Mornings in Jenin (2 page)
1941
ARI WAS WAITING BY the Damascus Gate, where the boys had first met four years earlier. He was the son of a German professor who had fled Nazism early and settled in Jerusalem, where his family rented a small home from a prominent Palestinian.
The two boys had become friends in 1937 behind the pushcarts of fresh fruits, vegetables, and dented cans of oil in Babel Amond market, where Hasan had sat reading a book of Arabic poems. The small Jewish boy with large eyes and an unsure smile had started toward Hasan. He moved with a limp, the legacy of a badly healed leg and the Brown Shirt who had broken it. He had bought a large red tomato, pulled out a pocketknife, and cut it, keeping half and offering the rest to Hasan.
“Ana ismi Ari. Ari Perlstein,” the boy had said.
Intrigued, Hasan had taken the tomato.
“Goo day sa! Shalom!” Hasan had tried the only non-Arabic words he knew and motioned for the boy to sit.
Though Ari could improvise some Arabic, neither spoke the other’s language. But they quickly found commonality in their mutual sense of inadequacy.
“Ana ismi Hasan. Hasan Yehya Abulheja.”
“Salam alaykom,” Ari had replied. “What book are you reading?” he had asked in German, pointing.
“Book.”
English
. “Dis, book.”
“Yes.”
English
. “Kitab.”
Book, Arabic
. “Yes.” They had laughed and eaten more tomato.
Thus a friendship had been born in the shadow of Nazism in Europe and in the growing divide between Arab and Jew at home, and it had been consolidated in the innocence of their twelve years, the poetic solitude of books, and their disinterest in politics.
Decades after war had divided the two friends, Hasan told his youngest child, a little girl named Amal, about his boyhood friend. “He was like a brother,” Hasan said, closing a book that had been given to him by Ari in the autumn of their boyhood.
Though Hasan would experience a colossal physical growth, at twelve he was a sickly boy whose lungs hissed with every breath. The labor of his breathing pushed him to the sidelines of the strict confederacies of boys and their rough play. Likewise, Ari’s limp invited the relentless mockery of his classmates. Both possessed an air of recoil that recognized itself in the other, and each, at a young age and in his own world and language, had found refuge in the pages of poets, essayists, and philosophers.
What had been a bothersome occasional travel to Jerusalem became a welcome weekly trip, for Hasan would find Ari waiting there and they would pass the hours teaching each other the words in Arabic, German, and English for “apple,” “orange,” “olive.” “The onions are one piaster the pound, ma’am,” they practiced. From behind the cart’s rows of fruit and vegetables, they privately poked fun at the Arab city boys, with their affected speech and fancy clothes that were little more than displays of servile admiration for the British.
Ari even began to wear traditional Arab garb on weekends and often returned to Ein Hod with Hasan. Immersed in the melodies of Arabic speech and song and the flavors of Arabic food and drink, Ari gained a respectable command of his friend’s language and culture, which in no small measure would contribute to his tenured professorship at Hebrew University decades later. Similarly, Hasan learned to speak German, to read haltingly some of the English volumes in Dr. Perlstein’s library, and to appreciate the traditions of Judaism.
Mrs. Perlstein loved Hasan and was grateful for his friendship with her son, and Basima received Ari with similar motherly enthusiasm. Although they never met face-to-face, the two women came to know one another through their sons and each would send the other’s boy home loaded with food and special treats, a ritual that Hasan and Ari grudgingly endured.
At thirteen, a year before Hasan’s formal schooling was to end, he asked his father’s permission to study with Ari in Jerusalem. Fearful that further education would take his son away from the land he was destined to inherit and farm, Yehya forbade it.
“Books will do nothing but come between you and the land. There will be no school with Ari and that is all I will say on the matter.” Yehya was certain he made the right decision. But years later, Yehya would reproach himself with deep consternation and regret for denying what Hasan had dearly wanted. For this decision, one day Yehya would beg his son’s forgiveness as they all camped at the mercy of the weather, not far from the home to which they could never return. Yehya, a withering refugee in the unfamiliar dilapidation of exile, would weep on Hasan’s forgiving shoulders. “Forgive me, son. I cannot forgive myself,” Yehya would cry. And it was for the same decision and subsequent regret and heartbreak that Hasan would resolve, with determined hard labor and its pittance pay, that his children would receive an education. For this decision, Hasan would tell his little girl, Amal, many years later, “Habibti, we have nothing but education now. Promise me you’ll take it with all the force you have.” And his little girl would promise the father she adored.
Although Hasan was denied the privilege of formal schooling beyond eighth grade, he received superior tutoring from Mrs. Perlstein, who sent her eager young student home every week loaded with books, lessons, and homework. The private lessons started as a scheme between Basima and Mrs. Perlstein to lift Hasan from his dejection in the months after Yehya issued his final word on the matter of education.
“Hey, brother!” The young men embraced, locked hands, and kissed each other on each cheek, the Arab way. They unloaded the truck, setting the driver up with other street vendors. Weaving through narrow cobblestone paths of the Old City, the friends headed for their usual treat before walking to Ari’s house. From Babel Amoud, they walked toward el Qiyameh. The aromas of earthen jars, molasses, and assorted oils drifted from shops as sidewalk vendors called to passersby to stop and sample. They turned on Khan el Zeit, their heads brushing against leathers and silks hanging from store walls. A few more steps and they entered el Mahfouz café.
“Two heads of honey apple,” Hasan called to the attendant.
“This can’t be good for your lungs, Hasan,” Ari warned him. “Does Uncle Yehya know you smoke?”
“Of course not!”
At the Perlsteins’, Hasan delivered the two trays of halaw and knafe.
“The usual from Mother,” he said in German.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Perlstein said, taking the sweets.
She was a reserved, long-limbed woman and Hasan thought her appearance gave no hint of her expansive kindness. His instinct, when he saw her, was to look for her family heirloom, pinned on her chest, always.
One, two, three, four . . . eighteen
. He developed a habit of counting the small pearls of her brooch while she inspected his homework.
Over the years, Hasan proved himself an assiduous pupil and quick study. The mentorship with Mrs. Perlstein continued until he “graduated” with Ari in 1943, the year when the two young men drifted apart for a while, as Ari developed a small group of friends at his school and Hasan became smitten with a young Bedouin girl named Dalia, who had stolen Ganoosh, his brother’s horse.
1940–1948
UNLIKE MARRIAGES OF THEIR time, arranged at birth and kept within the family clan, Hasan’s union with Dalia was born of forbidden love. He was a descendant of the original founders of Ein Hod and heir to great stretches of cultivated land, orchards, and five impressive olive groves. Dalia, on the other hand, was the daughter of a Bedouin whose tribe came to work in the village every year during the harvest and eventually settled there.
The youngest of twelve sisters, Dalia was willful and paid little mind to convention. Despite living at the pitiless end of her father’s belt, she did not always remember to wear the traditional coverings of hijab and let the wind roam her hair. Unlike proper girls, she’d hike up her dress to chase a lizard, soiling the bright Bedouin designs of her thobe with mud stains and cactus thorns. Often, she would forget to empty her pouch of strange new bugs and beetles collected that day, for which her mother would beat her. But the force of nature within her compelled her back to her curious ways. She relished her time with her six- and eight-legged little secrets until she had a four-legged one, a horse named Ganoosh.
Its young master, a boy whom she knew to be Darweesh, son of Yehya Abulheja, offered her a ride when he happened to see her walking the hills. She couldn’t accept a ride with a boy. She’d be beaten if her father learned of it.
“No.” She was as emphatic as an eleven-year-old can be, but as soon as she answered, her face relaxed into “maybe.” Darweesh spoke softly, “I am happy just to walk in front and I swear on my honor I will not look back at you on the horse.” He seemed trustworthy and there was no one around for miles among the hills. She looked around at the quiet expanse of rolling land. Her heart was pure. “How do I get on?”
“Watch me first, then try it when I turn my back,” Darweesh said. Ganoosh allowed the petite figure to mount his back and then he walked slowly on. Suddenly she was overcome with fear of being caught with a boy and his horse. She demanded to stop, and as soon as she had dismounted she ran off.
Weeks later she returned to the spot to wait for her magnificent four-legged secret, until it arrived with Darweesh and she experienced the magic again. The secret lasted more than two years and in that time, Dalia learned to ride alone. Darweesh would have done anything she asked, if only she had asked. In all that time, they never exchanged a word except on that first day. When Darweesh saw her coming, he would avert his eyes to show no disrespect, turn his back to her, and hold Ganoosh steady while she hitched up her thobe, pants underneath, mounted, and rode away. Darweesh would wait until she returned and go through the same ritual of modesty in reverse.
To the villagers, Dalia was like a wild gypsy, born of Bedouin poetry and colors instead of flesh and blood. Some thought the child had an aspect of the devil and convinced Dalia’s mother to bring a sheikh to read Quranic verses over her. Most assumed the girl would simply grow out of her ways. Eventually, folks agreed that Dalia ought to be “broken.” Almost fourteen now, she needed to be disabused of her childish carelessness.
“Break her, beat her, teach her a lesson,” another Bedouin woman told her mother. “Look at her eat that orange! What shame on her family. All the boys are staring at her.” Such was the village scorn of Dalia. The jingle of her ankle bracelets bothered the women. More, they hated Dalia’s immunity to their acrimony. The unapologetic force that shone from her skin and floated off her hair reminded them of an irretrievable old bliss that they had willingly discarded. Dalia’s vulgar carelessness was sexual, more so because she didn’t know it.
Basima, Um Hasan, thought Dalia a godless thief with no shame, after Dalia had “stolen” her son Darweesh’s horse for a covert respite from the backbreaking monotony of the olive harvest. No one would have been the wiser had Dalia not fallen and broken her ankle, sparking a scandal that caught the attention of Hasan. The whole village was abuzz. Darweesh thought of ways to defend Dalia, but he knew his involvement would bring a far greater punishment to bear on her.
Disgraced, Dalia’s father vowed to crush his youngest daughter’s insolence once and for all. To restore his honor, he tied Dalia to a chair in the center of town and put a hot iron to the hand she was forced to admit had been the one that had stolen the horse.
“This one? Put it out where I can burn it good,” the father said, seething, as Dalia offered her right palm. “And if you scream, I’ll burn the other hand,” he added, turning to the crowd of onlookers for approval.
Dalia made no sound as the burning metal seared the skin of her right palm. The crowd gasped. “How cruel the Bedouins are,” said a woman, and some people implored Dalia’s father to stop in the name of Allah, to have mercy because Allah is Merciful.
Al Rahma
. But a man must be the ruler of his home. “My honor shall have no blemish. Step back, this is my right,” the Bedouin demanded. It was his right.
La hawla wala quwatta ella billah
.
Dalia pulled the pain inward, the mean odor of burned flesh scorching the life at her core. Her complicity with nature, the intimacy of her hair with the wind, the jangling of her coin ankle bracelets, the sweet aroma of her sweat when she toiled, the gypsy colors of her—all of it that day became an ash heap in the center of town beneath the deep blue sky. Had she screamed, perhaps the fire would not have reached so deeply into her. But she did not. She spied a rabbit and transfixed them both in an impossible stare. She gripped the torture in her hand and held it there with a clench of her jaw as tears streaked her face. For the rest of her life, Dalia would have the unconscious habit of rubbing the tips of the fingers of her right hand back and forth on their palm while she gritted her teeth, giving the impression that she held something in her grip that was living and trying to get out.
* * *
Basima was unnerved by the Bedouin girl’s stoicism and she wanted no part of “that family,” for she was not unaware of Hasan’s watchful eyes that followed the young Dalia as she worked at her daily chores in the village and in the fields.
To Basima, Dalia was a “no-good Bedouin” who would bring all manner of trouble to their peaceful village. Indeed, her worst fears were confirmed when her son, the young Hasan Yehya Abulheja, was unable to resist the audacity of Dalia’s beauty and the wildness of her spirit and resolved to marry her.
With the determination that would characterize Hasan all his life, and with the reluctant blessing of his father, Hasan faced his mother with his decision.
“Yumma, marriage is not a sin,” Hasan said, trying a conciliatory approach.
“No, no, no, no, no!” Basima was wild. In the drama of scandal, she flailed her arms, tugged at her thobe with pleas to Allah, beat her chest, and slapped her own face. She bemoaned the humiliation and rued the day “that Bedouin” ever stepped foot in Ein Hod. Her embarrassment would ripen to shame when she would be obliged to deliver the news of her son’s rebellion and his refusal of his own cousin, who was already betrothed to him.
“Ya Abu Hasan, what will people say of us?” she pleaded with her husband.
Yehya tried to reason with his wife. “Um Hasan, let it be. He’s a man now. We cannot force him.”
But she went on as if her husband had not spoken. “That our word is not honorable? That we promise a girl marriage to our son, then allow him to disobey us? What fault has my innocent niece committed to be rejected for a filthy Bedouin thief?”
“This is Allah’s will. Let it be, woman! The country is being turned upside down by Zionists and you’re in a bad temper because your son wants to marry a pretty girl you don’t like. Don’t you hear the news every day? Zionists killing British and Palestinians every cursed day? They’re getting rid of the British so they can get rid of us and everybody’s too stupid to see it or do anything about it.” Yehya grabbed his cane in one hand, his nye in the other, and walked outside in disgust of his fears, which had been intensifying with the near daily BBC reports of terrorism by the increasingly militarized Zionist gangs.
On the marble steps of their home, Yehya exhaled through his precious nye, moved his fingers, and raised his brow at the first sound. He played for his trees, to resurrect simplicity and peace.
“Stop that!” Basima marched onto the portico Yehya had designed and tiled himself. She was furious.
“One of these days I’m going to break that thing,” Basima growled softly, so the neighbors wouldn’t hear, and stomped away, fearful that she had crossed a line. She was still muttering her displeasure as she walked across the Persian rugs of her foyer, through the tiled grand arches, into the family room, where she struggled onto her knees to sit briefly on the floor cushion. Years earlier, Yehya had wanted to buy sofas, like the British had, but Basima had refused; and now she thought sofas might be better. Restless, she unfolded her prayer mat to submit to Allah. After she had prayed two rukaas, she pulled herself up, walking over more Persian rugs scattered over the marble floor into the kitchen, where she looked around at Yehya’s blue and green tile design.
He’s stubborn, but he sure is an artist
, she thought.
Ya, Yehya, how can you agree to this marriage!
No amount of Basima’s pleading or cursing could dissuade her son. Only Darweesh understood the resolve with which Hasan defied their mother, for he too loved Dalia. And when the family went to ask for Dalia’s hand in marriage, Darweesh wept in the company of his beloved Ganoosh and Fatooma, his other Arabian horse and Ganoosh’s mate that had a distinctive white streak between her eyes.
Dalia’s father accepted with a great sense of relief from the burden of his youngest daughter, and two days later, as was the custom, he received her dowry. On that day, Dalia watched through the little holes in the privacy mesh of her window as a convoy of men brought money and gold to her father. She was less moved by the impressive dowry than by the sight of Darweesh walking among those men.
She had no say in the matter, though the idea of becoming an aroosa appealed to her, in the way dressing up like an adult appeals to little girls—but she wished it had been for Darweesh.
On the day of Dalia’s wedding her female relatives—mother, aunts, married sisters and cousins—scrubbed and buffed every inch of her body. Aeeda was repeatedly smeared on and snatched off her legs, thighs, arms, belly, and buttocks. Dalia stretched her neck each time to survey the tiny forests of black hair extracted with every yank that seemed to send electric currents through her skin. The tender flesh between her legs was most painful. “It’s okay, daughter,” the mother said as she spread her daughter’s legs wide.
Bismillah arrahman arraheem
. With the confidence and dexterity of a midwife, Dalia’s mother drew away all of her daughter’s recent pubic hair (of which Dalia had been so proud) in a single swipe of the aeeda that made Dalia spring to her feet with pain. The women laughed goodheartedly. “Come, daughter. Come back to the world of women.” And when an aunt noticed the moisture on Dalia’s thighs, she exclaimed to her sister, “Looks like your daughter will make a fine wife.” They laughed again as Dalia was an obedient spectator to her own transformation.
She watched in the mirror as lines of kohl shaped her eyes with seduction and sketched on her face the age and maturity that she lacked. She was an aroosa, the pretty center of her culture, and all the little girls watched her as she had watched brides before her being prepared for marriage.
Heavy with glowing gifts hung around her neck and across her brow and dangling from her wrists, ankles, and ears, fourteen-year-old Dalia married Hasan Yehya Abulheja in a grand ceremony. It was a celebration befitting the vindication of Dalia’s father, the virulent bitterness of Basima, and the melancholy heart of Darweesh.
Bejeweled with half her weight in gold, the small bride inhabited her wedding quietly, rubbing her hand unceasingly, her jaw motionless on tight hinges, even when kissed by well-wishers.
Before joining the women, the men celebrated separately, sacrificing a lamb, dancing, and making joy with song and music. With a wounded heart, Darweesh led a dabke for his brother and toasted the groom with love, a secret sadness, and acceptance of Allah’s will.
“Inshalla, you’re next, brother,” Hasan said sincerely, hugging Darweesh.
“Inshalla.” God willing.
Within ten months of the wedding, Dalia ingratiated herself with the village by bearing a son, whom she named Yousef. Thenceforth, from the age of fifteen, Dalia was respectfully called “Um Yousef ” and Hasan “Abu Yousef.”
Even before Yousef was born, Basima had softened toward Dalia. She could not help being impressed by the tenacity with which Dalia tackled her chores, the skill with which she helped her own mother deliver babies in the village, or the delight of her new husband in her company. Furthermore, the families had agreed that Darweesh would marry the niece who had been abandoned by Hasan, and thus Basima’s pride was saved.
Dalia’s inexperience compelled the maternal instincts of her mother-in-law to induct her Bedouin daughter into the world of motherhood, teaching her the rhythms of breastfeeding and the treatments for colic. She instructed her in the secrets to regain the body’s firmness and in tricks to keep the interest of her husband after childbirth.
“It all goes eventually—the breasts, thighs, they just fall,” Basima said. “But olive oil is the trick.” Basima’s narrowing eyes glimmered with conspiracy as she moved closer and began describing the beauty concoctions she had discovered herself. “These are a woman’s secrets that I’ll only pass to you and, inshalla, Darweesh’s wife, since it wasn’t in Allah’s plan for me to bear daughters.”