I went to the West Bank looking for him, looking for them, searching for my own face in the land of exile. I wanted to know how it would look. I had received a letter from a man saying that my father was somewhere; in other words, that he was still alive. He said that he was my father’s brother from Wadi al-Rihan.
A huge gap separates Wadi al-Rihan from New York and Washington. I had always visualized Wadi al-Rihan as being the opposite of New York, as a small clean town inhabited by simple people, good-hearted and nature-loving, not like New York. Whenever I heard my father talk about the place in the evening, I would run down the stairs, shouting “We’re going back home, we’re going back, we are going back,” But we never did because my father ran away or, to be accurate, I ran away.
The story began in New York, when my father came from his village and married an American woman, my mother, and as a result acquired a green card and became a resident alien. Then came the divorce, predictably, then the grocery store and other wives and an army of children. Before he had the grocery store, my father sold small items, which he carried on his back, going from door to door. He sold all kinds of merchandise, regardless of its origin, as products of the Holy Land. He would fill small bottles with water and sand and call in the streets, “Holy water and holy sand from the holy river. Do you know Jordan, Madam? Holy water and the baptism of Jesus Christ. Is there a baptism in your family? We have many baptisms in ours, we get baptized every day.” Then my father would add, “I am from Jerusalem and I have brought water from the Jordan River.”
He had trouble speaking English but managed to communicate in a typical Middle Eastern glib manner. He would display his wares—shiny clothes, pins, and threads—and say to the American housewife, “Look, lady, how beautiful it is! This caftan is hand-embroidered in Arabia, far away, do you know Arabia? The land of sand and camels, dates and incense, gum and the Qur’an. Do you know Mecca?”
Seduced by the exotic appearance of the man and his merchandise, she would answer with great enthusiasm, “Oh! Mecca! Arabia! Of course, of course, let me see, let me see.”
“Easy on them lady, look at this and this and this.”
Then, as if by pure coincidence, he would happen upon something of little importance, an old, faded photo of Husayn I. He would ask her, “Do you see this, lady? It is my father’s photo, he was a great prince, but died. A Bedouin tribe seized his emirate while I was still a young boy. I ran away to Jerusalem, then to Cairo, and later to Marrakech. From there I took a boat to America. Do you see, lady, I am a poor beggar while my father was a great prince!”
The lady would stare at the photo with eyes wide, seeing a noble face, a white beard, and a large turban on his head. Deeply moved, she would repeat, “Oh dear! Oh dear!”
My father would say again, broken-hearted, “Do you see, lady, I’m a poor beggar while my father was a great prince.”
“No, no, never!” the lady would object. Her eyes moving between him and the picture, she would comment, “No, no, never. You’re not a beggar.”
Looking at him again, she would stare at his black eyes and his glittering dark mustache and whisper to herself in amazement, “His father was certainly a prince, he looks like a prince too. I’ll bet anything you’re a prince!”
At this very moment he would wrap a piece of silk around his head and, standing in front of her, ask flirtatiously, “like so?”
Visibly moved, the woman would exclaim, “Oh! Goodness me, I can’t believe it! I'll bet anything that you’re a true prince!”
He would move toward her, saying, “You too are a princess, a sultana, the goddess of beauty and charm, by God Almighty!”
He would then take another piece of silk, tie it around her waist and swear, by the Prophet Muhammad, master of all Prophets and Messengers, that she looked exactly like Sheherazad, with all her majesty and glory, that she was even the jewel of all Arabs and Muslims, amen. He would swear three times that he would divorce his wife if he were wrong. He would repeat it over and over again, each time saying, “Let’s try this one again, one more time, one more time.”
This is how he was able to sell Hong Kong merchandise as products of the Holy Land made by former “princes” such as himself. In a few years he was able to open a grocery store in Brooklyn containing everything one could imagine.
He was naturally successful, not because of his knowledge of English and his fluency, but rather because of his eyes and his mustache and his ability to make up stories and invent dreams.
I was born to inherit all this. I became a well-known writer in the field of human civilization; in other words, I am an anthropologist. Yet, before becoming what I am now, I made use of my father’s tricks. The story began when I felt the pain of my budding breasts. My stepmother said that that was a hereditary chronic illness in the family. The illness progressed to the point that it made me peep through keyholes and windows that were ajar.
One day, while I was standing on the roof spying on two lovers kissing in the dark and learning from them, my father caught me red-handed. I had no choice but to invent a story about me fasting and waiting on the roof for the call to prayer. I asked him innocently what time the sun set for iftar, the evening meal at sunset on a day of fasting, in order to break my fast. I explained that I was waiting for Bilal’s call to prayer.
Bilal was our senile and clumsy neighbor who said he was trying to convert America to Islam by making the call to prayer every day, five times a day. My father looked at me, perplexed, but chose to believe me. I convinced even myself and almost choked with tears from pangs of hunger. I said in a strangled voice, “I’m hungry, I’m so hungry!”
At night I heard my father reprimand his wife, saying, “Show some mercy—the girl is killing herself with this fasting! See how small and thin she is! Is it acceptable that she prays five times a day, fasts the whole month of Ramadan and makes up for missed days?”
My stepmother turned in bed making the springs squeak under her huge weight, and said to my father, “Isn’t that what you want her to do?”
He replied anxiously, “Me! And also to make up for the missed days!”
She said angrily, “What? What missed days? Why? Pray tell me do you think that your daughter really fasts? She eats like a horde of locusts. She could gobble me up in a single bite as though I were an appetizer. Before lunch she gobbled up seven ears of corn at one go. I tried to stop her but failed. My God, how stubborn she is and unbearable. She is headstrong, a liar, crazy; she never tells the truth. May God protect us from her. I’m afraid she’ll do something like Hoda and embarrass us in the neighborhood.”
Hoda was the daughter of our neighbors living in the same complex. Like me, she was half-American. She became pregnant at fifteen and we all saw her father run after her in the street like a raging bull, carrying his longest knife. My father tried to stop him, but couldn’t. Finally, with the help of two neighbors they were able to prevent him from Killing her. My father constantly said, whenever he had the chance, “He should have killed her, she sullied his name, stained his honor, and humiliated him among his people. Had I been in his place I would have gone after her to Hell.”
Hoda was able to escape, however, and took refuge in her American grandmother’s house. We did not see her in Brooklyn again, but we heard rumors. Some said she had kept the baby, others said that she had given him up for adoption. Still, others said that she had had an abortion. Regardless of all the rumors, everyone agreed that Hoda’s father was no longer a man since he had not washed his honor in her blood.
I heard my father mutter, from his bedroom, “God forbid, God forbid. She said that she was waiting for the call to prayer while I stood there like a billy goat. All I needed was a turban!”
The following morning my father announced the news, “To hell with America and the Americans. That is it—I’m going back home.”
He was sitting in front of the grocery store with two of the neighbors, smoking a water pipe. I stood in a corner, watching them expectantly. As I heard the words “old country” I jumped for joy and almost flew up the stairs to the second floor. The words “old country” were music to my ears, as melodious as the long stretch of a mawwal. It was like a miracle, a story similar to that of Aladdin and the magic lamp, with its magic words, ‘shubbayk, lubbayk,’ one of father’s stories, enveloped in smoke, incense, and butterfly wings.
I pushed open the door and shouted, “We’re going back home, we’re going back home!”
My stepmother came toward me holding a big wooden spoon that she waved threateningly, “A liar goes to hell, you will go to hell and melt like a candle.”
I started crying but repeated, stubbornly, “We’re going back home, by God Almighty. I heard my father say it with my own ears. Go listen to him.”
She hesitated for a few seconds, then rushed to the window, looked below, and heard my father saying, “What are we waiting for, friends? Haven’t we had enough of America and its trash? We all have boys and girls, do you want your daughters to be loose like American girls? Do you want to protect your girls, keep them pure, and bring them up strictly and marry them well?”
The two men nodded approvingly, and my father became very emotional. He shouted in a voice that could be heard at the end of the street, “There, one really lives, brothers! There you speak Arabic, eat Arabic, drink all-Arabic coffee. Everything is Arabic! If you need help, you find a thousand hands stretched out to help you. It you need money you can take it from a friend, no banks, no checks, and no headaches. At the end of the day you can sit in the cafe for hours on end, then go the mosque or to the diwan. There, people are genuine Muslims, even the Christians are good-hearted and know God exactly as we do. We worship God in a mosque and they worship Him in church. There’s not much difference. As for here, God Almighty protect us from what is here! Is there anything here, please tell me?”
One of the two men growled, “Hah!” and my father shouted, “Well, well, we all gorge ourselves. I eat and you cat and everyone of us eats to the point of saturation. But pray tell me, the Americans in Saudi Arabia, what are they doing there? Are they defending the Kaaba? Are they being baptized in the River Jordan? Or do they perform the tarawih prayers? Do please tell me what are they doing there?”
The two men shook their heads without saying a word, provoking my father’s anger. He shouted at them, “Don’t shake your heads like Bilal! Just tell me what they’re doing there?”
One of them exploded, saying, “They eat our food and take us for a ride! This, in a nutshell, is what they’re doing there. We Arabs, on the other hand, are as stupid as mules and donkeys, and deserve more than that. That’s what they’re doing: they’re screwing us openly and shamelessly.”
“God forbid,” commented my father.
The other retorted, “They’re screwing us? I’m the one doing the screwing. I don’t spare anyone, white or black, and I screw them all.”
My father shouted, “That’s the intention—you screw their daughters and they screw yours. Isn’t that the plan?”
“God forbid!”
The first man shouted, “I won’t let anyone touch a hair on one of my girls!”
“Well, what about Hoda?” my father asked, “What happened to her?”
The three men bowed their heads for a few minutes until my father ended the discussion, saying, “I want my daughters to be brought up as Arabs, clear and transparent as a candle. I want them to marry Arabs and Muslims, according to the Prophet’s teachings. I want them to be impregnated by Muslims. To hell with America—I’m going back home.”
My father didn’t return home, however. He opened another grocery in New Jersey, bought a new house, and married a new woman. Then he ran after me in the street, holding the longest knife he had. I was fifteen years old, and pregnant.
My language was lost before I was lost and so was my identity. My name and address followed suit. My original name was Zaynab Hamdan, and with time it became Zayna. My father was called Muhammad Hamdan and with time I was left with neither Muhammad nor Hamdan. My father’s birthplace was Wadi al-Rihan and mine was Brooklyn. As Zayna I was caught between two languages and two cultures—my father’s Brooklyn and the West Bank on one side and my maternal grandmother’s American culture on the other. I was later left without any culture and lived in a vacuum. My father’s songs, the Qur’anic verses, and the praises of the Prophet were meant to protect me from the negative influence of American culture. Obviously, they did not. There was a simple explanation for this: I didn’t understand the meaning of the words and I didn’t respond to the melodies. There was also my new stepmother, a person who considered the ability to speak English a sign of education, good upbringing, and civilization. Her own English was poor, however, and so was her upbringing. She pronounced p as b and the k as a strong guttural sound. She would say, “abble bie,” “panana sblit,” and “bark your car in the barking lot.”
As for us children, we were able, thank God, to distinguish a p from a b, but were unable to put together a single meaningful sentence. Our conversation consisted of a strange mix of the two languages, so strange that our American guests wondered whether we went to school to learn reasonably correct English or not. Our relatives didn’t hide their dismay that we did not join the Arab club and learn decent Arabic. To counter such criticism, my father would ask me at the end of each gathering to prove to our honorable American friends my mastery of the English language. I would spend part of the evening standing on a chair, surrounded by bottles of araq and plates of mezze, and the cheers and laughter of the visitors as I recited the verb “to be,” then the verb “to have,” followed by “Twinkle, twinkle little star” and “Row, row, row your boat.” I used to end the show with the American national anthem, accompanied by the loud singing of all the guests. The noise would be so loud that our new neighbors would call the police and the fire department. The scene was repeated with our Arab relatives. I would stand in their midst and stun them with my knowledge of Arabic grammar, enumerating many defective verbs and conjunctive particles, reciting the laudations of the Prophet, and tala‘a al-badru, al-Hamd, and the Fatiha—the first sura of the Qur’an. I would end my performance with an Andalusian muwashshah accompanied by the enthusiastic participation of all those present. By this time dawn had come and the police officers would have returned to the apartment to escort our relatives out of the building and possibly out of New York.
I can’t really claim that my childhood was miserable. On the contrary, it was filled with excitement, fun, and good food. With the exception of my difficult interactions with my father’s wives, my unfulfilled dream to return to the homeland, my hope to receive a phone call from my mother in Los Angeles, which never came, and a single visit with my grandmother without one of my father’s wives spoiling it, it was a breeze.
I enjoyed living with my father, who was as dear to me as my soul and the light of my eyes. He was a good-hearted man, full of memories, anecdotes, and funny stories. I still remember him when he used to gather us around the large wood-burning stove on New York winter nights and tell us old jokes while grilling chestnuts, drinking araq, and eating mezze. He used to say that he was a child of the world. He had toured the globe, seen everything, and heard it all. Nothing surprised him or shocked him anymore, and yet, at the mention of the name of a relative or a friend in Beirut or Damascus, he would be overcome with emotion and cry.
He liked sad songs. He would listen to them and move with the rhythm, flapping his hands as if flying. Then he would get drunk, relax, and shout after each rhyme, in appreciation, “Allah! Allah!”
I would observe him quietly from my place, my tears flowing down my face. The tears, the rhymes, and the stories kept me from feeling totally ostracized from my family.
Whenever I remember the knife and that final look, I recall the tears of longing and the dream of returning to the homeland, a wish that was never fulfilled. His words still ring in my ears, “It’s true that I’m a worldly man, but I have never dishonored anyone or betrayed the trust of any person. Every woman I’ve been involved with I have known according to God’s law. I’ve never taken people’s opinion lightly. All my life I’ve cared what they said and thought of me. Listen to me, Zaynab, the most important things in life are a good reputation, the fear of God, and the Day of Judgment. It’s possible for a person to live without this and that, but if you forget God, He forgets you, and if you ignore God’s words you won’t remember people’s words. That’s how life is, and that’s the way the world works. Life is but a lesson, an exhortation and a path. Life is a message, a message of love and forgiveness. What is life Zaynab?”
I would answer him, with tears running down my cheeks, “Life is an exhortation, Daddy.”
“What else?”
“Life is a test, Daddy.”
“What else?”
“Life is a path.”
“A path to where? Toward whom?”
“A path to the afterlife, to the Prophet and his Companions, and the believers, both men and women and the pure men and women.”
“Great, my daughter, great, great. May God protect you in this world, smooth your way and cover it with good intentions and good deeds. Come sit beside me and eat this. Be careful with the mezze and don’t spill the araq. What’s wrong with you my daughter? What’s wrong?”
When I became pregnant the first person who came to my mind was my grandmother, Deborah. Maybe because Hoda had sought refuge with her grandmother, I did like her, and maybe because my grandmother was in the habit of sending me every Christmas, a fruitcake and a card decorated with candles. She even had sent me on another occasion, a bear as big as a baby. It was the first time I ever had been given a big toy. My father didn’t like the bear and said that it was a boy’s toy. He took it away and threw it very far. That’s what he told me, but actually he had done nothing of the sort. Ten years or so later I found the bear in the attic among old things belonging to my mother.
When I found out that I was pregnant I went up to the attic and jumped up and down ten times on the floor. Afterward, I felt tired and sat down amidst old things covered with dust. I was alone in the dark except for the bear. I put it on my lap and began sobbing on its tummy. I was afraid my father would find out about my pregnancy and would kill me as he had once threatened to do. He did try to kill me when he learned of my pregnancy, but I ran away from my home in Brooklyn to my grandma’s house in Washington D.C.
I lived a normal life in her house; in other words, I had no life at all. There was a huge difference between my life in Brooklyn and my life in Washington, where my life with Grandma was quite different from the life I had lived with my father. Whereas he had loved having fun, my grandma never drank and never dreamed. Her kitchen was sparkling clean, as white as a pharmacy. Everything in it was organized and kept in jars that revealed every grain and every seed. She had placed a label on each jar with numbers and letters. If there were more than one jar for the same product, she would write, sugar 1, sugar 2, sugar 3, or English tea, Australian tea, Chinese tea. Although my father had his own system of keeping things, her kitchen was more organized than our grocery store. He could find anything you requested in a few seconds, from a strange collection of garlic hanging from the ceiling to dried fish to sausages to onions to pickled turnip to eggplant to dry mulukhiya, to araq from Qurtas to tomato paste and orange-flower water. He would ask the buyer questions without waiting for a reply, “A kilo of mixed nuts? A kilo of black olives? Three yards of rope? A kilo of coffee with cardamom? Just relax, the world isn’t going anywhere, why do you keep running, life isn’t a race. Have you become like them, running like a horse without a bridle? Take it easy and enjoy life. Why run, why crowd your time? With whom are you competing? Can you go faster than life or death? Let me tell you this, the fastest is death. My God, how fast and close by it is, closer than the eyebrow to the eye! Trust in God and sit here. Drink a cup of coffee and smoke a water pipe. Let me tell you a story, come on, sit down, I won’t let you leave, by God you won’t go. I swear I’ll divorce my wife if you leave, what’s with you, man? Do you want to destroy my family and give my children a stepmother? I have gone through four wives and you haven’t found one yet? What do you say, let me find you a bride. I know a girl from a good family, beautiful like a full moon and to your taste. She has a green card and you would obtain your citizenship without delay if you marry her. She has a waist that moves like a spring, and a couple of killer green eyes, may God be praised. She’s as plump as a duck and her cheeks are like apples. She’s young and as delicate as a twig of peppermint and you can shape her the way you want. Would you like to see her? Stay here then, she’ll soon return from school. You’re welcome here, give me a minute and I’ll have everything ready for you in the blink of an eye.”
One second becomes one hour and then you stop counting, and you don’t feel the time passing, not because the service is slow, since he usually prepares your order as promised, in a wink, but because of all the stories, the tales, and the laughing while listening to tales from the Arabian Nights, ‘Antar and ‘Abla, al-Shatir Hassan, and Bilal the Stupid, to the news of the neighbors, the scandals, the politics, the price of gold and silver, the merchandise ads, the apartments for rent, the cars, and the tires. Didn’t he say that he was a man of the world? A totally different world!
The confrontation between my father and my grandma came to a head after I got pregnant and took refuge in her house. I had been with her for a week when he came to see us. We were in the kitchen baking a cake when Grandma saw him from the window; she immediately pushed me to the storage room. He came into the kitchen, and Grandma tried to talk to him but he didn’t answer her and began searching the place for me with the eyes of a hunting dog. He looked much older and darker. I didn’t think he would really kill me, he loved me deeply, and I didn’t believe him capable of doing such a thing. I hadn’t lost hope in spite of my grandma’s incessant warnings: “Didn’t you see what happened to Hoda and to the others? Weren’t they young girls? Didn’t their parents love them?”
I held my breath while watching him through the holes in the door. His face was gloomy and his eyes were bulging. I saw him push my grandma away, and when she tried to use the telephone he snatched the receiver from her, pulled out the wires, and shouted in a thundering voice, “Nothing doing! Don’t interfere! It’s over; consider her dead. She must pay for her mistake. I must wash away my shame and hers.”
My grandma tried to convince him that I wasn’t there but he refused to believe her. Instead, he went to the sitting room and began breaking everything in his way, kicking things and shouting at the top of his voice, until he reached maximum anger. Whenever that happened, which was rare, he would turn into a ferocious beast incapable of reasoning or grasping the true meaning of events. He wasn’t the father I knew but a total stranger.
He returned to the kitchen holding the big bear in one hand. I crouched back in fear and apprehension, causing a jar to fall and break. In a second I found myself at his feet. He dragged me into the kitchen, my body covered with pieces of glass, jam, and blood. He pulled my hair and shouted at the top of his voice, “Daughter of a dog, by God I will suck your blood!”
I held the hem of his trousers and begged for mercy. He met my pleas with heavy blows to my stomach and head. He pulled my hair and yanked my face up, asking with eyes afier, “Who is the bastard responsible for this?”
He was drunk and stunk of araq, the smell making me vomit. My father began to shake me as if I were an empty sack, and then shouted, “Who is this bastard who soiled my honor with mud?”
I couldn’t utter a single word as I was gradually losing consciousness, but I was aware of his movements and felt that my end was near. I closed my eyes tightly and felt his kicks to my chest, while waiting for his knife to fall. Suddenly we heard a crack like a bomb exploding. It shook the whole kitchen. I felt the muscles of my father’s legs tighten, then he collapsed on the floor. As our eyes met for a second, I saw in his amazement, extreme pain and surprise. I looked toward the door, where my grandmother stood holding a hunting rifle in her hands. She whispered, hissing, “Move and I’ll blow your head to pieces.”
Her face was calm, while her eyes moved left and right.
“Drop the knife right now,” she told my father.
He replied, rattling, “Daughter of a dog.” Then a second bullet hit the table near him and it fell on him.
“Zaynab, come here, quickly,” said my grandmother. But I was dazed and couldn’t move. She turned to my father and said, “You’ve seen what I can do, Hajj, throw away your knife.” He did as she said, using his left hand while pulling his wounded arm to his chest.
“And you, young lady, move, go to my room and call the police, fast.”
I climbed the stairs, but I didn’t dare call the police. A mixture of guilt, shame, fear, pity, and loss froze my thinking and paralyzed me. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked out the window. Fall was nearing its end and the leaves were falling from the trees, a few remaining on the branches. I whispered, wondering, “What did I do? What will I do? What’s next?”
A gloomy feeling took hold of me and I felt a strange calm. I was unaware of rime passing but I finally went downstairs and heard him say to my grandma, “You’re the cause, you made her leave. You destroyed my family and broke my heart. You’re neither a woman nor a man.”
She replied quietly, “Calm down, Hajj, let me clean your wound. Hold this for me, put your mind to work, and let’s talk quietly. Zaynab is staying here. You can go to your people and tell them that you acted like a man and killed her. Don’t play games or go to court or do anything else. You know what will happen. You tried that once before, so don’t try it again. Forget Zaynab like you forgot her mother.”
He answered her, crying, “I have not forgotten her and I never will.”
I, too, never forgot him and lived with my grandma for many years. I later forgot my mother and my son, but I never forgot the sight of my father crossing the hallway with his arm tied to his neck and his back bent under the weight of thousands of years of shame. I shouted at the top of my voice, “Forgive me, Daddy.”
He turned and pointed to the skies with his sound arm. The road was desolate as he walked heavily, his head hanging, a bandage attached to his neck, and dragging his feet through the dry, fallen leaves.
I shouted, feeling quite guilty, “Forgive me Daddy! Please forgive me!”
He motioned once more with his hand and disappeared down the road, forever.
Life with my grandmother passed quickly. Events raced by and I can’t recall the details except for two events that haunted me day and night. The first was giving up my son to an adoption agency and the second was meeting my mother for the first time. Between the two events my grandmother taught me how to deal with life. At the beginning I proceeded carefully, like someone walking in the rain trying not to get wet. My Grandma continuously repeated to me, “Make success your aim because if you fail, people will feel sorry for you, but they won’t respect you or befriend you. If you want to keep your son, take him only if you are able to support him.”
From then on, I became a winner in everything I did, whether sports or academics. At first I thought I was doing all this for my son, not for me. I thought that my success would make me strong and would make it possible for me to get him back. The reality was different, however. The more successful I became, the more I wanted to succeed. Success meant proving myself, but it made me lose touch with the rest of the world.
I became aware of people only when I wrote about them. I saw them as nothing more than competitors, individuals to beat. I had no time for love, emotions, family ties, or friendship. No one counted except Grandma Deborah and me. Eventually, Deborah melted away and disappeared, leaving me alone following my path, with a forlorn heart. I was all alone, no one with me and no one supporting me. I saw nothing but my shadow and even my steps stayed behind me. My questions remained unanswered. I had no time to talk with others, no time for memories or feelings. I did nothing but run.
I changed completely. I lost my unique personal characteristics. I didn’t feel nostalgic for the strange stories and tales of my childhood. I didn’t laugh or have fun, and I no longer enjoyed eating with others. I learned to eat sandwiches on the go. I learned to live in silence and spend my days alone. I became accustomed to spending long hours in social gatherings without songs and music. There was nothing strange about this life because my grandmother was serious by nature, and so were my university colleagues and others I met. They were kind, but each was for himself, and all moved in their own orbits. I learned from them, locking myself in a glass cage and keeping people and emotions outside.
It was comforting to live that way. It was agreeable and our conversations were superficially pleasant. There were no fights, no blame, no frictions, and no aversions—and how could there be with such high walls erected between us! In this social setting, so different from the one I knew when I lived with my father, we neither touched anyone nor were touched.
Yet, despite all that peace, under that pleasant and innocent surface, something cold was growing inside me, making me shiver on the hot summer days. At night, I would switch off the lights and withdraw to my grandma’s rocking chair, spending hours in the dark feeling my enthusiasm for life draining away. Whenever my grandma returned late from one of her meetings, she would sit beside me and read the day’s newspapers. Out of consideration for her I would usually relinquish the rocking chair, except when I felt a cold chill around and inside me. Then I would remain seated in the rocking chair oblivious to my surroundings. Grandma would feel sorry for me and say, “You must have had a long day, poor thing? Did you?”
If I didn’t respond she would continue, “Poor thing, she works so hard!”
She would remain in her seat for an hour or longer, and before she went to bed I would hear her say, “Oh! My God, what has happened to America and Americans! What has become of us?”
The “us” was painful to me. What does “us” mean? Who is “us”? “Us” Americans? I am not American.
“What are you then?” Grandma asked me one day as I said those words.
I didn’t say I was Arab because I wasn’t. Who am I then? Despite my mother’s citizenship, my birth certificate, my school certificate, my books, my accent, my clothes, and everything about my life, I was not truly American. The depths of my mind were inhabited by visions and pictures, love songs, those Arabic mawwals moving like the passage of a breeze, the scent of violets, the fragrance of memories, all leaving behind a honey-sweet solution in the heart. Memories would rush in like a swarm of butterflies, hovering in the room until the morning, filling the darkness with the fragrance of jasmine, rare incense, Arabic coffee with cardamom, almonds and cinnamon, mahaleb and nutmeg, grilled bread and chestnuts. The butterflies would glide like the sails of a boat, a waving hand, a flock of pigeons. My ears would respond to a remote voice calling and singing, Amaneh ya Layl, ‘I trust you, O night.’ I would plead in my longing, “Forgive me, Daddy, forgive me.” I would spend the night watching the flames change into ashes. Grandma’s hand would then reach to me in the dark and shake my shoulder, whispering, “It’s nothing but a dream Zayna, just a dream.”
“No, I’m not dreaming,” I would tell her.
“No Zayna, it’s nothing but a dream,” she would repeat.
A dream? A dream? What about the little girl and all the anthems, the songs, the laughter, the pleasure, the food and drink, the mezza and the araq?
“It’s only a dream, Zayna, nothing but a dream,” she would say, then return to bed.
I was probably depressed. When she grew weary of my condition she consulted a psychologist who immediately identified it as a case of homesickness, nothing more. She shook her head approvingly, and added, “Of course, it’s normal, a young mother of a young child.”
She took me to see my child. He smiled, but when I approached to touch him, he withdrew his head and cried, fearful.
“Do you feel better?” she asked.
“I feel nothing at all,” I said.
My grandmother was surprised but said nothing. On the way back to the apartment she tried to explain that it wasn’t normal to be indifferent and that a mother is expected to feel something. She went on lecturing me until she was tired of the whole issue. While she was talking I wondered whether human beings are expected to feel or not to feel, and whether that child felt something or felt nothing. If a child can feel, what does he feel—is it boredom? Love? Fear? Is he homesick? Does he recognize his mother on his own or is he taught to recognize her? Does he know that I don’t feel?
To be fair to her, I must say that my grandmother was patient with me. She invited my mother to visit us from Los Angeles. I was getting ready to meet her in the hall when she came up to me from behind. She laughed and cried and said, to justify herself, “I was young.”
She wiped her tears and continued, “I couldn’t handle him, I couldn’t put up with their traditions, their food, their drinks, and their skin color! They were strangers and their habits were strange to me. I couldn’t bear it.”
I didn’t open my mouth and kept looking in the mirror.
She pleaded with me, “Don’t blame me!”
“Why should I blame you?” I said.
She asked, “Do you love me?”
“I don’t hate you,” I replied.
“What about love?”
“Yes, what about love?”
“You don’t love me then?”
She felt stupid and I was extremely bored. She went on talking, crying, and sobbing. I was about to lose my temper, and I finally shouted, “Lady, please tell me, how can I love you when I don’t know you?”
She replied, reproachfully, “But you love him?”
I didn’t utter a word.
“Though he tried to kill you!”
I didn’t defend him or myself.
“He tried to kill you!” she repeated.
I didn’t look at her and kept looking in the mirror. Finally, I told her, “Lady, I don’t blame him, I don’t blame you, I don’t blame anyone. I only wonder.”
She whispered in amazement, “She only wonders, she wonders!”
When she reached her car, she waved and I waved back. I watched her until she disappeared from my view.
My academic life was barren, tasteless, and emotionless. My mother died and I inherited her property. I had two apartments—one in Washington, one in San Diego. I acquired two cars, attended yacht and swimming pool parties, and diplomatic receptions. I was a member of three different health clubs. I did aerobics and enjoyed Jacuzzi baths, massages, and saunas. And yet, despite this life of luxury, I felt deprived. Aware of my feelings, my grandmother would ask me, “What are you missing? Aren’t you successful?”
Yes, I had succeeded, I had, and what a success! I had received an award for the best research at the university, I had become chair of the anthropology department, but I wondered what next? I was in my thirties then. In ten years I would be in my forties, then fifties, then sixties, I would retire, then die. What happens after death and even before death? What would be left for me to do in my sixties? How would I be? Would I be a carbon copy of my grandmother? Make jam and bake cookies, join a charitable organization and go to church every Sunday? No, I never had gone to church and I wouldn’t begin now. I was neither Christian nor Muslim. Concerned, my grandmother repeated constantly, “You need an ideology, you need faith.”
What faith, I wondered? When I was young and I still had the strength to debate and ask questions, I couldn’t bear the idea of celestial justice. I was firmly convinced that what happened to me was no more than clear proof of the absence of justice. Even if justice existed it was not necessarily celestial. Because of this I never entered a church in my life except to attend a wedding or a funeral. I would cry at the sound of church chanting, but I would rush to wipe the tears away. I didn’t want anyone to see my tears, and I never cried in public. This was the secret of my success—I was strong, and I neither cried nor broke down.
As time passed, the gap between my past and my present grew narrower. I was extremely homesick, and frankly, longed for my past. Fulfilling myself through research was only a substitute. As for my true feelings, what had broken inside me was an old wound that no longer bled. It was the deep dirge that reminded me constantly of the past and the wailing of the soul. The only solution was to admit that I wouldn’t settle down and find peace until I returned to my past, to what was lost.
I returned to New York for the first time since I ran away, to our grocery in Brooklyn. Everything was different, everything had changed, and our store was no longer a grocery, but a huge white building that looked like a palace. It had a high fence, large, bushy trees, and a dark Arab concierge. He asked me what I wanted. I said I was looking for my father whose grocery had been in the spot where the palace now stood.
“When was this?” he asked, a look of surprise in his eyes. He said he had lived in Brooklyn for many years and he knew many grocery owners, but he had never heard of Hajj Muhammad. He suggested that I go to his father and ask him because he was an old man and might remember.
I walked in the back street trying to recall signs and events. This is where I had lived and where I’d been fashioned. I saw the riverbank and the intersection, the west side and its trees across the river and the courtyard where young black boys played their music. An old man dozed on a chair, wrapped in his coat. Everything was as I remembered it in the neighborhood, except for my father, the store, the line of shops, and the neighbors. I reached the house described by the young man and knocked at the door. A woman who reminded me of one of my father’s wives opened the door. She said in a friendly voice, “Yes, madam. Abu Faleh is there, sitting near the window.”
She smiled and pointed to the window, causing her gold bracelets to clank.
He was sitting on a rocking chair facing the western window, a crocheted blanket covering his legs and a cotton Arab skullcap on his head. Behind him, the skyscrapers looked like a line of piled matchboxes and Legos. The contrast between the background and the man was striking. Here was an old man with ancient features sitting against a background of modern buildings and columns.
The woman whispered, “The whole day he goes in and out of sleep. He is old and forgets people but remembers things centuries old. He remembers the fig tree, the village jar-shaped oven, Hajj Muhammad, and the mayor, but he doesn’t remember me. What would you like to drink, coffee or lemonade? For God’s sake, don’t say no, what’s happening, have we become Americans? Believe me, even if we stay in America hundreds of years we won’t be like them. You said your father used to live here? This happened long ago, before I married this old man, so wait until he wakes up, and perhaps he will tell you. He might remember and then again he might not. You have to be patient. What shall I give you, a lemonade or a Pepsi?”
I sat on the sofa, in the corner, under the traditional photo of the head of the household, Abu Faleh. He was in his youth then, wearing a waistcoat and a tarbush, the traditional Turkish headgear. Squeezed under his photo, near the edge, there was a torn picture of a number of young men with hats and mustaches. In the dark corner where I sat was a table with an embroidered cover, plastic flowers, and pictures of numerous grandchildren. There was a picture of a bride, a photo of a college graduate, and one showing a young man flanked by an old man and an old woman. Standing in this order were two young boys, a young girl, and then a young boy, a 1920s Buick with a man wearing white shoes and a tarbush, standing in front of it, one foot on the ground and the other on the running board. A prayer rug hung on the opposite wall. It looked like a painting, showing the Dome of the Rock and some Qur’anic verses.
Abu Faleh woke up, drank some lemonade, yawned, and paid no attention whatsoever to me. The woman nudged his back and said, “Hey, Abu Faleh! This woman has come all the way from Washington to see you. Talk to her. Did you know someone who had a grocery in our street, near the bakery?”
He mumbled, surprised, “Which bakery?”
She winked at me and whispered, “God protect you, it’s no use.”
She nudged his back again, saying, “Do you remember Hajj, or don’t you? He might be in the photo with you all, here. Look at it, dear, you might find him.”
I took the photo and examined it. He could have been this or that one, but he was neither this nor that one. They all looked like my father, but none was my father.
The woman said, “Your Arabic is so-so; is your mother Arab or foreign?”
My voice broke as I explained, “She died a long time ago, I can’t remember. When I was a kid, I could speak it well. My father used to tell us stories, all kinds of stories. Sometimes he would talk about Jerusalem and sometimes about another city, I can’t remember what it was called. I truly don’t know, it was either al-Ram or al-Tireh, and possibly Abu Dees. I really don’t recall. It was a different name every time, then Jerusalem, always Jerusalem, the tannery, Bab al-Khalil, and Musrareh.”
The man mumbled, sighed and said, “Oh, the old country! My heart yearns for those days!”
The woman stared at me, as if to encourage me, and said, “Talk some more, let him hear you.”
I searched my memory for a souvenir, a story or a picture and found nothing but a hazy vision of a photo hanging in the living room and others hanging here and there in my memory, photos of places, the courtyard of the Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock. I saw stone tiles, silver columns, sweet basil, and refreshing ablution water as cold as melting snow pouring through the tap on hot days. I saw my father moving in circles, carrying his usual basket and bound Qur’ans decorated with mother of pearl. I saw copper kohl containers shaped like peacocks and their dipping sticks shaped like wings. There was amber, mother of pearl, carnelian rosaries, and caravans carved in olive wood, as well.
The man mumbled again, repeating, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Oh the old country! My heart yearns for those days.”
His wife said, playfully, “Hey Abu Faleh, would you like to go back to the old country to bless our pilgrimage, receive benedictions, and discover who we are after a long absence?”
He mumbled, surprised, “What is left for us to find? Our children have grown up in a foreign country and have left us alone in this house, with no one except the Everlasting.”
“God is with us,” the woman replied, getting emotional. She regained her composure, and said enthusiastically, to spur him on, “Come on Abu Faleh, you ought to thank God. We did our duty and a little more. Your children are successful and you and I wish for nothing more than good health.”
He turned to me and said, “The most important thing is health, my daughter. In this country we are worth nothing without health.”
He rocked his chair, his eyes wandered and he smiled slowly, saying, “In the old country, whenever a horse fell ill we used to stay with it, we did the same for a donkey. We would talk to it, sing for it, as if it were a family member or a neighbor. Here, however, there is no family and no neighbor. Each one minds his own business. You said that your father lived here? What was he doing? What was his name, his surname, and from which region was he?”
I searched my memory once more for the name of the city but I couldn’t find it. It was mixed up with many other names I had heard from the beginning of time. My father, on the other hand, was present—his shadow was here, his sadness and that look!
“He lived in Brooklyn,” I said, “and our house was located where the palace now stands. My father and his neighbors used to talk about America and the Americans and said that the old country was much better.”
He rocked his chair and moved his head approvingly, “Of course better!”
“Do you remember, Abu Faleh?” I asked.
“Who can forget?”
“And my father, don’t you remember him?” I asked.
“Which one of them?”
“He had opened a shop here,” I explained.
“We all did.”
“He used to live here,” I added.
“We all did.”
“It was where the palace is now and where your son Faleh works.”
Feeling sorry for me his wife interrupted, saying, “Come on, Abu Faleh, the lady has come all the way from Washington!”
“Even if she had come from Mexico, I don’t know,” he said, looked far away, then turned to us and said, “If she knew his name, it might be possible.”
“His name was Hajj.”
“Who was not a Hajj?”
“His name was Muhammad.”
“There were at least fifty Muhammads,” he explained.
“He had a grocery.”
“Thousands had groceries,” he added.
I got so close to him that my head reached his knees, and my voice quavered, “Is it possible, Abu Faleh, that you don’t know?”
He stared at me from behind his thick glasses, his eyes looking like two small fish lost in two glass containers. Squinting his eyes and pondering he said, “Do you want me to know?”
“You must know?”
He stared deeply and an expression of sudden understanding appeared in his eyes. He laughed maliciously and said, “There was a man who had a daughter who made a mistake and then ran away. From that day on he disappeared leaving no trace.”
I felt as if a shower of cold water were pouring over my head, but I persisted, “Well, and then?”
“Some say he went to the old country, others say he went to Canada, and some say he lost his mind and died.”
“How can I find out?”
“Only God knows.”
“But how can I know, Abu Faleh?”
He turned toward the window and resumed rocking his chair, lost in the world of his silence, while I repeated my question to him, “But how can I know, Abu Faleh?”
The only thing I heard was the squeaking of the wood and the rocking chair. I gathered myself and stood up. I looked at him for the last time hoping for some indication or sign. All I saw was a debilitated old man, looking across a window, with buildings stretching all the way to the horizon, a dark, limitless sky, and the street below rumbling with cars. I had reached the door when he called me. I stopped and turned, my heart pounding. I listened with apprehension, “Tell me my daughter, truly, in God’s name, aren’t you Zaynab?”
I looked at him, and he stared at me, and the two fish moved at the bottom of the bowl. I felt cold seeping into my bones and I left, oblivious to everything around me.
I went back to the spot where our house used to be and where the palace now stood. I looked for Abu Faleh’s son, the palace concierge, but the gate was closed. I sat on the bench waiting for him. I looked beyond the bridge and beyond the sea at the port. This is where my family had arrived in boats that had carried thousands, spewing them forth without mercy. This is where they had stepped down, and if they went back they would have returned from here. Where was my father, then? Had he immigrated again? If I were to see him I would ask about his life and his health. If I only knew where and how he was living now. If I only knew how life had treated him, whether it had helped him retain his memory or whether the hand of time had changed his appearance, like the palace and the garage that were built on the land where our house and my father’s shop had stood.
I heard Faleh inquiring, “You’re back?”
I summoned my courage and told him that I had lost the beginning of the thread, I had lost my family and my father. I didn’t know where they were or what I could do now.