The Parisian

by Isabella Hammad

  “Fursa sa‘ida.” The priest bowed his head. “Père Antoine.” He reached out a hand for shaking.

  “Fursa sa‘ida,” said Jamil.

  Midhat looked at the pencil in Père Antoine’s hand, and continued in French: “What were you writing?”

  The priest regarded him. His eyeballs seemed quite pink. In Arabic, he said: “Notes. I am studying.”

  “At a university?”

  “I am with L’École Biblique, in Jerusalem.” He paused. “Je suis professeur. Though I am not teaching at the moment. You are a student?”

  “No. I was a student. Now I am working, we are both working … in the market.”

  “Ah,” said Antoine, blinking several times. “That is interesting.”

  “It is not particularly interesting,” said Midhat at once. “In fact, I would say it is quite boring. Isn’t it Jamil? I would say it is not interesting at all.”

  “I don’t think it’s very boring,” said Jamil in Arabic. He wore an odd expression.

  “I meant, only, that it is not interesting that one should be a student and then work in a market. It is …” Midhat shrugged, “commonplace. At the same time, I would not say it is particularly representative either.”

  There seemed to be no appropriate reply to this remark. A strong breeze ran through the grass on the mountainside. No one said anything, and Midhat knew the dissonance was his fault, that he had strained the exchange needlessly. The priest made a motion to go.

  “It was nice to meet you,” said Jamil.

  Neither of the boys spoke on the way home. Then as they passed a thicket of trees before the house, Jamil said: “You know, I have forgotten most of my French.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes. If you don’t use it, I think it just goes.”

  Teta was waiting in the kitchen. In his confession, Midhat angled the blame towards Haj Nimr.

  “You are such an idiot,” she said, unmoved. “You should have let me, why did you stop me?”

  “You mean the charm?” he lashed back. “That doesn’t even make sense! That was meant for Fatima, not for her father. You would have to have taken a hair from his head.”

  She marched out of the room. “And now I have to find you another girl. You are unbelievable. Unbelievable! You want to make me work like a donkey.”

  “It’s not my fault,” said Midhat, but she was already gone.

  In bed that night he wondered whether Teta might have been right. Whether, had he said yes to the charm, Haj Nimr might have consented. Obviously, failing with the Hammads would not put an end to the question of marriage. If it was not her, it would be some other girl. In the morning, he rose early and left before Teta was awake.

  To Hisham’s bewilderment, Midhat threw himself into the bookkeeping that day with zeal. He exerted his mind all morning and all afternoon over the mathematics of debt and credit, in pursuit, not really of the ostensible goal—the completion of this or that task—but rather of the feeling afterwards. He wanted the used-up sensation, that ecstatic emptiness after concentrating. He wanted to be a body that did nothing but work, with no space left over in his mind to ruminate. He fell asleep quickly that night, and woke early again the following morning.

  In this manner three weeks passed. It took that long for him to learn how to manage the accounts without Hisham’s supervision. Several things must be done at once: he must monitor the interest accrued on the credit lines, while also remaining aware of the different family names, and the traditional allegiances that mitigated interest rates, or allowed one to speed up an order when the client came in person; and then keep an eye on the outstanding orders, the progress the tailor was making, and what stock, if any, was running low. As he became more adept at these details, however, he found they required less and less concentrated energy, and as more free time appeared in his working day the flurry of activity was breached with dangerous passages of stasis.

  Teta made no further mention of brides, nor did Midhat broach the topic. He had still not told Jamil about his failure, and whenever he saw his cousin’s long strides approaching the store, head dipping side to side in search of him, he adopted a languor he did not feel. He suspected Jamil was behaving stiffly around him too. Although this might only be a lingering shyness from their time apart, Midhat still felt their conversations had shallowed since that night at Sheikh Qassem when he first told Jamil about Teta’s plan. It made him protective of his private feelings. Should Jamil ever ask, he was prepared to explain that he had not yet decided whether to speak to Haj Nimr. Jamil did not ask. Midhat tried not to think about it. But thoughts had a way of travelling back, like water on a skewed floor.

  To distract himself, he spent time in the tailor’s room. He brought Butrus cups of coffee, and watched reams of fabric develop into quilts and pillows and mattress covers, and the hemming of the silk belts and handkerchiefs under the biting tooth of the black and gold Singer sewing machine. Most of what the Kamal store produced was for clients in the hinterlands, so there was some limitation in type and style, although the fellahin did dress nicely for their weddings. But the store did not set out to provide for the upper-class market: those clothes were the domain of the Samaritan tailors.

  The Samaritan store was located on a corner near their quarter. There were four staff, two women and two men, and at least three could usually be found sewing in a semicircle. The most gregarious was Eli, a tall, thin man with prematurely grey hair and a youthful olivey face. He was always happy to show Midhat what they were working on, and this became a point of interest in Midhat’s day; sticking his head in after lunch he tracked the progress of the European-style woollen coats as they took shape, the way the gold embroidery was fitted over the jacket backs, and the gowns adjusted for the ladies to wear to their private parties. Finished items lay pressed and folded near the entranceway. Unless expressly forbidden by the client, items were also given a brief spell hanging in the window. Not long enough to attract the evil eye, but enough to advertise the design.

  Though often ostensibly “Western-style,” the clothes they produced were not precisely like Western clothes. The jackets were more square than those Midhat recalled from Paris, and though the fabrics were often imported—there was a recent flood of cotton from England, for example—they were habitually cut with local cloth, which meant nothing looked purely foreign. Nor did the Samaritans rely on European sewing patterns; their designs were based on local demand, with some influence from rare silent movies of Americans or Egyptians and even from the British women who peered into the khan. Little did those ladies know, the eyes travelling up and down their exposed forms were looking less at their bodies than at the fabric that wrapped them. And then the styles mutated from order to order, and each time an item was sewn it was adjusted to the preferences of that particular customer, and those changes were often applied to the next order. To Midhat, these stylistic compromises looked like errors. The tunic shape that was appearing at Parisian parties when he left, somehow preceding him to Cairo, was being tested now in Nablus in black silk and cotton, and at first he wondered if these tunics were for particularly large ladies, until he realised their sizes were being increased so they could be worn loosely after the local style, just in case, perhaps, some aspect of a woman’s body should be indecently contoured.

  In December the rains failed, and business at the khan slowed. Customers came into the Kamal store less to purchase fabric or visit the tailor than to repay their debts, or to beg for an extension until the harvest. On one particularly cold afternoon, a man with a dramatic stoop and a tarbush threadbare in several places stepped over the threshold and laid a bundle on the counter.

  “What’s this?” said Hisham.

  “The order of fabric from last month.”

  That voice was familiar. The man’s fingers lingered on his bundle, the tendons pronounced. Midhat crouched to see his face.

  “Amo Ayman?”

  “Midhat!”

  It was a face from Mid
hat’s childhood, the father of his little friend, the red-haired Hala Saba. Time had disfigured him, and long cracks ran across his temples.

  “How are you, Amo?”

  “I heard you had returned,” said Ayman wearily. “Congratulations.”

  “The order?” said Hisham.

  In a sharp movement Ayman released the bundle. Hisham started to unroll the fabric.

  “Hisham, don’t do that,” said Midhat.

  Hisham glanced up. Showing his palm Midhat said, in a voice not quite his own: “It’s fine. I will deal with this.”

  Hisham contemplated him, and with an ambiguous bow at Ayman walked past them into the back room.

  Midhat turned up one edge of the sacking. “You take this with you. There’s no more debt. Khalas, it’s finished.”

  Ayman’s eyes ran down the buttons on Midhat’s chest. “Oh no. Oh, Midhat, oh. God bless you, amo.”

  Midhat did not see Hisham for the rest of the day. The sky paled as he smoked by the door. Butrus came through on his way out, wrapped in an overcoat; Hisham had already left, he said. Midhat watched the shutters close over the other stalls one by one, the merchants waving to one another. Like his own, their families were said to depend on a hinge between the masses and the elite. But really, it seemed to Midhat, it was people like the Sabas who suffered. The Sabas had once been wealthy, that was known; and though the cause of their privation was unclear they were now the kind of Christians whose veiled women were the only marker left that they belonged in town. He wondered where Hala was now. He wondered if she was married.

  “It’s freezing,” said Jamil, appearing from around the corner. “Will you hurry up please?”

  “Give me a moment.”

  Jamil slid inside as Midhat continued to smoke, watching the ash creep up his cigarette and melt off. He heard his cousin say:

  “What is this?”

  “What is what.”

  “Mashallah. You are an artist.”

  “Oh no.” The butt end flew from his fingers. “Don’t, please.” In two strides to the counter he reached for the accounting book, and as he tried to screen the page with his arm he raised his voice to invent what he thought was a better pretext for his indignation: “What the hell are you doing looking at our accounts?”

  “You left it open.”

  The book was turned to the back. The left-hand page showed some waistcoats and a few variations on the cuffed trouser leg. On the right-hand page Midhat had attempted, several times, to draw a dress. He closed the book as Jamil withdrew, and then sank to his heels to unlock the cupboard where it belonged.

  “You shouldn’t look at other people’s things,” he said, pushing it onto the shelf.

  “It was open!” Jamil laughed. “Why are you doing those drawings?”

  “Why do you do anything?”

  Midhat was not good at drawing. They were not taught to draw at school in Constantinople. In Montpellier there was some occasion for describing the cross sections of flora to annotate and memorise in botany class. In fact, that had been his first experience of observing and copying, the eye going back and forth from the specimen on the glass slide. But he had never drawn from the mind’s eye before, and the results in the accounts book were clumsy. He had been trying to remember the guests at parties, mannequins in shop displays, the ladies’ dresses that absorbed the fashions of military uniforms. He caught none of those nuances, however, and all the skirts were triangles. They looked like half-opened umbrellas.

  He straightened up. Jamil was holding his stomach with mirth. Catching sight of Midhat’s face, he fell slack. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “It’s nearly dark.”

  “Oh, all right. I’ll wait outside.”

  The cabinets did not take long to organise and lock. Midhat spent an extra moment cleaning the space around the counter, given that today for the first time he had exerted some authority over Hisham, and he felt unsteady about it. He took up the broom and performed a little sweep of the floor in front, where smears from muddy shoes dried off into dust, and threads sometimes lay sprinkled. Stepping into the open air with the padlock he caught Jamil, bowed against the cold, poking his finger into a crevice in the outer wall. He jerked up and met Midhat’s eye. His forefinger was covered with white fluff.

  “Cobweb,” he said.

  Without meaning to, Midhat smiled, and rolled his eyes to temper it.

  “I wanted to ask,” said Jamil, as they walked. “Did you see many motorcars in Paris?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you see a Bugatti?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s a race car.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “The Germans had many in Jenin,” said Jamil. “In the base. Tahsin rode in one. He said it took three hours to Jerusalem.”

  “Why are you obsessed with cars suddenly?”

  “Not obsessed. Not everyone has seen so many.”

  “You must have in Constantinople.”

  “I didn’t see the Ford. Of course, I’m sure you saw every car ever made in Paris.”

  “Oh, Jamil, come on. This is stupid.”

  “What?”

  “You have to stop this.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Being …” He faltered. “You know, being jealous of me. The Paris thing.”

  Jamil made a sound in his throat.

  “Not everything that has happened to me is so amazing.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Midhat groaned. They had reached the edge of town and the trees were going black with sunset.

  After several moments, he said: “I proposed to Haj Nimr, you know. He rejected me.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that.”

  “No, you’re not. That doesn’t matter. My point is, not everything comes easy to me, either.”

  “I never said—”

  “I said it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  Jamil did not reply. They went on up the slope, and as the road curved Midhat was seized by a memory. As though his thoughts had lagged, as though they had been searching for a long while for some association, and had only just hit upon it. It burst into his mind: the windy terrace in Montpellier, the lawn, the pond. Frédéric Molineu asking about the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim. He tugged at the scene, and other details clinging to the underside shivered into life. He stared at Jeannette’s bare, wet legs. They came out through the trees.

  “You know how you test a flat tyre?” said Jamil.

  “How.”

  Again the road curved, presenting a view of the other mountain, dim with evening and distance.

  “You wet your finger, heyk, and you feel for the air.” Jamil rubbed his hands together. “You know I think you should try again.”

  “Try?”

  “For Fatima.”

  “Fatima.”

  “Where are you, habibi?” Jamil touched his shoulder. “I can tell you’re upset. How did he say no, Haj Nimr? Tell me his words.”

  “He said, ‘Unfortunately the answer is no.’”

  “Those were the words? Wallah. Well, even so. If I were in your position, I’d try again. He doesn’t know you. You would be perfect.”

  “God keep you.”

  “And I’m not jealous. Mish ma’ool Midhat, I can’t even believe you said that. I do think—”

  Turning off the main track onto the road to the house they saw, between the branches of a low-hanging tree, the glass eyes of two unlit headlights. Just below, the curves of two front wheels.

  “Ah,” came a voice, and an upright shadow stepped onto the path. “Midhat.”

  Nerves snapped in Midhat’s abdomen.

  “Father. I didn’t know you were here.”

  “And Jamil,” said Haj Taher. “Ahlan wa sahlan, amo. I saw your father, you’re working in the khan now.”

  “Ahlan, Amo, yes.”

  “I was at a meeting in Hai
fa. I came by on my way to Cairo, to see how things are going. Damascus is chaotic. Are you eating with us?”

  “Yes he is,” said Midhat.

  “Yalla.”

  Teta was in the hall. Her eyes were bright, and her lips pressed hard against Midhat’s cheek.

  “Where is your mother?” she asked Jamil.

  “Downstairs.”

  “You should have brought her, I miss her. Ta‘alu.” She took Taher’s coat. “Mama,” she said to him, “how was Damascus?”

  “Demonstrations every day, I was just telling them.” He lifted his tarbush and ran three fingers through his silver hair. “It makes life more difficult for everyone, including the merchants. You should have seen the crowds … oof.”

  “What was this meeting?” said Midhat.

  “Ay meeting?” said his grandmother from the divan.

  “A conference in Haifa. Is there anything sweet? I’m hungry.”

  “Wait for dinner,” said Teta.

  Taher made a gesture of impatience with his pursed fingers, and Teta rose. He turned to the boys. “It was al-Nadi al-Arabi, and the other societies. Haifa, Yafa, al-Nassira …” He waved a hand, already bored. But as he leaned back in his chair his demeanour changed, and he made a sucking sound through his teeth. His voice became public, explanatory. “We’re setting up a committee for all Palestine, three centres, Haifa, Nablus, Jerusalem. We’re talking about getting Palestinians to fight in Faisal’s army, against the French.”

  Teta returned with a tray of baklawa. Taher pulled a piece from the edge, which clung to its neighbour with strings of honey.

  “Where’s the napkin.”

  “Army,” said Jamil. “Is there a war?”

  “Depends. They let Faisal have his government … but the people are unhappy. Have you heard from your friend Hani?” He pointed at Midhat with a sticky middle finger.

  The question pleased Midhat, and he wished he had a better answer. “Not for a while. I should write to him, in fact.”

  Haj Taher leaned back again and crossed his legs. “And what about you, have we found you a wife yet?”

  In the corner of Midhat’s vision, Teta’s eyes flashed.

  “I think so.”

  Teta coughed.