The Inheritance

by Sahar Khalifeh

  She looked at her daughter, felt sad and remembered her son Abd al-Nasser. She found it strange that the present generation of the Shayib children lacked enthusiasm, ambition, and intelligence. In the past, they had been lighting flames, strong like a rock and a dome, their radiance had lit Jerusalem. One could recognize them in a crowd. There were famous leaders, religious scholars, historians, and thinkers in the family. At that time, Jerusalem was the greatest city in the world and the members of the Shayib family were the jewels of the world.

  There were prestigious schools and colleges in Jerusalem at that time. Its graduates were geniuses, lawyers, teachers, scientists, and religious scholars. Religion was a shining subject then, it pulled one up toward the skies, lit the public squares, and the centers of learning. Now religion is heard through loudspeakers and the shouting from the top of the minarets every Friday, rather every day, five times a day. The voices were hoarse and raucous, lacking tenderness. They sounded like drums and aroused fear in people’s hearts. It had been so different in the past, the morning adhan had been like a glass of milk scented with the fragrance of flowers, drunk in the morning it brought a feeling of peace and serenity’ to the drinker and warmed his heart and insides.

  Futna’s father, may he rest in peace, used to tell the judge and the court cleric that “the adhan has to be as soft as the breeze, and as tender as basil because the adhan is the breeze of paradise, the scent of paradise and God’s whisper inviting us to submit to him.”

  Amira didn’t submit now because the adhan woke her up like the sound of a cannon and reminded her of the present situation, of the sounds of cannons, of machine guns and tanks. Can this be God’s voice? Or was it the sound of the tanks crossing the valley and climbing over the hill to reach the citadel?

  If Futna only understood this difference, if she had understood it in the past she would understand the present situation. But Futna didn’t listen to the morning, noon, and evening adhan, she only listened to her music. She loved dancing and wearing beautiful clothes, looking attractive in her short dresses and getting pregnant from over there, then giving birth. Was this today’s generation? Was this what the old generation had given birth to?

  Futna said to her mother, “Mother, I’m bleeding heavily. When will we get there?”

  Amira remembered her daughter and found her very pale, her lips were as white as cotton. She put the baby down and knocked very hard on the windowpane. When Mazen looked back she said, begging, “Can you talk to them and tell them that she has just given birth and is bleeding? If we continue at this rate we’ll never get there, we won’t,”

  The governor turned to her and said, “We’ll get there, but as you see the line is long, you must be patient.”

  Mazen felt uneasy sitting between the governor and the driver. He wanted to ask him to make way for him so that he could tell the soldiers that she had just given birth and was bleeding, and the child needed medical attention. But he was embarrassed as he remembered the governor’s humiliation when he tried to talk to the soldiers. He said, “Sometimes I feel as if I were suffocating and I wish I could get out of my skin and run away to Frankfurt or Berlin like Kamal, who ran off to save his skin. But I stayed inside my skin and my own skin is too tight for me. I’m ashamed of myself, sometimes I look in the mirror and I say to myself, you’re Mazen? You are Hamdan Guevara? You are Hamdan’s son?”

  The governor said with mounting anxiety, “Leave it to God, what can we say? One must be patient and look beyond the present. If we paid attention to every word where would we be today?”

  Mazen turned to him and asked angrily, “Well, where are we now?”

  The governor smiled with the expression of those who know, the mature, experienced men, those scoured by time. He said quietly, “We must be patient and look beyond the horizon.”

  Mazen was deeply irate and wanted to shout at the governor. How could he tell him to be patient, to wait, to look beyond the horizon? Did he have a date? Did he have a deadline, a year, two years, ten years, fifty years? He wished they could understand each other, but Mazen wasn’t sure that the man understood.

  The governor mumbled in a low voice, “We dreamed a lot but to no avail!”

  A few years earlier he had been living in Tunis, in a palace near the sea. The visitors, the journalists, an Arab minister and one from the European Union had said that it would be solved. But he hadn’t believed them because the solution had been suggested many times before. It had been mentioned in Tunis, in Beirut, in Amman, in Baghdad, and in Moscow, but it had never materialized. He had gotten used to living without a solution. He had grown older and became more and more removed from his past and his activities. He had begun his professional life as a story writer, then as a playwright. One of his plays had been performed on stage but it hadn’t achieved much success because it hadn’t appealed to the people. It promoted the spirit of struggle and patriotic feelings. It contained speeches glorifying heroes, martyrdom, and suffering. The play ended with the ululations of a tearless mother who had lost her son. People left the theater without crying, without emotions, and without feelings.

  His stories had been quite successful because they were about real people he had dug from the past and his memories, when he lived in the village. He had read avidly and spent long hours silent, observing people’s lives, listening to them talk under the mulberry tree, and the vine trellis, in the cafés, and during Monday’s market. The peasants’ voices filled the pages of his stories and the reader felt them budding with life, with the day’s concerns, and the hopes of the future. Then came the present and his present was removed from that of the people, from their streets, and their simple daily stories, their marriages and their divorces, the fights between neighbors stealing from each other, or fighting over a basket of figs.

  Futna said in a faint voice, “Mother, I’m bleeding heavily.”

  Amira knocked at the window and Mazen turned his head toward the governor, then toward her and didn’t say a thing. But the governor said, very slowly, “What can we say, the line is long.”

  Four persons were trapped in this long line between the citadel and the road block. There was Sitt Amira, Futna’s mother and the baby’s grandmother, Mazen Hamdan Guevara sitting between the governor and the driver, and the governor predicting a quick resolution to the situation. There was also a bleeding woman and a newborn baby in dire need of medical attention.

  Mazen was getting extremely anxious and began moving his legs in a fast, nervous, and annoying way. Even the governor was beginning to lose his patience after an hour and a half waiting in this line. Amira had recourse to religion for help. She recited the al-Falaq chapter three times, then al-Kursi followed by Yasin, but none of them resulted in opening the way for their passage. Strangely enough it was the daughter who felt least threatened, possibly because of her silliness, her mental limitations, or the bleeding and her will to live, She was the calmest of them all, the most reassured and relaxed. She was sure of crossing the road block, and didn’t think that the bleeding would lead to her death. Her major concern was staining her clothes with blood and her good appearance. She feared that sleeping on her back would spoil her hairdo, and continually interrupted her mother’s recitation of Qur’anic verses to ask if she were presentable. Her mother would reassure her with a nod of the head to avoid interrupting her recitation of the holy verses. Futna asked her mother to bring her the blue nightgown, her slippers, and the baby’s clothes after they arrive at the hospital. Amira’s response to her daughter’s request was to raise her voice, occasionally stressing some meaningful words. But only the word envy attracted Futna’s attention. She asked her mother, “Mother dear, do you think that all this happened to us because of Nahleh’s envious eyes?”

  The mother didn’t reply and continued to pray in the darkness and the silence of the night. It was almost ten in the evening but the line had not moved. The floodlights were blinding, but the soldiers at the road bloc were relaxed and the number of youn
g men lined against the wall was growing. The long wait had exhausted the governor, he felt depressed and bored, and tried to kill time telling stories and evoking memories of his life in Tunis, Beirut, Dharan, and even his childhood in the village. He related that he used to study under the light of the street lamp until the morning. He had read Eliya Abu Madi, Maxim Gorki, and Hasanayn Haykal among other authors whose books could only be smuggled in.

  He said to Mazen, smiling as he remembered his past victories, “We used to snatch the books and read them over and over again. Whenever a book was confiscated we would laugh, because we knew it by heart. It was stored in our brains and couldn’t be confiscated.”

  Mazen asked him, in a covert irony, having reached his wit’s end, “Are the words still stored in your memory?”

  He didn’t turn to Mazen to answer his question, but went on talking in a monotonous voice, almost whispering, “Of course they’re stored, and will be to the day I die. Do you think that words can be confiscated? A ruler can confiscate a book but not its words. They are the concrete embodiment of ideas. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Mazen was extremely bored, but he confirmed his understanding of the governor’s words.

  The governor smiled in the darkness and said to Mazen, “Oh my God, we’ve endured and suffered so much! No people in the world has endured what we’ve endured, more than the Jews, more than the American Indians and the blacks.”

  Mazen turned to him and asked, curious, “The blacks?”

  The governor paid no attention to him and continued to sift through his memories, “I saw them in America and in Africa. By God they are good people and they like us. They like the Arabs and the Muslims and some of them have converted to Islam. They invited us to speak in their mosque and after the sermon they began singing, they held hands and began to move as if they were dancing an African dance and I found myself dancing with them. From that time on, Jackson never left us. He visited us seven times in Tunis and according to him things were beginning to turn in our favor.”

  Mazen muttered surprised and curious, “In our favor?”

  The governor said joyfully, “Naturally, naturally, you know that die number of blacks is increasing in America, it’s unbelievable, and so is the number of Spanish and Mexicans and all those who come from overseas. I mean all those described as colored. Their number is increasing very fast, while the number of whites is decreasing daily. The equation is predictable and its result means that the colored peoples, led by the blacks, will rule America without a revolution, without a coup d’état, without bloodshed and all that nonsense. It will be done through elections, they will rule through the elections!”

  Mazen turned to him and asked, furiously, “Are you sure?”

  The governor exclaimed in reply, “Of course I’m sure. Jackson said so and Jackson backs his arguments with polls, and the polls say that the number of whites in America in the year 2055 will literally be one-third of the whole population. At that time what would America become?”

  Mazen said, “A third world country.”

  The governor seemed to agree with him, saying, “It’s possible, it’s possible, and then America will be different.”

  Mazen stopped balancing his legs and said begging, “Let me pass because I’m squeezed in here and I must get out. Can I, would you please? Excuse me?”

  He went out in the dark to pee.

  Futna said, “Nahleh didn’t believe that the baby would be a boy. I told her twenty times that a doctor in Hadassa confirmed it to me. He saw it on the screen and said it was a boy. But Nahleh refused to believe me. She would have liked the baby to be a girl or a Mongoloid. When she saw me give birth she lost her mind and gave us both the evil eye.”

  Her mother raised her voice while reciting the Qur’anic verses to silence her daughter, but Futna didn’t stop talking, as usual. She went on, “It’s also possible that Abu Salem’s daughter is the cause, God only knows.”

  The mother stopped praying to figure out what her daughter was inventing. Futna explained, “I mean the curse of Abu Salem’s daughter when we went to their house. Do you remember how insolent she was? Do you remember what she said and did? Do you remember how she touched her belly and said vulgar words that only a vagabond would utter? Maybe she felt that I was happy and very lucky because the baby I was carrying was the only heir. In other words, my son was an only child and a male and had only one sister. His sister isn’t even interested in the inheritance. This means that he will inherit everything, unlike Abu Salem’s daughter. who has ten brothers and two unmarried sisters, not counting Nahleh.

  I am sure she thought of all this while she was sitting there staring at my belly, her hands resting on her own belly. Isn’t that true mother?” Her mother did not reply but she stopped praying. She fell into a total silence that covered her brain like an endless white fog. She didn’t see any use in praying for a woman who could think like this. But Futna was her daughter after all, whatever she said and whatever she did, she was still her daughter. She was kind and pleasant, and very amusing. She couldn’t deny, however, that sometimes she-got on her nerves. She loved her mother dearly and sincerely and always inquired about her whenever she was sick. She gave to her generously whenever she asked for money and even when she didn’t. She gave to her father and brother, as well, showering them with her wealth. She even opened a souvenir shop for her brother with her late husband’s money, before his death. If anything serious should happen to her daughter, she would lose her consolation and her support in this world. Futna was indeed the best of daughters, the prettiest and the dearest daughter, and this baby was after all her baby, despite his problems.

  The governor continued talking in the same monotonous voice, “I thought that misery existed only in Beirut but it seems to follow us everywhere. How can the wealthiest revolution become so poor? Was it conceivable that the oil rich countries would ever become indebted? And you still say that America will never change! It has to change despite itself, it must change. America is responsible for our misery and when America becomes like all other countries in the world you could say that we are free.”

  He then turned toward Mazen and asked hastily, “Do you want to get in?”

  Mazen was standing in the dark, leaning against the door. He shook his head and said dryly, “I’d better stay here.”

  The governor went on saying, “The problem with our people is their eagerness for a quick solution, one delivered on a rocket, at no cost to them. Is it conceivable to have a solution without paying a price? Look at Japan, Germany, and even China.”

  Mazen muttered, “Look at Mandela.”

  The governor didn’t seem to hear him, or maybe he heard him and didn’t stop, to avoid losing his train of thought. He went on, “Look at China, opium was destroying the people and hunger was eating away at their bodies. See where they are now. They’re as active as ants, riding bicycles, every member of the family rides a bicycle, even the ministers ride a bicycle. They’re a united people, a patient people, and a people with a vision for the future. If we could only look far enough! But our people want immediate solutions delivered on a rocket.”

  Mazen objected, whispering, “No, in a Mercedes.”

  The governor did not seem to have heard him or he heard him but did not pay much attention because the focus of his conversation was the bicycles. He continued his reflections on this topic, “People used to say silly and stupid things about the Chinese, that they wore khaki clothes like prisoners and police officers, that they were all dressed alike. What’s wrong with that? I wish we wore identical khaki clothes like them, rode in carts and bicycles, and could become a great nation like them. If we imitated them we would become like them and even better, don’t you agree?”

  Mazen didn’t reply. He was thinking about Kamal’s project that had turned into a catastrophe. The purification station had become a problem, the festival was a scandal, and this man whose help he had sought to go through the roadblock did nothing
but talk. He cited examples from Japan, Germany, and China where the people run and ride bicycles, unlike the Arabs, who ride donkeys and travel in Mercedes cars.

  He turned his face away from the ambulance and saw the young men lined against the wall with their arms still raised above their heads. Then he saw the long line of cars shining under the floodlights. He remembered Kamal, his father, the crowds, Saad and Said, and Abd al-Hadi a! Shayib. He also thought about the consuls and the journalists who had left in the bus while they were still waiting in the ambulance, at the roadblock. Who was to blame, he or the governor? Neither one. The governor could do nothing but dispense words from his past readings in a remote village. China runs on bicycles and how do we run? We run on dilapidated coffins!

  Futna said, her voice weakening, “Mother, I must be sleepy. I’m dizzy, I can’t keep my eyes open, is it alright to sleep?”

  The mother became aware of the seriousness of her daughters condition and said, “No, don’t sleep, you might lose consciousness.”

  Amira remembered how she used to advise her to be strong, solid, and courageous. She repeated the same recommendation, “I’ve always told you to be tough. Don’t sleep or close your eyes, do you understand me?”

  Futna replied, in a weak voice, “Alright mother,” then she fell asleep.

  The mother knocked at the small window and asked in a harsh, determined voice, “You, in front, what’s happening with you?”

  The governor turned to her and said calmly, “Sitt Amira the line is long, we cannot jump over the other cars. We must be patient, we have to wait for God’s help.”

  She said, angrily, “Honorable governor we can’t wait anymore. My daughter is losing all her blood and she is about to die as I watch her. Is this acceptable? And you Mazen, where is Mazen?”