Fractured Destinies

by Rabai al-Madhoun

  At the beginning of the 1950s, the house was occupied by new immigrants from the Yemeni community. They included the Arusi family, who still live in the house, and use the equipment to be found there—such as the olive press, the grain and wheat mill, the bread oven, and the grain and wheat store situated on the ground floor—in their daily lives.

  A whisper crept from the inside of the house, and I peered through a large crack in the door. I was embarrassed about looking into the house of a stranger and spying on the people who lived there. But it might be my parents’ house, or the house of one of my relatives. I knocked on the door.

  From the inside, I heard a voice saying, “Beseder, ima, ani bo . . . ,” “Okay, mum, I’m coming.”

  “The house has got people in it, everyone!” I said. “There are Jews in our house!”

  “Mi? Who’s there?” a woman’s voice asked apprehensively in Hebrew.

  “Ani rotsah le-dabber im mi she-babayit,” Luda replied, saying that we wanted to talk to whoever was in the house.

  A woman opened the door with a smile, having lost her former hesitation. “Welcome, please come in,” she said in Arabic with a slight accent. We didn’t yet know her name, nor the reason for her smile, which to me felt like guilt hanging on the conscience of its owner. We accepted the invitation with pleasure and went into the house that had been my family’s before al-Majdal Asqalan fell into the hands of the Israeli forces on 4 November 1948.

  “My name is Roma,” she said.

  In the right-hand corner there were two rusty old gas canisters and a bright plastic water bucket. There was an old wooden door with several holes for locks and bolts that suggested it had been borrowed from the front of an old shop in the nearby market after the owners had been driven out, perhaps looted by the Jewish Agency, which had distributed our possessions to immigrant Jewish families after the city had been occupied. About two meters away from the door, there was a small window with a pale-green wooden frame. About half a meter from that was another wooden door beside a rectangular window, which was also painted green.

  I stared at what I thought had been our bedroom. Had it really been our bedroom? I walked on a couple of steps. My small feet stumbled on the threshold, two low, narrow steps. My mother picked me up and exclaimed, “God’s name be upon you, may God protect you!” I hid my tears, tears I was shedding secretly in my parents’ house. Was this really my parents’ house? Or was it a trick of memory weighed down by nostalgia, constructed out of stories piled up over the course of the years?

  The woman excused herself for a few moments and disappeared into another room.

  At the end of a yard, the floor of which was covered with small square tiles that had seen better days, there was a pair of black tattered men’s shoes and a wheelchair.

  Roma returned and invited us into a second room. In the room was an ancient woman, a heap of bones piled up by time in the middle of a bed. She must have been over ninety. She didn’t register our presence, and she didn’t understand anything of what we said. She muttered the whole time, but none of us could understand what she was saying.

  Roma took us around the house. To the left was a kitchen with no door. “This is the oven,” she said. “My mother used to use it.” And she pointed to an old photo of herself and her mother in a wooden frame, propped up against an oven. She said that they used to bake their bread together in it. I wanted to tell her that it was my mother who used to use it, but I couldn’t. “And this is the grain mill,” she said, pointing to a round stone mill with damaged edges. She took a handful of oats from a bag nearby and threw them into the soft flour channel to show us how grain was milled. I almost laughed at Roma’s ignorance, but I didn’t want to embarrass her—the grain should have been put in the small circular opening in the middle of the upper part of the millstone. There was a piece of marble beside the millstone, part of an old olive press. That press had belonged to the house of my aunt Ruqaya, the wife of Abd al-Fattah Dahman. Abd al-Fattah had had a mule with a wooden yoke to drive the press. The blindfolded mule would go around and around on a path that ended only when its work was finished.

  Abd al-Fattah and Ruqaya had perished in the Jibaliya camp in Gaza many years ago. They had left behind several boys who were no longer boys and girls who had become women. And these in turn had left behind girls and boys who had fought each other in order to defend their party allegiances. They had become Dahmani Fathis or Dahmani Hamasis.

  As for the mule, they had left it behind more than sixty-five years ago, braying. No one had enjoyed its braying, so they didn’t think of taking it with them as a means of conveying their possessions—they’d be coming back after a couple of months, so they’d been told. So they had carried away with them everything they could and went off, leaving the mule to meet a fate that the people themselves had not been strong enough to confront. Had he been here, walking around, blindfolded, unable to see anything around him? Was this my aunt Ruqaya’s house, then? No, the press had been brought to this house, for there was no room here for a mule to turn, not even enough space for people to turn the millstone.

  The Dahman house, which had become the Arusi house, was an example of an ordinary house, a memory of all the Dahman family’s houses, and perhaps of the whole of al-Majdal. The Israelis had gathered together there our old implements like handed-down possessions from a past that would not return.

  In the room of the silent old woman, who had retained her headscarf (which looked like a leftover from her Yemeni past), a large picture had been hung on the wall in front of the bed. In the middle of it was a large circular clock, whose hands pointed to 1:41. It was surrounded by photos, some black and white, some in color, which told the story of the Yemeni Arusi family. This was Roma’s mother, and these were her relatives, in the days when she was just a Yemeni Jewish girl. This was a picture of a wedding; here were photos of family celebrations. At the far edge of this illustrated life story was a conscript carrying his weapon on his shoulders. I didn’t ask Roma about her personal life, and in any event she didn’t seem ready to say much beyond:

  “I was four years old when I came here . . . I was only young.”

  I said goodbye to the house that had been our house. I said goodbye to a piece of my history that had been exchanged for a picture hanging on the wall. I gathered up my confusion and carried it with me as I left with the others, as if I were my father when he had left his birthplace to live as an exile, bequeathing me his exile until this day.

  I turned back to Roma. In her sunken eyes, behind her thick glasses, there was a passing flicker of conscience, which flitted between her Majdal, which was not her Majdal, and the Yemen she had lost. I guess we were like an uneasy question that you want to ask though you are afraid of the answers.

  We said goodbye and walked away. We didn’t hear the sound of the door shutting behind us, but instead heard the sound of footsteps. Roma quickly caught us up. She suggested that she take us on a tour of whatever remained of al-Majdal Asqalan. We accepted.

  I walked beside Roma. I compared everything I knew about Majdal from Khan Younis to the alleys we moved through. We were all walking in silence, accompanied by the sounds of our feet kicking the small pebbles that were strewn over the unpaved streets. Suddenly, Roma stopped.

  “This is Zakhariya’s Pharmacy,” she said, and my heart lurched.

  If I called my mother and said to her, “Mother, I’m at this moment standing in front of Zakhariya’s Pharmacy,” she would answer, “Good God! How often I talked to you about it. Who would ever have imagined that a day would come when you’d go to Majdal and see the pharmacy with your own eyes?” Then she would disappear into her past and forget that she was on the telephone: “We used to buy red mercurochrome there, and the English salt drink that cleans the stomach and draws the worms out. We also used to buy powder for the little children, and cough medicine. May God put an end to coughs! And don’t forget the muslin either, and the ointments, and the liquid people soak their feet i
n. God put an end to aches in the feet . . . .”

  Zakhariya’s Pharmacy occupied the ground floor in a two-story building of limestone. The house was still beautiful, as if it hadn’t witnessed any disaster—unlike the remains of the small buildings around it. Over the front of the pharmacy was a sign on which was written ‘Sh.R.M,’ and underneath in Hebrew, ‘Bayit Mirqahat,’ and then in English ‘Pharmacy Megdal.’ Behind the pharmacy was a small beauty parlor for women, the Magdalenes of the Israeli period.

  Soon enough, we said goodbye to Roma and she said goodbye to us.

  “Ma‘assalama,” she said.

  Luda quickly tried to slip a bank note into Roma’s hand, but Roma was quicker than her and pulled her hand away. Luda insisted that she take it, but Roma refused again, and pushed away Luda’s hand, which remained outstretched at a distance for several moments. When Luda continued to press her, Roma said, with an embarrassed sigh, “Seliha, gvirti, today’s the Sabbath!” Despite Roma’s obvious embarrassment, Luda tried again. I myself understood that the giving or receiving of money on the Sabbath day was regarded as a sin by Orthodox Jews. I didn’t ask Luda afterward if Roma had taken the bank note in the end or not. So I never found out which won, Roma’s need or the sanctity of the Sabbath.

  As we walked away, I was conscious of Roma saying something far behind us. I turned back, and saw her waving her short arm in the air. I stopped for a few seconds, and watched her as she turned away under my watchful eyes. I don’t know whether tears were actually falling from her eyes as she moved away, or whether I imagined it. But I wondered whether Roma was looking for her Yemeni childhood in us. Or maybe she was happy with her role as tourist guide for the likes of us, who would pay money to gaze on their past, and just wished that we had come some other day.

  8

  In al-Majdal Asqalan, Julie had empathized with Roma, from her ‘Welcome, please come in’ to her ‘Ma‘assalama.’ She behaved as if she was on a visit to an old neighbor. For the whole time the four of them were in the house that had once belonged to the Dahman family, she had never stopped chatting to Roma with a certain obvious affection, until Luda’s impatience made it clear that she was tired of translating the two women’s chatter in both directions.

  Now, in the airport, Walid thought it not unlikely that Julie had been trying to test, and get to know the feelings of, the woman she expected to be their nearest Jewish neighbor in al-Majdal Asqalan if he agreed to her proposal and they moved to live there. He told himself that his wife perhaps wanted to persuade herself that it would be possible to live in the country. Hadn’t she spent several days in Jamil and Luda’s house in Haifa, in a three-story building containing six apartments, five of which were lived in by Jews? There, Julie hadn’t woken up in a disturbed state. On the contrary, she had seemed happy with Jamil’s talk about friendly relations between neighbors he described as ordinary, and about joining a committee of residents of the block to deal with any disputes and day-to-day problems, and to organize any shared concerns.

  Walid himself had never commented on what Jamil had said. Instead, he persuaded himself that Julie would finally discover that as soon as Jamil left the building, which was governed by the democracy of neighbors and the conventions of ordinary people, he would lose half his citizens’ rights, while his Jewish neighbors would continue to enjoy their full rights as citizens, inside their homes and outside them, including the right to choose the graves for their dead. When they left the country, Julie would realize that they had been wandering around like tourists who had seen only the rare beauty and holiness that belonged to the land.

  Walid had to say something in answer to Julie, who had been waiting while reality grappled with his memories. In the end, he said to her, “This isn’t Gigi’s return. I won’t come back to this country to live in it as a stranger. When we get to London, we can discuss the issue away from the pressures of this moment of parting.”

  Then, to hide his emotions, he turned in the opposite direction and noticed a black girl, who looked Ethiopian, lazily sweeping the long corridor leading to the airport departure lounge with a broom. She was cleaning the floor slowly, at a rate proportionate to the shekels being paid to her. Their eyes met for a few seconds, during which they silently exchanged undefined feelings.

  Luda emerged from her silence, speaking with a measured expression of emotion. “Fully understood, Walid. Why not? Every Palestinian should come back to his country, he has to come back. But arrive home safely, and you can discuss the subject together as you said. It’s the step of a lifetime, and this isn’t the best place to talk about it.”

  Still, she went on to recommend Haifa as their place of residence, where they could live as neighbors, and swore an oath, for which there was no need, that the city “drives you crazy and blows the mind.” Jamil hurried to support his wife’s invitation: “Come and live in our quarter—you’ll lend light to Haifa and the whole district, including the villages destroyed by the Jews. You’ll honor Carmel from its summit to the seashore. Is there anything nicer than sitting on top of the mountain and looking out over the waves washing its feet?”

  Julie kissed Luda goodbye. “Of course! I love Haifa so much.”

  Meanwhile, Jamil implored Walid: “Listen to me and to your wife, my friend, and sell your house. You’ve nothing to lose but your exile and loneliness. There’s nothing better than this country, either in this world or the next.”

  Walid hugged him and Luda goodbye, and then he and Julie took their cases and hurried toward the departure lounge.

  Second Movement

  Nine Days Earlier

  1

  A Stubborn Palestinian

  Jinin sat at her desk in the only room in her house that overlooked Jaffa’s old port, and continued to revise the chapters in her new novel. Basim called her just before two in the afternoon about the reply of the Misrad Hapnim in Tel Aviv to the application to extend his residency and allow him to work. Jinin recalled her total failure, which was still fresh. She told him that the Israeli Ministry of the Interior had once again rejected his application. Basim hung up in shock.

  Jinin placed her own phone to the side on her desk, and tried to imagine the progress of his reactions. She followed him in her mind as he returned to the house as usual by al-Bahr Street, dragging with him his share of failure. He took advantage of the contraction of his shadow at this time of the day to attack it, cursing it, then trampling it with his feet. He punched the air and cursed the year he had returned home, thinking it was a homeland, while his head argued with the walls of the al-Bahr mosque.

  The iron outer door opened, then closed. Jinin stopped following Basim with her mind—he was home.

  The inside door opened, and Basim’s voice arrived before his footsteps.

  “The bastards! If I were a homosexual, they’d hang a human rights placard around my neck and let me work!”

  The front door and his mouth closed together, and tension spread through the house. Basim walked toward the middle of the room and stood there, furious. With his hands, he wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. With his fingers, he tried to clean his face of the unhappiness that had stuck to it. He let out a long breath. With what remained of his emotion—which was finally subsiding—he said, “Of course, if I were like . . . ,” then hesitated.

  “Calm down, Basim, my love! It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last,” Jinin said, and then used his continuing hesitation as an opportunity to enquire maliciously, “Like who?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “Fine, it’s obviously Samir Badran. Can’t you let it go?”

  Samir Badran had lived for a time with an Israeli friend of his called Hayyim Anbari, who was a member of the singing band Tseva’Ehad (One Color), the best-known group among Tel Aviv’s gay clubs. It was Jinin, alone among Palestinian authors, who had borrowed his story for a short story she had published on the Qadita website. She had been one of the first to surf the site on the day it was released. “Thi
s website has brought together the country’s homosexuals,” she had remarked to herself bitterly at the time (overheard by Basim), “but ordinary people can’t find anyone to bring them together.”

  Basim muttered something in response, then turned around and walked toward the kitchen. Jinin reckoned he must have gone to the window and looked at their neighbor, for she could read the contentment on his face when he returned a few minutes later. She knew that Basim felt at peace when he stuck his head out of the window and saw their Jewish neighbor, Bat Tzion. He would go into a trance of contentment as if he were taking a siesta on a hot afternoon. He would watch Bat Tzion busily finishing a new painting, or progressing on a piece she had started on a previous occasion, as she sheltered beside the wall of her house, which was near the entrance to the cooperative in the small courtyard between the houses in the Old Citadel.

  Basim had known Bat ever since he had married Jinin and moved to her small house in the Citadel. One calm summer’s morning, Basim had stood at the same window, leaning on his elbows against the window sill. He had started to watch Bat, who had soon raised her head and caught him staring at her. It didn’t disturb her; she simply said good morning to Basim, calling him a handsome young man:

  “Boker tov, tas’ir yafeh!”

  Then she had introduced herself: “I’m Bat Tzion!”

  “Shalom, gvirti, ani Basim!” Basim had replied. Of the four words, three did not require any knowledge of Hebrew: one was his name; the second (ani) was shared with the Palestinian dialect; and the third (shalom) needed nothing to turn it into Arabic except to change the shin into sin and the o into an a. The fourth word, gvirti, Basim struggled to select from among the dozen or so Hebrew words that were all he knew of the language.

  Basim called on Bat frequently. Every time, he bore her a bouquet of fine words as befitted her. He often expressed his sincere admiration for her ideas and paintings in Jinin’s presence, saying that her lines had the language of a poet, and her colors had the shape of truth. But he never used the old lady’s full name, Bat Tzion. He had never done that, not once since they had become friends despite their different ages. He contented himself with calling her Bat, in what the old lady thought was a sign of affection. Even Jinin thought that Basim was flirting with their neighbor. But it wasn’t like that at all; Basim simply hated the other half of his neighbor’s name. Even to hear it provoked him.