The Parisian

by Isabella Hammad

  It is winter here, and the pond has frozen over. Montpellier is quiet; I don’t know if we shall have any more parties. We tuned the piano yesterday, and I have been practising. I miss you very much. Come back, please.

  Yours ever,

  J.

  As he read, Midhat was not aware of being in any pain at all. Nearing the final page, however, and sensing the moment when he would have to come back into the room, he immediately turned to the first sheet and started to read it through again. Then he read it a third time, and then a fourth, until the words were like an incantation and he lost count.

  He dropped out of the present time. Jeannette was beside him, speaking. It was a miracle. This piece of paper had transferred him absolutely to that other time and place. He was with Jeannette in the garden, by the pond; he was walking down a street in Montpellier, he was sitting in a lecture hall, sure of returning to her in the evening, he was waking before dawn and finding her in the corridor. He heard her breath in his ear.

  There was a noise. His trance snapped open, and he put the letter on the floor.

  “Midhat? Are you all right?”

  A man was standing over him, blocking the light.

  “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with him?”

  Jamil’s face, darkened by the sun. He looked afraid, or angry.

  “Midhat?”

  Midhat looked around. He was in his father’s room. It was bright. He looked between Jamil’s legs at the desk and the window, he saw their undersides, the sky from low down, and the room smacked him in the face. The cruel transparency of the present time, this searing whiteness. A section of his brain, suppressed for too long, shot through with spasms of pain. He moaned. He felt the heat of Jamil’s body crouching near him, and his cousin’s face came properly into view.

  “Why did he keep it?”

  “Keep what, Midhat?”

  “Why did he keep it?”

  “Midhat?”

  A second person had arrived. He could see legs approaching.

  “What’s he doing?”

  What superstition made his father keep it? Midhat looked at Jamil’s face in wonder. Had his father thought it was a Samaritan thing? One of those things they made and dyed a fake colour—did he think it was an amulet because it was in another language? He put his hands on the floor.

  “It’s not real!”

  “What’s not real?”

  The moan was coming out of his mouth. “Stop touching me.”

  “What’s not real, Midhat?”

  Had he thought it held some power beyond him, simply because he could not read it? Yes. He could see why his father might have thought that. Even he could see that.

  “Midhat, habibi, you have to get up.”

  Here was something beyond nature. He clutched his stomach. Hanging on the wall was a large translucent object, like a pool of water suspended sideways. His heart began to thump.

  “Midhat, can you hear me?”

  Hani was beside him. His eyes were full of love and concern. Oh Hani, he wanted to say. He could not say it. The tears streamed down his face.

  “Can you pick him up?”

  “Midhat, you have to help us. Can you take his hand?”

  “I need to go back, I have to go back. Don’t stop me.”

  “Go back where, habibi?” said Hani gently. “I’m not stopping you. Can you stand up? Take his arm—gently.”

  Just then, as they brought him to his feet, a high ringing sound erupted. It was like a sharp blade of silver being inserted into his eardrum. Midhat clutched his ears and moaned. It was pretending to be benign, it pretended to be beautiful. But it was pain, that high ringing sound was pain. It was entering his ears like a virus. It was interfering in there, it was doing things it shouldn’t. Someone needed to take things in hand and put an end to that sound.

  “Cut it off!” he said, as they led him from the room.

  Time moved slowly in the corridor. He was aware of being led, he felt the ground hitting his feet. But now there was a little tear in the fabric and he was peering through. Someone was forcing him to peer through it. He thrust his arm out, he felt a distant throbbing in his leg.

  “Midhat, Midhat, will you sit in there? It’s Hani. Will you sit down?”

  “Hani!” said Midhat. “You are my friend.”

  “Yes! Yes I am here,” said Hani. “How are you feeling? Are you …”

  “Je suis complètement lucide. Une lucidité absolute. Qu’est-ce que c’est, qu’est-ce que c’est cette folie?”

  As though he had just caught sight of himself, he collapsed back into the leather seat, and began to laugh.

  4

  Fatima saw the aeroplane on the way to her parents’ house. It was flying beyond Mount Ebal, an insect with a marking on its tail, the propeller at its nose audible even from this distance. It moved up and down slightly, as if on a gentle wind, and then, progressing forward, circled and tipped sideways, exposing its marvellous wingspan.

  Today was Wednesday. Usually she would visit her parents on Fridays. From the doorstep she saw exasperation pass over her mother’s face.

  “We have guests,” said Widad, stepping back to let her in.

  “Who?”

  “Amo Hassan. And the French priest.”

  “What French priest?” said Fatima.

  “Friend of your father’s. Yalla we’re having coffee.”

  “Could we speak alone?” said Fatima, but her mother’s back was already turned, ascending the stairs.

  On the landing, Widad pushed the door open so that one muffled voice became clear: her father’s.

  “This is my understanding, and I honestly believe …”

  There was no formal recognition of the two women as they entered the room, but Haj Hassan, wearing a dark maroon tarbush, acknowledged his niece with a slight duck of his head, and the French priest tipped his glance to her very quickly before adding to something her father had said. Widad offered Fatima the remaining chair and sat on a footstool. Fatima looked curiously at the Frenchman. His black robe had a dirty hem, and his beard, entirely white, was stiff like the bristles of a brush, and his brow wiry and expansive. The sky was grey in the windows, though outside it was blue; on the table lay a tray of biscuits and coffee, and on the stool beside Haj Nimr a large unbound book with uncut pages.

  “Some of the women are going to take food and bullets,” said Widad.

  “Who are?” said Nimr.

  Widad shut her eyes.

  “I hope that you, at least, are not,” he said.

  “Take bullets where?” said Fatima. A glance passed between Hassan and Nimr, and she was swift to add, in a languid tone that belied her intention: “I saw the aeroplane, outside.”

  The effect was achieved. Hassan turned to look at her. “You could see it?”

  “Yes, it was flying over that way.”

  “Fa … they killed one of them, you know.” He turned back. “One of the British.”

  “And where are they now?”

  “Hiding,” said her mother.

  “The point I wanted to make,” said Nimr, with the tone of one who has suffered a long interruption, “is that one cannot be too stringent about these things.”

  “What things?” said Hassan.

  “Just as it is better to decentralise a government,” said Nimr, “so it is better to decentralise the application of religious laws, according to the needs of the civil society.”

  “We have literally been having this conversation for years,” said Hassan, reaching for a biscuit.

  Fatima appealed to her mother with her eyes. Widad refused to look at her, and lifted her chin.

  “When you exist within the state, civil laws, religious laws, they are like laws of nature,” said her father.

  He was now addressing only the French priest, who appeared to be the sole person listening. Hassan was brushing crumbs off his chest, oblivious to the piece of stewed fig lodged on his chin.

  “Only when we step
beyond and observe the edges, can we see they are buildings made by men, and they do not extend to infinity.”

  “B-buildings!” Hassan sputtered, “made by, by men!” He looked to the French priest to share his incredulity—but the priest had eyes only for Nimr.

  “The fellahin have this love,” Nimr went on, “of local saints and walis and leaders that are not, ya’ni, halal. But this is how laws stretch and change shape at the edges of the Islamic world.”

  Fatima stopped longing for the conversation to end. She had collected the necessary pieces, and now she dived in headfirst. “Baba, Haifa is not the edge of the Islamic world,” she said. “And the followers of Qassam are not only fellahin.”

  Her father studied her. Over the years, Fatima had earned the right to hold opinions that differed from his. She had become renowned for her reason, and her status during such discussions approximated that of a widow, who had earned her authority by age and the death of others. Except that no one had died, and Fatima was only thirty-two. Nuzha, by contrast, was never present during conversations like these and presumably would not know what to say if she was. All the same it was an expression of her youth that Fatima occasionally went too far. To contradict her father outright, and in company, even if that company consisted only of a relative and a holy man. She caught her breath, unsure if she should feel encouraged by the fact that the Frenchman beside her was nodding vigorously.

  “She is correct,” pronounced the French priest. He had a heavy accent. “In truth, I was in Haifa only last week, and I found that most people who are interested in the sermons of Qassam are workers. Railway workers, harbour workers, postal workers. It is only recent, this support among the villages.”

  Haj Hassan squinted at the priest’s beard, and his own jaw wobbled in anticipation of speech. “I can assure you, Abuna Antoine.” He raised a hand. “That these workers were originally fellahin. Fa, they are villagers who moved to Haifa when they lost their land. Hata I don’t know if worker is the right word, fa, most of them are unemployed. Mish heyk?”

  The Frenchman’s eyes rose to the ceiling as he digested this remark.

  “What I mean, baba,” said Haj Nimr to Fatima, smoothing with his tone the corner of her last remark, “is that they like a local leader. This is the fellahi mentality. They like a sheikh, a wali. Hala’ the two are combining fi Qassam, religious and political. This was not the way before.”

  “You’re not going to like me saying this,” said the Frenchman. On cue, Haj Hassan frowned. “But there are some studies on this at my school.”

  As though he had not heard, Nimr said brightly: “You will stay with the Ebal Girls in Nablus?”

  “Yes.” The Frenchman smiled. “But I’m not sure they are girls any longer.”

  Fatima saw a twitch pass through her father’s forehead.

  “Khalas Fatima.” Her mother was on her feet, making a big gesture with her hand, as though to a recalcitrant animal. “Ta‘ali, we’ll make the tea.”

  Fatima rose. To conceal her irritation at being taken away, she adopted a blank expression, just as she had done when she arrived at the front door twenty minutes ago, concealing her distress.

  After her morning with Sahar, Fatima had been unable to return home alone, so frightened was she of the building that might or might not have the evil eye upon it. She was also smarting from the incident in the garden, that view of her husband in the chicken coop with his earth-stained hands, Sahar a witness over her shoulder. Envy jostled shoulders with the evil eye, and yet Fatima coveted envy, and dreaded the loss of it. And who would envy the picture of her marriage that Sahar had seen? When Sahar left for Jenin, Fatima sought shelter in her parents’ house.

  She often came here when she felt perturbed, even though the house never turned out to be the shelter she needed. Of course it was unreasonable to expect the place to remain unchanged after she married, or somehow to revert to its old nature, yet she always hoped against the evidence of her last visit there that she might step through the doorway and find the mood of the building, the behaviour of its inhabitants, the colour of the ornaments, exactly as they were when she was seventeen. She yearned for the place where her status was secure, and where, most importantly, she was not responsible for maintaining it. Until she married, Fatima had been a prize, famous for being not yet won. Marriage meant someone had named her price. It did not matter that she herself chose her mate: in the eyes of Nablus she was appraised and evaluated, stripped of the precious mystery of being young and undefined. This was the reality she was forced to live under. Forgetting how much as a girl she had hated feeling amorphous, she looked back at her youth and saw, with what she thought were clear eyes, that the anticipation of glory had itself been the real glory, and should have been treasured.

  In such moments of distress, the changes in her parents’ house impressed Fatima powerfully, but the needs of her heart always prevailed over any memory of disappointment, and she never retained the facts. Ah, now she recalled: her mother, petulant where she used to be passionate. Her father, ossified where once he was flexible. Today he was belabouring his point about Qassam through the same old contours of his rigid cosmology, ignoring those facts even Fatima was aware of. After all these years of learning, of striving for clarity, Nimr had frozen halfway up the summit, and his ideas set in stone at some stage of their development, to be applied now to everything without discretion.

  Her mother sneezed as they entered the cold kitchen.

  “You wanted to talk alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it then. Yalla.”

  “I am just worried. And I’m tired.”

  “What’s happened?” Widad picked up a plate that was leaning on the sideboard and touched with her fingernail a fine crack in the lip.

  “There was a fire in my husband’s shop.”

  Her mother jerked up. “Mish ma’ool, a bad one?”

  “He says it is a small one.”

  “You think someone did it.”

  “I don’t know,” said Fatima, defensive. She circled the table. “I’m just nervous, that’s all.”

  “Don’t be. Inshallah kheir.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  Widad put down the plate. “What did your husband say?”

  “He said it was not a big problem,” said Fatima. She hated discussing Midhat with her mother. Midhat, in the field of their relations, was Fatima’s expression of free will. “I don’t know, Mama. I feel … I don’t know what.”

  “How are the children, then?”

  “Fine, the children are fine.”

  “You never bring them here.”

  “What do you mean? I brought them last night.”

  “But you don’t bring them with you, when you visit. You always come alone.”

  “Well, sometimes I need a rest, I don’t see why—”

  “You think there is a rest in my life?”

  “Leh Mama, why, you are so irritable …”

  “Excuse me Mama,” came the small voice of Selma, the maid, hunching in the door to the dining room. “There is someone outside.”

  As Widad reached for the door handle to the hall, Selma added:

  “No, sorry Mama, over here.” She gestured behind her, at the window that looked onto the kitchen garden.

  Widad followed her as far as the doorway, and then abruptly withdrew.

  “Who is it?” said Fatima.

  “I don’t know.”

  Fatima took her place and saw the long legs of a man pacing backward and forward along the flowerbed. The legs stopped, and the man stooped down to peer in through the window.

  “Jamil?” said Fatima. “That’s Midhat’s cousin.”

  Jamil jumped off the raised bed onto the ground, and waved at Fatima without smiling. He had the rangy, hollow-cheeked look of all the young radicals, with a scarf wrapped tightly around his neck.

  Widad appeared in a coat, and pushing past Fatima, unbolted and opened the casement window. “Why didn’t y
ou come in the main door?” she shouted.

  “No one was answering,” said Jamil. “May I speak to your daughter?”

  “What’s happened?” said Fatima.

  “I’m sorry, Madame.” He addressed Fatima over her mother’s shoulder. “Can we speak a moment?”

  “Do you want to come inside?”

  “Midhat’s had an accident.”

  “A what?” said Fatima.

  “An accident. You understand?”

  “Is he alive?” said Widad.

  “Yes yes, he’s alive.”

  Fatima tried not to run. She buttoned her coat with trembling fingers as she made her way to Jamil, who had gone to the front door and was waiting on the terrace.

  “Where is he?” said Fatima.

  “Take it slow,” said Jamil, speaking very fast. “He’s at my mother’s house, he’s fine now, he’s sleeping. We don’t know what happened.” They reached the lower gate and Fatima lifted the latch. “I think he hit his head. He is not …”

  “Not what?”

  “He is not … clear, ya‘ni. He is a bit …” He whipped a hand in front of his face.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Khalas you’ll see.”

  As they turned the corner onto the southern road to Gerizim, Fatima felt a great urge to hit Jamil.

  “Can’t you just tell me what happened?”

  “I don’t know what happened, I told you. You’ll see him in a moment.”

  Um Jamil opened the front door. Um Taher and Hani were sitting in the salon; Um Taher was rocking backward and forward on a chair.

  “He’s asleep!” she cried at the sight of Fatima. “You mustn’t wake him!”