Jerusalem Stands Alone

by Mahmoud Shukair

  There she is now, praying to her God, wondering why she can’t let go of those days. She remembers them and feels confused.

  The Darkness of the Night

  THE ELECTRICITY goes out in the city, so Rabab and I stroll in the darkness of the night. She says she’s afraid of the dark, so I grab her hand and walk close to her and say, “Don’t be afraid.”

  She says, “Do you hear that? One of the daughters of Jerusalem is searching for her lover and grieving loudly. ‘I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had turned away and was gone. My heart leaped up when he spoke. I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him but he gave me no answer. The watchmen who went about the city found me. They struck me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took my veil away from me. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him I am lovesick!’”

  The lover’s voice fades and we keep walking. I ask her, “Are you still afraid?”

  “No. Disappear somewhere so I can look for you.”

  I stride away and hide in a nearby alley. She searches for and finds me. I hold her to my chest and in a whisper she asks me to take off her dress. So I do, and darkness blankets the alleyways and markets and neighborhoods and roads until sunrise.

  A Scene

  AS I WALK THE ROAD leading to al-Aqsa Mosque, in my mind I summon a dreadful scene: seven thousand people slaughtered by invaders’ foreign swords, their blood running through the markets and squares up to a man’s knee.

  I walk and as I walk, I feel the blood drench my feet. I lift my right foot, then the left, becoming disoriented and beginning to sway as I walk, to the right, then to the left.

  The scene haunts me. Blood floods the city’s markets and squares, and it remains.

  A Show

  WE GOT TO THE THEATER one evening. We leave the house and walk down Nablus Road by the graves of the sultans, then take a left and enter the courtyard of the National Theater, which holds so many men and women.

  We watch a play about Jerusalem, which invaders have fought over throughout history. All of them have left, but the city remains.

  The leading role is played by a talented woman with a sturdy body. At the end of the play, we cheer for her and for the other actors and actresses.

  As we’re walking home, she says she regrets not pursuing a career in acting. She claims a director came to her college when she was a student and announced he was looking to recruit actors and actresses. Many students answered his call, but Rabab hesitated.

  She says the actress in the play touched her deeply and made her wish she could play her part or one similar so she could pour out all the energy bottled up inside her.

  She speaks, and I listen quietly so as not to interrupt her thoughts. Every now and then, when she stops speaking, I squeeze her waist affectionately.

  She halts and stands in front of me, blocking my path, and says, “It’s not too late, is it?” I look into her eyes. She doesn’t wait for an answer.

  She runs to the house, and I run after her.

  The Little One

  SHE SAYS she heard him cry. He cried because his mother was asleep and he was looking for her breast. She says it upset her to hear the little one cry in her sleep. She wishes she were near him so she could pick him up, carry him in her arms, gently rock him back and forth to calm him, and stop his crying. She would give him her dry breasts to keep him quiet until his mother woke.

  She says it was the little one crying that woke her. Abd el-Razzaq didn’t hear any crying but he did wake up when she turned on the light. She tells him, “The baby is crying and his mother is fast asleep.”

  He asks her what baby she’s talking about, but she doesn’t answer him and goes on singing a lullaby. “Sleep, little baby, don’t you cry.” Abd el-Razzaq is confounded by what he’s seeing and hearing, and Khadija continues singing to the baby so he’ll go back to sleep.

  Photographs

  I RETURN HOME with photographs in glass frames. The photographs were taken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  There are photographs of shoeshiners at work and photographs of storytellers in Jerusalem cafés. There’s a photograph of a man dancing with his dancing monkey, surrounded by a crowd of men and women. There’s a photograph of female students at Jerusalem University standing outside their university with their teachers, a photograph of the Jaffa Gate, and another photograph of horseback riders and pedestrians entering through the gate.

  When she sees me, she looks confused, as if she can’t figure out what I’ve brought home this time. She won’t relax until I show her the pictures, and then she declares that she loves black-and-white photographs!

  We get busy hanging the framed photos. Rabab hangs the picture of the man and his dancing monkey in our bedroom, and she smiles mischievously as she does so. I want to hang the photograph of the college girls in that spot, but I don’t tell that to Rabab out of respect for her wishes.

  One Bullet

  YORAM GOES UNDERCOVER, disguised as an Arabic-speaking foreigner. He wears the outfit of a resident of Jerusalem working in the wool trade and walks toward the Damascus Gate, expecting to find the horsemen. He’s devised a plan that as soon as the army receives his phone call, it will immediately undertake a raid and take out every horseman.

  Yoram is surprised to see the city stretch out vertically toward the sky. In a moment of agitation, he remembers that the city was destroyed seventeen times and now has been rebuilt for the eighteenth. Praise be to God, the city has once again risen from the dead, and Yoram will have to bear the heavy burden of responsibility for protecting all eighteen cities in one.

  Yoram is overwhelmed by the responsibility assigned to him. He notices how the city up close looks like an eighteen-story building ascending into the sky, and sees peoples and merchants and vice presidents and brokers and tax collectors and investors and men of the cloth and scientists and intellectuals and hermits and smugglers and druggies and thieves and women in different fashions and armies marching out the gates of the city and others marching in and all the guards standing vigilant at these gates.

  Yoram realizes he’s not qualified to maintain and cannot guarantee the security of such a city. (It’s later said that his marriage was on shaky grounds, too.) In a state of total despair, he takes out his gun and shoots himself. One shot.

  He falls on the sidewalk, and the city keeps on living. It does not kill itself.

  Besieged

  I LEAVE THE OLD CITY in the evening and walk through the Damascus Gate toward my house. In my left hand, I carry bags of fruits and vegetables, and in my right, I hold the papers that haven’t left my person for weeks and months. (I could be searched at any time.)

  This evening Rabab and I are celebrating. I’m going to publish a book about the city, so we’ll stay up celebrating until after midnight. Rabab will burn incense in our bedroom and she’ll wear her silk nightgown, and I’ll be plunged into the atmosphere of One Thousand and One Nights. The city is ready for us tonight—summer is a house without doors. I walk faster toward home, experiencing a yearning for Rabab stronger than any I’ve ever felt for her before. I hurry. The city walls look down on me suspiciously as night rapidly encompasses the buildings without asking permission. I reach my house but can’t get in. Abd el-Rahman pops into my head and I wonder whether they’ve come for Rabab, or maybe, now, for both of us? Is it simply a routine search?

  I wait outside. Rabab is home and by now she’s probably wondering where I am. The soldiers have circled the house.

  Friends

  I SAY TO HER, “I’ve had many friends in my lifetime.” When she looks at me, I continue. “Some were perfectionists and those friendships didn’t last long. They couldn’t forgive me my mistakes, sat on them like silent demons. Some were very careful, and my heart experienced so little pain that it turned as pale as a lemon.

  “Others loved life, and they steered me away from the drama that turns hair gray.

  “Oth
ers were honest and trustworthy, but these friendships didn’t last long because death takes the good ones first.

  “And others were ugly in spirit. They would cheerfully smile at you in the morning and gnaw your flesh come evening.”

  Here I am, talking to Rabab with her head on my chest, about the mystery of how friendship takes root in people’s hearts.

  Settlements

  SHE ASKS ME with her head still on my chest, “Earlier you said that hatred can also take root inside people’s hearts.”

  “I did.”

  She stands and walks toward the window to look out at the settlements surrounding the city on every side.

  I rise, walk over to the window, and stand beside her. I bring my head near hers and we look out at the settlements together. There’s no need to speak.

  Birthday

  MARY IS CELEBRATING HER BIRTHDAY. She invites Asmahan and Rabab to her party, so Rabab and I bring flowers and dessert and walk to the Christian Quarter. It’s late afternoon and darkness creeps over the imprisoned city.

  Rabab wears her silk dress, embroidered in red and green, and wraps a kaffiyeh around her neck. She carries herself through the city markets like a bride while I walk by her in my black pants and brown jacket. In the markets around us are traders and soldiers and movers and students and women from other times and places.

  We kiss Mary’s cheeks and wish her a long life. We shake her parents’ hands and greet her old Aunt Janette. We sing “Happy Birthday” to Mary, and Mary and Asmahan and the girls dance joyfully in their white dresses, like a flock of doves. Rabab ties her kaffiyeh around her waist and dances an entire hour. Janette cries. She tries to hide her tears, but it’s obvious. Maybe she remembers Mustafa and cries for him. Rabab cries, too, when she sees Janette cry. Maybe she cries because she remembers her parents’ house, which they’ve been ordered to evacuate, or maybe she remembers her brothers, one in prison and the other somewhere in the world.

  I cry as well. I cry because Rabab cries, and I cry because under occupation we have to be thieves and steal these moments of joy. I dry Rabab’s tears and dance the last fifteen minutes with her.

  Jerusalem, October 2009

  Afterword

  THE 155 VIGNETTES of Jerusalem Stands Alone (Al-Quds waḥda-hâ hunâk, 2010) build a narrative through moments. A girl comes of age. Her brother has disappeared somewhere in Europe. The narrator frequents a café and is detained by police. Laundry blows on the line. A faucet leaks. The daily routines of the characters unveil their relationships to each other and to their embattled city. As the narrative offers us bits of context, we come to understand the power of the unstated. Narrative gaps allow us to feel the emotional undercurrents that make this novel read like a sequence of prose poems—reveries on identity and place, family, and history.

  Readers may be disoriented or liberated by the lyrical fragments. Mahmoud Shukair gives each character a distinct voice and story through deceptively simple, often haunting, language. We explore this vision of Jerusalem through characters who frequent real alleys, markets, and residences whose place names can be found on a map. The specific setting allows us to view Jerusalem through the eyes of people living there, their worries and small joys becoming ours.

  Although the vignettes are loosely interwoven, they build on each other to form an intimate portrait of the inhabitants’ lives. The bearded men, whose roles are never explicitly defined, are at first simply uncanny. Their beards are comedic but their demeanor is ominous, until at last their threat becomes visible when they mark the walls in red. They’ve come to claim Abd el-Razzaq’s house. His family’s helplessness and rage are unspoken but potent.

  The ongoing pressure of history is shown more often than it is discussed. Yoram, the chief of police, reads a nineteenth-century document detailing tourist spots. Photographs from the same time hang on the narrator’s wall. The pressure intensifies, until the narrator approaches the al-Aqsa Mosque:

  I walk and, as I walk, I feel the blood drench my feet. I lift my right foot, then the left, and feel disoriented and begin to sway as I walk, to the right, then to the left.

  The scene haunts me. Blood floods the city’s markets and squares, and it remains.

  What he senses is the 1099 assault on Jerusalem by crusaders. Contemporary accounts estimate seven thousand dead among the city’s inhabitants, the streets flowing with blood. “And it remains.”

  Emotions are rarely named but when they are, as in “Settlements,” silence quickly takes over:

  She asks me with her head still on my chest, “Earlier you said that hatred can also take root inside people’s hearts.”

  “I did.”

  She stands up and walks toward the window to look out at the settlements surrounding the city on every side.

  I rise, walk over to the window, and stand beside her. I bring my head near hers and we look out at the settlements together. There’s no need to speak.

  Abd el-Razzaq’s son, Abd el-Rahman, is arrested for being too quiet. It’s funny and horrifying, but there’s power in the unspoken. When the characters fall silent, Jerusalem speaks.

  Jerusalem Stands Alone provides insight into the full range of history of Jerusalem’s long life. Below is a brief outline that may guide readers unfamiliar with the overlapping eras that underpin this novel.

  Timeline of Jerusalem’s Conquerors

  Iron Age I (1200–1000 BCE)

  Jerusalem is conquered by Canaanites (Jebusites)

  Iron Age II (1000–529 BCE)

  • 701 BCE: Assyrian ruler Sennacherib lays siege to Jerusalem

  • 586 BCE: Babylonian forces destroy Jerusalem (Babylonian exile, ca. 597–539 BCE)

  Persian Period (539–322 BCE)

  Persian ruler Cyrus the Great conquers the Babylonian empire, including Jerusalem. Exiled Jewish people return.

  Hellenistic Period (332–141 BCE)

  Alexander the Great conquers Judea and Jerusalem. Ptolemaic and Seleucid rule.

  Hasmonean Period (141 BCE–70 CE)

  • 141 BCE: Hasmonean dynasty (indigenous) expels Seleucids

  • 63 BCE: Roman general Pompey captures Jerusalem

  Roman Period (70–324 CE)

  • 70 CE: Roman forces destroy Jerusalem

  • 135 CE: Jerusalem rebuilt as a Roman city

  Byzantine Period (324–638 CE)

  • 614 CE: Sasanian Persians capture Jerusalem

  • 629 CE: Byzantine Christians recapture Jerusalem

  First Muslim Period (638–1099 CE)

  • 638 CE: Caliph Omar enters Jerusalem

  • 661–750 CE: Jerusalem ruled under Umayyad dynasty

  • 750–974 CE: Jerusalem ruled under Abassid dynasty

  Crusader Period (1099–1187 CE)

  Capture of Jerusalem

  Ayyubid Period (1187–1259 CE)

  • 1187 CE: Saladin captures Jerusalem from crusaders

  • 1229–44 CE: Crusaders briefly recapture Jerusalem twice

  Mamluk Period (1250–1516 CE)

  Walls of Jerusalem dismantled

  Ottoman Period (1516–1917 CE)

  • 1340 CE: Tankiz dies

  • 1517 CE: Ottoman Empire captures Jerusalem

  • 1538–41 CE: Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem

  WWI to Present (1917–48 CE)

  • 1917 CE: British capture Jerusalem during World War I

  • 1947 CE: United Nations partition attempts to resolve Palestinian and Israeli claims.

  • 1948 CE: State of Israel established. Jerusalem divided.

  • 1967 CE: Israel captures Jerusalem’s Old City and eastern half and illegally annexes East Jerusalem and a number of nearby villages in an effort to expand the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. This annexation has not been recognized by the United Nations, the United States, or the international community.

  • 2002 CE: Construction of the “security fence” begins

  Note on Relocation

 
At the heart of the Israel/Palestine conflict is the question of who has a right to the land. The Israel State and Palestinian State claim the same territory. The 1947 United Nations partition attempted to resolve the two claims simultaneously but failed to result in a lasting settlement. The land dispute has recently focused on Israel’s occupation of territories outside the 1948 boundaries—namely, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip on September 12, 2005, but to this day continues to build Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories, actions deemed illegal by the United Nations (Resolutions 242 and 338) and other states.

  Since 2002, the Israeli government has been building a security fence that winds deep into Palestinian territory, claiming the fence provides protection from Palestinian suicide bombers. The construction of new settlements and the security fence enables Israel to control important Palestinian economic areas, agricultural spaces, and natural resources. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s West Bank barrier violates international law, but the unequal struggle over Palestinian land continues. The Israel/Palestine conflict, deepened by the tragedies of the Holocaust and the dispossession and occupation of Palestine, shows little hope for a two-state solution.

  Glossary

  Abaya: A loose outer garment worn by women in some parts of the Middle East. It is long-sleeved, floor-length, and traditionally black. The abaya is worn over street clothes when a woman leaves her home and is designed to hide the curves of the body. It may be worn with other pieces of Islamic clothing, such as a scarf that covers the hair (hijab or tarha) and a veil that covers the face (niqab or shayla).