I stood up too quickly, spilling the tea. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Impossible. I have work to do.’
Her eyes misted up.
***
I tried not to think of Nora as anything but my student, a friend; but every night I dreamed of her. In my heart raged a struggle. How could I agree to an arranged marriage? How could I be with anybody else? Nora was smart and lovely. She was learning Arabic. The more I got to know her, the more I realised that I wanted a marriage based on love. I wanted a wife I could be proud of. An accomplished wife. But I knew in my heart that it couldn’t be Nora. How could I disappoint my parents?
Every time Nora invited me back to her dorm room, I found an excuse not to go. ‘I’ve got too much work.’ ‘I think I’m coming down with the flu.’ ‘I have a headache.’ That line made Nora laugh. ‘Don’t you know?’ she said. ‘That’s the woman’s line.’
One evening, I was having dinner with her at Casablanca. Sitting next to the fireplace in the dimly lit room, candlelight flickering on her face, she suddenly stopped eating, put her pita on the table and sat up straight in her chair. I dipped my pita into the hummus and was about to take a bite when she spoke.
‘I want to be with you, Ichmad,’ she said.
My hand was suspended in mid-air. How could I tell her I didn’t want her because she was Jewish? Working with a Jew was one thing, marrying one and having children together was another. In Israel, my children would be considered Jewish and have to serve in the Israeli army. The folded piece of pita in my hand started to drip. I put it in my mouth and chewed, trying to buy myself time. Swallowing, I cleared my throat. ‘I promised my mother I’d marry someone from my village.’
‘We can’t continue like this,’ she said. ‘It hurts too much. Can’t you tell your mother that you met someone?’
‘She won’t understand.’
‘Why not?’
‘She doesn’t want me to be with a Western girl.’
‘I love you.’ She waited for a response. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. ‘You think I’m a foolish girl; that I don’t understand. But I do. I choose to believe in love.’ She got up and hurried out of the door.
My heart ached as I let her go.
***
Nora stopped coming to her tutoring sessions. Every time the telephone in my office rang, I jumped, but it was never her. When Justice asked about her, I told her that she wasn’t the one for me. I worked around the clock. As long as I kept busy, I felt in control. I didn’t need her.
Menachem received a grant for $20,000 from the Institute for the Advancement of Nanotechnology, so we went to Habibi’s to celebrate. We were discussing what he wanted to do with the money when I noticed Nora with Justice and the others from their peace activist group at a different table.
‘I’m feeling sick,’ I said.
Menachem looked over at Justice and Nora. ‘This was Justice’s idea,’ he said. ‘She thinks you two are meant for each other.’
‘It isn’t feasible.’ I grabbed the coat Justice had given me and walked to Harvard Yard in a snowstorm to find the bench Nora and I always shared. The snow was several feet high. It was freezing, but I still hadn’t put on my coat. I sat on the bench and let the frigid air punish me.
The more distance I put between Nora and myself, the more I wanted her. I had to regain control. As I sat there in the storm, Nora appeared. I rose. Before I knew what to do, she embraced me, crying. She held on tightly.
‘I can’t stay away from you any longer,’ she sobbed.
‘Don’t cry.’
‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do.’ Her hair smelled of green apples and cinnamon. ‘I love you.’
‘Please, Nora, don’t.’
‘I’m not strong like you.’
‘I’m weak,’ I said. ‘Don’t you see that?’
‘Don’t you desire me at all?’
My arms remained at my sides. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Then what?’
‘Obligation. My family.’
‘Please don’t tell me I’m not good enough.’ Tears trickled down her face. ‘Show them that you could love a Jewish girl. Lead by example.’
Nora kissed me on the lips and I returned the kiss. Just for a moment I allowed myself that – Nora’s sweet lips, which were as soft and inviting as I knew they’d be – and then I pushed her away and walked her to her car. As she drove off, I began to think that maybe I could marry her. I’d ask Baba for his blessing.
With the money I had made, I’d had a telephone installed in my parent’s house. I went to my office and called him.
‘Baba,’ I said, not bothering with the normal pleasantries. ‘Please listen. I’ve met the girl I want to marry. She’s so beautiful, smart, kind. She speaks Arabic and wants to become a human rights lawyer. There’s only one thing.’ I took a breath. ‘She’s Jewish.’
There was silence.
Finally, he said, ‘The Jews aren’t our enemies.’ He spoke slowly, choosing his words. ‘Before the idea of the creation of the Jewish state, Jews and Arabs lived in peace together. Does this girl make you happy? Does she love you? Do you love her? Do you have the same values and outlook on life?’
‘Yes. Yes to everything,’ I gushed.
‘Then you have my blessing,’ Baba said. ‘You’ve suffered so much. You’re a grown man. It’s not right for me to tell you who to marry. That’s your decision.’
Mama got on the line. ‘In the name of God, are you trying to rip my heart out with your bare hands?’
‘He’s sided with the enemy!’ Abbas screamed in the background.
I heard a struggle and it sounded like the receiver was dropped. ‘Call back later,’ Baba said. In the background I heard Abbas yelling, ‘He has lost his mind!’ There was a click and the line went dead.
***
I waited outside the law library for Nora to emerge. When she saw me it was as if thick cloud cover had parted and a sunbeam was reflecting off her face – only it was night. We walked together through Harvard Yard. The stars were shining. Snowflakes drifted from the sky and landed on her blue ski cap. It was a perfect night. I walked her back to her dorm.
‘Can I come up?’ I asked.
Her eyes widened. ‘Of course.’
I followed her up the stairs to her room. She unlocked the door and, when we entered, I was taken aback. Nora’s walls were covered with framed pictures from her travels.
There was a picture of Nora when she was eight or nine kneeling with dark straight-haired girls carrying poles on their shoulders with buckets hanging from both sides.
‘Look at you!’ I marvelled at the young Nora.
‘That was in Laos. The stream wasn’t safe, but it was all the village had. For three months a year that stream dried up. The children walked five miles every day to get the water and carry it back over the hills and a rickety bridge. My parents installed a pump in the centre of the village and paid for a new bridge to be built.’
There was a picture of Nora kneeling in a cabbage patch with three skinny black girls.
‘That’s Rwanda. Did you know that fourteen per cent of the world goes to bed hungry each night? My parents belonged to an organisation that went to different impoverished areas and gave the locals advice on growing vegetables.’
Why hadn’t anyone come to my village? Why, now that we were alone in Nora’s room, didn’t she try to kiss me?
‘Did you know that while nearly a hundred per cent of children in the US and Europe go to school, in poorer countries only forty-five per cent of girls and fifty-five per cent of boys go on to secondary school? 550 million women and 320 million men in this world are unable to read or write.’
I thought of Mama, who never had an opportunity to go to school. And of Amal and Sara, who died. And of Nadia, Abbas and Fadi, who dropped out. Only Hani had continued. He was scheduled to graduate from high school at the end of the year.
I turned Nora to me, pressed my fingers to her lips, and looked into her
eyes. ‘Would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’
‘Ichmad.’ She seemed stunned. ‘Yes.’
I leaned in and, for the second time, we kissed. I wanted to kiss Nora forever. ‘Come to my office. I must call my parents.’
‘Call from here.’
‘It’s too expensive.’
‘Call from here. Your family needs all the money you make. We can live off my trust fund. Please, don’t argue with me. I won’t have it any other way. I couldn’t live with myself if I took any money away from them.’ She handed me the receiver and I dialled the number.
‘She said yes,’ I told Baba. ‘We’re going to get married.’
‘May God grant you many happy years together. May I talk to your fiancée?’
I handed the phone to Nora.
‘I’ll take good care of your son,’ she said in Arabic, her smile as wide as the sea. Then she handed the phone back to me.
We sat on her bed together.
‘I want to get married as soon as possible.’
‘Me too.’ She leaned over to kiss me.
‘Wait.’ I pulled back. ‘We should wait until we’re married.’ I wanted to do that for Baba.
Nora laughed. ‘You’re serious?’
‘I am.’
She stood and put her hands on her hips. ‘Then let’s get married immediately.’
‘And your parents?’ I know she’d said that her parents were liberals, but they were also Jews.
‘My whole life they’ve drilled into my head that people are equal, that differences add to personal relationships. I’ll let you see for yourself. You’ll meet them. You’ll love them.’
‘I want to marry you this summer in my village.’
‘I’m not waiting that long.’
‘My family has to be there.’
‘We’ll have the ceremony there,’ Nora said. ‘And we’ll sign the civil contract here. It’ll be easier like that. Israel doesn’t permit interfaith marriages anyway. Your parents don’t have to know. If you want, we can sign a Muslim contract there. You can start applying for citizenship sooner. I’ll set it up.’
I agreed; after all, I was a twenty-eight-year-old virgin. We didn’t make love that night, but I did kiss Nora one more time before leaving her room. We were engaged.
CHAPTER 37
‘Orange blossoms represent everlasting love,’ Nora said when she answered her door with the flowers in her hair. Then she handed me a box. ‘New clothes for our new life.’ I changed into the white cotton turtle-neck and trousers in the men’s room at the courthouse.
‘Ichmad,’ the justice of the peace said. ‘Please start.’
I looked down at the paper in my hand. ‘You have taught me that love is an emotion we can’t control.’ I looked at Nora for a moment and she smiled. ‘I never wanted to fall in love with you, but I had no choice. God made you especially for me.’ She took my free hand and held it. I looked back at the paper. ‘You have lit up my darkness. I couldn’t imagine a life without you. You are my sunshine.’ The paper fell to the floor as I took her hands in mine and gazed into her eyes. ‘Our best days are in front of us. I look forward to creating a family and growing old together. I pledge to you my everlasting love.’
The registrar looked at her. ‘Nora.’
She pulled her own paper from the folds of silken white robes that made her spun-gold hair look like moonlight. ‘Let our marriage be the first step towards the weaving together of two people.’ Nora stopped looking at the paper and shared her longing through her steady gaze at me. ‘Our love confirmed what I already knew. Love transcends the barriers set up by humans. You are the only one for me.’ She glanced at the paper. ‘I believe that a great marriage doesn’t come from merely finding the right person, but by also being the right person. I hope that at the end of your days, you’re able to look back on this one with certainty as the day you loved me the least.’ She put her paper on the justice of the peace’s desk and took my hands. ‘May my love liberate you. I pledge to you my everlasting love.’
The registrar handed Nora the two-spouted jug filled with water that she’d brought with us and she took a sip.
‘This water symbolises the sanctity of your union.’ He read the lines Nora had written and then handed me the jug. I drank from the other spout. ‘Water is a basic element without which there is no life.’ The justice of the peace put the jug on his desk and looked at me. ‘Do you, Ichmad Hamid, take Nora Gold to be your lawful wedded wife?’
I took her hands in mine. ‘I do.’
Tears glistened in Nora’s eyes.
‘Will you love, respect and honour her for as long as you both shall live?’
‘I will.’
‘Do you promise to love and cherish her in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer, for better, for worse and, forsaking all others, keep yourself only unto her, for as long as you both shall live?’
‘I do.’ I smiled at Nora, she squeezed my hand and we laughed a little.
‘The wedding band, with no beginning and no end, signifies never-ending love.’ He handed each of us the other’s ring, first giving us the final words of the ceremony. ‘Repeat after me,’ he said. ‘With this ring, I thee wed.’
With the simple gold bands on our fingers, the justice of the peace pronounced us husband and wife.
Later, in her dorm room, Nora walked to her bed and held out her hand. I moved towards her as if she had just hypnotised me. Our lips met. She slid off my new blazer and folded it over the tartan chair next to the bed. My shirt stayed on the floor, where it landed.
I feared that I wouldn’t know what to do, but when she leaned towards me, I felt her warmth and began to relax. We kissed. Her tongue teased my lips apart. Nora guided me towards what I believed to be impossible pleasure. Raw adrenaline pumped through my veins.
My hands roamed around her waist and caressed the small of her back. She stepped away and unzipped her dress. I focused for a moment on her pink-painted toenails as she stepped out of the pool of white her dress had become. Even her toes were magnificent, I thought. I marvelled at the beauty before me as my eyes took in the lines and texture of her silken flesh, which was clad now in only a brilliant-white lacy undergarment that conformed perfectly to the round fullness of her breasts. That such an item of clothing existed was yet another marvel. Then that, too, slipped to the floor.
Nora reclined on her bed like a marble nude in Baba’s art book. I approached hesitantly. Could we both fit? Would I crush her?
She smiled a mischievous smile and reached for the zipper of my trousers. She tugged, but it wouldn’t budge. ‘Help me,’ she whispered.
A thread had got caught. I yanked it free.
‘Take everything off, my husband.’
I felt the blood rise to my face. How could I get naked with her staring at me?
As if she could read my mind, Nora slid under the covers and flung them open for me to enter. I quickly slid down my trousers and underwear and jumped in next to her so hard that the mattress bounced. We laughed, and I was glad.
She rubbed her hands on my chest. ‘What a handsome man my husband is.’ Her Arabic was like music.
I took a deep breath. ‘Not nearly as beautiful as you, my wife.’
I glanced at Nora’s sparkling eyes. She threaded her white fingers through my black hair. I was going to make love to her. Before her there had been no other woman in the entire universe. In an almost ironic way, this Jewish girl reminded me of my home. Holding Nora in my arms, I was overcome with feelings of completeness, security and love. Never in my wildest dreams had I ever thought that a Jewish woman would bring out those feelings in me.
When we were done, we lay panting, trying to catch our breath, with the blankets on the floor and my modesty dispersed. I started to laugh and couldn’t stop.
CHAPTER 38
We found an apartment in Somerville and I carried Nora over the threshold, which almost killed me – we’d rented on the third floor of a building
with no lift. Nora insisted she pay the rent from her trust fund. I knew it was unmanly to allow my wife to pay, but my family meant so much to me that I preferred to swallow my pride.
Our main room was only eight by ten feet, but it was ours. On the left was our kitchenette with avocado-coloured appliances and windows on either side. The wall-to-wall, burned-orange shag carpet continued into the bathroom and stopped at an orange-and-green flowered shower curtain.
‘I love it!’ Nora seemed genuinely thrilled. ‘Our very own apartment.’
I felt like my life was finally beginning.
With the money from Nora’s trust fund, we bought a mattress, an avocado bedspread with big orange flowers, two card tables, two folding chairs, an orange Formica kitchen table, a black vinyl loveseat, a beaded curtain that Nora wanted to hang over the opening to the bedroom nook, an orange mood lamp, and an orange poster with a peace sign in the middle bearing the words, ‘Make love, not war’. We put the loveseat against the wall next to the kitchenette and the mattress in the small nook. The two card tables and folding chairs went in the middle of the main room and the Formica table in front of the kitchenette, for cooking purposes.
Just like in her dorm room, Nora covered the walls with her framed pictures – the same way Baba did with his portraits. Mixed among the pictures, she also hung souvenirs from her travels – a retablo made by the Ayacucho of Peru, which was a painted wooden box framing a papier mâché Palm Sunday gathering scene; a Masai Kudu horn; a Zulu beaded belt; and a bow and arrow from the Bushmen of the Kalahari.
On the windowsill in our bedroom, I placed the two-spouted jug. Next to it, I set the silver spoon with our names engraved on it that Menachem and Justice had given us.
‘So you’ll never go hungry,’ Justice had said.
On the wall over the loveseat, I hung the two portraits Baba had given me as a going-away present. The first was of us all together before Amal and Sara were killed. He drew both of them as they had looked the last time he had seen them. Right next to that portrait, I hung the drawing he did the week before I left, of the remaining members of my family. Seeing them next to each other saddened me, so I moved the recent portrait next to our bed.
The Almond Tree Page 19
