Sister Louise did look weary. She had a face like an elegant tortoise: wizened and close to the bone.
The Sisters of St. Joseph were a quiet, forbearing lot. They had tussled with the Nablus notables for years, accused of diverse crimes, from converting their patients to Christianity to taking business away from local doctors. But when they caught typhus during the war, the survivors among them were inoculated and therefore of value, so that the mayor at the time, Haj Nimr Hammad, urged them to stay and gave them the run of the new municipal hospital. The nuns had no funding from the British. Their tea tables were sparse, their bodies thin, they had the clean, drawn-out look of good household economists. Most admirably to Antoine, they did not cling to their Frenchness in any way. They truly did serve God alone.
“How is your work going?”
“Oh, this and that. I am worried that I have not achieved a cohesive …” He looked into her face. “It’s like this, I look at my notes one day and I see things of interest, paths to follow. Another day, I look and I cannot remember what I thought was valuable.”
He tapped the leather cover of his book with the pads of two thick fingers. His bond with Sister Louise was peculiar; in her company his reticence simply gave way. She seemed hard from the outside, and yet she always managed to pull confessions out of him, he who was ordinarily so guarded, and this she did apparently without judgment. And since Nablus was practically impenetrable to outsiders, she was also a great aid to his research. Sickness, hospitals, medicine—this was how one became familiar. She supplied Antoine with patients who were willing to talk, and his association with the hospital establishment was, in the eyes of the convalescents, greatly to his credit. Antoine had started wholly to rely upon her—and not only for learning about Nablus, but also about himself.
“Surely you are writing about the town,” she said.
“Yes, yes, but my notes seem at the moment rather like an index of local gossip. I am concerned that the conclusions I should draw—though of course, that is running ahead of myself.”
“Tell me what you have so far.”
“Lists. Enemies and alliances. Family against family. Particularly this Atwan character,” he flicked a forefinger against the book cover, “the one who owns the soap factory. Do you know him? He always has a vendetta against someone—but in general it is a very Naplousien phenomenon. This city …” He looked out at the buildings below and shook his head. “Between these mountains it is all jealousy and scandal.”
“That is always the case, scandals are everywhere.”
He hummed. “No, I don’t think so. It is different here. It fascinates me, I must say. Something strong in the air.”
On cue the wind pulsed, and Sister Louise’s rosary snapped against the rock.
“In any case, I am looking for the shape.”
“The shape.”
“Of the work. If local intrigues do become my plot, what would they elucidate.”
She opened her hands. “The life of the Muslim city?”
“Certainly that would be the premise. But … is that not a little trivial? Ideally one wants to elucidate—well, the teachings of the Church. I wonder if I was mistaken to choose the Islamic city …”
“Your last project was the Bedouin.”
“Yes, but then you see the desert is a preserver. It was directly connected to biblical study, since the Bedouin are kept fresh from biblical times. And I did know that from the outset.”
“Persist for now. It may become clear.”
Antoine said nothing. He rubbed a finger along the edge of the pages.
“I should be sad if you change your mind.” She gave him a quick smile. “If you choose to study somewhere else, I mean.” She grasped the rock to get to her feet. “I have to prepare for the morning. You shouldn’t stay long either, it is cold and will be dark soon. I hope you are staying with us tonight?”
“I should return to Jerusalem. I’ve been away too long, and they say snow is coming.”
“Goodbye then, father. See you soon, I hope.”
“Goodbye.”
As she made her way to the path, he returned to his rock, breathing heavily. He opened the book and repositioned his leg on the little boulder in front.
Things had changed since the war. The numbers at L’École had grown, and the purity of Lavigne’s vision for the school had become impossible to maintain. And although Antoine’s colleagues in Jerusalem were pleasant, and he did have friends among them, he felt they now represented French interests rather more than they used to, and ought to. Quite unlike Louise and the other sisters in Nablus. Of course, the entire Holy City was currently under siege, and not just by the French: every European grappled for his quarter; a hospice here, a church there, a missionary facility around the corner, an archaeological chairperson two floors up. Flags waved from every cornice as though Allenby had done nothing, and while the diplomats pretended to be secular there was always an overlap with the general fanatics, who ran the gamut from saviours of their own souls to saviours of others’, to those merely avaricious for anything ancient or well esteemed. In a word, there was no such thing as being disinterested. Even among those apparently present sola fide one struggled to extricate the throb of the mystical in their breasts from the national impulse, which was something that seemed to live in the bones these days. The blood rose in their faces at a newly discovered scroll, any mention of Byzantine legend or Mesopotamia, and amulets by the dozen were quarried daily, and inscriptions scrutinised at desks in offices overlooking the spice market, and though these types called themselves scientists and attached badges to their lapels, it was becoming hard to distinguish between a tourist and an academic when everyone had that same wild look in the eye.
But Antoine had persevered in his private rigour, with his monograph on the Bedouin communities. And now, his work on Nablus. With a zeal that belied his ivory beard his mentor Père Lavigne continued to stress the importance of ethnographic practice, even before one could perceive how it would illuminate faith. He laced his praise with reminders from across his paper-strewn desk: “Be precise, Antoine, while all around are vague. Never impute to the object of study what is not already there.”
Antoine wondered whether scholars were always fanatics in some sense. Only, Jerusalem possessed a kind of chemical power to bring out what might otherwise lie dormant. The other day he saw a Swedish woman, generally known to be living on an academic fellowship from the Theological Society, actually howling in the wake of a cross reenactment, which comprised an Arab with a long nose dragging the burden of timber and trailing his feet like a marionette’s down the Via Dolorosa. To be sure, even he sometimes felt it, a rustle of the desert baptism; and as the wind nudged the prongs of his beard, while he sat there by the oldest tree in Palestine before the valley of Nablus, he noted down in his long book how the appeal of the metaphysical had an amazing ability to reach all the way from the Judaean hills to the stacks of one’s quiet library, where one could almost hear the British Zionists hurrying on the storm of progress with a thrill in their voices.
A massive cloud shadow, jagged like the shape of a continent, passed over the town and bent against the inclines of the mountains. Antoine could just about see the municipal hospital: a tiny oblong where the base of Ebal cradled an olive grove. He could not see the residence of the French sisters, however. Hidden, probably, behind one of those overgrown palaces.
As he packed his things and walked down to the bus station, he thought of what Louise had said about leaving the hospital. It was odd that the Nabulsis should miss the Turks so much as to continue worrying about espionage on their behalf. Had not the Turks been their tormentors, when all was said and done? A fellah passed him on the road, leading a packed mule up the mountain.
Perhaps men had an ability to forget the strictures of past law. The past appeared eternal: what had happened was inviolable; one did not keep forever the contingencies; what did not happen was forgotten. But in the present moment, one was
made more aware of what would be possible if only; the bonds of present law held one by the wrists, and caused one to recall looseness where there was now firmness. Which meant it was natural that as the British soldiers paraded before the old prison houses, the Nabulsis would remember the amity of the Ottoman officers, and the marriages to their daughters, as it struck them that these British fathers would never bring a daughter to marry an Arab.
He found the first bus to Jerusalem and paid his fare. The sun was setting as they approached Damascus Gate.
10
That night, the snows began. In the morning, the sky smothered Nablus in a thick white smoke, which settled into thigh-high banks and silenced all the houses. No birds sang. Within days damp invaded stored grain and rotted the vegetables. Neighbours wrapped their legs in sackcloth to plough to one another’s front doors, and any news that could not be transmitted in this manner was not transmitted at all.
Wrinkled deposits of ice masked the windows on Mount Gerizim. Midhat lurked in his bedroom and emerged only at mealtimes. Since their last exchange, Um Taher had not probed the issue of marriage. But with little to occupy her except sewing, she became obsessed by what the priest had almost told her about the Samaritans. Of course, that fragment of gossip might mean nothing at all; whatever curse he saw administered—a charm involving a bird was always a curse—might have been intended for anyone. And yet, on the blank snow beyond the kitchen window her brain painted images of jealous Nabulsis setting maledictions on her grandson. Against his ability to marry. Against his sanity. Her mind was incontinent: Midhat might struggle to see beyond the end of his nose, but Um Taher imagined future possibilities far too much.
By the middle of February 1920, the first globe thistles thrust their heads through the snow on the mountainsides, which melted in little circles around their necks. The white of the sky curdled and faded, and finally left the air a pale, empty blue. The blanket on the mountains became ragged, the streets turned grey, and the townspeople braved the thoroughfares and the children played in the open spaces.
One morning in March, everyone woke to find the cold had relented. The air was moving, birds singing, ice draining off the mountains into the valley, filling the streets with slush. The women of Nablus hiked out to Ras al-Ayn to sit by the waterfalls with their baskets of nuts, as their children washed lettuce in the icy water and cupped the leaves in their palms to stop them ripping in the flow. Newspapers were once more in circulation, telegraph lines were opened, and at last Nablus heard what was happening in Damascus and Jerusalem.
The negotiations between Faisal and the French that Hani had described in his letter to Midhat were soon public knowledge. So were the outbreaks of violence in the hinterlands. Agitation rippled into Palestine, and people in the coastal cities were photographed with placards saying:
PALESTINE IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF SOUTHERN SYRIA, and NO ROOM FOR THE ZIONISTS IN PALESTINE. “Violently suppressed by the British,” wrote the reporter. “All rallies have now been banned.”
“Have you heard anything yet?” said a voice.
Midhat had just arrived at the store and taken off his jacket; the speaker’s shadowed head was visible through the gap in the display, but it was difficult to see his face.
“Burhan?” he suggested.
“Yes, yes it’s me,” said Burhan. “Have you heard anything?”
Adel Jawhari’s face appeared beside Burhan’s, along with a gas lamp that illuminated them both and shone a ray across the floor. “Are you guys talking about it?”
Midhat sucked his teeth and opened his hand.
“There’s some news,” said Adel. “I think Faisal is the king.”
“King of what?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
Burhan shrugged. “Hey, hey,” he said, to someone out of view. “Is that a newspaper? Oh, sorry, ya‘tik al-afia.”
“Good morning Midhat,” said Hisham, as Adel let him through. “Have you heard this thing about King Faisal?”
“What do you know? We haven’t heard anything.”
“Morning Midhat,” said another voice.
“We don’t know anything,” said Midhat. “Oh, Qais, I didn’t see you.”
“You’ll know in a moment,” said Qais. He was grinning. “Look what I’ve got.”
“Where did you get that from?” said Burhan.
“My father came from Jerusalem an hour ago.”
Outside, someone shouted: “Qais’s got the paper!”
“Zut alors,” said Midhat.
“What did you say?” said Burhan.
“Quickly,” said Midhat, “give that here.”
The shout had already passed down the market and multiplied, and as men began to cram into the Kamal store, Qais was forced to one side. Midhat pushed some boxes back to create space and passed Qais an empty crate while everyone negotiated over chairs. Dawn was beginning.
“Are we ready yet?” said Qais.
“Yes!”
“Lahza, lahza.” An old man shook an arthritic hand. “Does anyone have coffee?”
“Faisal!” Qais shouted. He spread his legs on the crate in the manner of an orator.
“Here you go, ya Haj,” Midhat whispered to the old man, handing him a cup.
“The Emir Faisal Declared—King—of—Syria!”
Whistles and applause. Midhat looked over the sea of heads and caught sight of Jamil, leaning against the doorjamb with his arms folded. Their eyes met.
Midhat shouted out: “Does it say where Syria is?”
“Hang on!” said Qais. “Wait, wait everyone! Let me read the rest.”
But the crowd was already too large to silence. A few people tried to lead them in an old farming song. Hisham lifted his bony arms and made a downward motion with his outstretched hands, but it was no use. Midhat forced his way over to Qais’s corner.
“And it says Palestine?”
“Yes,” said Qais. “Damascus is our capital.”
“Give me,” said a tall man, pulling out a pair of eyeglasses.
“So,” said Qais, “we are now part of Syria.” He turned to Adel. “Right?”
Adel blinked. “I don’t know. Didn’t they just ban our rallies?” He stared at the article. “Remember, we don’t have an army.”
“Faisal has an army,” said Jamil.
That night the Murad brothers, Basil and Munir, enlisted Midhat and Jamil’s help with what they titled an “operation.” An uncle on their mother’s side had fought with Faisal in the Arab Revolt against the Turks, and brought home as a trophy the Sharifian flag, red, black, green, and white, that he had waved from his horse. Close to midnight Basil and Munir, bearing this same ragged flag, climbed to the top of the municipal building and hoisted it onto the empty mast. As instructed, Midhat and Jamil circuited the building, nodding when they passed one another. At Basil’s whistle, they met at the back to help the boys descend.
They saw it in the morning from the mountain path: the colours of the Arab Revolt, now the colours of Arab independence, rippling and unfolding over the town, exaggerating the wind.
“It’s good to feel as though you’re doing something,” said Jamil. “Do you know what I mean?”
That day Midhat wandered back and forth from the edge of the khan watching the street until nightfall. Everyone was agitated. Every tiny action, each flick of a hand, shift of a trouser, amassed into a wave of motion, the way single leaves gesture in a forest until the whole becomes a single stirring animal. Next morning, the flag was gone. But it didn’t matter. Everyone had seen it.
Although Midhat and Jamil had helped with the flag operation, over the next few weeks they spent most of their time not with the Murad brothers, but with Qais Karak and Adel Jawhari. Basil and Munir talked in slogans and always agreed with each other, but Qais and Adel liked to debate. After work, the four of them—Midhat, Jamil, Qais, and Adel—walked down together to Sheikh Qassem to decipher the newspapers. Adel, who was a member of the Muslim-Chr
istian Society, was the one who first told them about the plan to demonstrate in Jerusalem in favour of Faisal, at the festival of Nebi Musa.
Midhat did not know when his father would arrive, but as April approached, Teta had still not found him a wife, and he was in no hurry to remind her. April was also the month when the region flared with religious festivals, and Nebi Musa, the Muslim pilgrimage to the tomb of Moses in Jericho, had recently become the most significant. Nebi Musa always coincided with Good Friday in the Orthodox calendar, but over the last few years the pilgrimage had taken on a secular weight with more and more Christians processing alongside the Muslims, or at least travelling down to Jerusalem on the first Sunday. Sometimes Jerusalem Jews joined in too—though presumably they would not do so this year. This year, by one further infelicitous overlap of calendars, the first day of Nebi Musa was also the first day of Passover.
“It is a fantastic opportunity,” said Adel, forcing Midhat and Basil to quicken their pace. Jamil was already ahead of them. “They can ban our rallies, but they would never ban a religious event. They are always talking about maintaining the Status Quo—the reaction would be too enormous.”
It was Friday, and they were walking to Ras al-Ayn with a nargila pipe. En route they had come across Basil smoking on Qaysariyeh Road. Basil asked where they were going, and Adel told him to come along. When Basil said, could he bring Munir? Midhat and Adel exchanged a glance. One of the brothers was just tolerable; both might be unbearable. “Why don’t you meet us there, then?” Adel had said, at which Basil let it go with, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” and fell in step with Midhat.
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