The Lady from Tel Aviv

by Raba'i al-Madhoun

  As for the man who was so fond of marrying, the new regulation did not stop him daring to challenge the authority of the President. At every gathering, event or meeting he attended, Muhammad would talk loudly to whoever would listen, saying that Arafat wished he could marry more. He never tired of repeating, ‘It’s not my problem if the President can barely handle one woman. But as for me, I could never be satisfied with just Suha. Being married to one or two isn’t enough for me. I swear, if Arafat could, he’d marry ten women—one from each political faction. And then he’d unite the PA and the PLO in a single household.’

  *

  Walid stood at the corner of the house overlooking the heart of the neighbourhood. He started to watch the sun as it set far, far away, dragging with it the remaining moments of his last day in Gaza until it, and those moments, disappeared behind the yellow sand dunes. He imagined that there the sun would rest its head on the horizon’s edge before it slipped, sleeping, into the sea—and then the features of the camp began to dissolve into the spreading twilight.

  The lights in the city streets came on suddenly, as if they had just woken from an afternoon nap that had stretched on too long. With each light, the shadows of the place also awoke, as did everything else that sprang to life when light bulbs flickered on.

  Walid wandered along until he got to the corner across from Jaber Rayyan’s shop. He stood there under the utility pole, where he had arranged to meet his cousin Said.

  Walid began to study the stars and constellations with sudden astonishment. High in the distant sky he saw a silver glow amidst the stars of Ursula Minor, and right there in the middle he could make out the features of his father’s face. Then he heard the words, ‘Your father’s been vindicated.’ Looking into the night sky, Walid remembered the day his mother said those very words.

  Umm Walid was in the middle of sweeping the courtyard with palm fronds when Walid’s grandfather, Nimr, walked in and broke the news that Walid’s father had been declared innocent. He told her how the police had detained the director of the distribution centre, Khamis al-Sawafiri, and formally charged him with stealing bundles of clothing. Unable to deny it, Khamis had admitted the crime. On top of that, they accused him of conspiring with some of his employees in loading trucks with pilfered bags of flour that were sold to merchant friends of his in Gaza City market.

  Umm Walid exploded with a song that rent the heavens. Walid was down the street playing with friends when he heard it. His mother’s ululation was like no one else’s. She was the only woman in the camp to split her trill into four heaping portions—which she never served at the same time.

  Walid ran off to follow the singing that led him back home. When he got there, he found his mother leaning up against the front door with her hands held up high in supplication. Her arms were stretched wide to receive the neighbours, who flocked to congratulate her.

  Walid threw himself into his mother’s arms and hugged her with all his might, kissing her forehead and hands. She held him tightly, her face drowning in tears of joy.

  ‘Hi, Walid. You’re right on time!’

  The surprise of hearing his cousin’s voice brought Walid back to the moment. No sooner had he replied to Said’s greeting than Fawzi Ashour also arrived.

  *

  Fawzi was short and slightly stocky. He had a delicate face, as round as a Valencia orange and as ruddy as an Anatolian apple. He may have worked as a weaver on a manual loom, but his daydreams took him on journeys far from the din of the textile factory. And unlike his loom, his dreams were woven by electricity. He dreamed that one day he would inherit Marlon Brando’s throne in the sultanate of cinema. He would raise his thick right hand in the air and solemnly swear that if they had cast him in Julius Caesar, he would have delivered a performance as good as Brando’s.

  Fawzi would sometimes stumble and fall from the heights of Hollywood into the depths of Cairo’s B studios. Fawzi was mad about cinema. When Fawzi impersonated Shukri Sirhan playing Said Mahran in The Thief and the Dogs, he would completely disappear into character. Fawzi often played Sirhan playing Mahran for his friends. And when he did, Said would leap up and threaten Fawzi, his hand clenched in the shape of a revolver. ‘Said Mahran, come out with your hands up!’

  The three friends would sit and smoke to the rhythm of Said’s off-colour epics. Said told the story of Samira Doughan and how she would leave the window to her bedroom open at night for Ibrahim Harb, the Arabic teacher at Mustafa Hafez Boys Elementary. Knowing this, Ibrahim would steal into the side yard and deliver a love letter to Samira. Said told his friends about the rose that Ibrahim had left at her window one night—the same damask rose that caused so much whispering in the neighbourhood. ‘She wore that rose in her hair,’ Said went on, ‘for an entire month. And somehow, as long as it was in her hair, it stayed as fresh as the day Ibrahim first gave it to her.’

  Fawzi added, ‘I swear to God—anyone who walks by the Doughan house today can still smell that rose.’ And he sniffed at the air with nostrils that would not recognize the attar of a rose if they smelled it.

  Before he finished the story of Samira, the three friends had agreed on one thing: that her father, Hajj Omar Doughan, would kill her with a rusty knife if he found out what half the camp already knew. He might just do to her what Mahmud Abu Hayya had done to his sister Marwa.

  Walid interjected that the two situations could not be more different. ‘When Mahmud killed Marwa, it was out in the open and in front of witnesses. And it was to redeem his family’s honour. She deserved it, but Samira does not. It’d be enough to slap her face a couple of times. A few lashes on her back, and she’ll repent and never do it again.’

  Sheikh Mu’min Abdel Aal happened by just then, his glorious robes flowing as he went. The sheikh was a judge in the Sharia courts and was on his way home after praying at the nearby mosque. A half-stifled laugh escaped from Said and Fawzi. The sheikh cleared his throat, drawing their attention to the greeting that he had uttered and which, still hanging in the air, demanded the courtesy of a reply. Shamed, the three called back with even more elaborate greetings. But as soon as the sheikh was gone, Said began to cackle and howl. ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Judge, Mr. Sheikh, Mr. Azhari! Let’s have it—that’s how men of religion should be!’

  ‘What’s so funny, Said?’ Walid asked.

  ‘You mean you don’t know what the sheikh did? You’ve always been such a good little boy!’

  With a wicked smile, Fawzi butted in. ‘Listen to what Said’s about to tell you. It all happened while you were in Egypt—I’m sure you haven’t heard it yet.’

  Then Said began to narrate what they called ‘The Tale of the Sheikh’. ‘Sabha al-Farran slept with Ali Wafi in his family’s place. She lost her virginity to Ali that night and then ran out of the house in such a hurry that she forgot her knickers. She thought about going back to get them, but got scared she’d get caught doing it and then everyone would know.’

  Fawzi objected, ‘Are we sure that Sabha even wears panties?’

  That pissed Walid off. ‘You two have no shame. These are people’s reputations you’re talking about!’

  Said ignored Walid’s comment and turned to ask Fawzi, ‘So, how do you know that Sabha doesn’t wear panties? Huh? Fess up! Have you, fine sir, had the good fortune to disrobe the fair maiden in question?’

  For a moment, a lascivious smile hung on Fawzi’s fine, delicate lips. Then, wryly, he said, ‘No, sir. I use logic. Simple logic, nothing more. Consider these facts. Sabha comes from a dirt-poor family. Her father doesn’t have a penny to his name. Were she to die, the man wouldn’t be able to afford to bury her in a panty-sized shroud. He couldn’t even do that for Umm Sabha, even though he sleeps with the old woman every night. Thus, I aver that the Farrans are a family that wears no underpants.’

  Said continued his story, ignoring Walid’s anger and Fawzi’s sarcastic interjections. ‘A few days later, Sabha ran off. She’d told her mother what had happened—and now her father was
determined to marry her to her cousin Yasser. Sabha refused the marriage, fearing that her cousin would figure out that she wasn’t a virgin. She made up a story about wanting to wait until she’d finished high school. Her father stubbornly insisted on going forward with the wedding arrangements, and told the girl that he and his brother, the lucky groom’s father, had already agreed all the details. It was at that point that she ran away to the home of sheikh Mu’min Abdel Aal. There, she went on and on telling stories and pleading with the old man, ‘Have mercy on me, sheikh! Protect me! My family wants to marry me off to my cousin by force, but I won’t consent to it. I’m scared they might come after me and kill me!’

  Finally, Said began to talk about the role the sheikh had played in the tale. ‘May God grant that noble gentleman a long, prosperous life and reward him for the principled stand he took while he considered that poor girl’s plight! Even though that man had no daughters of his own, he took Sabha into his bosom like any loving father would do. Then the good sheikh convinced Sabha’s parents to let her remain in his household long enough for him to convince her to change her mind.

  ‘She took refuge in his home. Long-term refuge—it went on for more than three months. At which point, Sabha began to show signs of being pregnant. No one could figure out who the father was. It could have been Ali—he was the one who had first blazed the trail. But it also could have been the Azhari sheikh’s—there’s no doubt that of late, the industrious man had widened the road somewhat.

  ‘No one believed the torrent of gossip that spilled through the alleys and streets of the camps and city. No one believed all the chatter about the sheikh and Sabha until the day the sheikh announced—four months after she’d taken refuge in his home—that the two of them were legally married. And this made everyone—his family, her family and everyone else in the city and its camps—face the fact that Sabha had become this man’s wife fair and square.

  ‘The sheikh said it would be a pragmatic solution to Sabha’s problem, in addition to being a highly commendable legal resolution. Not even the girl’s father could object.’

  After feasting for months on the story of Sabha and Ali, people began to view the story in a different light and began to sympathize with the sheikh, who had done nothing more than use religious dogma to smooth over the bumps in the road. Whenever his name came up, people would say, ‘God really owes him one.’

  The lights of the city turned off before Said’s tongue stopped wagging. The three friends did not stop talking until Walid reminded them that he was travelling in the morning and had to get up early. It was midnight and the outlines of the streets and alleys had faded into the gloom around them. Only then did they say goodnight and goodbye. Only then did each go off, bleary eyed, in the dark, toward his home.

  *

  The next morning, after performing dawn prayers, Walid quickly ate the breakfast his mother had prepared for him. He kissed his nine-year-old sister, Raja, and said goodbye to her. He picked up his leather suitcase and went out. His mother went with him to where the taxi was waiting. He put his bag in the boot then turned to his mother and embraced her. The car went off with him in it, but his eyes remained glued to his mother. Her face leapt back and forth in the rear view window, and then got smaller. The shawl she held in her fingers billowed and flapped like a flag in the wind. And then her image disappeared in the distance. Nothing remained but the last words she said to him. They rang in his ears, ‘Go and come back safe.’

  Over the Sinai the train carried Walid to Cairo. He travelled in the third-class carriage for nine tedious hours, six of them choked with the dust of the desert.

  That was the last time he would take that trip in either direction. He never made it back to Gaza after that.

  Tomorrow, he comes home.

  Return

  1

  I throw my little backpack into the overhead bin and take my seat. Row 19. Seat B. British Airways Flight 153, from London Heathrow to Tel Aviv. The plane is supposed to arrive at 7 am local time. I am no longer thinking about how anxious my mother is, nor about how sceptical she was, doubting I would really come. Her feelings had already begun to change into a kind of waiting whose hours were dissolving now, tonight. By now, on this last night of waiting, she must have surrendered to a sleep as restless as her feelings.

  It is 11:15 pm, which makes it 1:15 am in Palestine. ‘Believe it, Mama,’ I will tell her as I hold her in my arms tomorrow morning, seeking my childhood somewhere in her embrace. ‘Here I am, I made it.’ And then we will sit down at the squat table to eat. Passengers in my aisle walk right by, taking their seats one by one. Others in the aisle opposite look for their seats there.

  I study the passengers as they go by, nervous about which one will be sitting next to me. Their faces flip by like the pages of a book written in different languages and different alphabets. One of these faces belongs to my seatmate, who in all likelihood will be Jewish. Everything points to this likelihood—all the conversations, whispers and thoughts I have overheard since boarding.

  I will ignore the issue and my seatmate too. I lean back into my seat and surrender to the half-dozing wakefulness of flying. I might watch a movie once the airplane reaches cruising altitude. I could read the book I brought, Yann Queffélec’s novel, Cruel Weddings. I finished the first hundred pages yesterday, following the strange story of Ludo, cast into the world by the cruel thrusting of the American sailors who raped his mother. After this great and celebrated American victory, Ludo’s mother looks at him and sees only the wrong done her. She rejects him as if he belonged to a complete stranger.

  Next to the novel in my backpack is the statuette of Nefertiti, bought so long ago in a souvenir shop in Khan El-Khalili. Today, she travels with me to the friend I bought her for. But I do not reach for the novel, nor for Nefertiti. I might pick up my book later. If someone sits down and wants to talk, I will have to excuse myself from Ludo’s company for a while. But if someone asks me where I am from, I will pick up the book and start reading. Even now, I have no idea how I will respond to that question, should it be asked.

  It makes me more and more nervous to think about it. Really, where am I from?

  It is my first trip to Israel. It is the first time I have been on an airplane where all the passengers, or at least most of them, are Jewish. Only once did someone ask me that question before. It happened on the Underground, during my usual rush-hour commute to work in central London.

  I was on the Piccadilly line, heading toward Cockfosters, when the man got on at Acton Town. He was about seventy, with an old yarmulke and long curly sidelocks. He wore black trousers, a bright white shirt and an overcoat, even though it was summer. The man smiled at no one in particular, then made a bee-line for the seat next to mine Before the train had even left the station, my neighbour began to read aloud from a book that lay open in his hands. The murmurs and whispers streaming from his lips were surprisingly strident. Unlike Qu’ran reciters who rock side-to-side when they read, this man rocked back and forth.

  At first, I did not pay much attention to him. Nor did I read any sign of annoyance on the faces of the other passengers who were, I suspect, busy thinking about other things. No one complained or said a word about the man or his mumblings. No one paid him any mind until he stomped his foot so hard it shook the floor of the carriage. Then he did it again and people began to exchange startled looks. Eyebrows went up and eyes rolled.

  Finally, my curiosity got the better of me and I turned to look at my neighbour. He continued to stomp on the floor to the same slow syncopated beat while he went on reading and rocking back and forth, like a clock striking midnight.

  All of a sudden, the man stopped reading and his foot stopped stomping. He looked around at us as if our faces would tell him why we were so surprised. His gaze eventually settled on me. He stared, and then glared at me in genuine astonishment.

  ‘Israeli, no?’

  I shook my head.

  Without relinquishing the look of sur
prise on his face, he smiled. ‘Jew?’ He did not wait for me to answer but put his index finger on a line in his book. He began to read the words beneath his finger as it crept across the page.

  I gently touched his wrist to stop him and said, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I don’t speak Hebrew very well.’

  My words made the man even more curious. And when I told him the same thing in correct Hebrew, my apology came across like an outright lie. That is how it always is whenever we try to apologize for not speaking a language by using the right words in the language itself.

  That only encouraged my neighbour to go on with his questions. ‘Egyptian, huh?’ he asked in Hebrew.

  I shook my head again. Maybe he thinks the Camp David Accords have somehow made the Egyptians learn Hebrew?

  Then he turned to look at me squarely. ‘So where are you from then?’

  I decided to put an end to his confusion. ‘I’m Palestinian.’

  With the innocence of a child and the wonder of a sage, he called out in Hebrew, ‘You are a Philistine? A Palestinian?’

  Then he began to rattle on in Hebrew. With some difficulty I was able to grasp this: he was on his way to meet his son and go to synagogue. He promised to pray for both of us, because he loved Palestinians and hated war.

  When the train stopped at Green Park, the man closed his book and leapt energetically for the door. Before he stepped off, he turned to look at me with a huge, genuine smile on his face. ‘Shalom!’

  ‘Salam!’ I called back.

  A heavy-set man comes walking down the aisle. The shaggy red beard on his face makes him look like my grandfather’s old goat. The man goes on toward the rear of the plane. A woman about his age approaches. She is wearing jeans and a light blue blouse, unbuttoned low. In her cleavage, a little Star of David glitters and gleams. She also walks back toward the rear.