Qissat (15 page)

‘But it is three in the afternoon!’ Zaki cried. ‘We are between meals now. Is anyone really hungry?’

His cousin Samih started telling of a house he had visited in the town of Ramallah where the people never fed him from sunup to sundown.

‘Who were these selfish heathens?’ croaked Tawfiq the Bird-Man, happy to be enraged.

Uncle Khaled looked as if he were in great pain. ‘I believe in the customs,’ he was saying, though no one but Zaki was listening. ‘All my life I have tried to weave together the old and new, keeping the best of the old, yet trying to move forward at the same time. In this house you will see the arches of the old architecture and yet there are plastic dishes in the kitchen. I beg your consideration for my full stomach, which forgot its manners, but soon everything will be well again.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Zaki said loudly. He whispered to his uncle, ‘Listen, my father is just talking like he always does. Pay no attention to him and please, may I see your bathtub?’ This seemed to make Khaled even sadder.

Farouki returned from the market with his arms full of bread, at least thirty loaves. He dropped them down on the coffee table in front of everyone. ‘So eat,’ he instructed them. ‘Eat and eat till the day is done.’

Nabeela appeared with a tray of warm meatballs and a dish of cold eggplant dip. ‘But we have no more bread,’ she was saying, till she saw the bread on the table and looked surprised. Uncle Khaled rose, saying he was going to his own store to get a better kind of bread. ‘But we aren’t hungry!’ Zaki shouted. ‘Are you hungry? Is anyone hungry?’

Abu Zaki, apparently not to be outdone by his brother, the poor host, or his strange nephew, stood up and said he would be back shortly with all the necessary supplies.

‘Father, we’re leaving!’ Zaki shouted. ‘We’re going away! We’re going to fly back to America this instant without saying goodbye!’ Sometimes it works to fight logic with logic and craziness with craziness. This truth, however, cannot be depended on.

A half hour later, everyone was back. Zaki and Suheila had been muttering together in the drowsy living room, waiting for them. Two flies had mated on the arm of a chair, and Zaki’s mother had gone to sleep, her ashtray full in front of her. At least sixty loaves of flat bread were now piled on the coffee tables and cabinets. Nabeela had prepared soup and a salad of cucumbers and radishes. She moved in and out of the kitchen like a sleepwalker.

Now that they had all this food in front of them, Zaki’s father and uncle had stopped speaking to one another. The cousins declined. Zaki’s mother woke up, tasted one meatball and some salad, but said no bread, thank you, she wasn’t hungry enough for bread. Only Tawfiq the Bird-Man was eating. He picked at his food like a sparrow picks at the ground. He kept telling weird stories with wrong endings, and no one asked Zaki or Suheila anything else about the United States for the rest of the visit.

Three nights later they were all dressed and perfumed for the farewell feast when a young boy appeared from Uncle Khaled’s village to say that none of the family from over there would be coming. Abu Zaki, the
mukhtar,
had cast a shadow over the relatives. He had insulted his own brother in front of women and his son. Neither would the family of Nabeela, Zaki’s mother, be attending, since they had heard the terrible story and could not permit themselves to socialise with Zaki’s family again so soon. The villages were temporarily divided – those who loved, or were related to, Khaled or Nabeela standing firm against the
mukhtar.
No matter that they were related to the
mukhtar
just as much; for the present, they weren’t claiming him. A few tender-hearted women sent consolation gifts to Zaki’s mother. No one even seemed to remember Suheila and Zaki, and weren’t they the ones who were leaving, the whole reason for the party?

Zaki’s grandmother Sitti stood in the doorway of the house, watching the sky. ‘It’s going to rain tomorrow,’ she said gloomily. ‘You won’t be able to fly. And it’s a bad sign here too, we have killed the lambs and no one is coming to eat them. That means something terrible is about to happen. If you leave us and the plane falls out of the sky, I will die.’

‘So will we,’ Zaki said, hugging her. Later they stuffed themselves with triple the usual amount of food, to make up for all the people who weren’t there.

There’s no way out of renewing her Israeli driver’s licence; she has to travel to Amman, where she’s used to escaping to squash her boredom, and doesn’t want to run into any obstacles. She’s tried several times to avoid that arduous trip to Jerusalem; she can no longer stand that close-by far-away city. She planned to meet a relative of hers just past the Qalandia checkpoint, so he could walk her to the crossing. She walked about fifty metres on the way to the checkpoint. When she reached the pedestrian crossing, the dust was penetrating her cells as well as the buttonholes of her shirt. She decided, without any hesitation, that she wouldn’t squeeze herself into a circle of sweat mixed with hatred, malice and perversion. For a moment she imagined her body sandwiched between two young men thirsty for a piece of flesh. She didn’t want to allow herself to be an object of masturbation, or for a moment to lie on a filthy bed, under a yellow blanket, in one of their fantasies.

She thought, ‘If I slapped one of them, their eyes would turn to rocks,’ and headed towards the officer in charge of crossing to the other side.

She wanted this all to be over as soon as possible, before the checkpoint shut its gates. She hurried towards the row of cars, and caught up with the fifth van. She knocked against its window hysterically, looked at the driver and pointed at the back seat questioningly. ‘Peace be upon you,’ she greeted the driver and his friend, ‘I have to get to an important meeting. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’ She sat down confidently, proud of herself, as though she’d won an historic victory.

The driver was a bearded young man with relaxed features, and his friend seemed equally well behaved. She noticed a small Quran in the driver’s hand. He was reading it intensely, in a voice like a secret delight. They were three cars away from the checkpoint, and, as the car approached, he kept reading from the Quran.

She thought, ‘What if he’s planning to blow himself up, to bomb the soldiers at the checkpoint? It’s obvious that he’s planning to. I don’t know if I’d be able to slip away; he let me on, and I can’t just abandon him!’

And yet …

There was a single car left in front of them. He shut the Quran and gave it to his friend silently. He turned the stereo on – a sheikh reading from ‘The Cow’
sura.

‘It looks like I’ll be dying with them,’ she thought. ‘I want to get out, I want to cry. Maybe I want to be the heroine.’

The sheikh’s voice grew louder, then she could only hear her thoughts: ‘I won’t hurt. I’ll crumble. I hope the dynamite is heavy so I won’t suffer.’

They came nearer to the checkpoint.

The driver looked at her in the rear-view mirror. She gave him a quiet look, and a smile of surrender.

They were a single metre away from the checkpoint.

‘Write this down, Saad! “Waleed and I are well, and we miss you! By God, your absence has been very difficult for us. Being away from you has robbed me of sleep, Khaled!” Look, Saad! Write down what I say in classical Arabic, in your own beautiful words. Your mother says you rank first in your class, and that you’re very, very good at writing!’

However, because he didn’t understand, Saad wrote none of it down.

‘OK. How about Mohammed and Omar. Your sons … didn’t he ask about them?’

‘No. Just Waleeed. He asked only about him!’

Her voice was short and decisive, so his confusion grew.

You’ve seen Khaled once or twice, during Eid while you were playing in the alley with your friends. A handsome young man, as you recall. But you don’t understand him, and you don’t understand what this woman wants from you.

She stared off into the distance. Then she realised that he hadn’t been writing, so she said, angrily, ‘Why aren’t you writing this down, Saad? Come on. Let’s get this over with.’

She regretted her anger, and tried again. ‘Saad. Write something, Saad. I’d love to see your lovely technique.’

Your unopposed technique! But she doesn’t understand that what she asks for confuses you completely. Her impatience, which began when she first asked you for the favour, makes things even stranger. And in spite of her beauty she doesn’t understand the basics of writing, and yet she shouts her objections, even though she doesn’t understand. She’s very beautiful, but she doesn’t understand, and she doesn’t think properly! Your mother is older than she is, but she stares at you for hours while you read with delight. Like a teacher you explain words and their meaning to her: about things as disparate as Saladdin and the milkman. She keeps nodding her head in approval.

The day you read her the teacher’s praise on the pages of your composition notebook she unleashed her blessings and her prayers for God to open your mind, and light up your sight, and bring good people to your side. She stared at you, because she couldn’t comprehend the two lines the teacher had written, so you explained them to her with patience and tenderness. She ululated loudly, because you can write and be written to in a way she can’t comprehend. Maryam is hard to please.

After some hesitation, he read what he’d written: ‘Dear brother, Khaled.’

She exploded, ‘No, leave out the “brother” part.’

Their eyes met, and hers were wide and glimmered with a strange light; her face was beautiful and confused.

‘But isn’t Khaled your husband’s brother?’

‘Yes, of course, of course, his brother in Kuwait!’

‘Then it should say, “Dear brother”.’

‘No, Saad, no. Use a word better than “brother”.’

‘Your brother is your brother, no matter what,’ the teacher had once said. Every night Saad falls asleep to his mother’s words of wisdom about brothers … there’s nothing like a brother … when one is hurt, he says, “Oh, brother”.’

She was staring at him, still, waiting. He thought she’d said something. She was a moody woman, so he read what he’d written with a fancy voice, to please her: ‘Dear Sir.’

She shook her head in refusal.

‘Dear Khaled.’

She accepted. Her gaze wandered across the small window and rested upon the stone bench which had been built under the window. Maryam spread a clean blanket over the bench, and set up a few pillows.

He was overcome with a feeling of embarrassment and confusion when her gaze landed upon the edge of his shorts. His mother, God forgive her, had cut his old pants at the knee and sewn them up in wide stitches, in a colour different from the fabric of the pants.

He gathered the sheets of paper to cover himself up, and Maryam frowned at the sky, clueless to what he’d done.

Maryam is beautiful. She’s even more beautiful when she’s frowning and confused.

She continued, ‘And tell him, Saad, write it down in your pretty words. Tell him he must return at once, as soon as he can. Waleed and I can no longer bear his absence. Write …’

Saad can’t believe how much she neglects her two children, and how much she accepts their neglect. They’re beautiful and energetic, and you see them playing in her yard each time you pass by, in search of her face. So how can this man bear for them to be neglected: isn’t he their uncle, Waleed’s brother?

Saad wanted to make things up for her, so he wrote, ‘The family and I miss you. Your absence is difficult. Our country is dear to us, and you should come back to your land: it needs its sons’ support and love and belonging.’

She became angry when she heard what he’d written.

This woman is either mad or ignorant. The teacher had gone into a frenzy when he’d read these two lines of yours, and asked your classmates to clap for you, ‘Louder boys, louder.’ You’d used the lines here in their entirety, except for one verse of poetry about your country and its honour! So why is Maryam angry? Should you have kept the verse, would that have pleased her?

She said, decisively, ‘No, Saad. Not like that. Just write down what I say, in your nice handwriting, and don’t change a thing.’

His gaze froze where her hand had stopped, in between her breasts, so that her cleavage appeared. She took out a pouch and opened it hastily, and it spread out into an embroidered handkerchief.

‘Take this, Saad.’

In his bewilderment she handed him something.

Her eyes grow larger and when she smiles, her teeth show off a fantastic jaw structure, so that her mouth looks unlike any other mouth you’ve ever known. When she’s confused, she becomes even more beautiful, her face mysterious; you are unable to understand it.

She took something else out without hesitation and put it in his palm, since he’d kept it open as he was staring at her. He heard the coins ring when they landed, and still he kept his palm open.

‘What’s wrong with you, Saad? I swear, this tip isn’t too big for you.’

Maryam is strange. She’s not like other women. Ever since she moved in next door, you’ve felt a strong, invisible pull to her. You walk by her house, spy on her through the open door, play in front of her house on purpose so you can catch a glimpse of her smile.

The day she came over to visit for the first time, you sat around at home for hours beforehand, and stayed close to your mother during the entire visit, until the moment she left. Since then, she brightens up every time she sees you. You flew into ecstasy when she invited you over today!

Maryam sat next to him on the bench, and came closer than he could bear.

‘Are you happy, Saad? An entire pound. But please write this down, quickly.’

A pound, Saad, for a letter? Your mother gets paid half as much working from dawn till dusk, embroidering cotton towels, handkerchiefs and bedcovers for the factory. She folds them gently and lays them over a clean blanket and yells, ‘Wash your hands before touching them! Wash your hands or they’ll throw them in my face and pay me nothing. Help me!’ And you sit there with your sisters, sometimes with your father despite his exhaustion after cutting stone all day. You all wet your fingers with water, and separate the string hanging from the cloth your mother had measured out in the morning. You twist them and tie the ends over the middle in the desired shape. Each bundle gets you fifteen pennies. But you, Saad, you get a pound for writing down a couple of words. And the pounds may multiply, so write, Saad, write!