37

Yasmine visited us and brought a dish of freekeh with beans and a pot of yogurt. It was not an authentic freekeh dish because the beans were dry, not fresh; she had soaked them in hot water so they would swell and become suitable for cooking like fresh beans, but the skin was hard. She cooked them with green wheat and added too much coriander and garlic to cover up the color of the beans and give the dish a green color. The pot of yoghurt she brought she had made with Nido milk powder.

“Nido milk!” Rabie shouted in a hoarse voice. He had caught a cold, and was coughing. He had a sore throat and his tonsils were inflamed.

He brought the pot close to his glasses and examined its surface as if reading a pamphlet or a document. He exclaimed, annoyed and disapproving, “Nido milk! This yogurt is made from Nido milk. I have never prepared yogurt from Nido milk, even in Canada.”

“Do you make yogurt?” Yasmine asked.

He looked at me and said sadly, “Tell her, so she knows.”

He meant for me to tell her about his grandmother Umm Nayef’s yogurt, his mother’s yogurt, and the yogurt that all the peasant women used to prepare. Now, however, yogurt was sold in plastic containers, sold by both Arab and foreign companies who had stolen the secret but did not succeed. They made a yogurt that had no identity, no thickness, and did not melt in the mouth like butter.

He tasted the yogurt with the tip of his finger, eating about a teaspoonful. He checked the spot where he had dipped his finger in order to examine its texture and find out whether it released water, as a way to test the quality. He then brought his finger close to his eyes and his nose and smelled the yogurt while rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. After having smelled it three times and rubbed it between his fingers three times, he tasted it carefully and seriously—as if listening to a strange tune or tasting an exotic dish or an old meal—to determine its suitability for human consumption. He looked like someone trying a spicy Indian sauce, concerned about its pungency in case he overate. He proceeded with his examination with an expression of extreme seriousness and concern. He looked much older, as if he had aged suddenly or revealed his true age. Even his front teeth, which had amazed me when I first saw him, seemed now like artificial teeth. I said to myself as I watched him do what the elderly do, the way my grandfather did before his death, “My God, did I know then that Rabie would look this way now?” And did I ever think I would be the way I am now?

Yasmine looked at him with controlled anger and disapproval, then whispered in my ear, “He has no manners; isn’t he ashamed of himself to behave like that, in front of me? He could have waited for me to leave, then done all this behind my back.”

He understood and smiled apologetically, bending his head until it reached his shoulder, begging for her forgiveness. Then he said to me, to prove his good intentions and truthfulness, “Tell her about my grandmother’s milk. Tell her about real, authentic milk, sheep’s milk and goat’s milk. Tell her.”

He did not wait for me to tell her, but took her by the hand and walked her toward the bamboo chairs under the poppy tree, while still holding the dish of yogurt. He said to her as he placed the dish on the middle table before him, “Let me tell you how yogurt is made—authentic, quality yogurt, the smoked yogurt that releases the smell of sheep and grass. Every lick you take reaches your brain, and the yogurt melts in your mouth like butter. This is real yogurt, and no other yogurt in the world can compare to Asira’s yogurt. Have you ever drunk Asira’s milk? Do you know where Asira is?”

Yasmine looked at me, confused, wondering whether he was crazy. I smiled because I knew that the poor man was suffering from a sore throat, lack of sleep, and insomnia. He was also suffering from an overwhelming recollection of past events and a return to a time passed that this siege revived—the memory of another siege, in another place and another time. And the news broadcast from the Path of Love station warned of a new barrier and a new closure.

Yasmine said, shocked, “Does this mean that the blockade is still on?”

He stared at Yasmine and asked, “Did you know that we had in the past surrounded them?”

“Who did we surround? The Jews?” she asked, surprised.

He replied enthusiastically, “We had no weapons and we surrounded them. We had no money and we encircled them. We had no army and no ammunition, and we did, in fact, encircle them. Did you know about it, or did you not?”

She smiled and apologized, saying, “I was in Damascus at the time.”

I said, to warn him, “She is from Damascus and she is young; she is probably twenty years younger than us, maybe more.”

Yasmine nodded, confirming my words, apologizing but equally pleased, saying, “I am young. I was young.”

He objected, saying, “Even if you were young, this is history, your history. Even Damascus—don’t you know that Damascus was responsible for our death? It killed al-Husseini and Saadeh.”

I said to calm him down, “It’s not Damascus’s fault. The leaders of Jerusalem who were in Damascus are the guilty ones.”

“No, it is Damascus’s fault,” he said angrily.

Yasmine turned to me and asked, surprised, “Damascus killed someone? Who does he mean?”

He shouted at her, “My love, it killed al-Husseini!”

She turned to me and asked, as if choosing me to be her witness, “Am I his love?”

I signaled to her to let it go, and he turned his face away, to hide the anger I was causing him. All this because I did not go along with his ravings, especially that which concerned my mother and her alleged love story with the leader, and what he was claiming about the present blockade. He believed that this blockade would not have happened if we’d had a leader like his leader, back then, in the past, during the time of the heroes. He said that the leader was the most important figure, and I said that the leader, even if he was Jesus Christ himself, peace be upon him, would not have been able to raise the dead from this coffin, from this ruin, from this destruction. He would not have been able to shove death away from the dead in the time of disaster.

He lowered his voice and spoke in a serious tone to prove to us that he did not have a fever that was affecting his mental capacities. He wanted to prove this to Yasmine, my neighbor who did not know the difference between authentic yogurt and the imitation, and did not know the difference between Nablus and Asira, and did not know that Damascus had killed his leader. He said to her, “My lady, at that time, Damascus was the mother and the realm. All the delegations went there. The mufti was there, and even the Arab League.”

“You mean the turbans and the brooms?” Yasmine joked, to calm him down.

“Which brooms?”

“I mean the beards and the goatees.”

Unconsciously, he raised his hand and placed it over his goatee to hide it or to protect it from blame. He then said with the seriousness of a well-established professor, “We went seeking the help of the Arab League.”

She jumped out of her seat and asked, “And did they support you?”

Without waiting for his answer, she turned toward me and asked, “Are you going to return the plate empty or full? And the yogurt pot?”

She turned to him again, looked at the yogurt pot, and said joyfully, “A pot of yogurt made with Nido milk and freekeh, with dry beans and frozen coriander, and imported garlic from China. This is what we have, this is what is available. Shall I take the plate empty or full?”

I smiled and said, “Of course, empty.”