The Night Counter (20 page)

“Come on, we’ve got time to see the sun set over the sea,” Jamal said one evening. As they walked past the McDonald’s, he took her hand. “You’ve become more beautiful here.”

“I haven’t had a manicure in so long.” Dina blushed.

Jamal laughed and swung his hand in hers.

She had forgotten to call Jake back the previous night. Before she could feel guiltier or Jamal could get more romantic, two guys waved Jamal over: AUB students who had helped spearhead a clothes drive for the camps the previous Christmas. He introduced her in English, but the guys couldn’t help switching in and out of Arabic as they talked to Jamal about the possibility of getting CNN to come down to Shatila. The conversation continued all the way to the dorms, and only Dina noticed the sun setting over the campus’s pristine gardens and the sea.

“They’re going down to Solidaire for coffee,” Jamal told her. “You want to go?”

“No, make it a boy’s night out,” Dina said. She had to call Jake.

Jamal casually kissed her goodbye, so quickly that she didn’t have enough to time analyze whether his lips had accidentally landed on her
lips or if the kiss had been purposely restrained in order not to reveal too much.

“Hey, Dina, what do you think about me going a little shorter with my hair?” Jamal called back as he joined the other guys. “Do you think that’d work better for television?”

Dina giggled only long enough to realize it wasn’t a joke.

Back inside the dorm, Dina escaped Allison’s scowl and phoned Jake.

Dina expected that the first thing Jake would say was that he missed her, but instead he said, “Your dad’s a hard-ass.”

“Yep.” Dina laughed. “So did you stay with the Beamer?”

“Yep,” Jake said. “These Tucker employees are amazing, D. The primary spokesperson for the migrant workers has been supporting her family since she was twelve because her mom has tuberculosis and her dad lost his leg in a farming accident. If she could go to a bilingual college, there would be a real chance that she could finish. But that wouldn’t be likely with a regular community college. After this case, Bud and I are going to look into a case requesting Spanish-language community colleges.”

“That’s so cool, Jake,” Dina said. “I wish you could come see these kids here. They’re really amazing, too.”

“I got to run,” Jake said. “Adios, sweets.” Sweets. Jake was even picking up Bud jargon.

The next day, Jamal left Dina on her own at the school to serve as a translator for two human rights observers visiting from Amnesty International. Dina was in the middle of teaching the kids how to cheer to “Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Toes” with their pom-poms when a CNN reporter and his Lebanese cameraman came in with Allison.

“Where’s Jamal?” Allison asked. “This is Matt Reynolds. He wants to interview Jamal on changes since 1982.”

“Jamal wasn’t here in 1982,” Dina said.

Dina and Allison looked across the reporter’s head at each other.

“Duh, but he can get together some of the people who were,” Allison answered.

“Let’s start with you and get some B-roll while we wait for Mr.
Masri,” the reporter suggested to Dina. “Whatever you were doing here looks like fun.”

The reporter motioned for the cameraman to start rolling. Allison smirked, but Dina turned to the kids and clapped. “Let’s go, team,” she hollered. “Woo!”

The kids fell into squad formations. “Eyes, ears, nose, and toes,” they chanted for the camera, using hand drills to point out the eyes, ears, nose, and toes on the kid next to them and then the kid in back of them.

“Way to go, team,” she cheered. “Let’s pick up the pace.”

As Dina worked with the kids, the cameraman filmed. “How did you come up with this approach to teaching?” the reporter asked. She shrugged.

“Come on, what’s your story?” he pressed on.

“I’m from—”

“I’ve been working with kids in camps all around the world, and I think Dina’s work is genius,” Jamal said upon arriving, putting his arm around her.

“I’m glad you got here,” Jamal said directly to the camera. “We’ve been working to get more global attention on this refugee problem. This is just humanity taken to its most wretched.”

“He’s going to be a while,” Allison told Dina. “I’m going to check on the embroidery co-op to see if they need any more supplies.”

Dina continued to look at Jamal from his butt to his eyes, but he never motioned for the camera to turn back to her.

“I hope for your sake he’s not the only man you’re in love with,” Allison hissed.

Dina shook both Jake and Jamal out of her head with an absent-minded wave of the pom-pom still in her hand. “Can I come with you?” she asked.

Allison was slow to answer. “Yeah,” she said. “But be careful what you say around these women. They’re into virginity and God big-time.”

“I’m from Texas, remember?” Dina laughed, but Allison’s sense of humor was still back in LA., and so they walked in silence until Allison stopped in front of one of the shacks.

Inside, several women in plain milk-gray dresses sat on the floor cross-stitching threads of red, green, blue, and orange into intricate mosaics on long black dresses.

The women stood up for Dina, each giving her two kisses as Allison introduced her. At first, she assumed the women, their wide eyelids drooping from fatigue, were old like her mother—until they started talking about their infants in broken English, smiling at her with mouths often missing several teeth. With Allison translating, they asked her about her students and why she wasn’t married yet, then showed her photos of other dresses they had made, all sold, they bragged, at high prices to wealthy Arabs in America who wore the dresses to fancy banquets. Dina did not tell them she was a wealthy Arab in America, and as far as she could tell, neither had Allison.

“You take dress and help,” said one of the women, pointing at the partially embroidered dress on which she was working.

“She wants you to hold it tight for her,” Allison explained. “Like me.”

Allison sat on the floor, pulling taut a section of the dress so that the woman next to her was better able to stitch on it.

Dina sat on the dusty floor and did the same thing. “I am Sarah,” the woman told Dina. Sarah began cross-stitching, her eyes nearly squeezing shut.

“Tell her she needs glasses,” Dina said to Allison.

“She knows that,” Allison said.

“You know, my grandmother told me that in Palestine all the women in my village could afford dresses like this,” Sarah boasted. “To wear to weddings, of course.
Aah Balik, inshallah, habiti.
”

“May you marry next, sweetheart, God willing,” Allison translated.

When they took a break for Turkish coffee, the women gathered around Dina, pointing at the pom-poms. Allison reluctantly translated for Dina that their kids came home with the cheers. Sarah picked up the pom-poms and gave an example.

“P … p … p … Palestine,” Sarah said, nearly tripping on her dress.

Dina laughed and showed her how it was done with grace. The
women tried to imitate her while Allison glared from the side—until Sarah grabbed her hand and made her join, as if it were an old folk dance. Allison never would have made the Kinross squad. The women’s bodies, put through many kinds of labor over the years, moved with far less spring than did those of their children. Out of breath, the women soon sat back down to their coffee. Dina inspected a chip on her cup. “Have you ever thought of immigrating to America? Seamstresses can make pretty decent money there,” she asked Sarah, ignoring Allison’s warning sign. Too late: Sarah was on her feet.

“I come back soon,” Sarah said, leaving the shack. “You wait.”

Allison mouthed “just great” to Dina before going back to cross-stitching and motioning Dina to hold another woman’s gown taut for her. A few minutes later, Sarah returned, flushed, with a yellowed envelope. “You come, come,” she said, motioning to Dina. Then she took a deep breath and pulled out a thin, faded document as if it had been spun from gold.

“It’s the deed to her father’s house in Palestine,” Allison explained. “They like to show these to foreigners because they think no one believes their story. Pretend to read it, why don’t you.”

Dina held the deed as delicately as Sarah had. Not a stain, not a blemish on the yellowing papers carried around for more than fifty years by Sarah’s family.

“I am sorry,” Dina said. She couldn’t think of what to add to that.

“No, no be sorry,” Sarah answered. “I go back one day,
inshallah.
”

“
Inshallah.
” Dina nodded. Having no other viable answer, she had spoken her first Arabic word.

As Sarah reached for the deed, a ferocious wave of thunder roared through the shack, rocking its walls and forcing the Koranic blessings and maps of Palestine on the walls to sway wildly before crashing down. The women began wailing for their children and knelt down on the floor, covering their heads with their hands.

“Get down,” Allison yelled at Dina.

She yanked Dina’s arm. Dina obeyed, squatting and covering her head like Allison and the others. She wanted Allison to roll her eyes at her shaking hands and brimming tears, but Allison just grimaced, and Dina could see that she was afraid, too. Then, just as suddenly as it started, the thunder stopped. The women stayed silently in place for a few more moments and then, as if on cue, looked at one another and got up and rushed out the door. Dina stayed put, covering her head until Allison reached out for her hand and led her to the street. The alleys of the camp were filled with people running up and down, screaming, hands flailing in the air. Over the loudspeakers, a voice came on.

Allison pointed at the loudspeaker. “They’re saying it was an air raid in retaliation for a mortar attack yesterday on an Israeli naval vessel,” she translated. “They fired two rockets at another camp, but we’re okay here.”

“When was there a mortar attack from here?” Dina asked.

“That doesn’t matter in Lebanon,” Allison said. “Punishment for and by everyone is often random.”

Dina watched as the wailing and hand-wringing subsided and people began picking up signs, bottles, and the squashed produce that had fallen off the carts. The boys with the lottery tickets came back out.

“Don’t just stare,” Allison said to Dina. “Go help.”

Dina hated that all she had done to be perfect and virtuous was nothing compared with Allison, who wasn’t even a virgin. As she bent to pick up a rolling tomato, she saw that Sarah’s deed was still in her hand. Sarah must have gone looking for her kids. Dina stuck the deed in her backpack and headed toward the school.

“Jamal’s going to be even busier now,” Allison warned.

“I have to see Sarah,” Dina said. Both women knew this was less than half of her motivation.

Jamal’s butt was facing her while he faced the camera, translating as the CNN reporter interviewed people, including Sarah. He took a break when he saw Dina.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

Dina nodded.

“It’s your first air raid,” he empathized. “It can be scary.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

He kissed the top of her head, and they both looked at the residents clamoring for the reporter’s attention. Dina waited for Jamal to take over for the camp residents on CNN, but he didn’t.

As they left the camp that night, the kids surrounded the Peugeot. Jamal hugged them all.

“Boy, they act like they’re never going to see you again,” Dina remarked.

“I’m leaving for Gaza tomorrow. The UN is very shorthanded for volunteers there as well,” Jamal said. “I told the CNN guys I’d go there with them tomorrow to show them.”

“Can I come?” Dina asked.

“To Gaza?” Jamal said.

“It can’t be any worse than here.”

“You’re going to be okay here,” he said, as if her motivation were fear. “There won’t be another air raid, and Allison will be with you.”

“I just thought it would be a chance to spend some more time together,” she said, sounding hostile.

Jamal looked her over. “If that’s what you really want,” he said. “Are you sure?”

Dina nodded with a grimace, trying to maintain some of the hostility that seemed to have turned him on.

Later that night, Dina asked Allison if she would like to join her and Jamal for falafel as it would be their last night with her.

“I need to get some sleep,” Allison replied.

Jamal and Dina ate together on a hillside campus bench overlooking the sea. This time, they did see the sunset together.

“The women were so comfortable around Allison,” Dina said.

“It isn’t nationality that binds us,” Jamal said. “It’s compassion, and Alison’s is pure.”

Whereas it was your eyes and butt that inspired me, she thought. “It’s all so messed up,” she said.

“Someone once said humanity is a concept that is easier to advocate than to bestow,” Jamal said. “You’ll see that in Gaza, too. Come on, we should get some rest before the trip.”

At her dorm, under the carob tree, Jamal took her hands, which were rough and cut.

“You are so beautiful,” he said.

“See you tomorrow.” Dina smiled.

“
Inshallah, habibti
,” he said, and hugged her.

The next morning God was not willing. Jamal was not downstairs waiting for her, and he wasn’t there when Allison came down an hour later.

“I’m sure he explained it all in an e-mail,” Allison said. “Come on, let’s go.”

“I’m not going,” Dina decided. “What’s the point without Jamal?”

“You are truly sad,” Allison said with even more disdain than usual. “Just because a guy loves peace doesn’t mean he has to love you or make a good boyfriend.” She slammed the Peugeot door shut, and the car sputtered off. Dina couldn’t believe that she had contemplated betraying Jake for the last several weeks, Jake who had stood by her even when she insisted on keeping her virginity. She touched up her makeup and called.

“Gosh, D,” Jake said. “I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.”

“So you heard about the air raid on the news, huh?” Dina said. “I should have called earlier. I’m okay.”

“Wow, D, be careful.”

“How’s the chicken case?” Dina asked. “Can you handle Bud as a father-in-law after working with him?”