by Rula Jebreal
Nadia waited a long time for him, but he did not return. Perhaps she felt more vexed by the cowardly way Beni had left than by the separation itself. Once again she had been shamed and sadly humiliated.
She didn’t know if the deciding factor in Beni’s flight was her being a dancer or her being a Muslim, but, in any case, for the first time in her life she felt discriminated against by her own people. Everyone thought she was an Israeli. She considered herself integrated, and she’d never given a thought to the possibility that she could be the object of such a strong prejudice. Until that moment, her beauty and her emancipated attitudes had served as her safe-conduct into Israeli society, but now, suddenly, all her certainties had been shaken. After having rejected the rules of her own community, she had never thought of herself as a Muslim. Now she was being abandoned, not because of the choices she had made, but either for a quality she had inherited or for belonging to the nightclub world that she herself looked upon as absolutely distant and strange.
When her daughter was born, she experienced great joy, but within a few months, Nadia realized that she couldn’t reconcile the irregular life she led with the fixed hours her baby imposed on her or with the obligations the child’s upbringing required. As soon as she left the stage, she would hurry to her dressing room, where she would invariably find her daughter crying from hunger or thirst, or in need of a change. Nadia loved the child very much, but she felt awkward, and she was afraid of making the mistakes that her own mother had made with her. When she looked at her baby, she couldn’t help remembering the innocence that she herself had lost so early.
One day she received a visit from her sister Tamam, who in the meantime had left the religious school in Nazareth and married Abbas, a gentle and intelligent man who had an ice cream parlor in Haifa. Tamam told Nadia that their mother sincerely regretted having behaved so spinelessly in the past and would very much like to see Nadia again. Their meeting was possible only because her stepfather, Nimer, had been the victim of an accident at the port. A jammed winch had dropped three tons of cargo on him, flattening him like an inkblot.
The meeting with her mother was not the easiest of encounters, particularly for Nadia. No matter how hard she tried to remember a nice moment with her mother before Nimer came into their lives, she could not let go of her residual resentment. After all, her mother was the person responsible. Nadia spoke a little about her life in Tel Aviv and about the difficulties of raising her child. Tamam and Abbas offered to help her, but her mother declared that she would take on the care of the little one herself. “Please!” Salwa implored Nadia. She felt lonely now that her youngest daughter, Ruba, had also gotten married and moved to Nazareth, where her new husband had relatives.
Nadia was surprised to hear such an offer coming from the very woman who had abandoned her to her fate. She could read her mother’s sincerity in her eyes, but how could she simply forget everything, just like that, and take an eraser to the past? Besides, many years before she had sworn to herself that she would make it on her own, and she had no intention of eating her words.
“Nadia, we’re here—we’ll be close to her,” Abbas gently assured her. Until that moment, he hadn’t said a word.
In the end, Nadia accepted. She knew she had no choice, and she was certain that Abbas and Tamam would watch over her daughter in Haifa.
Doubly humiliated by having been abandoned by Beni and by needing to ask for help, Nadia gradually began to take refuge in the oblivion that alcohol offered. She frequently ended her evenings completely drunk. Sitting before the mirror in the dressing room, she would look at her face, with its smeared makeup, at the heavy hair falling over her eyes, and regret that, all things considered, she had done nothing with her life, nothing more than rhythmically undulate her hips for the delectation of a few sweaty businessmen, smarmy industrialists, and smelly local officials.
She felt that the best part of her was not evident in the seductive movements of her body, and at times she thought that some customers could read the truth burning in her eyes. She thought they could see her story, which was not as beautiful as her lips, her breasts, her buttocks, but which was as deep as the sadness she drowned in bottles of arrack. At the end of every show, she called for a bottle of liquor and shut herself in her dressing room, where she drank steadily, mechanically, until her muscles relaxed and the objects that surrounded her faded into the background. She wondered what the rest of the world was like and what it was about Israel in particular that made it such a difficult place to live. Almost every night came to an end with her falling asleep like that, imagining herself strolling the streets of a distant city, one of the many she hoped to visit eventually—Paris, London, Tokyo….
When she reached this point in her story, Nadia remarked to Fatima, “If you’re born in Israel, that means you are born as an Arab or a Jew, and every day there will be someone who glares at you suspiciously. I pretend not to notice, I walk with my head high, but more and more I feel as though I’m being scrutinized and judged. I’m a minority within a minority because I don’t belong to anyone or anything. I have olive skin, black hair, full lips; my entire physical appearance is a reminder that I’m a Palestinian. I associate with them, I go to their clubs, and their music is the same, just as their food is the same as the food I eat. And yet I have never felt that I was one of them.”
Why did she necessarily have to be either Arab or Jewish? Couldn’t she just be Nadia, Nadia the rebel, Nadia who was free?
Fatima had remained silent the whole time, listening to Nadia’s story and observing her rapt eyes. She seemed to be in another world, and Fatima had refrained from interrupting her out of fear that Nadia might wake from her memories and realize that they were no dream, they were her real life. Fatima was baffled. She, who had loved, hated, and was ready to kill for her people, could not and would not understand Nadia’s way of thinking. And yet Fatima perceived a common origin in their stories, as if the same sorrow had led them to make different choices.
Nadia took up her story again and told Fatima the last part, the part that had caused her to wind up where she was.
She was with some friends in a nightclub on the beach. The palms were swaying, stirred by a light breeze. Lamps shed a warm light on gaudily colored carpets that muffled the steps of those entering and leaving the club. Nadia was unaware of the young man seated at the next table, but he had been staring at her for some time. His companions, a broad-shouldered, middle-aged gentleman with a pleasant face, and a diminutive young woman, seemed to be deep in conversation. But the girl had discovered that her boyfriend’s attention was fixed on Nadia, and every so often she cast a hostile look in Nadia’s direction and then, with a false smile, quickly turned back to the man she was talking to. Nadia got up to say hello to an old friend, a woman who was seated at the bar. As she passed the next table, she finally noticed the young man, an Israeli with whom, not long before, she’d had a brief fling. She limited herself to greeting him with a crisp nod.
The lad sprang to his feet, and with the excuse of ordering another drink, he walked over to the bar and sat down on the stool next to Nadia.
A few minutes later, when Nadia was returning to her table, the girlfriend looked at her and sneered, “Arab whore.” Nadia punched her with such force that it knocked the girl down. Nadia’s temples were throbbing, while an expression somewhere between fear and surprise registered on the girl’s face. Blood was streaming down from her right nostril, soaking the white collar of her blouse. Nadia was on her feet, her legs slightly spread, her arm bent at chest level, her hand still clenched into a fist. The young woman on the floor had acted out of jealousy, unable to stand the sight of her man, or perhaps only her friend, so obviously interested in Nadia. But what stung Nadia more than anything was that “Arab” had been thrown at her as if it were the most common insult anyone could utter. Whether she considered herself an Arab had no importance; it was what she was, period, and there were people willing to offend her solely bec
ause of that.
A heterogeneous crowd of onlookers had gathered, and for several moments nobody offered any assistance to the diminutive young woman who had challenged Nadia’s pride. Then the older, pleasant-looking fellow helped the girl to her feet, as the clamor of the club’s patrons was drowned out by approaching police sirens. Nadia was loaded into a squad car, which then made its way along the seafront through the Saturday-night throngs. She looked out the window and saw a palm tree bent by the wind, leaning toward the sea. Nadia bit her tongue and the sweet taste of anise mingled with the salty bitterness of blood.
On the day after she heard Nadia’s account of the incident, Fatima was hanging the prisoners’ laundry out to dry in a little courtyard. She could see a slice of sky framed by the gray walls and thought at length about what she would do if she were in the same situation as Nadia: able to leave prison in a few months and come to terms with freedom.
When she finished her work, she went back to the cell and stretched out on her bed, waiting for Nadia to return. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, at the pieces of plaster that were about to fall down and the damp stains that highlighted its perimeter.
When Nadia reentered the cell, she smiled at Fatima, who smiled in return. When was the last time she’d done that?
Fatima’s influence on Nadia grew daily. Fatima especially tried to persuade her not to resume the life she’d had before, not to go back to dancing in Tel Aviv, but to go to Jerusalem, to Fatima’s family; her relatives would surely help Nadia. During the last month of Nadia’s detention, when Fatima’s relatives came to visit, they asked to speak to Nadia as well. They were cheerful, good-natured people, and Nadia started thinking that maybe her friend was right.
And so, much sooner than either of them wished, the moment of separation arrived. For Fatima, life in prison would resume its monotonous course; she would go back to enduring the hostility of the other prisoners alone. But Nadia was leaving her with something more. Her many questions had made Fatima reflect for the first time on what she had done and on many beliefs that she had never called into question.
The night before her release, Nadia pondered various experiences she’d had during the past six months. Sharing her story with Fatima had made Nadia realize that she had never thought of herself in terms of membership in a group, not until she was called an “Arab whore.” Nadia thought, “Maybe Fatima is right when she says that no one can be free if her own people are not. No Arab is free in this country.” She hadn’t thought about that before. And if she hadn’t thought about it, maybe it was because she hadn’t been thinking, and that made Nadia feel empty. It was a dangerous line of reasoning, though, because it contained the possibility of living as a prisoner in your own land even if you weren’t in jail, and of backfiring against anyone who might look for different ways to survive, who might choose to engage in something other than the struggle for her country.
As dawn was breaking on that final morning, Nadia reflected that prison had granted her the luxury of being able to think in the abstract for the first time in her life.
Later that morning, before giving Nadia one last embrace, Fatima told her, “You’re going to regain your freedom, but that won’t automatically make you happy. Whatever you do, do it in such a way that all the things we said to each other continue to mean something. Don’t forget; do it for me.”
4
Nadia soon felt comfortable with Fatima’s relatives and with life in Jerusalem. Fatima had led her family to think that Nadia also had been incarcerated for political reasons. From the very first day, she was on friendly terms with them, and she soon familiarized herself with the narrow streets and lanes of the Old City. She quickly decided to become engaged to Jamal, Fatima’s brother, who had fallen in love with her the first time he saw her in the prison. A few weeks after her arrival, Jamal asked her to marry him, and she accepted. She never mentioned to him that she had a child in Haifa.
Jamal Shaheen was a considerate, quiet man, and Nadia envied his serenity, which was accompanied by a rationality she knew was lacking in herself. She was happy to slip into the tranquil life of a future bride, which was made up of preparations, parties, and other weddings for her to participate in. While Jamal worked as an imam in al-Aqsa Mosque, leading the morning prayer, he also worked a second job as a night guard to put aside money for their wedding. Nadia was endearing herself to all and fitting seamlessly into the city’s social fabric.
It amazed her to think that prison, against all expectations, had given her the chance to make a new life for herself. Her disquiet seemed to have dissipated without her noticing. The news that she had been in prison with Fatima spread rapidly through the neighborhood and brought her boundless respect from its inhabitants, who forgave her Western clothes, her boldness, and her smoking. They were convinced that she had been arrested for political reasons, and she herself was convinced that her reaction to being insulted as an “Arab whore” had been, in a certain sense, a political act.
One day at a wedding party, she met a young man from Bethlehem. Jamal’s cousin introduced them, and when their eyes met it was as if they were the only two people left in the world. They talked for three consecutive hours without any of the other guests taking much notice. Hilmi was twenty-two, tall, and dark skinned, with intense, intelligent eyes. He wanted to go to Beirut to study at the American University. Nadia revealed to him that she was already betrothed to another man.
Despite these adverse circumstances, their reciprocal attraction was such that they decided to see each other again two days later. For a while after that, they met secretly in various cafés and restaurants in West Jerusalem and also encountered each other in the Shaheens’ home. Fatima and Jamal’s mother, an elderly and somewhat naive woman, thought Hilmi was turning up to court her other daughter. Jamal, Nadia’s fiancé, occupied with his work at the mosque and busy preparing for his new family, was totally unaware.
Nadia and Hilmi’s clandestine rendezvous became more and more intense. One afternoon they made love. Around lunchtime they met at the Damascus Gate and walked to a small hotel. Nadia was tense with fear, and it was obvious that Hilmi, too, was extremely nervous.
Once they were inside the large and handsome room, the couple embraced tightly, ending in a long, passionate kiss. Neither of them had ever been so certain of what they were doing as they were at that moment. Hilmi kissed Nadia’s throat and then slowly began to undress her. His movements were awkward, but Nadia thought his the most delicate hands that had ever touched her body. Hilmi gently leaned her back on the large bed. When he saw that she was trembling, he smiled and told her that she should relax, that everything was going to be all right. Nadia didn’t stop shaking, and her eyes grew wider. “If you want me to, I’ll stop,” Hilmi said. He would not force himself on her. Nadia’s only response was to take his hand and put it on her breast.
Time stopped for them.
Before they left the room, Nadia embraced him and asked him not to go away. She would have begged him, but her pride prevented it. “You can study here, in any university,” she said, but he was adamant. He soothed her by telling her that he’d come back for her soon.
“Please, Nadia, wait for me. Don’t get married,” he said.
A week later, Hilmi left Jerusalem, and it was difficult for Nadia to keep from showing the great sadness that consumed her. Her disappointment at Hilmi’s departure towered over her; once again she felt abandoned. Having lost her faith in men a long while back, she didn’t trust Hilmi’s promises, and so she decided that she should go ahead with her marriage to Jamal.
She did so a month later, but the day before the wedding she discovered that she was pregnant. She called Jamal and wept as she told him the whole story. It disturbed him profoundly, as he was a good man who had unconditional faith in other people. He rose from his chair and looked incredulous. So many questions were crowding into his brain: Who? And, even more than that, How? How could he have failed to notice anything?
�
�It would be better for me to go back to Haifa now,” Nadia said. “You’ve been very generous to me, and I haven’t been capable of repaying your trust.”
Jamal made his decision and broke his silence. “I love you, Nadia. Maybe it’s partly my fault, because I’ve neglected you for my work. I still want to marry you, but you must promise never to see him again.”
Nadia felt as though the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. How could she deserve such a good man? “He’s gone away, and he’s not coming back,” she said with tears in her eyes.
“I believe you,” Jamal said, drawing near and putting his arms around her. “I love you so much. I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you.”
The first year of their marriage passed in great serenity. Nadia became active in organizing various women’s groups. She promoted discussions and hosted parties, encouraged the women to be independent and to demand respect from their husbands. In this sense, Nadia was a genuine pioneer, as haphazard and instinctive as ever but effective in offering a contrast to the marginalized, submissive Arab women who were her neighbors. Her miniskirts, the way she rambled around the city by day or night, her total autonomy from her husband, the fact that she drove a car, that she had both Israeli and Palestinian friends—all provoked a palpable ferment in her part of town.
At the end of that first year of marriage, Hilmi came to see her at the family home. He told her that he had found an apartment in Beirut and enrolled in the university. “The city’s modern and full of life,” he said. “I know you’ll like it.”
Nadia flinched, which made Hilmi pause and look at her more closely. A little behind her, he could see an infant a few months old, apparently a baby girl. “You’re married,” Hilmi observed mournfully, “and you have a daughter.” Then a sudden doubt assailed him, a doubt that a quick calculation of the time involved did nothing to dispel. “Tell me the truth, Nadia. Is that baby, by any chance, mine?”
