Qissat (20 page)

My poor brother, I don’t pity myself. Your foolish bullets deliver me from many things. They put an end to this existence that has sickened me at every moment, and ease nerves deadened by filthy, cheap passions that make beasts of men, their pockets ringing with coins to buy memories of a scarlet night.

No, I don’t pity myself as much as I pity you, the one clean passion in my heart, and your tender life choked by the slimy prison walls.

Did Awad say nothing more than ‘Kill her’, I wonder? Didn’t he tell you what happened to us when were children the day our father died? I was fourteen and you were five. The women in the neighbourhood cried crocodile tears over him and thanked God for releasing his wife first so that she ‘didn’t drink his grief’. The men agreed on their duties towards the dead but disagreed over compassion for the living! Did he tell you how he came to me the next day? I already hated him because he had tried once to kiss me by force and I had complained to our father about him. He went to Awad’s coffee shop, spat in his hateful face and hurled abuse at him. Awad came offering his services, but I firmly turned him away, brushed aside his hand offering me pennies and barred him from ever crossing the threshold of our house.

Didn’t he tell you the story of a girl who had no one to hold her hand in a big, lonely universe where her small foot feared to stumble? Then let me tell it. Let me. For the accused has a right to say her last words before her neck winds up on the rope of public opinion. We were young, brother, and had no one but Hunger, which gnawed at our bodies. So I went looking for work my two small hands would be strong enough for. I asked around, and I begged and wheedled until I ended up in a weaving shop whose owner met me and said, ‘Let me see your hands.’ So I held them out. ‘Graceful fingers,’ he said. ‘You’ll certainly do your work well. Go see the senior girl to show you the work. And if you do it well, I’ll give you five pennies a day.’

As I turned round to go and see the senior girl, I heard him say, ‘Do you know you have a pretty face, girl?’ I didn’t know until then I had a pretty face! Afterwards I found myself in a group of girls, all gaunt and sallow, their tender backs bowed over the looms, their fingers moving entirely automatically.

I did what they did and I did it well, and so I earned the five pennies and a smile too that I did not understand from the potbellied owner.

I used to work all day, leaving you in the care of Umm Mahmud, the only kind soul in the neighbourhood, and come home to you in the evenings, with bread and cheese and olives in my arms and a hankering and longing in my heart. I would hurry to you, nothing inside me but the spectre of the disgusting Awad when he would sometimes waylay me in the gloomy winding alleys and I would shower him with curses and run off spurred by feelings of rage, fear and dread.

I worked hard and my wages increased from five, to eight, to ten. This made the girls resentful and their tongues wagged behind my back and I thought I heard them say, ‘We expected this the moment she got here. She has a pretty, fair face and green eyes. Can’t you see how he devours her with his eyes?’ I felt stung by their attack; I did not know if ‘the boss’, as we called him, did indeed devour me with his eyes, like they said. He was kind to me and I put his kind treatment down to a certain care and sympathy. As for the extra, I earned it. Then one day he came inspecting the work and doing his rounds between the rows of workers, and when he reached me he patted my shoulder and said, ‘Would you stay a while after the other workers leave … I want to have a word with you.’

I spent the rest of the day wondering what he could want from me. A shiver that stripped the calmness from my heart overcame me. Once it was time to leave I tried to sneak out with the other girls, but I saw the boss at the door signalling to me to wait, so I held back. When the place was empty he pulled me by the hand into his office, opened a drawer from which he took a bottle of perfume and a bangle made of coloured beads, and said, ‘These are for you … I’m pleased with your work… Take them!’

I did not reach out my hand, so he pulled me towards him, but I slipped away like a small cat, then made it through the open door to the alley, in my heart an oppressive fear of some mysterious and invisible thing. As I turned the corner of the alley I saw Awad, studying me with his disgusting face and a yellow grin. Maybe he had been waiting there for me, and when he had waited too long he asked the other workers about me, because the instant he saw me he said, ‘Wonder why, out of all the girls, the boss made
you
stay? Did …? I thought so, you …!’ And he fired a dirty word that shook my small being. I ran to you terrified, crying. You looked at me with puzzled eyes, then burst into tears with me. We slept together, side by side; I pulled your little body into mine as if to protect myself with you from the boss. From Awad. From people. From the feelings raging through my heart.

I did not go to work the next day. I wanted to feel safe by staying beside you. But – at the insistence of Umm Mahmud, who kept asking why I wouldn’t go – I was forced to return. So I did, and the boss noticed me coming in and he smiled like a fox and nodded his head meaningfully.

That evening he ‘had another word with me’ and, in the evenings that followed, more ‘words’. I heard from him promises of gowns, perfumes, sweet things to eat, of all that was in his power to spin the head of a deprived girl. But I shrank back from staying with him, and my young heart beat uneasily. His promises did not reassure me one bit. I hated him even more when he leaned his greedy lips to my cheeks and began to kiss me, unaffected by the slaps on his rough face, so that when he let go of me I took to my heels, determined never to return. I stayed away for days, then bowed my head and went back. Because we had gone hungry. I had tried to find other work, so I took up service for a family, but then left it – after the cruel lady of the house struck me hard for breaking two cups – without me even demanding my week’s wages! So I had to return … to the looms!

The game of cat and mouse dragged out between the boss and me, my nerves weakened and the long chase ran them down. One day the prey stumbled. The vile man kicked her onto the street, stripped of dignity, cheated out of pride, scared, bewildered, tearful, crushed. Malice plagued her, contempt hounded her everywhere.

This time I could not go back to the house, or to the neighbourhood: Awad’s rumours and his baseness had arrived there first. He peddled the rumours here and there. And lips opened not to excuse or defend, or to ask for God’s protection, but to curse and shred.

I wandered about aimlessly for days … and day by day the belief in the justness of life died inside me. I ended up in a pitch-black hell that swallowed a victim every day yet always hungrily demanded more.

There I learned to reduce my humanity in the crucible of spite. There I learned to hate, to avenge, to do many more things … And I learned the trade!

Sometimes I would wake up from the throes of this great spite and remember you, and my heart would soften and I’d cry. I would send someone to bring me your news and so learned that you had ended up in an orphanage after Umm Mahmud had pleaded and pressured the neighbourhood’s elder to do something for this stray soul, who was you. Once, my longing tormented me, I made up my mind to see you and I picked up some presents, but when I reached the place I stood bewildered at the locked gate. I didn’t know how to go in, or what to say, or who to ask for. I tossed the parcel I was carrying through the window and turned back, caring about nothing at all.

Afterwards there were no reasons to connect our two worlds. I think you asked about me once or twice; you missed me a little or maybe a lot. But when the longing couldn’t nourish you any more, the memory of me slept inside you, then my face faded out of your heart as the days passed. I forgive you; you were young.

As for me, the young-old one, I did not forget you. I kept asking about you because my love for you was the only link between me and the world of emotions. Apart from that, storms of hatred consumed my heart.

Once again I say I pity you, now that you’re a man, for selling your life so cheaply. Once again I say, pray guard against the friendship of a low-life like Awad, whom I hated in the innocence of my childhood and whom I rose above on broken wings.

Enraged, I scorned him when he knocked on my door once, like the others. I slammed the door in his face and sent him away under a hail of insults.

As for this clumsy gun, take it and sell it, my little one … and buy yourself a shirt that covers your naked shoulders instead of this torn one that you haven’t taken off your back for the two weeks you devoted to watching our alley, ever since the thought of revenge drew you … to your sister!

I’m free. I feel I’m saved at last. I throw my drained body into the safe little spot I’ve escaped to from the world of endless continents and lodge myself there securely. It is the realm of ‘my size’, though it barely contains me. I open my eyes as never before and shake my head from side to side with wild abandon. The stories and fingerprints of yesterday fall away with my curls.

As silent as love, granules of sweat roll down my face, like kind fairies bringing relief for a moment in childbirth.

I hold my head high, like a flag that has long hung half-mast but is hoisted up and flown with pride and victory by its children. With both my hands I smooth out the map of my life and call in a weary voice that barely reaches my ears:‘I’m free.’

I look down at my feet like an old invalid stunned by the sudden ability to walk. I rejoice like a child receiving a doll on a feast day and say to myself, ‘I’m reborn.’

I feel as fresh as peppermint, as though I was born today. My memory is as pure and clear as a pool of water untouched by the blowing breeze. I stand before the world in dumb bewilderment, as though I’ve stumbled upon a whole new existence.

The day before me is a blend of Eve’s life in the Stone Age and her life in this age of nothingness.

I run my hand along the contours of my body from the northern-most point to the southernmost tip and shout in that same voice you cannot hear, for I can barely hear it myself: ‘I can fly.’

The horse of my childhood dream, I see myself riding it now. True to the dream, we gallop on and on over level ground until we reach our destination. I hear nothing but the sound of hooves. I see nothing but the never-ending horizon dyed the yellow of sunflowers and the red of my lips. I feel nothing but a quivering desire to embrace life.

I know for sure that I can fly and won’t be brought down.
I’m liberated and won’t be shackled.
I’m reborn and won’t die again.
I have awoken and won’t slumber any more.

The awakening may have come late but what matters is that it has come at all. I thank the circumstances that drew me to him and him to me, in the same unexplained way we come into the world and the world comes to us. This afternoon I walked vainly down Jerusalem’s Madbaseh Street and entered his store. The world was ablaze with people and sweat poured forth from every direction. ‘What size?’ asked the young man, his mind on one customer, his eyes on another, his hands serving a third.

I quietly lowered myself onto a chair, then leapt up as its scorching leather seat stung me. There in the large mirror in front of me my action was reflected life-size. Struggling to overcome my confusion, I somehow managed to keep up my princess-like manners, ‘38, please.’ The young man, an expert in women’s fittings and shoe sizes, turned round and concentrated his full attention on me, ‘Really?’

His disdain brought the vile invisible walls that had encircled me for so long tumbling down. I could hear them collapsing. I watched him size me up and suddenly no longer knew myself. ‘What size am I really?’ I asked myself.

The man moved off, passing me, my distraction and my shock. He disappeared, then returned with the shoes in the style and size I had requested.

I took the shoes and undid the laces. Memories brought back the past. I recalled how each time I bought shoes in size 38 I would walk around in pain for a time, then eventually throw them in the cupboard stuffed with shoes of all styles and colours, all of which were 38s.

My feet are size 39 I told myself. Not 38. So why had I insisted on buying size 38 all this time? The answer lay folded carefully in a corner of Amal, Sana’, Samiyya and Ayda’s special girls’ meeting. We would all brag our feet were the smallest, the presumption of course being that there was a direct connection between shoe size and a girl’s grace and femininity.

I’d boast outrageously I was a 38, then fall quiet for a while, and occasionally admit warily that I was really a 39.

According to this theory, Samiyya was the most feminine and elegant of us all as she wore size 36, the size always on display in shop windows.

We would undress in front of shop windows to discover the truth. I stood for a long time in front of the windows of Benetton in Washington, lost in thought. How much ‘truth’ was really imparted there? If my colouring was black would the mirror receive me kindly? Or do we only stand in front of mirrors that flatter us?

Once, in a childish moment, exhausted by shoe sizes and walking barefoot in the desert of my life, I complained to my mother about the size of my feet. She gave me an adequate answer, but I was not satisfied. ‘It’s all proportionate. Samiyya is only 155 metres tall so she is petite and has small feet. You’re 170 so you have a bigger build and bigger feet.’

I dismissed my mother’s justifications, unconvinced and without giving her analysis much thought. I stuck with my own categorisation. ‘I’m a size 38,’ I thus convinced myself. It is incredible what we can make ourselves believe when we want to, in a sense selecting what we expose ourselves to, what we comprehend and remember. How we embrace some things and close our eyes to others and explain our visions from our own perspective! How we forget what we should really remember!