A Month by the Sea (23 page)

By then I had seen enough of those very disturbed children (aged six, five and three and a half) not to scoff at this prediction. Yelling and screaming, they tumbled wildly around the salon, dragging sofa cushions across the floor, jumping from chair to chair, thumping the glass tables to make them reverberate. They were aggressive, rude and angry. Plainly it had been a bad idea for Yara to have a foreign friend intruding on their precious half-day with Mamma.

Yara’s youngest sister, Jindiya, joined us briefly – a worryingly overweight seventeen-year-old who might have looked better in a
thobe
than in tight shorts and a tank-top. She spoke no English but was intensely curious about me and my family and my strange way of life. Yara’s interpreting for her provoked the boys to slap their mother’s face, pull her ears and kick her shins. Jindiya was betrothed to the youngest brother of Yara’s ex-husband and seemed happy with the engagement though she hadn’t yet met him.

I asked Yara, ‘Why hasn’t she met him? You all live within a few miles of each other!’

‘It’s my father,’ came the reply. ‘He likes the oldest customs.’

I felt helplessly sorry for Yara, who couldn’t cope – alternately she cuddled and kissed her sons with a desperate sort of urgency, then shrilly snapped at them. Once her eldest brother came to the doorway and shouted a protest about the furniture being damaged. He closely resembled his father in build and aura. The boys couldn’t play outside because he objected to their noisiness. ‘He hates children,’ said Yara, ‘even his own and he has seven of them.’

When inviting me, Yara had mentioned how much her
English-speaking
mother enjoyed talking with foreigners. But now it
transpired that her husband had said it was not necessary for her to meet me. I began to feel what might be described as emotional claustrophobia. Glancing at my watch, I murmured about having to move on. ‘No!’ exclaimed Yara. ‘I’ve a big new problem, we must talk when alone!’

There was a fixed routine; at 5.00 pm a taxi came to fetch the boys. Under no circumstances could their time with Mamma be extended. Now Yara rang for another taxi to take us both to ‘a quiet place’. I noticed how her hands trembled as she struggled to put sandals on wriggling boys – no longer screaming but sobbing piteously. Jindiya reappeared, to help drag the trio to the wicket and push them into the taxi. I hurried ahead and sat in the other taxi. As Jindiya persuaded the older ones to stay in their seats Yakob clung so fiercely to Yara that she stood immobilised by the wicket, ashen with grief, until the driver came to prise her son away from the maternal legs and carry him, kicking convulsively, to join his brothers.

I could think of nothing to say as the boys’ taxi sped away and Yara sat beside me on the back seat. At once she lit a (forbidden) cigarette and addressed the driver in English. ‘You haven’t seen this!’ For the first time since my arrival on the teetotal Strip I longed, in a visceral way, for a stiff drink.

Then Yara admitted, ‘Last Friday I made an excuse not to see them. Each week it’s worse – maybe best if they never see me? Children forget quickly …’

The driver intervened. ‘You’re wrong! That’s cruel! Being left trying to forget a mother destroys kids!’ This young man, Yara later explained, was an Eng. Lit. graduate who drove a taxi for lack of more appropriate work.

Our ‘quiet place’ was a large, circular palm-thatched
restaurant-café
, set back a little from the Strip’s main road, surrounded by palm trees and even at sunset on a Friday almost empty.
One-third
had been curtained off with loosely woven coconut fibres –
a token purdah space, not providing enough seclusion for the strictest. A few elderly men puffed at their hookahs or played backgammon; on the women’s side we were alone. ‘Here I can go on smoking’, said Yara. ‘I started after the divorce and nicotine tranquillises me.’

There was no smell of food and no waiter appeared. ‘They keep it open for big parties,’ Yara explained. ‘It was popular when new in the ’90s – people had more money. We came here as a family for ice-creams – parents and six children, my father and brothers always on the other side. They could have sat with us, it was allowed, but everything had to be
rigid
!’

Away from the family environment, Yara was regaining some of her vitality. But then as she revealed that new problem, tears flowed. It all took a long time to clarify and there were several détours down dismal alleyways of family history.

In brief: since the divorce a year ago Father had often talked of remarriage as inevitable though Yara had been resolute – ‘
Never
again!’ The day after our last meeting she had been told, ‘It’s all arranged.’ One of her father’s closest business associates had a 45-year-old son who married late (by Palestinian standards) and now, five years after the wedding, his wife’s barrenness had been medically confirmed. Divorce was not being considered; their cousinly union had been a success, they were devoted to one another and the wife understood that a second wife was essential. A man
must
have children! (Oddly enough, I had encountered a similar case when living in Hebron Old City.) Yara knew the barren wife (six years her senior) but didn’t know her well enough to be certain she could share with her a husband and a home. For Father this was Allah being kind: a divorced daughter with three children is not a valuable asset. Yet here was a win-win situation, in Father’s own terminology – an excellent husband for a
low-value
daughter and a chance to please an important business partner.

Yara, red-eyed, looked at me reproachfully and said, ‘Foreigners don’t understand it can be so much harder for women in business families though they’ve more money. Also they’ve more marriage problems, as goods for bargaining.’

Father had made it plain that if Yara resisted she could not go on living with her parents, nor could she live alone, that would be impossible, so there was no alternative to remarriage. He had come to a decision. She should be grateful that such a suitable man was prepared to overlook things.

‘But he’s bluffing!’ I said. ‘When you make it plain you’re determined to stay single, living at home, earning for yourself, doing your own thing – he’s helpless! He can’t put you out on the street!’

Tears trickled again. ‘He can torture me,’ Yara half-whispered. ‘Remember you wondered about psychological violence? Our men know how to do it!’

That silenced me for moments. Then I asked, ‘What are your options? Emigration if you could get out? And surely you could now, through Rafah? You have skills and training to earn your own living, rent a flat somewhere and be
yourself
.’

Yara gazed sadly down at her hands. ‘Do I have a
self
, the way you mean? There’s the Canadian option. My favourite brother, the one like me, got away to Canada in ’05. He married what he calls an Anglo-Canadian. She converted to Islam and says she’s OK about children growing up Muslim – no more than two children and she’ll never live in a Muslim country. That seems a fair compromise. I guess she’s not believing in Islam but pretending to make Omar happy!’

I wanted to say, ‘Isn’t your feminism coming unstuck? Why should the woman be doing the pretending on such a crucial matter to make the man happy?’ However, given Yara’s fragile state that would not have been kind. Instead I asked, ‘What does Omar advise?’

‘I Skyped him twice this week and he says I should settle in Canada, it’s easy with my qualifications. He’s not able to imagine how I’d feel never seeing my sons again. What do you advise?’

With three children in the equation, I dared not put a finger on the scales. Undoubtedly life in Canada, with a congenial brother in situ to provide support, would be best for Yara. But was the
taxi-driver
right? On the other hand, could a mother so tantalisingly inaccessible do enough for her sons to justify wrecking her own life? We talked on for another hour, inconclusively, and I remembered a passage in Ghada Karmi’s remarkable autobiography,
In Search of Fatima
. The author, born in Palestine but reared and educated in England, had in many ways been ‘Westernised’ by the age of nineteen. Yet as a young woman she couldn’t oppose her father’s decision that she should become a doctor.

As individuals, Ghada’s father and Yara’s father are not
comparable
. But the power of the cultural imperative too often prevails, regardless of personalities.

Four months later, I heard that Yara had become a second wife.

On one of our excursions Nita and I hired Nabeel, a young
taxi-driver
who had moved to Gaza six months previously from the UAE. There his father had ‘found a problem with the government’ and returned hastily to the Strip. Nabeel, aged twenty two, would have preferred to remain in his birthplace but was ordered to
accompany the family, which included eight younger siblings; his earning power would be needed.

One afternoon we called into that same palm-thatched café, where Nabeel fetched drinks (water and Coke) and a hookah. Nita admitted then that for years she’d longed to try a puff. Twice Nabeel urged her to experiment – declared young women were free to smoke as much as they wished in the Emirates – wondered why the Gazan way of life was so ridiculous.

There followed another futile debate about culture, religion, tradition, customs, family obligations. Nita couldn’t conceive of doing something which would upset her parents. (They were kind, loving parents: I’d met them a few times.) Nabeel remarked that as we were the only patrons, they would be unlikely ever to find out. Her mother said smoking was bad for the health. Emphatically I agreed – but then why may men smoke? Is their health not equally important? Nita exclaimed, ‘I often think that! But the Holy Koran says women mustn’t.’ She looked puzzled when I pointed out that tobacco came from the Americas centuries after Mohammed took direction from Allah. I was reminded of Khalil’s assertion that not only Muslims but all Jews and Christians were forbidden to drink alcohol. ‘The imam said so, in the mosque.’ He looked disbelieving when informed that Christ’s first miracle was turning water into wine and that Jews drink wine as part of their Sabbath ceremonies – and may have a shot of vodka as an optional extra.

Nabeel questioned Nita about the
jilbab
– why did all the IUG students have to wear black? Apparently because bright colours draw attention to the individual young woman and thus encourage ‘competition to be noticed’ which is ‘against our religion’. Nabeel laughed scornfully. ‘This is all Wahhabi stuff!’

I asked about the
niqb
(full face veil) and Nita explained some women (on the Strip an increasing number) choose it because it’s more respectful to Allah. A visible woman’s face can make her seem more attractive to men – especially ‘bad men’. Also it may
tempt her to communicate with people outside the family. I asked, ‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘She could smile at people she shouldn’t communicate with, in the market or the street.’

‘You mean
smiling
is forbidden? When she buys fruit or eggs and smiles at the trader as she takes her purchase – that’s wrong, sinful, against the Koran, offends Allah?’

‘Yes’, said Nita, ‘it’s wrong – maybe not sinful, but wrong, we shouldn’t do it! But of course most of us do, unless we feel we’re being watched by some jihadists.’

‘I think this place needs to go for treatment!’ said Nabeel.

I agreed. Invariably, people voiced anxiety about my walking alone in the dark; I had regular arguments with
serveeces
reluctant to put me down not directly outside my destination – because of my gender, not my hostage potential. I mentioned this to my companions and wondered, ‘When these sex-related fears are cultivated, what does it do to a society? When girls are taught to regard all non-related men as possibly “bad”, poised to rape given a chance?’

‘Sometimes,’ observed Nita, ‘the related men are the worst.’

I persisted. ‘Isn’t this danger-mongering insulting to Muslim males? Or, if they’re really so dangerous on the Strip, why not start a movement to civilise them?’

‘How?’ asked Nita. ‘By now you know we’ve a big problem, females not correctly dressed
are
vulnerable to attack!’

Impatiently I replied, ‘So why don’t the world’s “uncovered” women – the majority – have this problem? Where men are so dangerous, they must have been conditioned to see “incorrectly” dressed women as legitimate prey. That’s why I say it’s time to recondition them. But yes, you’re right – that’s much easier said than done!’

Such states of mind, on the part of both predator and prey, are self-perpetuating. For most brain-washed Gazans, reconditioning
probably won’t take place within the Strip under its present regime.

In entirely trivial and irritating ways (never mind ethical or pseudo-ethical matters) childhood conditioning can be irreversible. Some of my mature US friends would wet their pants on long motor journeys rather than pee by the wayside – yet these are rational beings in all other respects. (Come to think of it, I myself still feel vaguely uncomfortable if a male accompanying me along a pavement walks on the inside – though no one under seventy would understand why.)

I spent half the next day at Rafah Gate, waiting for someone who didn’t arrive. Normally vehicles enter Gaza via side-tracks
by-passing
the main gate, which is opened only for departing vehicles. But that morning one VIP’s 4x4 was allowed to use it and we later heard the Person was an EU official on a four-hour visit to Gaza City – ‘an insult!’ fumed several of my friends.