Mornings in Jenin (19 page)

Fatima and I bonded as women that summer in Lebanon. I was no longer the little girl who delivered their letters and played barefoot in the camp, but a young woman she could take under her wing. We shared domestic responsibilities, marking time with Falasteen’s development, and Fatima embarked on a matchmaking mission to pair me with a husband.

She had only one man in mind, a physician by circumstances similar to mine. He was a refugee and an orphan who had earned a scholarship through the United Nations and spent eleven years at Oxford, specializing in vascular surgery.

I faked disinterest, of course. But she goaded me, joking about how frustrated I must be at my age without a man.

“Well, you should know, since you did not have sex until you were thirty-two!” I retorted.

“Yes. And it was surely worth it!”

“Please. I don’t want to hear about my brother’s sexual competence,” I yelled, hands pressed over my ears.

She laughed. But when I confessed to a string of disappointing relationships in the United States, her voice deepened, pulling words from a wisdom at her core.

“Amal, I believe that most Americans do not love as we do. It is not for any inherent deficiency or superiority in them. They live in the safe, shallow parts that rarely push human emotions into the depths where we dwell. I see your confusion. Consider fear. For us, fear comes where terror comes to others because we are anesthetized to the guns constantly pointed at us. And the terror we have known is something few Westerners ever will. Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our own emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme.

“The roots of our grief coil so deeply into loss that death has come to live with us like a family member who makes you happy by avoiding you, but who is still one of the family. Our anger is a rage that Westerners cannot understand. Our sadness can make the stones weep. And the way we love is no exception, Amal.

“It is the kind of love you can know only if you have felt the intense hunger that makes your body eat itself at night. The kind you know only after life shields you from falling bombs or bullets passing through your body. It is the love that dives naked toward infinity’s reach. I think it is where God lives.”

In the long wait for one another and in the sacred love nestled in war, Yousef and Fatima had discovered this secret.

* * *

Majid came to visit my brother one Friday after Jomaa prayer. The day marked the end of my second week at the UN girls’ school where I had taken a summer teaching post. It was also a milestone day, when baby Falasteen first smiled.

Walking past me with a tray of nuts and coffee for her guest, Fatima whispered in my ear, “This is the doctor I’ve been telling you about.”

The man she hoped to pair me with was the man who had picked me up at the airport.

In the glory of her matchmaking, Fatima suggested that Majid show me around the city since I hadn’t left the camp in a month of being there. He hesitated and I was embarrassed. Fatima’s scheme was obvious and it made for an uncomfortable situation. Yousef frowned at the impropriety of his unmarried sister being seen about with a man. He trusted Majid, of course. But there was an order to things. There was rectitude.

“I just mean that Amal can help you with deliveries,” Fatima added, undeterred.

Majid volunteered regularly in the camp, which meant he attended a fair number of childbirths.

Fatima continued, “Um Yousef, mercy on her soul, was a midwife and she taught Amal. The two of them delivered a lot of babies in Jenin.”

Dalia and I had been a team.

Majid turned to Yousef in deference to his authority in the household. My brother made no protest and Majid in turn welcomed my help. “Um Laith is expecting next week,” he said. He’d be honored and relieved to share the responsibility. If, of course, I was interested.

I turned to Yousef, out of love, to affirm that matters in his house were subject to his judgment. He understood the gestures and loved us all. “It’s fine by me. Allah give you strength.” His sister and dearest friend together would complete his joy. He wanted to make things right. To honor his promise to Baba and to me.

Yousef smiled his goofy grin, privately now in cahoots with Fatima.

Wudu, then salat. Ready, I held new scissors over a flame “in the name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate.” Majid was running late and I was to go ahead to Um Laith’s house.

Walking there, Fatima remarked that I was too quiet. “Don’t be nervous; you’ve done this a million times.”

Unthinkingly, I responded as Mama once answered me. “Don’t talk. Now is not the time for it.” I immediately reproached myself.
I’ll explain to Fatima later
.

The baby was all wrong inside. I sensed the trouble immediately. “Help me invert her!” I cried, and recalled that I needed to be calmer.
Whatever you feel
. . .

I paused, mumbled a prayer.
Breathe, child
. I breathed,
Dalia, help me
, and pressed my palms to feel for the baby. “Put your faith in Allah’s hands,” I whispered to the distraught woman.
Let Allah work through your hands
, Dalia whispered to me.

Majid arrived and beckoned for an ambulance. I heard “cesarean,” “That’s enough,” and Fatima said, “Wait.”

The baby rolled in time to not die or kill its mother. The umbilical cord was out of the way; the head was where it was supposed to be. Majid took over, delivered a boy, and sent mother and baby to recover in the clinic.

“Where’s Amal?”

I had washed and left, pursued by the labor of hours past, the gnawing memories of years past. Pursued by Dalia. How it hurt, ever sweetly, satisfyingly, to be Amal again—not anonymous Amy.

I kept walking and there he was. “I’ve never seen that done before. I didn’t know it could be done.” Majid had cut his hair. Months later, he would tell me that he had done so for me, to make a better impression. “They didn’t teach us that in medical school . . . You look a little white. Are you okay?”

“I’m tired.” I looked down.
I miss my mother
.

“Can I walk you back?”

I nodded,
Yes
.

“Hungry?”

Starved. Where is this going
?

“I just . . . I can smell shawerma from Abu Nayif ’s restaurant,” he said, his words tripping over themselves. “I think it might be fine since word will spread by tomorrow that you’re my medical assistant.” He was trying out the sound of random thoughts, hoping something would fit, fill an awkwardness he didn’t realize was charm. “But if you think it too forward, I can just pick up food and bring it to the house.”

We had helped a woman and her baby win a round over death, Dalia had helped me find another piece of myself, and now Majid was stumbling through our intricate culture for a route to a simple meal with me.

Of their own accord, my lips stretched and curled into a smile. Devilishly I suggested, “We could eat downtown.” He straightened, grinning the awkwardness off, relieved not to have offended. A dimple that I hadn’t noticed before appeared on his left cheek, a small shadow made deeper by late-day stubble and by his smile that I loved.

It was growing dark by the time we walked back to leave a note for Fatima. Yousef would be late, but Majid and I both wanted to be home before he returned. So we settled for shawerma by the ocean.

“Finally, the ‘Bride of Palestine,’ ” I said, face-to-face at last with the Mediterranean, smoldering with moonlight. “My father used to call her that. Jiddo Yehya—I never met him—used to take him and Ammo Darweesh to its shores when Palestine was still Palestine.”

“She’ll always be Palestine,” Majid spoke softly, as if reluctant. He leaned back, exhaling. “You know,” he added, his voice lighter and quicker, “the Lebanese call her the ‘Bride of Lebanon.’ I think Greece and Italy claim her as their bride also.”

“She gets around.”

“A regular tramp.”

He laughed and I imagined his dimple. The comfort was strange and pleasing, the darkness vast and punctuated with stars, the moon halved, pouring on the water.

“See there,” Majid said, motioning to a studded sky.

“See what?”

“Do you know what Leo looks like?”

“Yes, that’s my zodiac sign,” I said.

“I know,” he answered. “Can you see the outline? Follow my fingers.” Tracing the hook of the lion’s head, he said, “That’s Algieba, there’s Ras Elased, Alterf . . .”

“Those are Arabic words. Are they actual names?”

“Yes. The stars were named by Arabs. The names they gave them are still used. But the constellations have Greek names. Can you see where I’m pointing?”

I moved behind him, the better to find the stars. Instead I saw that his shoulders spanned from one end of the ocean to the other.

“How do you know so much about the sky? Or that Leo is my sign?” I asked, backing away.

“
Al-Sufi’s Suwarul Kawakib
,” he said, looking intently above. It was Majid’s most prized material possession—one of the first comprehensive descriptions of the constellations, written in the first century. “I’ll bring it with me on my next visit with Yousef.”

“And,” he added, “your brother and I are close. We’ve spoken about you.” He looked directly into my eyes. “Mostly recently . . . because I asked.” A small, moon-shadowed smile stretched from his lips all the way to my heart.

Fatima was waiting when I returned.

“Well?” she asked.

“He’s nice,” I said, not wanting to give her the satisfaction but dying to tell her every detail.

“Aha! You like him. I can tell. But you don’t want to admit I’m the master matchmaker around here,” she boasted, patting herself on the back.

“Okay, smarty pants. But what if I didn’t? You tried to push me off on some strange man! What kind of an Arab are you?” I joked.

“He’s hardly a stranger. He’s been your brother’s best friend since the Battle of Karameh. Majid is the man Yousef saved when he took the bullet in his leg in sixty-eight,” Fatima said.

It surprised me that Majid had ever been involved in fighting. “How did a PLO fighter get a scholarship to study in England?”

“Yousef found out that Majid had been a perfect student in the camps and had tried but failed to get a scholarship to study. So your brother set out to make sure his friend got one. He had connections with UN staff because of his work at the school, and he was able to get Majid’s application to the right people.”

“He didn’t tell me that,” I said.

“I’m sure he will. Just tell me first, who is the master matchmaker around here?”

“My silly sister-in-law.”

“Good to hear you admit it. That look you gave me on your way out was scary,” she laughed.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The Letter

1981

MAJID PERSISTED IN AMAL’S thoughts. He filled her daydreams, where she replayed their time together, searching for hidden meanings to his words. She began to grow agitated when a full week had passed without word from him. And for another two weeks, Amal tossed in the anxiety of waiting for Majid’s next visit to her brother’s home.

She continually surveyed her surroundings for the dented little white Fiat, hoping—no, praying—to find him visiting a patient in the camp or training physicians there. She listened vigilantly for news of his whereabouts, impending house calls, or plans to visit his comrade. Her condition was easily discerned among the women of Shatila, and they whispered in private when they saw the young schoolteacher looking about for—they were sure— signs of el doktor Majid. Though gossip it was, the women did not talk out of malice, but rather, out of habit and nostalgia for their younger days when love had been the grandest of possibilities. It is also true that in a refugee camp, where so many people live in so small a space, not even secrets can find a place to hide.

As was their routine by now, a band of girls caught up to their teacher on her walk to school one morning. “Good morning, Abla Amal!” Amal turned to her students, each in her blue uniform, white hair ribbons, books strapped to her back. Raja, a slight girl with mischievous eyes, came running. “Abla Amal,” she panted, “el doktor Majid is coming to Mirvat’s house tomorrow to check on her father.”

The mere mention of Majid’s name stirred in Amal a thrill she attempted to hide from her students. “That’s good. How is Abu Jalal doing after his surgery?” she inquired with labored casualness.

“El doktor is coming in the evening, abla,” Raja reiterated, ignoring her teacher’s question.

“El abla asked you about Abu Jalal!” another girl growled at Raja, then lowered her voice, adding firmly with a gratuitous light shove, “Not about el doktor!”

“Okay, girls.” Amal gave them a sideways glance, endeavoring to fill the title of “abla” with the authority it merited. “Go on to your classes.”

And along they went, giggling, tickled to have had a part in a subject of gossip overheard from their mothers.

Amal remained late at the school, preparing for the next week’s lessons and passing time until evening’s approach, hoping for an encounter on her way back. Finally she left, walking slowly the long way past Abu Jalal’s house, looking in all the alleyways wide enough to accommodate a parked car, but she saw no white Fiat.

Dejection was on her face when she entered her brother’s house.

“Where were you?” Fatima hurried toward Amal, helping her unload her books.

“I had to prepare some lesson plans for the next three weeks,” Amal answered quietly.

“I sent some kids to fetch you. Majid was here. He left not fifteen minutes ago,” Fatima said. Again, the mention of his name stirred Amal’s depths.

“Salamat yakhti.” Yousef approached his sister with a kiss on her forehead “Majid left this book for you. Said to take good care of it.”

She took the book slowly. Majid’s prized copy of
Al-Sufi’s Suwarul Kawakib
. She looked up at her brother, inspecting his eyes for remnants of a conversation with Majid. Surely Yousef would not have taken the book without questions, nor would Majid have given it without explanation. An exchange between them would not occur with deception or hidden liberties. Honesty is a matter of honor. And honor is paramount.

Still, Yousef said no more and his face betrayed no useful hints. Amal found nothing in her brother’s expression but an annoying artlessness.

Yousef yawned. He stretched his bulky limbs, rolled his head toward his wife. “Fatooma, habibti”—as he addressed Fatima when he wanted something—“I’m going to bed early, are you?”

“Your brother is wearing me out,” Fatima whispered happily in Amal’s ear.

“Agh”—the sister covered her ears—“I don’t want to hear about my brother in that way.”

Fatima kissed Amal’s cheek, laughed her way into the sleeping room, and closed the door behind her. Amal walked out into the courtyard, the old book secure in her grip. She brought it close to her nose and fancied that she could sense Majid’s cologne mixed with the antiquity of the leather book cover. She opened it, staleness coming off the parchment pages. Inside, tucked in between the cover and the first page, lay a small white envelope:
To Amal
.

She took it.
Yousef knows
. Majid would not have made him an unwitting messenger.
Fatima knows, too
. Going to sleep early was part of their conspiracy.

Now, Amal would also know.

Bismillah Arrahman Arraheem

Dearest Amal,

I am not sure how to start this letter, except to tell you that since that day I picked you up from the airport, I have thought of little else but you. And since that evening on the beach, you have been in my dreams. I have avoided coming to Shatila with the hope of making sense of what I feel. But every thought comes to this: I am in love with you.

I have given my life to the resistance and sworn many an oath to the struggle. I thought my heart was too full with pledges and responsibilities to make another promise. But you have touched my heart in places I had not known were there. And I am compelled to one more promise, and it is this: If you will have me, I will love you and protect you for all my days.

Yours, Majid

Amal read it again. And again.
Ba-boom, ba-boom
. Her heart beat as vigorously with love as it once had beaten with fear.

“I wish I could see the look on her face when she reads it,” Fatima said to Yousef, annoyed that he would not reveal to her the contents of the letter, which Majid had been obliged to share with Yousef.

Fatima pouted, playfully vexed to be the last to know. She narrowed her eyes to focus a thought. “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to join Amal in the courtyard,” she warned her husband, unable to contain a smile despite her best effort to give a serious ultimatum.

“Habibti, please stay with me,” Yousef whined like a little boy, lying on their bed with Falasteen asleep in his arms.

She kept her eyes narrowed and crinkled her nose, and Yousef delighted to watch her face surrender to a willing smile. In a last attempt to hold her ground, she bit her lip, and the sight of her thus was more beauty than Yousef could bear.

“I suppose I can wait until morning,” she said, turning to retrieve her nightshirt from a drawer.

The baby had put extra flesh on Fatima’s body and stretched her belly, and now she hid herself self-consciously behind the dresser to change her clothes.

“Go back with the baby,” she ordered Yousef when he rose toward her.

“Why? Falasteen is sleeping.”

“Well, I’m just changing. Go back.” She held her nightgown to hide her body. The light switch was out of reach. Yousef understood and lowered himself before her.

“Let me see,” he whispered at her knees. She stopped, trembling as if he would see her, touch her for the first time. As she loosened her hold on the gown, her husband rested his head against her waist. He kissed the body that had borne his child, moving along her curves, swallowing life from the marks of motherhood on this woman who held his heart, dreams, and aches inside of her. The gown fell completely and love rose from them over their small dwelling in the Shatila refugee camp. From a man making love to his wife and from his sister in the courtyard, reading and rereading a promise of love.