17

Alaa

Nadeen came by yesterday to take me to Haifa to visit some friends. Nadeen, Abu Hasan’s daughter, who was my classmate at the Frères school. When we finished the baccalaureate final exams, her folks decided to marry her off to her cousin. Do you remember when she came crying and begging you to convince them to postpone the marriage until after she finished college? She’d been accepted to Tel Aviv University and wanted to study there. You said that her father had gone crazy. You asked him why he’d sent her to the Frères if he didn’t want her to go to college? But he was stubborn, and no one knew what got into him, and why he wanted her to get married so young.

On her wedding night, right after the party, the military intelligence came and took her husband. It looked like a prearranged deal. There were many rumors that he had made a deal with them to arrest him after the wedding. That’s what people said. But it didn’t make sense. Since when do the intelligence wait for someone? They placed him in security detention and she asked for a divorce, because he’d made a deal with the intelligence, and didn’t even tell her he was politically active. He refused at first, but she got the divorce eventually. I’m not sure if what was said is true. I doubt it. Perhaps he was imprisoned for some civil offense, but his family claimed it was for political reasons. I don’t know. The whole story doesn’t hang well. I never asked her about the wedding. There were rumors about her, too. She disappeared for a period of time and we didn’t know where she had gone. I loved her laugh, but she kept everyone around her at a distance. As if everyone, including her family, had betrayed her. She used to visit and we’d go out, or drink something. But she never liked to go out in Jaffa and preferred Haifa.

“What is there in Jaffa except fish restaurants and those stores in the old city the Israelis took over and turned into art studios? They fool the world trying to show American Jews and rich Russians that they’ve renovated and built the city. Fuck these bastards and enough already. I can’t stand Jaffa any longer. I can’t go out there. It hurts. And I can’t stand going to these fish restaurants and hearing the owners blabber in Hebrew. I swear sometimes I can’t tell who is an Arab and who is a Jew. For the love of God, let’s get away from Jaffa. Haifa is much better.”

“You’re overdoing it,” I used to tell her. But I had no objection to going to Haifa. There is no city like it. Coming from a Jaffan, that’s high praise. The sea has a different face there. Would you have objected had you heard me say this about Haifa? Anyway, where was I? Yes, I was visiting my folks and I went to the flea market. I was looking for an old chair to go along with the 1970s green set in the guest room. It’s still in our house. My mother didn’t want to throw it away. It wasn’t really used since we, as you know, never sat in the guest room that often. I was looking for a chair from that period. I thought I’d send it to be refurbished along with the whole set. When I passed by stores in the flea market I would see very old furniture, from the 1940s. I used to wonder whether it was old and refurbished, or looted from the houses of those who were forced to flee? I sometimes have an intense feeling of anger and bitterness when I walk in Jaffa. I feel am on the cusp of madness. And I wonder how you were able to stay in Jaffa without going mad yourself.

I stood before a big oval mirror with wood lining topped by an engraving in the shape of a bunch of grapes. The storeowner had probably repainted it recently. I remembered you as I looked at myself in the mirror. The beauty mark on my right cheek is the same as the one you had. My mother had it, too, but on her left cheek. I looked at my hoary curly hair. My eyes look tired and have black circles around them. Is it true that my eyes have the same color as my grandfather’s? Why didn’t you say that they were blue like my mother’s? Why were you so cruel to her? As if depriving her of the pleasure of having me look like her. Why did you always remind her of the man who left when she was still in your womb?

I remembered the story about the mirror and curtains.

You told me that what pained you the most were the mirror and the curtains you left behind in your house. You didn’t retrieve them when you went back, even though you stayed in Jaffa? They kicked you out of al-Manshiyye, but you stayed in Jaffa. They took you from your homes and crammed you in other houses in Ajami and surrounded you with barbed wire. I remembered your story about the mirror. You were too shy when you were married. He took your hand and you both stood before the mirror. He told you, “Look into the mirror and see how gorgeous you are. Don’t be shy.” Then he started to touch you and caress your body right there in front of the mirror. That’s what you said, and it stayed with me. Mother went crazy when she heard you talk about sex so explicitly in my presence. Maybe she was angered by something else too. That you were talking about the father she never got to know. How sweet and loving he was, but not to her. She got upset whenever you cracked one of your lewd jokes. You and I laughed a lot and you told her that she was too uptight. “Jaffans like to joke around and to live life,” you’d say. You were baffled that she was like that. “She’s so backward. I swear. She harps on shame and manners so often, one would think she’s the mother and am her daughter.” Then you sighed and didn’t say much afterward. You felt tired and asked me to go with you to your house, which was a fifteen-minute walk away. That was before you moved to live with us the last six months.

“Iskandar Awad,” I used to repeat whenever I went through Razyal Street, the name that had occupied Iskandar Awad Street. After they uprooted the street’s name, they gave it a number. They replaced street names with numbers. They kept the names that had remained naked, then they dressed them up in foreign names. I try to remind myself out loud of the names of streets, houses, and people who live here . . . still live here. Even if they are now in Beirut, Amman, or any other place. I know their tales and problems. I know who got married and who didn’t. How you all spent your holidays, the orchards, and Prophet Rubin festivities. I never understood who this Rubin was, and why you stopped celebrating his feast? “So what if Israel came? Why would you stop celebrating him?” I asked you once when I was young. God. I realize now how cruel our questions can be sometimes.

I was cruel when I was young. I didn’t get much of what you used to say. I never appreciated the Jaffa you spoke of. I thought you were exaggerating. Otherwise why did they leave? I know they were kicked out, but sometimes it seems that words cannot convey the cruelty of what took place. I didn’t understand. Only later did I comprehend what it meant when you said, “Bullets were flying over our heads, darling. To stay was like committing suicide. It was terrifying and it all happened in a flash. God have mercy on our loved ones, the dead and the living. That’s enough darling. My heart aches.”

I told you once that, with you, I felt that I was living the world of your Jaffa before “that year.” I live in an entire world above, or beneath (it doesn’t matter) the city we live in. You didn’t like me saying that Jaffa was buried beneath Jaffa. You said that Jaffa will always be Jaffa. It exists everywhere around us. We just have to look to see. You said that you could hear voices and wedding celebrations with music and drums at night. Mother said you were crazy. “Only you, and those who don’t hear the drums at night, are crazy,” you said to anyone who doubted your words. You drove me crazy talking about al-Manshiyye and even Tel Aviv. You said you used to go to Allenby Street to buy cloth for brides. You were a seamstress and that is what saved you from the claws of poverty.

You said you cried a lot when you went back and rang the bell of your house in al-Manshiyye after they’d forced you to leave it and go to Ajami. One day you snuck away with your father to retrieve the guest room curtains. You never explained how you managed to sneak away. “We went,” you said. I never asked how you were able to do that when you were still under military rule. You told your father that you’d crocheted those curtains with your blind sister, Sumayya, and hung them before she, your mother, brother, and Ruben left Palestine. They all tried to save their lives and were hoping that your father could convince you to leave and you would return later. He didn’t want to leave you by yourself, especially since your husband had been displaced to Beirut.

There was a woman living there, in your own home, and she recognized you. She knew that you were the owner without you saying a single word. You sat in your house and she offered you coffee. You were embarrassed to ask for the curtains. She said the curtains were beautiful and she’d never seen crocheted curtains before. You didn’t comment. You left with your father and felt that you had betrayed Sumayya. Your father didn’t say anything either. He remained silent as if tongue-tied. And he died soon thereafter. He went mad and then died. He was demented and then died. How can I describe his condition? You described it differently each time. He left you and mother alone. He was demented, as if he couldn’t bear staying in Jaffa without becoming demented. I still imagine you walking together, greeting strangers in your city, and smiling so that he would be reassured that all was well. Why am I telling you, again, what you already told me? Perhaps I am writing out of fear, and against forgetfulness. I write to remember, and to remind, so as memories are not erased. Memory is my last lifeline.

What am I saying to you? How can I describe what I feel? I feel intense loneliness. I’m orphaned without you. My mother was never more than a caring woman, but I forgot that she was my mother. My father was way too busy with work. Sometimes I am so sad I cannot cry. Is that what you meant when you said, “Tears have dried up in Jaffa”? I wish you had stayed longer and never left us.

Where are we? Oh, yes, I was telling you about Nadeen, our neighbor, and how I survived death. I was standing before that mirror at the flea market in Jaffa, imagining that intimate moment with you and the grandfather I never knew. Memories, mine and yours, flash suddenly. I was smiling, as if I had seen you in the mirror, when I heard a voice calling my name. It was Nadeen. You liked her joie de vivre and sense of humor. We hugged. She had a slender body and smelled good always. She told me that she’d finished college, and was working as a teacher in al-Lid, but she didn’t want to stay there, because the situation was horrible.

“Things are so tough here in Jaffa, I never thought there could be worse. But it’s much worse over there. I just can’t go on. Students boast that their fathers are drug dealers. One of them even brought a gun to school, and the principal didn’t do anything. Can you believe that? They are drowning in drugs and a form of tribalism that has nothing to do with old Bedouin values, or their city life. It’s a hodgepodge and the state leaves it as is so that they keep wallowing in drugs, crime, and being lost. They don’t need to do anything, or bother with these youth, because they’re already lost. It’s hopeless.”

“But Nadeen, if everyone leaves, who will change things? Their situation is not worse than blacks, or Native Americans, in the US. Nevertheless, they try to change things.”

“Alaa, darling, spare me your naiveté. Native Americans are almost gone and the blacks are still suffering. You know what? You are right. We shouldn’t leave, but I can’t anymore. If you want, you can leave Tel Aviv and go to al-Lid to work with these kids. But, please don’t pontificate, because I’m really tired of slogans.”

I didn’t want to defend myself or what I do, so I told her that it was a complicated subject and we’ll agree to disagree. She insisted on coming by the next day to take me to Haifa, so I told her we’d resume our argument then.

I spent most of last week at my parents’ house. Mother is not doing so well. She’s sick. The doctor says she’s depressed. She says that she’s just sick and the doctor is an idiot. I felt that she needed me to be by her side. But let me tell you how we escaped death yesterday.

Nadeen came in her old Volkswagen Golf. My mother frowned upon my going out with her. She thought that she had designs on me, especially since she was a divorcée. I tried to explain to my mother that I saw her by accident and neither of us was interested in a relationship. We were like siblings. But mother didn’t get it.

I am going on and on. When I write in this red notebook I feel that you are here, sitting and listening to me. It is still difficult for me to call your departure “death.” This word carries the sense of eternal loss. Anyway, we left Jaffa and were heading to Haifa. We didn’t take the express highway, because Nadeen wanted to stop by Tel Aviv University to drop off books to a friend of hers there. It’s never a straightforward trip with her. We always end up making unplanned stops to buy something, or see someone. We sat at the cafeteria to have a coffee about an hour after we’d left Jaffa. Mother called, but I didn’t answer. She kept calling. I got worried so I answered. Her voice was shaky. She said that a suicide bomber had detonated his car at the Beit Lid intersection. Had we gone directly to Haifa we would’ve been at the intersection around the time of the bombing. Were it not for Nadeen’s random decisions, our lives, or deaths, would have intersected with that man’s. They said on the news that he was a father of five from the Galilee.

It seems that I have dodged death more than once. Do you remember the year I had to live part of the time in Jerusalem for work? There were many suicide operations. Cell phones were not widely used back then. I didn’t have one. But I would know that I had escaped death when the landline kept ringing in the early morning. I would hear my mother’s terrified voice when I picked up. She used to call to make sure I was still asleep. I always missed the early morning bus and death would miss me. I hated working as a cameraman those days. Having to hear the chants of “Mavat la‘Aravim!” (Death to Arabs!). The jarring sound of that chant still resounds in my head. Sometimes I would be looking into the mirror and I would sarcastically repeat these chants. As if trying to drive away the fear that nests in my memory.

I was never that close to death. Maybe when we are born in such a place, on a cradle of disasters, we always search for riveting stories about surviving life and death. Because “normal” stories don’t resemble us. We no longer see ourselves in our stories—the ones in which we tend to our boredom. So we search for ourselves elsewhere, so we may resemble our images in news stories and novels. Why did I just switch to writing in the plural? Everything around me is fragmented.

Tata, I miss you . . . a lot!

Ariel turned the page and felt uncomfortable that Alaa was not honest with him the previous night. He didn’t say that he was tired or bored. Why did he lie and say that he had to go to work today? It was the last page. Ariel looked at his watch and realized he had to go back to his apartment and write his article.

He understood now why Alaa always talked about his grandmother and rarely mentioned his mother. But why did he lie? Their conversation the night before was normal. They didn’t talk about politics. Was it just Alaa’s need for solitude? Ariel felt a lump in his throat. He closed the red notebook and kept it in his lap. He turned on the lamp to his right. The veiled person’s eyes in the painting on the wall across from him glistened as they gazed at him. It was strange, he thought, that a painting could unsettle him. He grabbed the red notebook and got up to go to his apartment.

He left the light on.