The Parisian

by Isabella Hammad

  “What happened to him?” said Fatima.

  Hani leapt up. In the daylight his hair looked very grey, and she noticed a bruise on his cheekbone. “We found him up there,” he said gently. “We found him, he was very distressed. Come.”

  He led her down the hall and stopped outside Um Taher’s bedroom. She turned the handle. “I’ll wait out here,” said Hani. Fatima nodded.

  The bed lay under the window on the far wall. She could see Midhat’s body rising and sinking with deep, regular breaths beneath the blankets. The glossy tip of his black head was just visible at one end. She approached. He was turned so entirely towards the window that she could see only the end of his eyebrow, and the bent cavity of his nostril, and his parted lips pressed onto the pillow. The mattress sighed with her weight. She touched the hair that had fallen over the side of his face and uncovered the slit of his closed eye.

  “What happened,” she whispered. She put her palm on his warm head: his eyelids flickered, but otherwise he did not stir. She ran her fingers around his hairline, examining it gently, as though she might find a wound.

  When she emerged, everyone in the salon turned to look at her. The men were standing, the women were sitting. She steeled herself and addressed Hani.

  “How did he hurt himself?”

  Hani exchanged a glance with Jamil. “We should see how he is in the morning.”

  “Probably the shock is a part of it,” said Jamil. “The fire, and so on. We heard him upstairs, he was very upset.”

  “What had he found?” said Fatima. She was thinking of the evil eye.

  Hani’s features were suddenly disfigured by surprise. For a moment he didn’t say anything. His eyes conferred with Jamil’s. “I’ll take her up there.”

  The light outside hurt her eyes. The sky was pale blue and the wind constant, so that what leaves there were left on the trees wiggled continuously. They circled the perimeter to the upper house and Wasfi answered the door.

  “Marhaba Fatima. How is he?”

  “Sleeping,” said Hani. “I want to show her the box.”

  “Tfadalu,” said Wasfi, and led them down the hall.

  Fatima rarely came to this house. When they visited Midhat’s family they went to Um Jamil’s, and Wasfi, if he was home, joined them down there. Now that she knew the story of Midhat spying on her in the salon, this house held for her a particular aura associated with that incident, so that she felt sensitive to its warren-like design, and the impression that every closed door was an aperture. Wasfi led them to Haj Taher’s old study and waited outside as Hani reached for something on the desk. It was a cigar box.

  “I found him looking at these things.” He spread his bony fingers over the top and opened the lid with his fingertips.

  Several items lay inside. She shook the box a little as she poked them. Two bronze models of women. A ring. A blank rag. And an envelope. She opened the envelope. Inside was a tintype of a house.

  “What are they?”

  “I have no idea,” said Hani.

  “There was nothing else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hani,” said Fatima. “Did he hit you?”

  Hani put his hand over the bruise on his cheek with a feminine gesture of recollection. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t think he meant to.”

  A current of shame shut Fatima’s eyes. On her closed lids she saw, with the exactitude of a real memory, a vision of her poor husband, lashing out, deprived of grace.

  Père Antoine left the Hammad house shortly after Haj Nimr’s daughter. The aeroplane was still weaving back and forth over the mountains: the English had not found the brigands yet. Certainly they would kill them when they did, if only as a lesson to the others.

  He sighed, and started walking. This visit to Haj Nimr Hammad was supposed to be a terminal milestone in his project: putting a published copy of his study of Nablus into the hands of a Nabulsi who would—or at least could—read it. During the research years, Haj Nimr had been one of his few aristocratic sources of information. As one of the hospital’s founders, he was on good terms with the sisters and, unlike some, quite willing to answer their friend’s questions regarding the town and its families. Although Nimr accepted the book with grace, however, Antoine detected his disinterest. It was the Nabulsi way of course, not to be direct. And since the manhunt for Qassam began only yesterday they had plenty of reason to be distracted, though that did nothing to abate the recurring sadness that nobody cared.

  As the road to the bus station sloped, the plane ducked behind the buildings. It purred loudly, mingling with the din of Antoine’s own body, his breath catching on the back of his throat, shooting through the piston of his nose, the tacks in his boot soles ringing out on the paving stones. He crested the hill and the noisy aircraft came again into view: a small white fleck, angles shadow-grey, beyond the sprawl of the mosque.

  He was put in mind of the Graf Zeppelin, which had looked even more bizarre when it flew over Jerusalem a few years ago. Everyone at L’École Biblique turned out to watch when at the culmination of a rainstorm the gigantic machine appeared at the edge of the sky. The weather gave the whole event the appearance of a miracle: the sun’s path through the thunderous firmament, the silver airship emerging from the mist and circling the old city four times, a vast tumescent pipe gliding over minarets and domes. One brother remarked that Jerusalem looked as though she was sunk beneath the sea, and this was a submarine coming to investigate the wreckage. A hundred metres above the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the zeppelin shut off its engines and unfurled a German flag, to applause and tumult all over the Mount of Olives. How much had changed in four short years. There was no chance the British would let the German zeppelins fly over Jerusalem now, with those black hooked crosses painted on their fins.

  The bus reached Jerusalem at dusk. The police station was quiet when Antoine arrived.

  “Evening, father.” The guard set down his newspaper. “You’re here late.”

  The lamp on the front desk wore a fur of dust.

  “I would like to hand in my report.”

  “Michaels is in the back office.”

  Antoine breathed heavily along the corridor. Now that his scholarly work on Nablus was complete, his work as an informant should also be coming to an end. He was sixty-seven, and considering retirement in Nablus. Sister Louise had died of typhoid three years ago, and he was the only one who fought to keep her body there. Nablus was her home, he urged Sister Marian: it was only right to bury her in the Catholic cemetery, here at the foot of Mount Ebal. But the sisters had been given their instructions from the family, and would not deviate, and so the body was shipped at great expense back to France. Since then, Marian had taken Louise’s place as Antoine’s primary contact in the Order, but of course she could never provide him with the same solace and companionship. Reflecting upon it now, Antoine considered Louise the only person he was ever truly familiar with. He may have lost the battle over her burial, but to stay in Nablus with the sisters these days was the same to him as to visit her graveside and lay flowers by her name.

  Naturally, Père Lavigne would expect him to retire at the convent in Jerusalem. But Lavigne’s health was deteriorating rapidly, and now that Antoine no longer had Louise, he was not sure he could bear to watch his mentor age and die also.

  Michaels glanced up as he entered. His spectacles looked very small on his face. The lamp cast a sharp yellow circle on his desk.

  “Father, good evening. You’re here late.”

  “Good evening, Inspector. I have brought my report.”

  “Pop it over there, would you.”

  “I want to add something—to do with this sheikh, Qassam.”

  Michaels set down his pen.

  “I have been visiting with a high family in Nablus today, they were discussing the sheikh and the hunt for him and his men. There was mention of women carrying weapons to the mountains.”

  “This is in your report?”

  “No,
I only heard it this afternoon.”

  “I see.” He looked thoughtful. “And is there any more on the arms trafficking?”

  “In the report. One source, a patient in the hospital, says weapons are being brought over the Jordan River. From the Bedouin tribes. I need to acquire more details.”

  “Try to get some dates. And times. I’ll put the other agents on it as well.”

  Antoine had never told Sister Louise about agreeing to help the British. This was despite the fact that her very allusion to doing likewise had convinced him to. “Take it from me,” she had said, “it is not worth it.” It was also that allusion, however, that set in motion his withdrawal from her confidence. Her words had provoked in him a feeling of shame, which soon afterwards became intolerable. In those few seconds Louise had demonstrated the steep imbalance in their intimacy: how much he had always shared with her, and how little she with him.

  Michaels was Hodges’s replacement, and he began their alliance by asking for quite basic information about Nablus: local demography, economic activity, famous personalities. As the situation became more heated, Antoine supplied more targeted intelligence. But in general the Brits seemed too concerned about Communism among the Jews to pay much heed to intelligence about the Arabs. They were not at first perturbed, for instance, by Antoine’s report on arms shipments from Transjordan, which he had drawn from snippets overheard at the hospital. “Just keep an eye,” said Michaels. “You mean an ear,” said Antoine.

  Do not get involved, it is not worth it. Antoine still returned to the words, heard them again in her voice, half-murmured, like an afterthought. He often wondered what her role had been, whether for the British or the French, and what about it so enervated her that she should warn him off. For the truth was that although he considered the British a little incompetent, Antoine did not find their work a burden per se. It rather relieved him of a burden—that of observing Nablus, of witnessing the ferment of unrest and permitting its path to violence unbridled. Informing was a moral valve: he helped keep danger in check. Last month, for instance, he had reported a conversation between four upper-class Muslim ladies in which one woman suggested a secret plan was afoot. It soothed his soul that he might have played even a small role in the path of that aeroplane flying over the trees.

  Fifteen years had passed since he began his monograph on Nablus. The final writing, the terminal act of composing into chapters and indices the product of ten years’ notes had sent him into a rapture, a particular concentrated bliss that only heightened the loss of it, and made of his return to self a fall. Although in the end, despite Lavigne’s encouragements, the study had no ostensible bearing upon the Christian faith, Antoine’s analysis was nevertheless precise and thorough, and he was proud of how clearly he had portrayed the city’s preservation by its two mountains, analogous to the way the desert preserved the Bedouin. His research about female oppression was also highly original, especially given the many obstacles to direct contact with Nabulsi women. His secret weapons were, of course, the hospital and his priesthood. Christian or no, everyone in this place trusted a holy man. Indeed most of his intelligence for Michaels came from the same sources.

  None at L’École had remarked upon the publication, however. Returning from France with printed copies he had presented a condensed version of the monograph at the Palestine Oriental Society on a panel alongside the flora of the Galilee and the grammatical qualities of various ancient verb forms. Attendance at these meetings had shrunk; the age of observation that Père Lavigne had inaugurated was already over. What had it been? Some sense of common purpose, was it? Or was he already misremembering? There was a polite discussion in the tea break afterwards, and Lavigne, long beyond ability for any serious debate, drawn from his shell to hear his old pupil speak, smiled and kissed his cheek. That was all.

  Now his gaze must turn upwards. Louise was gone; heaven was the place of honour. He had wished to remain outside of society in Palestine, and thus he had remained. Every clue, followed as though he was going to find out, had led, where? To a publication which very few, in all likelihood, would ever take the time to read. And yet, by God, how halcyon even the research years seemed from this distance! That Muslim town had run a plumb line through his life. He was exhausted, he needed to retire—and yet at the prospect of ending his informing also, of cutting off his final path through Palestine, a pall hung over everything and he couldn’t help it, he hankered after his last illusions of duty as for a return into grace.

  Candles adorned the tables in the convent dining room. Over stew and rice, a Franciscan and a Dominican were debating the unity of the Church before an audience of wide-eyed seminarians. Père Lavigne dripped brown sauce down his beard and stared glassily into the distance. After dinner, Antoine skipped Mass, and dragged his feet to the dormitory building. A messenger caught him in the shade.

  Qassam dead. Please go back to Nablus. J.M.

  He left early the next morning. The bus reached Nablus just after eleven o’clock, and after alighting, Antoine passed the Atwan soap factory and noted that its advertising pillars of soap had been dismantled and the storefront was padlocked. The post office was also barricaded. He crossed the rickety bridge over the railway line and in minutes was among the well-scrubbed buildings, late-flowering beds, and fruit trees of the northern quarter. This was a chic neighbourhood now, relatively unspoiled by the earthquake. Lights shone in the windows of the sisters’ residence: Antoine had a sensation of returning. Jerusalem was strange, France even stranger; Nablus was his home.

  Hand on the gate, he caught a spasm of voices from inside. The door opened at his first knock and Sister Marian wafted him in. Two other sisters flew like pigeons up the stairs and the icons clattered on the walls.

  “What is going on?”

  “Oh—Père Antoine.” Marian thumbed the wimple at her temples. There was a basket at her feet, covered in a blanket.

  “Sister Marian I need the—” said a younger spectacled nun with sharp, modelled features. “Oh goodness.” In her arms she was carrying a cloth bandolier of bullets.

  Antoine’s vision sharpened. He stared.

  “Father, I’ll explain,” said Sister Marian. “But—you must be discreet when the soldiers arrive, or we’re in danger.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “When they come,” she said, directing him into the dining room, “we will all be serene.”

  Antoine sat at the dining table, as beside him Sister Marian pressed her hands into a prayer. He watched her murmuring lips. With a shift of horror, he realised he had made an error.

  As Sister Marian had predicted, in the morning there was a hammering on their door. Seven soldiers arranged themselves along the banister.

  “Might we ask a few questions?”

  The nuns were serene. Above all, Antoine was struck by how off guard the young soldiers seemed, how unsettled and at a loss, grasping their hats beside their guns. Nestled in that request for information, he fancied he heard a yearning for comfort rather more general; comfort of the kind men usually sought in a holy woman and the folds of her habit. And in that, naturally, he recognised a spectre of his younger self. It pained him, thinking of Sister Louise, and he receded with a glow of anguish and his usual facility at disappearing into an inconspicuous corner of the dining room.

  This room. It was at this table, around which the soldiers were drawing out chairs, that Antoine had confessed to Louise he was tempted to inform for the British. Why it never occurred to him, then or afterwards, that she might have already taken the opposite stance, he didn’t know. But then, why had she never told him? Perhaps she knew about his decision and kept her secret accordingly—he bowed his head—yes, that did seem likely. One could not, in the end, fault her for that.

  Sister Marian was pulling a sympathetic face. As capable as Sister Louise had been, Marian was, if possible, an even more perfect performer. She supplied some platitudes about the nature of the Arabs while pouring coffee into seven t
iny cups.

  When at last the soldiers departed, Antoine mounted the stairs without a word. Beyond his bedroom window a goatherd was coaxing a sluggish flock along the alley, and behind his closed door the sisters whispered in the hall. He wondered if he had mistaken them, if their Order was propelled by French interest after all, and intent on undermining English rule. That did not seem plausible.

  He pressed his fingers against his mouth and faced the thought he had been avoiding. At root there must exist some profounder alliance between the sisters and the Arabs. Louise saw something in them he had not seen. With a cold rush he cast his eyes up at the Virgin propped above the window, cloaked in her painted rays of yellow light, and wondered whether, had he known the truth earlier, he might have felt differently about Nablus. How strange all this was! He covered his stinging face with his hands. That his opinion of an entire people could in the end be so mutable, so subject to the opinions of his peers. No, not his peers: Louise.

  The funeral for Qassam was held the following day at the mosque on Haifa’s docklands. Antoine and the sisters read about the thousands who trooped towards Haifa from all over the country, delaying the ceremony by over an hour.

  “A sign of what is to come,” said Sister Celine, squeaking against the wicker of her chair.

  The French-language broadsheets were spread over the dining table. Now that he was in their confidence, the sisters held back nothing. Antoine marvelled at Sister Celine’s prophesy. A sign of what is to come?

  “What was he like?”

  “Qassam?” said Sister Marian. “Quite intelligent. Frightening. Charismatic, obviously.”

  “You know,” he said, “the Palestine Oriental Society have been rather foolish. I have often heard them claim the Arabs have no public opinion. They picture them as a crowd of morons ruled by their elites.” He pointed at the aerial photograph. “And now look. The inert multitudes have organised of their own accord.”

  But his grimace belied his frame of mind. He listened with perplexed clarity to several memories of himself reciting adages that bore a painful affinity to those opinions he was now claiming to disdain. This Muslim city, “lost in the mountains.” “Divided”—the remembered words moved again on his lips—“from the great movement of the world.”