The Inheritance

by Sahar Khalifeh

  “No, I’m not dreaming,” I would tell her.

  “No Zayna, it’s nothing but a dream,” she would repeat.

  A dream? A dream? What about the little girl and all the anthems, the songs, the laughter, the pleasure, the food and drink, the mezza and the araq?

  “It’s only a dream, Zayna, nothing but a dream,” she would say, then return to bed.

  I was probably depressed. When she grew weary of my condition she consulted a psychologist who immediately identified it as a case of homesickness, nothing more. She shook her head approvingly, and added, “Of course, it’s normal, a young mother of a young child.”

  She took me to see my child. He smiled, but when I approached to touch him, he withdrew his head and cried, fearful.

  “Do you feel better?” she asked.

  “I feel nothing at all,” I said.

  My grandmother was surprised but said nothing. On the way back to the apartment she tried to explain that it wasn’t normal to be indifferent and that a mother is expected to feel something. She went on lecturing me until she was tired of the whole issue. While she was talking I wondered whether human beings are expected to feel or not to feel, and whether that child felt something or felt nothing. If a child can feel, what does he feel—is it boredom? Love? Fear? Is he homesick? Does he recognize his mother on his own or is he taught to recognize her? Does he know that I don’t feel?

  To be fair to her, I must say that my grandmother was patient with me. She invited my mother to visit us from Los Angeles. I was getting ready to meet her in the hall when she came up to me from behind. She laughed and cried and said, to justify herself, “I was young.”

  She wiped her tears and continued, “I couldn’t handle him, I couldn’t put up with their traditions, their food, their drinks, and their skin color! They were strangers and their habits were strange to me. I couldn’t bear it.”

  I didn’t open my mouth and kept looking in the mirror.

  She pleaded with me, “Don’t blame me!”

  “Why should I blame you?” I said.

  She asked, “Do you love me?”

  “I don’t hate you,” I replied.

  “What about love?”

  “Yes, what about love?”

  “You don’t love me then?”

  She felt stupid and I was extremely bored. She went on talking, crying, and sobbing. I was about to lose my temper, and I finally shouted, “Lady, please tell me, how can I love you when I don’t know you?”

  She replied, reproachfully, “But you love him?”

  I didn’t utter a word.

  “Though he tried to kill you!”

  I didn’t defend him or myself.

  “He tried to kill you!” she repeated.

  I didn’t look at her and kept looking in the mirror. Finally, I told her, “Lady, I don’t blame him, I don’t blame you, I don’t blame anyone. I only wonder.”

  She whispered in amazement, “She only wonders, she wonders!”

  When she reached her car, she waved and I waved back. I watched her until she disappeared from my view.

  My academic life was barren, tasteless, and emotionless. My mother died and I inherited her property. I had two apartments—one in Washington, one in San Diego. I acquired two cars, attended yacht and swimming pool parties, and diplomatic receptions. I was a member of three different health clubs. I did aerobics and enjoyed Jacuzzi baths, massages, and saunas. And yet, despite this life of luxury, I felt deprived. Aware of my feelings, my grandmother would ask me, “What are you missing? Aren’t you successful?”

  Yes, I had succeeded, I had, and what a success! I had received an award for the best research at the university, I had become chair of the anthropology department, but I wondered what next? I was in my thirties then. In ten years I would be in my forties, then fifties, then sixties, I would retire, then die. What happens after death and even before death? What would be left for me to do in my sixties? How would I be? Would I be a carbon copy of my grandmother? Make jam and bake cookies, join a charitable organization and go to church every Sunday? No, I never had gone to church and I wouldn’t begin now. I was neither Christian nor Muslim. Concerned, my grandmother repeated constantly, “You need an ideology, you need faith.”

  What faith, I wondered? When I was young and I still had the strength to debate and ask questions, I couldn’t bear the idea of celestial justice. I was firmly convinced that what happened to me was no more than clear proof of the absence of justice. Even if justice existed it was not necessarily celestial. Because of this I never entered a church in my life except to attend a wedding or a funeral. I would cry at the sound of church chanting, but I would rush to wipe the tears away. I didn’t want anyone to see my tears, and I never cried in public. This was the secret of my success—I was strong, and I neither cried nor broke down.

  As time passed, the gap between my past and my present grew narrower. I was extremely homesick, and frankly, longed for my past. Fulfilling myself through research was only a substitute. As for my true feelings, what had broken inside me was an old wound that no longer bled. It was the deep dirge that reminded me constantly of the past and the wailing of the soul. The only solution was to admit that I wouldn’t settle down and find peace until I returned to my past, to what was lost.

  I returned to New York for the first time since I ran away, to our grocery in Brooklyn. Everything was different, everything had changed, and our store was no longer a grocery, but a huge white building that looked like a palace. It had a high fence, large, bushy trees, and a dark Arab concierge. He asked me what I wanted. I said I was looking for my father whose grocery had been in the spot where the palace now stood.

  “When was this?” he asked, a look of surprise in his eyes. He said he had lived in Brooklyn for many years and he knew many grocery owners, but he had never heard of Hajj Muhammad. He suggested that I go to his father and ask him because he was an old man and might remember.

  I walked in the back street trying to recall signs and events. This is where I had lived and where I’d been fashioned. I saw the riverbank and the intersection, the west side and its trees across the river and the courtyard where young black boys played their music. An old man dozed on a chair, wrapped in his coat. Everything was as I remembered it in the neighborhood, except for my father, the store, the line of shops, and the neighbors. I reached the house described by the young man and knocked at the door. A woman who reminded me of one of my father’s wives opened the door. She said in a friendly voice, “Yes, madam. Abu Faleh is there, sitting near the window.”

  She smiled and pointed to the window, causing her gold bracelets to clank.

  He was sitting on a rocking chair facing the western window, a crocheted blanket covering his legs and a cotton Arab skullcap on his head. Behind him, the skyscrapers looked like a line of piled matchboxes and Legos. The contrast between the background and the man was striking. Here was an old man with ancient features sitting against a background of modern buildings and columns.

  The woman whispered, “The whole day he goes in and out of sleep. He is old and forgets people but remembers things centuries old. He remembers the fig tree, the village jar-shaped oven, Hajj Muhammad, and the mayor, but he doesn’t remember me. What would you like to drink, coffee or lemonade? For God’s sake, don’t say no, what’s happening, have we become Americans? Believe me, even if we stay in America hundreds of years we won’t be like them. You said your father used to live here? This happened long ago, before I married this old man, so wait until he wakes up, and perhaps he will tell you. He might remember and then again he might not. You have to be patient. What shall I give you, a lemonade or a Pepsi?”

  I sat on the sofa, in the corner, under the traditional photo of the head of the household, Abu Faleh. He was in his youth then, wearing a waistcoat and a tarbush, the traditional Turkish headgear. Squeezed under his photo, near the edge, there was a torn picture of a number of young men with hats and mustaches. In the dark corner where I s
at was a table with an embroidered cover, plastic flowers, and pictures of numerous grandchildren. There was a picture of a bride, a photo of a college graduate, and one showing a young man flanked by an old man and an old woman. Standing in this order were two young boys, a young girl, and then a young boy, a 1920s Buick with a man wearing white shoes and a tarbush, standing in front of it, one foot on the ground and the other on the running board. A prayer rug hung on the opposite wall. It looked like a painting, showing the Dome of the Rock and some Qur’anic verses.

  Abu Faleh woke up, drank some lemonade, yawned, and paid no attention whatsoever to me. The woman nudged his back and said, “Hey, Abu Faleh! This woman has come all the way from Washington to see you. Talk to her. Did you know someone who had a grocery in our street, near the bakery?”

  He mumbled, surprised, “Which bakery?”

  She winked at me and whispered, “God protect you, it’s no use.”

  She nudged his back again, saying, “Do you remember Hajj, or don’t you? He might be in the photo with you all, here. Look at it, dear, you might find him.”

  I took the photo and examined it. He could have been this or that one, but he was neither this nor that one. They all looked like my father, but none was my father.

  The woman said, “Your Arabic is so-so; is your mother Arab or foreign?”

  My voice broke as I explained, “She died a long time ago, I can’t remember. When I was a kid, I could speak it well. My father used to tell us stories, all kinds of stories. Sometimes he would talk about Jerusalem and sometimes about another city, I can’t remember what it was called. I truly don’t know, it was either al-Ram or al-Tireh, and possibly Abu Dees. I really don’t recall. It was a different name every time, then Jerusalem, always Jerusalem, the tannery, Bab al-Khalil, and Musrareh.”

  The man mumbled, sighed and said, “Oh, the old country! My heart yearns for those days!”

  The woman stared at me, as if to encourage me, and said, “Talk some more, let him hear you.”

  I searched my memory for a souvenir, a story or a picture and found nothing but a hazy vision of a photo hanging in the living room and others hanging here and there in my memory, photos of places, the courtyard of the Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock. I saw stone tiles, silver columns, sweet basil, and refreshing ablution water as cold as melting snow pouring through the tap on hot days. I saw my father moving in circles, carrying his usual basket and bound Qur’ans decorated with mother of pearl. I saw copper kohl containers shaped like peacocks and their dipping sticks shaped like wings. There was amber, mother of pearl, carnelian rosaries, and caravans carved in olive wood, as well.

  The man mumbled again, repeating, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Oh the old country! My heart yearns for those days.”

  His wife said, playfully, “Hey Abu Faleh, would you like to go back to the old country to bless our pilgrimage, receive benedictions, and discover who we are after a long absence?”

  He mumbled, surprised, “What is left for us to find? Our children have grown up in a foreign country and have left us alone in this house, with no one except the Everlasting.”

  “God is with us,” the woman replied, getting emotional. She regained her composure, and said enthusiastically, to spur him on, “Come on Abu Faleh, you ought to thank God. We did our duty and a little more. Your children are successful and you and I wish for nothing more than good health.”

  He turned to me and said, “The most important thing is health, my daughter. In this country we are worth nothing without health.”

  He rocked his chair, his eyes wandered and he smiled slowly, saying, “In the old country, whenever a horse fell ill we used to stay with it, we did the same for a donkey. We would talk to it, sing for it, as if it were a family member or a neighbor. Here, however, there is no family and no neighbor. Each one minds his own business. You said that your father lived here? What was he doing? What was his name, his surname, and from which region was he?”

  I searched my memory once more for the name of the city but I couldn’t find it. It was mixed up with many other names I had heard from the beginning of time. My father, on the other hand, was present—his shadow was here, his sadness and that look!

  “He lived in Brooklyn,” I said, “and our house was located where the palace now stands. My father and his neighbors used to talk about America and the Americans and said that the old country was much better.”

  He rocked his chair and moved his head approvingly, “Of course better!”

  “Do you remember, Abu Faleh?” I asked.

  “Who can forget?”

  “And my father, don’t you remember him?” I asked.

  “Which one of them?”

  “He had opened a shop here,” I explained.

  “We all did.”

  “He used to live here,” I added.

  “We all did.”

  “It was where the palace is now and where your son Faleh works.”

  Feeling sorry for me his wife interrupted, saying, “Come on, Abu Faleh, the lady has come all the way from Washington!”

  “Even if she had come from Mexico, I don’t know,” he said, looked far away, then turned to us and said, “If she knew his name, it might be possible.”

  “His name was Hajj.”

  “Who was not a Hajj?”

  “His name was Muhammad.”

  “There were at least fifty Muhammads,” he explained.

  “He had a grocery.”

  “Thousands had groceries,” he added.

  I got so close to him that my head reached his knees, and my voice quavered, “Is it possible, Abu Faleh, that you don’t know?”

  He stared at me from behind his thick glasses, his eyes looking like two small fish lost in two glass containers. Squinting his eyes and pondering he said, “Do you want me to know?”

  “You must know?”

  He stared deeply and an expression of sudden understanding appeared in his eyes. He laughed maliciously and said, “There was a man who had a daughter who made a mistake and then ran away. From that day on he disappeared leaving no trace.”

  I felt as if a shower of cold water were pouring over my head, but I persisted, “Well, and then?”

  “Some say he went to the old country, others say he went to Canada, and some say he lost his mind and died.”

  “How can I find out?”

  “Only God knows.”

  “But how can I know, Abu Faleh?”

  He turned toward the window and resumed rocking his chair, lost in the world of his silence, while I repeated my question to him, “But how can I know, Abu Faleh?”

  The only thing I heard was the squeaking of the wood and the rocking chair. I gathered myself and stood up. I looked at him for the last time hoping for some indication or sign. All I saw was a debilitated old man, looking across a window, with buildings stretching all the way to the horizon, a dark, limitless sky, and the street below rumbling with cars. I had reached the door when he called me. I stopped and turned, my heart pounding. I listened with apprehension, “Tell me my daughter, truly, in God’s name, aren’t you Zaynab?”

  I looked at him, and he stared at me, and the two fish moved at the bottom of the bowl. I felt cold seeping into my bones and I left, oblivious to everything around me.

  I went back to the spot where our house used to be and where the palace now stood. I looked for Abu Faleh’s son, the palace concierge, but the gate was closed. I sat on the bench waiting for him. I looked beyond the bridge and beyond the sea at the port. This is where my family had arrived in boats that had carried thousands, spewing them forth without mercy. This is where they had stepped down, and if they went back they would have returned from here. Where was my father, then? Had he immigrated again? If I were to see him I would ask about his life and his health. If I only knew where and how he was living now. If I only knew how life had treated him, whether it had helped him retain his memory or whether the hand of time had changed his appearance, like the palace and the gar
age that were built on the land where our house and my father’s shop had stood.

  I heard Faleh inquiring, “You’re back?”

  I summoned my courage and told him that I had lost the beginning of the thread, I had lost my family and my father. I didn’t know where they were or what I could do now.

  Part Two

  This Inheritance

  I received a letter from my uncle saying what amounted to, “Come quickly before the thread breaks and you lose your claim to the inheritance.” I lost no time thinking things over, but decided without hesitation. I felt at that moment as if I were standing before a window whose curtains were hiding the symbols of the country I had long dreamed of seeing. There was the affection of the family I had lost in my childhood and the warmth of my connection to the roots for which I had long searched in vain. So I gathered my things and left. I took an indefinite leave from work, explaining to my dean that I would not return to Washington until I had found my family and reconnected the severed stem to its roots.

  I took the first plane to Ludd’s (Ben Gurion) airport in Israel and from there I went to the city of Natanya. I crossed the Green Line in an Israeli taxi that took me to the outskirts of Wadi al-Rihan. The taxi driver left me at the entrance of the town, refusing categorically to get close to the crowded streets of the city. So I carried my suitcase down a narrow, deserted asphalt street filled with potholes, curves, and weeds. When I reached the first populated street, the windows opened and shut quickly; faces hid behind curtains but followed my every move. I was puzzled by the silence and the deserted streets. There were no cars, no children, and no pedestrians. Everything was still. The dogs in front of the houses did not bark and the cats walked slowly and lazily under the shining sun. The smell of garbage and manure combined strangely with the scent of eucalyptus trees, filling me with sadness, oppression, and a captivating nostalgia. Images of the past and childhood memories from Brooklyn began to surface, events that had taken place and others that I had imagined and believed to be real. My eyes wandered in all directions in the street that was jammed with buildings lined up without harmony. I was searching in vain for the charm of this country I had long dreamed of seeing, but I found only emptiness, silence, and clutter. The stillness was unexpectedly broken by the squeaking of a worn wooden door that opened without warning. The faces of mischievous children peered behind it, disheveled and curious. They stared at me in silence, daring, and cold. When I reached the end of the street a young girl shouted sharply, “Shalom, woman,” and the other children echoed her, “Shalom, shalom.”