The Inheritance

by Sahar Khalifeh

  A tear fell from Kamal’s eye and he thought to himself, “This is what I came for!” Even Said was risking his life and his safety for a lost sister who had shot him in the shoulder; who, over there, would do the same? There, everyone was by himself, an isolated, forgotten island. Except for your wife and me children, you have no one and nothing to count on but yourself, your money, and your work. If you slow down even for a second, the wheel and the machine will crush you. Over there you’re like a beast attached to a wheel in perpetual motion; you don’t have the right to be sick or feel tired, you don’t have the right to be bored or to rest. You aren’t allowed to make a mistake or give in to your moods, to be compassionate or emotional.

  He wiped a tear away and shook his head. He’d drought he was a scientist with no emotions, but here he was crying like a woman. Like a woman? Yes, like a woman, like Nahleh. He recalled the tenderness he’d felt when he rested his head on her chest. He searched for it in exile and sought worldly things in their world. He was supposed to have been struggling for our world, what had happened? Where had he taken a wrong turn?

  He had written to his father saying, “Father, their world is merciless.”

  He had received an angry reply from his father who wrote, “Don’t make the mistake of coming back. I have enough dealing with Mazen and his problems. Here, we have unemployment and war worries. Please, please, for my sake, be wise and do not make rash decisions.”

  He stayed wise until age fifty, but now that he was getting older and entering middle age, the age of despair, he wanted to recover his ability to feel. He wanted to live among people who were not born in tubes, to eat fruits free of chemicals, to sit at caféés and on sidewalks, and to eat knafeh and tamriyeh. He wanted to forget his life in exile, he wanted to do the right thing.

  Kamal heard threatening words, warning him to remain still and keep silent, he then felt the up of a knife thrust in his back. There was commotion, shouting, and Said was swearing loudly. Kamal tried to run in a different direction but he was hit on the head and lost consciousness. When he awakened Nahleh was standing near his head, crying quietly. She was dipping tiny pieces of paper in water and placing them on his forehead. Their eyes met but she whispered to him, “Hush, don’t talk, rest.”

  She sat down, lifted his head, placed it on her lap, and caressed his hair. He looked around the place and in the darkness he could see a small bulb hanging from the ceiling. The old stone walls were black, revealing signs of fumes. The ceiling was dome shaped and had long windows with wide sills and frames. There was a circle that looked like a pool in the middle of the room, an iron chair and chains stood in the center. Nearby, a large piece of iron that resembled a hanger was suspended from the ceiling. There were torn ropes everywhere, on the chair, over the barrel, and over the distant platform.

  Kamal asked Nahleh, compassionately, “Is this where they tied you up?”

  She didn’t reply but pressed her hand on his chest and whispered, “Hush, don’t say a word, just rest.”

  He was silent for a moment then remembered something and asked her, “Where is Said?”

  She replied, cautiously, whispering, “Maybe they took him, I haven’t seen him. Just rest, don’t say a word.”

  They fell silent. But he said again, affectionately, “Said was here, he came for your sake, rest assured that we all support you.”

  He felt her fist stiffen, then she began to cry, while rocking him like a baby. His tears gushed again like a woman’s tears, but he didn’t try to hide them. When she saw his teary eyes, she said surprised, ‘You’re crying? Is it possible, you, Kamal crying? I never dreamed or imagined that I would see you cry one day, not you.”

  He asked, lightheartedly, making an effort to smile, “Aren’t I human?”

  She looked at him intently and said, “You certainly are, but you’re different from the rest of us, you’ve always been different.”

  He asked her, curious, “What do you mean ‘different’?”

  She got a distant look, rocked him again, then fell silent for a while, before saying in a broken voice, “I don’t know, I don’t know, maybe because you have always been distant.”

  “Me, distant?” he asked, surprised.

  “I mean that you were always alone. Jaber and Jamal were the oldest, Mazen and Said were the youngest, I was close to my mother, whereas you were always alone with your books. You were the best in your class and the children called you bushnaq. You used to play football as well, you were either with your books or playing football.”

  Nahleh turned his face toward her and asked him, “Do you still play?”

  He felt sad because he’d spent a lifetime without play. He had squandered years of his life running, but now he felt eager for change. He was searching for himself and wanted to live. He wanted a woman that fired his emotions, a project that motivated him and awakened his abilities. Look at Mazen, he took risks, fell in love with many women, braved death, and roamed about in foreign roads, airports, and world capitals. Mazen was adventurous and lived his life, but what about him, what had he taken from life? What had he given? And now, when it’s time to give and take, he finds himself in this place, what’s this place anyway?

  He asked his sister calmly, without showing fear, “What is this place?”

  She whispered, “It’s an old soap factory that they took by force and transformed into a prison and a torture chamber.”

  He raised his head and asked her, “Were you tortured?”

  “No, no,” she said, “don’t worry, just two or three slaps. Your sister isn’t just anybody. By God, I will not sign and give away my rights. They wanted me to sign away everything. They believe that their father has signed all his fortune to me bat, by God, he only wrote the shares in my name, nothing else. His children don’t believe me, I swore to them by God and the Prophets and the Messengers, but they still didn’t believe me. One of them looks like an imam, the other looks like you, as tall, but dark-skinned. Those two are nice, but the third one is like a beast. He used foul language and was quick to slap, a slap that makes your head turn and twist, like a wheel. I don’t know how I got into this trap! Their father left and didn’t care about me, he’s too scared to come back. What a coward! Is this how virile men behave?”

  Kamal smiled at the description and remembered Abu Salem at the party when he had rolled at their feet after the punch he received from Mazen. But he quickly remembered that he was in prison with his sister and that they wouldn’t leave until she signed away her rights. He wondered where Said and Samaan were, then said, pitiful, “Poor Said, I wonder where he is?”

  She didn’t respond and wondered how it could be that Said had come in person to rescue her from this prison. She asked, doubtfully and somewhat surprised, “Is it possible that Said came for my sake? Is it true?”

  “Why not?” asked Kamal.

  “Well, don’t you remember the day he came after me?” she asked.

  “Of course I remember it, how could I forget? Truly however, it was he who brought me here. Without him I wouldn’t have done anything. It’s thanks to him that I came. I wonder where he went,” said Kamal.

  She whispered in disbelief and amazement, “Is that possible?”

  Then she looked at him and said, “I can’t believe that you came either!”

  He looked at her, casting back to his memories, remembering what Nahleh had meant to him. He recalled a winter evening when their mother was very sick, and the doctor was called. When he entered their mother’s room he took Nahleh with him, while his father stayed with them in the living room, reading Qur’anic verses and praying for God’s forgiveness. Nahleh went back and forth in the house, without a moment’s rest. She was still a teenager, but was acting like a mature woman, cooking, washing clothes, cleaning the house, and looking after her sick mother. She was the true mother in the house, while Mazen was the spoiled child and Said, poor Said, was the black sheep of the family. One day Kamal had asked his father what it meant to be t
he black sheep of the family, and their father had said, “It means the rotten fruit on a tree, and Said, the bull, is that fruit.”

  Kamal had then turned his head and seen Said listening to his father, expressionless. Had he heard his father’s words? Had he understood them? Was he sensitive enough to react? Kamal had told his father, “Dad, Said heard you say the rotten fruit of the family.”

  His father had shaken his head and said, despondently, “What can I do with him? I have enough to handle with worrying about his mother and Nahleh. Look at the poor girl, look at her, the whole day she’s as busy as a bee, while you all spend your time playing in the alley.”

  Kamal had asked if he could help, feeling guilty and lost. His father told him, “Don’t do anything, just pay attention to your studies. I want nothing from you but for you to succeed in your studies and make me proud, not like this one. . . .”

  He had pointed at Said, while Said had sat looking at him, his mouth open, his eyes expressionless. At this moment Nahleh had come out of her mother’s room and said, in shock, “Mother is dying!”

  Mazen and Said had started crying, but Kamal had run to his room, taken his book, his ruler, and his coloring pencils, and stood near the windowsill reviewing his lessons. He hadn’t understood what he was reading but he’d kept on reading. Nahleh had entered the room and hadn’t seen him; she’d sat on the edge of the bed and cried. When she saw him she smiled and said, feeling sorry for him, “Don’t worry, Mom is fine.” But he had left the room and stayed by himself.

  Kamal asked her, curious, “Did you like me when I was young?”

  She said, hurriedly, and simply, “Of course! Why do you ask?”

  “Did you have time to love me?” he asked.

  Surprised, she explained, “Yes, of course, you all meant the world to me.”

  “And do we still mean the world to you?” he asked.

  She didn’t reply and kept silent. He thought she didn’t understand or hear him. He repeated the question, “Do we still mean the world to you?”

  She shook her head and said, confused, “I don’t know brother, I don’t know where my head is and where my feet are anymore. The world isn’t what it used to be. My mother passed away and you grew up, my father remarried and I got used to life in Kuwait, away from home. When I returned to Wadi al-Rihan I felt lost, I had nothing and no one special. The world has changed, this is how things are and this is how all people feel. You certainly aren’t the same person you used to be. Sometimes I look at myself and wonder whether I was once young, and if I ever lived in this house. I can’t believe that I spent more years in Kuwait than I did in Wadi al-Rihan. When I left the house I was nineteen years old and when I returned I was fifty years old, a quarter of a century spent away from you. The world can’t remain the same, people change. Remember how you were and what you have become. You were reserved and you used to blush whenever someone spoke to you. Look at you now, may God Bless you, you talk and joke and laugh, you dance and sing and act crazy, you don’t care. You’ve changed and I too have changed, at least I think I did.”

  He thought about what she’d said and asked, “I dance and sing and act crazy? How do you know?”

  She laughed for a brief second then held him rightly, and said, “I saw with my own eves, I saw you, I saw you.”

  She remembered that this had happened during the unfortunate party at Futna’s house. She feared he would remember the events including the punch he had received, while she stood near Abu Salem. She couldn’t believe that she, Nahleh Hamdan, daughter of Abu Jaber, with an impeccable reputation, well-born and wise, had conducted herself in that manner. Couldn’t she have found a more suitable place to express her love than the bathroom? She stood facing the sink, in front of the toilet seat, with a man as old as her father, a man who colors his hair and has a partial in his mouth, a man who doesn’t know his head from his heels. He knows where his head is, he really does, but not where his legs are and what comes above them. It’s truly sad and disgusting. Is this what she had hoped to experience? Why people say it is heaven and love is like a fire with flames and volcanoes? Is it because Abu Salem is a pitiful man and she a fifty-year-old woman? Did he become ugly and old in her eyes after she signed the marriage contract? Or did it happen after the marriage was consummated? Had the situation been different, she would have run away, but where to? To her brothers or back to her father and the women in Wadi al-Rihan? She said regretfully, “Sometimes I wish Kuwait had remained what it was and I hadn’t returned here. I wish what has happened hadn’t happened.”

  He raised his head but felt dizzy and placed it back on her lap. He asked, resolutely and seriously, “Would you like to go to Frankfurt to stay with Helga?”

  His offer took her by surprise, it was the first time he had invited her to visit him. She felt relief and joy, like a short-lived glimmer of light. But she was quickly overcome with a sense of fear and apprehension, as they both were in a prison and he was there because of her. How could she visit him? There was also the project and the company, would he stay here or return to Frankfurt?

  She said, saddened, “What would I do in Frankfurt, and even if I wanted to go, how could I?”

  “Do you mean this prison? We’ll get out of here, eventually, in a day or two, in ten or twenty days, we’ll get out of this prison. When we get out would you like to go to Frankfurt? Tell me, what would you like to do?”

  “What I would like?” she asked.

  “What I mean is, do you want to stay with that man?” he asked.

  She replied, hesitant and uncertain, “Isn’t he my husband? Even if he fled for his safety, he’s still my husband and I’m his wife, and a wife has to endure hardships.”

  “That’s nonsense,” said her brother, “all this talk about patience and endurance. As if you haven’t had enough. What do you want with him? What do you like in him? How have you fallen in love with him?”

  She turned her face away and said sadly, “I don’t know, brother!”

  He was overcome with resolve and lifted his head, this time without feeling dizzy. He faced her, saying firmly, “When we leave here you must divorce him and go to stay with Helga in Frankfurt.”

  But she objected saying, “Divorce him! How can I do that? Do you think that divorce is easy?”

  He said, firmly, “Don’t worry, leave it to me.”

  She exclaimed, concerned, “No, my brother. Do you want me to get a divorce at my age, what would people say? Do you want them to question my reputation? Do you want people to say that I married him for the inheritance? Or do you want them to say that I married him just to have a taste of him?”

  He asked, perplexed, “What do you mean ‘to have a taste of him’?”

  She lowered her gaze, embarrassed or sorry, or both. She seemed to regret having said what she had. But he insisted, asking, “Tell me, have a taste of what?”

  She didn’t reply, saying tersely, “Forget it.”

  He finally understood and saw the connection between her words and the situation. He said excitedly, “So what, let them say what they want! Is it a shame to have a taste of him? Is it a sin? And what if you did? What business is it of anyone whether you had a taste of him or you didn’t?”

  “Enough, my brother,” she said sighing heavily, adding, “Don’t burden me with more anguish and worries.”

  “I don’t understand why you behave like this,” he said.

  She looked at him inquisitively and defiantly, then asked, “Why can’t you understand? How different from us are you?”

  He stared at her, but his eyes were roaming in the depth of the place and probing her words. He repeated, absentmindedly, “Me, what about me?” He-blinked and said repeatedly, “Me, what about me? I don’t know, tell me.”

  She smiled to him as she noticed his bewilderment and his inability to figure things out. Defiant and conniving, she said, as if revealing a secret, “Haven’t I told you that you were never like the others, you were always different?”
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  “How different?” he asked, curious, as he was beginning to see that he was not like Mazen, Nahleh, Said, and all the others. Was it because of Europe? Because of Helga? Because of chemistry and his work in the lab? Was it his sense that the human being was made merely of matter, feelings, and emotions? The human being working in a lab was nothing but chemistry, Freud, Margaret Mead, civilizations, values, borders, and references.

  What could he do to be like the others, to become one of them? What could he do to get close to them and bring them close to him, to change them, to open their minds to the world, to civilization, and to history? How could he explain to them that people are both unique and similar? The human being is the child of his civilization, he eats and drinks from it, he sucks its milk, its values, and it shapes his personality. He eats, drinks, relieves himself, loves, makes love, and marries according to laws, but the excrements are the same everywhere, and the digestive system is the same, the mouth and the orifices are the same. Why then do we worship an orifice or an organ when science has proven that man is in majority water, excrements, gases, and metals? He is a mere tube with an entry hole and an exit hole, and what exists and what doesn’t depends on civilization and values. How could he explain to her and to the others that their world was the true one, the world of the individual, that life is the life of the individual and the value of the individual depends on what he accomplishes, not what he rejects. He went back to his original question and asked her, excited and insistent, “So what? Is there any shame in having a taste of him? What business is it of anyone whether you had a taste of him or you not?”

  She exclaimed, perplexed, bored, and in pain, “Enough my brother, please don’t add to my worries.”

  He stared at her as she stared at him and whispered, insistently, “You must go to Frankfurt.”