The Parisian

by Isabella Hammad

  The train to Montpellier departed an hour later. Night settled on the countryside, which looked rather like Palestine: similar rugged hills, dry greenery. Midhat slept against the loud, vibrating glass, and in the groggy morning waded through another two chapters of The Three Musketeers as the hills drew a wavy horizon line, and raindrops snagged and shuddered down the panes. He fell asleep again after lunch, and when the announcer called, “Montpellier!” it was a quarter to five: he stood and followed the other passengers onto the platform, fatigued and in need of a wash.

  The fore of the Montpellier station resembled a temple. Midhat dragged his trunk between the columns and watched the figures and motorcars move over the quadrangle ahead. He had no idea what Docteur Molineu looked like. There had been no description in the letters from the university, and therefore every man walking nearby was a possibility. That thin person with long shirttails, was he looking at Midhat with interest? Or that elderly gentleman; with those spectacles he certainly looked like a scholar. At the moment when his true host would have turned towards him, however, each candidate continued walking. The man by the ticket booth was definitely staring, but rather too intently, and Midhat avoided his eye.

  The crowd before the station thinned, and a lamplighter carried his ladder between the standards. A flock of nurses crossed into the foyer of a building opposite and shook their umbrellas. The lit end of a cigarette flashed double in a puddle, vanished, and someone passed Midhat close on the right. He had a large blond moustache. He was too young to be the Docteur, surely—and as he drew nearer Midhat saw the man’s expression was not kindly, and that his eyes, encircled with blond lashes, were not on Midhat’s face but on his tarbush. The man’s own hat was lipped and shallow, and as he fixed Midhat he put a finger on its brim. Midhat recognised the French sign of respect, the gesture en route to the gesture of lifting the hat, which showed you weren’t hiding anything underneath. But he couldn’t help feeling that this blond man was pointing out the brimlessness of Midhat’s own hat. He frowned, and the man disappeared down a side street.

  “Monsieur Kamal?”

  At the end of the concourse, a young woman raised her hand. Beneath her cap, short curls of brown hair hugged her ears. A diagonal crease across her lap switched from side to side as she approached.

  He hesitated. “Bonjour. Je m’appelle Midhat Kamal.”

  The woman laughed, and wrinkles appeared beneath her eyes. “Et je m’appelle Jeannette Molineu.”

  Jeannette Molineu extended a pale hand with knuckly fingers. Midhat held them; they were rather cold. It was peculiar that the wife should come to collect him, but he thought of what Faruq had said about French women, and followed Jeannette to a green motorcar parked on the concourse.

  “I hope you weren’t waiting for long,” she said, opening the door and squeaking onto the backseat. “How was the journey?”

  “It was … for many days.”

  The chauffeur drove fast and the motor overwhelmed their voices. From the window, Midhat watched the city rise and fall and thin into alleyways, with shoals of umbrellas and overcoats swelling and contracting on the sidewalks. They turned down a narrow road on which the buildings were gridded with black balconies and roofed with terracotta. The car slowed.

  “This city,” said Midhat, “it is similar to Nablus. The two mountains, the stone buildings, the small streets. But it is bigger, and the stone is more yellow.”

  “Nablus is where you are from?”

  “Yes. And you were born here.”

  “No,” said Jeannette, in a low, smiling voice, “I grew up in Paris. My father and I moved here about four years ago, when he started working at the university. And I did my baccalauréat here.”

  “Your father is Docteur Molineu?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ah. And your husband?”

  “I’m not married. Pisson, will you take us through the centre? This is Rue de la Loge, the main commercial street. And at the end is Place de la Comédie. It’s small, Montpellier, you won’t take long to know it. It’s a little dark now to see, I’m afraid.”

  Midhat looked over at Jeannette Molineu’s face. Shadows falling between the streetlamps made her eyes appear black and large, blotting her pale skin and filling out her thin upper lip. The shadows rotated as they moved, and each time they entered the full glare of a lamp again the effect was reversed.

  The road was broader now and the roadside grassy. Pisson turned a corner and decelerated to an open pair of gates, then crunched into a driveway checkered by windowlight falling from a large house. A maid curtsied by the door as Jeannette escorted Midhat into the hall. Electric lamps were mounted on the wall between framed pictures, and a large mirror hung beside a staircase that curved up to the right. One open door revealed cream-coloured walls and the shining black hip of a piano; from another, a jowled man had emerged, with grey hair and a close-fitting suit.

  “Bienvenue, bienvenue, Monsieur Kamal. Frédéric Molineu. I am your host.”

  “Good evening, my name is Midhat Kamal. Enchanted to make your acquaintance.”

  “Come come, bonjour my dear, so—pleased, so—pleased.”

  Molineu shook Midhat’s hand vigorously, clasping a second hand on top of the first. Midhat tried to copy the motion but now his fingers had been released, and his host was spreading his arms out at the hall.

  “Please feel this is your home. We are honoured to have you as our guest and enthusiastic to show you how we live. Please, come have an aperitif.”

  The salon was blue, with quilted couches around a table crowned by a silver tray and four crystal glasses. Glass doors gave onto a terrace with an iron table and chairs, and a gloomy lawn.

  “I notice your hesitation.” Docteur Molineu snatched at the fabric on his knees as he sat. “This is not alcohol. This is called a cordial. Sans alcool totalement. S’il vous plaît, Monsieur, asseyez-vous.”

  Midhat took a seat on the couch and immediately felt exhausted.

  Jeannette said, “When is Marian arriving?”

  Now that father and daughter were beside each other, Midhat could see the likeness. There was a direct expression in the eyes. But where the Docteur’s jaw was substantial, Jeannette’s chin tapered, lightly cleft. She had removed her hat but her hair remained flat over the head, her curls released just at the ears. Her features were delicate and the tiny creases beneath her eyes only made her more beautiful. And she was slender, but there was a breadth to her shoulders—or perhaps it was the way she held them, slightly hunched. Midhat looked down, pressing his thumb into the stem of his cold glass.

  “Later, dear. Marian is my niece. She is getting married next week, so you will see a French wedding! Marriage ceremonies are the key, really, to a culture. You see a wedding, you understand the society. How was the journey?”

  “The journey was long. For that I am tired. This is extremely delicious.”

  “Your French is very good,” said Jeannette.

  “Thank you. I attended a French school in Constantinople.”

  “So, I’m interested in your first impressions,” said the Docteur. “Did Jeannette take you on a tour of the town?”

  “Papa, he’s tired. We drove a little through the centre.”

  “It is a beautiful city,” said Midhat.

  “Well. I hope you are comfortable here. Montpellier is not large, and I suspect you will prefer walking to the Faculty while the good weather lasts. But Pisson will help you in the first few days. On Monday je crois qu’il y a une affaire d’inscription, and then, you know, tout va de l’avant.”

  There were several words in this speech that Midhat did not understand. He nodded.

  “It’s a lovely building,” said Jeannette. “The Faculty. It used to be a monastery, you know.”

  “Ah, merci,” said Midhat to the maid as she presented the decanter. “Bikfi, sorry, that’s plenty. No, I did not know that.”

  Molineu leaned back, eyes to the ceiling. His face was lined and his hai
r was dappled with white, but his body looked limber. The waistband of his trousers was narrow, and the indent in the wide muscle of his thigh showed through the fabric. With his hands on his knees he sprang forwards again, and his heels clacked on the ground.

  “We are so enthusiastic about your coming. I’m afraid we are going to ask you all sorts of questions. Professionally, I am a social anthropologist. The lining of my heart is sewn with questions.”

  Midhat did not understand this last phrase. But Molineu had put the tips of his fingers on his chest, and the words “question” and “heart” prompted Midhat’s own heart to accelerate with the immediate fear that Molineu might be referring to medical practice.

  “I have much to learn,” he said. “I am very new.”

  “Absolutely, absolutely. There is always so much to learn. Of course we are not always so new.”

  “Do you live near Jerusalem?” said Jeannette.

  One of Midhat’s fantasies from the ship flared involuntarily in his mind, and he saw his invented Parisienne lost in Jerusalem’s old city. Heat rose to the back of his neck and he said, in as rapid French as he could muster:

  “We are north from Jerusalem. It will take five hours, six hours. It can be dangerous. You must travel through Ayn al-Haramiya, a passage between two mountains. After, perhaps, nine o’clock in the evening, there are thieves.”

  “Ayna—what is the name?” said Docteur Molineu.

  “Ayn al-Haramiya, ya‘ni, it means the place where the water comes. I don’t know the word.”

  “Sea?”

  “No, in the ground.”

  “River? Lake?”

  “No, in the ground, it comes from under—”

  “Well? Spring?”

  “Spring, spring. Ayn al-Haramiya means the Spring of the Thieves.”

  A bell rang, and a second later the maid Georgine entered the room.

  “Mademoiselle Marian et Monsieur Paul Richer.”

  “The very couple,” said Molineu. “Midhat, please meet my niece. This is Marian.”

  The young woman at the door wore a green dress and shiny green shoes. Behind her came a head of red curls, and Midhat instantly recognised the captain of the steamship, Gorin.

  “Bonsoir, Capitaine,” he said.

  Jeannette turned sharply, as the red-haired man replied: “Bonsoir.” He returned Midhat’s nod and reached out his hand: “My name is Paul Richer. With pleasure.”

  “Hello,” said Marian.

  “Marian is our young bride-to-be,” said Docteur Molineu.

  Midhat stared at the weathered face of the man he knew as Captain Gorin while everyone sat down. He felt feverish. The maid brought fresh glasses for the cordial, and the fatigue came in rushes; he batted it away by moving a leg, an arm, a foot, anything to keep him present, here on this couch, in this blue salon.

  “Dear Marian, I cannot believe it is so soon,” said Jeannette.

  “This is our young guest du Proche-Orient,” said the Docteur, “Monsieur Kamal, who has come to study medicine at the university. He has just arrived, in fact. We expect he is feeling a little désorienté at the moment.”

  “Papa.”

  “Vraiment!” said the man who was or was not Captain Gorin. “Where are you from?”

  “Nablus, a town north of Jerusalem, south of Damascus.”

  “Magnificent.”

  “He is going to be a doctor,” said Jeannette.

  Midhat twisted his torso. The position kept him more alert. It also allowed him to look again at the man’s face.

  And as he looked now, a conviction solidified that this was not, after all, Captain Gorin. Those ginger whiskers were not familiar, nor the sunburnt cheeks. This was a stranger, his name was Paul Richer, and given the smile on his lips he was clearly aware that Midhat was studying him. The realisation jarred as strongly as the instant of his first mistake, and Midhat was overcome by a sour-tasting unease.

  “Monsieur Midhat,” said Jeannette. “You must be very tired. Would you prefer to go to bed? Georgine, perhaps Monsieur Midhat would like to see where his bedroom is? He looks—he must be very tired from his journey.”

  And so, shortly before seven o’clock in the evening, on the twentieth of October 1914, Midhat Kamal was shown into a corner room in the upstairs of the Molineu house in Montpellier. The window showed the dim garden, a large tree at the far end. The walls of the room were striped yellow, and opposite the bed, beside the fireplace, a wooden chair faced a table with a vase of lilies dropping orange dust on its shiny veneer. His trunk stood upright beside an armoire. He untied his shoes and lay down.

  Flat on his back, he thought again of the stranger downstairs named Paul Richer, and tried to picture his captain. Red curls, grooves in his cheeks. The rest was harder to fill in. He felt the rocking motions of the sea, and the images of the day plotted themselves on the insides of his eyelids: the French coast that morning, emerging from the blue distance; the passengers abandoning breakfast to crowd at the windows; the port of Marseille, the bustle for gangplanks onto shore, the motorcars, the whistling; Jeannette stepping towards him with her hand out; the town from the car window, darkening; the cordial, the salon, the bedroom, the ceiling. He realised his eyes were closed, and opened them.

  The colours had gone. He was on his side, and the floor by the window was quilted with moonlight. In the dark the bedroom was large and soft. Sleep was half off and half on. He pulled himself up; a chill seared. Jacket off, braces down, unbutton the shirt. And then a whisper, a patter—nothing human, the sound of two objects shifting past each other. He stared at the door, and watched it puff open with an intruding breeze. The latch had not clicked shut.

  On his feet, he pulled the handle and the door turned silently on its hinge. There lay the upstairs hall. Grey and empty. No draught, although the air was a little cooler. The lip of the carpet that ran up the stairs lay supine at the top, slightly furled. Above it the banister turned, descending. And in the far corner at the other end of the gallery, where the gloom deepened, a lamp stood beside a closed door.

  He retreated. He pressed the door until he heard the latch, and slid under the cold sheets. His eyes shut on the dark ceiling and soon the bedclothes were as warm as his skin, and he could imagine he was back in Nablus. A memory rose up, of a time he had walked in his sleep, when he was fourteen or so. He had woken at the warble of the call to prayer to find himself in bed beside his grandmother, his Teta, with one of her arms around his waist. Confused, ashamed, he tried to pull himself upright, stuck a foot out onto the cold tile—until Teta stretched forward and touched his hair. You were talking, she said. Habibi don’t worry, habibi, go back to sleep.

  2

  In the twilight years of the Empire, keeping time had become a problem. The official year still began in March, when the tax farmers plagued the fellahin. But the Christians used the Gregorian calendar, led by January with the leap years and a few variations according to their liturgies; and while the Jews adjusted their terms to accommodate the cycles of the earth, the Muslims followed the lunar Hijri and gradually fell out of step with the seasons as they turned.

  While Midhat was a child everyone in Nablus, even the non-Muslims, followed the moon and, in spite of Sultan Abdülhamid’s new Frankish clock tower, kept religiously to Arab time. According to the Muslims, the Almighty had so designed the universe that every day as the sun disappeared the timepieces of humanity should be set to the twelfth hour, in obedience to the clock of the world. And so as darkness fell and the muezzins called for the maghrib prayer, wealthy Nabulsis all over town pulled watches from their pockets, extracted the crowns with their fingernails, and fiddled to make the hands clap on twelve, before, if so inclined, rushing off to the mosque.

  As a very young child Midhat would sleep beside his Teta, Um Taher, in the winter. When he was five they moved beyond the old city walls, from a house with a shared courtyard and rounded chambers to a modern building with private rooms and squared edges at the foot of Mount Ge
rizim. He watched the seasons from his new bedroom window with the snowy gussets of Jabal al-Sheikh on the horizon.

  The day Haj Taher, Midhat’s father, announced his second engagement, Teta declared she had seen the carriage on the mountain a month before. Teta’s prophecies protected no one, for she never knew what they meant at the time, and suffered only from the haunting of retrospect. Among other things, she had foreseen her own husband’s death.

  “I had a vision of a coffin on a blue carpet. I saw the corner of the wood on the blue carpet. I was at my mother’s house, and I saw it again when they brought the coffin from Jaffa and put it at my feet. My eye, this eye, looked quickly down and I saw the corner of the coffin and, underneath it, the carpet.”

  Haj Taher’s first marriage, to Midhat’s mother, was Teta’s doing. The girl came from a good Jenin family, and Taher had loved her.

  “Your mother had green eyes. Her face was almost flat under them, like this,” and she pressed her fingers over her cheeks, “wallah, like a little boy.”

  If she had prophesied this girl’s death by tuberculosis, Teta kept it to herself. Midhat was two years old. His father was in Egypt. The house was filled with women crying, and as they washed the body on the dining table the housekeeper brought semolina pastries out to the hall, which Midhat crumbled in his fists before licking the sweet grit off his palms. The moment his father appeared in the doorway Teta yowled and gripped the edge of the table as though she might fall over.

  Haj Taher did not stop long in Nablus. His clothing business in Cairo was growing fast and required more of his attention, and though he had hired extra staff for the shop on Muski Street and more young men to bring silks from the Golan, he never forgot his own father’s lesson about the importance in business of maintaining personal relations, and since “Al-Kamal” was entering the Cairene lexicon to signify clothing of particularly high quality, Haj Taher Kamal himself could not run the store as an absentee. Nor could he rely on anonymous couriers to collect the silks from the merchants. He must both appear regularly on the selling floor and travel north for the stock, using the new envoys only to keep pace with the turnover. This ceaseless engagement was exhausting but profitable: it ensured the loyalty of the consumers and the honesty of the traders. Besides, the journeys added variation to his life; he could visit Nablus on the way, stop in on his agent Hisham at the local store, spend an evening with his mother and young son, before returning to check the accounts on Muski. When he returned to Cairo after his wife’s funeral, he would have liked to set out on a trip again, but business had no time for grief. The holiday was approaching, sales had escalated, and he needed to stay in Cairo to supervise the shop.