“I wish I could see your face,” said Jeannette.
He reached for her hands and pressed them together.
“But I’m here,” he said.
The panic was starting to rise.
“Sometimes I think I feel you in my breath.”
“I wish I could be in the clinic in Jerusalem,” said Henryk.
Midhat looked round. Henryk was sitting up in his bed, rubbing his eyes.
“I heard they have treatments there that send you into a coma. I am so tired of being awake.”
“Jeannette?” said Midhat.
“Who is Jeannette?”
Midhat held out his hands. He felt the air.
“Well, why did you not go to Jerusalem, then!”
“It was too expensive,” said Henryk. He sounded offended.
Midhat looked over and saw Henryk draw his hand under the cover and pull it out again. In his palm lay a gold disc. He rubbed his thumb along the edge. It was a pocket watch. He popped the clasp to reveal the face and began to wind the tiny crown. Midhat stared. The mechanism rasped and ticked. He could see the numerals from here—they were written in Arabic. His heart pummelled against his lungs.
Slowly, he said: “Where did you get that?”
“Get what?”
“That.” He pointed. “That watch.”
“Oh, this?” said Henryk. “This was a gift.”
“Who gave it to you?”
The surprised expression on Henryk’s face was mixed with something else. Interest. He was looking at Midhat with interest.
“Why do you ask?” he said. “It was a gift from a friend.” His pompous mouth hung much further open than was necessary.
“Can I see it?”
“No.”
Midhat waited a moment. Then: “Please.”
“Why would I give it to you?” said Henryk. “I don’t want you to take it.”
Midhat’s entire body propelled round in his covers until he was facing Henryk fully. “What was your friend’s name?”
“Serena.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“You are manic,” said Henryk. He looked delighted.
In a much cooler tone, as if it had just occurred to him, Midhat repeated: “Who gave you that watch?” But the ruse was sabotaged by the hand that now reached out uncontrollably from his bed. “Let me see it. Let me see it.”
“It’s mine.” Henryk laughed. “You can’t have it. You think I would give something as precious as this to a mad Arab? Are you out of your mind?”
“Give it to me! Give it to me!” He was out of the bed. His fingers found Henryk’s neck, he pressed hard on the clavicle and the eyes bulged and the face began turning red. Hands pushed up at Midhat’s chest but they were too weak. His enemy strained in Polish, and then in French.
“LCHEZ-MOI! LCHEZ-MOI!”
Someone grabbed Midhat’s wrists, someone else his torso. He was dragged back to the bed, his ankles and arms were pressed down into the mattress.
“No, no, no.” His voice gurgled in his throat. Four nurses were holding him down. His chest was burning. “I killed him, I killed Laurent.” He gulped the air. “For nothing. I killed him for nothing.”
6
Ghada Kamal loved funerals. When school finished at three o’clock she listened for the sound of drums, and if passing out through the school gates she heard them—even faint, far-off—she would follow. Surveying the road for any hint of unusual commotion, straining over the motorcars for the report of sad voices—there, the pace of traffic slowing, pedestrians diverted down an alley—Ghada, scampering along with her empty sandwich case clutched to her chest; one corner turned and then another, coming at last upon the mourning procession in their black and dark blues, men first, women second, drums third, the chief mourners by the body taking turns to lead the others in the chant, “There is no god but God,” and the echo from the rest, “There is no god but God,” Ghada slipped into their ranks and, overwhelmed by the sheer immensity of noise, jubilantly stalked the coffin all the way to the cemetery.
One good thing about staying at Sido Nimr and Teta Widad’s house while Baba was away was that it was closer than home both to her school and to the centre of town. The bad thing was there was only one entrance. At home she used to climb the bottom gate and pretend she had been in the flowerbed the whole time, but Sido’s garden wall was too high, which meant that when she rang the doorbell she gave herself away; and when she did not ring it she also gave herself away, since her mother consulted the members of the family over whether or not they had heard the bell, and thus found out with ease whether her youngest daughter was in the house. Massarra would equivocate on Ghada’s behalf: “I don’t know, perhaps I heard it, perhaps I didn’t,” but Taher kept an ear out on purpose. “Where is Ghada?” her mother asked. “Is Ghada home yet?”
“Ask who died today,” Taher replied. “Ghada will be with them.”
The truth of the matter was, their mother did not actually seem to mind that much. What bothered Ghada, rather, was that it seemed increasingly she couldn’t do anything without everyone knowing about it. She supposed this must be a hazard of growing older.
Her mother had informed them, drifting into their bedrooms at Sido’s in a beige nightgown, that they would continue staying at their grandparents’ house until their father returned. Ghada puffed without speaking, then threw herself onto her bed. She heard Massarra ask when he was coming back, and the answer: “I don’t know.”
Baba had already missed Ghada’s seventh birthday. “You know you are only one day older, not one year older. It’s an illusion,” Khaled had said. It was also the day they announced the general strike, which meant her birthday was completely ruined, since of course that was all any of the guests talked about when they came round for cake. The calamity of Ghada’s life was that when she wanted to be noticed she was ignored, and when she wanted to be ignored she was noticed.
But other than gunfire at night, since her birthday the streets had been unusually quiet. When she went out funeral-walking Ghada found the shops closed, their metal shutters pulled across and padlocked, the ground cleared of refuse and the husks of merchandise, the ribbons and papers and empty boxes that ordinarily littered it at close of market day. And apart from the occasional band of armed fellahin marching through the town, there was no sign of anyone striking anyone else. She wondered, dragging the skein of wool she called her “cat” up an empty hill towards the Eastern Cemetery, whether the men of Nablus had gone to Jerusalem to strike people there. She pictured her father at Damascus Gate, hitting someone with his stick. Whatever the cause, the new quiet made it easier than usual to pick out the funereal drums, and catch up with the coffins before they reached their graves.
Christian funerals she loved most of all, because they played music as well as the percussion. She gazed at the faces of the musicians, transfixed by the lightning movements of their fingers. She strode with confidence and no one doubted that she knew the dead. With the cemeteries she was certainly familiar; she knew the profiles of their headstones as one might know the skyline of town on the ride home. She knew the Christian graveyards around the different churches, the Orthodox and Roman monuments and cenotaphs, and the Western Muslim Cemetery where her mother’s family were buried, their tombs regularly replastered white, and the Eastern Cemetery, to the north near Ebal and the railway station. After the coffin containing the dead person had been lowered into the earth, and the sheikh or priest had emitted some holy words, Ghada trod out between the headstones and walked back to her grandparents’ house through the quiet street.
One afternoon in June, after the congregants had departed, Ghada remained peering in through the archway of the Greek Orthodox Church. A late rain conjured a rich smell out-of-doors and her shoes were muddy from the graveyard. But from inside the church the fumes of incense still emanated, dregs from the tinny censers which minutes before had been swinging up and down the aisles. The priest was the only one left. In
long black robes and hat, beard sprawling from the curtains of his habit, he was lighting the tapers, stroking the wicks with the end of his thin candle to impart the flame.
The days were getting longer. And yet, owing to a lingering warmth in the wet air, Ghada did not anticipate the onset of night. Only when the call to prayer reverberated from the minarets did she notice the light changing behind her. She gasped. Her first instinct was to run, and she would have done so, had not the street before the church filled up at that very moment with other people running.
She took a breathless step back under the arch. In the half-dark the runners accumulated. Kufiyas whipping behind their heads, feet hitting the ground. She could hear the clothes rustle against their bodies, and the clicks of things they were carrying. She gripped her sandwich case and kept still. The runners thinned, now only two or three passed at a time. There was something weird about the scene, and it was a moment before she understood that it was because no one was speaking. A fusillade of gunshots started up in the distance, and a few fellahin ghost-men increased their speed. Across the way a woman appeared in a doorway. She stepped to the side, and three running men passed into her house without dropping pace.
“What are you doing here, little one?”
Ghada looked up. The priest was pressing the heel of one hand against the armpit of the arch. His eyebrows were big and put his deep eye sockets in shade.
“Where are your mother and father?”
Ghada’s face stretched open.
“Don’t cry. No, no, no.”
Tutting and pouting the way childless people pouted at children, he crouched to pick her up, and then she was in the air with his arms around her waist, being carried into the church. Tears erupted forcefully from her eyes, her only dam against fear crumbling at this first sign of kindness.
“Do you know where you live?”
“Of course I know where I live!” she broke out, full of scorn.
“We will wait,” he whispered, gesturing at the door, “until the rebels are hidden.”
Two big armoured vehicles appeared in the proscenium of the doorway, mounted with torches that beamed along the road. At last, voices. English shouts.
The hard polished wood of a pew met Ghada’s backside, and the priest, after closing and bolting the doors, crouched again before her with an agility one did not associate with priests; he was talking again but she could not hear him, she was too preoccupied with her tears, which were relentless and very tiring. The harsh fibres of a rag rubbed the underside of her nose. And then he was beside her, sitting on the pew. Gunshots screamed beyond the doors; he tried to put his big old hands over her ears but she pushed them away. By the time silence fell and she had stopped crying, nighttime was absolute. The priest dragged open the door on the black night, and gestured for her to climb into his arms.
As they walked, he sang loudly. “Irahamna ya Rab—iraham-na. Li-an-nuna mutaha-yru-un-a an ku-u-u-ul-i jawab.” A slow, plodding melody, very solemn. Ghada, hugging his neck, experienced the deep vibrations in her side, as the sandwich case, which he was holding in one hand beneath her legs, beat against his thigh. They passed a group of soldiers peeping through the windows of a house, and the priest increased his volume. The soldiers glanced up like animals and stared; the priest added some English words to the song, which Ghada recognised from school: “Glory to the Father, the Son, the Spirit—Holy.” The soldiers lost interest.
When he dropped her at the gate, she whispered: “Thank you, father.”
“Goodnight.” The sandwich case dangled from his fingers. For a brief second he touched the top of her head. She was halfway up the steps when his singing restarted. In the thin light from the windows the skirt of his black robe swayed from side to side.
Her mother opened the door. “Where in God’s name have you been!”
“The priest brought me home.”
“Priest?” She slammed the door. The wings of her nose flared. “No more funerals! No more! If you don’t come home immediately after school the Ghuleh will follow you and she will eat you. She will eat you.”
Ghada eyed her mother’s features. That neck, stretched by rage. She looked terribly ugly.
“Where has Ghada been?” Taher was in the hall, dressed in a tweed suit and tarbush too large for him.
“Go away,” said Ghada.
“Don’t tell your brother to go away.”
Taher cracked a smile and walked off singing in English: “Ghada had a little mare, its coat as white as snow. And where that mare and Ghada went, we’re jiggered if we know.”
“Where did you learn that?” said Fatima.
The boy shrugged. “Oozelbart, Oozelbart, where have you been? I’ve been to Damascus to see Haj Amin.”
“Stop speaking English.”
Ghada pushed her way past her mother, and when she met no resistance, ran up the stairs to the bedroom. Massarra was sitting in the window, darning a hole in her skirt, which was hitched over her thighs. She glanced up as Ghada entered.
Ghada lay flat on her back, awaiting her punishment. She listened for footsteps, and, each time they approached, held her breath. Each time, they travelled past the door. She turned to face the wall. The wind crooned and a light rain ticked over the windowpanes.
When she woke, it was morning. Her sister was gone. A blanket lay on top of her, and lifting it Ghada saw she was still in her clothes. Someone had taken her shoes off and put them on the floor.
She changed her knickers, and without touching the caked mud on her shoes slipped them on, took a piece of cheese from the kitchen, and left the house. There was no sign of her mother. The morning was cool and bright. A few cars travelled down the road; there were no pedestrians. A tangle of armed soldiers adorned the back of a Ford Tender, draped over their guns. They ignored her. She paused at the tip of the road from Sido’s house. Then she turned up the higher road, which led to their old home.
As she walked, she imagined Baba would be there. Her evil mother was keeping her from him. Partway down the street, the force of longing took hold of this fantasy, so that as the corner of the house came into view she started to run, ready to jump into his arms. She slowed, laughing, breathless, at the door.
The shutters were closed. The air cooled in the shadow of the tree. The blank door goaded her. Yet her craving for Baba was strong, and she ran a hand against the rust and peel of the iron rail and mounted the steps to try the handle, but the cold iron sweated in her fingers and would not give. Then something made a noise. In the house, near the house, she didn’t know—she scuttled down the stairs and ran. The road felt longer this time, and her legs hurt, her shoes smacked the ground. At the junction she slowed to a walk, her heart still going.
“I was looking for you,” said Sahar, on the doorstep. “Your neighbour told me you were here.”
It was early afternoon, and Fatima was not expecting visitors. Sahar was visibly sweating from the heat.
“Are you sure you should travel like that?”
“There are many things I probably shouldn’t do.” Sahar sighed, and spread her fingers over her pregnant belly.
They sat in the large main room, Fatima on the couch facing the door, Sahar in a chair at an angle. The swelling had reached her neck and she had the heavy, bovine look of one overwhelmed by the activities of her body.
“Please.” Fatima pointed at a bowl of dates. “Were there many soldiers?”
Sahar nodded. “On the road from Jerusalem. I saw a train overturned.”
“Al-hamdulillah. How is your husband? Is he still detained?”
“Yes. I have only heard a little. I know he is active. Writing to the British, and the Higher Committee. Working, in other words. He told me,” she began to laugh, “he told me they are meditating every day. That it is the only way to cope.”
“Do they get fresh air?”
“Yes, they go outside,” said Sahar.
“I heard this is important.”
“And Midhat?”
“Ah good, good.”
Fatima scrutinized Sahar. The person she really yearned to talk to was Hani. She longed for his reassurance that everything would be fine, it would be over soon, Midhat was only temporarily disturbed and would soon recover. For, apart from his famous wisdom, Hani knew Midhat better than anyone else did. She needed to be told there was a rational cause. Midhat was usually the one who would tell her that. It was becoming hard to keep her balance without him, paying for paltry vegetables in other people’s living rooms, the constant fear of disaster, teetering on the edge so that she rose breathless in the mornings without appetite. Although she was living with them now, her parents brought no solace. Her father was too detached to discuss anything with her, and her mother’s historic reserve against Midhat was transparent and abiding.
She could not formulate any of this into a question. She was so used to wearing her polished social armour, requiring nothing, that though she desired Sahar’s comfort she did not know what to do with her desire. After several seconds of contemplating, she realised Sahar was smiling, and understood that something on her face must have conveyed proximity to speech. She said:
“How long do you think the strike will last?”
“I think they will make concessions in a month or two.”
“They?”
“The British.” Sahar shifted her leg with a heavy jerk and released a breath. “You know some people say, well, if we are in the right then of course they must see sense. They have this idea of British justice, you know. But to be honest with you Fatima, I think they are shocked, the British, we have shocked them, and this is the only thing that may make them relent. They call it crime. Mish ma’ool. If to want a nation is a crime,” she laughed, and for the first time her weary voice rose in pitch, “we are all criminals! They should lock us all up.”
The Parisian Page 52