The Inheritance

by Sahar Khalifeh

  He began to rebel against his life, his children, and his wealth. If he were told, “The price of land had gone up,” he would reply, resentfully, “What do I care whether it goes up or down?”

  If he were told that the dollar has gone down, he would reply, “Tomorrow it will go up.”

  If he were told that the price of gas has increased, he would respond peevishly, “Why should I rejoice? What is there in fife to make me happy?” He would then take watermelon seeds out of his pocket and split them between his teeth, spitting the skin and yawning.

  When Nahleh responded to his advances and asked for butter, he regained his energy and his will to five. Romance began in the Mercedes, on the trips to Nablus and al-Tur Mountain. He started thinking seriously about a different venue for their encounters, one that would be in agreement with the sunna, God’s law.

  Nahleh and Mazen were late, and my uncle was worried. He called Ramallah, then Nablus and Jenin, looking for them. He wondered where his children were at this time and in those days; he pondered about this life and time, when no one cared for a father, a brother, or a family, with people doing whatever they liked.

  My uncle’s wife winked at me and whispered in my ear, “Nahleh is certainly with the realtor.”

  I didn’t react and went on watching the television news describe the latest guerrilla operation and the movement of the ambulances carrying the wounded to Hadassa hospital. The soldiers were leading disfigured Arab workers to buses that looked like cages used to transport animals to the slaughterhouse or the zoo with bars and barbed wires on the windows.

  My uncle’s wife whispered again in my ear, “Mazen is certainly with Violet.”

  I didn’t react but my uncle heard Mazen’s name and said, angrily, “If Mazen were here he would have looked for his sister!”

  I said, trying to calm him down, “Maybe Nahleh is with her brother in the Makhfiyeh.”

  Embarrassed, my uncle replied, “Maybe, maybe! If there were only a telephone at the Makhfiyeh!”

  Then he muttered, angrily, in frustration, “I would like to know where Mazen is!”

  My uncle got up and went to perform his ablutions, before reading the Qur’an and going to bed. I sneaked out from the kitchen door and went looking for Mazen at Violet’s house. She didn’t live very far—her house was in the same street, near the realtor’s house. The backyards of the two houses were contiguous, separated only by a chain link fence and cypress tree. Suddenly, I heard a car engine in the distance and decided to hide behind the cypress trees. The car stopped a few meters away from the realtor’s gate and two young men got out. I couldn’t see their features in the darkness, but I heard one ask the other, “Are you going to say hello to your mother?”

  I realized then that they were the realtor’s children, and I understood that one of them was wanted by the Israelis. He hadn’t seen his mother and sisters in many weeks. The wanted brother said, “I warned him but your father is as stubborn as this wall.”

  The other one replied, “You have guns.”

  The wanted brother hastened to reply, “Who said that my weapon is for such matters?”

  Both stopped talking and a heavy silence fell on the place, all I was able to hear was their heavy breathing caused by the heated argument. I had the impression that they were continuing a conversation they had started long before they had arrived here. One of them said, impatiently, “Let’s not quarrel again. Let’s sit under the trellis until he shows his face.”

  They opened the small gate, entered through the garden, and disappeared between the trees. All I could hear after that was my heartbeat and my rapid breathing. I hurried to Violet’s house looking for Mazen to tell him what was happening. He was the only one who had the means and the ability to intervene with the brothers and put an end to a deteriorating situation, to prevent a crime or a scandal.

  When I entered the house, however, Mazen was in a setting quite different from the one I had expected. He was sitting on a sofa at the entrance of the house, surrounded by mezze dishes, vodka, and araq glasses. A man I had seen at Violet’s birthday party was sitting with him. Violet didn’t look cheerful and seemed rather shaken up. Mazen, on the other hand, appeared in high spirits and quite relaxed. In other words, he felt like a sultan. I sat on the edge of my seat, thanked Violet and her mother for the warm welcome they gave me, and tried in vain to point out to Mazen the importance of the matter that brought me to Violet’s house. Violet’s mother served appetizers and jabbered meaninglessly, while the man with gray hair and inquisitive eyes, made smug comments to the two women and me.

  Violet was holding a remote control pointed toward a new electronic set that I hadn’t seen before She was willingly repeating parts of songs that Mazen requested with authority. It was clear that Mazen and Violet were in some way at odds or having a lover’s quarrel, while the mother and the man were acting normally, neither interfering nor commenting nor smiling at anything they heard. Violet sighed every now and then, showing signs of impatience. She made comments that would have seemed casual and innocent to the inexperienced observer, but they were filled with riddles, double meanings, and the anguish of a heavy heart.

  As he watched me with eyes shining from the effect of alcohol, Mazen said, “Look Umm Grace, see how beautiful my cousin is!”

  Umm Grace laughed and said, affectionately, “God’s blessings be upon her, she is very beautiful. I loved her the moment I saw her. She is pretty, thoughtful, and not at all pretentious. May God protect her from the evil eye.”

  Mazen wondered, “Why would she be pretentious?”

  Umm Grace answered, affectionately, “Because anybody like her, with all she owns, Ma shallah, what God gave her, she is still humble.”

  Mazen laughed, then said, his jaws weak and his speech slurred, “What does she own, let’s see?”

  Umm Grace replied, looking at me and said smilingly, “She is beautiful and sweet, and she has common sense. She always speaks Arabic and isn’t pretentious.”

  Mazen said laughingly, “Her Arabic accent is cute.”

  The gray-haired man said, smacking his lips, “It is very cute, nothing is cuter than that.”

  Mazen approved enthusiastically.

  Violet looked away, upset with Mazen. She replayed the song she was listening to until she reached a specific part where the singer Najat says: “I implore you to leave, my love for the sake of our love.”

  Sure of his power over Violet, Mazen asked her to play al-Atlal. He then raised his voice joining the singer as she was saying, “Has love seen drunks like us?”

  Violet looked at him sideways and whispered, “I want you to leave.”

  I understood from the covert struggle unfolding before my eyes that Violet, despite her known attachment to Mazen, wanted for some unknown reason to get rid of him and his love. I understood that Mazen, despite his Don juan attitude, his moodiness, and his feelings of loss, wanted to keep Violet. It wasn’t so much out of love or appreciation for her, but because she filled a void in his life and provided him with an environment he wouldn’t be able to find in this semi-rural and conservative town. He had found it difficult to come to such a place after Beirut’s open and pompous society. Violet offered him the best possibility here, in view of her somewhat higher social class, her education in a nuns’ school in Bethlehem, and her training sessions in Beirut, Tel Aviv, and Cyprus. She knew how to talk, dress, and display Western manners. She was familiar with men’s tricks, the relation between the sexes and the anxieties of love. As my uncle’s wife and Nahleh explained, she also knew how to turn a man’s head and reduce him to a toy in her hands Mazen didn’t seem to be a toy, however, but a sensible man who imposed himself and knew how to melt her heart with his games and his seductive black eyes.

  He repeated while raising his glass before me and looking furtively at Violet, “You are so beautiful, cousin.”

  The graying man who made annoying comments said, “Thank you for saying that, I’ve never seen a more b
eautiful person.”

  Then he turned to me declaring, “Mazen is a very lucky man!”

  I looked at him and understood the meaning of his words. He implied that Mazen’s youth, games, and black eyes, his stories about the revolution, his body, his limp, and his sweetness had won me over. Not satisfied with Violet’s love and companionship, he had turned to his beautiful, adorable, rich, and humble cousin!

  The graying man turned to Umm Grace, and said, “Ya Umm Grace, isn’t he a lucky man?”

  Umm Grace moved her eyes between me and Violet, comparing the two of us for the first time. She said absentmindedly, ‘Yes, he’s lucky.”

  Mother and daughter exchanged a look that filled me with doubt and made me wonder. I returned to my glass of wine, drinking and listening to the simple, clear words of the song written in plain standard Arabic. I understood them and began to react to their meaning. Umm Grace said graciously, “How are you? We haven’t seen any of you in a long time. How is your uncle? And Nahleh?”

  I looked at Mazen and suddenly remembered Nahleh’s story, but Mazen was swaying on his seat, listening to the melody, pouring another drink and chewing slowly. He then said, in a commanding tone, without looking at Violet or using her name, “Bring some more ice.”

  She looked at him without comment, put down the remote, and went to get the ice he’d requested. He looked at her sideways and said, “Play al-Atlal.”

  She moved slowly toward the tape player and sat holding the remote control in the direction of the set. The sound burst out, thundering and scary, from the loudspeakers. The room was suddenly filled with the roaring of the echo and the shock of the meaning. I didn’t know why I felt a certain sadness, why I was emotional or for whose sake. Was it for the ruined love reduced to rubble? Or for the sake of a man lost on islands of salt? Or was it for the sake of this woman, this female with broken dreams and a bleeding heart? Or was I feeling a stranger in these surroundings, more alien than any of them, sensing something that I didn’t understand but felt? My cousin exclaimed, obviously moved, “How did love become a piece of news, a subject of conversation like the weather!”

  Nahleh was stranded in Nablus as the city was closed to all traffic, surrounded, and placed under curfew following the killing of a truck driver. A ferocious campaign was launched to arrest the culprit, but the perpetrator disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. It was as if the earth had swallowed him, leaving the authorities no choice but to follow the usual procedure, which no longer scared or upset people. They had become accustomed to searches, curfews, strikes, road blocks, and the shop closures that caused fruits and vegetables to rot and garbage to pile up in the streets. Sewage pipes and drains ruptured, the sidewalks were destroyed, the asphalt and the buildings were damaged, revealing their skeletons and those of the people. They had gotten used to paucity and humiliation, and lived as if they were in the Stone Age.

  Nahleh was not used to that kind of life, however. She was the product of Kuwait, a country where nothing was lacking or scarce. Despite the difficulties and the pain and suffering caused by the Gulf War, those earthshaking changes had come too suddenly to have become a way of life. There was a war, fighting, and expulsions; people suddenly found themselves in a different country and another reality. But their pockets were full, sparing them the compounded humiliation endured by their other compatriots for a quarter of a century or more. They left the comfort of Kuwait and spread out. The lucky ones went to the West Bank and continued to live a pampered life, among young people most of whom were not yet twenty, children of the occupation and the Intifada, who had endured prison life, beatings, hunger, unemployment, and need. Those who emigrated from Kuwait, despite their disgrace, were not humiliated because they had come from the land of affluence and wealth. They continued to see themselves the way people saw them, as providers who supported families, brought gifts to the West Bank throughout the years, and had bank accounts.

  That’s how Nahleh felt and that’s why she couldn’t adapt to the situation. She was resentful because of her age, a woman of fifty whose senses had awakened, holding on to a final chance, a last opportunity to escape her ordeal and the misery of repression, loneliness, and a squandered life. She was searching for a way to end her trips to the druggist and her pursuit of perfumes, creams, face lifts, and all the excitement they provided: the feeling of lust, the anxiety, the sighs, the dreams, the withdrawal from, reality. She had gotten attached to specks of rosy clouds in a spring that was not hers but one that she was chasing, stubbornly. The realtor too was in a race to beat death in the way he lived his life.

  Nahleh looked at her brother’s wife, then turned her head away. She looked like a “bundle,” a nickname the family had chosen. They also referred to her as the drum, the owl, or the cow, descriptions that seemed especially tailored for her. Whenever Said visits his parents, everybody says, Said has come with his bundle, or Said has come with his owl, or his drum. Those words were said casually, without a smile, in a matter of fact way.

  The “bundle” was not a true bundle, but a mean street girl. Her father sold lupines and fava beans in the street. She suffered from an inferiority complex that caused her to be greedy and somewhat dishonest, especially toward the Hamdan family. She was a frustrated woman with a malevolent gaze; she felt crushed by the Hamdan family whom she perceived to be as powerful and glorious as the Turks, the Romans, and the British. She was conscious of their influential position m society while she, the bundle, had a real name, Ni’meh, whose meaning, ‘blessing,’ did not reflect her condition as a poor and lowly person. She used to accompany her father on his rounds, selling lupines in the street and chanting: “Here are the salty ones,” while her father repeated after her: “Salty and delicious lupines, cheap and fresh, the product of the season.”

  As to why Said married her, it was because he was more stupid than she, though he was an industrialist at present, producing candy and toffee. He talked to people from the tip of his nose and dealt with them snobbishly and haughtily. His wife began spending a great deal of money after the factory was built. She spent a great deal on the family food, choosing only fatty foods such as tripe, and fried turnip with garlic and lemon. This explained the odors that invaded Said’s house, which were more nauseating than the smell of public toilets.

  Nahleh was naturally disgusted by the situation in her brother’s house. She refrained from eating a single bite in Said’s house. One can only imagine how she felt, trapped in the bundle’s house, being served fatty food in the company of her crazy brother. She kept watching television, hoping for good news that would announce the end of the closure and the lifting of the security ring around Nablus. The speaker didn’t say anything reassuring, and the news of the operation on the road to al-Ludd and the killing of the truck driver in Nablus added to her pessimism and anger. She wondered whether the day she was supposed to cross the threshold of the house that would soon become her own—a house of happiness, the realtor’s house—would be a day of doom and gloom? Was this a bad omen, a sign of bad luck? Oh God, why? What had she done to deserve this punishment and face such hardships? Even the bundle was luckier than she. When the day she had been waiting for had finally arrived, the day she had hoped to begin to settle down the world turned upside down with the killing of the truck driver! Why God? Why all this? The worst part was being stuck in her brother’s house She wondered whether the situation would force her to eat and sleep in this disgusting house and to provide an explanation for spending the night in the Makhfiyeh She was the author of this house’s well-being hadn’t she given her brother ten thousand dinars to start the candy factory? She wondered why she felt humiliated in the company of the bundle the girl who sold lupine and salted fava beans and ate on a tabliyeh.

  Her sister-in-law said to her seriously, but gently, “I set the mattress for you in the guest room. I lit the heater to warm it up. That room is cold and humid in winter because of its westerly location and its leaks. We never go there in winter, but i
n summer it’s so wonderful, it’s the best room in the house, cool and breezy, you feel as if you’re in a plane.”

  She did in fact feel as if she were in a plane the whole night; the wind was blowing and shaking the door, the windows, and the television antennas on the roof. Everything sounded like the beating of hammers and the raging of demons. What a night! What a nightmare! She was scared and cold, surrounded by walls covered with maps drawn by salt, dampness, and black water moss that looked like crows. She was surrounded by the smell of mildew, which made her feel as if she were trapped under a mound of earth, inside a grave. Was this an omen, a sign of bad luck? She covered her ears and forehead with the comforter and the blankets despite their unpleasant smell and their dirtiness. They were Tarek’s covers, her ten-year-old nephew, who spent his name in the street. His fingernails were long and dirty, as black as qazha, his shirt collar was disgustingly dirty, and his hair was always untidy and sticky, like that of a wet chicken.