A Month by the Sea

by Dervla Murphy

  A small shy boy opened the gate as Jannath came sauntering across a parched lawn – bare-headed and wearing tight lime-green slacks and a low-cut cherry-red blouse. She introduced the boy as Mahmoud, a cousin, one of twelve family members now living in a house with ample space for forty. We sat on a wide verandah, enjoying the strong breeze coming from the sea across open ground, the property of a neighbour who was ‘keeping it undeveloped as an investment’. Meanwhile food was being grown there: lettuce, fennel, spinach. On the far side a few skeletal dwellings marked the site of a March 2008 IDF attack on Jabalya.

  At the end of February 2008 a forty-seven-year-old resident of Sderot in Israel was killed by a home-made rocket and, for the first time, other Qassam Brigades missiles reached Ashkelon where they did little or no damage. A week or so later the IDF killed 61 Jabalya camp residents in one day – among them two of Jannath’s cousins (Mahmoud’s sisters) and their mother. Tzipi Livni, then Israel’s Foreign Minister, found it easy to explain this mass slaughter of (mainly) civilians. ‘Everybody needs to understand that Israeli citizens are being terrorized by rockets coming from Gaza Strip. This is something we cannot live with.’

  Two years later Jannath and her sister Ayshah (aged respectively twenty-two and twenty-three) unwillingly migrated from their UAE birthplace to settle in Gaza. Their father (‘managing a big business in Abu Dhabi’) had been widowed in 2006 and remarried in 2007, his new wife not much older than his daughters. In that purdah quarter the atmosphere soon soured – though Jannath said their stepmother had a good relationship with the five brothers, all younger than the girls. In January 2010 the sisters were despatched to Gaza to live with their grandfather in the ancestral home, study at IUG and get married. Now all was well. Their previously unknown extended family had welcomed them enthusiastically and they were allowed more personal freedom on the Strip than in the paternal home.

  At that moment Ayshah joined us, wearing shorts and T-shirt, keen to show off a month-old infant in an expensive carry-cot. She had married a second cousin soon after their arrival, a young man who was making his mark at IUG as a ‘researching agronomist’. When I complimented both on their fluent English Ayshah explained, ‘Abu Dhabi is bilingual – has to be, with most of the population foreign!’

  Jannath looked at me and suddenly seemed embarrassed. ‘We should apologise for the university’s booklet in such bad English! It makes me angry and when I see Internationals laughing over our mistakes it makes me sad. So much money comes from Saudi, they could hire a qualified translator. It’s damaging our reputation. If bad English is OK, maybe we’re not so smart as we say about other things?’

  Then the bell rang. Mahmoud hurried to the door and shouted ‘Ahmed!’ – so the sisters had to scurry inside before the visitor could be admitted. Ahmed was a tall, bony young man with lingering acne and a slight squint. He shook hands and greeted me in halting English, then sat down and helped himself to tea. When the women returned, wearing colourful hijabs and all-enveloping plain cotton gowns, he was explained as Jannath’s first cousin and fiancé. Before marriage he must never see her hair uncovered or her curves discernible. I provocatively recalled Mrs Halaweh’s reminiscences of swimming parties on Gaza beach. Everyone looked shocked and after a moment Ahmed, frowning, pointed out that in Mandate and Egyptian times British customs prevailed and the Holy Koran was not properly interpreted. Now correct interpretations guide Gazan life. I persisted, remarking that West Bank women are less controlled than Gazan women. By now Ahmed looked indignant. On the West Bank, he sternly reminded me, there is a Jewish influence and also many more Internationals and some weak people want to copy their behaviour and harm is done too in some mosques where the Holy Koran is not interpreted by correct imams.

  Soon Ahmed went indoors to pay his respects to their mutual grandfather and Jannath said, ‘I’m happy, I worried a bit coming here, about would I like him. It’s fine, he’s a nice kind person, I’m very happy.’

  Ayshah said, ‘Some of our age group get the idea, from outside, about girls choosing husbands. A few years ago I was confused, thinking maybe I should be more independent. But really I know I couldn’t, I’d be afraid to make a mistake!’

  The baby woke, whimpered once and was taken under the maternal gown. Both sisters made banal remarks about Israel and the blockade but neither was interested in any form of activism, or speculation about future possibilities. As we chatted on in a desultory way I wondered if they were unaware of the risk involved in all these cousinly matings or if they had been warned but preferred to ignore the risk. The day before, at the Al-Nasser Paediatric Hospital, I had learned that from the Palestinians’ high consanguinity rates come abnormal levels of (among other afflictions) IEM – Inborn Error of Metabolism. Out of the hospital’s 18 cases of this rare condition (causing skeletal deformities and mental retardation) 17 were the children of cousin marriages. In three of the Gazan families I visited regularly, IEM cases were sadly obvious – relatively mild cases, yet a source of much parental anxiety. In one family, not only were the parents first cousins – both came of consanguineous marriages. And this is not as unusual as one might hope. The young paediatrician with whom I talked wanted a thorough study done of the Strip’s incidence of IEM, as preliminary to a major anti-consanguinity campaign. In general her advice to parents was rejected, seen as ‘Western’ interference with an ancient custom that had served the Palestinians well by reinforcing clans’ assets. She herself had become estranged from her own parents – the unhappy consequence of a refusal to marry a first cousin.

  I was saying goodbye to the sisters when Ahmed reappeared and escorted me, as is the custom, to the nearest taxi route. This gesture provoked a mixed reaction: appreciation of the courtesy, resentment of the implied dependency or vulnerability of women. Life among the Palestinians was taking its toll. A decade ago the appreciation would have been unmixed.

  Two serveece rides took me to Yara’s family home, where I was expected at noon.

  * * *

  I first met Yara in a sub-office of the Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development (PWWSD), a group severely handicapped by its title: even the initialism is a tongue-twister. It was established in 1981, inspired by a damp squib – the Arab Charter on Human Rights – which banned all discrimination against women but was not put into force because at that date only Iraq would ratify it. I was shown the figures which PWWSD helps to gather for the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. In 2006 50 per cent of Gazan women and 69 per cent of West Bank women suffered psychological violence. For physical violence the figures were 25 per cent and 26 per cent. When I objected that ‘psychological violence’ is too vague a term Yara replied sharply, ‘You know it when you live with it. Here it often means forced marriages.’ Events since 2006 have impeded the statisticians.

  Yara was tall and too thin: not beautiful but with an arresting face, strong and mobile, showing volatile emotions as a landscape changes under swift clouds. She spoke fluent English, self-taught with BBC World Service assistance, and worked for PWWSD as a part-time volunteer. Her ‘earning job’, as she called it, was demanding: no sinecure. Her hobby was wood-carving, ‘to prove I’m a feminist’. She refused to shake hands with Muslim men – ‘Let them feel what it’s like when women are up against mysophobia!’

  I had to ask, ‘What’s mysophobia?’ When Yara replied, ‘A morbid fear of defilement’ I at once remembered my first day in Gaza. Mehat had introduced me to a reliable money-changer, a charming old man who graciously apologised for not shaking hands. He asked Mehat to explain that since marrying fifty-five years ago he had never touched any woman but his wife. In Mehat’s view, this was an edifying boast. Yara said, ‘Some people see it as a neurosis needing treatment.’

  For her mother’s sake Yara wore the hijab. ‘I’d take a chance – she has nightmares about acid in my face. A blinded disfigured daughter!’ But she wouldn’t wear the thobe, never mind the jilbab. ‘What’s wrong with trouser-suits? They show no sk
in, I’m covered to the ankles and wrists!’

  Aged twenty-six, Yara had married at nineteen, been divorced at twenty-five. She saw her three sons once a week, on Fridays, and invited me to meet them in her parental home. At first she seemed to me stoically resigned to her situation – a sad one, but not uncommon.

  * * *

  Finding Gazan addresses is not easy for the non-Arabic-speaker. I tried my luck in a huxter shop where two youths sat on crates sharing a tin of Coke and talking to the elderly owner, still wearing his mosque gown and cap. He eyed me with disfavour – then, on seeing the well-known family name, ordered a youth to guide me to my destination half a mile away. En route we attempted conversation but got no further than an exchange of names. All UNRWA school pupils learn English – in theory …

  From the street Yara’s home was invisible behind a high concrete wall. When she opened the wicket gate I got quite a shock – this was not the Yara who had taken me into the most deprived recesses of Shatti and Jabalya camps on a round of morale-boosting visits to the widowed mothers of disabled children. In six days she seemed to have lost her poise and vitality, to have become uncertain and frightened.

  The long three-storey house overlooked a wide, bleak concrete forecourt unrelieved by any fleck of green. ‘We built in 1997,’ said Yara, ‘and it’s three flats. My two oldest married brothers live here. But the planning was silly – too ambitious. Money dried up and inside it’s mostly unfinished.’

  A long flight of shallow, semi-circular steps (crumbling at the edges) led directly into an enormous high-ceilinged salon that felt unused. The gaudy Chinese carpet didn’t match the two four-person sofas; ten ornate dining-chairs were symmetrically placed against the walls, equidistant from a central row of glass coffee tables; holy texts decorated two walls. Yara apologised for the three non-functioning ceiling fans and opened a big window opposite the door. From upstairs came a cacophony of small quarrelsome children. ‘My mother is feeding the boys,’ explained Yara. Her father appeared then, returning from the mosque; tall and heavily built, he avoided my eye and greeted me gruffly while passing through the salon. ‘He doesn’t like independent women,’ observed his daughter.

  Over the next few hours I heard the full story. When Yara was allowed to meet her twenty-nine-year-old fiancé, a week before the wedding, she instantly disliked him and begged her father not to force the marriage through. He told her not to behave like a spoiled child. To break an agreement with an important business partner, to cancel an elaborate wedding party – merely to cater for Yara’s whim – unthinkable! He reminded her of her eldest sister’s awful fate. Having spurned her father’s choice, she eloped with a university lecturer and found herself the divorced mother of twins in less than a year. And the scoundrel had to be taken to court to secure maintenance of their babies. Whenever Yara’s mother tentatively supported her daughters ‘she was punished’. I didn’t ask what form that punishment took.

  Two weeks after the wedding Yara ran home, craving mercy. She exerted every sort of pressure, including a mock suicide attempt, in an effort to escape, to be allowed to live at home. But that too was unthinkable – the shame of it! Within forty-eight hours she had been returned to captivity. For a Palestinian woman there was no Third Way; she must live either with her parents or husband.

  The next seven years were tolerable only because Yara was allowed to study at IUG, an alleviation made possible by her mother’s caring for the children as they came.

  ‘All the time,’ said Yara, ‘I hated him more every hour. Slowly I learned how to show my hate in ways that humiliated him. Last year I escaped but the price is high. He won’t let me have the boys. Shari’a law says mother should have boys until they’re seven and girls until nine. Have you noticed Shari’a is kept for when it suits men? Here is a big house, enough money, everything easy for me to have them. And they hate their stepmother! Next month her first baby comes and she must take care or they’ll kill it!’

  By then I had seen enough of those very disturbed children (aged six, five and three and a half) not to scoff at this prediction. Yelling and screaming, they tumbled wildly around the salon, dragging sofa cushions across the floor, jumping from chair to chair, thumping the glass tables to make them reverberate. They were aggressive, rude and angry. Plainly it had been a bad idea for Yara to have a foreign friend intruding on their precious half-day with Mamma.

  Yara’s youngest sister, Jindiya, joined us briefly – a worryingly overweight seventeen-year-old who might have looked better in a thobe than in tight shorts and a tank-top. She spoke no English but was intensely curious about me and my family and my strange way of life. Yara’s interpreting for her provoked the boys to slap their mother’s face, pull her ears and kick her shins. Jindiya was betrothed to the youngest brother of Yara’s ex-husband and seemed happy with the engagement though she hadn’t yet met him.

  I asked Yara, ‘Why hasn’t she met him? You all live within a few miles of each other!’

  ‘It’s my father,’ came the reply. ‘He likes the oldest customs.’

  I felt helplessly sorry for Yara, who couldn’t cope – alternately she cuddled and kissed her sons with a desperate sort of urgency, then shrilly snapped at them. Once her eldest brother came to the doorway and shouted a protest about the furniture being damaged. He closely resembled his father in build and aura. The boys couldn’t play outside because he objected to their noisiness. ‘He hates children,’ said Yara, ‘even his own and he has seven of them.’

  When inviting me, Yara had mentioned how much her English-speaking mother enjoyed talking with foreigners. But now it transpired that her husband had said it was not necessary for her to meet me. I began to feel what might be described as emotional claustrophobia. Glancing at my watch, I murmured about having to move on. ‘No!’ exclaimed Yara. ‘I’ve a big new problem, we must talk when alone!’

  There was a fixed routine; at 5.00 pm a taxi came to fetch the boys. Under no circumstances could their time with Mamma be extended. Now Yara rang for another taxi to take us both to ‘a quiet place’. I noticed how her hands trembled as she struggled to put sandals on wriggling boys – no longer screaming but sobbing piteously. Jindiya reappeared, to help drag the trio to the wicket and push them into the taxi. I hurried ahead and sat in the other taxi. As Jindiya persuaded the older ones to stay in their seats Yakob clung so fiercely to Yara that she stood immobilised by the wicket, ashen with grief, until the driver came to prise her son away from the maternal legs and carry him, kicking convulsively, to join his brothers.

  I could think of nothing to say as the boys’ taxi sped away and Yara sat beside me on the back seat. At once she lit a (forbidden) cigarette and addressed the driver in English. ‘You haven’t seen this!’ For the first time since my arrival on the teetotal Strip I longed, in a visceral way, for a stiff drink.

  Then Yara admitted, ‘Last Friday I made an excuse not to see them. Each week it’s worse – maybe best if they never see me? Children forget quickly …’

  The driver intervened. ‘You’re wrong! That’s cruel! Being left trying to forget a mother destroys kids!’ This young man, Yara later explained, was an Eng. Lit. graduate who drove a taxi for lack of more appropriate work.

  Our ‘quiet place’ was a large, circular palm-thatched restaurant-café, set back a little from the Strip’s main road, surrounded by palm trees and even at sunset on a Friday almost empty. One-third had been curtained off with loosely woven coconut fibres – a token purdah space, not providing enough seclusion for the strictest. A few elderly men puffed at their hookahs or played backgammon; on the women’s side we were alone. ‘Here I can go on smoking’, said Yara. ‘I started after the divorce and nicotine tranquillises me.’

  There was no smell of food and no waiter appeared. ‘They keep it open for big parties,’ Yara explained. ‘It was popular when new in the ’90s – people had more money. We came here as a family for ice-creams – parents and six children, my father and brothers always on the oth
er side. They could have sat with us, it was allowed, but everything had to be rigid!’

  Away from the family environment, Yara was regaining some of her vitality. But then as she revealed that new problem, tears flowed. It all took a long time to clarify and there were several détours down dismal alleyways of family history.

  In brief: since the divorce a year ago Father had often talked of remarriage as inevitable though Yara had been resolute – ‘Never again!’ The day after our last meeting she had been told, ‘It’s all arranged.’ One of her father’s closest business associates had a 45-year-old son who married late (by Palestinian standards) and now, five years after the wedding, his wife’s barrenness had been medically confirmed. Divorce was not being considered; their cousinly union had been a success, they were devoted to one another and the wife understood that a second wife was essential. A man must have children! (Oddly enough, I had encountered a similar case when living in Hebron Old City.) Yara knew the barren wife (six years her senior) but didn’t know her well enough to be certain she could share with her a husband and a home. For Father this was Allah being kind: a divorced daughter with three children is not a valuable asset. Yet here was a win-win situation, in Father’s own terminology – an excellent husband for a low-value daughter and a chance to please an important business partner.