We didn’t answer her and went on talking about Mazen, his adventures, and his concerns. She came again and asked angrily, “Well, hasn’t he yet honored us with his presence?”
My uncle raised his hand and asked her to keep quiet. She laughed and squirmed, and wondered whether it was she or Mazen that was annoying the group. She would then wink at me as if she were saying what she had told me hundreds of times already, “Notice the difference between him and me. When I am absent, no one cares. No one says that I’ve wasted my youth and life in Kuwait’s heat, living alone in a foreign land. Now I don’t care, even if heaven falls on earth, I don’t care, even if the whole Hamdan family disappears, I couldn’t care less!”
Our eyes would meet, I would smile at her, and she would respond with a cold, strange smile that I didn’t understand. Ever since my father had died, or rather since she had opened up her heart to me that night and the following nights, her smile to me was full of reprimand, bitterness, and deep hatred.
Looking around him, my uncle whispered, “Nahleh has changed, changed very much. She has become cruel and stubborn and says strange things. She even wears strange clothes, laughs loudly, and chews gum! What’s happened to Nahleh? That isn’t like her.”
I, too, was aware that Nahleh wasn’t like that, had never been like that. She-had changed and become this way, and she will continue to be this way until the day God provides her with a solution. She needed a solution that would save her from her reality—the reality of a fifty-year-old woman. That woman had once been beautiful, fresh, young, and full of love and feelings, then she had been hit with the realization that she was fifty, homeless, aimless, and unsatisfied. She controlled herself, considered her limited options, and tried in vain to adapt to her fife. She started using make up, taking small, timid steps, and secretively applying small amounts of eyeliner. She used blush and put rollers in her hair every night. She started going to Nablus every Thursday and returning with piles of clothes and trinkets. She would spend hours in her room, trying on the dresses, the mascara, the eye shadow, the lipstick, the various creams for her skin, moisturizer, cleansing, anti-wrinkle, and neck and eye creams. Her father often wondered where she was hiding. She would spend hours m her room, trying on her clothes in front of the mirror, exercising to lose weight and listening to songs by Wardeh, Najat, and Umm Kulthum. Then she took up writing, she wrote in her diary and sometimes wrote poems that she didn’t finish. She would fill one page, then another and another and then stop, not knowing how to end it or what to say. She would then return to her tapes and gymnastics, to Umm Kulthum, and to sighing. We would hear her sing with Umm Kulthum: “Give me my freedom, release my hands, I have given everything and did not hold back.”
My uncle’s wife would smile, and my uncle would shake his head looking at me as if to say, “Do you see what Nahleh is doing?”
Mazen would comment, “Nahleh needs a change of scene. Tell her to go on one of those long, package tours, or let her go visit her brothers.”
I would smile and look away lest they realize that I knew how little her brothers cared. If it weren’t for the Gulf War she would have continued to endure the heat and sandstorms of Kuwait, and no one would have cared.
On my advice, my uncle left the kitchen and went to Nahleh to let her know that he cared and that everyone cared and to tell her that her brother in Frankfurt had called to ask after her. My uncle’s wife sat close to mc and whispered, “I want to tell you a story but I don’t want you to repeat it.”
She told me that she had heard that Nahleh was having a relationship with her cousin, the real estate agent, and that he, a married man with ten children, wanted to take her as a second wife. Meanwhile, his children were going out of their minds, saying that they would kill him and her.
“Kill her, how?” I asked, terrified.
My uncle’s wife mimicked the shape of a firing gun with her hand to explain, and said, “That’s how they shoot.”
Her hand truly looked like a revolver. I asked, surprised, “Do people have weapons? Don’t they fear the Israeli authorities?”
She whispered with the same degree of fear, “His oldest son is a member of many organizations and is wanted by the authorities. People say that he’s an important leader. Nahleh is crazy; she doesn’t seem to care. They would kill her and him if they go ahead with their plan. There’s no authority and no one would care. Life is cheap. Your uncle is coming back, no more talking; don’t quote me.”
She then went to the sink and poured the tea.
Nahleh was facing the woman who was rubbing her skin with the oils and creams she had bought from the perfume vendor in Nablus. There she saw women wearing long coats, their faces hidden behind scarves to conceal their identity and their presence in such a place. They whispered their requests to the vendor and he whispered back, while searching the shelves for all kinds of bottles. Then, m a mortar, he pounded stones that looked like amber, handling the powder with extreme care, pouring perfume over it and adding heavy, scented oil with a syringe.
The customers observed him from behind their veils and listened to him explaining, “This is for firming the skin, this is for blood circulation, this is meant to open the pores, and this to whiten the skin; they will make your skin feel like velvet.”
The customers made no comment but continued to stare, breathing behind their veils. Nahleh requested the same products and was told that the qirat costs five dinars.
She inquired about its effect with the savvy manner of an experienced buyer. To her the vendor looked like a priest or a magician. The whole atmosphere was heavy and complex and secretive, as if someone was engaged in dangerous activities forbidden by the law. But what law? There was neither law nor police, not even a state to defend their rights. It was as if the end of the world were near, and everyone feared the future, feared they might wake up to a different world, in a country with roads emptied by curfews, with only guns, bombs, and loudspeakers, and the radio announcing the news, as usual. There might be a new-operation at Hertsiliya and on the road to Jerusalem, a kidnapped soldier, a burned factory, and a Jewish farmer hit with an ax. His attackers would be chased by the army and the police, and the poor Arab workers would spend the whole day in the sun while people there, in Israel, would spit and swear and throw stones and shoot. The roads to Haifa, to Nablus, and to Jerusalem would be closed. Her father wondered what she did in Nablus, “Every other day you go to Nablus!” he said, “Yesterday conditions were crazy and every day there’s a new operation. I’m afraid you’ll get stuck there.”
She replied, “I’d go to Said’s house and sleep there.”
She was lying because she didn’t like Said or his wife or his children, and she found their house in Makhfiyeh disgusting. The name Makhfiyeh, which meant “concealed,” reflected the wishful thinking of those who would have loved to keep such a nauseating neighborhood invisible. Nahleh’s sister-in-law was filthy and her children were like worms. She had never seen dirtier kids. Even her brother was filthy and the stupidest one in the family, but he at least had a family, a wife and children, and a toffee factory, whereas she, Nahleh, the lady of ladies, the clever and smart one, the beautiful, elegant, and coquettish young woman was unmarried. There were no young men left in the neighborhood who hadn’t proposed to her, but she had turned them all down. Now there is a real estate agent, illiterate, with a big belly, his eyes always puffed, and headgear that covers half his face. But when he looks at her she melts immediately, and she feels things inside her, the same things she feels listening to her favorite songs. That was the time when she used to dream at night and wake up, her heart beating, dazed and sweating.
Poor woman, poor girl, this is what life docs to her? But love has its ways, it brings back youth to the heart and mind. The mind becomes dizzy, and thoughts and beautiful visions like dreams fill her world. She stands, then sits, then sleeps, then bathes, then showers, feeling him, his eyes, his hands, his lips, and all his being, making her vibrate. She dis
covers love, warmth, and the sweet taste of life, the beauty of experiencing those sensations, this enjoyment. All this makes her forget the world and the long, sleepless nights and the subjugation and the worries, her fifty years and the graying hair and the changes in her body and the hot flushes. She’s getting older and her period stops for two or three months and then returns, causing her great pain. The doctor told her that it was normal and that it will stop. Stop? Stop? The beautiful, elegant Nahleh would have no period. It has hardly started, then it ends! Fertility hasn’t begun yet for her, she hasn’t tried it a single time, not even one time, one time in her life!
She would listen stealthily to the conversations of women burdened by numerous pregnancies and deliveries, submitting to their husbands’ disagreeable demands, forcing them to have sex against their will. Nahleh would smile to herself, and laugh at the women’s silliness because they didn’t know how to live, how to enjoy themselves and their sexuality. She. on the other hand, will fully experience these things because even songs move her and so does just thinking about it. His fiery, eagle eyes burn her, making her wet and overwhelming her with a burning sensation. She would circle in her room like a bee, listening to songs that stirred her, that set her on fire, then the telephone rings and a voice says come. She throws down the receiver, puts on her tight skirt, and goes. In the car he touches the silky and velvety skin of her legs, that velvety feel she had worked to create with the products made with the perfume vendor’s stone.
Her father was deeply concerned and wondered why she went so often to Nablus—Nablus was hell. But she has known the true hell of the hot sandstorms in Kuwait, the hell of life in a faraway country, years of subjugation, of loneliness and desolation, the hell of the yearning heart, and the hell of the hot flashes. There was also the hell of the damned realization that the beautiful Nahleh, the diligent Nahleh, the elegant Nahleh, the best among all girls, had reached fifty. She lamented over her fate in disbelief that she had reached fifty, an old woman whose youth was totally gone or almost gone. She wondered about the ingratitude of life, about having reached fifty without having lived her life.
A neighbor told her that things were even better at fifty, the same one who used to hang the towel to dry in the courtyard in broad daylight after her lovemaking. The house was now empty and there was nothing to worry about. She had explained, “All the children were grown and each left doing his thing and the old man and I stayed behind. But he’s not really old, a sixty a seventy, and even an eighty-year-old man is not old. I too at fifty—I’m not old, dear Nahleh. Things are much better at fifty.”
The neighbor laughed and so did Nahleh, who immediately went back to her room to rub her skin and listen to Najat and Wardeh’s songs and wait for his phone call, inviting her for a ride.
When she saw him for the first time she was shocked by his height and his size, his sloppy wife with her double chin and her golden kirdan. His foul language appalled her, using words like an illiterate, ignorant man, a backward animal. His wife spent her days cooking and tending the sheep under the fig tree. Her father was a shepherd and she was used to the sound of the sheep, their smell, and their milk. She made cheese, cheese cream, and butter with the milk—a white butter that Nahleh liked and ate with sugar and country bread. When he heard her mention the white butter he told her, melodiously, “Miss Nahleh, you’re more valuable to me than butter. I’ll have your butter ready for you and my eyes too.”
He looked at her keenly, which made her realize that he had » eyes, two lips, and a beautiful black mustache despite the black dye.
He is her uncle’s wife’s first cousin, born to a twelve-year-old mother and a father in his nineties with a large retinue of wives who filled his olive yards with progeny, prosperity, and country bread. She lived well, thank God, raising the child alone since his father died soon after his birth. The boy grew up among the vine trees like a goat, grazing like sheep in the midst of grass radishes and shrubs, while his mother tended the sheep with his half-brothers and his father’s other wives. He spent his early childhood without education, and when he became an adolescent he started herding the sheep with the other shepherds gathering mulberries and olives from under the trees. Then he was able to shake the branches with his stick and later married his first cousin having sold a piece of land from his inheritance.
He bought a cupboard, a mattress, a radio, and bracelets shaped like a rope. He opened a shop with the remaining money and traded in oil, cheese, and olives until he accumulated enough money to buy land for almost nothing from the peasants and sell it at a very high price to the city dwellers. This is how he became rich and how his wife acquired two chins, two kirdans, and ten rope-shaped bracelets.
His children are in universities and organizations and attend conferences, and it is said that one of his sons is in the peace process delegation, acting as a negotiator. It is also said that another one is in the opposition, a third one is a sheep merchant. Two of his daughters are unmarried. The brave Nahleh is stepping in the midst of this large family, including a merchant who is a well-connected negotiator, a member of the opposition who is ready to die a martyr at a moment’s notice for the sake of his beliefs and the liberation.
Love perturbs sane minds, however, and transforms a free woman into a servile slave to her feelings. It changes a man who knew no other woman but his unattractive cousin into a jealous man ready to sacrifice his life for love and the beloved. The beloved is a city woman, well born, educated, and composed, with two twinkling eyes, white skin, without a mustache or a double chin. She is fashionable, with legs that look like cheese under the nylon stockings, and a behind as soft as butter. She laughs coquettishly and talks softly. She makes jam like the one the English call marmalade. He ate the marmalade or the jam and felt elated, as If he were flying or dizzy. It tasted of the magic of high society. He made up his mind and waited for the right time, So when she said “butter,” he replied generously, “You’re more valuable to me than butter.”
This is how the far-reaching love story began, and the rest is history.
When he touched her knee and her calf without any objection on her part, he was dazzled, his head burned as if in a blazing furnace. He was overcome with conflicting emotions: concern for and disgust with a woman who allowed a strange man to touch her unabashedly, and the memory of his childhood experience when he used to venture with the children of the shepherds to observe the sheep, the cows, and even the chickens, mating. For years he couldn’t get enough of this. When he finally lost interest he lost his sexual drive and thought he had become impotent. He withdrew within himself, and centered his attention on his family, his children, and the mother of his children. I le focused his efforts on making money and never had enough of it. But finally, he had. He wondered how this could have happened, though he had heard the elders and the sheikhs state that the human eye was greedy, but a handful of earth can fill it. He-found out that the eye of the human being doesn’t remain greedy to the end of Life and can find satisfaction in less than a handful of earth long before death.
It was a strange experience, difficult to describe or explain. One of his sons passed his exams with honor, and that was great; another one landed a high position and married the daughter of a minister. That was fine too. The price of the land rose and he sold the meter for one hundred dinars, ten times the price he paid for it. What then? He bought a palace in Amman from a wealthy man who went bankrupt, then sold it for ten times what he paid for it. What then? His capital was in the millions, his children were distinguished members of society, and he owned land in Nablus, Ramallah, and Amman, and a magnificent palace in Abdun. But he continued to live in a house that was more like a shack, with a woman his age, but one who looked like the trunk of a Roman olive tree dating back to a time before Christ. She had made the pilgrimage to Mecca three times and was getting ready for her fourth trip. She had decided to don the hijab following her fourth pilgrimage. She usually wore a long gray or khaki, or maybe green dress ma
de especially for her, utterly colorless and shapeless She covered her hair with a white scarf, tightened around her forehead and jaws. It made them turn red and caused the skin to puff up.
The realtor was watching the singer Wardeh on television one day when his wife told him, Hajj. after the ‘umra, I will wear the veil, God willing.”
He took a quick look at her and in one glance saw her puffed up skin, her cheeks, and her forehead. He muttered, while eating watermelon seeds, “Okay, okay.”
She turned around to show him how the long dress looked on her. All he saw, however, was a barrel-like shape filled with fat, with a propeller, two oars, and two fans. She moved past him, displaced the air, which smelled of butter and buttermilk. He muttered and uttered God’s name, asking for His mercy, then shifted his attention to Wardeh as she sang, “I like your company.”
He felt oppressed. He felt as if a heavy stone were weighing on his chest, and he had a shrinking feeling at the bottom of his belly. The telephone rang, startling him, making his heart race as if a bomb had exploded and shaken the house. It wasn’t a bomb but the voice of a realtor in Nablus telling him that a lot he owned was worth a quarter of a million dinars. It didn’t matter to him whether the land was worth a quarter of a million or half or even ten million. What difference would it make in his life? Would this change the face of the earth, his feelings, or this woman standing before him? But was she a true woman? A female? A human being? Despite his money, his travels, his new house, and his rugs, his wife had a rancid odor and smelled of the country oven. Nothing had changed in his life despite the dining room bought in Jerusalem, the living room bought in Haifa, the television from Natanya, the Mercedes with a double antenna, a telephone, dark windows, a roof window, and a horn with three different sounds: a happy sound, a dancing melody, and an alarming sound like a police siren. Despite all his wealth, at the end of the day he spends the evening watching television with his two daughters who look like frogs and the “barrel” wife. Lately, he had been sitting alone to watch television; he had bought a new set and put the old one in the girls’ room. His wife was busy finishing a khatma, a reading of the Qur’an, and getting ready to start a new one for his soul. She had recited a khatma for each dead member of the family and she was poised to start a khatma for the living members, for Salem, the oldest son, for Hamzeh the second son, for Marwan, for Saadu, for Mahmud, for the two girls, and, finally, for her husband. Yet, he didn’t feel any better as he stared at the television, examining Wardeh’s cosmetic surgery. She was very beautiful after her face-lift and the weight loss; she looked younger and more radiant than before. Her face was like a rose and her neck slender. He thought to himself, “How lovely Wardeh is, looking so young and energetic. That’s the way to live, that’s life for anyone who understands what living means, not like my life, worthy of cows.”
The Inheritance Page 9