The Parisian

by Isabella Hammad

  By the time Haj Taher had mounted his horse to make his way home towards Mount Gerizim, the sun was slipping back down again. A breeze flapped his shirtsleeves and cooled the sweaty hair around his ears, and already the houses and trees were losing their shadows as the wind whipped the sky with fresh clouds.

  “Hamdillah assalameh!” The housekeeper, Um Mahmoud, opened the door with her arms out. “Ahlan wa sahlan, ya Haj, ahlan wa sahlan.”

  “Thanks be to God. Um Mahmoud, I’m hungry.”

  “Your health, ya Haj, I’ll put the water on to boil. Give me your coat.”

  In the entranceway Taher saw two letters on the table. He opened the first where he stood.

  The Most Honourable Sir, Noble Brother, Haj Taher Kamal,

  After inquiring about that most dear to us, the health of your Noble Person, I put before you our hope that you will send us a dima cloth of pleasing form and fixed colour, a dark-coloured abaya like the one you sent us earlier, with a head cover, of good quality, of a length reaching below the knee. For the ladies, two and a half good-quality pieces of dima of fixed colour, so that they can tailor them into dresses at home. Four arm’s lengths of mansuri cloth, two undergarments and four ladies’ handkerchiefs. With the grace of God, Most High, we will send you its price after the holiday with the bearer, Husain son of Sulayman al-Muhammad. We implore you not to delay its delivery to us at all, for you are well aware of the wedding coming up at Abu Uthman’s. God bless you.

  Ibrahim Abd al-Wahhab

  Such orders were usually handled by Hisham. But since he was here to receive it Taher could take care of it himself. It would be his first village visit as a patron since the war started, and he pictured briefly the enthusiastic welcome he would receive.

  The second envelope was a pale lilac colour. Written upon it were the words:

  Monsieur Midhat Kamal

  Maison de Famille Kamal

  Naplouse

  Palestine

  Haj Taher could speak English and knew the Latin alphabet, so his son’s name was quite apparent. He examined the two green postage stamps. They both showed the same image of a woman in a Grecian robe.

  Four years ago, he had received a letter from Midhat with an almost identical stamp, informing him of a change of plans: Midhat had left Montpellier and would complete his university course in Paris, returning home after the war had finished as originally agreed. He had also enclosed his new address, on the Rue du Four in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The explanation for the change was vague: an opportunity had arisen by which he might gain greater and better experience. Haj Taher had not made a fuss. Why not Paris? All the better, have his son return with some more sophistication. After they had confirmed the transfer of funds the letters became infrequent once more. The last Taher received was in the spring: a postcard photograph of Midhat leaning on a cane with his hand in his pocket, glancing off into a corner behind the cameraman.

  The lilac envelope was postmarked Port Said on the 13th of October, Haifa on the 17th, Jerusalem on the 18th and again on the 19th. Haj Taher tore it open along the upper fold with his big forefinger. Both sides of the page were thick with a stream of curved writing. He stared at it: he could not read it. At the end it was signed with a single letter: J.

  What Haj Taher did not know, standing now at three o’clock in the afternoon on the 20th October 1919, in the entranceway of the family house, on the side of Mount Gerizim in Nablus, was that his son had already left Paris. And that earlier that morning, having stepped off a steamship onto the Egyptian shore, Midhat was this very moment in a carriage on his way to his father’s house in Cairo, where he was hoping to surprise him.

  Six days earlier, Midhat had boarded the Caucase bound for Alexandria. After sending his letter to Jeannette, he decided not to return immediately to Palestine. First, it would be a good idea to acclimatise. Egypt was the place to start, a place known to him but not the way Palestine was known. Cairo was not a part of him as Nablus was. Nablus was all smells and sounds, the rushing air between the mountains. The only other time he had visited Egypt, by contrast, was on his first passage to the Marseille steamship five years ago. He imagined the delight in his father’s eyes when he saw him, unexpected and full-grown. He inhaled the sea air and smiled. The embrace would be full of spontaneous feeling.

  Also six days earlier, a lilac envelope had left the Montpellier post office by mail cart and, also at Marseille, boarded a mail ship named the SS Amboise. There may have been a moment somewhere along the way in which Midhat and the envelope crossed paths. At the port perhaps, or somewhere in the Algerian basin or the Strait of Sicily, the two ships may have passed within view of each other. But regardless, the express mail boat docked at Port Said and the letter from Montpellier began its way overland to Palestine two days before the Caucase arrived at Alexandria.

  In Alexandria the train station was closed. Other travellers who had alighted from ships gathered around a sign that announced track repairs; a few wandered to the entrance and peered through the glass. Scraps of paper and disused cloth banners were strewn on the lawns of the ornamental garden opposite, and around them the telegraph lines had been pulled down. A few hung loose from their poles like ribbons from a French liberty tree. Walking away from the crowd, Midhat found an idle caleche further down the road. A small man with a cigarette between his teeth was in the driver’s seat, resting his feet on the doorframe. After some negotiation Midhat persuaded him to drive to Cairo for the extortionate price of five piastres.

  The route to the capital exposed more broken telegraph lines, vacant tramways, abandoned banners at the roadsides proclaiming “Egypt for Egyptians,” now trampled on and ripped. The horse pulled them alongside the railway track and Midhat glimpsed Egyptian workers hammering, under the watch of armed British soldiers.

  The streets of the Abbassia neighbourhood were almost empty. It was that hour of the afternoon when the inhabitants lay in a stupor under shutter-strained daylight. He reached his father’s house: a white villa with pillared balconies in the baroque Ismaili style. The orange trees in the front garden were in their final bloom. Half-brown flowers decayed on the grass.

  Layla opened the door with a child on her hip and a thin black veil over her face. For a moment she said nothing. Then suddenly, she cried: “Midhat!” The child turned away and wiped his mouth on her shoulder.

  She ushered Midhat in with her free hand, and peered out before closing the door, as if the street might hold more surprises. When she turned and removed her veil to kiss him, he laughed in spite of himself at her enthusiasm. Perhaps time and distance simply wiped away ill will. Layla smiled naturally, as if no malice had ever passed between them.

  “How tall you are!”

  She set the child on his feet, and he pulled at her skirt. Layla seemed smaller than Midhat remembered. He looked down at her thin wrists and her long black hair, and her fingers, which she still hennaed, pale red from a former ointment.

  “You are truly a man.”

  This pleased Midhat not a little. She led him further into the house and shouted for more coffee. As she turned a door handle, the boy ducked under her arm and fled down the corridor.

  Midhat recalled this room from his last visit, when it had been a bedroom. Now it contained two satin couches and a writing desk by a window, which was crowded with jasmine.

  “Did you write? Your father is in Nablus, he said nothing about you coming.”

  Midhat was silent for a moment. Layla raised her eyebrows.

  “Oh,” he said. “I assumed he would be here. I suppose I thought no one was working … I heard about the strike.”

  “Yes, but it will soon return to normal. For that your father went to Damascus to buy more silks.”

  “Of course. Well, in that case I’m sorry to have interrupted you. I should take a train, and go to Nablus.”

  “Nonsense! Sit down. You must stay at least a night, you will have supper with me.”

  “No, thank you, I should go and
see Teta, I should get back to Nablus.”

  “Midhat, I have not seen you in five years. Haram aleyk, you want to leave me after just hello? You must at least meet your brothers and sisters.”

  She opened the door to shout for the children. Then she sat again, and they did not speak for a few minutes. A maid entered with a tray of coffee, and the children followed.

  There were five. The eldest, Musbah, was as tall as his mother’s waistline and had a thick brow. He remained near the doorway, staring. The next eldest was a blonde girl named Dunya who reached forward for Midhat’s hand. Then there were Nadim and Inshirah, both dark-haired, Nadim dressed as a sailor, Inshirah in a white dress. And then Nashat, the shy boy he had already met. Layla lifted Nashat and balanced him on her hip.

  Midhat shook their delicate hands one by one. Nashat refused to look at him, sucked a finger, and hid in his mother’s hair. As Midhat stepped back again, his stepmother fixed him with a determined look, and whatever rancour he had felt towards her suddenly vanished.

  In Paris, he had often thought over his formative years in Nablus. Considering that each man was a product of his experiences, he thought that Layla’s actions may indeed have done him some harm as a child. Too early she had exposed him to the shocking insubstantiality of the family, to the fact that parents are just two people who have been united.

  When Musbah was born, Midhat had been thirteen. The baby, he recalled, was very small, with ridges under his eyes that made his cheeks bulge, and deep pleats in the flesh of his arms. Sometimes he looked demure and sometimes like an angry little man, punching himself with his tiny fists and yelping.

  A load of furniture had followed the couple and the baby to Nablus from Cairo, in a convoy of three carriages pulled by chained horses. The house was soon full of trinkets, and the rooms became at once much bigger and more crowded. An ornate wooden table sat in the centre of the sitting room near a wardrobe covered in petals of mother-of-pearl; and identical octagonal side-tables perched all over the house like strange implements, tall, narrow, clawed. The European-style bedstead, carried in by three men, took four hours to assemble.

  Because Taher was conducting business in Jerusalem, Layla supervised the workers. She did not rebuke Midhat when he peered around the door to watch. “There was a beautiful headboard, zey kida,” she said, holding up her hands. “Fabric everywhere, silk. Bitjannin, haram. It would have been ruined on the journey.” The men were clumsy in their bare feet, holding odd segments of wood and iron, bowing occasionally to the veiled mistress.

  That was the first time Midhat had entered the bedroom since Layla and his father returned. The second time was after school when he met his friend Adel Jawhari on the road. Adel was weeping.

  “They beat me in class.”

  “Why?”

  “I laughed when Abu Nasir knocked his leg against his chair.” Adel smiled, and showed Midhat the backs of his skinny calves. The dark bruises were red with wet slits.

  “Teta uses alum. We have some, come inside.”

  As the door fell closed behind them, Midhat recalled that the medicine cabinet was in his father’s bedroom. While Taher and Layla were in Cairo, of course, it was just another empty room in a house full of empty rooms, where, in addition to keeping medicine, they stored sweets and marmalade for guests. He motioned for Adel to be quiet, and tiptoed into the bedroom. The famous bedstead stood in the centre, covered in bright cushions. He approached the cabinet, unclicked the latch, and put his hand in to feel for the bottle. A dark-headed figure appeared in the doorway and screamed.

  “Get out of here! How dare you come in here!”

  Adel sprinted out the door. Before Midhat could follow, Layla had stopped the door with her body and raised her hands. Ten red fingertips.

  Teta appeared behind her. “Habibi get out of there.”

  Midhat aimed for his grandmother. But Layla grabbed his arm and slapped him across the back of the head and neck, awkwardly and with force so that her long nails scraped the skin. He wrenched himself free and ran out through the front door, which Adel had left ajar. There was no sign of his friend out on the mountain. He cornered the building; no sign. Two sheets hanging on adjacent ropes formed a corridor; Midhat ran inside it and sat down, as the maid beyond pulled another sheet from a basket.

  “Midhat?” came Adel’s voice after a few moments. “Midhat?”

  Then all that was left was the sound of the wet cotton rasping on cotton, and the flap of fabric as the maid slung the laundry onto the ropes. The sky grew dark, and the hairs rose on Midhat’s legs. Rattling hooves announced Taher’s return from Jerusalem; the door fell shut; Layla’s voice began its uninterpretable squall, gusting out of windows as she passed them. The sounds settled. At last the maid called Midhat in for dinner, and they ate in silence around the low table.

  He could never remember if this came before or after it was decided that he would leave for Constantinople. He remembered only that one night as Teta lay beside him on his bed she described the Turkish capital, and the new school he would be going to. He would say goodbye to his father, goodbye to the tiny baby, goodbye to Layla.

  Midhat looked down at his stepmother, her hands on the shoulders of her sons, and recognised that above all she was extremely young. She could not be more than thirty. Which meant she had been approximately Midhat’s age now when she married his father, if not younger. No wonder she had hated the heir of her predecessor. And no wonder she had preferred to live in Cairo near her family, and had used her energy to persuade Haj Taher to arrange it so. It had been necessary to claim her territory and expel the foreign boy when he trespassed into her bedroom. Marriage was her life’s great venture, and, happily, she had prevailed.

  The surprise that Midhat had planned for his father was all Layla’s then, since immediately after he left the house she sent a telegram to her husband in Nablus. Haj Taher replied that he could of course stay in Palestine for a little longer than planned; it would do no harm to delay his visit to Damascus given the circumstances. By God’s grace, how many times does one stand to welcome a returning eldest son?

  In the Kamal house in Nablus, Um Taher was beside herself with glee. While Taher was out at the khan she went downstairs to tell Um Jamil, and instructed her to tell their neighbours; the news would travel around the rest of town through the whispers of the maids. Her grandson was returning, Doctor Midhat, from Montpellier and also from Paris. They must have a ladies’ reception to celebrate. The following day Um Jamil came upstairs to help prepare the food, calling from the doorstep that Jamil was so pleased, so pleased! The years of the war had aged Um Jamil, and her birdlike face was covered with wrinkles that fanned out from the corners of her eyes. She sang in Um Taher as they rolled the kusa and crushed the garlic, and then left the rest of the work to Um Mahmoud as the other women arrived, kissing congratulations and sweeping through to the salon.

  “Twenty-four years old? He has plenty of time!” said Um Dawud. “Let him play a little,” she clucked, jiggling her shoulders.

  “Dalia,” said Um Taher. “Midhat is a nice boy.”

  “Shu nice boy?” said Um Dawud.

  Um Taher looked astonished. A second later, she abandoned her piety, hooting as wholeheartedly as she had played her virtue, just before drawing her embroidery closer to her failing eyes, her belly wobbling beneath it.

  “Um Mahmoud!” she shouted. “Are you making more coffee?”

  “Yes Mama,” came the voice of Um Mahmoud.

  “And we need more chocolate ba‘dayn!”

  “Is Taher excited?” asked Um Burhan.

  “Of course,” said Um Taher.

  The women exchanged looks. It was good to see her happy, meskina Um Taher.

  “What will he do? Will he be our doctor in Nablus?” said Um Dawud.

  “He must help his father first,” said Um Taher. “He is the eldest, though his father’s wife has more children.”

  “Bas I think we can expect great things, ya Khalto,”
said Um Jamil. “Throw him into the sea and he will rise with a fish in his mouth.”

  Um Taher bowed her head, as if she already knew.

  While Um Taher entertained her ladies in the salon on Mount Gerizim, Haj Taher went to visit the British military governor of Nablus, in the old limestone municipal building on Northern Street, which was until last year the headquarters of the Turkish high representative and his advisory council.

  Taher greeted the guard in English. He was here to see Colonel John Hubbard please, he had a special request. Please to tell him it is his friend, Mister Haj Taher Kamal. The guard bowed and gestured that Haj Taher should enter, then disappeared around a corner. After a few moments, Hubbard called:

  “Kamal, come on in. Good morning, how are you today? Take a seat.”

  Hubbard was dressed in a khaki uniform with a red collar. He had a youthful face, which had at first caused some dissension among the Nablus notables, who took it as an insult to be sent a foreign principal who had barely grown his first beard. On a closer look, however, one could see the fine lines over Hubbard’s forehead and grey hairs at his temples and in his moustache. Haj Taher first met Hubbard at a reception to inaugurate his appointment, ostensibly a celebration but really an attempt to curry favour with the local men of influence by making them feel included in the affair. After Hubbard made his speech the room relaxed into smaller groups, and Taher found himself in a corner with the governor himself. Hubbard told Haj Taher that until recently he was stationed in Cairo, and the pair spoke of the different neighbourhoods, and when Taher described his business and his patronage of various ventures in the town, including the new high school and the municipal hospital, Hubbard seemed impressed. A few days later he turned up at the Kamal store in the khan. He took coffee with Haj Taher and before he left purchased a small cotton bag with a red lining as a gift for his wife.

  “Good morning Colonel John, a fine morning. How do you do today?”

  “I am very well Mister Kamal. And yourself?”