry for her. She doesn't get along with her son-in-law. Although, I don't blame him . . .'

‘Mama, the day they came . . . why did you send Sitti Zeynab, Jihan and me away to town with Khalto Aneesa? Khalto Aneesa bought us lunch. I remember that. I also remember Jihan was in a foul mood. She said you were treating her like a child.'

‘She wouldn't forgive me when you returned and there was nothing left. But I didn't want you all to see.

‘First they destroyed the water tanks, the ones we used to irrigate the farmland. Then a building your father used to store agricultural equipment. Your father . . . well, you have never seen him in such a state and it's unlikely you ever will . . .

‘The worst part was how noisy the demolition was, and how slow. When they came for our house I lost control of myself, Hayaat. I ran towards it but a line of soldiers was barricading the front gate, protecting the bulldozers. I wanted to hit them. I wanted to crush them. I've never felt such rage. The walls fell and I broke.'

‘And Baba?'

‘The neighbours had to hold him back. They pinned him down onto the ground as he screamed . . . They started on the trees,' her voice became a whisper, ‘and it was the most terrible thing of all.'

‘I miss our land. Mama, it's all under concrete now. The orchard. The house. I think of the cars that drive on the road and . . . I wonder if they don't know or don't care.'

She leans back in her chair and gazes wistfully at me. Then she smiles, her eyes crinkly and sweet. ‘We have two choices in this world,' she says in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘We either try to survive or we give up.'

 

 

We slip out of school an hour early.

‘I'll race you to the camp!'

I shoot after Samy, happy to pound my feet against the ground and make my heart and lungs dance inside of me. When we arrive at Aida my eyes take in the sharp difference between the camp and the town. Since moving from Beit Jala to Bethlehem I have become accustomed to the belfries, towers, domes and church steeples. But in Aida the dwellings are a tight grid of concrete block homes with heavy steel doors separated by very narrow alleys. Bullet holes decorate some of the graffiti-covered walls. There are people everywhere, packed on top of each other like a jar of coloured lentils. There are malnourished children our age and younger, with dark circles under their eyes, torn clothes sitting baggily on their thin frames, playing in the trash-strewn streets and alleys. But there are also children dressed in neat school uniforms, juggling piles of books and heavy backpacks. We walk through the camp, and I find it hard to picture it when it was a collection of tents and Sitti Zeynab and Sidi Yusuf sat within four poles with my uncles, aunts and mother at their feet. There is an enduring quality to the camp. The buildings are all so solid and seem permanent, not at all what you would expect in a place that was supposed to shelter people temporarily. Posters of people killed by the occupation are on poles and in shop windows. Posters of men, women, children and babies stare at me, frozen in time. They are part of the camp's permanence and yet, it suddenly seems to me, it's the struggle against such permanence that killed them.