The Parisian

by Isabella Hammad

  People gossiped about betrayal. How else could the army have known where their car would be, and at what time? These things did not happen in the dead of night by chance. Of course there were myriad ways a plan might leak without deliberate malfeasance: an indiscretion on the telephone, a chance word to a taxi driver, a peasant who saw the car and told a policeman without knowing what he did.

  Hani arrived on the fourth day to give condolences. He had had an operation on his jaw, with several teeth extracted, and was struggling to speak. Regardless of this, he was quickly besieged by other guests, who wanted to know about the progress of the talks in Jerusalem. It became clear over the course of the afternoon that something more was expected of Hani, whose presence conferred a particular solemnity onto the occasion. And so he took it upon himself to deliver a few words, in the phlegmatic, professional manner of one whose opinion is always in demand. His words on Jamil’s martyrdom had a far greater effect on the mourners than any of those delivered by the imam, who stood aside, nonplussed, while this gentleman in a kufiya spoke softly from one side of his mouth.

  “Our brother Jamil joins the souls of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam,” said Hani, “of Mohammed Bashir, Sheikh Yassin, Sadiq Zakaria, and Ahmad Maalouani, Ahmad Sheikh Said and Sa’id al-Masri, and countless others. All men who have fought bravely in the name of freedom against oppression. Jamil is a soul of great fortitude, and commitment, and bravery, and he will be rewarded by God in Paradise, and, as in the words of Ibn Masud, the Believer will have no rest until he meets God.”

  After his speech, Hani came to kiss Midhat. It was the first time they had seen each other since that day in Haj Taher’s study. Hani smiled, and neither spoke.

  The trouble must have shown on Midhat’s face because Hani reached and held his cheek. As he did so, Teta caught Midhat’s eye: she was in the hallway, watching him. So, he noticed with alarm, were Wasfi and Abu Jamil. Tahsin was speaking to one of the neighbours, moving his hands in wide circles, but his eyes shifted upwards and he looked at Midhat. Teta questioned him with a tiny shake of her head, and he forced a smile.

  “Is the revolt really ending?” he said.

  “It seems that way,” said Hani. “We hope so.”

  “I slept through it all,” said Midhat. He examined Hani’s tired face, thinking of his cousin. He wondered whether Jamil had thought of him at all, during his last days. He hoped not. He did not think he deserved Jamil’s thoughts.

  Hani smiled and opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say, he seemed to decide against it. With a chill, Midhat looked into his friend’s eyes and understood very clearly that Hani had seen the letter. But instead of shame, he felt, to his surprise, an almost unbearable sensation of relief. As though an immense wall were in the act of falling. The wall fell, and there he was. Standing on the other side. He felt the air on his face. He tried to speak, but could not.

  “Everything will be better from now on,” said Hani. “The worst is over.”

  Midhat nodded. Finally, he mumbled: “Praise be to God.”

  Hani kissed his cheek. Midhat looked down, stunned. With the energy of a new bad habit he reached into his mind for Jeannette. The vision of her in the hospital grew colder each time he reached for it, but he could not stop himself. He concentrated, trying to see her. He squeezed Hani’s shoulder.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “God with you,” said Hani.

  Midhat moved off towards the window. Her fading from his memory might, it occurred to him, simply be in the nature of the mystical. These things did not stay. Or was it rather—he touched his eyes with his fingers—was it that calling delusions by divine names was just a way to cope with yet another unutterable loss? He looked up as Fatima appeared in the doorway. Her powdered face, her knee-length blue dress, her brown leather shoes, all lit by the garden behind him. Time was a treacherous distance, and it would not be crossed but through the dangerous substitutions of the imagination. He reached. His hand brushed her neck. Fatima eyed him, appraising. No, it could not be resolved. For there she was, and there she was.

  Ghada had been tracing her finger over the leaf design on the hall tiles to disguise the fact that, really, she was watching her father as he moved about the room, talking to different people, standing alone and staring. Every so often, she wiped her finger on the back of her sock.

  He was quite as elegant as she remembered, dressed in his black suit with a blue tie. He did seem older, and a little less fat—but that might have been because of the photograph in the salon, which had, during his long absence, replaced her memories of his real body. In the photograph, Baba was sitting at a table, looking quite stout. She knew enough now about perspective to recognise that this was in part because of the angle. One of her recent discoveries was that when things were further away they were smaller, and when they were nearer they were larger, and her father’s legs loomed in the foreground of the photograph, and his foot was huge. He wore a linen suit and was reading a book, with a cat beside him. He was staring at the camera, head resting on his hand, but he did not look as though he were really seeing. Rather, his mind seemed elsewhere, although at the same time, when she pulled the photograph close to her face, she could see that his lips were a little stuck out, as though about to say something. Perhaps the word “and.” Once, while she was holding the picture close to her face, she did not notice her aunt Nuzha entering the room. Nuzha whipped the picture from her hand, ignoring Ghada’s outrage, and said: “I think this one was staged by the photographer. He is dressed too elegantly for reading. And that cat is sitting too perfectly. It must be fake.” Although Ghada knew her aunt was not deliberately trying to annoy her, she sucked her teeth and huffed her breath. How poorly Nuzha understood her father, who always dressed elegantly, even for bed.

  She lifted her gaze, holding this photograph in her mind to compare it with the man before her. Baba laughed softly at something Hani said and the expression she recognised from the picture returned. He looked up at the distance, lips slightly pursed as if to say “and.”

  Khaled was the one who told her where he had been all this time—and at first she did not believe it. Then a new nightmare had taken hold that Baba might never return. Or he might return a madman, or another person completely, pretending to be him.

  She looked up again, with an instinct that he might run away. He was talking to a man she didn’t know now, with a tall tarbush and grey in his hair. Baba’s lips began to move, and from the way he was waving his hands she knew he was telling a story.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to run an errand.” Midhat touched Ghada’s hair. The guests were gone; the afternoon was almost over. “But now, you know if Mama asks where I am, you must tell her I’m in the garden. Mashi? I’m looking at the chickens.”

  Ghada covered her mouth with both hands. Midhat put on his coat and selected a cane, and stepped out of the house.

  The street was hot, and the air, alive with flies, smelled strongly of wild, dry thyme. At the intersection, the thoroughfare was as quiet as a Friday. He walked quickly in the shade. Something thin and black on a rooftop caught his eye. It moved, and revealed itself as the shadow of something pushed by the wind.

  The route to the hospital took him near the road to Nouveautés Ghada. He hesitated at the bend with the corner of Barclays Bank just in sight. The fire at Nouveautés seemed so remote—now every shop in Nablus was closed, and that was the least of their worries. This, he supposed, must be catastrophe’s slim gift, to make other terrors seem from its vantage comparatively light.

  A pattering struck up behind him and he turned. Something white was running down the hill.

  “No, Papi, go home!” he shouted.

  “I’m coming with you!”

  “Ghada, go home.”

  Ghada’s scrubbed, flushed face expanded into view, and as she reached his side he saw she had combed her hair into a centre parting. He gripped her shoulders and the white puffed sleeves of
her dress rose like meringues.

  “Papi.” He let out a breathy syllable of exasperation. “I can’t take you with me, it’s too dangerous. And now I have to take you home. You are very naughty, do you know that?”

  Her lip trembled; she avoided his gaze. “No.”

  “I’m very angry with you,” he added softly, touching her chin.

  While his daughter tried to summon tears, Midhat considered whether he should go to Eli’s house, and under pretext of discussing the shop leave Ghada in the care of Eli’s wife. Then her posture transformed: she stuck a hand on her waist, and turned her watery eyes on him with a supercilious expression.

  “They don’t shoot in the daytime, silly, they shoot at night. And anyway, a man walking with a little girl is much safer than a man walking on his own.”

  “I think not, sweetheart,” he said, though it occurred to him that she might be right.

  “I’ll tell Mama.”

  “Excuse me? Is that a threat? Shame on you, Ghada.”

  “I’m not letting you leave again,” she said. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m going to the hospital.”

  “You have just left the hospital!”

  “A different hospital,” said Midhat. “Calm down. And walk quickly.”

  Her short legs slowed his pace so much that he soon picked her up and carried her. Ahead, a car crept slowly across Mount Ebal. They climbed the hospital steps.

  A patient was leaning on his crutches in the foyer. He lifted his head and locked eyes with Midhat just as another stepped in from the veranda, and a shadow flitted over both their faces. Then Midhat greeted them by name—Iyad, Abu Marwan—and they brightened. Iyad set his crutches against the wall.

  “Abu Taher!” he said, hobbling forward. “We missed you.”

  “And I missed you!” said Midhat. He addressed two weather-beaten fellahin behind Iyad: “As-salamu alaykum, I am Midhat Kamal. Has everyone been sitting outside?”

  “Yes,” said Abu Marwan, “as usual.”

  Beyond them, another man was waving—an old regular from Nouveautés. Midhat nodded, feeling graceful, and in all their faces seeing reflections of his grace.

  Père Antoine was surprised to see Midhat Kamal on the veranda. The last occasion had been during the spring. Only afterwards had Antoine learned that this Kamal had lost his mind and was being sent to an asylum. He wondered whether Midhat would recognise him.

  A few variants of Midhat’s story had been in circulation, but female patients tended to remark upon the plight of his wife, with the words “Meskina Fatima.” It became a kind of refrain, spoken in a way that suggested a pity not unmixed with pleasure. Others expressed clearer disapproval, gesturing at the lint-wrapped heads and splinted limbs on the veranda as if at the patent shame of being hospitalised for any ailment other than those sustained during armed struggle. One woman had mentioned it was “ma‘roof” that Midhat Kamal had made his fortune by illegal means. Ergo, someone cursed him, and set fire to his shop. Ergo, he went mad. “Hatha mantiqi,” this woman had concluded her analysis, with a satisfied pout.

  Midhat raised a hand in greeting. He was wearing a double-breasted suit and carrying a cane. The wind flipped his tie over his shoulder, and a little girl appeared beside him, dressed in white.

  “Good to see you again!” Père Antoine called. “Please, join me.”

  “Thank you very much.” He strode along the railing, and the girl ran to the opposite corner and sat on the floor.

  “You’ll dirty your dress.”

  “Oh.”

  Midhat swatted the air. “It’s done now.” He sat in the chair beside Antoine. “Marhaba, keef halak.”

  Up close, Midhat looked quite as drawn and pale as one might expect of someone lately released from an asylum.

  “I realised,” said Antoine, injecting a smile into his voice, “that I never told you my name.”

  “Father Antoine,” said Midhat. He looked him straight in the eye. “We did meet before.”

  Antoine paused, then nodded carefully. “Ah. Yes we did. Here, a few months ago.”

  “Non non,” said Midhat, “Avant ça. Years ago. I think you are the Brother of the Virgins.” His eyebrows began to rise, followed by the corners of his lips. His eyes became slivers.

  “Is that what they call me?” said Antoine.

  “They used to.”

  Antoine laughed and ran his fingertips through his beard. “You are visiting?”

  “Yes. Have a cigarillo,” said Midhat. “My cousin brought them from Beirut.”

  Only one cigarillo was missing from the line-up. Antoine rolled the next into the vacancy and pinched it by the gold seal; Midhat held another with his teeth and drew a packet of matches from his pocket. He lit Antoine’s first. Antoine sucked, exhaled, and watched the ends of the leaves crisp. Not often did a layman offer him a smoke. He looked out at the orchard and imagined, for a moment, that he was another person, with another life.

  “What is your opinion of the uprising?”

  Midhat uncrossed his legs, nostrils fuming. “I wish I had not missed the beginning.”

  The implied candour of this remark took Antoine off guard. He stole another look at his companion. Midhat was gazing at his little girl. Perhaps he took it as a given that everyone knew of his confinement.

  “Yes,” said Antoine. “The beginning was quite beautiful. Now, people seem rather tired. I doubt they will want to miss the harvest.” Midhat opened his hand—agreeing, qualifying?—and Antoine tipped his head back and blew into the air: “I hope they will succeed. That some good will come of this.”

  “Well,” said Midhat. “We deserve it.”

  He had put no pressure on that “we.” Nevertheless, Antoine felt the force of his correction.

  “Of course you are justified, there’s no doubt about that,” said Antoine. “All I meant was, now the British are bringing more troops, and there is talk of martial law, and, you know, if there is anything I have learned in my life—and though I am an old man the truth is I have only learned a few things! But I do know we can never predict the future. So I only meant—that it might go either way, if you see.” He sucked the cigar and rotated it as he held his breath, looking at the smouldering end. “More and more, I find, I struggle to hold the larger picture in view. Every year, my … mind,” he drew his palms together, “becomes smaller.”

  Somewhere, someone was playing scales on a piano. The sound brought the cicadas on the mountain to life, so that the silent veranda was abruptly full of noises. The pianist wavered between two notes.

  “Do you work with the nurses?” said Midhat.

  “Oh no,” said Antoine. “I was a researcher. I wrote a book.”

  “Bravo.”

  “So-so.” He tipped his head from side to side. “I am also a priest,” he gestured at his robes, “and once, I taught at L’École Biblique. In Jerusalem.”

  “Now I really envy you.”

  “Really?”

  “I would love to be at a university. In France, I went to two universities. I loved them. The classes, I loved …” Midhat shook his head, lifting his eyes again to his little girl, who, seeming to sense his gaze, also glanced up. “You know this sense that everyone around you is arguing,” he said. “When you are writing you are writing to one another, even to people who are dead. Even to people who are not alive yet.”

  “Well now,” said Antoine, “this is really the dream of the university! My experience was usually of a bleaker sort of monastery. Of course, L’École Biblique is attached to a convent. But, actually, convents are not bleak places to live, generally speaking. Contrary to popular opinion perhaps.”

  Midhat’s eyes grew round. “Bleak?” He laughed in disbelief. “But at a university, where every man can think for himself—”

  “And can count on being wrong half the time.”

  Midhat was shaking his head.

  “At least half the time,” said Antoine. “Probably more.”

&nbs
p; “That’s the point.”

  “To be wrong?”

  “To be … sharpened against others, against their … you know.”

  Down in the grove, a ragged cat pranced out from under the veranda, tail erect, stalking something too small to be seen.

  “You had a wonderful time at Montpellier, then,” said Antoine.

  “And the Sorbonne.”

  Antoine chuckled.

  “I have forgotten everything now. I remember some things. I remember I loved … the medicine bottles.” He contracted his lips around his cigarillo, puffing repeatedly before exhaling through his nose. “I can’t explain.”

  “The bottles?”

  “No, not the bottles. That’s not what I meant.”

  “Tell me. I’m interested.”

  “Are you?”

  “Very much.”

  Midhat met his eye. “Are you going to write it down?”

  “What?”

  “I said, are you going to write it down?”

  Here, it seemed to Antoine that several moments passed. He was quite unable to speak. His skin ran cold. His mind was bursting with Louise.

  “I know you have been writing about Nablus,” he heard Midhat say. “My wife told me.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Fatima Hammad. The daughter of Haj Nimr.”

  Very slowly, Antoine released his breath and shut his eyes. “Yes. I did write about Nablus. I am not writing anymore. So—no, I will not write it down.” He pretended to laugh. Only now, as the conversation was slipping against him, did he recognise how he craved the approval of this francophone Nabulsi. A crescendo of footsteps indoors heralded the end of their exchange, with its little window of sympathy: any moment now, more patients would be coming out for air. He cleared his throat for the goodbye. The footsteps vanished, and the doors did not open. Midhat tapped the ash of his cigarillo and flattened his tie, and the girl looked up.