Fractured Destinies

by Rabai al-Madhoun

  At the end of our shopping expedition, I met Jamil at the store entrance and we walked out together. He was carrying something in a wrapper similar to mine. He didn’t tell me what he had bought, and I didn’t tell him. Neither of us asked the other about the lucky girl he would be giving his purchase to. Maybe we each feared defeat. In a voice like a whisper, we just said to each other, “I’ve bought a small thing that I liked.”

  Did Jamil have the same feelings that day as I did? Did he, like me, feel that the two gifts were to be given to one woman? I don’t know. All I know is that we had divided up Luda without our knowing if she considered us equals in her affections.

  The day after our return, we visited Luda in her office at different times. I went after Jamil. I was late because I had a lesson in political economy, as I recall. Luda was looking at some papers connected with her work when I went in, my right arm behind my back. She left whatever she was doing, moved away from her desk, and hurried toward me to give me a hug and a kiss. I embraced her with my left arm and, as we separated, gave her my present—the white rose I had bought for her. She took it from me and kissed me again, then quickly went back to her desk. She reached over toward a glass vase, in which stood . . . a red rose. Luda put the white rose in the vase, picked it up, and came toward me, smelling each rose separately, and repeating, “Mmm, krasivo, spasibo, tovarishch Walid, i spasibo, dorogoi Jamil!” As I watched reality cancel out our secrets, she thanked both of us, said that both our roses were beautiful, called me comrade, and called him dear. Then she put the vase back on her desk, turned to me with a neutral smile on her face, and said:

  “Your rose is as white as your heart, Walid. You’re a true friend.”

  Luda’s message reached me clearly—as clearly as the truthfulness of my feelings. I realized that what was between her and Jamil was more than that between her and me. I felt alone in my defeat at that moment, but to reassure myself I told myself that I’d been right to buy a white rose. I’d had my doubts, but I’d done well. I wondered what would have happened had I brought Luda a red rose like Jamil; would we have been plunged into a “War of the Roses,” in which we shed, if not blood, at least our emotions for her sake.

  I went up to Luda and kissed her on both cheeks. “Jamil’s rose is worthy of a lover like you, Ludichka,” I said, without a trace of hesitation or stuttering. “Keep our mutual friend, and look after him.” Then I left her room in the library, abandoning my fleeting dreams of Luda’s love. I took my defeat and left. And from that time, I had retained a strong friendship with both of them.

  I recalled these incidents from our late adolescence as I listened to Jamil recounting the details of the year we had spent together in Moscow.

  Suddenly, Jamil turned toward me and asked, “Do you remember the two roses, Walid?”

  Before I could recover my composure, he hastened to explain. “The ones we bought from Leningrad and hid from each other?”

  “Of course I remember!”

  “Bozhe moi, oh my God!” Luda said.

  “You still use Russian exclamations, Ludichka moya?” I retorted.

  “Yes, when I feel emotional—because I’ve still got the two roses.”

  “Bozhe moi!” I exclaimed in turn in Russian, not believing what she had said.

  “Ever since Luda came to the country, she’s kept those two roses in a glass jar,” commented Jamil.

  “Of course, because Walid’s is a rose of friendship and Jamil’s is a rose of love.”

  Finally, Julie, who had been struggling to eavesdrop all this time without saying anything, interrupted. “I don’t understand anything, you sometimes speak Arabic and sometimes Russian. Look, I can say it as well: Bozhe moi!”

  I explained the story to her, for she knew nothing about it, except for my friendship with Jamil. She wasn’t surprised or given pause by the past of three adolescents who had one day met in the same place.

  In this way, our drive of more than an hour and a half passed, as we looked at the scenery and recalled warm memories. Whenever something caught the attention of one of us, he would exclaim in Russian “Bozhe moi!,” until Haifa opened its arms to us and we threw ourselves into its clutches.

  3

  Jerusalem

  The day had begun to make way for a pleasant evening when we awoke from a well-deserved siesta. Soon, Julie and I were to go with Salman and Aida to the Nafura Restaurant in Jerusalem at the invitation of Dr. Fahmy al-Khatib and his wife Nada. And despite the short distance, we were to go in Salman’s Mercedes (a car that was much more sporty than he was himself).

  I pulled back the curtain from the only window in our room and threw curious glances from lazy eyes over what lay outside, but I didn’t find the Jerusalem I’d dreamed of visiting all my life. Just modern buildings scattered all over the place—the sort of thing you could see in any European town, as if we were not in Jerusalem at all. As if Jerusalem was somewhere else.

  Night fell, and we left the hotel in Salman’s car. He didn’t seem to know the city well. He commented like a tourist guide who hadn’t taken lessons in his profession or walked about the streets before. He would point out to us a corner or a landmark whose details were hard to absorb. He would show us little things he had generally only heard about. We looked and were astonished, each in their own way.

  We parked near the Jaffa Gate, left the car, and crossed Omar ibn al-Khattab Square, then turned left, and entered Latin Patriarchate Street. We reached the Nafura Restaurant, which looked just like the other establishments around it, with their mostly blue old doors, and went in, one after the other. Once inside, we looked in more detail at the place where we would spend our evening, while the owner greeted us with traditional expressions of affection. Fahmy would later explain that it was his favorite restaurant, and that its owner was also a friend of his. The two men—who hadn’t met for a considerable time, so he would later inform us—embraced and chided each other, exchanging the excuses that people habitually use—“You know how busy things are . . . by God, I swear . . . ,” then, as he steams ahead with the rest of the usual formula, the other interrupts him, and says, “Don’t swear, man . . . I’ll divorce my wife . . . ,” and the first won’t let him finish for fear of him having to divorce his absent wife for the sake of a white lie.

  Inside, the restaurant was a work of art. Tables covered with clean, neat cloths, with flowerpots between them holding roses that hid both pots and customers, and an enormous fountain in the middle, like those in old Damascus houses. The mezzes and grills were not much different from those served in other Levantine cities, but our being in Jerusalem gave everything the fragrance of the city. When the restaurant owner said that the wall directly facing me formed part of the Wall of Jerusalem (like the others, I had already taken my place around the table), a lot inside me changed, and I couldn’t stop reading what the stones said the whole time we were eating supper. After finishing our first course, Salman laid out the essence of Ivana’s instructions, along with our wish that Fahmy and Nada would help us carry them out.

  The doctor seemed to understand the situation. He wasn’t shocked that Ivana’s body had been cremated after her death, though this was contrary to religious custom. “Why not?” he said. “In the end, every body turns to dust. Ivana, may God rest her soul, has merely taken a short cut.”

  Nada rolled her lips uncertainly, suggesting a temporary disquiet. But she kept her disquiet to herself and did not translate it into words. That encouraged Julie to say in English, with her eyes on Nada, “We’ve brought her ashes in a beautiful container.”

  “Did I understand from Salman that it’s a glass vessel?” asked Nada.

  “No, it’s porcelain, in the shape of a woman’s body, with the figure of my mother in her youth,” replied Julie.

  I cut in, to arouse Nada’s curiosity, “You’ll see tomorrow. Then you can choose whether to help us or not.”

  There was a silence like the moments that precede a decision.

  F
inally, we thanked our hosts and said goodbye, in the hope of visiting them the following day in their house in the Sheikh Jarrah suburb of Jerusalem. Then we left, to search for other details of the city. The car took us to the top of the French Hill district in the northeast of the city, its houses scattered along the line of our silent glances. Since 1971, the hill had been given a new Israeli name: Giv’at Shapira.

  “They can call it what they like,” said Salman, “we’ll go on calling it ‘French Hill.’” Meanwhile, all eyes were roving over the illuminated houses in the settlement amid the sleepy forest trees. Close to the settlement, lights were shining in the Hadassah Medical Center, and in the Hebrew University, some of whose students lived in the settlement, where they formed part of the total of seven thousand residents, in addition to a number of doctors and nurses of both sexes who worked in the hospital nearby.

  “This is the highest point in Jerusalem,” said Salman. Without waiting for anyone to comment, he went on, “I did a Google search on it yesterday. I don’t know what brought it to mind. Someone—a female estate agent, I think—wrote about how she’d come with a client who wanted to buy an apartment on an upper floor in the settlement. The woman brought him here and took him to the building, showed him the apartment, then stood him on the balcony, and told him to look. The man turned to where she was pointing and saw a view to blow the mind. He couldn’t believe he’d found an apartment in Jerusalem on a hill eight hundred and thirty meters above sea level!

  “‘Adoni,’ she said to him, ‘you see the road over there?’

  “He turned to where she was pointing.

  “‘That road goes from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea.’

  “‘Beseder, okay, I like the view a lot. But the price you’re asking is too much.’

  “Laughing, she told him, ‘The 400,000 US dollars that you’ll pay is for the view in front of you. We’ll give you the apartment for nothing. What do you say?’”

  Aida, who lisped a little, gave a start and said, “It’s not just the hill, Salman, my dear—the Jews have taken the whole of Jerusalem for free.”

  I didn’t make any comment. Nor did Julie, who was concentrating hard on the discussion going on around her. But I whispered to her, “We’ve become like the rest of the Arabs, and like the prophets of the city: we just look at these places as they bury Jerusalem under them, settlement after settlement. We see new features piling up over the existing ones, and new names tramping on the old ones.”

  The night went on, loitering with us in the streets. Most of the evening had passed, and darkness covered the greater part of the city. Jerusalem appeared decorated with necklaces of stars, as the earth turned into sky. Eventually, Salman stopped his car.

  “This is the American Colony Hotel.”

  We all turned toward the hotel. It was a beautiful building, constructed of the white limestone that is used a lot in the country. In front of it were six bougainvillea shrubs, whose flower-covered branches hung over the front wall. We used to call them the ‘madwoman.’ They reminded me of my mother Amina, who loved them a lot, and would wait for the summer to welcome them. As they crept up the wall of our house, she would watch them the whole time. She’d said that they were strong, and that it was their madness that pushed them toward the trellis on the walls and made them climb it. One summer, I’d asked her, “The madwoman that’s on our wall, Mother, is she mad or sane?”

  She’d turned to me with tears in her eyes, and said, “After Sharon’s tanks destroyed our house, my dear, there were no more walls for the madwoman to climb up!”

  I loved the madwoman as well. Like my mother, I loved her flowery madness. Sometimes, I would talk to the madwoman. I would tell her what my mother said about her: “There’s no tree stronger than this one. She climbs up the walls like a thief. She’s got a shameless eye, which makes amorous glances at anyone who’s coming or going in the street, and talks with them.” And I would laugh.

  I started to laugh again now, as I looked at the flowers climbing up the entrance to the American Colony Hotel. I looked at them, silent on a silent evening, but I recalled that their flowers were the only ones in the whole of nature that smiled with three lips. I saw them smile at the very moment Salman snatched them from me.

  “Hey, I’m going to surprise you. Look over to your right. What do you see? That’s Orient House at the end of the street.”

  Without asking their permission, I put my mother and the madwoman out of my mind, and thought, Orient House, Orient House, Faisal Husseini. I remember the day he died in Kuwait. The last day of May 2001. He went to deliver a letter to the Kuwaitis from the PLO, after the rupture that developed between them following the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, and he died. It’s as if the rupture, which had eluded repair, brought about his end.

  I contemplated the place from a distance of a few meters. I looked at the house, which had disturbed Israel for years. Israel only found peace and contentment in 1997 after it officially closed it and raised the Israeli flag over it, having already restricted, banned, and shut down its institutions one after the other. Faisal Husseini was known as Abul Abd—after his father, the martyred leader Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini, the hero of the battle of al-Qastal in 1948—and his family had inherited the house, which was built in 1897. When his turn came to manage it, Abul Abd had turned it into a headquarters for the PLO in Jerusalem, and had set up a number of media and academic research institutes, which he accommodated there. We’d thought we had a temporary site for the Palestinian capital.

  “The Palestinians lost Abul Abd once, but Jerusalem lost him twice,” I said. “Abul Abd was the crown on the head of the city. From the day of his death, Jerusalem has either been headless or sometimes had a hundred heads.”

  Salman prayed for Abul Abd, and the rest of us prayed with him: “May God have mercy on his soul!”

  Salman’s car moved on, turning right and following the road. After driving a short distance, Salman said, “We’re near Salah al-Din Street. Let’s get some sesame cake. Everyone who comes to Jerusalem has to sample its cakes.”

  I recalled the main commercial market in Jerusalem even before it came into sight, and the famous strike in the street when traders had opened the gates of Jerusalem to the First Intifada, which broke out in December 1987.

  Suddenly, Salman stopped at the junction of two streets. He peered to his right, and started to debate with himself: “We’re in Shabbat Square! I’m afraid I’ve got in a right mess. Now where will you go, Salman? Where will you go? This way or that way? We’re in a right mess!”

  “What sort of mess?” the other three of us asked.

  I turned to where Salman was looking. There was a small blue sign with the name of the quarter written on it in white: Mea Shearim.

  “If you’re afraid of the monkey, he’s bound to appear,” I said.

  I realized the disaster we’d landed ourselves in. The red traffic light had stopped us at the entrance to the Jewish quarter’s main street, which announced its strict religious code in three languages. Directly above the sign bearing the name of the quarter were two posters in Hebrew and English, their texts lit up by the traffic light. With some difficulty, I read what was written in English on the poster: ‘To women and girls: please do not walk in this suburb in immodest clothes!’

  “Is there a problem?” asked Julie.

  Salman answered her tensely, in his own broken Arabic. “Of course there’s a problem. Big problem! The problem is that today is Saturday, and if the Orthodox Jews don’t kill us, they’ll at least smash the car. God, I just want the light to change so we can move on before we get into real trouble.”

  The light changed to green, but we were still exposed. As another green light appeared in the distance, Salman pursued it with his wishes: “God willing, we’ll be able to get past it before it turns to red and we’re in trouble again!”

  But his wishes were apparently in need of renewal and reinforcement, for suddenly, at a distance of no more than fifty meters,
two groups of youths appeared, loafing around in defense of their religion. If we stopped, they might surround the car, or they might confront us in the middle of the road and force us to stop. Then they might attack us. The road was completely deserted except for the youths, and the next traffic light—with all the fears that brought—and the light from some faint candles in a few houses that were staying up late for the Sabbath.

  Salman quickly drove the car forward, trying to outstrip our fears. We passed between the shouts and curses that the two groups of youths all inevitably hurled at us, and passed the traffic light—which provided a few seconds of safety for us, after which it changed. We passed Mea Shearim, the quarter of the strict Orthodox Jews, who came from Eastern Europe before the Holocaust to form a unique community in the country. I don’t know how we got back to Salah al-Din Street, where we discovered a different world, unconnected to the rituals of the quarter we had just left.

  We crossed Salah al-Din Street to Sultan Suleiman Street. Salman stopped the car opposite a bakery. There were several carts in front of it, and the voices of the sellers drew pedestrians along the street to where they could satisfy their appetites. We opened the windows and breathed in the distinctive Arab smell of cakes.

  “Stay in the car,” Salman told us. He got out and walked toward the market, pursued by our expectations. After a little while, he came back with some cakes. The three of us smiled at their smell, and our breasts filled with desire.

  We all ate a portion of the famous Jerusalem confectionary, and then went back to the Ramada Renaissance Hotel, the smell of the cakes wafting from us—a smell foreign to the hotel where our rooms were, and to the area where we were staying.