Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  “I’m not talking about giving up anything, I’m talking about rights, and I’m talking about sharing. There have always been Jews in Palestine, always.”

  Now it was Omar Salem’s turn to shrug. He had nothing against Louis, whenever they had come to an agreement in the past a handshake or the other man’s word had been enough to seal it. But the Jews were crazy if they thought that they could take control of Palestine after the English left; they wouldn’t be allowed to have even a tiny piece. He looked at Louis and they realized that the gulf between them was widening and that it might soon become impassable. But they said nothing further. Both of them had been invited to Noor’s wedding and neither would have forgiven himself if an argument had been allowed to cloud the wedding of Aya and Yusuf’s daughter.

  A few days after the wedding Hassan was found dead in his bed. He had suffered the same death as his beloved Layla, his heart had stopped in his sleep.

  Mohammed mourned his maternal uncle. Hassan had been a good man. Although Jaled seemed to have recovered, the death of his father made him melancholy.

  “I’ve thought about going to Beirut, or maybe Damascus,” he said to his cousin Mohammed.

  “Why, why would you want to leave? You should find yourself a wife. Your parents were worried because you didn’t marry again to give them grandchildren.”

  They were silent for a while. Jaled thought about his wife, Fadwa, who had died trying to give birth to a stillborn child. In losing her he had lost a part of himself.

  “Yes, I should have married again,” he replied, “but up until now I have not met a woman I’ve wanted to spend the rest of my life with. When I meet someone who inspires me in this way, I will think about marriage.”

  “Marriage is a duty,” Mohammed reminded him.

  “I reject that idea. Cousin, let me use you as an example. You married Salma, the best of all women, but we all know that not a single day has gone by when you don’t think about Marinna. I remember you as children, always spending all your time together, chatting, sharing secrets. When you were together, the rest of us stopped being important. Have you been happy? Has Marinna been happy? I wonder how you have been able to live so close to one another . . .”

  For all that he loved his cousin, Mohammed did not like it when he spoke about things that touched the very roots of his being. Marinna and he had always acted with the greatest of propriety, and had never done anything that could have shamed them or that they would have been embarrassed to tell their families. It had not been easy for the two of them, but they had managed to take control of themselves and act with dignity.

  “I’m sorry to have upset you,” Jaled apologized.

  “No . . . It’s not that . . . I don’t like talking about my business and still less about my feelings. You said it yourself, Salma is the best possible wife a husband could have, and I assure you that I have never regretted marrying her, not for one single day. You know something, Jaled? We owe who we are to our honor, our family, our traditions, our friends, our ideals. If we allowed ourselves to be controlled simply by our passions . . . I have carried out my duty and I would never, not for anything in the world, exchange my two wonderful children, Wädi and Naima, for anything.”

  “Yes, you are a lucky man.”

  “You cannot carry on mourning Fadwa,” Mohammed said.

  “I will go in a couple of weeks. Do you want to look after my house? I don’t want to sell it, but I don’t want it to be left to go to ruin either. I will come back one day.”

  Mohammed promised that he would look after the house.

  Ezekiel went to the Moores’ print shop one afternoon looking for Wädi.

  “Ben is coming home in a week!” he told his friend.

  “We should tell Rami so that we can celebrate.” Wädi was as happy as his friend was.

  “That’s why I came to tell you. Marinna and Igor are happy that their son is coming home. They haven’t seen him since we left for the front.”

  “The four of us together again, Ben, Rami, you, me . . .” Wädi spoke in a tone of nostalgia.

  The two friends remembered their childhood, when Wädi and his cousin Rami, the son of Aya and Yusuf, would run off with Ben and Ezekiel. The four of them had been inseparable.

  “How things have changed . . . Rami deals with Omar Salem’s farm business, but as far as I understand wants to get away and start up on his own; you are studying at the university; Ben . . . Well, you told me that Ben is helping the Jews to come to Palestine, and I am what I have always wanted to be, a teacher,” Wädi said.

  “How time flies!” Ezekiel replied.

  “You speak as if we were a thousand years old . . . Rami is twenty-seven, Ben is twenty-five, I am twenty-six, and you’re twenty, the baby,” Wädi reminded him.

  “I’ve fought in a war and lived to tell the tale,” Ezekiel replied.

  “Yes, the war has made us all older, but if Allah permits it we have a long life ahead of us.”

  “You know what? I’m happy Ben is coming, as I am going to get married.”

  Wädi was not surprised by Ezekiel’s announcement. He realized that this was the real reason for his visit and that he wanted to tell his friend the news a long way from Hope Orchard.

  Mr. Moore allowed Wädi to leave a little early and the two friends decided to take a walk through the Old City. They liked to walk its perimeter, moving from one area to another.

  “You’re getting married to Sara.” Wädi did not pose this as a question, it was clear that there was no other woman for Ezekiel.

  “Yes, I dared to ask her to marry me and she said yes. She has been much better since we came here. Sometimes she even laughs . . . and she is very affectionate toward my mother.”

  “You can’t have children,” Wädi reminded him.

  “I know, and my mother has said that as the years go by I may miss having children. I don’t doubt that this may be so, but I would not marry any woman who was not Sara, so that is what we will do.”

  “And when will you get married?”

  “My mother has asked me to give her time to organize the wedding. I would like it to be as soon as possible, but it won’t be until next year, I’ll get married in spring, in May 1947. And what about you? Aren’t you thinking of getting married?”

  “Stop behaving like my mother! There isn’t a day goes by when she doesn’t want to introduce me to the daughter of some friends of hers. I’ll end up by giving in, of course, but I would like to try to find a wife without going through intermediaries.”

  They made plans about what they would do when Ben came, and spoke about the most recent events, the attacks carried out by Lehi and the Irgun against the British, attacks that did not only take the lives of soldiers in Palestine. The Irgun had also managed to carry out an attack on the British Embassy in Rome.

  “The English will leave,” Ezekiel said.

  “You know, sometimes I’m scared of that, because if they do then there will be nothing to stand between you and us,” Wädi replied.

  “We will sort things out better without the British present.” Ezekiel seemed convinced.

  Wädi couldn’t help but be surprised at Ezekiel’s naïveté. For all that he had fought in the war and killed people, he was so optimistic that to Wädi he sometimes appeared childish. His friend refused to accept that sooner or later the clash between Jews and Arabs would become inevitable, if the Jewish Agency and its leaders did not stop their attempts to create a homeland for themselves inside Palestine.

  He knew that the leaders of the Palmach and the Haganah took advantage of Ezekiel’s wartime experience to use him to train other young men. All the Jews worked with both the Jewish defense organizations. Ezekiel had never hidden this from him. He knew this, just as he knew that Ben was a member of the Haganah and that from Europe he dedicated himself to helping Jewish refugees come to Pales
tine.

  “It’s scandalous that the British are persecuting us so,” Ezekiel complained. “And also, it’s scandalous that the world doesn’t care what happens to the Jews. What more has to happen for us to be able to live in peace? Hitler wanted to exterminate us, and now the countries that managed to overthrow him don’t know what to do with the Jews; everyone is so sorry for what we suffered, but they won’t give the Jews visas to leave Europe. Hypocrites!”

  “Will you carry on living at Hope Orchard?” Wädi said, to change the subject.

  “Yes, or at least if Sara wants to, I think that she finds Marinna and my mother are good protection for her.”

  They walked along for a while, making plans for when Ben came. Then, when they came to the fence that separated the two farms, they went their separate ways, happy to have shared these hours.

  Wädi met Anisa Jalil by accident. One morning, when he arrived at the school, Brother Agustín was waiting for him with the smallest children lined up.

  “We have to vaccinate them,” he said.

  “We do?”

  “We have to take them to the hospital. Well, you take them and I’ll stay with the older children. When you’ve finished getting them vaccinated, come back.”

  Wädi didn’t protest, as he knew how important it was for the children to get vaccinated. The little children were happy to dedicate the morning to something that was not study. It was an adventure for them to go into the hospital.

  A nurse showed Wädi the way to the vaccination station. They got to an open door. A woman was consoling her son, who was crying inconsolably after the injection he had just been given. A nurse with her back to them gave the little boy a sweet. Wädi looked at the nurse, thinking that she really was a very beautiful woman. She looked at him and asked him with a smile to come in.

  “I’m coming from Brother Agustín, I think that they are going to vaccinate our children.”

  “Ah, the children from the friar’s school! Come in, how many of you are there?”

  “I have brought twelve, and I’ll bring the rest tomorrow.”

  When the boys saw the nurse with her syringe they started to cry and refused to show her their arms. She promised them sweets if they were brave.

  “Well, that’s them, all done,” she said in satisfaction when they had all been given the injection, while Wädi tried to calm the youngest child, who was almost screaming.

  “Good . . . Thanks a lot . . . I’ll be back tomorrow . . .”

  He was tempted to ask her name, but he did not dare. She seemed to be a woman who was very sure of herself, and she held his gaze as he looked at her in stupefaction.

  The next day, Brother Agustín said that he would take the rest of the children to be vaccinated, but Wädi insisted that he go instead. He wouldn’t have passed up the opportunity of seeing the nurse again, not for anything the world.

  “Well, if you insist, give my thanks to Anisa for getting the ophthalmologist to look at the old woman who lives above the school.”

  “Anisa?”

  “Yes, the nurse who vaccinated the children. She lives up to her name, she is a devout but very energetic young woman. The man who marries her will have his hands full.”

  Anisa received him with an enormous smile as she saw him coming with a child holding onto each hand, and ten more following behind him.

  As she gave them their vaccinations they started to speak about the school, and about Brother Agustín’s good work.

  “Have you known him for long?” he asked with interest.

  “Not long. He came to the hospital one night, bringing with him an old man who had a raging fever. He was coughing so much that it was as if he was going to choke. He had pneumonia, and sadly died a couple of weeks later. Since then I’ve helped him however I can. Sometimes he asks me to give an injection to a woman who cannot afford it, or to come with him on a visit to a family where one of the women is sick. He says that I am good at convincing people that they need to see a doctor. Brother Agustín is a good man, always concerned for others, making no distinction between Christians and Muslims.”

  “If you ever need me, then maybe I could help. I have a car, an old car, but it could be used for taking sick people from place to place.”

  Wädi wondered why the friar had never asked him to help with the sick people, so he asked him when he got back to the school.

  “Well, you do enough giving the children free classes. I owe it to other people, I came to the Holy Land to help others, but you . . . You are young, you need to work, build a future for yourself.”

  But Wädi insisted the friar could count on him to go wherever was necessary.

  “Alright, if that is what you want, you can come to the hospital around eight, when you finish your work in the print shop. We need to take a woman to her daughter’s house in Bethlehem. She has been very ill, but she has gotten better, thanks to God. Anisa wants to go to explain to the family how they should look after her and what medicine she should take.”

  From that day forward he went with them as often as he was needed.

  “Are you in love with Anisa?” Brother Agustín asked one day.

  The friar’s question caught him unawares and he realized he was blushing. He couldn’t deny what was so obvious, and anyway, he didn’t want to.

  “She’s a good girl,” Brother Agustín said.

  “She never talks about herself.”

  “She’s very discreet. She lives with her parents in the Old City. Her father is a Palestinian but he has lived for a long time in Beirut. Now he has a business close to the Damascus Gate. He sells clothes and fabrics. Her mother is an important woman, an activist in the Arab Women’s Union, a fighter against colonialism, and Anisa shares her ideas.”

  Wädi understood that if he wanted to marry Anisa then he would have to ask her for her hand directly, that she would not accept an arranged marriage between families. He asked Brother Agustín to help him.

  “So you want me to leave you alone one afternoon so that you can ask her to marry you . . . You want me to be Celestina . . .”

  “Celestina?” Wädi did not know what the friar was referring to.

  “Yes . . . Well, it’s a classical Spanish play. Celestina is the intermediary between two lovers . . . I’ll do what I have to do. Go meet her at the hospital and I will not come. I was going to go with her to the house of a poor widow who needs an injection and some firewood.”

  When she saw him appear alone, Anisa did not seem to be surprised.

  Neither was she surprised when he took her hand and asked her to marry him. She did not immediately respond.

  “We don’t know each other well enough yet. I would be lying if I said that you didn’t interest me, but I know very little about you . . .”

  He wanted to tell her his whole life story that very minute, but Anisa stopped him.

  “Let’s get to know each other and then we can decide. But in the meantime, I don’t want you to think that we are engaged. Not yet.”

  It was a relief for Mohammed and Salma to know that Wädi was in love. They had no doubt that this young woman he had told them so much about would accept him as her wife. Salma insisted that they meet her, but Wädi asked her to be patient.

  “I don’t want to pressure her.”

  The first thing Ben did when he returned to Hope Orchard was to head over to the Ziads’ house. Marinna protested that her son had barely done anything other than hug her and kiss her on the cheeks, and after he had done the same to Miriam and Sara, he headed off to their neighbors’ house. Igor would have liked his son to delay the visit a day or so, but Ben was now a man, he had fought in the war and it was difficult for him to accept any suggestions from his father. Along with Ezekiel, Ben went to the Ziads’ house.

  Mohammed was moved to see him. Ben was Marinna’s son and Mohammed felt as if he were a
part of him, too. He hugged him affectionately and smiled when Ben kissed Salma. It would have been out of place for any other man to kiss his wife, but for them Ben would always be the little boy who clambered along the fence that separated the two houses, the boy who had fallen into the drainage ditch, the boy who had played with Wädi and Rami, Aya’s son. Mohammed regretted that this strapping young lad was not a Muslim like them. If he had been, then he would have made a good husband for Naima. He knew that his daughter had flirted with Ben, but Allah had given her enough good sense to marry Târeq and become the mother of his first grandchild. He was nearly sixty and was keen to have more grandchildren, he hoped that Wädi would marry soon and that Naima would be blessed with more children as well.

  Salma noticed the tension in Ben’s voice as he asked after Naima. They told him in detail about how happy she was with Târeq and how handsome little Amr was.

  After his arrival, Ben, Wädi, Rami, and Ezekiel became inseparable friends once again. They fought the winter cold by going to swim in the Dead Sea. Or they went camping in the mountains around Judea. Most often, they would meet to have dinner in one of the Old City restaurants.

  “Sara is jealous,” Ezekiel confessed.

  “Anisa is complaining as well, she says that now I am paying her much less attention,” Wädi said.

  “I am very lucky with Shayla, she encourages me to spend time with you,” Rami added.

  “It’s because she wants to get married and doesn’t want you to regret your decision,” Ben laughed.

  Time had not stolen away a single speck of their former closeness. They had grown up together, they had squabbled, they had shared their secrets ever since they were children, and they had protected one another. It seemed impossible that anything or anyone could ever get between them.

  Ben said one day to Wädi that he was worried about Ezekiel.

  “I’m not sure that he is in love with Sara. Not because she doesn’t deserve it.”

  “You don’t need to worry about Ezekiel, he knows what he is doing. Also, no one would be able to convince him not to marry Sara.”