My uncle remained silent, watching my father, and I watched them and him. My cousin, the father of five, growled, saying, “There is no power and no strength save in God, the Great, the Almighty. I ask for God Almighty’s forgiveness, I ask for God Almighty’s forgiveness.”
He sounded angry, and there was a certain rhythm in his tone. It did not appear that he objected to God’s will, but something else seemed to have provoked his anger and made him ask for forgiveness. Was it me? Was it the woman? Or was it both of us? The woman said insistently, “I wish we could transport him to the Maqased hospital. The Maqased is a much better hospital.”
My uncle replied, kindly but firmly, “No, my daughter, he must stay here with his family. His daughter has come from America to see him.”
The woman looked at me with eyes that expressed reproach, as if blaming me for depriving her of an opportunity to be the only one in charge of that dear man’s health condition. I sensed that she was weak, disoriented, lost, and not very bright. I felt sorry for her. Mazen said politely, “This hospital is close to us and if something should happen we would be by his side.”
She moved restlessly in her seat and said begrudgingly, “Every day I come here and each time the road seems longer.”
As no one answered, she looked at me, complaining about the trouble she endured, “The trip to Jerusalem has become a journey.”
I stared at her and shook my head, speechless.
She said, unthinkingly, “Are you his daughter?”
I nodded my head in assent. J examined her and she examined me. I didn’t like her, but for some unknown reason I felt sorry for her. She was the type of person who leaves one cold and scornful. She probably knew that and tried to make up for this shortcoming by wearing short clothes, coloring her hair, and wearing heavy makeup. The colors of her clothes matched, and revealed a certain taste and class, a good social standing. She was not cultured, however, and did not seem very bright. What did I expect from my father?
At this very moment my father’s features became more familiar to me, more real. I saw the streetwise grocery man, a man who became rich because of his exile and his situation, because he worked for a long time overseas. He married an American woman who was my mother, then another and another and then this woman. He owns property estimated at thousands of dollars, and perhaps up to two or three million. I am here to claim my right and she is, too, and so is my cousin, maybe my uncle as well, according to shari’a and the law.
The woman stood up, pulled her short dress and shook her long, blonde hair. My cousin who had asked for God’s forgiveness mumbled, “May God Almighty forgive me, may God Almighty forgive me.”
The blonde woman said, “I’m going to the store. Does anyone want anything?”
No one replied, so she looked at me, making me feel sorry for her again. I said, “Thank you.”
She left and they looked away. As she closed the door behind her and I heard the sound of her heels become fainter and fainter, I whispered to my uncle, “I don’t understand.”
He whispered, examining my father intently, “I don’t understand either. When we met him he was alone and when he became ill they said: this is his wife.”
Mazen said, smiling, “It doesn’t require any explanation. She is here for the inheritance.”
The other cousin growled, “By God, over my dead body!”
I looked at one, then the other and the other, then returned my gaze to the forgiveness seeker. He was a big man with a narrow forehead, thick eyeglasses, slicked-back hair, and a mouth where saliva gathered around the lips, turning slightly white and hard. He was the only one among my five cousins without an education and a formal degree. They were all educated and cultured, with titles and in important positions, whereas he was only a craftsman.
My uncle had bought him a candy and toffee making machine and rented a big store in Nablus because of the city’s large size and its market. They called the machine and the store “Al-Hana Factory,” implying that toffee was a symbol of bliss in Nablus. There might have been another reason for the factory other than bliss, as I believed it to be a way to commercialize my uncle’s honey. Despite its good quality, my uncle’s excellent honey was not selling well in the face of competition from Israeli honey. By suggesting that his son make a kind of candy filled with honey, he guaranteed the sale of his honey.
The honey candy sold well only at the beginning of the Intifada, when people complied with the call to boycott Israeli products. My cousin made money at that time and controlled the market, but he lost customers when he started cheating, replacing pure honey with a mixture of sugar and honey. As the amount of honey decreased and sugar increased, the candy became as hard as granite and tasted like castor oil. My cousin began complaining again. He doubled his prayers and ablutions, and his towel hung continuously on the balcony railings. His wife was struck with chronic liver disease as a result of her numerous pregnancies and inflammations.
My uncle held my father’s hand, patting it and talking to him as if he could hear, see, and interact with him. He told him, “Well Muhammad, do you see Zayna? Here she is, she came to see you.”
He then signaled me, took me by the arm to bring me closer to my father’s eye level, but my father’s look remained vague, his eyes resembling unfocused fish eves.
My stepmother returned from the store while I was alone with my father. The others had gone to check the candy factory and buy a few things while I stayed with my father, observing him. I chose to stay beside him to discover my true feelings. I wanted to sense the bonds of the past, to my memories and the subconscious yearning of the heart. My memories were mixed—a medley of photos and an amalgam of emotions. When we were apart, the memories were distant; now that we were close, the human current that bound us together was interrupted. How could I feel the current without talk, without a look? A person’s eyes are his measure, his knowledge, and the mirror of his soul. The man stretched before father, only a body. Had he smiled, moved, revealed emotions in his eyes, I would have said, “We have arrived.” This man, however, this nearly dead man with a glassy look, was the past, or the voice from the past in the present.
When my stepmother entered the room and saw me staring at my father, she began to cry. She thought that the shock of seeing him in this condition had paralyzed me. She took her place near him, held his hand, kissed and coddled it, and warmed it around the wrist near the artery and the pulse. She raised her eyes and looked at me, and her face, now free of make-up, revealed a lusterless, dull complexion. She suddenly looked old, making me feel sorry for her, for him, and for myself.
We sat in the balcony chewing gum and watching the people go by. As usual, the city looked beautiful to me from afar, but up close, what devastation! There was something noble, uplifting to the soul and the heart on the horizon, but people there lived in the bottom of the valley.
She gave me a piece of chocolate and said simply, “This piece is filled with hazelnut.”
I looked at her in amazement, an amazement that was close to admiration for a type of person that fascinates me, one who does not lose themselves in dreams, explanations, interpretations, and meanings; a person who lives without favors and goes about life without prattle, but chews gum, talks clearly, and calls things by their name. She opened her purse, took out an envelope containing photos and said calmly, as if she had not been crying a few minutes ago, “Look at this one.”
I took the picture and looked at it. There she was with my father, in a romantic moment. They were at a New Year’s Eve party surrounded by light and decorations, glasses of araq, appetizers, and beer, wearing conical hats covered with curled paper ribbons.
I compared my father in Brooklyn to the man I saw at the hospital and to the one in the photo. My father in Brooklyn was the father I knew, whereas here at the hospital he was only a corpse. The man in the photo was a living man but he wasn’t my father—he only looked like him, a man with a different gaze. The man in the picture was elegant, a
businessman with glasses, an expensive suit, and colored hair. He looked twenty years younger than my father; he was laughing and had one arm around Futna—her name is Futna—and in the other hand he held a glass of araq. She was drinking beer and wore a dress revealing her shoulders and neck and hardly covering her nipples. She wore huge earrings, a grape bunch hanging under her conical hat. She looked beautiful and happy, and he, too, appeared happy. She said, smiling, evoking the past, “We were engaged in this photo. Do you see my engagement ring?”
All I saw was a diamond ring with a stone bigger than a hazelnut. She was wearing a matching bracelet. He had gold-rimmed eyeglasses and straightened teeth and did not look at all like a grocer, but like an important businessman, an immigrant who had returned to his country. I asked absentmindedly, “What kind of work was he doing?”
She turned to me surprised, with a question in her look that she left unasked. Instead she showed me a new photo and said, “He was a landowner. Look at this photograph, it was taken in Jericho on the rose and strawberry farm. Do you see these roses? Five dunums of roses and lilies and ten dunums of strawberries and oranges.”
I looked at the picture and saw my father wearing a hat, sunglasses, a T-shirt, white pants, and tennis shoes. He really and truly looked like a returning immigrant—in other words, he looked like me and I looked like him! Futna looked like someone dressed for a party, with a golden belt made of chains, a necklace, and gold earrings. Her short skirt fit tightly around her thighs, ending a few inches above the knee. She was leaning on his shoulder and holding his hand firmly. She explained the circumstances surrounding the photo, “We took this picture during our honeymoon. After our trip to Switzerland, we returned to Jericho and remained there until summer when we returned to Wadi al-Joz.
“Wadi al-Joz ?” I asked.
“Yes, Wadi al-Joz, in Jerusalem. Your father could live with me in Jerusalem because of his American passport. Don’t you know Jerusalem? Come visit me there for a few days. I live alone and I have no one except this man. If anything happens to him, I’ll lose my mind.”
Then she gave me another photo and explained, “This one was taken in the Nile Hilton. Have you been to Egypt?”
I shook my head, while staring at her clothes and my father’s, the movie-star surroundings, and the lights. Then came another photo.
She explained, ‘This one was taken there, in Haifa. Look at this, see their art! The rascals, they’re smart! Your father used to say that after Beirut this was the place to be. Beirut is the best in clothes and elegance, then comes Haifa. Look at your father—see how he laughs, see how happy he is! When I married him he was tired, and after our marriage he felt better, he even thought of having children.”
Without thinking, I asked, “At his age?”
She shook her head and hand as if she were reprimanding me, then said, “Why not, what’s wrong with it? Men older than he have children. It is I who didn’t know what was wrong with me. I tried treatments, but unfortunately, I have had no luck. Once he recovers, God willing, I will make it up to him. But to be frank with you, Zayna, I’m surprised that your father never even mentioned that he had a daughter.”
I didn’t reply and occupied myself with the photos, going through them once more, looking at my father surrounded by flowers in Jericho, my father shopping in Haifa, my father in Jerusalem in front of the Dome of the Rock, my father drinking, my father eating, my father clapping for Melhem Barakat’s singing, and finally, my father dancing.
She said, staring at me, absentmindedly, “You are a girl, however!”
She then turned her head the other side and mumbled, “Had I been lucky I would have made it up to him and given him a boy.”
I turned toward her in an effort to understand. She looked at me and lowering her voice, she said whispering, conniving, “A boy protects the inheritance. Without a boy your uncle inherits. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Umm Grace invited me to Violet’s birthday and warned me not to mention anything to Nahleh. I assumed, therefore, that I was the only one invited, but when I got there I saw Mazen on the balcony, surrounded by greenery and potted plants. He was relaxed, as if in his own house. Then in came Violet, her friends, a bald man and another good-looking man with white hair and piercing eyes. He stared at me intensely and asked, “How is your father, I hope by God’s will he is doing well?”
He began telling me the story of his acquaintance with my father when he worked as an errand boy at the souvenir shop and how he fell in love with a nun who left the convent for him. “She was as beautiful as a full moon; she had translucent skin, and her eyes were the color of the sea. She came from a village near Jerusalem where there are Roman and Crusader ruins. She had exceptional blue eyes, the most amazing the districts of Dabbagha, Musrareh, and Via Dolorosa had ever seen. We used to line up on both sides of the street whenever she went by; we would hold rosaries and incense and chant. Some of us thought of joining the priesthood to emulate her.”
He then raised his cup, “My glass to Muhammad, by God your father was a man!”
Mazen laughed and said to me, “Have you heard what your father used to do? Have you heard? Are you like him or different from him?”
At this moment Violet called him, so he left me alone to mull over his question. How could I know the answer? I never knew my father well enough to provide an answer. I was young and here I am a grown-up, coming back to gather the details of his life like someone collecting grains of sand.
I sat in the corner, by the fern and the fertilizer, and looked out through the glass window. The mud resembled henna and the hose was spraying droplets of water in the evening sun. The air was fragrant with the smell of flowers, mud, the linula viscosa and mint. My relatives were all in the living room singing a song with a monotonous, sad rhythm. I remained there sipping wine and gazing at the golden sun.
The light was oscillating, and I felt my head stretching upward while my body was swimming under the effects of the wine, the music, and the shimmering light. Suddenly, in the middle of the confusion and the clamor of people’s voices, rose the sound of a guitar and a melodious voice. There was total silence except for the guitar and the cooing of a woman, whose singing sounded more like praying, an invocation. She was imploring, pleading and repeating pledges for love to last till death. She was pleading with love to remain because sleep was resisting her, abandoning her eyelids and leaving her with a burning heart. The words of the song were naïve, heavily charged with feelings of love and tenderness, reminding me of the romance of the fifties and the sixties, of Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. Those were lost days and emotions that had escaped and hidden far away in a harbor between train stations and theater stages, while we stayed stiff, surviving only through touching. But people here are still genuine like fresh fruit, untouched by the manipulation of the experts’ hands. She repeated, accompanied by her guitar, “I am yours forever, be mine.”
The guests were still, no one moved except to utter an “Oh” every now and then. Listening to those words—“I am yours forever, be mine”—I started crying for no reason, and I did not hold my tears back or try to understand the reason I was crying. I knew at that moment why I had returned. It was’to be revived, to feel my heart beat again. Here I was able to recover my feelings and to experience my father’s world. Here singing is different and talking is different; here they love from the bottom of their hearts, and their hearts are offerings on the altar of selflessness.
I stood there watching this scene and the feelings of the most melodious voice. She was beautiful beyond description. Her world was fabulous, while her voice wavered in a space between clouds and darkness, like a foggy light. Hearts were moved, emotions were released, eyes were moist, and suddenly from the midst of darkness and the depth of the fog my cousin’s voice without warning, shouted, “God of humanity! We lost Beirut!”
We walked together that evening, an October night with heavy fog covering the roads and fields. The house wasn’t
very far, but my cousin Mazen, whose emotional wounds had been reopened, was distressed and wanted to walk a little to calm down. I walked by his side in silence, complying with his wish, and occasionally stealing glances at him. It was a dark night and the street lamps were swathed in fog. All I could see of him was a tall and large ghost, with little hair and a beautiful head. He looked elegant, like a baron or a cavalier. He was impressive despite the limp caused by the land mine. He usually was able to conceal the limp and the wounds, but alcohol tore off his masks and uncovered his bruises. We had no serious discussion during the walk. He had lost his concentration, and his talk was all foam, froth, and bubbles on the surface, keeping his inner feelings hidden. Sometimes the froth revealed bleeding wounds, Beirut being the most painful memory, his first and probably his last. There was something deep inside him, deeper than the wound of the country. I wondered whether it was the wound of manhood lost in the battle, the wound of the mind groping about in the whirlpools of infinity? Was he a human being without depths, without wings? Was he smart? Had he failed? Had he been a spoiled child? There were unfathomable secrets in the depth of the self that I didn’t understand, but that I continued to gather in order to understand what it meant to be a human being.
He mumbled absentmindedly, “After Beirut and its lights came Wadi al-Rihan!, This prison called Wadi al-Rihan, this oppression known as Wadi al-Rihan, this desperation, those people, the misery and the backwardness of Wadi al-Rihan. My soul is there, I was there, how did I get here?”
Trying to bring him back to reality, I said, “We are here now, in Wadi al-Rihan.”
He muttered the words of a drunk, “The way we were in Jinsnaya and the rose hills.”
“Jinsnaya?” I asked.
“Jinsnaya is over there, with Maghdousheh,” he responded.
The Inheritance Page 5