Against the Loveless World

by Susan Abulhawa

  I pulled back. “Are you scared?” I asked.

  He hesitated, moving slightly closer.

  “Yes,” he whispered, closing the space between us. I closed my eyes as our lips found each other. I would like to tell you that I was swept away with passion, but it was not so. The disquiet deep within me, an insecurity or fear so constant I barely knew it was there, arose. As our kiss deepened, became more expressive, thirstier, I was overcome by a desire to weep. No one had ever kissed me with such love, and it occurred to me that happiness can reach such depths that it becomes something akin to grief.

  Each of us was up early the next morning, taking our positions. Jumana and I arrived at the checkpoint at nine. On schedule, the tourist van approached in line with oncoming cars on the other side. She and I queued along the footpath, readying ourselves to create a ruckus, as we noticed the van was weighed down more than it should be with only six tourists, all of whom were white Westerners. To our relief, the soldiers waved them through without inspecting more than their passports.

  “I guess our work here is done,” Jumana said.

  “Damn. I was kinda looking forward to beating your ass in public.” I laughed.

  “Girl,” she said, flexing a muscle, “didn’t anyone ever tell you to watch out for the quiet, skinny ones?”

  “I’d crush you with one of my ass cheeks before you could do anything with that scrawny muscle.”

  We laughed, but without mirth, strained by all that could go wrong in the next few hours. Wadee, Faisal, and Samer had the most dangerous job. They had to retrieve the guns from the van’s secret compartment, pack them into the sofa in the back of a rented truck, drive to the beauty salon, and unload it. Bringing the sofa into Jumana’s salon was the riskiest part, because passersby would surely come to help, as much out of nosiness as generosity, and the weight of the sofa might rouse suspicions, which would surely bring the military at our door. So the twins would have to reject any help, offending would-be helpers and arousing suspicion anyway.

  That’s where Jumana and I would come in again. We were to be waiting at the salon to help carry the cushions, each packed with weapons and ammunition. No one would think it odd that women couldn’t carry more than a cushion at a time. We’d worked out every conceivable detail, even ensuring that Jumana’s customers couldn’t help, by putting them in hair foils or under the dryers, forcing them to stay put.

  Jumana and I had to cross one checkpoint returning to the salon. We didn’t expect to get held up, but one of the soldiers decided to scrutinize Jumana’s ID. Afraid to lose time, I flirted with the soldier. He was at least a decade my junior, but one could always count on men being distracted by their dicks. The Jewish boy with a big gun allowed us through, smiling, watching my ass jiggle as we walked away.

  I grabbed Jumana’s hand like she was my lover and warned, “Don’t look back.”

  “You’re my hero.” She clutched my hand. “I want to be like you when I grow up.”

  “Bitch, you’re older than me.” We gave humor another try, but it didn’t stop our guts from churning with anxiety. We continued nervously to the salon, about a twenty-minute walk. Jumana loosened her scarf and let it fall with each step until it draped her neck. As we neared the salon, we could see a crowd clogging the street. Jumana grabbed my hand again. We walked a few hurried steps until we realized the crowd was massed around the salon, trying to break the door down. Then we sprinted ahead as the neighborhood children yelled at us, “Hurry, Auntie Jumana! Your shop is burning!”

  Pushing through the crowd, we saw smoke foaming out from the door and windows. A siren wailed in the distance, the fire truck parting the crowd with a brain-seizing blast of its horn. We stepped back into the mass of astonished onlookers, clutching each other, watching and listening to the shouting men with the water hose, the hiss and roar of flames, and the black, billowing smoke.

  A child’s high-pitched voice said, “Looks like your brothers have to do all that work over again.” We both turned to the little girl, then to each other, exchanging worried glances. What if the underground is discovered? What are Samer and the twins to do now? What of Bilal and Ghassan?

  I had a vision of us all being tortured in Israeli prisons, the entire neighborhood razed and taken over by settlers, excavated as yet another Disneyland Jewish archaeology site, the city renamed, its natives ghettoized somewhere else. I felt nauseated.

  My mobile phone rang and I flipped it open. “Bilal!”

  “Habibti, are you and Jumana okay?”

  “We’re fine. But the salon—”

  “We heard. Ghassan and I are five minutes away. Stay calm. It’s all under control.”

  When the fire truck left and we stood in the charred, drenched salon, Jumana had a meltdown, screaming at everyone to get out. Her hair dryers, Formica counters, and plastic chairs had melted into abstract shapes; her potted plants were blackened and limp; and the ceiling fan hung precariously by a few wires, water dripping from its blades.

  “I sold part of my father’s farm to create this business. It’s all over. They’re going to kill us now and take it all,” she said to no one, broken glass crackling under her step. I peered into the bathroom. The walls and fixtures, including the cabinet behind the toilet, were blackened but not burned. She slid down with her back against the wall, hugged her knees, and began to sob. I kneeled close to her, worried what was taking Bilal and Ghassan so long.

  “Habibti, you have to pull it together. We will find a way to fix up the place, but right now—”

  “I’m not crying over the salon. I have no way to get in touch with Faisal and Wadee. I have no idea what happened to them. There’s no one to call, no place to look without putting them at more risk.” She looked into my eyes. “What have we done?”

  “Stop it!” I grabbed and squared her shoulders and said with as much authority as I could collect, keeping my voice low even though she had cleared people out, “Bilal and Ghassan should have been here half an hour ago. For all we know, all the men have been rounded up and soldiers will be here for us soon.”

  She opened her eyes wider, as if awoken from a bad dream. “What do we do? Should we go underground?”

  “No. People will see,” I said. “I must go take Auntie Hajjeh Um Mhammad to her sister’s house, in case soldiers are on their way to her house. Then you and I can—”

  We heard a car engine stop. Bilal and Ghassan were hurrying toward us, Bilal almost slipping on the white fire-extinguisher foam. We sprang to our feet, Jumana landing in Ghassan’s embrace and I in Bilal’s. She resumed her sobbing, muffled now against Ghassan’s chest.

  “What took you so long?” I asked when I caught my breath.

  “There’s a new checkpoint on Abu Hayyan Street. Two sons of bitches in uniform and a couple of boulders in the middle of the road,” he said. Both he and Ghassan were smiling, looking toward the blackened toilet and bathroom walls, all still standing, still hiding our secret.

  “What’s so funny?” Jumana pushed Ghassan slightly away.

  Ghassan hugged her again and apologized. “Nothing is funny. But you don’t need to worry. Your brothers and Samer are okay, and we’re all going to fix up your salon in no time. I promise.”

  I gaped at Bilal, the four of us exchanging looks. What began as a small chuckle of relief swelled into laughter that brought passersby peering in.

  Finally Ghassan suggested we get out of there. “Come on, let’s get something to eat. Bilal and I will seal the windows and door with some of this wood.” He pointed to planks from the blackened furniture. “We’ll fill you in on what happened when we get to the house.”

  “No, tell us now,” Jumana insisted. “Where are my brothers and Samer?”

  “They’re safe. They have the shipment. The truck is parked in a garage overnight. Samer had the sense to rent it for a week, and our contact in Barmal is putting them up for the night,” Bilal said. Jumana looked at Ghassan for confirmation.

  “It’s true,�
�� Ghassan said. “We’re coming early tomorrow morning to repair the outside and replace the door and windows. We’ll bring the sofa another day.”

  Jumana furrowed her brow. “How are you going to replace windows before anything else? What if the whole place collapses?”

  Ghassan again chuckled. “It’s not as bad as it looks. It just needs some cleaning up and a bit of carpentry. Fire doesn’t burn metal and stone, habibti.”

  “I’m sure she knows that, Ghassan,” I instinctively snapped. Men have a way of speaking to women as if we’re children.

  He looked at Bilal, as though restraining himself on account of their friendship. But I continued, “Just like she knows, as I’m sure you do, that fire can weaken the mortar and make the metal frame shift or even collapse, if it’s not repaired.” I made that up, but it sounded logical, and I figured Ghassan probably didn’t know either. I liked Ghassan, but he had a machismo that provoked me to sarcasm, which provoked him in turn.

  “You’re both right,” Bilal and Jumana chorused to ease the tension. But Ghassan would have the last word.

  “Just let the men fix things,” he said, pleased with himself as he walked ahead. Bilal signaled pleadingly not to respond. I held my tongue, not because of Bilal, but because of what Ghassan said next.

  “It was just an electrical fire, not an explosion. Jumana shouldn’t have left that hot plate on,” he said.

  Jumana immediately put her arm around me, whispering, “I leave that stupid thing on all the time.” I realized at that moment what the firemen had told Jumana and then gone around telling everyone else in town. The only “hot plate” was the depilatory wax warming pot that I used for clients. I was the one who had left it on. The fire was my fault. Jumana hadn’t told me, or Ghassan. I turned to her, mortified by my mistake, but her eyes told me not to say anything.

  I went to bed that night preoccupied with how I was going to apologize and repent. I think it was the first time I had felt such a thing.

  Ghassan was correct that the fire hadn’t damaged the building, but it destroyed enough to keep the brothers working every evening for a week while Jumana and I cleaned, painted, and repaired what could be salvaged. If there was a silver lining to the fire, it was the trust that formed between Jumana and me. It was my turn to apologize, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

  “If I blame anyone, and I don’t, it’s my brothers for faulty wiring,” she said.

  The hours we spent washing soot from the walls, ceilings, floors, fixtures, and furniture were passed in a redemptive sisterhood. When we had cleaned as much as we could, we painted the walls, the frames of the newly installed front window and the front door, wide open to the springtime air, the radio playing the pop music of Nancy Ajram, Hayfa Wahbe, ‘Amr Diab, Sherine, and Ragheb Alama.

  “Since you’re feeling guilty and need to atone, you can thread my eyebrows later,” she said.

  “I thread your eyebrows anyway.”

  “Yeah, but not after a day’s worth of scrubbing, hauling, sweeping, and painting at the salon.”

  “The way you say that makes me feel like I need a raise.”

  “You said you were trying to atone!”

  “I didn’t say anything about atoning. I was just apologizing.”

  A smirk crept onto her face as she flicked her paintbrush, flinging blue paint onto me. Stunned, but fast in my reflexes, I used my roller to paint a blue line from the side of her face down past her waist before she could react, running away, laughing and screaming.

  “You did not think this through, girl,” I yelled, chasing her with my paint roller. She got a few more swings of paint at me, but her little paintbrush was no match for the long reach of my roller.

  That was our state when her brothers arrived to install the counter and shelves they had built in their shop. Nancy Ajram’s “Ah We Nos” was playing in the background to our madness.

  “What the hell are you crazies doing?” Faisal seemed exasperated. “Sis, you can’t do this right now.” They had been working for three days straight, both at their regular jobs and later at the salon, neither of them getting much rest, and weren’t in the mood for play. Wadee was missing his fiancée. “She thinks I’m cheating on her,” he said. Faisal was a nervous wreck, expecting someone to discover the truck at any moment.

  “My darling baby brothers. Go home and get some rest. Tomorrow the place will be fully painted and ready for you to install the counter and shelves. Just leave everything over there.” Jumana pointed toward the front of the store.

  Jumana and I took a break to clean ourselves up and enjoy a glass of tea before getting back to work. Bilal and Ghassan couldn’t help out much during the day, since there was so much to do at the bakery, especially with Ramadan fast approaching.

  “Is there another reason Ghassan only helps out here in the evenings after I’ve already gone?” I asked Jumana.

  She didn’t look up from her tea. “He comes when I’m gone. You know how people love to talk.”

  “That’s not the reason, is it?”

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  “Liar.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “He doesn’t like you being friends with me, does he?” I asked.

  “Nahr.” She sighed again. “He’s a traditional Palestinian man. He’s a good man with a big heart.”

  “But?” She hesitated. “He’s not used to women challenging him so much, that’s all.”

  I sucked air in through my teeth. “Let’s get back to work,” I said, getting up.

  “But he also really respects you. In fact, he admires you.”

  It both surprised and pleased me to imagine what she said was true. “Really?”

  “Yes, he said so more than once.”

  We worked well into the evening, stopping only once more for sandwiches from the falafel cart across the street. We cleaned and painted in step to whatever played on the radio. We gossiped. We spoke about love, revolution, beauty hacks, food, and loneliness, Bilal, her brothers, Ghassan, the bakery, settlements, menstrual issues, astrology, livestock, stray cats, news from surrounding towns, politics, and why neither of us wanted children.

  “I worry enough about my brothers, grown men, in this shitty situation. I don’t think I could survive worrying about my children having to deal with soldiers and settlers everywhere they turn,” she said. “What about you? Why don’t you want kids?”

  “Probably the same reason as you. I don’t want to bring a life into a world that will despise her existence, and because … sometimes the thought of having sex makes me want to throw up.”

  She turned to me, but I kept my eyes on the task at hand, leaving her to make her own assumptions as to why.

  CHAOS THEORY

  TWO WEEKS AFTER the smuggling operation, the card games at our house resumed, the truck had long been returned, and the new sofa, emptied of its secret contents, replaced the old, blackened one in the cleaned-up, fixed-up, repainted salon. We were spent, but proud of what we had done. We worked as a team and remained loyal to one another through the worst of surprises. The trust that evolved from that had weight—an immovable thing, like the hills around us, full of stories they’ll never tell and life they’ll always nurture. Or that’s just how I experienced it.

  “The fire actually gave us cover to bring in a new sofa, even though the old one wasn’t worn out,” said Faisal. We could count on him to find something good in misfortune.

  Most important, the twins had moved the guns safely underground. Bilal and Ghassan, the only two who knew anything about weapons, still had to inspect the wares. Being watched, they tried not to be together in places other than home and the bakery. The best opportunity to inspect the guns would be during an upcoming local wedding. In the meantime, the most Samer and the twins could offer was: “We counted everything, and it’s all there.”

  Finally Bilal and Ghassan met in the underground, as Jumana and I ran interference for people asking about them at the wedding. We stuck with Ha
jjeh Um Mhammad for a while, but she left early with her sister, who wasn’t feeling well. I did the best I could, but time and again I was pulled to dance and got lost in the music. Thankfully, Jumana kept her wits and eventually called me away. “Girl, if you dance one more time, the bride is going to clobber you. You’re sucking all the air and shine away from her,” she warned. I smiled at the bride, who narrowed her eyes and turned away, the music of Elissa’s “Bitmoun” filling the hall.

  “On the bright side, you distracted everyone,” Jumana whispered.

  We saw Samer heading toward our table. It was difficult to read him because a kind of jittery apprehension never left him, a sheath of electrical concern, like static that compelled one to always ask, Are you okay?

  “Everything okay, Samer?” Jumana asked.

  He signaled he couldn’t hear her. The music was loud. Jumana grabbed a chair and yanked him down between us, the three of us huddling. “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “They’re not happy,” he said. “They said most of the stuff is useless.”

  We straightened in our seats. I saw Bilal and Ghassan on opposite sides of the room giving a good impression of enjoying the party. About thirty people were dancing to an ‘Amr Diab song; others sat around tables, talking, eating, and watching the dancing. There was nothing more we could do that night. I started toward Bilal, but was pulled to the dance floor just as the DJ slowed the evening with the music of Fairooz. The first notes of her song “Ya Tayr” always move me. They are simple melodies played on the flute. But they sound like time. Like all that was good and lost. Others on the dance floor linked their arms and began to sway and sing the lyrics. I closed my eyes, the better to soak in the music. Fairooz has the kind of voice that gathers up the heart and takes you somewhere else. I was transported to another time, where I sat on the shores of Kuwait, my bare toes digging in the wet sand of the Arabian Gulf, the tide coming and receding at my feet, hundreds of periwinkle snails burrowing around them. I cruised el-Bahr Street in Salmiya with my friends, flirting with boys, prancing in our newly curved bodies. Silent smiling images of Mama, Sitti Wasfiyeh, Jehad, Sabah, and Baba framed in song lyrics floated gently by. Mhammad’s solitude and dishonesty, Um Buraq’s cunning and generosity, Deepa and Ajay, Saddam Hussein, American bombs, and finally back to Palestine, to sweet Jandal and baby goats. My hips swirled a spiral of memories that climbed through me into the ether until the song began to subside. I opened my eyes and saw Bilal watching me.