Mornings in Jenin (12 page)
“You’re Yousef Abulheja’s sister, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Amal answered, thrilled that he had spoken to her. “Your nose is bleeding.”
Huda produced a tissue from the constant stash she kept in her pockets because, as she repeatedly told Amal, “you never know when you’ll need a handkerchief.”
Amal had never been so close to a boy other than Yousef, her baba, or Ammo Darweesh. The proximity flushed her with modesty and timid excitement, and a rush of bashfulness lodged in her throat. She accepted the weight of his arm stretched across her shoulder, pushing her head forward and her gaze downward, while something fluttered in her belly. They walked in silence, paced by the labor of Osama’s jagged breath, and Amal’s gaze fastened itself to a wrinkle in his pants that disappeared and gathered with each stretch of the thigh beneath the cloth, while the ground moved beneath their steps.
“Do you get bread from my dad’s store?” Osama asked, the pain truncating and elongating his words. Amal lifted her head. But he was not addressing her and she saw clearly that Huda was as oblivious to his interest as he was to Amal’s.
“Don’t talk, you’ll make it worse,” Huda responded with uncharacteristic assertiveness that was not quite confident but rather willful, and now Amal’s shyness was rinsed away with envy.
At home, Amal found Yousef holding Mama’s hand and talking into the stagnant air that hung over her forsaken eyes.
“Do we need bread? I can go get some,” she interrupted, indifferent to the perceptible gravity in the room, wanting only an excuse to be in Osama’s presence again.
“Amal, I need to talk to you,” Yousef said. “But not now. Can you stay with Mama for a bit? I’ll be right back.” And off he went. Impatient to know what Yousef had to say and why Fatima had been crying, Amal looked uncharitably at Mama and sat in a rancorous mood next to her.
Dalia turned to her daughter. She surfaced tenderly above the fluid canopy of unawareness, touched Amal’s hair with her lips,
maternal at last
, and said, “Yousef is leaving,” seamlessly returning to her depths.
Come back, Mama!
Amal’s heart called, but Mama had already retreated into her mind.
Amal knew what Mama said was true. Yousef was leaving. She feared he was being hunted by the Israelis. So many men had gone away in handcuffs and blindfolds, never to be seen again, siphoned into the place wherefrom emerge only the subjugated and broken. She felt the approach of something frightening. Something she could not yet view or grasp, like the foul breath of a hiding beast. It made her shudder and her legs erupted in a directionless stride. She ran, unsure where to go or even why she was running.
Huda.
Where is she?
“Huuudaaa,” Amal called beneath her friend’s window.
Huda’s head appeared in the window long enough to say, “Not now. I’ll come over later. I can’t talk now. Bye.”
God, what is happening!
Amal ran, unable to control the explosion in her legs, the tender buds on her chest tormented with every stride. Her eyes stung with tears, her lungs burned with the cold until she fell to her knees, exhausted, in the peach orchard, the place that had once bustled with activity during the spring harvest and had been a clandestine meeting place in the winter for young lovers to hide from the watchful eyes of their families. Now it was off-limits to Arabs, another domain she dared not trespass.
Yet there she was, just beyond the first row of trees . . .
1968
YET THERE I WAS, just beyond the first row of trees in the peach orchard, and it was growing dark. It was cold and I was too lonely to be afraid. I folded my limbs, winding into exhaustion and making believe that I lay in the embrace of Osama. I slept that way, melted into the darkness of a star-filled sky, and awoke before dawn above a thin layer of fog hovering low to the ground.
I don’t recall how the sight to which I opened my eyes affected me then, but the memory of that morning’s landscape takes my breath away now. It was the picturesque backdrop of my parents’ lives—miles of pasture carpeting valleys nestled amid waves of olive groves. Trees like beckoning grandparents, hundreds of years old, wrinkled and stooped with heavy arms that stretched to every direction, as if in prayer. Those who took that glorious land, which had glistened green beside the blue Mediterranean waters since before Moses, claimed that it had been a “desert” that they had “made bloom.” A magnificent sun poured its light over the hills like yellow paint and lit the old Arab homes that were enduring the perils of abandonment. No other soul was in sight and I thought then that I understood the formidable enticement of solitude.
Unthinkingly, I reached for my new breasts. Seduced by curiosity I caressed them with thoughts that roused shadows of guilt. Shame stirred, reminding me of scriptures, sin, and punishment. But I heeded nothing except the irresistible slip of my hand into my panties and there, under a tree in the forbidden peach orchard, I found the unspoken pleasures of womanhood.
My hand emerged guilty and bloody, evidencing the arrival of the mysterious and long-awaited menstrual cycle. I smelled my scent, even tasted my own blood, and believed that I had been transformed overnight into a woman, that my world had changed in a way that was magical. I got to my feet and started back to Jenin, confident that Yousef was not really leaving, that it had all been a misunderstanding.
A voice broke my fantasy in broken Arabic. “Stop!”
A soldier!
I lifted my pleading eyes toward the sun, but its indifferent and brilliant smile only blinded my sight with black spots as I was caught trespassing. First one, then two more soldiers were upon me like hyenas and I shook with fear. They asked me endless questions, passing the stack of identity papers between them. One soldier carefully refolded the papers and politely, compassionately, returned them to me. “Go home,” he said.
Untrusting, I put a distance between them and me with reluctant, suspicious steps, until a primitive instinct discharged in my wobbling legs a sprint homeward. As I ran, a swoosh seemed to set my ear on fire as something terrible passed within an inch of my head. Then my abdomen cramped. My breathing frightfully quick and loud and my knees weak, I stopped at the edge of Jenin, not far from where Osama had asked to take a break from walking when Huda and I had helped him the previous day. I simultaneously looked and felt where my right leg was oddly wet and warm. In the inchoate realization that my own blood flowed, I entertained the notion of a colossal menstruation. My hand moved to the cramp in my side and as my fingers sank into a horrid slush, my knees buckled, my eyes bulged and rolled, and my last string of consciousness that day roiled from the depths of the earth, through my lungs, fleeing my breath as a wild scream.
I’d been shot.
I opened my eyes to light and an unfamiliar female voice speaking in Palestinian Arabic, “She’s waking up.” The light disappeared into a halo behind Huda’s face. Fatima stood next to her and Lamya next to Fatima. I heard Fatima say that Haj Salem, Ammo Jack O’Malley, and Ammo Darweesh with his family and others from the camp were outside the hospital, smoking and waiting for news.
A familiar murmuring, that audible swirling of a broken mind, caught my ear and I turned my head toward it, finding Mama and Um Abdallah, the two of them looking like immobile room décor. Mama was dressed in her beautifully embroidered thobe, delicate but steadfast. And I thought then not of the bullet or the pain, or of Yousef, of Osama, or Baba, but of Dalia. I could at last see through the gaunt shell of my mother to the colorful, daring, and vivacious Bedouin girl whose fire had been tamped with a hot iron and whose wits had been doused with the ashes of too much death and too many wars. Those were my meditations when I awoke from the surgery that removed the metal fragments from my abdomen. The bullet had come from the direction of a southern watchtower, not from the ground soldiers behind me who had checked my papers. Such was the conclusion of the physician who examined the trajectory through my body. The bullet had struck my right side just above the kidney and exploded, tearing chunks of flesh from my belly upon exit.
“It’s burning,” I said.
“Here. The doctor said you should take this for pain,” Fatima said, handing me two orange pills.
“Bless your hands. Where is Yousef?” By their desolate expressions, I knew he wasn’t coming.
“He looked for you . . . ,” Huda began, and Fatima added that she was sure. “He would not have gone if he’d known you’d been shot.”
Gone where?
“Here.” Huda extended a letter Yousef had left for me.
Bismillah Arrahman Arraheem
My dear sister, Amal,
I have to go. Please understand. I’ve been writing this letter to you for weeks and I can’t find the right words. Every time I sit down with a pen I remember a promise I made to Baba.
One Friday, while we sat in the west olive groves after the Jamaa prayers, Baba made me promise to take care of you if anything ever happened to him. He wanted you to get an education, to marry a good man. I was too naïve to believe the Jews would invade again, but I believe Baba sensed the war coming.
I thought Baba would be around forever. I don’t know how to keep my promise to him. If I stay here, these Israelis will eventually kill me. They have all the power and they want all the land. So far, nothing is stopping them.
They’ve taken everything, Amal. And still they take more.
I can’t sit by and watch helplessly any longer. Please, little sis, forgive me for leaving. I’m going to fight. It’s my only choice. They have scripted lives for us that are but extended death sentences, a living death. I won’t live their script.
If I am martyred, then so be it. Be proud, pray for my soul, and celebrate my passing into Allah’s kingdom, as all martyrs who die fighting for justice, freedom, and the land shall be there to let me in among them.
I am like a caged bird here. I know you are too. It breaks my heart that I cannot make for you the life Baba wanted us to have.
It is unbearable to think of our future as nullified, condemned to an eternal refugee’s life of subjugation and shackles.
The resistance is forming and eventually we will take back what is rightfully ours. You were born a refugee, but I promise I will die, if I must, so you do not die a refugee.
I must leave Mama in your care. It is a terrible burden for so young a girl. My share of the garage I gave to Ameen in exchange for his promise to look after you and Mama. I also left all my savings for you. I left it with Ammo Darweesh with instructions that it be used wisely, for your education if an opportunity arises.
Please keep in touch with Fatima. She loves you.
Love always, Yousef
Yousef had started saving that money when he was sixteen years old, after he met Fatima, to pay for a nice wedding and a new home. I tried to understand, as he asked me to. But all I could feel was betrayed and abandoned. With Yousef ’s departure, I was now truly alone. It was January 20, 1968.
1967–1968
JUST BEHIND THE GREENERY of the Jordanian town of Karameh, the earth ascends into stony hardscrabble hills, where a Palestinian refugee camp, another city of cold tents and muddy paths, was also the headquarters of Fateh, the Palestinian revolutionary fighters whom Yousef had joined under the leadership of a young engineer named Yasser Arafat.
In March 1968, a formidable Israeli invasion force marched through the morning fog over the Allenby Bridge into Karameh, intending to eliminate the guerrilla base of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in a matter of hours.
Israel miscalculated. The fedayeen fought with mad courage. Some fighters jumped with bomb belts around their waists, blowing themselves and Israeli tanks to pieces.
My brother Yousef was there, battling with incensed audacity in man-to-man combat that spread throughout Karameh. An enemy bullet took a chunk of his left thigh when he tried to rescue a wounded comrade. That story, witnessed by Yousef ’s subsequent limp, became legend in Jenin, where I was still recovering from my own bullet wound.
By noon that day, Karameh was destroyed, but the lightly armed band of fighters held their ground and Israel recoiled, abandoning vehicles and tanks in a hasty retreat. Thus, the myth of Israel’s invincibility was shattered by my own brother and his comrades.
Within hours, news of the Battle of Karameh spread across the Arab world like a brushfire. Its glory reverberated in Europe and the Soviet Union, and foreign youth took to wearing the Palestinian checked kaffiyehs as a symbol of revolution and the power of the weak.
I could hear the radio blaring from the Beit Jawad coffeehouse down the lane.
“Come on, I’ll help you. Let’s go see,” Huda said, putting my arm around her shoulder to stand me up.
Outside, I stopped to shield my eyes from the assault of daylight. Crowds were gathered, chanting, singing with the radio. Yousef ’s friend Ameen stood on a table at the coffeehouse, holding up the radio speaker. The crowd fell silent and we heard the voice of Yasser Arafat. “What we have done,” the voice declared, “is to make the world realize that the Palestinian is no longer refugee number so and so, but the member of a people who hold the reins of their own destiny and are in a position to determine their own future.” Goosebumps sprang up along my arms and back.
“Allaho akbar,” the crowd roared. Jenin sang with self-worth and pride as people danced in the streets. Haj Salem made his way through the crowd when he saw me. Leaning to kiss my cheek, he said, “Your brother fought in Karameh. How about that! He’s fine, I hear.” Toothless smile in full beam, he walked away clapping with the people, fingers fully extended and spread apart in front of his old brown face. I saw him in the distance put his arm around Ammo Jack O’Malley, the chanting around them unceasing:
“Karameh, Karameh!”
“Yousef Abulheja! Jenin’s own fedayee.”
“Allaho akbar!”
* * *
Even when soldiers arrived to disperse the crowd, the concerto of a revolution in the making continued. From windows, music blared and the zaghareet of women filled the night. The aroma of baking goods suffused the darkness and made our night sweet when those treats were passed through windows and adjoining doors of neighbors to our home, in honor of my brother’s heroism.
Karameh
.
Huda and I and other young girls had our own celebration. Too weak to participate, I watched my friends dance into the night.
“Since there’s curfew, at least we won’t have school tomorrow,” Lamya said, and the others shared her thrill.
With hope kindled by our excitement plus a measure of naïveté, we mulled over the practical details of returning to our original villages, which we childishly took for granted as the inevitable outcome of the victory at Karameh. Our innocent deliberations that evening revealed the minutiae of our dreams. “A real bed.” “No soldiers.” “A playground.” “A garden.” “A bicycle.” On went the list of our simple wants. We wrote them out, checked the top three, then compared our choices.
Huda wanted to sit by the ocean more than anything else in the world. “Just to sit,” she said, “since I can’t swim.”
I have never forgotten that. The simplicity of her innermost desire is now enough to make me cry.
The television channel broadcast footage of fedayeen parading through Amman, and adults packed around the few television sets in Jenin. Beit Jawad’s coffeehouse had the most accessible screen and I could see Haj Salem and Ammo Jack O’Malley at their usual table trying to shoo others from their view. Vivid stories emerged and swirled. There were rallies everywhere in Jordan, where hundreds of thousands of ordinary people gathered in solidarity and praise. Women and children hurled flowers toward the revolutionaries. Grown men cried, breaking through the throngs to kiss their Palestinian brothers. The movement swelled overnight. Everywhere in Arab countries men lined up to join the PLO. Many from Jenin packed up the next day to join, only to be arrested by the Israelis, who had paid informers everywhere.
A month later, we were still under forbidding curfew. Our absurd lists of girlish dreams had soured with the accumulating garbage in the streets by the time an army jeep rode through to grant us permission to leave our homes. Even Lamya was eager to go back to school.