The Parisian

by Isabella Hammad

  “How are you feeling?” she said to Sahar. “Do you want anything? You must stay here, you’ll sleep in my bed.”

  Sahar frowned. She said: “Thank you. I’d like a glass of water, if I may. I’ll come with you.”

  “No no no, you stay. Have you eaten enough?”

  “Plenty.”

  Fatima ran the faucet in the kitchen far longer than necessary. She gripped the cold edge of the sink, and the touch sent a chill down her body. The porcelain around the drain was covered in long scratches and a string of something green draped over one of the bars between the holes. At the sound of steps behind her, she roused herself and quickly filled the glass.

  “You should be resting,” she said, and then with surprise: “Oh, Teta.”

  “Habibti.” Um Taher limped into the glow from the window. The tautness of her face upstairs was gone; her cheeks were slack and her eyes shining. “I have to tell you.” She was out of breath. “We need to bring him back to Nablus. We need to bring him back …”

  “Sit, sit, take a seat.”

  Teta’s hands were shaking. “He said he killed someone.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry.” She managed a condescending smile. “He didn’t actually kill anyone.” The muscles in her face twanged flaccid and the smile dropped off. “He is just mad.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Trust me. I know.”

  “Who did he kill—or say he killed?”

  “He is not a murderer,” she said again with that same smile, as though Fatima had brought up this idea. “An idiot, maybe, not a murderer. Anyway, we need to get him out.”

  Fatima’s eyes fell from Um Taher’s face to her fingers resting on the table, firm and capable, as if the wrinkled layer were only a glove she had put on. She whispered: “How will we get him out?” and glanced up to check her expression.

  Um Taher’s voice rose, edged with a whine. “Why do I always have to do these things alone?” She opened her hands. “Why weren’t you with me, mama?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Fatima. “The children—”

  “You can leave the children with your mother! I hate that place, I hate … why Hani thought it was a good idea, why! We know whatever the ingliz make is not good, nothing is good that they make. Stupid.” She continued murmuring, until her eyes met Fatima’s and her screwed-up face relaxed. “Don’t cry,” she snapped. “If I thought you’d cry I wouldn’t have told you.”

  Fatima lurched. In a tone of glacial anger, she replied: “Um Taher, I said I’m sorry. I will come next time if that’s what you want. But Sahar is waiting for me upstairs, and she needs water. So, if you will excuse me.”

  “Oh, go,” said Um Taher, with a flap of her hand.

  Upstairs, Sahar was asleep. The weave of her fingers beneath her belly had collapsed open, and her unravelled hair lay down the chair back. Before Fatima could fetch a blanket, she pulled herself upright. “Ah. Thank you.”

  “It’s nothing.” Fatima set down the glass. She hovered as Sahar reached for it. “Has your husband said anything to you?” She heard her words as if spoken by someone else. “About my husband. About what happened?”

  Unless Fatima’s eyes were deceiving her, Sahar winced. But a moment later the discomfort appeared more likely physical than moral, given the desperation with which she drank the water, holding the glass with both hands in a manner that reminded Fatima of Ghada. Sahar finished and frowned. “What sort of thing do you mean?”

  “Anything,” said Fatima, desperately casual. Standing with one hand on the back of the chair, she gesticulated randomly with the other. “Anything you might remember.”

  “I’m sorry. It must be, I imagine, very difficult.”

  Fatima gave a voluntary smile. “It is difficult, yes. I’m sure you can see that. I’m sure it’s obvious.”

  “No, you manage very well. It’s only that I imagine it must feel hard. I find it hard, and I have only …”

  “I have my mother. And a grandmother-in-law.” She made an ironic face. “I am beset, in fact, with mothers.”

  Sahar smiled, and Fatima remembered with a flush that Sahar’s mother was recently deceased. She chased the silence with a rapid, unprefaced: “Allah yirhamha,” which did nothing to cool her hot brow. Though Sahar betrayed no sign she had noticed, and her smile resisted all projection, once more Fatima wondered at her own slipping social grace.

  “How is the shop?” said Sahar. “What happened after the fire? The damage must have been considerable.”

  “Eli—you know Eli? He came by the day before yesterday. They are almost finished with repairs, but the stock … the smell is too bad. They will throw it away. Not that it makes a difference. They can’t open.” In her neck and shoulders Fatima could feel the ghost of her mother’s mannerisms. That transparent overeagerness. She concentrated, and stripped her face of expression.

  “It is difficult,” said Sahar sympathetically.

  “I’m not complaining. This is more important. We all make sacrifices for sake of the larger …”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

  Fatima was silent. “I should take you to bed.”

  “There was a letter,” said Sahar.

  It was a moment before Fatima understood what she was referring to.

  “From who?”

  “A woman. From a long time ago.”

  The words hung in the air. Fatima stared without seeing. The point of a needle slid into the soft patch of flesh between her ribs. From a distance, she heard herself say:

  “Was she from France?”

  Sahar nodded. “It was in French,” she said quietly. “I didn’t read it. Hani …”

  “I don’t want to know about it,” whispered Fatima.

  A great weariness had come over her. She closed her eyes, and saw Midhat lying in his hospital bed. Of course, there would have been other women. Her chest ached.

  But, in a moment, all thought of Midhat was eclipsed by her awareness of the pregnant woman sitting before her. She turned her gaze back on Sahar, lying like a royal animal on the Damascene chair. Why had Sahar decided to tell her this? What was her motivation? Her mind scrawled charts of insidious narrative: Sahar was trying to poison her against her marriage, because her own husband was imprisoned. She was lonely, and loneliness made women vicious. Face turned aside, eyes still on Fatima, forehead troubled by a frown. She knew she should be leading Sahar up to bed, but Fatima couldn’t move. Something heaved and froze inside her. It was getting dark, the lamps needed lighting. Her ringed hand looked pale on the chair back.

  “Mama,” came a voice.

  Massarra was at the bottom of the stairs, one leg bent with a lingering foot behind her.

  “We’re hungry.”

  “What do you mean you’re hungry?”

  “We didn’t eat.”

  She followed her daughter’s eyes to the silver tray on the coffee table, the empty cups, the torn scraps of bread and the dish of oil and za‘atar, the plate of fig biscuits. Ghada appeared behind her sister on the stair and shouted with effortless volume: “Mama I’m hungry!”

  A noise exploded from Fatima’s mouth.

  “GO AND MAKE SOMETHING THEN!”

  Massarra did not flinch. She gave her mother a piercing look, and only a tremor passed through her lips.

  “You’re not a child,” said Fatima.

  “I know,” said Massarra.

  Fatima reached out and slapped her daughter across the face. Behind her, Sahar gasped. Ghada, on the stair, looked suddenly very small and wan. Massarra’s face went scarlet, and not only where the handprint was materialising on her cheek, but all over. A muscle pulsed in her jaw. She turned, saying: “Come on, Ghada.” Ghada hesitated. Then, accepting her sister’s hand, she followed her down the lower steps.

  Fatima remained with her back to Sahar, watching the spot where her daughters had been.

  “I’m sorry if I upset you,” said Sahar. “I thought it was good to te
ll the truth.”

  Fatima’s face started to mangle. She had no control, she half turned, hoping the dark was a sufficient shield. A staccato thud struck up in her chest.

  “You should rest,” she murmured. “Let me show you … your room.”

  7

  In the sights of Jamil’s rifle, the back door to the Sports Club was opening. He drew a breath, pushed all the air from his lungs, and deflated his body against the side of his weapon. His heart clanged. The wood panels on the door dropped slowly into shadow. He aimed at the widening column of darkness in the frame, his finger on the trigger. The door stopped. And then, with the same controlled slowness, the panels veered forth again into the sunlight. A final shove sent a minuscule shudder through the wood. Jamil lifted his finger. Beside him, Basil Murad blew out his cheeks.

  They were in a bedroom on the second floor of a house owned by the Karak family, two streets from the Sports Club. Madame Karak had pushed the beds against the walls, from which she also withdrew a mirror and several pictures. Jamil did not take well to this last gesture, and scoffed as Madame hurried out, hands full, eyes down, promising breakfast.

  Jacketless, he was lying on the floor before the open double doors to the balcony. The chequered locks of his kufiya hung down over his shoulders, and the barrel of his gun was nosed through the lowest curl of the balcony rail. His elbows were propped against a sandbag stolen from the post office. Basil—contrary to Madame’s wishes—lay belly down on the last bed abutting the casement window, which he had fractionally opened for the passage of his own rifle. On the floor between them lay a plate of quartered figs.

  It was June 1936: the third month of the general strike. The morning was overcast, the streets empty. The week before, they heard the British had bombed the old city of Jaffa, which, with its winding alleys and matrix of courtyards and back doors, had been rebel-ridden and impossible to occupy. Evacuation notices flew from the sky before the bombs did, describing the demolitions as “improvement measures.” After the first blasts, a road ten metres wide was paved from the Ajami police station to the sea. The Jaffa Strike Committee announced the damage was worse than that from an earthquake.

  In Nablus, the British had seized the shari’a court and the Sports Club. The latter building, at whose back door Jamil was currently training his rifle, had been the headquarters of the Nablus Strike Committee. Fortunately, no documents or equipment had been left on the premises. In fact, the resistance was so decentralised that no list of the committee members even existed: almost everything was word of mouth. This British triumph had not then struck the heart of the movement; nevertheless it was an insult and bad for morale. The Committee was now forced to meet in the auditorium of the disused cinema instead.

  “The roof,” said Basil.

  Jamil turned his eyes, sore from the blank sky. On the bed, Basil was steadying his gun with one hand and holding a pair of field glasses to his face with the other. They clashed lightly against his spectacles.

  “What’s there?”

  “Machine guns.”

  Jamil lifted his head and squinted at the Sports Club’s flat roof. Outlined against the sky, two black circles of machine gun barrels eyed him. He said nothing. He lowered his head back to his gun and stared at the door. Basil reached for a fig quarter.

  “They think we are getting help from the Italians.” Basil flicked the stem away. “I heard it from Issa, in the police.” He shut one eye and peered down his carbine. “Issa’s mother, actually.”

  With a tiny violent gesture, the back door of the Sports Club opened again. Jamil inhaled and exhaled fast, gripping the barrel.

  “Wait,” said Basil.

  “What?”

  “Roof.”

  In the doorway, a policeman appeared. Full garb: hard hat, gun ready, bare legs and putteed ankles below short trousers running to open the door of a military car parked a few metres off. One leg inside, the other gone, car door slam audible over the quiet distance. The engine revved.

  “Shit,” said Jamil. He turned his body fully and opened his hand. “Why did you stop me?”

  “The roof,” said Basil steadily. “There’s someone there.”

  Jamil tipped his gun up and stared along the barrel at the sockets of the machine guns. One sky-filled gap between the nearest barrel and the roof suddenly blacked, and the dark half-moon of that gun’s upper curve grew slightly. A person, casting a shadow. Without thinking twice, Jamil aimed at the gap and squeezed the trigger. The gun reported with a slap.

  “Shu!” said Basil. “What are you doing?”

  A cry: a body slumped over the gun and into view. Jamil shot the bolt back and forth and the spent cartridge rang on the tiles. He took aim again.

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Shit,” said Basil through the binoculars. “That was perfect.”

  The man’s hand dangled. His five white fingers, visible even to Jamil’s naked eyes, did not stir. Something else moved on the Sports Club roof. It slid along the ledge, a slender brown extension of the stone. The arm of a soldier in uniform. Jamil aligned the sights, fired.

  “Stop!” Basil hissed.

  “Did I get him?”

  Jamil reached for the binoculars, dragging Basil towards him by the lanyard around his neck, and turned the lenses on the place where the second soldier’s arm had been. Drips of red glanced down the stone. His heart jumped: no sign of the dead man’s hand, nor his mate’s. Yes, that was foolish.

  Basil slumped against the wall, careful with his boots on the bed. The bags under his eyes cast dark shadows, doubled by his glasses.

  A loud crack in the hall shot him to his feet. Jamil pulled the butt of his rifle against his shoulder. The door opened.

  “Bravo, ya shabab,” said Madame. She ignored the gun and crouched to set a tray between them. Two yellow glasses of mint tea, a pile of hot bread, a plate of cheese. She rubbed her hands on her apron, and wavered. “How long do you need to stay?”

  “Half an hour,” said Jamil. He reached for tea. “Maybe an hour.”

  “Thank you so much, Madame,” said Basil. “Really, God keep you safe.”

  “Not at all. Sahtayn.”

  Basil cleaned his spectacles on his shirt, and ripped a piece of bread.

  Jamil and Basil considered themselves crossover figures. Crossed between town and country, Nabulsi and fellah, strike and rebellion. Some newspaper editorials argued that where the civil disobedience of the general strike was the urban struggle, the armed uprising was the rural one, and the separation between the two both inevitable and lamentable. Jamil was determined to rectify this misconception. Young men from noble families had indeed taken up arms, and more were doing so by the day—especially in Nablus. Sure, most of the major battles were still in the mountains, but that was a question of terrain, of playing to their advantages as an agile people on the known crags, where the British blundered with their boots and bad maps. Until last week, was not Jaffa, that city of indecipherable streets, a rebel stronghold? A question of terrain: the British could not infiltrate. Ergo, they bombed it. Sure, some new reluctance was sprouting among the wealthy, some resentment at being ordered around by peasants, who were starting to threaten landowners and merchants with defamation and damage to property unless they handed over funds that only a month ago they had been donating with pride. If only they were being helped by the Italians: they were strung out on the dregs of their resources, grain stores ran low, Nablus was hungry. But since the army had made this incursion the townspeople were not waiting to be saved. The roads of Nablus were strewn with nails and broken glass to puncture English tyres. Under the arcades of the old city, people looked alert and touched their holsters. These two were not the only ones firing from upper bedrooms.

  Among other notables, Jamil and Basil were original members of the Nablus Strike Committee when it first convened in April. They still helped coordinate with committees in other towns, and with ancillary local ones that distributed grain, rice,
and sugar across Nablus, that funded the poor, prevented bankruptcy, monitored strike exemptions—including the cafés that opened at night for exchanging news, and pharmacies, which rotated so that one was available every twenty-four hours. But they also bore weapons. Jamil Kamal and Basil Murad were thuwwar. This was their third sniping operation, undertaken at their own initiative. Chief among the tactics they had learned from those refined veterans flowing in from Syria and Jordan and Lebanon was: after the shot, don’t move. They are watching for movement. Jamil had taken a big risk by shooting twice.

  Basil wrapped half a round of bread over a slice of cheese and resumed his vigil at the window, looking through the binoculars.

  “That was stupid.”

  Jamil rolled his eyes. They ached: he shut them. “Ya‘tik al-afieh.”

  “Allah ya‘afik.”

  He sipped his cooling tea. He had no appetite. He had risen earlier than necessary, and running the faucet in the dawn dark to splash his face woke his mother, who crept into the kitchen to berate him for not sleeping enough. “I sleep like the dead, Mama,” he said. But she was right. He had so feverishly compounded his duties as a bridge between the city and rebel commands, undertaking tasks that could have been delegated, that although he dropped off at night under a warrior’s fatigue he woke in the mornings with a chemical jolt, disturbed by a spectral image of victory. When he wasn’t plotting with Basil, he was on the telephone with leaders in Jerusalem, or with forces in Syria, tallying losses against victories and tracking arms deliveries over the Jordan River, where Arab patrols were bribed with hashish brought on camels from Latakia. He was not a public figure. He was not Hani Murad. He saw himself as a quiver of darkness; an actor and also a ligament; the fibre between fighter and fighter.

  Ever since he first saw death at the Nebi Musa riots sixteen years earlier, Jamil had longed to be doing. That pair of dirty corpses still lay in his memory. The moment he bore the weight of that dead Arab aloft, and the still-warm blood soaked into his jacket, was a tremendous, altering moment. With a great slow force over subsequent months this experience gradually changed Jamil’s sense of responsibility. And finally, now, the time for witnessing and suffering, of debating in assemblies and composing memoranda, was over. His arms grew full of blood; his stomach sharp. He so dissolved into his mission that the strains in his body became idiomatic of the struggle: the energy in his feet was Arab energy, his mind’s determination was Nabulsi determination, the weakness of his ankles Palestinian weakness, the ache in his bones a Palestinian ache. News of British violence gusted through him and flowered out as anger. Images remained: he saw the policemen flogging student protesters on their bare buttocks in a line outside the mayor’s office. Peasant women being searched for arms on the roadside and lewdly gestured at. A house demolished, the family holding their belongings beside the soldiers on the hillock, forced to watch as their home exploded. His rage pulsed. He tended carefully to the hearth of his fury: well-kept it fuelled him, but he was no help to anyone if his whole self went up in flames. His irritation at Basil about the second shot was really irritation at himself, because he could not afford to be rash. He bowed, penitent, over his tea, and forced himself to eat a piece of bread. His grateful stomach unclenched.