The Woman from Tantoura: A Palestinian Novel

by Radwa Ashour

  Later I asked Sumana about the sea in their country. She understood some of what I said, but she didn’t understand all of it. I wanted to hear from her about the scent of the sea there, and about the flowers. She said, “Fa-low-erz?” not understanding. I said, “Are there flowers in your country, like these?” I took her to the large vase where there was a bouquet of artificial roses. She said the names, and I did not recognize any of them. But she did not forget the question, because weeks later she brought me a Sri Lankan magazine and showed me pictures of flowers. She said, “This one is found in our village; this one, no.” Then on another page: “This one and that one too grow near the sea, and these birds.”

  Sumana writes regularly to her family. Once a week she holds out her hand to Sadiq with two sealed envelopes, and he takes them from her. She waits for his return so he can reassure her that he has put the envelopes in the mail; and as long as he is going to the post office, he might find letters from her family in the box. Generally he brings her a letter, but sometimes he says, “I’m sorry, Sumana, nothing came for you.” She thanks him and gives him a courteous smile.

  One day traces of weeping appeared in her eyes. I asked her and she said, “It’s nothing.” I asked Randa, and she said, “I scolded her because she broke a plate and burned the kubbeh she was frying. She’s been holding a wake since yesterday night because her mother sent her a letter saying that her husband is living with another woman. Evelyn told me. Men are like that, you can’t rely on them. As long as she was worried about her husband, she should have stayed with him! In any case I called her in and told her that personal matters have nothing to do with work.”

  I said to Randa, “And if she got news that her four children had died in a traffic accident, would she be allowed to cry, or would she have to be careful to serve kubbeh that’s not burnt?” Randa was surprised by what I said. She picked up her purse and said that she had an appointment with the hairdresser.

  I was sharp. I acknowledge that Randa and Sadiq put up with my sharpness. It would surprise me; I didn’t speak much, and I would be surprised by what I said as much as Sadiq or Randa would be surprised by it. Sadiq tries. Sometimes he says, “Let’s go, Mother.” “Where to?” He takes me in his car, usually to an air-conditioned coffee shop. During the two months of winter, when the scorching heat and humidity retreat, he drives his car to a spot on the beach where we can walk in the sand. We take off our sandals and walk beside each other. Sometimes then the knot in my tongue comes untied and I talk to Sadiq, and he also talks to me.

  36

  A Lesson

  I said to Maryam, “I want to talk to you. Don’t go to the club with Sadiq and his children tomorrow morning; we’ll sit and talk.”

  “Is it a punishment?”

  “Not a punishment, but a talk that will take time.”

  “Why on Friday morning? Let’s talk now, or Friday evening.

  “I want you on Friday morning.”

  “Mama, the talk won’t go away. I wait for Friday all week, so I can go to the club and meet my friends.”

  I ended the discussion firmly: “No club this week.”

  She left me, grumbling in protest, but she obeyed.

  I was amazed that when Maryam recalled what happened and told her brother about it, she remembered the conversation down to the smallest detail. She was talking to Abed in my presence more than ten years later, flavoring her words with some of the Egyptian expressions she had picked up since we had moved to live in Alexandria.

  Maryam told him: “She cornered me in the room and beat the hell out of me. It was a lesson in morals and history and geography and the family tree: ‘Your father was … your grandfather Abu Sadiq was … your maternal uncles … your grandfather Abu Amin was … ,’ and the refrain: ‘We’re Palestinians. Refugees. Children of the camps.’ And me, ‘Mama, what did I do?’ She said that she had noticed that I was putting myself above the Sri Lankan maid and that I had begun to act like the girls here in the Gulf. ‘And if our living here is going to change you into one of them, we’ll go back to Lebanon. We’ll go back to Sidon and live in Ain al-Helwa, and the camp will cure you, it’ll teach you who you are.’ It was heavy, Abed, and your sister was completely lost! I didn’t understand why Mama was so angry. I was twelve, and I couldn’t comprehend the nature of the crime. She hauled me before a court where she was the judge and the prosecutor, and I was seeing stars.”

  I broke in, “Stop exaggerating. All I did was point out that you were slipping into a style of life that we don’t belong to, and that we can’t belong to. I don’t remember the details, but I remember that I heard you calling Sumana as if you were issuing orders, and I was horrified. I didn’t sleep all night.”

  Abed laughed. “We’ve all graduated from that institute before, with the same book and the same lessons!”

  Maryam said, “You were three, you could get it off your chest with each other. Poor me, who could I complain to?”

  “So which actress should play you, Fatin Hamama or Shadya?”

  “Fatin, she’s an orphan and wasn’t treated fairly.”

  “And Mama?”

  “Mimi Shakib, the stepmother. She’s fat and mispronounces her R’s and wears tighter clothes than she should, to call attention to the size of her breasts and buttocks. She leaves her hair disheveled on purpose and dyes it bright yellow, and she persecutes me!”

  They dissolved into laughter. Then Maryam realized that she had gone too far, so she jumped from her seat, put her arms around me and kissed my head. She bent over my ear and said, “Thank you. You were right.”

  I was afraid, that’s for sure, and being away from home made me more worried. I brought up the children as well as I could. I held each one’s hand and accompanied him on the path from childhood to youth without any unfortunate accidents, and now each was responsible for himself. That left Maryam; I wanted to bring her up properly. Was I afraid for her only, or was I afraid that she would go over to the other camp and leave me alone and completely isolated? It was absolute isolation, utter and complete, in a two-story house with two servants who had come from the Far East, where a single one of the banquets given cost a sum that would have been enough for a large family in the camp to live on for a year, or maybe two.

  I did not spend time alone with Sadiq as I did with Maryam, to raise her. My mission and my role in life, and maybe the meaning of my life now, was Maryam. As for Sadiq, my attitude toward him was ambiguous and strange. I thought about it, and it seemed as if I had entered a maze and become lost. He was an architect and a contractor, successful in his work, his company growing day by day, bringing him money in amounts that were inconceivable to me. He helped his brothers and supported his sister and me. He made contributions to this or that Palestinian foundation. He took responsibility for the education of three young men from Ain al-Helwa, following their progress and guaranteeing them a job on graduation—and then he took on three others. What did I have against him? He had worked hard, and had been helped by his education, his acumen, and by luck. In short, he had strived in an oil-producing country and been rewarded—what was the problem, what was wrong with that? Use your mind to judge, Ruqayya, and reckon calmly: Would you have preferred that he suffocate in the tank truck on the way to oil country? Or that he stay in Ain al-Helwa, looking for work, falling afoul of the law, and not finding anything? Or that he bear arms and end up in one of the offices in Tunis, or as a besieged fighter in the camps in Yemen or Algeria, with no way to see his wife or children? I jumped over the maze, or sneaked outside its walls, but it caught up with me, became larger, and threw up new walls around the area I had run to. Don’t they suffer from isolation in Ain al-Helwa, too? I wonder where Haniya is now? Has she found a job in another place, or has she been forced to deny that she’s Palestinian to find work in one of the hospitals in Beirut? Where will I go, where will we go?

  37

  Abu Muhammad

  It was chance, pure chance, that brought us together.
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  Sadiq took me to a large shopping mall to buy some things for Maryam. He said that he would come to take us home two hours later, and told us about a coffee shop on the second floor where we could sit to rest, or to wait for him if we finished shopping before he came back.

  I finished buying what Maryam needed in less than half an hour; we went down to the second floor and headed for the coffee shop. As soon as we went in I noticed him. He was sitting alone, with a kufiyeh on his head. He was wearing a qumbaz with a leather belt around his waist and a jacket over it, like my father and my uncle Abu Amin. We sat at a nearby table; I ordered the ice cream Maryam wanted and a cup of coffee for myself. I thought, he might not be Palestinian, maybe he’s Syrian, from the country; but I thought it was likely that he was Palestinian. His face seemed familiar, similar to many of the elderly men in Ain al-Helwa and Sabra and Shatila. He was between sixty and seventy, maybe older but not showing his age. He was tall and thin, his face dark and gaunt, his forehead broad. He had a penetrating look in his lively eyes, despite the prominence of his forehead and his bushy white eyebrows. I turned away my eyes; what would the man say, with me staring at him like that?

  “Yes, Maryam.”

  She protested, “I’m talking to you and you’re not listening!”

  “Yes I am, I’m listening.”

  She returned to her chatter, but I only followed a little of what she said. I interrupted her, “Do you see that man sitting at the table to our right?”

  She pointed with her hand, “That man?”

  I suppressed a laugh. “Maryam, when will you grow up? It’s not polite to point to him like that. I wanted to tell you that he reminds me of your grandfather Abu Amin.”

  Maryam looked at him directly.

  “Don’t look at him like that, he will realize that we’re talking about him!”

  He realized. Perhaps he felt awkward and wanted to change the situation, so he greeted us: “Hello.”

  I said, “Hello, how do you do?”

  He said, “I arrived in Abu Dhabi yesterday. One of my acquaintances asked me to take a letter to his son, and I called him on the telephone as soon as I arrived. He said, ‘I’ll meet you in the shopping mall, in the coffee shop on the second floor.’ It’s half an hour after the time he gave me, and he has not appeared. Is there another coffee shop on this floor?”

  Maryam ran to one of the employees in the shop, and asked. She returned to her seat, and said, “There are many coffee shops in the complex but this is the only one on the second floor.”

  “No problem, I’ll wait.”

  Maryam asked him, “Do you live in Lebanon?”

  “I’m Palestinian, I’ve never visited Lebanon in my life. I’ve come from the West Bank to visit my son. I live in Jenin. Originally I’m from Tantoura, do you know where Tantoura is, girl? It’s …”

  Did I scream or shout? Did I laugh? Was I preoccupied by the thought that I would not have looked at him like that if I hadn’t known him even though I didn’t know him, because blood calls to blood? I invited him to sit at our table, and it was easy to talk.

  When the man looking for the letter came and took Abu Muhammad to another table, he seemed to me like an uninvited guest who had no right to spoil our meeting like this. I kept waiting, looking at my watch every few minutes, only to discover that just a few minutes had passed. Why doesn’t he take his letter and leave? Why doesn’t he leave Abu Muhammad to me, so I can ask him if he knew my father? He’s younger than my father, maybe ten years younger; or maybe he was of the same generation, and just doesn’t show his years. How had he escaped the massacre? Maybe he was not in the village on the night of Saturday to Sunday; where was he? Had he lost anyone in his family? Why was the recipient of the letter sitting so long with Abu Muhammad? He came an hour and ten minutes ago, and he doesn’t seem ready to leave. He got the letter, what does he want now—and what if he took Abu Muhammad with him? Maybe it would be wisest if I got up now and took his telephone number, or a way to reach him. Will he live in Abu Dhabi, or is it just a passing visit? I was becoming more and more tense, and Maryam was complaining that I was not following what she was saying. I said, “I’m listening to you, Maryam, I’m listening.” But her words came to my ears as a handful of sounds, which did not translate into any meaning in my head.

  At last Sadiq appeared, and I introduced him to Abu Muhammad. They spoke a few minutes, and before we left the coffee shop Sadiq invited him to visit us with his son, exchanging telephone numbers with him.

  The next day as we were having lunch, Sadiq said, directing his words to me, “It’s a coincidence more amazing than the one yesterday. Muhammad, Abu Muhammad’s son, works with us as an accountant in the company, a young man in his thirties. The predicament is that I’ve never invited any of the employees, and now it will seem like clannishness for me to invite him because he’s from our village.”

  I looked at Sadiq, “Where’s the predicament? How can it be clannishness to invite a person from your village whom you want to get to know?”

  Sadiq laughed. He seemed split between embarrassment and pride, “Mother, your son is the president of the company!”

  “So?”

  “I can invite an employee on some occasion, but can’t favor a minor employee by inviting him to my house unless he’s my brother or my cousin.”

  I said, “Consider them your uncle and his son!”

  “The problem is that his colleagues will feel as if it’s favoritism.” He laughed suddenly, not without embarrassment, “Should I explain that my mother wants to meet his father because he’s from Tantoura?”

  I was not comfortable with his words, and I didn’t understand what he meant.

  After Abu Muhammad and his son visited us, I was careful to return the visit. I took Maryam with me and I met Muhammad’s wife and two children, and asked them all to lunch at Sadiq’s house. I said that I would cook, and I prepared a feast worthy of people from Tantoura. Sadiq did not seem to welcome my conduct; maybe he considered it rash, unjustified, and incomprehensible. That’s what I sensed, though he did not add anything to what he had said previously. But I decided to leave him to his confusion and worry, and to do as I pleased, visiting them and inviting them to the house. The day Abu Muhammad left for Amman, Sadiq took me, unwillingly, to the airport to see him off. He said, “Didn’t you say goodbye to him yesterday? I sent the driver as you asked, didn’t you go?”

  “I did go.”

  He smiled. “You forgot to give him the wool sweater you made for Wisal?”

  “I gave it to him. I asked him to look for her, and to give it to her.”

  “So?” He was looking at me in surprise. I said, “Sadiq, humor me, I want to see him off at the airport.”

  “As you wish.”

  38

  The Prisoner’s Tale

  Abu Muhammad told me his story.

  “I was among the forty they stood against the wall. I no longer remember if I had resigned myself to death and pronounced the shahada, or if I was still clinging to God’s power over everything, to his ability to change one state into another, in the blink of an eye. I only remember that we were standing, raising our hands as we had been ordered, our faces to the wall, barely seeing what was going on behind our backs: the rifles leveled at us, the contempt on their faces and the look of fear and bloodthirstiness. Yes, Sitt Ruqayya, they were afraid—how else can you explain all this killing after the battle had ended in their favor, after they had killed some and occupied the town? They were talking at the top of their voices, as if they were in the desert or as if they thought that everyone around them was deaf. They were shouting insults and curses and pushing this one with the butt of a rifle and beating that one on the head. We were standing near the village center, which was suddenly invaded by a strange odor, stronger than the smell of the sea. Then suddenly they said ‘Yalla, yalla, let’s go,’ and drove us under the threat of arms into trucks, we forty who were to be executed at the wall and others from the town
. They stuffed us into the trucks like sheep and took us to the Zikhron Yaakov colony in Zummarin. We were several hundred, maybe three or four hundred men.

  “Why didn’t they kill us at the wall? Some say that Yaqub, the headman of Zikhron Yaakov, is the one who saved us. They say that an old man from our town knew him and was standing in another line to be executed, and that he said to Yaqub when he saw him, ‘Abu Yusuf, the town has fallen and you’ve taken the weapons. What more is there after that?’ and that Yaqub answered, ‘We want to make peace between you and the Hagana so that we can stop the killing.’ They say that the headman left the village and came back with a written order to stop the killing. They say that some of the residents of Zikhron Yaakov, who had neighborly relations with some of the townspeople, intervened. Some say that they wanted to stop the killing because they needed us to work in their settlements, and some say that they wanted us alive because Abd Allah al-Tall had captured three hundred of them in the battle of Kfar Atsiyon near Jerusalem, and they wanted to exchange us. God only knows.

  “In any case the trucks unloaded us in Zikhron Yaakov, at the building that was the headquarters of the English army. They held us, thirty to a narrow, dank, dark room that was only big enough for us if we stood. We spent three days in those mass graves, without any food but beatings with rifle butts, insults, and abuse.

  “I’m sure you understand, Sitt Ruqayya, our morale was very low. The town had fallen, and we had seen piles of bodies with our own eyes. In fact, four of us had been told to move some of the bodies and bury them in a large ditch. Everyone who had seen anything spoke about it. Some said that they saw groups of people from Zikhron Yaakov walking around the town, with the bodies everywhere, singing and clapping their hands, and that others were doing the same thing on the boats in the sea near the beach. They were celebrating. One would say, ‘I saw So-and-So’s body.’ ‘So-and-So fell, killed before my eyes.’ ‘I saw Abu So-and-So and his brother and the three children of his brother killed near the mosque.’ Those who were martyred in the battle were few. In fact, more of them died than of us; that was also why they were afraid and lusting to kill. But most of those who were martyred were killed after being stripped of their weapons, after the end of the battle. Then we saw the women and children and old men in trucks, and no one knew where they took them. One person among us saw the Israeli soldiers assaulting a girl before his eyes, and when her father tried to protect her, they killed him. No one talks about rape now because it’s a painful subject for the family, and they don’t want to go into it, but we learned of it when we were held in Zikhron Yaakov. I was twenty-two and was not married, but I had four sisters; you can imagine my state, and my fears. We were all thinking about the old women. I mean, death and destruction and the greatest possible humiliation. All of these things, Sitt Ruqayya, were lead weights. It was a terrifying despair; I never knew anything like it, before or since, except perhaps in 1967. I was imprisoned twice later on and I did not despair, even though I was older and had a family and children I was worried about. In the seventies I was imprisoned for five years, and in the Intifada I was held for six months. Both times I was part of a group that believed it was powerful. We were part of a resistance organization, and in the prison camp there was a meaning to life; we weren’t without hope, or without moments of contentment, satisfaction, even cheer. In 1948 the situation in the camp was completely different. The despair was total, and life was narrow, dark, dank and oppressive, like the room we were crowded into.