The Parisian

by Isabella Hammad

  “Are you going?”

  “Nebi Musa?” said Basil. “Of course we’re going.”

  He reached to scratch his lower back, and as he did so, opened his jacket. A pistol was tucked into his trousers. The grip bent over the waistline with a sheen of recent polish.

  “Are you serious?”

  Basil faced forward, chewing the inside of his cheek.

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “Have you heard of Jabotinsky?” he said after a moment.

  “No.”

  “He’s a Zionist. He’s starting a Zionist army. If we want to beat them, we have to train ourselves.”

  Ahead, Adel burst out laughing. Jamil’s long arms gesticulated, his shirtsleeves blazing in the sun.

  “And he had a tiny dog,” Jamil said, “and he called it Naila!”

  “Can I ask,” said Midhat, “why you are taking it to Ras al-Ayn?”

  “I’m getting used to carrying it.”

  “Which spring shall we sit by, guys?” said Adel, spinning round.

  “Whichever you like,” said Midhat.

  A ring of women seated by the roadside shivered into motion and walked quickly off like a flock of blackbirds.

  “Do you have others?” said Midhat.

  “You want one?” said Basil. “We could probably get one before the festival. The person to talk to—”

  “No no no, I don’t,” said Midhat.

  “It’s just in case, habibi,” said Basil, with an indulgent smile. “Just in case.”

  The first day of the procession passed without incident. Pilgrims began their journey down to Jerusalem, prayed in al-Aqsa mosque, camped outside the city walls for a night, and continued on to Jericho. On Sunday morning, Midhat and Jamil met on the path in the dark, and as they walked down the mountain they heard the pilgrims singing in from the hinterlands. On the Northern Road they saw the festival convoy, ready with drums and cymbals, grainy in the colourless dawn.

  Jamil and Midhat took the first train to Tulkarem and changed for Lydda. On the Lydda platform, the Englishwomen carried furled umbrellas. Common to all of them, Midhat noted a certain righteous bearing of the chin. After a while he became aware that none of the women would look him in the eye. He selected one at random. Straight pale orange hair, tucked under an ugly kind of cap. Cheap leather gloves, a camera.

  “I’m already tired,” said Jamil.

  The orange-haired girl would not look at him. With a loud hiss the train pulled in, and she and her friend reached for the railing. All the women were boarding. Midhat recalled photographs of French trains bearing soldiers to the front, and looking at the points of their umbrellas saw the barrels of guns.

  “I think Adel’s over there.”

  Jamil gestured towards the end of the platform, before grasping the handrail and stepping up. He ducked his head under someone’s arm and as Midhat slid in after him the attendants closed the doors. The engine whined, and the platform disappeared from the window. The carriage was close and warm. They saw the procession stretching far ahead to Jerusalem, winding through the valleys.

  Over the next three hours, Midhat fell into a daydream. He thought of what Hani had said in his letter about naming themselves Syrians, and wondered what might happen next. Perhaps a war of independence. Which would do what to Nablus? He already knew how wartime could suspend the normal rules. It might free him from his father’s command. Syria would be free—and so would Midhat. Jamil met his eye and winked. The mountains beyond the window interrupted the sunlight, sculpting his cousin’s cheekbones with their moving shade. Beyond him, the foreign women hunched on the benches. And where would that freedom lead? Teta was right: he did not know what he wanted. His tableau vivant of King Faisal ruling Palestine lapsed into a vision of himself in Cairo, married with small children. He tried to work out where this image had come from, and was bewildered to realise that he was imagining himself married to Layla.

  The echo of a drum fought discordantly with the rhythm of the crankshaft. In English a woman cried: “There are so many people!” The window was filled with heads and flags. The roar reached them dimly, like a waterfall across a canyon.

  Midhat put an arm across Jamil to let the women alight first. Several thanked him, and as he bowed and lifted his tarbush, Jamil hit him on the chest with the back of his hand and laughed. Stepping down was like stepping into a thundercloud.

  “Michael isn’t that the Hebron procession?” shouted an Englishman in a boater. “I thought they weren’t coming for an hour yet.”

  They followed the crowd towards the old city. One smug-looking tarbush was carrying a gramophone above his head, but its music was inaudible. The crowd thickened and slowed, and a horse appeared by the roadside bearing a stout man with a small block of a moustache. The middle two buttons of his waistcoat had popped open, and the separated seams disclosed a pointed ovoid of white shirt.

  “Ya comrades!” His chins distended. “Behave peacefully! Ya comrades!”

  At Jaffa Gate they came to a stop behind a group of young European men refusing to go further. Midhat took Jamil by the arm.

  “We’re going in?”

  “Of course,” he shouted, and plunging through the group released Jamil’s arm to clap, borne along under the arch of the gate.

  The Europeans had moved to one side, and as the parade bent to fit through the entrance, Midhat saw that its tail was made up of Arab women. Many carried banners and placards like the men; a few even waved Sharifian flags. They were shouting something. “Falastin arad-na” was the first phrase; he could not make out the second. All at once the crush overtook them, and as they were impelled under the vault into the open air on the other side (“Stay with me,” said Midhat, snatching his cousin’s sleeve), they saw more women on the balconies above, throwing coloured handkerchiefs down onto their heads.

  By a group of drummers, a Sufi dervish in a long gown and jacket of balding velveteen began to dance. His body torqued, first one way and then the other, so his garment spun out and the seams twisted. He rocked his head back and forth, patting the ground with his feet. Dust rose in a mist. The crush became an audience, dilating the space around him. A clap started, then one song caught over the discordance of the many and spread around their area, and as someone pushed him closer to the dervish, Midhat lost his hold on Jamil. The dancer’s feet patted faster, faster, and Midhat stepped close enough to hear the man’s own voice: “La ilaha illa allah la ilaha illa allah.”

  Then something unexpected happened. Half propped up by people on either side, Midhat experienced a strange, dull explosion in his chest. Something close to joy but deeper, more serene. He moved his head to the pulse, his tongue ticked against his hard palate. Unable to see the dervish’s feet, Midhat watched him revolving with mechanical smoothness, motored by the turbines of his tensed, upstretched wrists. A hand clasped his neck.

  “Is everything all right?” Jamil’s hair was matted, his forehead shining, a scum filmed his upper lip. “Look, look, dabke!”

  The dervish gave way to a line of village men, grasping elbows and hopping up and down. One at a time they shuffled to the centre of the vacated ring, and jumped and kicked. From somewhere, pipes. Midhat looked down at his own legs. His shoes were pale with dust. He felt a shove from behind.

  “You know dabke!”

  “No I don’t!” He gasped a laugh and pushed back.

  The group of women at the rear had moved under the arch, and as the crowd compacted they settled by the wall and clapped along. One woman near the front, who was not clapping, caught Midhat’s attention. She was looking directly at him. Staring, in fact, and standing very still. He tried to keep her level in his sight while everyone else jostled, then knew she had detected him because she quickly turned away. She remained in absolute profile, motionless. Without even thinking of Jamil, Midhat pushed towards her. Although she did not move her head, he could see the white corner of her eye go black with her turning iris. Without the other eye, the
single organ was like an object, and he did not have the feeling of meeting someone’s gaze. Instead, he was watching her looking at him. A body blocked his view: he pressed against the next person along to take the woman into his sight again, provoking a knock on his shoulder as the dancing circle closed in on itself. The crowd began to shift. The horde of waiting pilgrims by the gate plunged towards him, and then she turned. He caught her: Fatima Hammad; both eyes, the downward slope at the corners, and though he could not see the rest of her face, the eyes were enough to summon the whole.

  The current was too strong. He fell further to the right and Fatima dissolved into the wall of women. Midhat rotated to tell Jamil what he had seen, but all was motion, and his cousin was not there. He scanned faces as they passed.

  “Midhat!” came a voice. “Midhat!”

  It was Basil Murad. Waving, a few feet away, a distance of about seven or eight bodies. His section of the crowd was moving faster than Midhat’s, sliding forward as the mass mutated. Midhat strained against the current, and considered running back for Jaffa Gate where the women were.

  Pivoting round, he saw the place where the women had been was no longer occupied by women. He looked at the torrent ahead, chevronning to fit through the narrowing courtyard. People pushed from behind. Jamil must be somewhere there. He waved back at the place from which Basil had called, but Basil was no longer there either. There was nothing for it but to submit. He pressed forward with the multitude.

  Before daybreak, Fatima and Nuzha had met Burhan in the hall to wave at the departing pilgrims. Their mother was in Lydda and would never know. Out on the dark street, they heard the trumpets and drums, and Fatima thought immediately of the Nebi Rubin festival. A shiver of memory: that sleepy excitement, waking early in the tent and hearing the musicians tuning their instruments.

  The darkness magnified their footsteps. Along the Northern Road the music became louder until finally the dancing crowd came into view. In advance of dawn, lamps rocked from sticks and raised arms, their flames swaying like a blurred rash of stars.

  The largest group of well-wishers was made up of townswomen. The sisters joined the group’s flank, and, tentatively, Nuzha started to ululate. She laughed and looked back to check on Fatima, and for a moment Burhan dithered at the edge. Then he spurned the impulse and stepped off into the scattered strip of men. Feet apart, his hands rose to clap.

  “Fatima? Is that you?”

  “Meen?”

  “Muna al-Jayyusi. Do you know me?”

  A pair of eyes. Pale eyelashes.

  “Muna? Of course I know you! How are you, I have not seen you since school!”

  “Ikshif alayya, ya tabib …” sang the pilgrims, stamping their feet.

  “Come with us,” said Muna. “We’re taking the train from Tulkarem. The roads will be packed.”

  “To Jerusalem?”

  “It’s safe, we’re just going to watch. Come.”

  “It leaves in twenty minutes,” said a thin voice.

  “If you want … Fatima,” said Muna.

  The group began to move off. Fatima grabbed her sister’s arm. Nuzha stiffened.

  “If he asks,” said Nuzha, “I’ll say you’re helping at the school.”

  Fatima looked for Burhan. He was facing away, waving a handkerchief he had stolen from their mother’s dresser.

  On the platform their group made twelve in total. In the train carriage, they settled on three rows of wooden benches as dawn erupted across the windows.

  Fatima’s mind was sticky with anxiety. Although Nuzha would certainly keep her word, Burhan might tell their father, who would, of course, tell their mother. It was her mother Fatima feared. Her father was not the real lawmaker of the house; he was more like the law itself, a name Widad invoked as a spectre of wrath to make the children fearful.

  Until recently Fatima had been persuaded by the myth of her father’s great anger, and went quiet when he entered the room. But on the morning after the Atwan istiqbal, she had heard her mother’s voice, voluptuous with emotion, coming from her father’s office.

  “I know,” her father was saying. “Hassan told me. I advised him on the sale.”

  “You advised him on the sale?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fazee‘a! Men are proposing night and day, and you want to refuse them all.”

  “Night and day?”

  “I know about Midhat Kamal. I was in the house. Don’t look surprised.”

  “Enough.”

  “Enough, even though you decided not to tell me that also? His grandmother invited us round for coffee—ya Allah. Ya Allah. No one has such a husband.” A clapping sound.

  “I said enough.”

  “She is very wanted. She will not be wanted forever. You want her to marry the emir? Who exactly is your ideal husband? She is not that beautiful, Nimr, there are thousands of beautiful girls, beauty is not rare. I know you, I know you will wait until the family name is fallen and forgotten. You want me to die? Is that it, you want me to die, you want to kill me? No one in hell has such a husband.”

  Later on, Fatima realised she had witnessed a chink in her parents’ alliance. It signified that her mother was not an exact conduit to her father, and that the threat, “Your father will be angry,” might not always be true. Since then, it became not her father’s but her mother’s wrath that Fatima feared. Not the law, but the law’s steward. And, watching her father, she started to wonder that she had been so easily duped. He seemed far too concerned with his life outside the house to pay them much attention, and though she may have attracted more of it over recent years, his concern for her marrying well was like an extension of his role as judge: he appraised her from a distance.

  “Don’t be frightened,” said Muna. “We’ll only stay a few hours, just to hear the speeches.”

  In the dawn Fatima noticed that the skin around her friend’s eyes was delicately wrinkled.

  “Are you married?” said Fatima.

  “No,” said Muna. Her eyes smiled. “I became a teacher. At the Fatimiyah School. Are you married?”

  Fatima turned to the window. “Not yet.”

  They lingered on the platform as the carriages emptied. Among their group a leader emerged: an older woman with a veil and a white umbrella, which she held out before her like a staff. She steered them onto the street. Muna held Fatima’s hand.

  “I have missed you.”

  Fatima put her hand on her chest to communicate the same, and was surprised by how hard her heart was thumping.

  The roads streamed with people. Night winds still ran through the air, and the women huddled together. Fatima wished she had worn sturdier shoes. At Jaffa Gate, beneath the clock tower, the stream fed into a sea, and dismounted riders led horses by the reins. The noise was extraordinary. She saw she had been wholly mistaken to think this would be like Nebi Rubin. Nebi Rubin was a festival of open-air beaches and children: this was a festival of men. She had never seen so many. She looked at their jagged movements, the jaws, exposed necks, and in her mind leaving for Nebi Musa and leaving home for marriage became one and the same thing. Both treacherous, both nauseating. Under her shawl she clutched her hands together and with her free thumb picked nervously at the tie on her waistband.

  “Stay by the wall, ladies!”

  They followed the white umbrella under the shade of the arch.

  “I didn’t expect so many!” said Muna, lifting her hands to clap.

  Fatima stared at the men, and feeling her nose running, reached a hand up under her veil.

  That was when she saw Midhat Kamal. Visible because of a space before him, in which someone was dancing dabke. She knew what he looked like because Burhan had seen him passing their house a few weeks ago, and called her to the window. Now he was laughing. He was lifting his arms to defend himself against another young man, a little taller, darker skinned, with an arrow-straight nose, who gripped him around the neck. The sight of Midhat was a balm on Fatima’s temples. He was not frigh
tening. The copperiness of his face, his smile. She watched him. Somehow, he managed to be both inside the scene and, like her, detached from it, observing. There was some freedom about him, laughing like that. He spoke to his companion. The laugh burst back onto his face and separated the features.

  Then the drumbeats invaded her chest again and the cold thought struck that she was probably inventing. Led, as usual, by the repetitious longings of her imagination. She did not know Midhat Kamal. Having heard his name and conjured a picture from the things Burhan had told her, clearly it was she giving him a character and liberating him from the bonds of the scene. That was why he stuck out to her, distinctive and human over this sea of men.

  He turned slightly from the dancing, and with a little frown that pulled his laughing eyebrows down—the sunlight strong on his features—she knew he had caught her. She switched her face away in surprise. Then, she could not help herself, but like a creature careful of its shadow she strained from the corner of her eye. He was still watching. And though her face was covered she felt sure he recognised her. He was, unmistakeably, making his way over. Every thought had its shadow, and it occurred to her that it was more likely she had drawn him by her staring. She had provoked him, he could not know who she was, she was simply a woman who had invited a man to move towards her. Divided by the possibilities, at the last moment she did both: she braved him with both eyes. And then she turned around, and retreated among the shawls and skirts and umbrellas of the other women.

  A struggle started outside the Arab Club building as paper cups appeared above their heads. Midhat grabbed one, spilling contents that dried instantly over his fingers into something viscid and unpleasant. The cup held a few centimetres of lemonade. Saliva rose around his tongue. He opened his throat: it was warm and sugary.

  The walls were draped with celebrants, and on the balcony of the Arab Club a line of tarbush-wearers in alabaster suits holding pieces of paper played with their ties. One man brandished a flag for their attention. There was Basil again, a few people ahead, punching the air and shouting.