Jamal! Jamal!
“It’s gotten to be nine o’clock, Jamal. I went to their house and I saw her sister, Randa.”
. . .
“What do you mean whose sister? Lamis’s, of course! I talked to her about it, and you can’t imagine what a great girl she is. If he liked her even just a little, I’d match him up with her instead. But like they say, the heart wants what it wants. Her mother always calls her ‘little head.’ Like Lamis, she’s still pretty and petite, just the way I remember her from the first time I saw her. I’m the same way with you: to me you’ll always be the guy who’s going away to Egypt, scared of any city other than Gaza. Now don’t get me wrong. It isn’t just because I hold onto this image of you, but because you really are still tall and handsome the way you were before. Just look at you: there isn’t a gray hair on your head!”
. . .
“But there’s something I’ve never been able to figure out. There are people I first knew when they were even younger than their children are now. Yet I can’t seem to imagine a son being older than his father or a daughter being older than her mother no matter how long they live—even when their hair turns gray and starts to fall out, their backs are stooped, and they get cataracts. You know what I mean?”
. . .
“I remember meeting people way back who were older than I was—some just a little older, others a lot older. Then later they died, and now I’m a lot older than they were then. But when I remember them I still think of them as being older than me, the way they were when I knew them before.”
. . .
“You’re going to get me off the subject by saying things like that, Jamal! I’m going to forget what I was talking about!”
. . .
“Anyway, I saw her.”
. . .
“‘Who?’ you say? Are you still asking me who? I saw Randa! I said, ‘Randa, sweetie, I know your daddy’s been in prison for the last twenty years. But even so, we’ve got to go on with our lives.’ Well, I might not have said that. But I’m not lying to you, since if I saw her again, that’s exactly what I’d tell her, word for word. It’s what I should have said. But when I went over there, I was flustered. You know how it is. Whenever the suitor’s family go to the girl’s house, they take one step forward and one step back. So I was afraid I might say the wrong thing and mess things up! You remember what my dad did to us when he rebuffed you? It was a different situation, of course, since, when a guy asks for the hand of a girl he’s in love with and she’s in love with him too and her father says no, they both feel terrible. But the issue is more complicated here. Lamis and Saleh are in love, of course. That’s no secret, even though Lamis has always kept quiet about it. The problem is that Randa is older than Lamis. Granted, there’s only a difference of five minutes between them, but she’s still the oldest. So as far as her parents and brothers are concerned, she’s the one who should get married first. That’s why I wanted to talk to Randa before anybody else, since I didn’t want anybody to hurt her feelings by saying something like, ‘See? Your little sister got married before you did!’ You see what I’m saying?”
. . .
“I want her to feel as though she’s the one approving her sister’s engagement—that she’s the one giving permission. Besides, you have to remember that Randa’s my friend. True—I still see her the way I did the first time we met: as this little girl hiding behind her mother and thinking I’m Athar al-Hakim. I’ve never told you this before, but that really made me happy. I hadn’t told you because I didn’t want you to think I was conceited.”
. . .
“Oh, God, what have I done? Here I am telling you, even though I didn’t want to! I swear to God, I didn’t mean to tell you that!”
. . .
“Anyway, I know you believe me, honey. So what was I saying . . . ? Oh, I was saying that this is hard for me. I’m only human, after all. But Randa took it hard, I think, because she said to me, ‘I thought I was your friend, and that you loved me the most. I thought that when you decided to look for a wife for your son, I’d be your first choice.’ You see what a mess I’ll have gotten myself into if I can’t find a way to explain this to her?”
. . .
“If you want to know the truth, Randa would be my first choice. I’ve got to lower my voice. I wouldn’t want Saleh to overhear me. But the boy’s been in love with Lamis since . . . no, I won’t tell you that. I won’t say. . . .”
. . .
“Are you mad now? All right, then, I’ll tell you.”
. . .
“You say, ‘So, he’s been sweet on her since the first gust of wind that blew her dress up?’ Now where did you hear that? I don’t remember telling you! And there’s no way the boy would have said so himself. He didn’t even tell me, and I’m his mother! But if you’re right, then it means the boy grew up while I wasn’t looking. In any case, that isn’t why he fell in love with her. It started a long time ago, and then developed later on.”
. . .
“You know how we hold onto the images we first formed of people. The best example I can think of is the way we look at our own kids. No matter how old they get, we go on seeing them as our babies!”
. . .
“You get me now, right? Of course, we’ll marry him off and he’ll have kids of his own. We hope so, anyway! And then I’ll be a grandma and you’ll be a grandpa. But even then we won’t really believe he’s a father, just the way nobody who’s known us for a long time will believe we’ve become grandparents.”
. . .
“When we like somebody, it’s usually based on our first impression. Why is that? It really bugs me. I don’t think about it night and day, of course, and I don’t want to give you a headache by talking about it. But I think we hold on to our first impressions of people because we know deep down that sooner or later they’re going to change.”
. . .
“Hey, don’t laugh at me! I’ve thought a lot about this, actually, and I’ve decided that people are like cameras. That’s right—cameras. Now there you go laughing at me again! If you don’t want to hear the rest, never mind. I won’t say another word.”
. . .
“So you aren’t laughing at me, really—you’re just putting up politely with my silliness?”
. . .
“The idea of the camera is strange, I’ve got to admit. And why should I tell you about it? Should I just blabber on about this and that? When you tell me everything I say is worth saying, are you being honest, or just polite?”
. . .
“Well, thank you.”
. . .
“So even silly things are worth saying?”
. . .
“What do you mean?”
. . .
“Now we’re back where we started. I swear I’m going to get mad. I’ll stop talking to you, and you know I’m serious, since I’ve done it before. One time I stopped speaking to you for days because I thought you’d stopped listening to me. Well, that’s a mistake I don’t plan to repeat. And in case you’re wondering, I’m not saying that to please you. I really mean it.”
. . .
“Do you want me to go on? So what were we talking about? Oh, yeah . . . we were talking about people being like cameras. And they really are. For each person we know, we take just one picture. Of course, nobody knows how long a person’s ‘film’ is, but the more a person engages with life, the longer the film gets. If you use your eyes right—the eyes being like the camera lens—the film inside you expands so that it can hold more images. Some people blow up pictures they like and hang them on their walls. But believe me: the day will come when you’ll be able to see your picture inside the person who loves you. On this point I think Fairuz was way ahead of her time. So if you don’t believe what I’m saying, you can at least believe her, since you love all her songs! One of them goes something like this:
‘Open up!’ she said,
knocking on my chest’s door.
She wanted to see if my heart
was there any more.
“Boy, that woman hits the nail on the head!”
. . .
“I’ve heard you say, ‘All Fairuz’s songs are so wonderful, I wish I’d come across just one that’s no good so that I can stop being so crazy about her. But what can I say? She’s perfect! So do you think she’s perfect because I love her, or because her songs are so amazing?’”
. . .
“Uff, we got off the subject again! What I wanted to say was that we aren’t just cameras. We’re dark rooms, too, in a sort of a way. When I went next door today to ask about Saleh marrying Lamis, I saw Randa as a little girl, the way she was the first time we met. So for a moment I thought of coming right back home again. They’re identical, you know.”
. . .
“I think we need to start getting ready for the wedding right away. It would be awful to let the day take us by surprise, even though we’ve been waiting for it forever. Isn’t it strange the way weddings always creep up on us?”
. . .
“And you know why it happens? It’s because we don’t trust the world any more. We’ve trained ourselves not to expect good things so that when they happen, we can experience the pleasure of feeling awed and amazed.”
. . .
“Now, I’m no philosopher. You’ve been telling me that for a long time. But I wanted to say that I hadn’t been seeing things clearly. It’s like, my lenses had had a lot of dust on them. But now I’m another Amna. I don’t know whether I’m better than the old one or not. But I think I might be because, even though you hardly say anything lately, I get this feeling you love me more now.”