Fractured Destinies

by Rabai al-Madhoun

  Nada now addressed us all: “Come on, let’s go down one step at a time to the sitting room on the third floor. We can pray for her soul and put the statue in the middle of the room, so that everyone who visits us can see it and hear the story from me or Fahmy, or even from our children, to whom we’ll tell everything—they’ll come back home this evening . . . .” As the others listened, I was searching for the Fairuz song ‘Flower of Cities’ and loading it on my cellphone. As soon as Nada finished talking, she moved away, followed by everyone else, to the rhythm of Fairuz’s voice:

  For you, City of Prayer, I pray,

  For you, most splendid of dwellings, Flower of Cities . . .

  Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, City of Prayer, I pray!

  We left the terrace, and turned, still in the line we had spontaneously created, Nada and Julie at the front. As we descended the house’s outside marble staircase, a beautiful panorama appeared in front of us: three- and four-story buildings climbing a wide hill, and olive trees racing each other in pursuit of them. Below stretched a valley, an extension of the Wadi Joz, from which smoke from burning car tires was rising up somewhere in front of us. A few meters away, there was a small gathering of people (a little later, when we went down to the garden—which clung to the bottom of the mountain—Nada would tell us, “Those are groups of Palestinian and Jewish leftists, some of whom still gather here. They’re protesting against a government plan to annex a piece of land in the valley”).

  We went down the stairs one after another, enveloped in small clouds of holy incense, to the accompaniment of Fairuz’s voice and the solemn rhythm of our feet. We reached the third floor, and our small funeral procession went in through the door of the guest room. Nada stopped, so we all stopped. She gave the statue to Julie and asked her to place it herself in a corner of the room. When she had done so, and without any prior arrangement, we paused for a moment of proper silence, after which Julie received final condolences for the soul of Ivana, which I felt—and no doubt, the others felt the same—must now be hovering over the heads of the protestors, before it began its final journey over the Flower of Cities.

  We went down to the garden and Nada brought out tea. Then we listened to Fahmy telling the story of his family. He concluded by saying bitterly, “And here is our latest loss. Do you see the house over there? Just above my left hand?” Everyone turned to where he was pointing. “That’s the house of my younger brother Mustafa,” he went on. “He emigrated to America a year ago. He said he couldn’t stand the situation at home. Every morning, I would be drinking my coffee here in the garden, and I would wave at him or he would call out to me, to say good morning to each other. May God have mercy on him, he didn’t listen to my advice—he quit the house and emigrated with his family. Anyway, some months ago, I was standing in the morning with a cup of coffee in my hand as usual, probably thinking of Mustafa, when I turned toward the house and saw a Jew who’d planted a chair by the door and was sitting as though he was in his ancestral home. I went crazy, hysterical—I contacted the police, and submitted a complaint. Months have gone by, but the wretch won’t leave the house. He ripped the door off, he’s taken up residence there, and the police aren’t willing to take any steps against him or get him out. We’re waiting for a decision from the courts. And I’m afraid it’ll be the same for Mustafa as it’s been for thousands of Palestinians who’ve quit their homes and taken the keys with them.”

  Next morning, Julie and Aida decided to go back to the Khan al-Zeit Market to buy herbs and spices. Aida said Julie was insisting, and that she really liked Abd al-Mun‘im Qasim’s shops. Salman agreed to go with them and spare me the trouble of waiting for the two women to explore the huge variety of produce on offer. He said he would call in at a number of Jerusalem bookshops and seek out some new publications. That gave me a chance to visit the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock on my own.

  The four of us passed the Damascus Gate amid a crowd watched by three armed Israeli soldiers. We walked on down the few steps in front of where al-Wad Street intersects with the Khan al-Zeit market, where we became part of the crowds vying for their share of the delights of the city. Julie and Aida didn’t need a guide, or even Salman’s help, to take them to the Suq al-Attarin inside, for the smells of the superb Palestinian herbs and spices were enough to draw them by the nose to such shops as were left in the market, though many of them had closed because of the taxes and other irritations, as well as continuing Israeli intimidation.

  When the smells reached my nostrils, I left the others and headed toward the Dome of the Rock through the Cotton Suq, after agreeing that the other three would visit the Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock later while I went on my own to the Holocaust victims’ museum known as Yad Vashem. We would all meet in the Ramada Renaissance Hotel in the evening.

  I was now in the Suq al-Qattanin, the Cotton Suq, the most beautiful market in Jerusalem, built by Sayf al-Din Tunkuz al-Nasiri, the governor of al-Sham in the reign of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad Qalawun in 1336. I looked at its colored stones, and its half-barreled roof, supported on pointed arches. I walked slowly under the eight openings through which the light and air penetrated, allowing the suq, which was crowded with people, to be ventilated. Like millions of other people, I sang to myself and to the city I loved:

  For you, City of Prayer, I pray,

  For you, most splendid of dwellings, Flower of Cities . . .

  Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, City of Prayer, I pray!

  I sang, and whenever I came to a bit I couldn’t remember, I re-sang what I could. When I reached the end of the road, still singing, I went up the first steps that eventually lead to the mosque of the Dome of the Rock, where an Israeli policeman stopped chatting to his female colleague (whose face looked Ethiopian) and indicated that I should stop. I did so, and my singing trailed off at “For you, City of Prayer, I pray.”

  “Hey, you, where are you going?” he asked.

  “To the mosque,” I replied.

  “It’s forbidden.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s forbidden. Don’t you understand?”

  “That’s odd. Can you explain why it’s forbidden?”

  He blocked my way with his M16 rifle.

  “I told you it’s forbidden.”

  “I wish you’d had the same courage to say that in front of my mother. Do you know, if your government had tried to stop my mother from visiting the holy places, she’d have slapped you in the face and shouted, ‘Go away! Is there anyone in the world that stops God’s servants from visiting God’s houses except your Occupation that’s as filthy as you are?’”

  “But it’s forbidden.”

  “But you haven’t told me why it’s forbidden.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “From this country. A Palestinian, if you like.”

  “Do you have ID?”

  “I’m a British Palestinian.”

  I raised my head, and my eye caught sight of an Arab man sitting to the side of the people going up to the mosque. I was about to put my foot on the next step up again, when the policeman pushed his rifle forward until it touched my chest and surprised me by demanding that I recite the Fatiha.

  “Why? Has someone died? I’ll recite it for sure after I’ve entered the mosque, praise be to God for my visit there.”

  “If you don’t recite the Fatiha, I won’t let you past.”

  I was taken aback, and growing increasingly angry. This stranger wanted me to prove my Islam to him. Did they teach the Israeli police the Fatiha for this purpose?

  At this point, the strange man I’d noticed sitting on the edge of a low stone wall at the side of the steps interrupted. “It’s no problem, sir. Recite the sura of the Fatiha. You won’t lose anything; in fact, it will bring you rewards in heaven.”

  That’s a religious detective, a voice whispered inside me. He’s waiting to pass judgment and inform on me.

  I recited the Fatiha with a calm that was almost like contemplatio
n.

  “Please go in,” said the policeman, who had stepped back a little.

  I climbed what remained of the eleven steps, passing the policeman’s rifle. Then I stopped directly in front of the religious detective, and gave him a disapproving look. The man, who was in his fifties, smiled, and spoke to me calmly:

  “Sir, I’m a delegate of the Islamic awqaf department. It’s we who are asking these questions.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir, but why do you have to ask? Suppose I were a Christian and wanted to visit al-Aqsa, or even an atheist. Since when has it been forbidden to visit the holy places?”

  “No, sir, don’t misunderstand me; we’re just afraid of settlers and Jewish fundamentalists slipping in. You know the situation. Every day or two, they try to storm the place.”

  I sat on the wide side staircase which leads up to the Dome of the Rock, and phoned my mother.

  “You seem happier this time. There’s laughter in your voice. Ha!”

  “Is there anyone in the world who could be in Jerusalem, Mother, and not be happy?”

  “Heh! It’s a gift from God. They won’t give me a permit to visit Jerusalem. So my son visits it, and I visit through him.”

  “Of course, Mother, consider it as your visit, and a sanctification of your pilgrimage to Mecca. I’m going to the Dome of the Rock in a bit—I’ll pray two rak‘as for you, and another two rak‘as in the Haram al-Sharif. Okay?”

  “Okay, and you . . . do you want me to pray two rak‘as for you to reward you in God’s sight?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Mother. Are you happy?”

  “I’m okay. And Jala . . . Julu . . . I mean, Julie. May my tongue be cut out, I keep forgetting. Ah, that’s right, she’s a Christian. By God, you’re both as bad as one another! I’ll leave it to God to judge between you.”

  I stood inside the Dome of the Rock, not far from the door I had entered through, propped up by my emotions. I took off my shoes and put them on a wooden stand near the entrance. I walked like someone walking between two ages, holding on to neither of them—not even the present in which I found myself—toward a corner at the side, where I prayed two rak‘as. When I had finished, and recited two salaams—“Peace be upon you, and the mercy of God. Peace be upon you, and the mercy of God”—I stayed sitting there for a few minutes, contemplating the Golden Dome from the inside, and the verses of the Quran that decorated it. I looked in the direction of the Rock, which I couldn’t make out completely because of the repairs to the roof being undertaken by a team of Jordanian specialists. I got up and walked nearer. The Rock was irregularly shaped and a meter and a half high at its maximum. Under it was a small cave, with an area of 25.5 square meters at most, making the Rock appear to be suspended, which has given rise to all sorts of legends and fantasies about it. These legends have enabled anyone who hasn’t visited it to mix myth with religion and fantasy with reality, producing tales and stories about it that are widespread throughout the country.

  “There’s a story, Amina, that the Rock flew and caught up with the Prophet (on whom be blessings and the best of peace) on the night of his ascension into heaven. The Prophet (blessings and the best of peace be upon him) chided it. ‘Have some manners!’ he said. So it stopped where it was . . . and it stayed suspended in the air.”

  My uncle’s wife had told this story to my mother, taking advantage of her ignorance and my aunt’s superiority to her in studying up to the sixth elementary grade. When my mother did not comment, and seemed to doubt what she had heard, my aunt continued:

  “Did you know, Amina, that if a pregnant woman goes under the Rock, she’ll have a miscarriage?”

  “Oh! I seek refuge with God, the Almighty One. Lord, protect us!”

  My mother believed what she had heard, and commented on the words of her sister-in-law with a naiveté that I had not previously been aware of (I was a child at this time). “Do you know, Umm Hatim, that if God gives me life and I visit Jerusalem, I won’t visit it when I’m pregnant? I’m afraid for what is in my belly.”

  I praised God when I heard that. My unborn sibling would be safe!

  I left the Dome of the Rock, borne along on my amazement at the design of the unique building and its interior decorations, and of the Dome itself, which lifts the person looking at it to new heights of pleasure in artistic contemplation. I headed toward the Haram in a southeasterly direction, went into the mosque and performed two rak‘as, then emerged, my spirit soaring on an ethereal sense of repose born of the two visits.

  On my way back to the Suq al-Qattanin, I detoured in a westerly direction to the Western Wall. A strange curiosity led me to make acquaintance with the place, which had now become known as the Wailing Wall, visited by fundamentalist Jews lamenting the loss of the temple. But my curiosity could not overcome the fact that the visit would not bring me any advantage or hold out the prospect of any particular pleasure. Indeed, it offered the visitor a strategic national obstacle course, beginning with the electronic security barrier guarded by a group of armed soldiers at the entrance, and ending with the Wall, which had imposed on us the Judaization of most of Jerusalem and the feverish efforts to impose a fundamentalist religious stamp on the state as a whole.

  I continued walking in the opposite direction across al-Wad Street, and left the area via the Damascus Gate for the taxi stand, from which a driver took me to the museum for the victims of the Nazi Holocaust, or Yad Vashem as they call it.

  6

  Haifa

  Jamil Hamdan drove us in his small Fiat to the Merkaz HaShmona station, then went back to his work in the Ministry of Education. I bought return tickets for Julie and myself to Merkaz Savidor station in Tel Aviv. At 9:11 am, train number 107 arrived at the station, its final destination being the town of Beersheba in the Negev. The train was odd but nice, like a string of the famous red double-decker buses in London, each one attached to the next, though like a lot of trains it was actually pale silver. We got on together, and took two seats opposite each other beside a window.

  Julie and I had traveled on a train like it in Paris a couple of years ago. We had spent two days tracing with our feet the maps and landmarks of the city. On the evening of the third day, we had gotten lost, swallowed up by a foolish murky evening stroll. We’d been forced to abandon what was left of the evening and look for a nearby Metro station to get back to Montparnasse, where we were staying in a hotel. Our feet had led us on—with no knowledge on either our or their part—to a station like an ancient castle. We went in by the main entrance, to be swallowed up in a maze of tunnels and internal corridors that circled around themselves and us. As they turned, we turned with them, until we ended up dizzy in front of a notice stuck on a wall, which displayed a map of the train routes for passengers’ use. With no pity for us or the situation we were in, it informed us that we were somewhere in an outlying suburb, not served by the Metro, and the only help the map could give us was to provide details of the trains that passed through the station and connected with a Metro station, so that we could board the Metro and complete our unconventional journey back to the hotel.

  The gloomy double-decker train had finally arrived. I said to myself at the time that it looked fit to transport inmates to some prison—prisoners who were forced to hew rocks for which there was no need at all, except to fulfill the sentences of hard labor issued against them—but not to convey two people like ourselves. This called to mind the Bastille, and 14 July 1789—when the first sparks of the French Revolution had appeared, the prison was stormed, and the date had become a national day of celebration.

  The Haifa train was smart, and promised a quiet journey. It was clean inside. The seats were a dark blue, the color of the deep sea, and each of them was wide enough for two passengers. Between our seats was a table, suggesting an invitation to a lunch for four. By the window was an electric socket for people wanting to use a computer or charge their cellphones during the journey.

  Julie sat with her back to the train’s direc
tion of travel, paying no attention to it. I sat opposite her, watching, through a wide rectangular glass window, scenes from the country introducing themselves to me for the first time, presenting features that I’d previously only studied in books and maps.

  I explained to Julie that we would be getting off at Merkaz Savidor station in Tel Aviv, which had been built on the ruins of the villages of Sheikh Mu’nis, Manshiya, and Karm al-Jabali. The land belonged to Jaffa. We would leave the station and hire a taxi, which would take us to Dina’s Café, at 34 Yehuda Hayamit Street, Jaffa. It used to be called King Feisal Street. There were still many Arab residents in the city who used the old names and refused to recognize the Israeli names attached to the official signs that had been put up at street corners. We were to meet Jinin there at 10:30 for a cup of coffee, as she had suggested, and from there continue in accordance with the program she had drawn up for us. I believed she would be taking us for a tour in her car, after which we’d go to the port, then on to the Old Citadel for a short tour there before she took us back to her house. We might also meet Basim, if he was there.

  “Why wouldn’t he be there?” asked Julie.

  “I don’t know. Jinin’s been very quiet about him in her latest emails to me.”

  The train passed Haifa Bat Galim station, then stopped for a few minutes at Haifa Hof HaKarmel before resuming its journey. At Atlit station—which brought to mind the graphic stories about its notorious prison (one of the ugliest in Israel) and some of the worst instances of man’s persecution of man that I could recall—a young conscript got onto the train, holding a copy of Israel Hayom, the most widely distributed right-wing free paper. A medium-sized rifle was slung over his shoulder.

  The conscript chose to sit beside me. He lowered his weapon from his shoulder, and stretched it over his thighs, its base pointing toward me and touching my left hip. I didn’t dare ask him to move it away, but reluctantly accepted the situation, while he proceeded to leaf through the pages of the paper with interest.