“Well, is that a surprise? I believe you. You know that when this began I said that what the Arabs and the Jews needed was to put ourselves in each other’s skins. It’s not a bad idea for you to get rid of some of your prejudices. I’m not trying to convince you of anything, but I’m telling you a story that you need to fit in alongside lots of other stories. And now that you’re in touch with the Ziad family, you can check that what I say is the truth.”
“Everyone lives events in a different way,” Marian replied.
“Yes, these conversations have a different meaning for you than they do for me. Every human being is unique.”
“Do you think that . . .?”
“That we can carry on talking? Of course. Now take me home, I’ll make you some tea, and you can carry on with your story until my granddaughter gets home. And if we don’t finish today, then we can carry on tomorrow. I don’t have anything important to do, but what about you? Is your NGO happy that you’re spending your time talking to an old man like me?”
“It’s not just about the work I have come here to do. I need to know, to understand.” As she said these words, she said them also with her eyes, looking at Ezekiel with a direct gaze in which he could see that she was telling the truth.
Aya had a son. They named him Rami. He was born in Amman, at the end of the Great War. Yusuf had barely been able to be with his wife at all during those years. He fought alongside Faisal, and Faisal’s forces went everywhere, from the sands of Aqaba to Damascus, from Damascus to Jerusalem, and whenever he could he escaped briefly to Amman to see his widowed mother, his family, and Aya, that sad little woman who suffered because she missed her mother and her grandmother, and who cried in despair at night when she thought no one could see her.
“Your wife is not happy,” Yusuf’s mother told him.
He knew it. He had nothing to complain of with Aya, but he knew that her bright black eyes had lost their happiness and that she accepted him with resignation. But this was not what he wanted.
One of the nights that he was able to be in Amman, he went to speak with Aya.
“Don’t you love me? Do you regret our marriage?” he complained.
She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer and burst out crying. Yes she loved him, she assured him of that, but she couldn’t help missing her mother and her grandmother, couldn’t help remembering her brother Mohammed, couldn’t help regretting her father’s death. Amman seemed to her to be farther away from her family’s house in Jerusalem than the moon was.
“I almost never see you . . . Your family is very good to me, but . . .”
“But you would be happy if you could see your mother again.”
Aya hugged him. She didn’t dare say that this was what she wanted most of all in the whole world.
“I’ll take you to your mother’s house. You can stay there until the fighting is over. Your brother will be responsible for you. When the fighting is over we will come back here.”
Yusuf carried out his promise in spite of his mother’s recriminations.
“The wife should live in the husband’s house. What will they say about you, about us, if you let her go to Jerusalem?”
“My home is wherever Aya is. If she wants, then we will live in Jerusalem. Where is it written that she has to be unhappy? Aya is still very young.”
“You are treating her as if she were a child, and you’re not asking her to behave like a married woman, a woman with obligations.”
“Mother, it was you who told me that Aya was unhappy.”
“Because you needed to know, but that doesn’t mean you should take her wherever she wants to go.”
“I will take her to Jerusalem. We will live there.”
Nothing his mother said could convince Yusuf. He loved Aya and he wanted her to be happy.
Nothing could make Dina happier than having her children with her. Mohammed had just come home after fighting loyally with Faisal’s troops. Her son had taken part in the conquest of Lebanon and Syria. Dina had been moved to hear from her son’s own lips about Faisal’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
“If you could only have seen it, Mother . . . The streets were filled with men, women, and children. The women were shouting for joy. We were the first to enter the city; it would never have fallen had it not been for Prince Faisal and the Arab troops.”
“Do you think that things will be better for us without the Turks?” Zaida asked. She seemed to be feeling better, and didn’t spend so much time in bed, even though she was still weak.
“My father was killed because he thought that this was the way forward,” Mohammed said to his grandmother.
“And this man, this British officer who supports the Arabs so much?” Dina asked.
“You mean Lawrence? He is a friend to Faisal, as well as a good advisor. Lawrence is a man of his word, it’s a shame that his opinion does not hold sway with his superiors. He fought like one of us, he has always been valiant in battle. Lawrence has no doubts at all about the claims made by Sharif Husayn, and he believes that once the Turks are defeated then we should build a great Arab nation.”
The two women listened to him with interest and concern. They were born, raised, and had lived knowing that there was a sultan in Constantinople whose power stretched all the way to their city, and they were worried at the changes taking place all around them.
Dina did not dare say so to Mohammed, but in the past she had argued with her husband Ahmed about the great Arab nation, and she blamed her own brother Hassan for having planted these ideas in her husband’s mind, ideas that he had now passed on to his son.
Mohammed tried not to upset them and turned the conversation to Aya’s imminent arrival.
“My sister and her son will be with us in a couple of days. Yusuf will only be able to stay a day or so, as he has to return along with Faisal.”
Dina was overjoyed at the prospect of her daughter’s return, but Zaida, although she wanted to be with her granddaughter as well, seemed worried.
“Yusuf’s mother will take it as an offense that Aya is coming back to be with us,” she said.
“Yusuf asked me to take care of Aya, he wants to stay and live in Jerusalem when Faisal no longer needs him,” Mohammed repeated.
“And you promised to take care of your sister and her son without thinking of the consequences,” Zaida insisted.
“Grandmother, my sister is very thin, her milk has dried up and she seems to be prey to a melancholy that not even motherhood can save her from. What can I say to my brother-in-law? Aya will always be welcome here.”
“But you, too, will marry. I will not live much longer, but do you think that your wife would like to live with her mother-in-law, your grandmother, and your sister?”
“Salma knows what my position is. Her father was hanged alongside mine, her mother died shortly afterwards. She lives in her older brother’s house, and she wants a place of her own. She respects you and she will be a good friend to Aya. I hope that soon we will have children and that they will be able to play with Aya and Yusuf’s son.”
Mohammed would have liked to stay with Faisal’s troops, but he was needed in Jerusalem. His Uncle Hassan had fallen ill, his Aunt Layla had been driven mad by her son’s death, and Jaled had become an officer in Faisal’s forces. Also, his house and the farm needed a man’s touch. The Great War was over, and Yusuf said that now was the moment to force the British to keep their promises. But he didn’t trust the Europeans, not after finding out about the treachery that two men, the Englishman Mark Sykes and the Frenchman Charles François Georges-Picot, had carried out against the sharif. Their respective countries had given them the tasks of negotiating and setting the boundaries of the great Arab nation of which Sharif Husayn dreamed.
They had told Prince Faisal that the Sykes-Picot Agreement was nothing more than some paper written on the desert sand
s, worthless, and anyway, who could trust those Europeans?
Dina burst into tears when she saw Aya arrive with her son in her arms. While Mohammed helped Yusuf unload the bags, Zaida and Dina argued about who was going to look after little Rami. He was seven months old, and Zaida said that he was very thin.
“He’s a healthy child,” Yusuf said. “My mother has looked after him and given him all that he needs.”
“Of course, of course . . . But he is so thin! . . . Aya, I have left my room for you, I’ll sleep with your grandmother. Do you think you’ll be comfortable?” Dina looked at her daughter anxiously: She seemed to be absent from all that was happening around her.
“We’ll be fine, and I hope that soon we will be able to have our own house,” Yusuf replied.
Zaida and Dina helped Aya to get settled in and left the men to their own business.
“I would like you to come with me to Omar Salem’s house. He has invited some people to dinner and he asked me to invite you. He was fond of your father,” Yusuf said to Mohammed.
Mohammed agreed. Omar had always been kind to him, and he was an important man in Jerusalem whom it would not do to disappoint. While the brothers-in-law spoke and Zaida tried to get Rami to take a little milk, Dina, who was helping Aya fold the baby’s clothes, asked Aya why she seemed so wretched.
“Every night I dream of the moment they took my father away. Do you remember it, Mother? All the women were talking and singing. I was as nervous as women are on their wedding day. Suddenly those men came in, they pushed the guests, they insulted my father, and they took him away without paying the least attention to anyone’s pleas that he should at least be able to wait until the wedding was over. That night became a time of tears. Yusuf is the best man in the world, patient and kind, but my marriage will always be a bad memory for me, the worst I could have.”
“Don’t you love your husband?” Dina asked, fearing what the answer might be.
“I don’t know, Mother, I don’t know. I thought I loved him . . . He seemed so handsome, a man of the world, a brave warrior in the army of Sharif Husayn and his son Prince Faisal. What more could I ask for? Women have to marry, and I couldn’t have found a better husband. Love him? I could have, if my wedding had not been stained with the blood of my father.”
“Your father would suffer if he saw you like this. You were the light of his life; out of respect for his memory you should try to be happy.”
“Do you think I don’t do all I can so as not to disappoint Yusuf? I have already told you that he is the best of men and that he doesn’t deserve a wife like me. I know that he stood up to his mother to bring me here, because he thinks that here I will be able to recover some peace of mind. The more Yusuf shows that he loves me, the more guilty I feel for not being able to reciprocate his love.”
“Men are not eternally patient . . . He could reject you, or take another wife, and then . . .”
“I wouldn’t blame him. Who can love a wife who is always crying? I’m not even a good mother: Look at my son Rami, I haven’t been able to feed him, and had it not been for my mother-in-law, who knows what would have happened to him . . .”
Dina embraced her daughter, whose pain hurt her. She stroked her face and kissed her, trying to comfort her.
“You are at home now, you’ll see how you start to feel better, little by little. But you have to make an effort as well, you have a husband and a son and your duty is to them. Your father’s heart would have broken if he had seen how you are suffering.”
Aya burst into tears in her mother’s arms. Her tears were not just tears of sadness, but also of relief. Her home was here, in the warmth of Dina’s embrace, and if anything could have made her feel better, it was being given shelter by her mother.
The two women kept holding each other until they heard Zaida calling for them urgently.
“The boy is hungry and milk won’t be enough to satisfy him. And I’m tired and need to go to sleep.”
Omar gave Mohammed an affectionate hug and scolded him for not having come to see him earlier.
“You know that you are always welcome in this house, just as your father was, and that we respect your opinions just as we respected his. You have fought extremely bravely, and you are back home now after having done your duty honorably,” he said, knowing full well that Mohammed was upset not still to be in Faisal’s army.
The men ate and listened to the news that Yusuf had brought, and felt pleased to hear the details of the conquest of Damascus.
“There are vague details that reach us about the Paris Peace Conference; tell us, Yusuf, whether the powers that have won the war will fulfill their obligations to us,” Omar Salem asked.
Yusuf was pessimistic.
“I don’t know much about it, just that France wants to become the mandate power in Syria and Lebanon. They think that Lebanon should be for the Maronite Christians. They are pressing Faisal to accept the map sketched out by Sykes and Picot in the name of the British and French governments, but he is resisting and defends the cause for which we all fought: an Arab nation. That is why we fought the Turks.”
“Will they keep their promises?” Omar asked again, worried this time.
“No, they will not keep them,” Mohammed said before Yusuf could reply.
“Why do you say that?” one of Omar’s guests wanted to know.
“Because the British only wanted to get rid of the Ottoman Empire: They didn’t want to replace one empire with another. Yusuf has told you, the French have their own interests. They will divide up these lands among themselves,” Mohammed replied.
“More and more Jews are coming to Palestine now,” another man added.
“Faisal is not worried about the Jews, they are not our enemies, at least not for now, especially if they accept their position within an Arab nation. Also, he had met with the leader of the Jews, Dr. Weizmann,” Yusuf explained.
“And have they come to an agreement?” Omar wanted to know.
“Neither Sharif Husayn nor his son Faisal mind for now if the Jews live here. We are fighting for a great nation. As long as the Jews accept these claims, nothing else really matters,” Yusuf repeated, tired that his friends were more worried about Palestine than about the construction of a greater Arab state.
“The British have given the Jews rights over Palestine. How dare they? They say that this could be their home and now they are taking our lands,” another of the guests said.
“People are selling our lands, don’t blame the Jews for that,” Mohammed said.
“You’re telling the truth, Mohammed,” Yusuf agreed, knowing of his friend’s good relations with the Jews, as well as his friendship with the people of Hope Orchard.
“So . . . ,” Omar Salem insisted.
“You must understand, Omar, that Faisal has won President Wilson over to our cause in Paris. The American says that no one should take a step further without consulting us, and he has put together a committee to see, on the ground, what it is that we Arabs want,” Yusuf continued.
“And who are the men on this committee?” one of the guests asked.
“Two Americans: a college president, Henry King, and an industrialist, Charles Crane.”
“A waste of time! What are they going to see that they don’t already know? Sharif Husayn has made clear the reasons why we fought the Turks and helped the Allies win the war. We want a nation. Doesn’t Faisal remember that?” another guest asked angrily.
“As far as I know, the two Americans Crane and King are already en route to Damascus,” Yusuf informed them.
“And we have to accept their recommendations, even if they are opposed to the cause for which we have been fighting?” Omar’s voice was filled with annoyance.
Yusuf shrugged. He couldn’t say much more, but he trusted that Faisal the prince would know what to do.
“I will go b
ack to Damascus tomorrow. The next time I hope to bring you good news.”
When they got home, Mohammed and Yusuf found the three women talking together. Yusuf thought that Aya had completely changed. She wasn’t happy as she had been before, but her suffering seemed to have eased.
Aya held Rami in her arms, and Yusuf was moved to see her smiling at her son, who seemed unable to sleep with all the comings and goings.
When they went back to their room, Aya told him that Kassia and Marinna had come over to meet Rami.
“Marinna is so beautiful . . . I would have liked her to be my sister-in-law.”
“Your father was right, Aya, it is better for Mohammed to marry a woman with whom he shares his roots.”
“But how is Marinna different from us? We have known each other since we were children. She’s like an older sister to me. Mohammed fell in love with her the first time he saw her. And . . . Well, I think that even though he is going to marry Salma, he is still in love with her.”
“That is none of our business, and you shouldn’t get involved in your brother’s feelings. Mohammed is a responsible man, and a brave man, and he knows what to do in all circumstances. He will be happy with Salma.”
“He would have been happier with Marinna,” Aya, who now seemed much more lively, insisted.
At dawn Yusuf left on the road to Damascus to meet up with Faisal’s men. Just like Mohammed, he, too, wanted a little peace so he could live with Aya. He wasn’t enjoying his married life. His father-in-law’s arrest on the very day of the wedding had complicated the start of his life with Aya. The first days of their time together had been spent in the anguish of knowing that Ahmed had been condemned to death. After they had hanged him, Aya had fallen into a depression that not even the birth of Rami had relieved. But he loved her and he would give her all the time she needed for her wounds to heal.
Being at home was the best medicine for Aya. Her mother and her grandmother spoiled her as if she were a child. Her only worry was that her grandmother was now so old. She could scarcely stand upright, and she ate very little. Aya feared that death was coming to her, and she prayed to Allah to let her live many more years.
Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead Page 38
