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Sonia Sulaiman (She/Her)
Zaynab’s lives are plural. As they lived their present life, they would remember scenes and images, feelings, from their past. And in the world around them, signs of fate were inescapable: in museums, their own face looked back from ancient portraits, traced the outline of their soul reborn a thousand times, and that of Hasan, always just out of reach. As a child they read the story of Zaynab and Hasan, fated lovers of Palestinian folklore, a Cinderella story. They felt in their bones that the story was much more than a tale. Every time, in every age, it has been Zaynab who walked away; all but once. They had been children, imagining a home together: a green house with a brick-red roof. War came to Hasan and Zaynab. Sometimes, when they close their eyes they catch glimpses of their many lives.
Mercifully, they can’t remember every detail of their immortal life. Memories pass like fragments of diamonds, and always in them they see themself in many forms. Sometimes they have been the daughter, sometimes the son—sometimes neither. And entwined in these memories is always Hasan—oblivious, unwise, filled with the deepest longing, and beautiful.
Today, they rim their eyes with kohl—the goddess Anat before a battle—and adjust their keffiyeh and agal in the mirror. It is the Day of the Key, the anniversary of the fall of empires around the world, and one of the holiest of days in Palestine. They close the door behind them, walk down the limestone steps shadowed with roses and jasmine, and take the bus to their best friend Nadia’s café.
They are greeted by the pleasant thrum of people talking as they settle into their seats for the poetry open mic. Nadia is there, working the crowd. She makes a beeline for Zaynab. The host of the Green Olive Café Open Mic is elegant in her three-piece suit, her teal silk draped over her shoulders and her long dark hair streaked strikingly with grey. She smells like the qahwah she’s been serving to her guests.
“It’s so good to see you, Zaynab! We have quite a crowd tonight. They’ve come from all over Palestine, too. All to my little café.”
“I mean,” said Zaynab, “they used to say that we’re the poets of the Arabs, y’know.” They laugh.
“Are you sure you don’t want to take a turn up on the stage tonight?”
Zaynab nods. “It’s just not my vibe.”
“Suit yourself,” says Nadia and she returns to settling her patrons. Zaynab looks out over the crowd. They see flashes of traditional clothes from all over Palestine, and the diaspora too. Their gaze lingers on a particularly stunning patchwork vest in vivid red and yellow, an almost-forgotten art from the Galilee. More than a couple people, like Zaynab, combine traditionally feminine and masculine wear. Tradition is not something which binds and constricts but inspires, it is the material that the people of this new, free, Palestine, can shape. The people are no longer surviving, but thriving, growing, changing. Palestinians chart a new course nowadays, re-forming the traditional into a spectrum of new expressions, identity no longer solidified. It’s an exciting time to be in Palestine.
Zaynab takes a seat near the front, their favourite spot. They take their poetry the way they take their qahwa: heady, rich, and bold. The poets are fantastic. Zaynab even recognizes a few immortals. One is a descendant of a folk saint, Amina, who used to hunt spiritual monsters across Palestine. Who knows if they’re still around, but this one brings all of the fire of prophetic speech to their verses. It sends a thrill through Zaynab.
A young man walks up onto the stage. The MC introduces him as – who else? – Hasan. It’s him. Really him. Zaynab stares, a mixture of old feelings pressing against their chest. He takes their breath away. Their mouth is parched, and a tension starts to build within them, slowly, as Hasan stands by the mic and raises his phone to bring up his poem for the night. He’s dark, his eyes heavy-lidded and round with long lashes. This is Zaynab’s prince, just as they remembered him. A sigh rises into their throat.
“This poem is called The Dream, and it’s actually very personal for me,” says Hasan. “I hope that it speaks to you, in the same way that it affected me when it came.” He nods to the audience, standing quietly for a moment. Tenderly, he steps toward the mic and begins.
His words stun the audience with their softness. This isn’t the fire of the prophets, nor the eloquence of the scholars, but a simplicity that is just as devastating. Zaynab listens. They hear each word but the more they hear, the less they are moored to reality.
“He is the noble son of the rose and the jasmine,” he’s saying.
“Bent to me, and his words were sweet.
A feast, life-giving water to a drought-blighted land.
His nearness flows into the cracks of me. In a dream,
I follow where he leads. Henna, mlokhia, and apple;
He feeds them all to me in language, in poetry.
I am swept up in him, this prince of men. And I wonder,
How could I be so struck by this man when I love another?
Where is the daughter of the rose and the jasmine,
And how could I ever forget her in the dark eyes of this stranger?”
“You were not wise in those days, Hasan,” thinks Zaynab, remembering all those times they met and sparred with poetry, all those times Hasan failed to resonate with her words. She had come to him, as a peasant girl, poor and cherished by the mother who raised her alone. She left and came back to him as a mysterious stranger, a nobleman who visited Hasan in his palatial gardens and, again, there was poetry between them. And, again, Hasan was oblivious that the love that was kindled in him each time was the love of the same person.
“He says to me,” continues Hasan. “He says to me...You have not been wise.”
Blood is all there is for Zaynab, in their ears blood, in their veins fire. This is the fatal moment, isn’t it? They are weary, they are yearning for an ending. “Hasan,” says Zaynab, “are you finally wise?”
Hasan has finished his poem, and he looks over the crowd and sees Zaynab. He starts and locks gaze with them. As the audience shows their appreciation, Hasan stands at the mic for a moment, rooted to the spot. Then, he steps away, and Zaynab follows inexorably, as though there was a cord taut between them. In some way, there is; the strings of fate which bound them together for so many lifetimes. In silence, they pass through the crowd and out of the café together.
Outside, the two find a quiet spot under a mulberry tree, the huge, aged branches spread a shady canopy over them. Zaynab pushes Hasan against the tree and rests their arm on the trunk. “It took you long enough to grow wise, my love,” they say. Hasan looks askance, and then laughs softly.
“I was confused,” he admits. “Was I in love with the girl, the boy...The mighty lord who visited me in my palace, or the young woman living in poverty who lost her golden sandal? Turns out, it was always you. I kept reaching for you, in every form you took. I thought, ‘I love the girl– but I also love this boy...How can that be? Surely, I have to be in love with one, don’t I?’ I was so unwise not to see it. Of course, love doesn’t have to be constrained like that. How could I not have known?”
Zaynab sighs, “just thinking about it makes me tired.”
“I know. I tried, Zaynab. I tried so many ways to...make things right. It was like there was a current that always drew me away from you. We missed each other in so many lifetimes for such trivial reasons, or it was the Occupation. I joined the Resistance and that also took me away from you. There was always something—”
“Yeah,” says Zaynab. “Something was always missing in the equation, somehow.” She looks over at Nadia. “I think we have a good chance of making things work this time around.”
Over time, Zaynab comes to reflect that their country is ancient, as their souls are both ancient, and young, in this freedom that is finally theirs. And when they come together, it is to discover the potentiality of all that love could mean. Instead of the fairy tale driving them onto the rocks, and circumstances drawing them apart again, they are truly free to know themselves and their desires. In exploring what ‘love’ means to them, they find something else: unhurried and quiet, a long proposal of mutual, intimate friendship. There are more kinds of soulmates, it turns out, than just romantic ones and more that can draw people together than the intricately woven strings of a fated love.
One day, Hasan and Zaynab walk the old city together. “I think we’ve finally solved the equation,” says Zaynab as they turn to watch Nadia approaching, her trailing a rolling suitcase. “It’s only a day trip,” they say as Nadia pulls up. “You won’t need all that just to go to the beach.”
“Oh, it’s just the sea to you, that’s not how I see it. I’m not here only because I need to keep an eye on you.” Zaynab elbows Nadia.
“Someone has to be the responsible one in our trio,” agrees Hasan. Nadia smiles.
“You’re growing on me,” she says. “Now, are you going to keep talking or...?” She hoists her bag into the car. Zaynab and Hasan pile in after her. Life is sweet, beautiful, and bright in the azure sky. The hills give way to the Mediterranean. They stay out in the waves and the shore so late, but there are no regrets. There is plenty of time to make something new between them, a kind of love they haven’t tried in all of their lives.
Art by Mishandi J. Sarhan