Two weeks after our wedding, Yasmine and I boarded a plane for New York City.
CHAPTER 45
For the majority of the flight, we sat in silence while Yasmine gripped the armrests as if she were about to be hurled out of the plane. Eight hours into the trip, she took the initiative and spoke.
‘What’s New York City like?’
‘The opposite of the village.’
‘Have you been to Times Square?’
I looked at Yasmine, surprised. ‘What do you know of Times Square?’
She shrugged, embarrassed.
‘Have you been to the Statue of Liberty?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t have time for such activities, Yasmine. I’m too busy with work.’
‘Do you have a lot of friends there?’
‘My best friends, Menachem and his wife Justice, live there. Are you excited to live in New York? It sounds like you are.’
‘I’m nervous. I’ll miss my family terribly.’ She started to cry.
I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t know how. We didn’t speak again until we reached my apartment.
‘This is it.’ I opened the door.
I’d made no improvements in the years that I’d lived there. Justice had recommended that I buy new furniture for my bride, but I hadn’t wanted to waste the money. I was her rich husband in New York and I didn’t even have a proper bed. It was enough for me, and more than she’d ever had, I figured. Yasmine paused at the door and took in the mauve shag carpet, Formica table in front of the stove, oven, sink and refrigerator, and the black vinyl couch against the wall, facing the television: my only improvement.
Yasmine’s mouth formed an O. ‘It’s wonderful,’ she said, and I knew that she meant it. She was used to a dirt floor and an outhouse in the back. She lowered her eyes. ‘I never in my life dreamed I’d be living like this.’
My stomach contracted. What had I got myself into?
I stopped working from my office at night – although I still worked just as much, I simply added a desk at home. Yasmine sat next to me, on the floor; like an obedient servant doing needlework or knitting blankets for babies that never came. We rarely exchanged words. She never left the apartment unless I accompanied her. She waited alone all day for my return and then followed me around as if she was desperate to have human contact.
‘In the name of God,’ I said. ‘Take an English class. You need to leave this apartment. It’s unhealthy. A wife has to shop for groceries on her own. I can’t have this burden on me. I have work to do.’
Yasmine had a ready array of excuses: ‘I’m scared’; ‘I’m homesick’; ‘I don’t need English.’
I felt as if she expected me to entertain her. With every passing day, I respected her less. I began to wonder if she wore her veil to conceal her rock-headedness. Her whole life, her every thought was about me – and it was suffocating.
At night, she waited patiently in bed for me to plant my seed in her, but month after month her period continued to come. Making a baby had become a dreaded chore. I detested our sex life. I’d turn off the light and roll onto my side, begging to be excused of my responsibilities. ‘I have a headache.’ ‘I have backache.’ ‘I have cramp in my leg.’
‘Are you broken?’ she finally asked.
I began to try to plant my seed again. All I needed was for her to tell her father I was failing in my duties as a husband and then the whole family would become involved.
The first time Yasmine told me of her belief that her father’s prayers and potions would make her fertile, I stared at her in amazement. Could she really be that dumb?
‘How can you accept such superstition?’ My voice oozed disgust. ‘We need to see a specialist.’
‘My father is a specialist,’ Yasmine argued.
‘Your father is ignorant. He didn’t even graduate from high school.’ I hated myself for being cruel, but I didn’t know how else to make my point.
‘There is many a person who believes in the power and blessings of my father. He has cured many and I believe in his miracles.’
‘Miracles don’t exist.’
At these words, a familiar silence fell on the apartment.
‘You aren’t a believer.’ Yasmine shook her head and covered her face with her hands. Not only did Yasmine believe in her father’s prayers, but she prayed herself, and she instructed me on prayers that I, too, was supposed to say. I knew that Nora and I could have made marvellous babies.
‘I believe in science.’ My cheeks were on fire. I imagined that this must be what it would be like for a modern man to live in the pre-Islamic period, when they buried female babies alive.
‘Science?’ Yasmine took her hands from her face and looked pityingly at me.
‘We need to see a fertility specialist.’ I was agitated; nothing like the compassionate man I wished I was. ‘You’ll see; this doctor will help us.’
‘Whatever you say,’ Yasmine said.
I knew that she didn’t believe in modern medicine, but she was glad, at least, to be the object of my attention. Never did we go out together during the day. I went to my office, she stayed home and cooked and cleaned.
I made an appointment with Dr David Levy, a fertility specialist in Manhattan.
Yasmine and I sat on Dr Levy’s plush leather chairs opposite his mahogany desk. Diplomas covered his wall. An undergraduate degree from Yale, summa cum laude. A medical degree from Harvard, also summa cum laude. His board certification was as a specialist in reproductive endocrinology and infertility. There were multiple awards for research, teaching and patient care; his PhD was in early embryo development.
He entered the room with his slicked-back hair, firm handshake, and a voice for radio. ‘I’ve reviewed your test results, Dr Hamid. Your sperm count is in the normal range.’
I tried to repress my smile. I looked over at Yasmine in her veil and her traditional black robe – she refused to wear the new modern clothes I’d bought her – and translated the doctor’s revelation to her.
‘What’s sperm?’ she asked.
‘I need to examine your wife,’ Dr Levy said.
I accompanied Yasmine to the examination room.
The nurse handed her a white robe. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she said.
The fluorescent light was not kind to Yasmine’s plump body. She undressed carefully, making sure the whole time that her veil remained in place. Her panties were white and big, and her bra was full-coverage. Nora had never worn bras.
Yasmine put the robe on.
***
On the taxi ride home, Yasmine sat in an almost foetal position next to me.
‘Your cervical mucus was normal,’ I said, knowing that she wouldn’t understand what that meant. How much more of this could I take? I wished she could take herself to the next appointment, where the doctor would test for blockages of her fallopian tubes, but Yasmine wouldn’t leave the apartment without me. I hated myself for my feelings.
***
Dr Levy found no blockages in Yasmine’s tubes. All of the tests came back normal, but, three months later, she still wasn’t pregnant. Two rounds of intra-uterine insemination and still no results. The next step was in vitro fertilisation. The cost was 10,000 dollars, which my insurance didn’t cover, so I decided we needed to take a break.
I didn’t want to go back to my village, but Baba asked me to come for Fadi’s wedding. He had graduated from medical school in Italy and passed the exam in Israel. As our village’s first doctor, he set up his office in the square and proposed to Uncle Kamal’s daughter Mayadah. Hani was in the last year of his PhD.
Baba was also sure that Yasmine’s father could cure our infertility problem. He was a wise man but, in this, I knew he was wrong. Every time Mama called, her first question was always, ‘Is Yasmine expecting yet?’
***
Yasmine’s father was waiting for us at my parents’ house and everyone insisted we go straight to his home. I couldn’t believe what I had go
t myself into. Even before we entered his house, I could smell the frankincense; he lit more once we got inside. After preparing a tea, he turned and took our hands in his.
‘Please grant them a child,’ he chanted over and over again.
Yasmine joined in. ‘Ichmad, you must join in as well,’ she said.
‘Please grant us a child.’ I chanted along with them, hoping to get out of there quicker by playing along.
***
A month later we returned to New York. Yasmine’s period was late, so I bought an over-the-counter pregnancy kit and explained it to her. When she came out of the bathroom, there were two pink lines. She was pregnant.
Pregnant.
I remembered something Albert Einstein said: ‘Science without faith is blind.’
My wife smiled at me, and I returned it. We were having a baby.
***
Justice and Menachem had invited Yasmine and me for dinner countless times, but I always found an excuse. ‘She’s tired from the trip.’ ‘She has the flu.’ ‘She has a headache.’
It had been over a year since Yasmine’s arrival when Justice walked into my office. I was grading papers. She sat in the chair on the other side of my desk and pushed her wild red hair out of her face.
I’d been avoiding her. I knew she wanted to meet my wife, but I wanted to postpone the inevitable for as long as I could.
‘Is there a reason you don’t want us to meet Yasmine?’ She cocked her head to the side.
‘She’s not like Nora.’
‘I wouldn’t expect her to be.’
I was silent for a moment while I tried to organise my thoughts. ‘She’s young and inexperienced.’ She looked like she could be my daughter. What would they ever talk about?
‘You’re our best friend.’ Justice smiled. ‘I’m sure we’ll love her. Tonight, at our house for dinner.’
Justice got up and looked at me. ‘And I won’t take no for an answer.’ Before I could respond, she was out of the door. I wanted to back out, but realised that I couldn’t.
Upon arriving home, before I could even reach for my key, Yasmine swung the door open. She wore a black robe with red geometric embroidery on the front panel – just like Mama’s. I wondered if she waited there listening for me to return. But she hadn’t been idle; the aroma of fresh pita baking in the machine that I had bought her filled the air. The table was set with two plates and a mezze of little dishes: baba ghanouj, hummus, tabboulie, goats’ cheese and falafel. Cooking on the stove was her musaka’a: an aubergine, tomato and chickpea stew.
‘Could you change your clothes, please?’ I asked. ‘Menachem and Justice have invited us for dinner.’ I would have called to tell her, but she never answered the phone.
‘What about the food I’ve prepared?’ She seemed crestfallen.
‘Put it in the refrigerator.’
Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She lowered her head, turned and walked towards the table. She was two months pregnant and very emotional.
‘Wait a minute.’ I called Justice, explained the situation and invited them over instead. ‘Please Yasmine,’ I tried my best to be polite, ‘can you change into the Western clothes I bought you? And please, no veil.’
‘What’s wrong with what I have on?’
‘We’re in the West now. Please act accordingly.’
Yasmine put on a flowered peasant skirt and a loose blouse. She wanted to braid her hair, but I told her it made her look too young. She wore it down, and I was taken aback at how pretty she looked.
When Menachem and Justice arrived, Yasmine hid behind me like a child. Justice went right up to her as if they had been friends for years, handed her a bouquet of sunflowers, took her hand and led her to the couch. She babbled away, unaware that my wife barely spoke English.
‘Beautiful wife.’ Menachem inhaled. ‘Is that fresh-baked bread?’
When Menachem and Justice used all of the pita to devour the mezze, Yasmine baked some more right in front of them. She always made everything from scratch, spending her days chopping parsley, mashing chickpeas and kneading dough.
‘I must get the recipe for this bread,’ Justice said.
Menachem took out the notepad he always carried with him in his jacket pocket and jotted something down. ‘I’ll get you the bread maker; maybe you can take some lessons from Yasmine.’ I had to smile, understanding his enthusiasm for any culinary improvement.
When the mezze dishes were empty, Yasmine cleared the table. She then spooned her musaka’a into four plates and placed them in front of us. Justice took a bite, closed her eyes and savoured the taste. ‘This is the best ratatouille I’ve ever had.’
I didn’t know what ratatouille was, but I knew Justice had given a compliment. Yasmine blushed.
‘Ichmad, I’m surprised you even leave the house,’ Menachem said. ‘What a talented wife.’
Little conversation was made, since the majority of the time was spent eating. Yasmine finished the dinner with her home-made baklava. Even I had never tasted anything as delicious.
‘You must teach Justice how to make this,’ Menachem said before he bit into his third piece.
‘I’d love to learn,’ Justice said. ‘I could make it next week. I’m having my peace group over for dinner.’
‘Wonderful wife,’ Menachem whispered in my ear before he left, and I knew he meant it.
Justice followed up. Once a week, Yasmine taught her how to cook and Justice taught Yasmine how to dress, speak English and live more independently.
In March, Yasmine gave birth to our son, Mahmud Hamid. From the first moment I saw him, I understood the sacrifices Baba had made for me. Now I knew what it was to love someone more than myself. I would do anything to protect him from harm.
Yasmine wasn’t smart in the ways of the world, but she was a natural mother. She bathed our son, breast-fed him, woke up with him in the middle of the night, sang to him when he cried and made up elaborate stories. And something about this change in Yasmine, the mother of my child, aroused in me a genuine passion for her. We were now united by a common bond. Yasmine’s life was filled with our son and me. I began to see her through different eyes – I saw her the way Mama and Baba had when they urged me to marry her: as a simple girl from my village. She and I were cut from the same cloth.
PART FOUR
2009
CHAPTER 46
The year 2009 did not start off well. For the last week, Israel had been waging war on Gaza. Yasmine and I had just returned home from a New Year’s Day party, when I grabbed the TV remote off the coffee table and clicked the ‘on’ button, anxious to see the latest news. Yasmine snuggled next to me on the couch.
‘Today an F-16 fighter jet dropped a 2000 lb bomb on the house of Dr Nizar Rayan,’ the reporter said. ‘He was a top Hamas leader who served as a liaison between the political leadership and its military wing. The bomb killed not only Dr Rayan, but also his four wives and eleven of his children, who ranged in age from one to twelve.’
The news showed footage of Dr Rayan before his extrajudicial assassination, and from the aftermath. The five-storey apartment building in which Dr Rayan and his family had lived was flattened. Yellow-vested men were evacuating the dead from the scene. Corpses, fire, smoke, the wounded, bloodied children; all were caught in the shaky camera footage. Many were scouring through the rubble looking for victims. Another explosion caused panic as the residents scurried for safety.
‘According to sources, Dr Rayan had been an advocate of suicide bombing since 1994, when Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein entered a Hebron mosque during Ramadan and opened fire on unarmed Palestinian worshippers,’ the reporter said. ‘Goldstein managed to kill twenty-nine Palestinians and wound 125 before his ammunition ran out.
‘In 2001, Dr Rayan backed his twenty-two-year-old son on a suicide bombing mission in which he died and killed two Israelis.’
The news played footage of Dr Rayan, a big bearded man surrounded by black balaclava-clad fighters with
green headbands. They were fighters from the Al-Qassam Brigades.
I was about to turn the television off when I recognised a hunched and crippled man walk over to a bunch of microphones. It had been years since I’d seen Abbas, but his walk gave him away. He was now sixty-one years old, his hair was gone and his skin hung loose on his face like an oversized mask.
Abbas leaned forward and said, ‘We will avenge the murder of our great leader, Dr Nizar Rayan.’
I sat straight up. ‘That’s my brother, Abbas.’
Yasmine leaned forward. ‘All the investigators you hired, and now he turns up on TV?’
Was he in the Al-Qassam Brigades? Had he been underground? He was a cripple; what could he possibly do for the military?
‘Does your brother have a death wish?’ Yasmine asked.
Why did he have to live in Gaza, the poorest, most dangerous place on earth? He should’ve never left our village. We may not have had equal rights, but we had better conditions than the people of Gaza.
‘What do you think the Israelis will do to my family?’ I pulled off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. ‘Why did Abbas have to get involved in politics?’ Gaza could never stand up to Israel, one of the strongest militaries in the world and the only nuclear super-power in the Middle East. ‘I have to help my brother.’
‘Now we know where he is,’ Yasmine said. ‘Let’s try to contact him.’
In my study, Yasmine searched for Abbas’ number on the internet. In Gaza, there were five Abbas Hamids and I contacted them all. None of these Abbases, however, knew how I could find him.
I contacted different government offices, including the President’s. I left messages everywhere, begging Abbas to call me.
For the remainder of Israel’s twenty-three-day war, I spent all my time watching the news on TV, the internet and reading it in the newspapers. I became more determined than ever to get Abbas out of Gaza after finding a YouTube clip that showed an expert on white phosphorus explaining how it had been used in Gaza by the Israelis.
The Israeli military had been air-blasting the white phosphorus shells, allegedly trying to create a smokescreen near the Jabaliyah camp, the most densely populated place on the planet. But the expert explained that the day on which they attempted this was so incredibly windy that a smokescreen couldn’t be created. Instead, the flaming pellets rained down on this highly populated civilian area. This was particularly dangerous because phosphorus could be absorbed through the burn area, resulting in liver, heart and kidney damage and, in some cases, multiple organ failure. In addition, white phosphorus continues to burn unless deprived of oxygen, or until it is completely consumed.
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