by Ibtisam Azem
So, my mother lived without her father and never knew him. My grandfather married another woman after divorcing my grandmother. After tens of letters he had written and sent via the International Red Cross, he penned one final letter. He said in it that he would wait until the end of that year. If she didn’t come, he would divorce her and set her free. And so it was, on paper at least. I asked her once if the pearl necklace was a gift from him. She laughed and didn’t answer. When I asked her when did it come loose, she answered, but without answering. “People went away, a country stayed, our souls came loose, and you keep asking about the pearl necklace? I’m done this evening. Enough questions.”
I wish I’d asked her more questions.
I wish I’d talked to her much more.
Alaa put his pen down on the wooden table, whose short legs were anchored in the sandy beach. He felt some back pain, so he reclined in the orange chair. He gazed at the sea’s blueness. He turned left and saw the lights of Mar Butrus Church and the Bahr Mosque. He went back to read what he’d just written. She used to mock his chaotic script whenever she saw him writing. “Why are your scribbles like chicken marks, sweetheart? You should have seen my father’s script. It was so beautiful, like a calligrapher’s.”
It was the first time Alaa had started writing his memoirs in the red notebook. Its color caught his eye when he was passing by a stationery store on Allenby Street. He bought it and was walking to Tsfoni Café on the beach when he decided to start writing his memoirs.
He felt exhausted and shut his big blue eyes to listen to the waves of the sea, and nothing else. But the loud reggae music billowing from the big speakers and the chatter of other customers were jamming to silence the sea. He tried, in vain, to listen to the waves.
3
Alaa
I return to you, now, two weeks after first writing in this notebook. I don’t know why I begin by addressing you directly. As if you are still here, or you will actually read these words. I’m not even sure if there is life after death. Nor do I know where souls go after they depart our bodies. You might be angry with me for saying that! But I think you will laugh. Yes, that’s more like you. You would ask God to forgive me. But then you would laugh and say, “All will be well.” That expression used to anger me quite a bit, especially when you said it. How could someone who went through what you did, still say “All will be well.” “If all wasn’t well to start with, how would it be well afterward?” I used to ask you. But you would laugh and say, “Don’t give me a headache. Find something else to argue about. Is this what they teach you at university? Just finish already and find yourself a wife.”
I am sitting at Tsfoni Café. I always come back to this spot. Why do I like to come here? Maybe because it’s right on the beach. I take off my shoes and put my feet down in the sand. There is nothing but the sea. Here, Jaffa is on my left, and the sea is spread out before me. I leave Tel Aviv behind. I don’t see it, and it doesn’t see me. I leave its buildings and noise. The sound of the sea overpowers the sounds of the city. I know Tel Aviv is behind me, but I couldn’t care less about its existence.
We didn’t spend much time together, but I feel your presence everywhere in this country. What is “much” anyway? I had wanted to bring you here to this spot. Hoping you would try to remember if you, too, loved it in the past, before my grandfather left. Perhaps you two walked together here once? It’s not far from your house in al-Manshiyye.
I’m mad at you. Your memory, which is engraved in my mind, has all these holes in it. Am I not remembering all that you told me, or was it incomprehensible? I was very young when I started listening to your stories. Later, when I turned to them for help, I discovered these holes. I started to ask you about them. But the more I asked, the more you got mixed up, or maybe I did. How would things not get mixed up? I was certain there was another city on top of the one we live in, donning it. I was certain that your city, the one you kept talking about, which has the same name, has nothing to do with my city. It resembles it a great deal. The names, orange groves, scents, al-Hamra Cinema, Apollo, weddings, Prophet Rubin’s feast, Iskandar Awad Street, al-Nuzha Street, al-Sa‘a Square . . . etc. Where do all these names come from? We would be walking and you start mentioning other names too. Names not written on signs. I had to learn to see what you were seeing. Akh! And all those people. I got to know all their problems, and how they were forced to leave Jaffa. I knew all the boring (and at times interesting) details about their lives. I knew all the jokes they used to tell. All this without having even met a single one of them. And I probably never will.
Your Jaffa resembles mine. But it is not the same. Two cities impersonating each other. You carved your names in my city, so I feel like I am a returnee from history. Always tired, roaming my own life like a ghost. Yes, I am a ghost who lives in your city. You, too, are a ghost, living in my city. And we call both cities Jaffa.
You were the exact opposite of the others. They couldn’t talk about their catastrophes when they take place. Even if they dare open the gate of memory, they would do it just a bit, and years later. You were the opposite. The last time I asked you about how they kicked you out of al-Manshiyye, forced you to go to Ajami, and how you lived with the Hungarian family they brought to share your house with you, you said, “My tongue is worn away from words. Don’t ask me anymore! They didn’t stay long in the house we were forced to go to. We were lucky. That’s enough, grandson. What good will it do to talk about it? Even words are tired.”
You used to say that you would walk in the morning, but could not recognize the city, or the streets. As if they, too, were expelled along with those who were forced to leave. Back then, my child eyes tried to imagine the scene the way you described it. “As if the darkness had swallowed them, and the sea took them hostage.” That is how you described your days, and those people who were forced to leave and go beyond the sea. But you didn’t say that the population of the city went from 100,000 down to 4,000. No, you didn’t say that. You did say that you couldn’t recognize your city after they’d left. What bereavement! My mind cannot process these figures. Nor can I comprehend what it means for a city to lose most of its people. I, who was born and raised in Jaffa after Jaffa had left itself.
You used to eat oranges voraciously. I thought you loved them, so I was surprised when you said that you didn’t. You only started eating oranges after they forced you out of al-Manshiyye to Ajami. They fenced Ajami with barbed wire and declared it a closed military zone. Why, then, did you eat oranges if you didn’t like them? Were you exacting revenge against those who were on the other side of the sea, yearning for Jaffa’s oranges? You always complained that the cypresses on street sides lost their meaning after that year. They stood there doing nothing except dusting the sky. You used to say that and laugh. As if you knew it was meaningless. But you insisted that those trees were meaninglessly big. You didn’t like the taste of oranges when you were growing up, you said. You only loved their scent and blossoms. But “after they left, everything took on another meaning, or no meaning at all . . . I began to love seeing people eat oranges, but I, myself, never liked them . . . I ate them, but never liked them. Oh, enough already! I’m tired of blathering. Let’s talk about something else. You ask too many questions.”
You said you used to walk down the streets laughing out loud with your father. Barbed wire surrounded you for more than ten years. No one could leave Ajami except with an official permit. They even stole Jaffa’s name when they placed it under Tel Aviv’s administrative jurisdiction. Is this why I dislike Tel Aviv? Did I inherit this lump in my throat from you? Why do I still live in it then? “Why shouldn’t you? This is Palestine. These are Jaffa’s villages and it’ll always be ours,” you said to me. But then you fell silent, as if talking was a painful act.
You said you went out with your father in what can only be described as a fit of madness. You walked with him and greeted strangers to fool him into believing that what he himself had said was true—that eve
ryone had returned to Jaffa. You said he was demented and saw everyone there. Ten years had passed and he couldn’t get used to his new Jaffa. Can one get used to his nakba? They changed street names into numbers to remind you that you were in a prison called Jaffa. As if you needed anyone to remind you of that. You said that your father saw bus no. 6 coming on time and saw his partner, Zico, giving him back the keys to the mobilia warehouse they co-owned. You always said “mobilia” instead of “furniture,” because you loved the sound of that word. Had I not seen this Zico in a photograph with my grandfather, I would’ve thought he was a figment of your imagination. Zico. What kind of name is that anyway? Was it his nickname? I asked you. You didn’t know. He was your father’s partner and they owned furniture stores in Jaffa. “They looted the country and the people, so you think they wouldn’t loot furniture? Of course! And how many times have I said I don’t want to talk about this. My father became demented and died of his heartache after that year. Why do you keep asking? How many times do I have to give the same answers? Please, sweetheart, for God’s sake.”
Then you went back to your silence.
You realized that your father was demented when he knocked on your door one cold morning. He told you that Zico had visited him during the night, and said they could go back to bring the furniture from the warehouse and reopen their stores. You didn’t say anything when you heard him say that. You stopped arguing with him when he yelled and said that he wanted to go back to his home. When you told him he was at home, he accused you of lying. You didn’t understand at first, but then you realized that he was demented, all at once. And you realized that he was going to die, all at once as well. You took him by the hand and walked with him in his last morning. “I walked and felt I was going to the gallows. The Israelis could have killed us. We weren’t allowed to just go out whenever we pleased. There was barbed wire everywhere. We were in prison and he was determined to leave Ajami. God saved us. I don’t know how. I was reciting the Kursi chapter from the Qur’an all the way. I was terrified.” You took a deep breath after that last sentence. As if all the air in the world wasn’t enough to fill your lungs. Sixty years later and you would still feel a tightness of breath when you talked about the nakba, your nakba and Jaffa’s. Your Palestine. You took him by the hand and greeted the strangers as if they were the city’s people. You said that God must’ve heard your prayers because no one stopped you to ask for permits. Passersby nodded as they responded to your greetings in a language they didn’t know. As if everyone had agreed to let him bid his hometown farewell. When you returned home, he said he was going to take a bath and sleep a little. But you knew that that was it. Did he take a bath because he knew he was about to die? Did you do the same? Is that why you took a bath before leaving, and refused to let anyone come with you? You hadn’t left the house for six months. Did you want to die alone, by the sea?
Survivors are lonely.
Today I put on that white shirt with silver buttons you used to like. When I put gel on my spiky hair, I noticed some white hairs. I remembered how you used to sit near the flowerbeds in the small garden with our neighbor Um Yasmeen. You used to dye your hair and tell my mother she should do the same. You chastised her for neglecting her looks. She would smile and tell you that you are puerile. Then you and Um Yasmeen would both laugh. Why didn’t you teach mother to love life the way you did?
My mother cried her heart out when I called to tell her that I found you, and was in the ambulance, on my way to the hospital. When she entered the hospital, people looked at her mismatched shoes and hair. Her black scarf had fallen. She was crying silently. Gasping and crying in silence. Her eyes were so red, the white had almost disappeared. I took her in my arms. Her eyes were just like her father’s—blue and vast like the sea, as you used to say. My father just stood by and wept out loud, as if weeping for the first and last time in his life. I had never seen him weep before. He said he was orphaned. You were more than just a mother-in-law to him. You were the mother and father he never knew. He only remembered their phantoms and flickers of memory.
Mother saw the smile on your face. “Oh God, she’s laughing. She’s dead, but still laughing.” You were lying down as if you were about to get up, as you did so often, to complain of a headache, and ask someone to get you a cup of coffee. You know my mother gave away your clothes and furniture after you died. Was she taking revenge against you for leaving her? Maybe she never forgave you because she lived like an orphan, even though her father was alive. But it wasn’t your fault. I told her many times, “Tata is the one who should be angry with sidu. How can someone leave his wife and go to Beirut?” I could never finish a conversation with her about this subject. Maybe she loved him so much, because she never knew him.
“As if the sea took them hostage.”
This sentence swirled in my thoughts whenever I looked at the sea at Jaffa and remembered “that year.”
Longing for you is like holding a rose of thorns!
4
Ariel
His head felt like an iron ball, too heavy for his neck to lift it off the pillow. The aspirin he took twenty minutes before didn’t help. The liter of water he gulped down couldn’t ease the pounding headache. He heard a rattle in the next room. He listened a bit and lit the lamp next to his bed. He scanned the room before jumping out of bed to open the door. He craned his neck in the darkness of the living room. Nothing. He turned on all the lights in the apartment. Still nothing. The rattle was gone.
Back in bed, he felt his forehead to make sure he didn’t have a fever, and that the heat he was feeling might be caused by the weather. He combed his smooth brown hair with his fingers and realized it was high time for a haircut. Why did Alaa act so strange and stay silent the night before? They sat for an hour and a half and then he excused himself and said he had to go back to his apartment because he had to get up early. They both live in the same building. It was a coincidence, like their first encounter.
They had met at Natalie’s party. The blond German who was uneasy about being blond and German. She was haunted by her guilt and her ancestors’ crime. And everything somehow revolved around her guilt. Ariel complained to Alaa once that she talked so much about the Holocaust, one would think she was the granddaughter of one of the victims, and not of a Nazi.
Being blond was a burden because many in the White City flirted with her. Here, people love life—a life where everything rushes to the future. People in this young city are always looking for sex. As if sex is the goal to which they would cling to make sure they are alive during those respites between one war and another. Natalie realized (or discovered) that later, after living here for more than three years. She realized that it didn’t have to do with her being a skinny blond with perky pomegranate breasts. It was rather that the young city’s streets were filled with garrulous men waiting for something. Living in a state of perpetual waiting.
She worked as a correspondent for a TV channel. That’s how she met Alaa. She sought his assistance every now and then when there was a crisis and the additional media coverage required more cameramen. Alaa was a freelance cameraman. He preferred freelancing because it provided him with a decent income while allowing him to continue his graduate studies in media at Tel Aviv University. She got to know Ariel through the weekly column he wrote for an American newspaper. They corresponded and became friends. Later, after she moved to work in another war zone, both Alaa and Ariel lost contact with her.
Last night they recalled that first meeting at Natalie’s.
“Ariel! Come here. I want to introduce you to Alaa, the Arab I was telling you about. It turns out that you guys are neighbors. What a coincidence!”
Natalie spoke flowing Hebrew with an Ashkenazi accent. Alaa extended his hand to shake Ariel’s. In a deliberately exaggerated Mizrahi accent, he said:
“Shalom Ariel. I am the token Arab of the party you all need so you can say you have an Arab friend. I think we met before on the stairs of our building.”
The White City’s parties never lack sexual energy and that party was no exception. A dark girl with chestnut hair sat next to him. He still remembers her beautiful voice but not what he said to her. The hash-induced numbness was spreading all over his body. He felt light and happy as if hovering high above everyone. The boredom he’d felt earlier had now been replaced with fits of laughter shared by the girl. She inched closer with each laugh and joke, coquettishly playing with her hair, and wetting her lips every time Alaa looked into her eyes.
He kept laughing and Ariel joined in after the hash got to him too. He laughed his way to the kitchen. He came back minutes later with a bottle of water, a plastic plate full of olives, cheese, and two glasses. He poured water for both of them. They both drank and Alaa ate two olives and a piece of cheese he didn’t like. He turned to Ariel:
“You know what? I’m really tired of so-called leftists, foreigners, and everything in this city. I don’t even know why I came to this party in the first place. I’m leaving. I‘ll see you later. You should come for coffee if you like. I’m not working tomorrow. But don’t come in the morning. I’m not a morning person.”
“I feel tired too. I have work tomorrow morning. I’d decided not to come, but changed my mind at the last minute. I’ll use your exit as an excuse to head out. Just give me five minutes.”
The twenty-minute walk back lasted an hour. They took turns cracking jokes and stopped at each intersection to harass passersby and wave to cars. How long ago was that? Three years? Maybe more?