Mornings in Jenin (20 page)
1981
WE MET IN SECRET two days later. Majid wanted my answer in private, away from voices and expectations. So it was, at our favorite spot just outside the quaint seaside village of Tabarja, that Majid and I held each other for the first time. The blue Mediterranean lapped at our bare feet and stretched at its far edges into a cloudless sky. You could not discern where the ocean ended or the sky began, and somewhere in all that blue the startling enchantment of love found me.
Majid turned to me, his penetrating eyes black in the blue light.
“I talked to your brother. You know I had to do that first . . . ,” he said, breaking into the tension. “Will you marry me, Amal?” he asked in sincere, committed blue, the ocean and the sky his comrades and conspirators in the question.
I had been waiting to answer. I had practiced in the mirror saying “Yes.” A surprised, happy “Yes.” A matter-of-fact “Yes, of course, I will.” So much preparation just to utter that little word.
But all I could do was nod my head in assent, and my body took him in its arms, absorbed the lovely blue crackling with love.
He brushed his lips against mine, pulled me closer, and I felt as if I had lived all my life for that kiss.
“I love you,” he said.
The most perfect words.
Whatever you feel, keep it inside
. Mama was wrong. “I love you, too,” I whispered at his ear, willingly falling into my words.
I listened to the breath entering and leaving me in Majid’s arms. Never had I been so aware of life or so grateful to live. To have a sense of blue.
We returned together, to give the news. Some of my students caught up to us as we walked through the alleyways. They greeted us, giggled, ran away and returned, blurted out “el doktor Majid and Abla Amal are going to get maaarrriieeed,” then ran away again.
The span of Majid’s shoulders moving next to me, the music of his steps, the clearing of this throat provoked a dream that rearranged my life, putting him at its center forevermore.
1981
THEY MET DAILY DURING their monthlong engagement. Majid came in the very early morning that had been so magical in Amal’s childhood. She waited eagerly each time, her heart suspended in the mist of daybreak, until she heard his steps approaching. He walked briskly, impatient to see passion expand her bottomless black eyes when they set upon him. Though when they beheld each other, their desire to hold and feel one another was tempered by rectitude, by loyalty and respect for Yousef ’s and Fatima’s good names, and by their approaching wedding.
They talked, less for meaning than to hear the other’s voice. Majid learned the nuances of an earnest love, the lines it drew from the eyes of the woman who loved him truly, the fullness of his own breath in her presence, the way time passed too quickly when they were together and too slowly when they were apart.
Their affection seemed to take on a life of its own during these times together, such that Majid and Amal had a sense that words were intruders. So they spoke in whispers. Time thus passed over these soft exchanges, the occasional laugh or smile offering each something upon which to hang his and her heart, until the sun started its ascent, and they prayed together the first salat.
Low to the earth, the sun found the two praying and cast long shadows that stretched their forms far behind them. Then they left one another, contented.
“Are you coming after work?” she inquired each time.
His answer was always the same. “Inshalla,” God willing.
* * *
The evenings were lovely, always seeming full, hopeful, and clear when Majid was near. I can see them now as if I were an outsider looking through someone’s window. The five of us, Fatima, Yousef, Majid, baby Falasteen, and I, sit around the plates of fried tomatoes, hummus, fuul, olives, zaatar, eggs, yogurt, and cucumber. A starry black sky is our roof in the courtyard where we all talk and laugh, as if we had been together all our lives. Falasteen plunges her hand into the hummus and Fatima licks it off her baby’s fingers. The baby loves this and continues to stretch her little fingers to her mother’s mouth. I feel then that I can’t wait to have a baby of my own.
Some nights Majid brought his telescope and taught me secrets of the night’s sky. Once, on a Thursday at the beach nearing sunset, Majid saw my maimed belly. He put his hand there, untroubled by the rutted skin. His hand moved lovingly over my abdomen and he kissed its waves of scar tissue. He gave my body the acceptance I had been unable to give it myself. It was an act so tender that it banished the shame. A scar of hatred soothed by Majid’s kiss.
The day quickly approached, and never had I been at the center of so much joy and attention. The zaghareet of women resound in my memories of that time. Fatima’s friends, who were now my friends as well, waxed and plucked my skin and rubbed oils and balms all over my body. They burned frankincense to perfume my hair and blessed me with their murmured prayers and incantations. One woman, bless her, gravely took Fatima aside to ask if she had instructed me on what to expect and do on my wedding night.
1981–1982
A DORNED IN GOLDEN JEWELRY far more humble than her mother’s had been, Amal delighted in her wedding. She wore a virgin’s white silk and danced with the women of Shatila, who charged the air with their songs and thrilled the evening with their dancing bodies. In their secret world apart from men, the women removed their hijab. Heads of dark and henna-dyed hair unraveled beneath, and each tied her scarf around the arches of her womanhood. They moved their hips, tracing curves of Middle Eastern rhythms, seduction and feminine pride. They danced to honor the bride and bless her marriage with their joy, celebrating centuries of Arab women who have danced together in a private world to which no man is privy.
“Aaaaaahh eeee aaaaaahh,” one elderly matriarch began at the top of her voice, and the crowd fell silent. “May Allah touch this bride’s womb with fertility.”
Amal’s elder female relatives should have been the ones to hurl those ancient calls for blessings. But Fatima was her only female kin in Lebanon, and she was not yet old enough.
“Aaaaaahh eeee aaaaaahh,” the old woman continued, heaving prayers into the air. At the end, excitement erupted in the women’s zaghareet, ululations pulled from their Arab foremothers to shake merriment from the air.
The spectacle reminded Amal of a time at the Warda house when the girls had played aroosa, one pretending to be the bride and the others wrapping their scarves around the bones that would someday flare into hips. They acted out wedding scenes and tried to oscillate their tongues rapidly to produce zaghareet. Only Huda, shyly at first, knew how to make that thrilling sound. From then on, she was their designated “zaghareet coach,” and Amal had secretly asked her not to teach Lamya, since Lamya could already do a somersault.
If only Huda were here now
. Amal silently longed for her best friend at her wedding. And that wish led her to others. To her mother, the beautiful iron-willed Dalia. To all the girls of the Warda house, and to Muna Jalayta and the Colombian Sisters. To the dawn and her father’s soothing voice. To the calls and responses of her country and days of el ghurba. She smiled throughout her wedding without once tightening her jaws. Watching the celebration, Amal wandered nostalgically in and out of her memories.
As the hours passed, the women replaced their scarves and veils to join the men, merging the two celebrations into one. Someone then placed Amal’s hand into Majid’s. The groom was dressed in white, a sword belt around his waist, the hems of his kaffiyeh threaded with silken red. Amal turned to face her husband, the coin-studded veil framing her vision, and the wedding party danced, arms linked in a circle around the couple.
A gale of love brewed in them both. A want so heavy it made their knees weak and their palms sweaty inside the grip of their hands. They turned to smile at the crowd, for the sake of what’s proper, the way newlyweds should conduct themselves at their wedding. But Majid never let go of her hand. From the moment he felt his bride’s small fingers slip into his, he did not release them until he carried Amal to his Fiat, and they rode away into marriage.
Majid carried his wife again to their apartment in the al-Tamaria building in Beirut. In time, the sword belt fell and the silk pushed against their skin, until flesh found flesh. He rose over her, drinking her nakedness. He had had many women during his ghurba days in England, but no body had enchanted him with such love. It was the body of Amal, long vowel, his yearnings and hopes. He leaned into her, kissed her lips, closing his eyes to take in their softness. She felt his breath fall softly on her face and opened her legs, like wings, taking her lover, her husband, into her body. There, they surrendered to a tempest that tore into the best-hidden parts of their hearts and Amal awoke the next day to a dream floating low on a landscape of love.
At last, fate had surprised her with a dream of her own. A dream of love, family, children. Not of country, justice, or education. Amal would have gone anywhere, as long as Majid was by her side. He became her roots, her country.
Their lives merged, and she cherished the smallest details of marriage to him. They brushed their teeth at the same sink; they ate and prayed together. They wrote their names in the sand like young lovers, holding hands all the while. He shaved her legs while she nibbled on his neck. She trimmed his hair and he washed hers. They took nothing for granted. Theirs was a raw intimacy, unabashed, the kind of love of which Fatima had spoken, that dove naked into itself, toward infinity’s reach, where the things of God live.
* * *
“What are you reading, habibti?” my husband asked.
I showed him the cover. “It’s a collection of American poems about roses.”
“The English are in love with the rose, too.”
“My grandmother Basima used to cross them. Here’s one by Robert Frost, the rhyming poet: ‘The rose is a rose, and was always a rose, but the theory now goes, that the apple’s a rose.’ ”
Majid replied, “What’s so special about a rose? Have you ever really inspected one? They have thorns. They aren’t particularly fragrant. They’re difficult to grow and are frail when you do get them to bloom. I’ll take a dandelion any day over a rose. Now that’s a flower. It’s humble, hearty, keeps coming back no matter what you do to it. And it always blooms a brilliant yellow smile.”
“Spoken like a true communist,” I teased him. “So what am I? A rose or a dandelion?”
“Agh! I should have seen that trap coming. You, my dear . . . are not a flower, something that blooms one day and wilts the next. You are the beat in my heart.”
“Great answer! Go on . . . ,” I teased.
“Do I get a prize for great answers?”
“Maybe.” I smiled.
“. . . the light in my eyes,” he said.
“You’re good. A prize is in order, sir.”
“Oh, madame, you are too kind.” Majid arched his brow mischievously. “I’ll collect my prize now.”
We found a small house near Shatila so that I could continue my teaching job in the camp and be closer to Fatima and the baby. But we kept our apartment in Beirut for nights when Majid worked late.
We were as happy as anyone can hope to be. Even as rumblings of war sounded from radio reports and coffeehouse conversations, Majid and I spoke of making children and growing old to the pitter-patter refrain of grandchildren.
When my menstrual period did not arrive on time, my elation was as vast and diaphanous as the morning sky and it was multiplied twofold that afternoon, when the UN clinic confirmed both my and Fatima’s pregnancies. We calculated that our babies had been conceived during the same week.
“The doctor thinks I’m due sometime in the middle of September,” Fatima said.
“Me too.”
“You think Yousef and Majid planned it?” She was almost serious.
“I wouldn’t put anything past those two.”
* * *
Majid’s thrill pulled him to his knees, face-to-face with my maimed belly, suddenly charmed with new life. The fine components of that perfect evening have long been pilfered from my memory by age. But I can invoke its purity, that sense of unmitigated contentment that leaves you without a right to ask for more.
He kissed my belly. “Hello in there!” he said, then looked disbelievingly at me. “We’re going to be parents, Amal!” He was excited as a schoolboy.
We talked for a long while, but I no longer recall the words, only the joy.
A month later, naked in our bed, Majid and I were making plans as expectant parents do. Our limbs laced and wrapped in each other, we spoke of our future and the future of our baby.
“If the situation becomes more heated, habibti, Yousef and I agree that you, Fatima, and the children should leave until things settle down,” Majid said solemnly, tightening his body around mine.
Israel had been striking Lebanon to provoke the PLO into retaliation. In July 1981, Israeli jets killed two hundred civilians in a single raid on Beirut, and Ariel Sharon, Israel’s defense minister at the time, issued a public vow to wipe out the resistance once and for all. The rhetoric was weighing heavily on Yousef and he was concerned for us should Israeli attacks intensify. Protecting the refugee camps was the priority. Toward that end, the PLO leadership ultimately struck a devil’s deal to keep the women and children safe.
But by April 1982, the United Nations had recorded 2,125 Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace and 652 violations of Lebanese territorial waters. Israel amassed twenty-five thousand soldiers on the border and continued to illegally deploy provocative maneuvers to the south of Lebanon. The PLO resisted retaliation and so did the Lebanese government. But Yousef correctly surmised that Israel would find a reason to invade, regardless of whether the PLO took action.
Yousef and Majid, even Fatima, convinced me it was for the best. I was to return to the United States, renew my green card, and begin immigration proceedings for my husband, Fatima, and Falasteen, who was by then nearly one year old. Yousef ’s fate was bound with the PLO, but he needed the peace of knowing his family would be safe.
“Amal, do not think you are abandoning us,” Yousef said, soberly reading my mind. “You very well could save their lives.”
* * *
My pupils conspired to prepare a farewell party on my last day at school. Ranging in age from ten to fifteen, in identical navy blue uniforms, they brought sweets and hot tea to class and moved their desks together to make a table. Two girls, Wafa and Dana, synchronized their tablas and the others linked arms to perform a dabke, pulling me in to dance with them. Before I left, each handed me a letter, a drawing, or a handmade going-away gift. One little girl, Mirvat, had stitched for me a small pillowcase with the words “I Love You” in English.
I promised that I would return, sure that I would, that my departure was a temporary and ultimately unnecessary precaution. That is what I said to my students before leaving them in Shatila.
Leaving Majid was infinitely harder.
“Please, Majid. Please, habibi, come with me,” I begged him.
“Habibti, you know I can’t just leave. Soon people are going to need doctors more than anything. I can’t turn my back on them.”
I wished then that my husband was a coward.
“If anything happens, I promise to live at the hospital. Even Israel will not bomb a hospital,” he reassured me, and pulled me close. “Before you know it we’ll be together, raising our baby and maybe expecting another. I love you eternally. What we have is made of forever.”
Love. Eternally. Forever.
Those were my husband’s words at the airport the day I left Beirut. I hung on to each one. Each syllable.
I promised my brother, as he asked me to promise, that my first order of business upon arrival in the United States would be to apply for asylum for Fatima, who stood behind him holding a well of tears in her eyes and little Falasteen in her arms. She and I comically maneuvered a side-winding embrace around our swollen bellies, already in the second trimester, and we kissed good-bye in that ribbon of humor. On cue, Falasteen pressed her open mouth against my cheek. “Ammah,” is how she uttered my name.
I kissed my husband once more and spent the next hours of travel trying to shoo away dark premonitions, circling like buzzards in my head.