The Inheritance

by Sahar Khalifeh

  In the dusk of a dark day I sneaked from the back door of the house, far from the watchful eyes of the family, and went to Violet and Umm Grace’s house. I passed by the living room and saw its large iron door wide open while the glass door was closed. When I turned the knob to go in however, the door opened easily. I found myself in the reception area, lit only by the faint sunset light that filtered through the glass door. It revealed white sheets thrown over pieces of furniture, hair dryers and a computer. I couldn’t see much, but I felt that I was in an environment different from that of a rural town like ours. There was a touch of taste that had no relation to this northern part of the country and its semi-rural nature.

  I heard the sound of a guitar coming from inside and I followed the melancholic tunes played in a slow, sad beat. I walked in the dark, guided by the faint light until I reached another glass door that was left ajar. It led to a small garden that separated the reception area from the rest of the house. There, I saw beautiful Violet from behind the door, sitting on a swing that matched the beach umbrella and the garden chairs.

  Her face wore a grave expression and she was totally absorbed in her own world. I knocked lightly at the glass door to avoid startling her, but she didn’t move. Her hand moved up and down in harmony with the musical notes. When I knocked a second time, she looked up and saw me but she didn’t move or return my greeting as I waved to her. I pushed the door and entered slowly, walking quietly, as if crossing the halls of a church or a library that had an echo. I sat on one of the chairs in total silence and remained there for a few minutes without opening my mouth. I closed my eyes and almost fell asleep in the growing darkness, trying to escape an overwhelming inner sadness. I don’t know how much time passed before Violet opened her mouth and talked to me. I don’t know whether those were the first words she said or whether what I heard was the continuation of a conversation she had probably started before she’d heard me or, maybe one she had began inside herself. She was saying very slowly, “No, it isn’t Mazen. If you had asked people whether Mazen was the reason, I have told you it’s not he, despite what you’ve heard. I’m telling you, it’s not Mazen, he was never the reason for my mood swings. The reason is inside me, I always build palaces in my dreams. When I go to the movies I imagine myself the heroine and if I see someone who resembles one in my imagination, I build up his image, which continues to grow until it fills my heart and my being. He becomes a giant and I move according to his wishes. I later wake up from my self-delusions and discover that those were my wishes, not his. I keep repeating the same mistake and I play the same role. Each time I’m left with a broken heart and a confused mind I tell myself: You are the cause and no one else. You build palaces and mountains in your imagination, you swim in a sea of delusions and drown in it.”

  She went on assessing her responsibility, “I cry for one or two months, I lament my luck and hate myself and others, until time heals my wounds and helps me forget. I find myself falling into the same trap over and over again. Because I endure so much and I’m so apprehensive, I often go on for a year or two and sometimes longer, without falling in love. I run away from everybody including, possibly, the right person. The nuns used to say that I was gifted, do you think I act this way because I’m gifted? But all girls are like me, even ordinary girls who never react to a beautiful sunset or to a beautiful melody. Do you think that Nahleh would conduct herself like me? I’ll bet she would, though she pretends to be strong and a good girl. She too is guided by her imagination and illusions. Is her story with the realtor different from mine? She must be laughing at me, saying that I’m stupid, yet if she opened her eyes and saw herself and the realtor clearly, she would laugh at herself, she might even cry. I’m sure she’ll cry a lot like me. I don’t blame you for Mazen’s indifference, nor do I blame Salma from Lebanon. Mazen Hamdan is responsible for his situation just as I’m responsible for mine.”

  She continued without giving me an opportunity to answer her, “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, you of all people. I know that Mazen is in love with you, or rather he thinks he is. Mazen falls in love with all the women he encounters in his life, that’s how he is. But Mazen can’t relinquish his independence, even to you. He has to fall in love with every beautiful and intelligent woman and she has to love him back, he pursues her until she falls in love with him. When she does, he runs away, inventing stories that he repeats constantly until jealousy drives his victim crazy. I know that Mazen wishes he were strong, that he had the power of a magician to handle all the women he meets. The reality is completely different, however; in the area of women he’s a loser on all fronts.”

  I opened my eyes to grasp the meaning of her words. She said, affectionately, looking at a chair as if watching a live person sitting on it, “He would sit thereafter sunset, and we would talk and listen to Fairuz or rather I did, since he prefers al-Atlal and always requests it. The first time he asked to listen to al-Atlal I thought I understood his message: there was Salma, Beirut, and the revolution, but now there is no Salma, no Beirut, and no revolution, they’ve become ruins. The singer would go on singing ‘Has love seen intoxicated people like us?’ repeating the sentence many times and he would repeat it after her. Listening to her singing was like listening to him sighing. Every time I heard the song my heart would melt and I would feel drawn strongly to his world. I used to spend hours listening to the song and repeating its words, interpreting them in various ways, laughing, crying, wondering, and daydreaming, abandoning myself totally to his power.

  “His song became my song, or rather my nightmare, he controlled me through it. Strangely enough, I felt as if every word she sang was addressed to me, personally. This is how Mazen was and that’s how I interpreted his feelings. As I came to know him better I felt betrayed, cheated, and deceived, but who had deceived mc and who cheated me? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I shook my head without saying a word, but she didn’t see me in the dark. She didn’t wait for my reply but continued to talk uninterruptedly, “I want to go away, to America, to forget all this, not only Mazen. He was only part of the problem, which kept me away from life. I lived in a world where I have no friends, where there is no club or any way to meet people. All those I see at the beauty parlor are women, of course, and in most cases, housewives with no experience and no brains, or young newly-weds who, intoxicated with their happiness or confusion, do not say a word from the moment they enter to the moment they leave. Mazen was like an oasis in this desert, I held on to him like a drowning person holds on to a piece of straw. Mazen is indeed a straw, I knew it before he even returned to the West Bank, as his story with Salma in Beirut was known to everybody here. Yet, I fell in love with him and became attached to him, believing that with so much pressure and his new situation he would change and become more productive. All he did was break my heart, hurt me, and make people talk. He hasn’t asked after me since the day he left, and my poor mother thinks it’s because of you. It’s not you or another woman, and it’s not something happening now, this is how Mazen is, and he will never change. He’s a defeated man and he’s changed me into a defeated person.”

  I responded in a broken voice that sounded as if it came from another person, “Maybe, maybe.”

  She turned toward me, totally surprised by my reply and ran her hand over all the piano keys at once. The sound they made in the darkness was like the soundtrack of an action film. She echoed my words, saying, “Maybe? Maybe?”

  She went on explaining, “Oh, this is exactly the situation, this is what I said and did. I told myself maybe I needed someone to stand beside me, maybe because I was alone and there was no choice, maybe because he was in front of me and close by, and maybe because I thought that time changes us. I thought he needed me because of his leg, he had no friends to talk to, friends who would understand him. Maybe, maybe, this is how we always think when we need someone; we say: When the conditions change, people change. No my dear, people do not change when the causes
are internal, and Mazen is defeated, internally.”

  I said, regretfully, “Are you sure?”

  She knocked on her guitar and said, “Of course I’m sure, I’m a hundred and one percent sure, but I only wonder whether his inner defeat caused his outward behavior or vice versa?”

  I asked, confused, “How can we know?”

  She answered, absentmindedly, “The future will tell, but unfortunately, I will be far, very far away.”

  Futna had come especially from Jerusalem to invite Violet and Umm Grace to a huge party in Wadi al-Joz. Futna’s pregnancy was at an advanced stage, she was big and breathed heavily. Her face was covered with sunspots, making it look like a sieve. We advised her to hold the party at a hotel to avoid exerting herself, but she insisted, with undoubted sincerity, on holding it at her house. She intended to use her recently renovated terrace, covered with pots of jasmine, and her beautiful bamboo chairs and lamps. My father had planned this change before his death, he wanted to see all corners of Jerusalem from the terrace, but he died and Jerusalem revealed itself to other eyes than his.

  Futna had insisted on inviting everyone to the party, including my uncle, his wife, and his children, except for Said and his wife. She also invited the realtor, his wife, and Nahleh. She was probably aiming at strengthening her position in the “Sewage Company,” the joint venture between Kamal and the realtor, having bought thousands of shares. She probably wanted to win people’s affection and appease emotions with the approaching delivery date for the heir, to facilitate the inheritance issue. She might have had in mind the establishment of a connection with Florida, through Violet, as America was a dream of hers ever since she had heard about it from my father. She had visited the United States and had fallen in love with it, returning with a number of suitcases filled with clothes, purses, Canon sheets, and feather comforters.

  Whatever the reason, she invited us all to the party and announced very proudly that her famous cousin and some members of the Shayib family were invited as well. There will also be some young men and women, an organ and a guitar player, plus all her artist friends, those she knew from the time of her late husband. The party was expected to last till the morning. My uncle, as expected, excused himself tactfully, as did his wife and the realtor’s wife, but the realtor planned on attending. Mazen sent his regrets as well, but Futna insisted and stubbornly requested his presence, calling him at all hours of the day, almost every day. She asked Nahleh, Kamal, and myself to put pressure on him until he finally condescended and agreed to join us. It was an opportunity for the Hamdan family to get out of Wadi al-Rihan, to breathe a little and visit Jerusalem after the closure. Ever since Jerusalem had been separated from the West Bank it had become like another state with borders, entrance areas, checkpoints, requiring identity cards, every sort of formality but a visa. There was something similar called a permit or rishion in Hebrew. Kamal had no problem entering Jerusalem with his German passport and so did I thanks to my American passport. Nahleh entered easily because she is a woman and the realtor did not have any trouble, probably due to his connections who could get him any permit from either the Arabs or the Israelis. He could even reach higher, to the Knesset if he had wanted to, but that wasn’t his ambition. Rather, he needed the municipality, where he could obtain a permit for the car and its passengers.

  We drove in the Mercedes, which had a telephone, two antennas, and three horns. We went together to the party with great expectations of enjoyment and entertainment. Kamel, guided by his German education and his good manners, refused to sit beside Abu Salem, leaving the place for either Nahleh or myself. He sat in the back and I ceded the honor of sitting in the ‘seat of death’ to Nahleh. It’s strange that people here consider sitting in that seat a sign of great prestige, and I didn’t want to deprive Nahleh of it. But, as she took so long to make up her mind, hesitating to move and insisting on refusing the invitation, Mazen jumped from his seat and said, firmly, “I’ll sit in the front seat beside him.”

  Nahleh was shocked and so was I, because her brother’s gesture was quite meaningful. It signified that the move was unacceptable and a source of possible trouble. It also meant that he was jealously guarding the honor of the family, Nahleh’s honor. It might have been the expression of a sense of superiority over the realtor, as well. So, he opened the back door and said to his sister, with a frown, “Sit here.”

  We sat behind the driver, in silence.

  Mazen was very uncomfortable with the party’s atmosphere, the way it was arranged, and the formation of small groups of incompatible, disparate people. There was also the obvious upper-class ambiance that Futna had bestowed on the party, to be on par with her famous cousin. She laid the tables on the large terrace with a calculated bias. She placed her cousin’s table and those of some of the notables, accompanied by tanned women wearing huge earrings reaching their shoulders, at the foremost point of the terrace. She-surrounded them by pots of mallow, basil, and a large jasmine tree over a trellis that made the table look like a throne or a stage. Close by, sat Violet and Umm Grace, joined by a peculiar gray haired man, and a group of other elegant men and women, among them a well-known writer and a female journalist. There was neither trellis nor pots of mallow and basil around their tables, however. Then came the Hamdan table, which included Nahleh, the realtor, and naturally, Mazen, Kamal, and me.

  We were at the other end of the terrace, far from the older people who spoke English as I did, the whisky drinkers and the cigar smokers. The realtor did not drink and Nahleh was half veiled, whereas Kamal drank only beer, Mazen vodka, and I, Pepsi. Futna served araq, tabbouleh, hummus, and ful for the artists and their fans, the organ and guitar players, and a large group of young men and women, most of whom were in black, while some wore khakis and jeans. They enlivened the party, sang and danced, then sat on the floor surrounding Violet as she played music. They cheered her on as she sang, they whistled, but then quieted down when she gave free expression to her longing for the distant beloved who disappears beyond the sea.

  This is how Mazen found himself, for the first time, far from the center of attention, away from the lights. He felt so alienated and resentful that he considered leaving the party, but Kamal reminded him of a practical reason that would make it impossible for him to leave alone—he didn’t have a permit to travel. It was thanks to the realtor and his Mercedes that he was here.

  In an effort to lighten up the atmosphere Kamal turned toward the realtor and said, holding his glass, “To your health, Abu Salem,” to which the realtor responded surprisingly quickly, “To my partner’s health, to the best partner. If I didn’t fear people’s comments, I would have drunk to your health.”

  Kamal laughed wholeheartedly, and said maliciously, “You fear people but you don’t fear God? Then take a sip.”

  He took the first sip then a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth till he finished the first glass, then the second and a third one, while Kamal laughed and Mazen stared at him without commenting. I was watching the scene and Nahleh was smiling as she wished nothing more than to see a relaxed relationship between the realtor and her brothers. This was the first time they had sat with the realtor in public. The company he was establishing with Kamal, their partnership, and their visits to various offices and to the municipality were public matters, that wouldn’t raise any suspicion. Here, however, in Futna’s house, the Hamdan’s daughter-in-law, sitting at a table where alcohol and mezze were served, things were different; it meant that the realtor had ‘infiltrated’ the family.

  If Mazen, or my uncle, or even Said didn’t like this situation, the Westernized Kamal considered the party a great success and took it upon himself to help Abu Salem bring down the walls that imprisoned him. He introduced him to some aspects of civilization and tried to shake the hold of traditions on him, pushing him to enjoy himself. He kept encouraging him to drink, one glass after the other, until Abu Salem was like a wet piece of cloth, and his eyes were as red as a ripe tomato. Kamal was in
the same condition and they acted like foreigners when they get drunk in an evening organized by Arabs. He stood up and made a fool of himself, he sang and danced and clapped his hands. The singers, the artists, the organ and the guitar players were cheering him on until Futna’s famous cousin noticed him and curious, he asked who was this pleasant American. Futna explained, proudly, “He’s not American, he’s German, he is Abu Jaber’s son.”