Against the Loveless World

by Susan Abulhawa

  Samer was still talking in a low voice, telling me how he’d discovered the underground space. His manner reminded me of an eager schoolboy presenting a science project. From what I gathered, Samer had started digging in the basement apartment of his family home after his brother was killed and his university shut down.

  “My brother read about some ancient village and was sure it was exactly where we lived. Except there were no apparent ruins in our town, even though our home was built sometime in the fifteenth century,” Samer said. The two of them had talked about it and imagined the buried city based on photographs of ancient underground cities found in Istanbul. “But at the time I didn’t believe it could be real,” he said.

  The group was mostly quiet, eating as they listened to Samer re-count the story they had already heard. “My brother loved to read and study.” Samer shook his head, reaching for a piece of bread. “I just took a sledgehammer to the floor the day we buried him, busted a hole in it and started digging. It was something to numb my brain. Or maybe I thought I could find my brother by finding this ancient city.”

  The novelty of the underground space was beginning to wear off. I was both fascinated and ill at ease, wanting to know more but anxious to return to the earth’s surface, liking being included but still the outsider.

  “I started with small hand tools, carving straight down. Then I used ones with longer and longer handles. I improvised. It became an obsession, and I didn’t tell anyone for at least eight months, until I had to figure out what to do with all the boxes of dirt all over the apartment.”

  I forced myself to eat as Samer went on with his tale. Bilal had brought his dented tin kettle and heated it on a battery-operated burner; he poured tea for us in small glasses and gave the first to me, which I’m sure he meant as a gesture of appreciation, but instead it made me feel like a guest in their secret world. I accepted the glass, sensing a distance grow between us in the confined space.

  “I had to do something,” Samer said, widening his eyes.

  I sipped my tea, tasting the sage. Most people added mint to tea, but Bilal preferred sage as I did. I smiled at the thought, which Samer took as a reaction to the story he was telling.

  “There were boxes of dirt everywhere,” he repeated, contemplating his tea. “Where I first started digging a hole became a crater as wide as I am tall. It was insane. I wasn’t sure if my mind was intact. I either had to tell someone or fill in the hole.”

  But he kept digging, lowering himself by rope into the pit, now a few meters deep, until the night when he heard dirt fall. Then the bottom gave way and he fell through. “It was absolute terror. I thought the house was collapsing, and we would all be buried alive,” he said, finally sipping his tea.

  “What about your family? Didn’t they hear the banging?” I asked.

  “They were used to me building things. The bigger problem was all the dust, but I bought an air scrubber and let it run constantly,” Samer said. “I have no doubt this room opens to more chambers under other homes. Who knows how vast it is? Our ancestors built it. I believe they’re here now, to help us.”

  There was still the matter of the excavated, boxed earth. Samer could avoid his family through the apartment’s separate basement entrance, but not people in the street. Carrying just one box would be a magnet for curiosity and offers to help; multiple boxes would have brought Israeli soldiers knocking.

  For the next month, Samer explored the small cavern. It was sheer luck that he had dug over the open space containing the cistern. He was sure there were adjoining rooms, and the easiest way to excavate was to clear the loose dirt toward Jumana’s salon. For the next few months he moved the earth around in the cavern, and found he was right: a small corridor led to another space below the salon.

  Samer had known Jumana since he was a small boy playing with her brothers, Wadee and Faisal. Although the boys had drifted apart after Samer went to university, they grew close again when Samer’s brother was martyred and the twins came to pay their respects. The twins’ own father had also been killed by Israeli soldiers, and they had separately spent time in Israeli jails. Their friendship revived and spread roots in the terrain of a grief particular to martyr-dom, where the anguish of loss mixes with pride, resolve, the desire for vengeance, and camaraderie.

  Trust wasn’t the only basis for Samer’s decision to confide in Wadee and Faisal: the twins worked in construction and had a large pickup truck. Their family owned a nearby hill, forested on one side and farmed on the other, and their sister’s salon provided another access for the underground secret.

  Wadee and Faisal picked up the story. “We were excited and frightened at the same time. We thought Jumana would know what to do,” the brothers said, fluidly taking turns with their words, like a verbal relay.

  “We couldn’t come up with any good ideas,” Wadee said.

  “But we agreed that nothing could happen without Jumana,” Faisal said.

  Samer had not thought beyond the digging. Wadee and Faisal could execute a plan, but not come up with one. That would be Jumana’s role. She was the big sister who looked out for them, their only parent after their father died, and she was also a dear childhood friend of both Bilal and Ghassan.

  “They said they wanted to install a new bathroom in the salon,” Jumana chimed in, twisting her mouth toward her brothers. “I had been begging them to fix a few things for months. Suddenly they were ready to take on a major rehab project.” In theory, Jumana was speaking to me, but she didn’t look my way, moving her eyes between her brothers, her glass of tea, the food, and Bilal. “I knew something was up, but I never imagined this.” She swept her eyes across the walls.

  I was twitching, needing to move. The body has its own logic, an impulsivity that betrays emotions running through it. But I held myself steady with a fatiguing determination to hide my discomfort.

  “We decided to completely gut the bathroom and expand it,” Wadee said, describing how they had measured the precise location to dig, a corner of the underground chamber just outside the existing bathroom stall.

  They managed to haul away twelve truckloads of dirt without raising suspicion.

  “What about neighbors and spies?” I asked.

  “People were curious, yeah. And we knew some of them had to be spies and collaborators. So the first thing we did was to dig through and then obscure the access behind a wall. Then we let people come and look around the renovation of the salon, as if we had nothing to hide.”

  I turned to Jumana, forcing her to look at me. “And you weren’t the least suspicious?”

  “Yeah. I was. I did finally demand to know why the simple toilet upgrade I’d asked for became a much bigger bathroom with cabinetry and shelves, why the late-night work, why their neighbor Samer was helping, why they were also redoing other parts of the salon,” she said, laughing.

  “We had rehearsed ways to tell her, but at that point, we didn’t even know where to start,” Wadee said. “Instead, we just showed her.”

  It had been Jumana’s idea to bring Bilal into the fold. Ghassan was in prison at the time, doing a stint in administrative detention.

  “We grew up together,” Jumana said, looking at me now. “I trusted him, and he was the only person I knew who could help us make sense of this, and what to do with it.”

  Despite the work they had done to excavate and create secret entryways, they had not given much thought to its use. “At least it would be a place to hide if any of us needed to disappear,” Jumana said. “But it was Bilal’s idea to amass weapons here. Between the army’s constant house raids and our own traitors, it’s difficult to hide anything from them.” Jumana looked again at Bilal.

  My insecurity—probably jealousy—turned into impatience. Every glance they exchanged was full of their shared kinships and friendships, family histories, community and political knowledge, common aspirations and secrets. The more they spoke, the more irritated I became and the more a question echoed in my head: What am
I doing here?

  They told stories about people who had been caught with guns. I began feeling claustrophobic, anxious to leave. My mind drifted to Amman. I wondered what Mama was doing. How was Sitti Wasfiyeh’s health? I wondered why Jehad hadn’t told me he had been in touch with Mhammad. I missed my brother. The sense of being an outsider among these people spread homesickness through me. Why was I still here, with these people who had spied on me? Who had invaded my privacy, dissected and analyzed my thoughts and movements? Bilal did not feel familiar to me anymore, and I heard Um Buraq’s voice in my head: Trust no man.

  “… and that’s why we need your help, Nahr,” Bilal said.

  “W-what?” I stammered.

  “You’re the only one who can cross into Jerusalem. None of us has a permit to enter. We also cannot be caught in a car with yellow plates,” Bilal explained.

  One of the first things I’d learned when I arrived in Palestine was the color code for license plates. White plates denoted Palestinians, restricted to driving on a few roads, most of which were disconnected and unpaved. Yellow plates were for Israeli citizens, some Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs, and tourists. One could travel anywhere with yellow plates, and since I had a tourist visa, I was allowed to enter Jerusalem. Bilal thought someone had made a clerical error in stamping a general tourist visa on my Jordanian travel document, because even tourist visas specifically from Jordan and Egypt could be restricted from entering Jerusalem.

  “I have an Israeli contact. He’s Russian and will sell us weapons but not risk taking them across checkpoints. We have to transport them ourselves,” Bilal said, now softer.

  “You’re crazy. I can’t be a gunrunner!” I said.

  “Please just hear us out, Nahr,” Samer pleaded. “You’re one of us now and—”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I said.

  “Stop!” Bilal put his hands up. “Let’s all take a deep breath and lower our voices.”

  Samer apologized. “I was just trying to say, we’ll have your back. No matter what happens, we would not let you take the fall. We have sworn loyalty to anyone we bring into this space and expect the same. We’ve also collected money to pay you.”

  “There’s no need, because I’m not transporting guns and ending up in some Jewish gulag.”

  “I’m sorry, Nahr. We made a mistake. I’ll help you up the rope ladder,” Bilal said. It surprised me how much it hurt to hear that he’d made a mistake choosing or trusting me.

  As I got up and turned to leave, Jumana’s whisper echoed in the chamber: “At least it’s an honorable way to earn money.”

  I hadn’t known the extent of the rumors. When I came to Palestine, I’d told myself I didn’t care. But there it was, confronting me in this strange place, and I did care. What Bilal thought of me mattered, despite myself.

  Bilal turned to her before I did. Her brothers too. They all looked shocked. “What did you say?” There was rage and fury in Bilal’s question. I could see that his reaction stunned her. She shook her head rapidly, as if trying to erase the past seconds.

  They knew.

  I walked slowly and deliberately past Bilal toward Jumana, feeling my body quiver with cold rage. Jumana waxed apologetic, but I put my finger to my mouth. “Shhh.”

  The sense of being an interloper, the insecurity and loneliness I had been feeling, concentrated a chill in my voice, calm, low, and measured. “I don’t give a goddamn what you think of me, or what you think you know about me or about honor, for that matter. You act like you’re some kind of revolutionary because you found a fucking hole in the ground. You think you’re going to liberate Palestine, you stupid, privileged girl? Or maybe you just want to impress Bilal. Maybe you think you’re much better than me. That you have a right to kick a woman you believe is beneath you.”

  Her face changed. She looked more vulnerable in the soft light of our primeval surroundings. But I wasn’t speaking only to her, or about her. Something inside of me was unraveling. My thoughts and wounds forming into words.

  “What’s truly revolutionary in this world is to relinquish the belief that you have a right to an opinion about who another person chooses to fuck and why. That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?” I’d thought this since the first time I met Mohsin, the boy who loved boys, but hadn’t truly considered it in the context of my own life. I spoke now from my secret shame, the smallness I’ve always felt and the grand bravado coating it all. It made my face twitch involuntarily, and I was glad for the dimness and shadows that hid my body’s betrayals. More than anything, I relished a new freedom blooming in me with every word, and I couldn’t stop.

  “Those destitute refugees from Iraq and Ethiopia you like to talk about with such feminist fervor—do you know what they do in Amman? They sell their daughters and sons. Honor is an expendable luxury when you have no means or shelter in this fucking world.” My legs began trembling, making it hard to stand still, and my voice shook now with suppressed tears. “We are not all blessed to receive a good education and inherit what it takes to live with some dignity. To exist on your own land, in the bosom of your family and your history. To know where you belong in the world and what you’re fighting for. To have some goddamn value.” I put my face closer to hers. I wanted her to taste my breath. “Some of us, Madam Honor, end up with little choice but to Fuck. For. Money.” My head spun behind my eyes. I thought I would faint.

  Jumana began to cry, which both surprised and disgusted me. I had expected her to become defensive and lash out with that word: Whore! But she was guilt-ridden and ashamed. I swallowed the tears that welled in my throat, turned, and walked to the corridor, leaning against the wall to steady myself. Bilal lit my way and opened the bathroom floor above. He tried to speak, to pull me back, to console. But I was stone. I was heartbroken too, and I shoved him away. No one judged me more harshly than I judged myself.

  I packed my bags. The belonging and acceptance I had found seemed an illusion. Palestine was my mother’s world. It belonged to Sitti Wasfiyeh’s stories. Palestine did not want me, nor I her any longer. I was again untethered and vulnerable, a stranger in a place that had felt like home. Needing an anchor and solid ground beneath my feet, I didn’t know what to do except go back to Amman. But I had to wait a few days more for the finalized divorce papers, time I spent with Hajjeh Um Mhammad—gardening, cooking, feeding the chickens, watching her favorite soap operas, praying, and talking. Bilal stayed away, returning late in the evenings.

  Hajjeh Um Mhammad tried to convince me not to leave. “You made me love you, and now you’re leaving. Don’t do that to an old woman. This is your home,” she said. I wondered if she knew. If she would still want me if she did.

  The divorce papers were completed in another two weeks. They were on the table one morning. Bilal had left a letter for me in the package.

  Dearest Nahr,

  I know there’s nothing I can say to convince you to stay, but I want nothing more. Palestine is your home, even if you choose not to live with us.

  I would like to speak with you. I fear you have made some false assumptions. It pains me that you will carry them with you. For the sake of our friendship, will you please allow time for me before you go? There are some things you have a right to know, secrets I’ve carried for too long. I will be in the hills with the flock until sundown. I’ll wait in our spot, hoping you will come.

  Love, B.

  I lingered on the words our spot. Now, in this Cube, this chamber of timeless nontime, I ponder why those words touched me as they did. Was I so starved for a place? For a physical and emotional ground that included me? Or maybe what moved me most was to know there was a little clearing on this planet just for Bilal and me, for “love.” Love, B.

  I walked in my green-and-white sneakers—now dirty and worn from months of walking this terrain—toward the clearing where Bilal and I first shared tea and bizir when I had trekked in heels. We had spent many hours together here since—hiking, picking wild thyme, nappi
ng. The quiet of that first day was already a distant memory, gradually replaced by the thuds of jackhammers, the screech of churning cement and drills in the expanding settlement nearby. But Israelis didn’t work on the Jewish Shabbat, and the hills were unmolested on that day. I saw Bilal ahead, reading under that old olive tree, resting his head on the belly of a sleeping sheep, man and beast completing each other in perfect laziness.

  The sheep heard me first and a few rose to their feet. Bilal closed his book and stood. Jandal, the kind shepherd, was on the other side of the tree. He greeted me: “Salaam, Sitt Yaqoot! You honor me. The land is brighter with your presence.”

  I didn’t correct the name, especially when the flattery continued: “Your name, Yaqoot, is a testament to your precious rarity.”

  “May God keep you always well, Brother Jandal. You are classy and kind,” I replied, and he excused himself, walking farther up the hillside. Bilal had spread a blanket on the ground beside him.

  “I’m glad you came.” Here was Bilal the Awkward Lover of Life. The Quiet Reader. The Lie-with-Sheep-in-Laziness Bilal.

  “Thank you for the papers,” I said.

  “We’re still family, divorce or not. Please sit with me.” He motioned to the blanket.

  “What did you want to talk about?” I lowered myself beside him.

  “Come. Tea first.” He pointed to his dented kettle warming over burning embers. From the looks of the fire, he’d been there for some time. He pulled a second tea glass from his knapsack, and we went through the motions performed millions of times through the centuries in this part of the world. Managing a hot kettle on an outdoor fire, adding tea and sage leaves, spooning honey or sugar, pouring, inhaling the warm air hovering over the glass, sipping, feeling hot liquid slide down the throat into one’s core. The sweet minted hot tea with sage warmed my insides. I was content to just sit there in the splendid silence of the hills, where the quiet amplified small sounds—the wind rustling trees; sheep chewing, roaming, bleating, breathing; the soft crackle of the fire; the purr of Bilal’s breathing. I realized how much I had come to love these hills; how profound was my link to this soil. The turmoil of the days past dissipated. Bilal had once again brought me to this special space where I could breathe deeply, lie on earth, let the crowded, chaotic thoughts colliding in my head recede.