by Ibtisam Azem
“What do you want now?” Ariel asked in anger, but Alaa didn’t pay attention and yelled at those who had gathered around.
“If you don’t gather the wreckage of what you broke, these shards will explode in your faces even if you bury them underground and build above them. Why are you looking at me as if am crazy? Palestinians will return from every corner. Your nightmare will come true, unless you hurry up and burn us all and finish everything. You can cry for us after that.”
One of those who had surrounded Alaa yelled as he was coming forward confidently,
“What are you talking about you idiot? We returned to our land. You are the occupiers. Go to the Arab countries!”
Ariel pulled Alaa away saying, “We have to go. We have to go before they eat you alive.”
They didn’t talk for two weeks after that incident, and they avoided talking about politics, or at least about the place’s history and memory.
Ariel reached the end of Allenby. The opera building was on his right and the sea in front of him. He turned left and walked along the beach to Tsfoni Café, his favorite place on the beach. Alaa loved it too. They used to meet there to chat, drink beer, and swim.
He greeted the waiter who appeared to have just finished smoking a joint and had a stupid smile on his face. The café had chairs and tables directly on the beach where he liked to sit. There were only three customers sitting at a table, playing cards. He didn’t take much time to decide where to sit. He took off his shoes and walked on the sand toward the first row of plastic chairs. He settled into the chair. Nothing but darkness and the sea before him. He toyed with the sand with his right foot.
Would the Palestinians have developed the place like this had they established their own state? Ariel wondered as he looked at the timid lights of Jaffa on his left. What if the state hadn’t been established? What if we didn’t gain independence and they had their Palestine? What would’ve happened? How would this country be? How would we be? He felt the need to look behind to the giant buildings extending along the beach.
He moved closer to the big lamp next to his table and took out the red notebook from his bag and put it on the table. Before starting to read, he looked at his cell phone. No one had called in the last three hours. He felt at peace. He ordered a cheese sandwich and local beer for the first time in a while. He picked up the red notebook. He forgot the page he’d folded so he leafed through and settled on a random page. He leaned back in his chair, brought the lamp closer, and gazed at the sea before beginning to read.
33
Alaa
I remember the beginnings of love well, but I don’t remember its end. Does love end? Was it love, or its disappointment, that prevented you from remarrying? Do you remember how I used to call you by your first name, “Huda,” instead of Tata when I was a child? Something in you kept insisting on life and on hope, so much so that it made you tired. You were like Jaffa. It became a city made of spider cobwebs: elastic, flexible, and transparent. But they are well-knit, strong, and come back to being. Do you know how a spider builds its web? We are just like it. I see us resembling it. I see you as a female spider, you and all those who stayed in Jaffa. I have a powerful will to live, even if it tires me at times, and I think I inherited that from you.
You asked me once why I didn’t get married. I didn’t know how to answer. I told you there was no luck. But the truth is there is a question that hovers around me. Why would I bring other Palestinians to this world? Aren’t there enough wretched Palestinians on this earth already?
Is this the real nakba? I don’t see myself ever committing suicide. That seems to me the natural thing any normal human would do, because what we see around us in this world is intolerable.
But I don’t commit suicide. So, have I inherited your spider talents, but I weave my webs differently? Or is that a lie I tell myself to find a reason to live?
My excuses were the failed love stories I lived. I’m still looking. I still acclimate after each love story. The ones that crushed my heart weren’t many. It was crushed and withered twice. But it sprang back to life. Other than that, they were mostly beautiful but passing ones.
Do you remember Raghda? The first time I saw her she was sitting with Nabih at the cafeteria of the College of Humanities at Tel Aviv University. She laughed out loud at his jokes and didn’t pay attention to anyone around her. Her orange shirt accentuated her dark skin and full chest. I didn’t like those who wore light and bright colors, but that shirt was beautiful. She was soft, slender, and young when I first met her. She was maybe twenty or twenty-one, but was liberated and relaxed. Her honesty is what attracted me the most. I liked her coal-black hair. She didn’t wear much makeup, except some light kohl around her big eyes.
I remember the night I told her about my feelings. I was very nervous and was surprised because I had gone out with other women and Raghda wasn’t a stranger. We’d become friends and met many times alone or with that strange group I was part of back then. We agreed to meet at a fish restaurant on the beach. I went early to reserve a spot on the balcony overlooking the sea.
She came wearing tight jeans with a sleeveless black shirt. My heart melted when I saw her walking in black high heels. I melted into her beautiful coffee-colored eyes. “Beautiful” doesn’t do them justice. Enchanting. That’s a better word . . .
We talked about politics, the country, relationships, people, and about Jaffa, of course. I told her about you. I used to tell everyone I met about you. About what it means to become the orphan of a country while you’re still in it. That’s how I see you. We talked a lot and time passed by quickly. We were the last customers and it was very hot. I craved her intensely and was afraid to tell her about my feelings. But I knew the situation was favorable. All the other tables were empty. The sea was peaceful and charming that night. I got up and took three candles from the tables next to us and put them on ours. She laughed and said, “You’re so romantic.” Her puffy lips were glimmering and the wine had made them red.
I was about to speak, but the cunning waiter’s voice, as if he were the grim reaper, asked us if we wanted anything, because it was last call. I asked for a brandy and she stayed with red wine. After he came back with the drinks, I moved and sat in the chair next to her. I took a sip of the brandy and started to kiss her, giving her half of the sip and biting her lips. She smiled, moved a little, and we laughed a lot. I kissed her passionately again. Perhaps you are clearing your throat and saying, “That’s enough, grandson. I’m your grandmother not your friend. No need for all these details.” But you used to say that Jaffans love life, love, and flirting.
The night she left me I felt as if a hurricane had stormed the city. “We can’t get married,” she said, lying next to me in bed and gazing at the cloudy sky through my dorm room window at Tel Aviv University. My roommate had gone to visit his family in the north and Raghda and I spent the weekend together. We never left the room except to go to the bathroom or open the door for food delivery. We spent the weekend listening to Um Kulthum, reading poetry, and chatting, then waking up to fall back asleep again.
“Why can’t we get married? We can go to Cyprus and get married there. Your family is open-minded and they won’t mind. I can persuade my family. We’ll live in cities and our friends and the people around us don’t give a damn about religion.”
“Alaa, my family won’t agree and I don’t have the energy to fight a backward society. What about children?”
“Since when do you care about these things, Raghda? Unbelievable.”
“I don’t, but I can’t cause my dad all these problems.”
She didn’t give me a chance to convince her to change her mind. She decided on behalf of both of us. We had been together for a year and a half. I would suffocate when she was away. Maybe she was right. Maybe. Because this society is merciless. No, she wasn’t right. But she would’ve had to sacrifice much more in the end merely because she is a woman. She left Tel Aviv after finishing her studies and wen
t back to the Galilee and got married. We kept in touch, but with time, it was meaningless. I used to ask about her from time to time and I learned that she had a daughter she called Amal.
My second love story, which didn’t end like fairytales do, was with Jumana. I’ve never seen anyone in my life who worked, stayed up late, slept, went out, ate, read, danced, and loved voraciously the way she did. She was brilliant and insane. I was very happy with her, but she was the most miserable person I ever met. I knew at a certain point that our relationship would not endure, because she couldn’t stay in the country and I had no desire to immigrate. The last week I saw her she had returned after a ten-day vacation to see her family. She was sad and not herself, as if her spirit had been stolen from her. I tried to understand what had happened, but she didn’t say much at first. Then, all of a sudden, she said she wanted to leave the country. She was sick and tired of both Arabs and Jews, and of Palestine and all things Palestinian. She got a scholarship to complete a doctorate in comparative literature in London. She said I shouldn’t wait for her because she didn’t know if she would return to this grave. Yep, she called the country a “grave.” I never saw her since and I don’t know if she ever returned, even for a visit. I asked about her more than once, but she’d cut everyone off. I sent her letters, but her replies were very abrupt. I realized she wanted nothing to do with me, or this country. She went as if she never existed.
Why am I telling you all this? Because you were the only one in the family that talked openly about sex, life, and marriage. You used to say that the people of the Jaffa you had known used to talk about relationships and life unabashedly.
I wish an older and more experienced person had given me some advice. My father never did that. My mother seems to have lost her sense of motherhood when she had the hysterectomy, which she never talks about. She only did once when I asked her why she never had another child. She said it in a very cold manner.
My parents were running around to compensate me for something, but they forgot the simplest things. When we are teenagers we think that no one understands us or our situation. So, we refuse to talk to our family about the details of our life, thinking that they are backward and won’t understand us. We move out and away from home when we are older. We choose to study and live somewhere else, far removed from anything related to our family. When we mature, we realize, often belatedly, that we can actually talk to them about our problems. But by then they are gone. I wish you’d stayed longer. I wish I’d learned to talk more to my parents. You know that after you died my relationship with my dad improved. Still, something prevents me from talking to them at length about my feelings. As if am punishing them for not giving me that opportunity when I was still young.
What can I say? My father chose his death. I don’t think it is bad in and of itself. He was about to go blind and didn’t want to live like that, so he put an end to his own life. What bothers me is the sadness he must have felt when he made that decision. What saddens me is that he didn’t love us enough to stay for us. Am I so selfish to think of his love for us or lack thereof and not . . . Maybe he committed suicide because he didn’t wish to be a burden to anyone? He wanted to leave us while he was still the way he always was. Saying very little, working, reading, and travelling a lot. And being alone somehow. Didn’t I already say that survivors are the loneliest?
I feel very sad when I remember him and remember you. Is there life after death? I don’t know. You believed that there is. If so, then why don’t you appear to me? Why don’t you come visit me from time to time? Maybe you come when I don’t think of you? Maybe you are present and all I have to do is look beyond the glass that surrounds me. The glass that I live behind to protect myself from hearing and smelling what I don’t want to. How else would I be able to live here? I firmly believe now that all those who stayed in Palestine are mad. Otherwise how would they be able to bear the memory of those who survived, and those who didn’t? How can they live with this pain in the memory of the survivors?
Do you remember when I came once and you were alone? I had never seen you carrying so much sorrow before then. When I asked you what was wrong, you said that staying in Palestine after the nakba is being orphaned. To stay in Jaffa is to be an orphan. “I was remembering Prophet Rubin’s feast and how we used to go there and how everything changed. As if Palestine collapsed over our heads . . . Jaffa collapsed over our heads. Why did that happen? I don’t know . . . What did we do? No use now, everything has a bitter taste. We have to make sweets out of what is sour. Feast ka‘k have become bitter. Sugar became bitter and, by God, all that remains is this sea . . . We are orphans, grandson, orphans.”
Longing for her is like holding a rose of thorns!
Longing is thorns.
34
Alaa
I’m tired, tired, tired. But then I say again that this is my only chance to live and I have to live it. You will be angry and say that am still young. How can I be young when my hair has become white? Yesterday I saw Abu Muhsin, our neighbor. Do you remember him? I swear I think he was in love with you. I was in Ajami looking for paint for your house. I’m moving there. I didn’t tell you before, but I’ve decided to fix the house and live in it, so I can be closer to mother. The twenty houses separating your house from hers will be enough space for me to have my privacy, but still be close enough so she won’t feel lonely. You know she started to go on trips outside Jaffa? Oh, yes, since father’s death she’s been going with a group of women to the Dead Sea, or Tiberias, and some other places too. They stay for a night or two and she comes back reinvigorated. They laugh a lot, she said. She tells me about many people whose names I don’t know and tells their jokes and pranks. They rent a tiny bus and go on a trip on their own. “Sweet,” is all I said. I find the smile that stays on her face long after she comes back from these trips strange.
Anyway, I went to paint your house and I sat with Abu Muhsin on the steps of his house. His granddaughter, Naziha, made us coffee. Abu Muhsin is tired of life, too, but life doesn’t want to leave him. That’s what he said.
“This life is stuck and stamped unto me and doesn’t want to let go . . . Ah, Alaa, I really miss your grandmother. I’m tired and this God of yours doesn’t want to take his servant. Do you know that Abu Mazin died?”
He said it as the sun was departing.
“Which Abu Mazin? Do you mean Mahmoud Abbas?”
“No, man. Our old neighbor, Abu Mazin. They took his land after 1948 and forced him to work on it. Can you believe the humiliation?”
“May God have mercy on his soul and may he grant you long life.”
“If God wanted to be merciful to him, he would’ve been so while the man was still alive. Maybe the grave is much better than living in this grave of a life!”
“Come on, man. Take it easy and be optimistic.”
“Optimistic, shoptimistic! That’s just useless bullshit. These Israelis are motherfuckers and they’ll never leave us alone. When they came to this country they wanted to finish us off. You know I lived through all that humiliation. There is no other solution. Either they finish us off, or we finish them off. Because they’re not willing to live with us, or just let us live.”
“What are you talking about, Abu Muhsin? Not all Israelis are the same. There are good Israelis and bad ones. There were betrayals and massacres. But still, they weren’t all OK with what happened. And frankly, we made mistakes too. Moreover, the victim should not lose its moral high ground. Plus, what are we going to do to the Israelis who were born here? Just throw them out one day if you have the power?”
“Man, I don’t want to get into this smart educated talk and bullshit. Whoever wants to liberate Palestine let them roll their sleeves. You want to be an intellectual now? What about all those refugees who left? That’s it for them? Who says so? Even God couldn’t say that. But I’m not talking about the refugees. I’m talking about the Israelis who are fucking us over. It’s not like they even accept being part of this regio
n and acknowledge what happened and we’re rejecting that. They’re making our lives hell and they keep crying. They have one of the strongest armies in the world and they keep saying we are so helpless and the whole world is against us . . .”
“And what’s the solution?”
“There isn’t. Just like Nasser said, ‘What was taken by force can only be taken back by force.’”
“We don’t want the force of weapons. We want another type of power.”
“Oh, son, you’re still dreaming, and you still believe in that stuff? How did they fool us? You know what, let them accept the one-state solution and recognize our rights and allow the refugees to return. Who would say no to that? You’re giving me a headache. I want to go eat and sleep. I have to wake up too fuckin’ early to work. God have mercy on your grandmother.”
Ariel stopped reading and closed the notebook. He felt a headache in his temple that radiated slowly to the rest of his body. He was tired of reading Alaa’s stories and of the past and the endless talk about the place and its memory. These are the tales of the defeated about the myths of the past. Yes, that’s what they are. He looked long at the sea. Everything was calm around him. Even the sea was calm. Is it divine intervention? He wondered and smiled, mocking himself for thinking that. Where did they go?
“Do you want another drink?”
“No, thanks. The bill please?”
“Eighty shekels!”
“Toda Raba. Keep the rest.”