38

I returned home in the morning to find his clothes hanging on a clothes line; he had washed them all in the new washing machine and was wearing my bathrobe. He was sitting in the sun shivering from the cold, though he had not gotten over an existing cold and a nasty cough that worried him and added to his anxiety. His high fever, the sweating, and the interminable blockade were wearing on his nerves, and made him get out of bed in the morning and wash all his clothes.

I scolded him and drew his attention to the situation, which would make it impossible for him to go to a hospital, were he to need one. What if he caught pneumonia? What if he got a severe throat infection? What if the fever made him hallucinate more than he did now?

“Have you, Rabie, forgotten that at this age we succumb easily to all kinds of illnesses? Did you not know that in the autumn of our lives we are like autumn leaves? Did you not know that in this siege we have a shortage of medication, water, and air? Did you not know that no doctor would leave his house to venture out to visit a patient, because in all the streets, on every corner, there are units posted, everywhere in the city, like a rash? Did you not know that an explosion wounded one settler and they, in turn, wounded dozens of our people? In short, my friend, the hospitals are full of young men and women and have no room for old people like you and me.”

He was upset because I said that he was an old man and because I called him, “my friend.” He opened his eyes and they were no longer green, but a light gray—the color of dust—and their whites were turbid and red. He said that he was not old and that he was not a friend.

“What are you then? Aren’t you my friend?” I asked.

He stared at me and his eyes were watery from the illness. His nose was red, he was disheveled, and his untidy hair looked like feathers on top of his head. “I am your beloved,” he said slowly.

“What?” I shouted in his face, then felt sorry because I knew that he was sick and hallucinating. The fever had affected his thinking and he was delirious. It was most certainly the fever, his memory, and the environment of the house that were responsible for his condition; hadn’t the house done to me what it was doing to him now? The paintings, the papers, the articles, and the newspapers took him there, back in time. He was reliving history through his memories, going back sixty years—to before he left his country, before the establishment of their state, before the downfall of our civilization, before the autumn season and this autumn.

I pulled him by the sleeve and took him to his room. He responded like a child. I put him to bed and then rushed to the kitchen looking for some medication that would help—aspirin, paracetamol, Codex—anything that would help him get over his cold and the fever. He was very hot and shivering like a chick. I felt like a disconcerted and determined mother. I was overcome by fear, sadness, and distress. I did not expect him to say what he said, but when he did, it pierced my heart and made it bleed. At this age, after all those years, and in this siege, he says he is my beloved? Could there be a beloved in these times? Were there friends in these times? Were there even relatives nowadays? Were there family members, or those who would come to our rescue at this time? Was there support? Was there an Arab League? I was moved by his question, “Who is with us?” and I said to myself, “There is no one with me except myself,” and whether I liked it or not, he was part of myself and my memories, part of this history, this reality. He was my companion in the struggle. As far as he was concerned, I was the only one who would help him and stand by him; I was the closest to him. He was my guest, and I was responsible for my guest. And this guest, to be honest, was not an unbearable burden; on the contrary, he was pleasant, charming, and extremely entertaining. Despite our differences of opinion, he had been agreeable, polite, and civilized. He helped me cook and washed the dishes, told stories, related memories, and read for me parts of my uncle Amin’s articles and memoirs. He followed me everywhere I went, trimmed the poppy and jasmine trees, watered the sweet basil. He made coffee and set the plates on the table when we ate, and cleared everything up. He was very different from my two ex-husbands, my male friends, and all the men in my family. Those men would leave the ashtrays for me to empty, the dishes to wash, as well as the kitchen and the bathroom to clean. I would replace the toilet paper and wash their underwear, though none of them would have lost a hand or a foot had they gotten up and done it themselves. Why did I have to wash their things? This man, however, washed his own things, made coffee and tea, and entertained me. What if . . . No, it couldn’t be. I was my own master and he was my guest and, at the most, he was my friend.

I rushed to him with a cup of tea with chamomile, two paracetamol tablets, and a jug of lemonade. I could not find lemons, oranges, or tomatoes, so I squeezed the bitter oranges, sweetened the juice, and added a spoonful of orange blossom water. It tasted delicious, like lemonade. “Drink,” I told him. He drank it. I told him, “Swallow,” and he swallowed, and I told him, “Listen,” and he listened. I said, “Listen, Rabie, you are not young, and neither am I. Do not make our life difficult. If I get sick, who would take care of you? You have to help me in order for you to get well and to avoid passing your cold to me.”

He replied, like a child rebuking his mother, “How could I have passed it on to you? I haven’t given you a single kiss!”

“Go on, drink. I will make you chicken soup; it is the best cure for the flu.”

He grumbled, “You are treating me like a child, as if you were my mother.”

“Am I not?”

He did not answer, but kept the teacup in his hands to warm them. He was pensive, probably due to the effect of the medication, which calmed his nerves. I expected him to fall asleep, but he did not; instead, he talked about his wife for the first time. I had not asked him, but he went on talking about her and that life, I mean his life in Canada. All the time he had been in the house, he had talked about us—about our past and our present and my uncle Amin’s memoirs, about al-Husseini and what had happened in Damascus, Lebanon, and al-Qastal—but he had never talked about his life in Canada and the circumstances surrounding his emigration. He had just glided over that topic and never stressed a specific event. He said that when Saadeh escaped to Damascus and the Lebanese security agents started arresting the members of the party, some escaped and others went into hiding. He, on the other hand, sought refuge in the Canadian embassy. He had made the acquaintance of an employee who used to visit them and attend the cultural activities. She was older than him, in her thirties, while he was in his twenties. She helped him hide in the embassy for a few days, and then she facilitated his escape to Canada. They both escaped and lived together for a few months, then got married and had children. She taught him English and French. She helped him and was his best friend. Their children were grown men now, light-skinned and blond, and had children of their own. She, Catherine, had been like a mother to him. Now I was interacting with him the way she had, although he had wondered, all those years, if upon his return to Sanour, to Asira, or to Zawata, to the past, he would find love.

I told him that we were too old for this; I was not the young girl with the shiny shoes and ribbons in my hair, and he was not Rabie, son of Asira. It was over; we were too old! He was upset and launched into a furious monologue, trying to convince me of the contrary, claiming that he was still strong, capable, a good performer, and an experienced man. I laughed quietly because he proved to be like all men, who claim to be active, virile, and experienced, as if this was all manhood was. Men are strange. Their thinking seems to revolve around this matter. But what did I think? Did I still feel something? Was I willing?

I pushed those thoughts away like I would an annoying fly, and said to myself that this siege was the true problem: the problem of aging, the siege of time, the siege of the city and that of the memory. I was not sure whether the problem was the vacuity in our lives, or the memories, or even the colors and what the environment of the house represented.

I looked around me as he was falling asleep, like a bird, and I saw the books organized in rows: the documents, the magazines, and the newspapers, each in its own place. My paintings were lined around the room in the order of my life events.

I left him and went to the kitchen. I recalled what he said about my mother and the leader. The story of the leader did not interest me or concern me in the least. I did not know what he did in Jerusalem and around Jerusalem and in Birzeit. I did not know anything about the holy struggle, the siege of the settlements, and the Rescue Army. I grew up in a convent with nuns, far from the news of the fight, and I got totally involved in my beautiful hobby and the mixing of colors. I saw nothing of Jerusalem but domes, bell towers, and minarets, the Dome of the Rock and the evergreen cypresses—all this from behind a wall. My uncle visited me from time to time and disappeared for many weeks. The only people I saw were my classmates and the nuns, the walls of the convent and my paintings. I lived far away and led a lonely life. And then I went overseas and endured our nation’s losses like everyone else, from a distance. But this man and the evocation of the past brought back the memories of my mother, my uncles, and the life I led behind the walls, the walls of Jerusalem, unaware as I was of the reality and of the many secrets, especially my mother’s strange secret.

At that time, my mother was more like an older sister to me. She was dejected and downcast, weak, pale, always complaining and unhappy. She would leave home to get away, to go to Jerusalem, where Lisa lived. As far as my grandmother and I were concerned, Lisa was responsible for my mother’s wasted life and Amin’s suffering. She controlled both of them, and for that reason both my grandmother and I disliked her. I was young, my grandmother was old, my mother was weak, and I was attached to my grandmother. When she died and my mother settled in Queen Victoria Hospital, and I was stuck in that convent, I continued to feel that my mother was a failure and a weak person. She had failed in marriage and motherhood, she had failed to win my grandmother’s and my older uncle’s approval, she had failed to rise up to my uncle Amin’s level and his ideas, and she had failed to imitate the educated and modern Lisa. Our relationship remained rigid, governed by antipathy, suspicion, and abandonment. She neglected me, or that was how I felt. I neglected her as well and lived my life in that convent, away from her. I got used to living away from her and I got used to a life without my mother.

Then came Rabie, during this fall season, to remind me and open my eyes to secrets I never knew, or could never have imagined. I could not fathom the idea of my mother being the leader’s nurse, of my mother falling in love with the young hero! My mother joining his party. My mother volunteering to serve him and his army and go wherever he went. This all meant that my mother was not that weak, pale, good-for-nothing person—the dejected Widad. She was a freedom fighter, a woman in love, with adventures unknown to me. Before he fell asleep, before the lemonade, the paracetamol, and his hallucinations, he pointed to the files and said, “Read your uncle’s papers!” Then he went back to hallucinating about the leader, and about what had happened in Damascus and al-Qastal. He kept repeating: “Damascus killed him and so did the Jerusalem leaders!” I was certain that the Jews killed the leader in al-Qastal. Why, then, did he say that Damascus and the leaders in Jerusalem had killed him?