The Woman From Tantoura (2 page)

I don’t know if this anxiety that possessed my mother was the normal anxiety of a woman who had never left her village, or if it was complicated and deepened by a reality weighed down by fears, a reality that led her as it led others to take refuge in all that was familiar to her and associated with her. The distance separating her from Haifa—which was twenty-four kilometers, no more and no less—seemed like a rugged road surrounded by dangers, more like Sinbad’s voyage to the land of Wak Wak, or like going to the hiding place of the ghoul lying in wait for Shatir Hasan. These fears were not solely caused by the probability that her expected son-in-law would live in Haifa; after all, the young man was studying in Cairo, and neither she nor anyone else knew what work he might find, or where. In fact, God would spare her the trip to Haifa and its twenty-four kilometers; the young man would not work in Haifa and her daughter would not live there. My mother would live and die without taking the train. She would never visit Haifa, and no mount or automobile would take her to Ain Ghazal or to any of the other neighboring villages, except for al-Furaydis.

She would go there in a truck.

I tell my grandchildren tales about their great-grandmother, to amuse them. I tell them about their great-grandfather too. I say, “He used to love to tease her. Was it an old habit he had acquired when they were little, since he was her cousin and only four years older, or was it something new that came after marriage? I don’t know. He would intentionally pick a fight with her and she would take his words seriously. He said, ‘Take the train.’ Of course he was toying with her, because Abu Isam’s bus went from the village to Haifa every morning and came back in the evening, and no soldier
or settler rode it. There were two Dodge cars that could be rented, that would take anyone who wanted not only to Haifa but also to Acre or Nazareth, or to Jerusalem or Jenin or Safad, or to Jaffa or even Gaza, usually to greet the pilgrims returning from Mecca by way of Suez. But he said, ‘Take the train.’” The grandchildren laugh and I join in, even though my awareness of the irony is like a lump in my throat. They don’t need to get used to traveling from town to town to see their grandmother or to visit their uncles or to attend a wedding or a funeral; they’ve never known any other way. I have not gotten used to it. Even after all these years, I have not gotten used to the movement of airplanes, which sometimes seems to me like a sky that the sky itself hides behind. I mutter to myself, “God rest you, Mother. If God had lengthened your life you would have known another time, and it would have taught you to know distant cities thousands of kilometers away from you. You would have stumbled over their names and clung to them, because the children are there.” Did I say I have not gotten used to it? I take it back. I have become accustomed. No one can resist being tamed by time.

I said to my granddaughter Huda, commenting on a silver ornament the size of a chick pea that she had put on the end of her nose, “If your great-grandmother saw you now!” She looked at me questioningly, not knowing if the comment showed admiration or implied criticism. I smiled and said, “I was a lot younger than you, maybe four or five at the most, when the Nawar came to our village.” She stopped me: “The Nawar?” “The Gypsies,” I explained. Then I continued, “They set up their tents in the village square, and there was a woman with them who put a basket of seashells in front of her, the kind that are small and spiraled. She would say, ‘Blow on them and give them back to me and I will read your fortune.’ That seemed very exciting, and she herself seemed different, arousing curiosity by those green marks on her face. There was a little round mark on the end of her nose and others more like two horizontal lines under her lower lip, and there was a crescent
earring, not placed as usual—a pair with one in each ear—but fastened on the side of her nose. Her accent was different and so was her garment; it was different from our mothers’ long dresses. She said that she could read the unknown and uncover hidden things, and that it was possible for her to tell us what would happen to us when we grew up. Everyone ran to his house; one came back with a stone-baked loaf, one carried an egg, one brought dates. She read our fortunes, but even after we learned our good luck, we didn’t disperse but stayed in a circle around her. Then I found myself pulling on the edge of her dress and pointing to the green marks on her face and asking her, ‘How did you color that, Auntie?’

“She laughed, ‘I didn’t color it!’

“‘Were you born like that?’

“‘That’s a tattoo, and we inscribe it whenever we want. It beautifies the face. Do you want one like it?’

“‘Yes, I do.’

“‘What will you give me in exchange?’

“I flew to the house and came back with a copper pot that I gave to her. She made the tattoo for me. I went home and when my mother saw the tattoo she stood screaming at me, threatening to beat me. When she found out about the copper pot she made good her threat and beat me with a stick until my brothers rescued me from her. For years I didn’t understand why my mother was so angry, and why she kept saying, ‘Now people will think you are one of the Nawar girls.’”

What did Anis say? He was my grandson who lived in Canada, and he had been following what I told his cousin. He said what would never occur to me, nor cross my mind: “It’s clear that Great-grandma was racist. What she said about the Gypsies is racist talk, it’s not right, and beating children is also unacceptable.” He added, in English, “It’s politically incorrect!”

I burst out laughing and laughed a long time, until the tears rolled down my cheeks. I said as I was wiping away the tears, “Your poor great-grandmother! God rest her soul and bless her and her time.”

I wait for Maryam to return from the university. I wait for her to finish studying her lessons. I wait for the calls from the children. I wait for the six a.m. news broadcast, and for the news at eleven at night, and then for the news at six the next morning. The hours pass slowly, in loneliness, as if I were moving about in a cemetery. The summer comes, or more precisely a certain summer month comes, and the house comes to life. We have to organize comings and goings to avoid traffic congestion, and the conflict of temperaments and desires. “What will we cook tonight?” What the girl wants, the boy won’t like. One smokes ceaselessly and one can’t stand the smell of cigarettes, one wants to watch a soccer match and another wants the news, while the third group wants to watch movies. One calls from an inner room, “Lower your voices a little, I want to sleep,” and one asks for help from the kitchen because he has caused a minor disaster, with no great consequences. I say, “A madhouse!” and notice the confusion of Mira’s face, my granddaughter who wears glasses, who reads a lot, and who takes everything that’s said seriously. I explain, “I’m joking, your being here is as sweet as honey for me.”

We laugh, we laugh between the jokes, the silly stories, and the recalled foolishness. We fill the gaps of months of absence with the stories of what happened to them, or to me, or to others of our family and friends who live in Ain al-Helwa or in Jenin or in Tunis or who stayed in the area of al-Furaydis, or who are scattered among the villages nearby, those we know and see from time to time and those we never meet, whose stories reach us and which we repeat, so they become part of the shared fabric of the family.

My neighbor, a young woman, a doctor to whom Maryam introduced me, asked me, “Your oldest granddaughter is in college, when did you get married?”

“Before I was fifteen.”

“God forbid, you were a child!”

I changed the subject as I didn’t think it was appropriate to present the story of my life, with a full accounting, to a neighbor who
had met my daughter less than two weeks before, and then had surprised me with a visit, saying that she wanted to meet me. There was plenty of time for us to become closer, to become friends, and for her to know some of my story—or to be satisfied with polite neighborliness, “Good morning” and “How are you?” when we met by chance in the elevator or at the door of the building, each going her own way and knowing no more of her neighbor than her name and the broad outlines of her life.

After the month of vacation, which might be a week more or less for one reason or another, I say goodbye to the children. The schedule of arriving flights is exchanged for another one, for departures to Abu Dhabi, to Toronto, to Paris, to Lid via Larnaca or Athens, to Nablus via Amman and the bridge. We go to the airport, then we go again, then we go a third time and a fourth and sometimes a fifth. Weeping has been worn out, maybe because the tears have become ashamed of themselves, there’s no place for them. The children kiss my hand and move away with unhurried steps, not turning around so I can see their faces one more time. The grandchildren, Noha and Huda and Amin Junior and Anis and Mira, follow their families with hurried steps, turning their necks again and again: “Goodbye, Teta.” I look at their smiling faces. I wave. They wave.

I hold Maryam’s arm as we come home together. A space of calm to recover the usual rhythm, to contemplate, to bathe, to put the house in order, to repair my relationship with the plants which I’m convinced get angry, like children, if you neglect them.

Usually it all takes two weeks, after which the house regains its cleanliness, the window glass and the wooden shutters and the doors, the carpet and the curtains and the furniture. And I spoil the plants, seeking to please them until they are satisfied.

Afterward I return to my usual daily schedule: I listen to the news broadcast at six. I wake Maryam. We have breakfast together. She goes to her university and I go to the sea. I cross the Corniche and go down to the beach. I take off my shoes, I go across the sand until the end of the wave reaches me and wets the edge of my dress.
When I go up to the paved road, I walk for an hour or more. Then I go home. I boil coffee, and I drink it in the company of the plants on the balcony.

It’s strange; after the children have left, with the first sip of the first cup of coffee I make myself, my mother’s voice always comes to me, crying in disapproval, “You are sending your daughter all the way to Haifa, Abu Sadiq!” I smile and murmur the Fatiha for her spirit.

3

Fickle February

In our town we call grass “spring,” because the spring is when the year turns and its season arrives, when it clothes the hills and the valleys. Classes and types and denominations of color, intense or coarse, deep or delicate, soft or light and vivid, all an unruly and unfettered green, and no one is sad. In its expanse grow the wildflowers, scattered wherever they please. But despite their red or yellow or gradations of purple, they can never be anything other than miniatures plunged in the sea of green.

All alone the almond tree ruled over spring in the village, the undisputed queen. None of the surrounding trees dared to contest it. Even the sea was jealous of the almond tree in the spring, even the sea foam was jealous, for what was its poor white compared to a heart like a carnation, taking one stealthily to a frank crimson? The almonds flower and steal our hearts, and then they capture them entirely with their delicate, deceptive fruit, stinging and sweet. We don’t wait for it to harden, we stretch our hands to pick what’s close. We climb the branches and take what we want. We eat in the trees or carry it as provisions in our
pockets, or lift the ends of our garments to hold them, and then fly home.

My mother says, “February can’t be tied down.” She says, “February is fickle and stubborn, it huffs and puffs and has the smell of summer.” The winds are active and the waves high and the cold still lingers, cutting to the bone as if we were in the depths of winter, but we know that March is only two steps away. Then the almond flowers, as if opening the way and giving permission, followed by the apricot blossoms, and afterward the trees are covered as they rush to compete, first with their flowers and then with the early fruit. Then we know that April has planted its feet on the earth, and that May will follow it, to set the wheat on the threshing floors and the fruit on the trees.

So why did they choose these four months for war, for strikes, and for killing people without number?

I didn’t know all the details, what happened in Haifa on any given day, how many were killed by the powder barrel the settlers rolled down Mount Carmel on such-and-such a street, or in what village they invaded the houses by night, pouring kerosene on the stores of flour and lentils and oil and olives, firing on the inhabitants. But like the rest of the girls in town I knew that the situation was dangerous, not only because we heard some of what went from mouth to mouth, but also because there was something frightening in the air, something on the verge. On the verge of what? We didn’t know. The madafa that served as a town hall for the men was almost never without meetings, where they would stay until late at night. Sometimes my father would wake us, asking us to prepare something to eat and a bed for guests, saying, “It’s late, they will spend the night with us. Offer them whatever there was for supper, and get up early in the morning to prepare breakfast because they are traveling.” So we would make a quick supper and prepare a bed, and get up early in the morning to make breakfast for the men who were traveling.

My father and the men of the village must have known about the partition resolution when it happened, and in those meetings of theirs
they were making their arrangements to confront it. (The coastline from south of Acre to south of Jaffa, including our village, was included in the Jewish state after the partition.) But I don’t remember that I heard about it or that the topic was brought up among the women of the village, or among the girls like me. The first news that alerted me was what happened in Haifa at the end of the month of December, since one of the neighbors told my mother about fights in Haifa between the Jewish and Arab workers in the oil refinery. The neighbor said that the Jews threw a bomb from a fast-moving car and killed and wounded many of us. She said that on the very next day the Palestinian workers rose against the Jewish workers, armed with sticks and knives, taking vengeance and killing anyone they could. Before dawn the Jewish soldiers attacked Balad al-Sheikh and a neighborhood on its heights where the refinery workers from Ijzim and Ain Ghazal and other neighboring villages lived with their wives and children. They descended on the residents with axes and knives and bombs and rifles, and left behind them corpses everywhere. Some say they killed sixty residents and some say that hundreds were killed.