Jerusalem Stands Alone

by Mahmoud Shukair

  I remain in the store looking out at the street, watching people, expecting someone to walk in—maybe a tourist looking to buy an antique—but twenty minutes pass and no one enters. My attention switches to the daily newspaper and obituaries.

  Fifty minutes pass and Sufyan has not returned. A tourist and her friend walk into the store and look around for ten minutes. The girl buys a kaffiyeh and the guy buys prayer beads strung beside a square block engraved with a picture of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They pay and leave, and I place the money in the drawer. Then I sit back down and wait, but no other customers walk in.

  Two hours later, Sufyan is back. I’m angry at him for having confined me to his store all this time but he only laughs playfully as I leave, suffused with rage.

  Knights

  YORAM GOES OUT AT NIGHT in disguise to inspect the city’s defenses. He roams the streets as a beggar (inspired by the undercover Israeli police) and heads toward the Damascus Gate. There are just a few men and three Israeli streetwalkers on the route leading from the New Gate to the Damascus Gate.

  As he approaches the gate, he sees a brigade of horsemen. At first, he thinks they’re his unit and approaches them confidently, but as he nears, he sees that these horsemen wear an unfamiliar uniform and helmets that date as far back as the Ayyubid era, with Yamani swords hanging at their sides.

  Yoram becomes flustered, but luckily he’s disguised—one of the horsemen might’ve stabbed him.

  He turns on his heels and hurries back to headquarters to order his men to take out the horsemen, but though the police forces mobilize and search until morning for the knights, they can’t find anyone who fits the description.

  Yoram is convinced the brigade is hiding somewhere, and he will arrest them one night.

  In Hiding

  GHAZAL (his nickname was bestowed by a man fond of irony) is the administrative manager at a city hospital. He still remembers that afternoon when people protested on the streets. His friend, the male nurse, had just finished sedating a woman in her thirties who was laid out on the bed, all made up, with the administrative manager monitoring the anaesthetization (he wouldn’t have had to observe if this were a better hospital). Then they heard gunshots. Soldiers opened fire at the protesters and the doctor and nurses ran out to the porch to watch.

  Ghazal remained in the operating room alone. He approached the woman’s body and inhaled every inch of it. He pushed the thin white robe open and was admiring her beautiful full breasts when a bullet ricocheted off the window of the operating room. He ducked under the bed and remained there until minutes before the operation.

  Sufyan

  HE’S A STRANGE MAN. He doesn’t leave the city, remaining tucked inside its walls. He spends his time in the bar, as if he and the bar were conjoined twins. He’s single and is not interested in marriage, drinking wine from dawn to dusk, taking a big gulp from his glass every few minutes. Life seems sweet to him sometimes—at other times, bitter.

  He guffaws as if exhaling bottled-up wrath and mourns the city he refuses to leave. His face is a heated stove as he reaches for the wineglass he keeps hidden from customers, while he keeps his eyes on the road as if waiting for a date.

  He exits the bar, leaving everything behind him, and doesn’t return for a while. Then he comes back, inevitably drawn back to this city he can never leave, as if he and the city are conjoined twins.

  A Lilac Robe

  ASMAHAN’S VOICE COMES TO HIM, calling his name. She asks him to fetch her lilac robe. (She’s been cranky lately because she can’t sit out on the porch anymore.) She tells him she forgot to bring it into the bathroom with her.

  He looks for her lilac robe and finds it in the wardrobe. She says the bathroom door is unlocked, so he presses down the handle and opens the door.

  He’s struck by her nudity. She glances over at him drowsily as she turns off the water, and a nervous smile makes its way to her lips as if it’s the first time he’s seen her naked. As she dries herself, he thinks to himself that she could’ve wrapped herself with the blue towel and left instead. But he likes this behavior of hers, a mixture of boldness and shyness.

  Before he drapes the robe over her full figure, Asmahan stands in front of the bathroom door rubbing her eyes. The scene that began comfortably ends awkwardly, with whispered apologies.

  A Memory

  HE TELLS HER, as she presses her right foot in between his feet, that one afternoon his mother went into the bathroom with a bucket to shower. The water was off that day and the faucet wouldn’t release a single drop. His mother forgot to take a cup to scoop water from the bucket, and she called for him to bring her one.

  The bathroom lock was broken, so she couldn’t secure it from the inside. He opened the door. He was twelve at the time and kept his eyes glued to the ceiling as he moved closer to his mother, but as he turned to leave, his eyes glided over her enigmatic pale figure. He walked out and reprimanded himself for not having closed his eyes.

  The pressure from her right foot stops and, heavy with exhaustion, she closes her eyes, while his sleep is intermittent and remains so until morning.

  The Helmet

  I’M WALKING THROUGH THE BAZAAR, heading toward Jaffa Gate from the side of Suwayq Alley, when I see him riding a white mare toward the vast field, surrounded by a formation of horsemen. It’s evening, and the market is swamped with men and women of different nationalities. I see the king in his steel helmet, looking in every direction.

  The merchants stand outside their shops and watch the scene unfold. One of the tourists asks me, “What era are we in?” I tell him, “We’re in the foreign era, and what you’re seeing here is one of the kings who once ruled Jerusalem.” I ask one of the merchants (originally from Venice, he came to Jerusalem with one of the foreign crusades), “Do you sell helmets like the king’s? I want one as a souvenir.”

  He says, “We’re fresh out of helmets. Come back in a week—we’re getting a large shipment from Florence.”

  I forget the exact date, but I return after a while and can’t find the merchant, or his shop, or the king and his knights. Only the city remains.

  Between Two Scenes

  SUZANNE ENTERS THE TREE-COVERED VALLEY. Looking around, she sees the Church of All Nations nearby, and her mind travels back to the ancient past as she watches him fashion his cross from tree limbs. He bows, afraid of death for the first time. She shivers and wishes she’d brought her friend, whose presence might have made this moment less painful, if only slightly.

  She remains among the trees for some time, ignoring the traffic noise coming from a nearby street and another strange humming sound. She sees him trudging along, so she paces beside him, listening to the people whimper and sigh. She walks the Via Dolorosa from beginning to end before reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and sitting on the steps facing the church gate. (If only she’d brought her friend!) The ancient scene plays out before her in its entirety. She sees the masses gather around him and weep. She sees the present-day scene and weeps, her mind caught between the two.

  Something

  ASMAHAN RETURNS FROM SCHOOL with her classmate Mary and their girlfriends. As they stroll through the streets, the girls add to the city a glow they’re too young to recognize. Sufyan is aware of it, however, as he sits in his shop waiting for tourists to buy his wooden sculptures, his photographs of the city, his crucifixes and other religious relics.

  Asmahan bids Mary good-bye and walks down the empty alley to her house. Mary turns onto another empty alley leading to her own home. Sufyan feels lonely. He gulps his wine then closes his shop early to walk the market streets anxiously, as if looking for something, and the scents of the city trigger old memories.

  Running

  I RECALL HODJA BITTERLY. He walked by a crowd of little girls and boys playing in the city square who gathered around him to hear a story. He shooed them away but they refused to leave.

  He thought of a way to get the kids to leave him be, so he glanced up
toward the nearby neighborhood and said, “Look, there’s a wedding over there! What are you all still doing here?” The kids believed his lie and ran in the direction he was pointing.

  When he saw them running enthusiastically, he thought to himself, It looks like there really is a wedding!

  And he ran after the little boys and girls, and I ran with him. I ran for a different reason—a reason that was not funny at all.

  A Boy and a Girl

  THE CITY KEEPS BUSY and I keep busy with everything I lay my eyes on—a girl wriggling out of her mother’s grip at the market, her mother running after her as she laughs carelessly. I grow bored sitting at my uncle’s store waiting for my father and fall asleep until the girl comes in and sits beside me, her dress bunching up around her knees as she sits down. She caresses my hair tenderly. I reach out and on a whim pull her dress down but she grabs my hand and says, “Come.” I stand up and follow her. She runs and I run after her, then next to her, and we don’t come back until nightfall.

  I open my eyes and see people I don’t recognize. The city keeps itself busy and I’m a few years older. I wish I could see the girl in front of me as I did in the dream—I wish she could really come to me, with that innocence, in that dress.

  One Afternoon

  THE CITY KEEPS BUSY and I follow the girl to the end of the marketplace. She takes an alley to her house and goes inside while I stop and wait. Her blue school uniform and white socks mesmerize me. Her hair is dark auburn, her eyes hazel, and she laughs with her schoolmates. When they separate, she invariably hurries home looking straight ahead while I stick behind her like her shadow, too shy to speak. She is too, apparently.

  But she’s hypnotized my senses. Every afternoon as my body sits in the classroom, my mind and soul are here, on the road where my fifteen-year-old beloved walks.

  I wait for her one afternoon to get out of school but she doesn’t emerge. I wait for her the next day, I wait days and weeks, but still she doesn’t show. That was last fall. I frequent the road she walked on, trying to track her by smell, like her pet dog.

  Sky Blue

  ABD EL-RAZZAQ brings three men with him. They work on the house for three days, painting it luminous sky blue. They paint all the rooms, including Suzanne’s. They paint the front door and the staircase and the storage room where they keep the furniture. Abd el-Razzaq says he likes the color. Khadija says she likes it, too. In fact, she was the one who suggested the color in the first place and her husband agreed instantly.

  The house looks its best tonight. Khadija struts around its rooms in a light blue dress, feeling one with the house.

  Saturday

  IT’S SATURDAY, and heavy rain pools in the markets and flows in shallow rivers. The shop owners stay inside, cold, waiting for customers, but the rain has trapped people in their homes.

  And the Orthodox Jews, with their long beards and black coats, pass through the Gate of the Valley to the synagogue despite the rain.

  Asmahan tells her friend Mary as they look out the classroom window, “I wish the teacher would let us go outside to play in the rain.” Mary says, “We can when school is out.”

  This Saturday stands apart from other days because it’s stopped raining by the time Asmahan and Mary get out of school. There are only scattered puddles that make it difficult to walk through the market.

  The Grandmother

  RABAB SAYS: “My grandmother died on a very cold and rainy day. We carried her out of our house to al-Aqsa Mosque to pray over her body and then to Via Dolorosa. We walked past the Lions’ Gate and went left toward the cemetery. Grandma’s funeral wasn’t a big one because of the weather, and anyway, Grandma wouldn’t have wanted a big funeral. That’s what she used to tell us.

  “We buried her by my grandfather’s grave. He died fifteen years before she did and Grandma used to talk about him all the time. She spoke constantly of him until the day she died.” Gesturing toward the sky, Rabab continues, “She used to say that she was waiting for the moment when she could be reunited with him.

  “And then the moment came, and Grandma left Jerusalem that afternoon to reunite with him.”

  The Young Son

  HE SAYS, “Our young son, Abd el-Rahman, was released from jail and came home. His mother and two sisters were very happy, and I was happy for his return. His mother stood at the porch of our house and ululated again and again while the settlers stood on the neighboring porch and watched us uneasily.

  “Our son, Abd el-Rahman, got out of jail with a long and unruly beard. I felt bad for him because he suffers from an old illness. I secretly prayed that God bring an end to these dark days. I hate bigotry and bigots (Farid al-Din Attar considered bigotry to be ignorance). His mother raised a white flag on our rooftop in celebration of the return of our imprisoned son.

  “The men and women from our neighborhood all came to congratulate us. His mother danced like a young woman, and his two sisters danced, and Suzanne danced too. All the women danced and sang until midnight.

  “In the stillness of the night, Abd el-Rahman cried as he begged God for forgiveness. But he wouldn’t say why he was crying. I raised my hand to my heart and prayed aloud for God to bring an end to these dark days.”

  Residency

  SUZANNE SAYS that she’ll only marry a man after careful scrutiny. Her father separated from her mother a few years earlier and that left a painful mark on her. She stayed with her mother until she was twenty while her father lived with another woman. She says, “When Mom found out that dad had a mistress, she hit her head against the wall every morning. She turned Dad’s mornings so bitter, he would jump out of bed, put on his pants, and run out of the house without coffee or breakfast.

  “Then Mom started dating a guy who looked like he played the villain in a horror movie. His stares used to scare me whenever he visited. I moved out and spent three years migrating from place to place before I moved here to Jerusalem, and the moment I arrived, I said to myself that I’d stay here forever if I could.”

  Loss

  I WALK through the alleys of the city, looking at the high windows, seductively arched windows that cry out for admiration. I wait, hoping she’ll look out one of the windows and my happiness will return to me after so long.

  I look and I search, I search and I look, and my search takes a long time. Then I see a girl who looks like her—I think maybe it is she, but she looks different after so long.

  I wave at her to open her window and come down to the alleyway. She disappears behind the window with flowers and flowerpots on its ledge.

  I wait, and the wait consumes me.

  Reassurance

  ABD EL-RAZZAQ and Khadija are worried for their child, whose head is being X-rayed. She sits a while in the waiting room, then stands up and paces anxiously. Abd el-Razzaq stands up and sits down whenever Khadija does. The doctor comes out and says the results of the X-ray are satisfactory and that the girl’s condition is nothing to worry about.

  Abd el-Razzaq and Khadija are happy. Khadija regains her energy as if she has just been pulled from a deep well, pushing her chest forward proudly. He avoids eying her breasts so as not to provoke gossip. Taking hold of her hand, he leads her down the hallways to check on their daughter behind the glass. Uncharacteristically, she allows him to lead her.

  Meeting

  HER NAME IS HALA.

  I see her walking in the market, taking fragile steps. When I greet her, she asks me who I am, and we walk together once I’ve introduced myself. The market smells fresh from an earlier rain.

  She speaks to me of the Katamon neighborhood, of her youth, of the pillaged houses. Then she looks into my eyes and says, “But who are you?” I answer her, then express my admiration of what her father wrote all those years ago about his wife’s breathtaking beauty, and his grief over losing the mother of his children, and about him raising his two daughters and a son after her death.

  When she’s reassured, we resume walking in the market’s eerie air. She says sh
e’s very tired. I warn her to be careful not to slip and suggest we drink a glass of orange juice at the neighboring diner.

  We settle in the diner like two old friends. I listen to her recount bits of her stories, while outside, rain patters on the city streets, on the diner, on Aftimos Road, and on the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer.

  She goes silent before saying that the rain transports her to that distant fall.

  Wailing

  HER NAME IS BARBIE.

  She read her father’s manuscript in Beirut as I cried in Jerusalem. I cried in bed while Mother moved between my bed and the broken window. Barbie didn’t know me and I didn’t know her, but she claims she heard a child cry that night.

  She says her heart was dislodged, that her breasts went numb, swelled, and filled with milk.

  On our way to a restaurant nearby, I tell her, “I wish I had known.” She says, “How could you have? You were a child at the time who only knew how to cry.” We laugh together. It’s evening. Barbie tells me about her mother, who died before reaching fifty. About her brother, who died young. About her father, who died of sorrow. About the house her father built from his sweat and blood.