The Inheritance

by Sahar Khalifeh

  Unconsciously, Futna looked at her nails and her knees began to shake, while Umm Grace turned to her daughter and whispered, “Lets go.”

  Sitt Amira heard her and said, firmly, “No, don’t leave, no one will leave.”

  Then she turned to the girl and told her firmly and without hesitation, “You have the right to talk and insult us, because we are your guests. Say all you have to say, don’t omit anything, I’m listening to you.”

  The girl waved her hand nervously and returned to her vulgar talk, saying, “Who told you that I was waiting for you to tell me whether you were listening or not? Well, honorable lady, you came here to talk about polite and good things, but what did you say to the harlot who took my father away from us? Did you tell her it was shameful? Did you tell her it was a sin? Did you tell her: fear God, the man has a wife and children, that he is sick and half senile? She has stripped him of the little brain he had left. She used such powerful magic to win him over that even the Sumerians were unable to undo it. Where did you have it prepared? Nahleh has not left the West Bank since she returned from Kuwait. One of you must have set it up outside the country, then given it to her.”

  Violet jumped from her seat and pulled her mother. The girl laughed hysterically, at her, “Oh, oh, oh, oh! In God’s name! Are you embarrassed to hear with your own ears what you have done? Does a person like you feel any shame?”

  As she was leaving, Umm Grace wailed and banged the door behind her, saving, “Oh mercy, Oh mercy, what a trap!”

  Abu Salem’s daughter stood up and moved toward Violet. She opened the door and shouted at her back, “Ya Sitt Violet, does a person like you know what is shameful? Go hide somewhere. The stories about you and Mazen and others are known all over the country. Had you and your mother been able to get hold of him you would have taken him away like Nahleh took my father, you would have-helped yourselves.”

  She then turned to Futna with one hand resting on her waist, and revealing her belly, while she waved the other hand, saying, “And you miss, when will the blessed one arrive? When will he claim his inheritance?”

  Someone said, “Shut up, girl.”

  It was Futna who had shouted those words, having lost control. She added, “Excuse me, I mean keep quiet. I didn’t say anything because we’re guests, but it is apparent that you’re rude and that you have no manners.”

  Abu Salem’s daughter stood in the middle of the room, and rudely, showed them the door saying, “Go away, leave, leave.”

  Futna replied, smugly and stupidly, “I won’t leave, let’s see what you can do about it”

  The girl replied, laughingly, “Oh, oh, oh, oh! By God! Do you think that I’m as kind and stupid as my mother? I’m not like her. I’m like you and I don’t care. My husband divorced me when my father took a second wife and signed his fortune away to her. In other words, I’m neither fearful for the baby I’m carrying nor concerned about my husband divorcing me, or my father disinheriting me. I have nothing to lose. If you don’t leave on your own I’ll drive you out by hitting you on the head with this shoe.”

  Amira stood up and said in a shaky voice, trying her best to get out of this trap with the least possible embarrassment and scandal, “All right, all right, we’re leaving, let’s go, Futna.”

  Then she turned to mc as I sat dazed, and said, “Get up, get up Zayna.”

  We left hurriedly with the insults of Abu Salem’s daughter following us. When we got far away from her, Futna said breathlessly, “What a vulgar person, ill-mannered.”

  Sitt Amira said, patiently, “Let it be, let’s think calmly.”

  We walked for a long time in the alley and saw faces looking at us from the windows and from behind the doors. We heard words such as “children of Abu Salem,” “Abu Jaber’s house,” “Abu Salem’s daughter,” “the Black Tigers” and “kidnapped her.” We paid no attention. We were still haunted by everything we had just experienced: Abu Salem’s daughter, Violet and Umm Grace’s escape, Futna’s stubbornness and her defeat, the calm of her mother in the storm, and the words and the insults we had heard. Futna was steaming again, saying, “What a vulgar, ill-mannered person.”

  Suddenly, she stopped in the middle of the street, oblivious to people’s presence and said to her mother angrily, “I would have taught her a lesson if you hadn’t intervened!”

  Her mother replied patiently, “Don’t be odious, walk straight.”

  Amira continued walking straight and slowly, then turned to her daughter and reprimanded her, “Walk straight in front of people, they’re all watching us.”

  She then walked slowly, her shoulders straight and her head raised.

  Sitt Amira could not sleep despite her apparent calm and self-control. Her sense of the enormity of the situation, her humiliation, and shock robbed her of sleep. She spent the night reviewing the events of the day, what they had said, and what she had said. The words uttered by Abu Salem’s daughter made her reconsider her position. They implied that she was divorced because of Nahleh’s marriage to Abu Salem, and because of the loss of the inheritance. She felt that her father had forgotten her because of Nahleh. She would lose custody of her baby when he reached the age determined by the law. The poor woman would end up without support and without a family. She had no husband and no father, and she would soon be without a child, and without an inheritance, all because of Nahleh and her marriage. This means that the harm Amira caused to Nahleh by marrying her to Abu Salem was now doubled because of the divorce of Abu Salem’s daughter.

  How had she, Amira, been trapped in this way? How had she been fooled by this illiterate man, she the educated woman who had attended Sahyun school. He hadn’t even had to try hard to convince her of his purpose and his good intentions. Even the Bey hadn’t made a special effort to convince her, she had convinced herself because she believed that the protection of a woman, her marriage, and her reputation were the most important things for a family, a means to safeguard its honor. Now however, after this experience, she wondered which family should be protected: Nahleh’s family? Nahleh and Abu Salem’s family? Do Nahleh and Abu Salem form a true family? Were they married to form a real family? A seventy-year-old man, illiterate and backward, a hillbilly, and a fifty-year-old woman, educated and somewhat refined. He is a real estate agent and a usurer who adores money while Nahleh comes from an honorable family; she had even-thing she needed and her brothers are true men, educated and respected, they’re not after easy money. In other words, Abu Salem belongs to one category of people and she to another, there is also the fact that he is as old as her father and possibly older. What was the purpose of this marriage anyway, to build a family and protect Nahleh? And now Abu Salem had escaped and Nahleh is being held in an unknown place.

  The Hamdan family was truly in a terrible situation. They were worried about Nahleh and their reputation in society. They had become the center of attention and their story was being told everywhere. If they were to abandon Nahleh, they would cause a scandal and would be considered as weak as women, but if they were to follow her and get entangled in her problems, they would risk destruction in their confrontation with the Black Tigers.

  Whose honor was at stake here—the honor of Abu Salem’s daughter or that of al-Hamdan’s daughter? The honor of Abu Salem’s family or that of Hamdan’s family? How could she, Amira, the lady of ladies, as she was always referred to in the family, the intelligent, well-born, and virtuous woman, have failed to understand matters from the start? It was only now that she understood! Only now! What made things worse was the fact that her own daughter was in the same situation. She too was like Nahleh and even worse. What she did was uglier, the ugliest thing a person could do, to become pregnant through artificial insemination in a Hadassa hospital! It was deceptive and immoral. Were those the moral values of the young and the old nowadays?

  Amira ignored the matter, hoping that it would be forgotten or that it would disappear altogether. But it was alive and well, growing in her foolish daughter�
�s belly. Oh how silly, spoiled, and stupid she was! She is her daughter after all, but the artificial baby she is carrying has Jewish blood. He will be a grandchild to the Shayibs before God, before society, and before the law. Though he will carry a name different from theirs, he will be one of them, he will be part of her and will be her grandson. This baby is the child of circumstances—were it not for Hadassa, Futna wouldn’t be earning a Jewish baby, were it not for the events, the conditions, the defeat, and the Jews, were it not, were it not . . . .

  She collapsed, crying desperately because she had discovered suddenly and after all those years that the souvenir shop and today’s concerns had made her forget yesterday’s worries, her concerns about the Israelis, about the world and about history. History was one single connected piece and now it was shattered into pieces. It was a song she had often sung with Umm Kulthum, repeating her words with all her heart: “I love it with all my soul and my blood.” She felt she was floating above the world, over the mountains of Jerusalem rising high above the clouds, above the Rock and the Dome, higher and finer. She had repeated with Umm Kulthum, euphoric: “I wish every believer loved it the way I do, the way I do.” She had felt that her love for Jerusalem was like her love for Egypt, for Khan Khalili, and Bab al-‘Amud, both had been born of the same father, the same progeny, and the fetus in her daughter’s belly then, was not only a descendant of the Shayibs or of Jerusalem alone but of Abd al-Nasser. When Amira gave birth to her son she had been asked, “What will you call him?” She had answered lovingly, as she listened to Umm Kulthum, “Nasser, of course!”

  That was the name she gave to her son Abd al-Nasser, what would Futna call her son? Hadassa? Kahana? Shlomo? That means that her son, Abd al-Nasser, will be Shlomo’s uncle, but Shlomo what, Shayibs or Hamdan? It doesn’t matter, if he is Shlomo Hamdan, he will still be a grandson to the Shayibs. Whatever is done, even if he is called Muhammad or Mahmud, he will be her grandson and Hadassa’s child.

  The secret is well kept, however, and no one in the world knows about it. It will remain buried in a deep valley like a drop in the sea that days erase, the way the memories of yesteryears are forgotten. That’s how life is, it makes us forget what we don’t like, we overlook things, we bite the wound, we make believe and then forget. With the passing of days we forget our sorrows and dreams, and we forget reality, because reality changes and never stays the same. With time she’ll forget the secret or pretend to forget it and with time she’ll get used to him because he’s part of her, and he’ll grow up with her.

  She will raise him the way she has raised all her grandchildren, the way she raised Abd al-Nasser. She will take him with her to visit the tombs of the Shayibs on feast days as she does with her other grandchildren. He will evoke their memory and read the Fatiha for the repose of their souls and those who preceded them and recall that the Shayibs were once the beloved of God, the beloved of Jerusalem and its cherished children. She will forget the past event because the secret is in a deep well, in a remote valley. She will give him an Arabic name, a pleasant one that reminds her of the Shayibs and their glory. She will either call him al-Amin or al-Ma’mun, or al-Nasser, or al-Mansour. What does the poor boy know, he is innocent and can’t remember where he came from, and no one in the world will know where he came from, not even him, because he will be the descendent of the Shayibs and the heir of the Hamdans. Her daughter will thus give birth to a secret that will not be known to anyone, while she, Amira will remain Amira al-Shayib who will go on as she has so far, without stopping. She will reprimand her daughter saying, “Walk straight in front of people, their eyes are watching us.”

  When Kamal, the engineer, accepted the plan his brother had concocted with the grocer Samaan to rescue Nahleh from her captives, little did he know that he would be involved in unprecedented negotiations. It was like the dialogue of the deaf. When Said learned from the women that Nahleh was refusing stubbornly to give Abu Salem’s children a general proxy, he came up with a solution to the crisis. He said that the moment Nahleh sees her brothers she would give them the required proxy because they are more worthy of representing her. Abu Salem’s children must know that Nahleh has men ready to back her up. When he discussed the idea with Kamal on their way to the detention center of the Black Tigers, his brother stopped and said in disbelief, “Do you want me to be in charge of the proxy, never! If you want to do it yourself, go ahead, but I won’t.”

  Samaan the grocer rebuked them, whispering, “Quiet, lower your voices, this isn’t the time for this kind of talk.”

  The three men crossed over through the sewage of the city, and Kamal was up to his knees in it. He felt dizzy from the overpowering smell of the urine and was suddenly struck by the thought that this mixture needed millions of liters of clean water for treatment. Where would he get so much water for his project? Then he remembered what he had heard at the municipality, people explaining that the Oslo Agreement did not provide them with a share in the water. They would have to pay, in dollars, or in stocks and bonds, for the water they needed. But the capital invested would hardly cover the cost of the equipment, the buildings, the pipes, and the cost of digging and drilling. And what about the cost of clean water brought from Tiberias or even the River Jordan? What is the solution then? How will this mixture be treated? Why hadn’t he realized before now that the sewage of this country is not as beautiful as that of Frankfurt or Berlin? In Frankfurt the sewage isn’t disgusting like this frightening lethal stuff. If you hit it with your shoes it hits you back like rubber because of the shortage of water. What will you do then, Kamal? What was the use of all the efforts when the source of life was missing?

  He stood still in the dark, but Said called him, frightened, “Come quickly, or we’ll lose our way.”

  He then recalled that Nahleh was still there, captive, while he, his brother Said, and the grocer were on their way to her, carrying with them through this mixture, the hope of her freedom.

  The scent of chamomile and lemon blossom wafted in the air as the moon shone on the walls and the tops of the houses. Seen from this angle of the courtyard, Andalus was more like a dream. Kamal was overcome by a sense of elation and guilt, as only a few moments ago he had been knee-deep in the oozing liquid, having forgotten the other dimensions to this country and this people, its shining moon and chamomile and lemon blossom.

  He had forgotten that there were people above the ground and a sky over the ground and higher than life. What will he take away from this life but kindness, good deeds, and the love of virtue? What would he get from this world and from a life in exile? He had worked many years in exile, in sophisticated laboratories that looked like space stations, he had been given all the advantages, but he had never felt like one of them. The Germans gave him a house, cars, and a bank account, health insurance and a pension, yet every morning as he rode the university bus or the metro, he felt his loneliness and an estrangement that never stopped growing. It was as if a huge tree with crooked branches and black roots had wrapped itself around his neck, his entity, his forgotten dreams, and his nostalgic heart. Something down deep inside him called out to him at times, while he worked, drove his car, or listened to a new Arabic song that a colleague had brought back from home. He would go on listening until he forgot that Helga was his wife and that he would grow old with her at his side.

  This is not nationalism however, and attachment to the nation and the land had never been his concern as it was for Mazen. He had always felt that the world was work and that work was the essence of life. He had believed that life was his laboratory and his laboratory was everything in life, it was its temple. He adored work and gave it his best, it elated him and he experienced the blessings of overcoming his limitations and his constraints. This process had taken years and had been preceded by hunger and a loaf of bread for a meal. When he had achieved everything he had striven for, he had been struck with a different kind of hunger, a hunger for an activity that would light up the earth and a desire for a country whose
cleanliness did not depress him.

  Oddly enough, the shiny garbage bins in Frankfurt had moved him, filling him with a sadness he had not been able to understand. Was it jealousy? Was it regret? He had not been able to tell, but he had been amazed by the peaceful feeling he had experienced in his car while driving through country roads outside Frankfurt, smelling the dung, the grass, the roots of trees, listening to Fairuz singing for the green mountain, the breeze, the pine trees and Baalbek’s roses. He had then felt the scent of Wadi al-Rihan fill his nostrils, spread through all his limbs and restore his heartbeat. He had wondered about all the longing, the sadness and the ability of his heart to love. How could he have forgotten, while working in his lab and on his daily jog, that he still longed for those horizons, for the shade of the evergreen cypress and the narcissus? Strangely, everything looks better from a distance, more colorful, greener, more delicious, and more melodious. The narcissus here was smaller than the European narcissus but it was more beautiful and more delicate. Mint, chamomile, lemon blossoms, and fruits tasted better here. People in Germany complained about tastelessness caused by genetic modification—was this the reason then? The explanation is that in a world dominated by shades of color, and despite his fairness, he was black under his skin. His heart beat to the rhythm of the flute and the taste of dill eaten under the trellis and the fig tree.

  One of his colleagues had told him once, after a trip to Syria and Egypt, “People there are better than us, they have voices, scents, and dreams, whereas we have lost our voices. We’re surrounded only by the noise of machines. We have lost our capacity to dream and we smell only of deodorant and cologne.”

  Looking at his calves, Kamal smiled as he remembered the smell of the sewage and the suffocating smell of carbon dioxide. He felt a certain sadness and thought to himself: Better than them? Then he saw Said climb on Samaan’s shoulder, hold the rails of an upper window, and heard him whisper fearfully, “Nahleh, Nahleh.”