The Locust and the Bird (15 page)

‘I want to be rid of this life,’ I told him, ‘just like Nawal …’

The photographer interrupted me.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Why do you want to be like Nawal? She’s crazy, committing suicide. She’s like a silver ring that’s tarnished. You have to rub your sorrows away, and then the silver will shine through like a diamond again.’

Back home, sobbing and weeping, I told the story of the film to Khadija, Mother and Maryam.

‘You cry so you can go to the cinema,’ Mother remarked, ‘and then you come home crying! And it costs a lot of money. Why don’t you just stay here?’

I went on crying. Why had Nawal committed suicide? Why hadn’t she pleaded with her beloved? Why hadn’t she raised hell? I imagined rubbing a tarnished ring until it shone with light. I promised myself I’d stay strong and not let despair get the better of me.

The Camel Howdah

I
WAS PRACTICALLY LIVING
with Muhammad. In my mind, it was as if his house and mine were one, despite the other buildings, shops, cars and pedestrians that stood between. I took his washing home and Maryam and I washed it in secret. Then she would iron his things so I could take them back the next day and put them in his wardrobe.

As I moved around his tiny room, I felt as if it were my own, as if I had not a care in the world, as if I didn’t need to hold my breath when passing his neighbours, or even the walls, in case they revealed my secret. His room looked out on to a side alley. I’d invented numerous ways of attracting his attention to let him know I was outside waiting for him. I would knock on his window or put a pile of sand or a matchstick on the sill.

Sometimes I called in on his sister when Muhammad was at work. When I got up to go, I’d beg her not to accompany me to the door. Then I’d sneak into his room and close the door behind me. Sometimes he left me alone inside his room when his work required him to go out for an hour. He would lock the door behind him and leave me with a jerrycan to pee in.

Once when he was gone I had a terrible need to poo. I hunted for newspapers and sheets of paper, piled them up and then crouched down with my eyes shut, praying that they weren’t important documents. I wrapped up the piles of paper, put them inside a paper bag, opened the window and
looked out to make sure no one was in the side alley. Then I threw the bag outside and closed the window again, leaving the shutters ajar so I could keep an eye on the bag. The doctor’s son, who lived in the same building, spotted it and circled around it before deciding to open it up. Disgusted, he began to curse and swear, looking around for the malicious person who’d played this dirty trick on him. My heart pounded. Had anyone seen me open the window and throw out the bag?

I started to shiver with fear, terrified of a scandal. It was as if I was watching myself, calmly observing from a distance. It reminded me that I was married. My house was not this room – my home was where my husband and daughter, Ibrahim and Mother all lived, together with the rest of the extended family and all of the endless visitors. I raised my eyes to the ceiling and prayed to God to rescue me just this once. I promised that, whatever happened, I’d never set foot in this room again.

But as soon as the doctor’s son gave up on the mystery bag and went on his way, I found that I wasn’t putting on my shoes and going home. Instead, I looked around the room, imagining that it was an old-fashioned camel howdah like I’d seen in films: a tent that sat on top of a camel, concealing the women and protecting them from the raging sands. I remained there, waiting for Muhammad, as though I was too ill to move and awaited a doctor.

In a way, Muhammad did play the role of my doctor. He seemed to have antennae that allowed him to sense my most trivial thoughts, even before they were fully formed. Although he had little money, he would bring me luxurious food: things like pistachios, grilled chicken, or dried beef as tender as asparagus tips. I would hide his gifts under the bed at home and take them out only when the house was asleep. I’d share them with Maryam and we’d eat in the dark
before settling down again. Muhammad really does love me, I would tell myself. He’s spending all his money, depriving himself of these things so I can enjoy them. Then I chided myself for being so greedy and tried to appreciate my lover’s true generosity.

When Muhammad returned, I told him his room was like a camel howdah. The simile delighted him. He promised he’d teach me how to read and write as soon as possible. As we sat together, he read me a letter he’d received from his brother. The language, more formal, was so different. His brother used expressions and words like ‘damask rose’, ‘jasmine’, or ‘Syrian apples’. He ended with a blessing: ‘Peace be with you along with the chirping of sparrows, the roar of waves, the cooing of doves, the ripple of waters, the rustle of leaves, the waft of scent and the flash of brilliance.’

Before long, without a thought, I felt that I’d become a part of Muhammad’s circle of family and friends, whose letters he read to me so often. I loved the way they wrote to each other. As he read, I would think of my own family and shudder.

We went to see another film called
Dananir
, starring the famous singer Umm Kulthum as a Bedouin girl named Dananir. One day the vizier Jafar – who came from the Barmakid family, known for its generosity – heard her singing and offered to take her to his palace to school her in the art of singing. Dananir was thrilled by the offer, which would enable her to live in Baghdad. But the Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, heard about her lovely voice and asked Jafar for Dananir, so she could sing in his palace. Jafar turned down the Caliph’s request, because he had fallen in love with Dananir. The Caliph had Jafar killed, imagining that Dananir would then obey his wishes and sing for him, but she defied him and refused, even when he ordered her imprisonment.
But eventually he took pity on her and released her. Dananir, free to sing for her dead beloved, promised to remain true to him till death.

I was so moved by the love scenes between Dananir and Jafar that I began to despair. It was the fifth film I’d seen in which the consequence of true love was death. The family always opposed the union and someone would cruelly expose their love.

The next day I visited Muhammad. He took my hand and read out what he had written that night when he’d been unable to sleep:

Weep for the Barmakid family, massacred at the hands of Caliph Harun al-Rashid! Woe for Jafar and his catastrophic love for Dananir, that woman whose loyalty and devotion was like the purest water poured into the heart. She kept her pledge to her beloved Jafar, when he was alive and after he’d been murdered. That was true loyalty. Oh God, please let our union last in life and death.

Gazing into my eyes, he asked if I’d be as loyal as Dananir. I couldn’t think why he asked such a question when he was my whole life. But he was insistent: had I been unfaithful to my husband with anyone but him? The question shocked me. I laughed it off, but inside I was nervous. Did Muhammad know about the boy next door, who had first noticed me when I ran screaming from the house at the sight of my white wedding dress? From that moment he’d watched me intently, indicating that he wanted to meet, though I kept things to an exchange of glances, flirting with him on my own terms.

When I left the house the following day, heading for Muhammad’s room, crowds blocked the entrance to our alleyway and the street beyond, stemming from the front of
the Prime Minister’s home. Riyad al-Solh, who’d recently taken up residence, had caused much controversy. There had been demonstrations throughout Beirut, with several people killed or wounded. This violence followed the arrest, by the French mandate authorities, of the President of the Republic, Bishara al-Khoury, along with the Prime Minister and other ministers. It was the final stage of the struggle by the Lebanese national forces against the French before the country won total independence.

I had to push through in order to reach Muhammad’s door. When I didn’t find him at home, I was worried that he’d been put on duty with the rest of the Lebanese guards. But as I turned for home again, he appeared and signalled to me to follow him inside. Not even bothering to kiss me, he told me we were seeing history in the making – independence for Lebanon, an end to the French mandate and a provisional government at Bashamun!

I asked God to ensure the demonstrations continued, so I could use them as an excuse for being late home. But Muhammad told me I must leave immediately, because he wanted to check on relatives working as guards near the HQ of the British general.
¹⁸
He’d heard rumours of people being wounded and wanted to go to Burj Square to see what was happening. I begged him to take me with him, but he refused. At that moment, I decided that he didn’t love me the way I loved him. I was distraught. I even considered agreeing to meet the boy next door in revenge, but I didn’t have the heart for it.

18
General Spears, head of the mandate authority.

How I Came to Call My
Second Baby Hanan

I
T WASN’T THE
nausea that made me refuse to sleep with Muhammad again. It was my fear that the baby would look half like Muhammad and half like my husband.

I didn’t want to tell him I was pregnant. So I rejected being intimate with him – I kept saying I wasn’t feeling well, that there wasn’t enough time or that someone might hear us. Finally Muhammad lost patience and told me Ibn al-Mutazz would never have accepted my excuses. Nervously I asked who Ibn al-Mutazz was. A famous Arab poet, he replied, who wrote, ‘Enjoy your beloved every day, for you never know when distance will separate you.’

When he recited this line, I felt as though my hand was being amputated! How could he possibly imagine we’d ever be separated?

‘But you don’t belong to me,’ he said. ‘Now or ever. You’re a married woman.’

My heart collapsed. In my mind, I was on a ship taking me to a land called Muhammad, far away from fear and trouble, from Ibrahim and my husband. But now suddenly the ship had capsized and I was drowning.

Muhammad tried to comfort me.

Holding me tightly, he vowed, ‘Death before I’d ever abandon you.’

He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and read what he’d written on it:

I love the path you walk on and the bed you sleep in. I love the pillow, the sheets, the house, the roof and the walls. If only I could be an invisible breeze which entered your house through the window at dawn and played … I love the brilliant moon in the night sky because its light resembles you. I love the clear sky because it’s like your eyes.

He began to caress me again, but I shoved him away. He dashed to the table drawer and took out a revolver, pointing it first at my head, then at his own. Terrified, I forced a smile, trying to lighten the mood, and then I told him I was pregnant. Muhammad hurled the revolver on to the bed, put his head between his hands and began to cry – he actually burst into floods of tears. I picked up the heavy revolver, and walked out of his bedroom, along the corridor to the kitchen, as if to announce to the occupants of the entire house that I was a human being, not a genie or a sprite. There was no one indoors, but his elder brother – who had not acknowledged me until this moment – was in the garden. I handed him the revolver without a word. He took it, also without speaking, shaking his head. I went back inside and held Muhammad’s head against me as we both wept. I assumed we cried for the same reason: I was going to give birth to a baby that was half his, in my husband’s house.

But then he turned on me, shouting, ‘How on earth could you have let your husband have sex with you?’

I explained about the half-baby and the reason I’d slept with Abu-Hussein. He stared at me in disbelief, suddenly calm. He had been very careful, he said, so I wouldn’t get pregnant. And now I’d managed to betray him with my own husband. Realising my obvious confusion, and though I was already pregnant with my second daughter, my lover told me the facts of life.

*  *  *

When it came time for me to deliver the baby and the contractions grew really bad, Maryam took me to the hospital. It was the same obstetrician as before.

‘You know, I remember you from last time,’ he exclaimed. ‘I gave a lecture later in which I told the students how I’d delivered a baby to a fifteen-year-old girl.’

That doctor was extremely well known, one of the most famous in Lebanon. Muhammad told me he’d written books on childbirth and motherhood.

As the doctor held up my second daughter, he smiled and said, ‘Well, I’ve brought you a lovely girl. Your husband’s going to think you can only produce girls. Maybe now he’ll leave you alone! What are you going to call her?’

‘My husband’s away on the pilgrimage to Mecca,’ I replied. ‘He instructed me before he left that, if I gave birth to a boy, I was to call him Mustapha, or if to a girl, Zaynab. I love Sitt Zaynab, of course, but I don’t want my daughter to have a religious name. It’s enough that he made me call my first daughter Fatima. This new baby’s as lovely as the moon! I want to call her Zulfa.’

The doctor laughed, correcting my pronunciation. ‘It’s Zalfa, not Zulfa, which means a beautiful woman with a tiny nose! But listen, you should give her a name you can pronounce!’

The nurse brought me a bouquet of roses that had just been delivered, saying they were from a relative who came by every day to ask how I was. Clutching the bouquet to my breast, I closed my eyes. Until then, no one had brought me a single rose, and I realised I’d had no visitors apart from Maryam.

A couple of days after the birth, when I saw how kind the doctor was being, I asked if it would be possible for me to go to the cinema. I’d only be out a couple of hours to see the new film
Hanan
. When I went home, I told him, my family
would insist on the custom of not letting me leave my bed for forty days. Then I wouldn’t get to see the film.