The Woman From Tantoura

by Radwa Ashour

  “It’s no use!”

  “If I didn’t know you as I know myself, I would say that you’ve given in to fear, like a woman.”

  My uncle exploded. His voice seemed loud, but as he continued speaking it rose more and more until it reached the houses of the village and the beach beyond, and perhaps even the islands and the sea behind them.

  “Haifa fell in two days, it went in two days, Abu Sadiq! I was there, and you know it. The city was besieged from all four sides, surrounded by ten settlements. And inside the city they lived on the mountain and we were on the plain, they had cannons and we had to be magicians to obtain weapons. Two hundred fifty rifles arrived from Syria and Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim only got eighty-nine, because the rest were old and useless. He refused to accept them. And despite that we did all that we could, all that we could—for five months. Attack and retreat, bravery, martyrdom. And Haifa fell in two days! The villages are as scattered as beads from a rosary. Surur Burhum said to al-Hunayti that we would spend the night in Acre and make the road to Haifa safe for the weapons so as not to fall into an ambush. Al-Hunayti wanted to arrive quickly and talked on the telephone, and said, ‘We’re coming with the weapons.’”

  My uncle shouted, “Does anyone in his right mind say on the telephone, ‘We’re coming with the weapons’? My God! They died and the weapons were lost. No arms and no leaders. Hajj Amin says ‘right’ and the National Committee says ‘left.’ Seven hundred soldiers from the Jordanian army were near the city observing events and could not intervene. Do you expect them to intervene when their commander is British? The whole thing is as clear as day. They have weapons and the British are with them and they are trained and they have cohesive leadership, and we… .”

  “We have God with us because we are in the right.”

  “We are in the right, yes. We have God with us, I doubt it.”

  My father’s voice rose: “I take refuge with God Almighty from all mighty sins! Blasphemy, on top of everything else!”

  “Haifa fell in two days!”

  “I know that it fell in two days, but the guerrilla fighters are still resisting on the plains and in the mountains, from Galilee to Gaza, and not a day passes when they don’t score victories. The Arab armies will get involved, they will definitely get involved.”

  “Brother, you can judge a book by its cover. They will not come in, and if they did they would be defeated.”

  “And the solution is for us to flee?”

  “The solution is for us to get ready, a year, or two, or three, even if it takes ten years. Use your brain, Abu Sadiq. They’ll enter the village and destroy it and kill the inhabitants and take it over. The solution is to save lives and see what we can do after that.”

  My father struck one hand with the other in despair. His face was flushed, with a blue tone hidden under the red. My aunt was crying. My mother got up to look for incense, since she was certain that someone had struck them with the evil eye. She was the only one talking, talking in an audible voice as she came and went looking here and there. We didn’t know if she was talking to us or to herself, and then she suddenly shouted, “Where has the incense gone?”

  That was when the second match fell on the fire: “I’m going to take Zeinab and Halima and Ruqayya and Ezz.”

  “Are you crazy?!”

  “Perfectly sane, Abu Sadiq. I’m taking the dependents.”

  “You’re not taking anyone!”

  “The battle is lost, so why should we risk death for them? I’ll take them to Sidon and leave them safe with my friends and come back.”

  “Shame on you, brother! You’re saying surrender before the young men do? By God it’s shameful!”

  “They took over Haifa in two days. Our village will fall in one night.”

  “Haifa is half Jews, they were barricaded on Carmel, they were on the mountain and we were on the plain. Our situation is different. The young men will protect the town proper and guards are stationed to the north, the south, and the east. And the mountain villages are Arab and not Jewish. The people of Ain Ghazal and Jabaa and Ijzim repelled the attack and we aren’t less than they were. Besides, we’re not alone; all the surrounding villages are ready to help save us.”

  My uncle slapped his cheeks in grief. He slapped his cheeks like a woman. The sobbing of my mother and aunt got louder. My father shouted, giving up, “God help you. You go, with your wife and son. But as for my family, I am free.”

  “Have we become two families, Abu Sadiq?”

  “Yes, we have become two families!”

  My uncle sprang up, and said to my aunt, “Get up, Halima. We’re leaving tomorrow morning.”

  My aunt got up and my mother followed her. They were both weeping. Ezz and I followed in their wake, not knowing what to do in this situation that was unlike anything that had happened to us as long as we could remember. My mother could not imagine her little sister moving to live in Sidon, farther than Haifa or Acre or maybe even Jerusalem. And my aunt was terrified of leaving her sister, who had been with her every day of her life. They kept crying until my uncle came into the room and scolded them. Then he addressed Halima and told her that she and Ezz might stay in Sidon for several months, and she should take that into account. The sisters’ sobbing grew louder. He said, “I only need one change. I’ll come back in two days. Come on, you two, get going, enough women’s dawdling!”

  On the morning of the following day we bade them farewell on the beach. My father did not go to say goodbye to them. He stayed angry with his brother, and all through the following days he kept repeating, bitterly, “You’ve left my back exposed, God forgive you.”

  The family crisis did not end. My uncle appeared four days later, alone, coming from the sea. He said that he had come to take the women and children. My father refused, threatening my uncle with a weapon. My uncle left in the boat he had brought from Sidon, taking the townspeople who wanted to leave, women and children and a few men. I was a witness to the event, both halves of it, but my uncle would tell me the story later as if I had not witnessed it. He would tell it with all the details, calmly sometimes and at other times in agitation; and two days before his death he called me and told it to me again in detail, as if he had not told it to me before, dozens of times.

  6

  Saturday, May 15th

  Fridays are all alike in being different from the rest of the week. We heat the water three times, for my father bathes first and then my brothers. They put on their long garments and go to the mosque for prayer. When they return my mother will have finished preparing a midday dinner different from the usual midday meal, “Because it’s Friday,” and because the boys, “Poor dears are far from home in Haifa, they’re bachelors who don’t eat enough to nourish them all week.” Even after Haifa fell and Sadiq and Hasan returned to live with us, my mother continued with what she was used to. Friday she would cook and huff and puff and pick up and put down and “Ruqayya, give me this and do that,” “Peel these garlic cloves for me,” “Chop these onions for me,” “Take this plate to the wife of my uncle Abu Jamil, she likes rice pudding,” “Take this dish to this neighbor, for the Prophet said we should care even for distant neighbors.” I get fed up. I say that Friday is my holiday and I work more on it than I do on school days. When I finished sixth grade and could no longer use that excuse I would hide. I would go to the sea. I thought, “She won’t see me in front of her so she’ll manage.”

  It was Friday. It was different from the rest of the days of the week and from other, similar Fridays. My father did not bathe. He left the house early. Sadiq and Hasan were sleeping; when they woke up they did not bathe but rather asked about my father and left the house in a hurry. None of them returned at mealtime; the food stayed as it was, we did not dish it out or eat. In the village there was a strange silence that made the call to prayer seem nearer and clearer, when it rose at the time for prayer. It was interrupted only by the whispering of the sea, the neighing of a horse or the bleating of a lamb.


  In the evening the news was confirmed. It was no longer a matter of apprehensions or expectations but a written statement signed by the leaders of the Jews and announced by Ben-Gurion at exactly four o’clock in the afternoon, amid a gathering in Tel Aviv that was recorded by photographers and broadcast by Hagana Radio and greeted by the settlers with dancing in the street. It was said that the statement would be in force beginning with the first minute after midnight, when the British Mandate ended and they would take its place in governing Palestine. The country would become a state for the Jews and its name would become Israel.

  All I remember from that evening is the silence.

  But at noon the next day we heard gunshots and uproar, voices cutting across each other. Wisal and I ran to hear the news. All the people of the town were telling each other what the radio had broadcast, repeating the broadcast as if every one of them, young or old, had turned into a moving radio, connected by a wire to the radio playing in the headman’s house, and to the ears of the men gathered around it. Everyone was saying it, everyone was repeating it and adding to it. Even the young men in the guard posts suddenly appeared to hear the details. As for the ones who shot off their rifles in the air, they had been forced to stop after the older men reprimanded them for wasting ammunition; they were still standing there, not knowing what to do with themselves. I saw one of them running in a back street, then he jumped and yelled at the top of his voice “Wiiiiii,” spinning around like a crazy man. Another was turning somersaults in the air, his head down and his feet up, and a second later he would be standing on his feet again like the rest of God’s creatures.

  We returned to the house. Our mothers already knew about it. We repeated to them some of what we had heard: “At dawn today the Arab armies entered Palestine. Egypt crossed at Rafah and al-Awja. Syria came in from south of Lake Tiberias, the Sea of Galilee. The Lebanese were at Ras al-Naqura. The army of Jordan crossed over the Sheikh Hussein Bridge and the Damia Bridge. The Iraqi army had arrived at the Majami Bridge, and… .”

  Wisal cut me off: “And the Egyptian planes shelled Tel Aviv. Twice.”

  My mother suddenly shouted, “God protect them. God give them victory. God keep them from harm. God bless them and their families, God raise their banner in victory and bring them back safe and sound.”

  Then she looked at Wisal’s mother, who was crying, “Pray with me, you are a good woman and are raising orphans, and your prayers will be answered.”

  It looked as if the sudden, intense prayer was going to interrupt the news that we wanted to broadcast in its entirety. I cut in: “Listen to all the news first and pray later!”

  Wisal laughed, and said, “The Syrian forces are shelling Samakh and two settlements nearby, one of them a big settlement.”

  Her mother asked, “Where is this Samakh? And Majami Bridge and the other bridges you mentioned?”

  Wisal said that she didn’t know, and I said I would ask my brothers. Wisal went back to finishing the newscast: “The Iraqi forces entered the Rutenberg power station and occupied it, and took prisoner forty Jews who were working on the project.”

  My mother asked, “You mean, when they first entered they went right to the power station? By God, good for them! How could they, didn’t the Jews land a blow as they were getting near the station?”

  “The station is on the other side of the border. In Jordan. The Iraqi forces occupied the station and then they crossed the border.”

  “In Jordan?” She didn’t believe it. She said that we had misunderstood, because if the station was in Jordan the Jordanian army would have closed it and done what was necessary before entering the war. “It doesn’t stand to reason that they would leave the enemy behind them and move forward. I’ll check with Abu Sadiq and figure out what happened from him.”

  Suddenly she said, “Turn on the radio, Ruqayya.”

  Wisal’s mother added, her face still flushed from crying, “Maybe there will be news of Qisarya.”

  I turned on the radio, and we stood listening to what the announcer said. Moments passed. I signaled to Wisal and we left the house, running. I don’t remember whom we met or who said what or when we came home or when we were able to sit with Sadiq and Hasan so they could explain the details we had not understood. But I remember the lanes of the village, that they were noisy. I remember bits and fragments of what people said, people who it seemed had suddenly become generals planning the movements of the forces. One said, “The Egyptians will advance on the coast road and enter Tel Aviv.” Another thought it was likely that they would head for Hebron and from there to Jerusalem to lay siege to it from the south, while the Jordanian forces would besiege it from the east and the Syrians or the Iraqis from the north. They would catch them in a pincer movement. A third said, “I don’t have confidence in King Abdallah, they say he has reached an agreement with the Jews, and even if he didn’t … how can we rest easy with the army when its leader is an Englishman? God protect us.” A fourth asserted that the Syrian forces would head for Haifa and liberate it. A fifth squatted on the ground, grasped a stick from a tree, and drew a map of Palestine on the sand, going on to explain his conception of the movement of the armies: “They’ll cut them off here, separating the south of Palestine from the north.” He moved the stick again, cutting the map lengthwise and saying, “And from here they will isolate the Zionist gangs in the west from the ones in the east.” His companion took the stick and drew a larger map in the sand, designating the cities and towns and movement of the forces. The names multiplied and the directions and movements and who would do what all mixed together. I whispered in Wisal’s ear, “I don’t know the map of Palestine except for the location of Haifa and Jaffa and Gaza and Jerusalem.” I did not tell her that I suddenly regretted my lack of interest in studying geography, which had seemed boring and meaningless to me.

  That night I waited up for my father’s return. He came in and I made supper for him. I asked him about Samakh as he was eating. He said, “It’s in the Jordan Valley, south of Lake Tiberias. It’s a few kilometers south of the Syrian border, but because of the train station there Samakh has become the border crossing between the two countries. The traveler stops and they stamp his papers, and customs agents inspect his things.”

  He finished his supper and said, “A cup of tea, God bless you, Ruqayya.”

  It was not his custom to drink tea at that late hour. I fixed the tea for him and took it to him. He said, “God bless your hands. Sit down, Ruqayya, sit down.”

  He took off his head cloth and headband and put them aside. He took off his sandals and sat cross-legged. He moved a little to support his back against the wall. I was glancing at him furtively as he sipped the tea. His mood was different from that of the young men whom I had seen in the afternoon. I recall how he sat, the features of his face, and I ask myself, was he happy? Was he sad, or perturbed and waiting?

  How did he move from talking about Samakh to talking about the Haifa–Daraa and the Daraa–Damascus lines, and how did it bring him to talk about his father’s hajj journey on the same line, the Hijazi railway line? I was listening to him, fascinated by what he said. Fascinated by that rare moment when we sat together, something that had never happened before and that would not be given to me again. He was speaking only to me. Everyone was asleep except for us two, and he was confiding in me as if he weren’t my father, who ordered and forbade and to whom my brothers and I didn’t dare lift up our eyes, for fear of meeting his eyes. We would stand like soldiers at attention in his presence, not moving or making a sound. But here I was sitting near him, not glancing at him furtively but looking at him directly, noticing, as he spoke, that his face was handsome, sweet, and good, and that his eyes were an ambiguous color between green and blue, more blue than green, and that in his very black hair there were three white strands.

  My father spoke to me, saying, “When we would go to Damascus, your uncle and I, we would take the train from the Haifa East station and arrive in Samakh in a lit
tle over two hours. There would be many tourists in the train with us; they would get off at Samakh because they wanted to see the lake where our Lord Jesus walked on the water. There was a walkway connecting the station to the lake, so they would take it to ride in little boats on the lake and look at the city of Tiberias, and then they would take the train back to Haifa. As for us, we would continue on to Damascus.

  “At the end of the First World War fierce battles took place between the Turks and the English. Some of them took place in the station buildings, when the fighting was house to house. Samakh is important because it’s the key to the road from Tiberias to Damascus. At the time of the revolt in ’36, ’37, and ’38, your uncle Abu Amin and I would go to Samakh a lot, but we would avoid riding the train because the English had created a team of Jewish wardens to guard the railway from the rebels, a team the English trained along with the Hagana. They would inspect the trains and bridges and surrounding areas for fear of rebel strikes. There were a lot of colonies in the area.

  “The Hijaz line connected Haifa to Daraa and Daraa to Damascus and Amman, arriving in Medina The Blessed in Arabia. People called it the Hamidiyeh Railway because Sultan Abd al-Hamid was the one who was enthusiastic about the project and ordered it started, and he was the first who contributed to creating it. In the Hijaz they called it ‘the sultan’s donkey.’”

  I laughed, and repeated after him, “The sultan’s donkey!” He laughed, and continued, “The line was created from the contributions of the Muslims, Arabs, and Turks and Iranians and Indians, and it was considered an inalienable Islamic trust. The intention was for it to extend from Medina to Mecca and from there to Yemen. When the Turks left and the English came, the project stopped. The existing railroad in Palestine came under the control of the English occupying power, and they named it ‘Palestine Railways.’ It ended in Samakh, and after that the line was under the control of the French occupying power in Syria. The train stopped at al-Himma, and when it arrived in Daraa the line branched into a railway for trains headed to Damascus and a railway headed for Amman.