Jerusalem Stands Alone

by Mahmoud Shukair

  We cross the Damascus Gate just as the king’s guards are about to close it. We continue walking in the night and turn down the road leading to al-Aqsa Mosque. Lanterns light the streets and storefronts where some merchants still sit. Rabab is utterly taken by the city that has yet to fall asleep.

  At Alqtanin Market, the entrance is wide and beautiful, with delicate carvings, arches, and colorful stones. We take a left and enter the roofed market. After travelling a short distance in the market, we take another left turn and reach Khan Tankaz. We see men and women from distant lands who have come to sleep in Khan Tankaz and find the man in charge to ask him for a room. He hands us a key, shows us to our room, and wishes us a good night’s rest.

  We stay awake until midnight, though we truly do have a good night’s rest. In the morning, we must walk seven hundred years to get back to our house outside the city wall.

  Bread

  HANAN INVITES HIM to her house to meet her mother. He eats the bread of the house, comfortably looking left and right, as if he were seated at the dinner table in his own home. Every now and then, a laugh slips from between his lips. His white teeth show.

  He has the laugh of an innocent child, he, who has traveled the long road away from innocence.

  His stomach feels heavy and that spoils his mood, so he stands up and prepares to leave so he can unburden himself of the weight in his stomach. He tries to let out a fake guileless laugh but fails for the first time, maybe because his behavior has exposed something unbearable in his character.

  Pain

  SHE WRITES A POEM about the city. She reads it for the sixth time and feels as if she is alive again, uniting the city’s pain with hers.

  She tears up the poem and rewrites it for the seventh time, because the city’s pain is much graver than her own, more massive than her senses can grasp.

  News Broadcast

  HIS EYES FOLLOW HER, in her light blue dress. She moves gracefully between the living room and kitchen, returning with cookies and tea and glasses to sit beside him on the sofa, and he feels at home.

  He asks her, “Why don’t we take a walk?”

  “In the state this city’s in?”

  “Yeah, in this state. If we stay trapped in this house, we’ll explode.”

  “I’m already trapped in this house. You get to go to the store every morning and spend your day there.”

  “Why don’t you visit me at the store, then? You can sit with me and watch my customers. You might have fun.”

  She smiles at him. “Ha. And the housework? Who’s going to take care of that?”

  She pours tea into the cups, content to have made her point, but he revisits the conversation.

  Interrupting him, she calls for Asmahan. Abd el-Rahman is out of the house and will not be home until a little after midnight. Asmahan comes out of her room and sits beside her mother and father. Each affectionately caresses her hair, and before they can say anything, the news comes on.

  A Desire

  SHE’S BEEN WAITING a long time and Ghazal still hasn’t proposed. She told him she was okay with his keeping his first wife, and he promised to marry her in the fall. (That was last summer.) She tells him she yearned for a child who will have his height and eyes. His ego inflates, sitting there, listening. She goes to the market one day and buys a maternity dress for women in late-term pregnancy, and when she returns home she wraps cloth around her belly as if motherhood has already called on her. She puts the dress on slowly so as not to disturb the baby forming in her belly. She stands in front of the mirror and becomes aroused, staring at her body.

  She rushes to the phone to call Ghazal and ask him to come over right away, but he doesn’t answer.

  Persistence

  IN HIS FREE TIME, Yoram reads everything to do with the history of the city. He is troubled by many things of the city’s past and wishes it could all simply be wiped away. Couldn’t the authors of history just obliviate the things that trouble him? Then the city could return to him, pure and fully worthy of his respect.

  Yoram is troubled by the city’s long history of wars and destruction. He’s bothered by the fact that it was destroyed and rebuilt seven times, and wonders, will the city be destroyed an eighth time? Impossible. Yoram stops reading to don the armor of a medieval knight from the Fatimid Caliphate. He mounts his horse hurriedly and ventures out into the city to protect it from further chaos and destruction.

  A Suspect

  ABD EL-RAHMAN is currently under arrest. They didn’t believe him when he said he’d retired from life and retreated from people. He was too quiet, suspiciously quiet, and they suspected he was hiding something. Fearing he might leave them, his secrets still his own, they arrested him. They didn’t want to regret letting him go free with his secrets.

  Under the cover of night, they raided the house and found him reading the Qur’an. They searched his home—separated his father, mother, and sister, placed them all in different corners of the house—and finally searched him separately. They went into Suzanne’s room and searched it, but found nothing suspicious in her bedroom, or in the kitchen, or in the bathroom, or in the attic over the bathroom.

  They handcuffed him and led him away to prison as his mother cried out after him to be safe. She will have to wait for visitation hours at the prison to see him.

  Asmahan

  ASMAHAN SHIVERS as she watches the soldiers ravage their house. Her father tries to calm her, pulling her to him by her waist. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Asmahan is afraid, not for herself but for Abd el-Rahman. She fears they’ll shoot him, and when she hears a gunshot she freezes, brings her hands up to her ears, and shrinks into a corner.

  Asmahan can’t control her fear as the soldiers move from one room to the next, carelessly throwing things around. Her mother tries to calm her, too, and tenderly squeezes her hands.

  But the girl can’t bear the scene playing out in front of her. Through the mist of her panic she doesn’t notice the yellow trickle making its way down her leg, running out into the middle of the room.

  The commander stands there for a moment, then he and his officers leave, taking Abd el-Rahman with them.

  A Dream

  THE PREVIOUS NIGHT, she dreamed that she saw Ghazal walking in the markets of the city with a crow on his head. She decides to look for him so he can explain this dream to her. Maybe she’ll find him roaming the markets.

  She puts on her best clothes and lets her hair fall over her chest, then sprays on her favorite perfume and, inhaling deeply, walks out of her house.

  Her perfume hangs in the air of every market of the city. She passes through the Bazaar Souk, Souk al-Dabbagha, the Spice Traders Market, Souk Khan el-Zeit, al-Wad Street, and Aqabat al-Saraya Street. In one of the markets, she hears a merchant from Ottoman times call out to her, inviting her to his store to browse through his collection of wool and fleeces, but she refuses because she doesn’t have time.

  She continues to search for him, to search far for him, on Avtimos Boulevard, in the Christian Quarter, in the Alloun Market, and at the Jaffa Gate. But she can’t find him in the bustling city. The crow on his head continues to trouble her.

  She keeps searching for him, searching far for him, but she can’t find him.

  She returns home sad. Three men harassed her as she looked for him.

  A Hug

  SHE SITS BESIDE ME and says, “I am not the same Rabab you’ve written your story about.”

  “And what makes you think that?”

  “Because we didn’t know each other when you wrote it.”

  I pull her to my chest and say, “Well, let’s start a blank page, then.” With emotion, I add, “Even if it were you who wore the jilbāb and went to the distant woods, I don’t care about any of that now.”

  She relaxes into my embrace, and my body relaxes with and into hers.

  Now, this doesn’t mean I won’t bring up the jilbāb incident again. Because I will, and it will lead to a fight which will be fol
lowed by a compromise made to render our lives tolerable again.

  Separation

  SUZANNE LEAVES JERUSALEM one morning. Her attempts to remain in the city finally proved unsuccessful. A young Israeli employee at one of the agencies told her that she should leave the city right away.

  She carries her luggage and some mementos from the city and returns to Marseille. She sleeps at night now and dreams that she’s walking through the same markets she still loves. She wakes up every morning and calls her friends to tell them of her new dream about the city that stands forever alone. She does so often, because it’s the only thing that can render the bitterness of separation somewhat tolerable.

  The Butchers’ Market

  SHE WALKS through the Butchers’ Market one afternoon. Blood covers the market floors and the stench is intolerable.

  He’s surprised to see her standing by the market’s gate. He thinks she’s her doppelgänger, who shows up sometimes for really no reason at all. (His wife has never come to this market before.)

  Suddenly he remembers he suggested that she visit him and welcomes her, “Come in! Hello!” He takes hold of her hand and leads her inside. Awkwardly he offers her a chair. She sits down and watches him sell fish to his customers. She feels comfortable.

  He only has time to speak to her again twenty minutes later. He apologizes, and she accepts his apology.

  A Sofa

  I ARRIVE HOME with a mover who hauls on his back a couch I’ve recently bought from an antique furniture store. I know she won’t like the couch and how much room it will take up in the house, so I tell the mover, “Go first and deliver this to the lady of the house. I’ll follow you in later.”

  I hide in the garden until Rabab has absorbed most of the shock, then I go inside with my hands held up high in surrender.

  “Where are you going to put this disaster?”

  “I thought we could put it by our bed. We could sit on it together and I could listen to you read me poetry.”

  I push the couch closer to the bed and sit on it like a sultan. I tell her to come closer, reminding her that there’s enough room on the couch for her to sit beside me. But she refuses to sit down and stays mad at me.

  I remember an anecdote of Nasreddin Hodja and say, “So, they say that one time Hodja bought a big bag of flour and, when he loaded it on the mover’s back, the mover ran away with it. Days later, when Hodja ran into the mover, Hodja quickly ducked away from him. When asked why he hid from the mover, Hodja said, ‘I’m worried he might ask me for his moving fee.’”

  She laughs and says, “I wish the mover you hired had run away with this couch. I’d rather he do that than have to see it swallow up the entire space.”

  That night as she reads her poem, she lounges on the couch and tells me that I’m right to buy antiques (some of them, at least).

  Swallowing Up the Place

  I ASK HER IN BED, “Earlier, did you say that the couch swallowed up the place?”

  “I did.”

  I can tell she doesn’t want to talk for some reason.

  Half an hour later, she goes back to being chatty. “If it was only the couch we had to worry about swallowing up the house, then it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  “I know what you mean. They’re swallowing up the whole city.” She doesn’t add anything else.

  Again silent, I’m happy to lie there, caressing her hair spread out on the pillow.

  She’s happy with what she said, and darkness soon takes over.

  Tourism

  YORAM AGAIN READS from an old document, this one dating back to the late nineteenth century:

  The large number of pilgrims flooding into the city has led to the opening of new hotels, built to absorb this massive influx of visitors to Jerusalem. Some of these hotels are the private Locanda of Nathaniel, son of mister Thomas Mrad, the Protestant clock smith, located by the Jaffa Gate; the public Locanda Dance Hall, near the Roman monastery; and the private Locanda Vile, which, like the Locanda of Nathaniel, is also located by the Jaffa Gate.

  . . .

  The pilgrims come to Jerusalem before the Easter holiday to take part in the celebrations and rituals held in the city. They visit the holy grave in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of Zion, the Cathedral of Saint James, and the Mount of Olives. They also visit the neighboring towns of Jerusalem, including Ein Karem—the home of John the Baptist, and Nazareth—the birthplace of the Holy Virgin Mary, and the Church of the Nativity, and they celebrate Holy Saturday and make a pilgrimage up the Via Dolorosa.

  Yoram rubs his eyebrows, once more experiencing the tangible burden of responsibility to protect the tourists. He feels confident that he will not let down the city which placed its trust in him and chose him to be the leader of the Jerusalem police force. He looks at himself in the mirror, inspecting his uniform as always, and marches out. He loudly orders several police officers to accompany him on a tour to inspect the three Locandas—Nathaniel, Dance Hall, and Vile—and to check on the safety of the foreign pilgrims. He wants to make a good impression on the tourists so that they have something to take back home with them of Israel and of Yoram.

  The Prince of Peace

  WALKING THROUGH THE CITY MARKETS with Rabab, I observe him taking his usual evening stroll with all his followers. The sky is clear and the stars flash like sequins on a woman’s dress.

  The king pays no attention to the women dispersed through the markets. I ask Rabab if she knows him and she responds that she doesn’t, so I tell her, “This is Melchizedek, the Prince of Peace.”

  He strolls about the city, looking completely unconcerned. Rabab asks, “What age are we in now?”

  “The age of the Jebusites. We’re five thousand years away from your mother and father and sister Asmahan.”

  Rabab clings to my arm so as not to be carried away by the crashing tides of time. I tell her not to be afraid.

  The peaceful prince walks into a bar at the end of the market and guzzles down a glass of wine as he fantasizes about the city of Jerusalem, which he so adores. Rabab and I watch him unnoticed, then walk back to our house, tired from our long walk.

  A Morning Tour

  SHE WAKES UP and gets out of bed, washes, and drinks her morning coffee. Then she dresses and leaves her house. (Ghazal has become a distant memory.) She moves humbly through the markets, as if she were going to or coming from a mosque or a church. She reverently touches the walls of the house, slowly inhales the smell of the stone, and carefully listens to the conversations coming from the balconies, conversations she believes only she can hear and understand.

  She looks up at the welcoming windows, thrown open to the city wind, and feels herself once again sharing in the city’s freshness and joy of life.

  She looks at the people in the bars and by the open windows of their houses, and in the squares and on the stairs and there in the cafés and restaurants and here in the alleyways and there on the balconies.

  In time, heavy with emotion, she returns home. In her personal studio, she pours out the things she’s seen and a busy city forms on the blank canvas, weighed down with sorrow and loss.

  The Description of the City

  AT NIGHT, as I read the history of the city, I impulsively include Rabab in my reading. She’s been standing by the window for a long time. I ask, “Do you feel like listening to what Nasir Khusraw said ten centuries ago about the city?”

  “Read what he said. I can hear you from where I’m standing.”

  “I only enjoy reading with you when you’re next to me.”

  So she nestles in close to me, and I read to her. “Jerusalem is a city set on a hill, and there is no water therein, except what falls as rain. The surrounding villages have springs of fresh water, but the Holy City has no such springs. The city is enclosed by strong walls of mortared stone, and with iron gates. Around the city there are no trees, for it is all built on a rock. Jerusalem is a very great city, the Holy City, and, at the time of my visit, there were in it t
wenty thousand men. It has high, well-built, and clean bazaars. All the streets are paved with slabs of stone, and wheresoever there was a hill or a ledge, the men of the city have cut it down and made it level, so that as soon as rain falls the whole place is washed clean. In the Holy City, there are numerous craftsmen, and each craft has a separate bazaar.”

  I look at her eyes to see if I should keep reading. She jumps up like a cat and takes off her nightgown, heading to the bathroom as she says, “I’m going to wash myself as this city washes itself in the rain.”

  I keep reading as I listen to the running water, like a river in flood, an uproar made song.

  Those Days

  SHE’S AT THE MOSQUE. She went to join a group of women and beg for forgiveness from God. At sixteen years old she loved a boy two years her senior. He reached for her breasts the moment they were alone in the storage room. She tried to push him away from her with shaking hands, strung with emotion, but she wasn’t successful.

  Her husband divorced her after their wedding night, and a loving father saved her from an otherwise surely harsh future. The neighborhood men told her he was scum. She lived at her father’s house for three years before an even-tempered man came along who dabbled in many professions until he settled on being a fishmonger. He was ten years her senior, and he married her after his young wife died of a terminal illness.