“Nor do I,” Marie said.
“Truth is, I don’t trust that my own people would treat you any better. At one point I believe they would have. But that train has left the station, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, it has,” Marie said. I saw a tear escape from the corner of her eye. I stopped in my tracks and pulled her towards me. I kissed away her tear. “I’m afraid this whole place will go up in flames. We’ll kill each other before there is a truce. I had some hope the Jews would come to their senses and choose that route. But they didn’t. And now the fighting will only get worse. Until one side is so beaten down they will have to surrender.”
“And then you and I will have to take sides, too, even more than we do now. There may not even be a way for us to meet again when the fighting makes its way to an-Nasira, your kibbutz and my village, which we both know it will. It’s already come so close.”
When we reached the tree, we sat on our rock, her head on my shoulder. I stroked her golden hair. She traced my face with her delicate fingers: my forehead, my nose, my lips. We sat in silence. There was no reason to break it. Our breaths said it all.
When it was time to part ways, I did not want to let her go. I didn’t know if I’d see her again. But I had to get back to my family, my village; and she surely had to get back to her kibbutz, too. “Promise me you will keep following the cross,” I said, standing and pulling her up into my arms.
“I will,” she said. Her blue eyes were overflowing pools. “Until I can’t anymore.”
I promised her the same. I wanted to ask her to meet me back at the tree, in the cover of darkness, to consummate our love before it was too late. But I, a man of words, could not find the right ones. I did not want to disrespect her, or imply she was less than worthy of a proper courtship and marriage. I would have offered her my hand then and there, but it was senseless. We could meet in the chapel, but we could not live in the convent. I dared not even kiss her on the cheek inside those walls.
But we were not in the convent anymore. We were under your canopy, Father Allah. And I knew you would approve. So I kissed her softly on the lips and held her close to me. I felt myself growing hard against her middle, and I could tell she felt it, too. I shifted, my hands against the small of her back, leading her with my movement. Wanting so much to be lying with her on the ground beneath us. My heart was beating rapidly, my breath against her neck. My arm pressed against the rosary in her pocket. She pushed me away.
“You should go now,” she said. I knew she was right, so I gave her one last long kiss and walked up to my village, turning around every now and then to watch her disappearing into the distance as she made her way off into the setting sun.
RUBY
RUBY HAD NO idea if Tikvah would show. But if she did, and even brought the diary with her, Ruby could call off her brothers. She had relented and let Raja tell them about the diary. They were surely planning something that would only make matters worse. Especially now that the PLO postponed its declaration of statehood, her brothers would feel even more defeated than before. She should not have told anyone about the diary until she was holding it in her hands. Once again, she had let her indignation cloud her thinking. Leaning against one of the trunks of the old olive tree, she took a puff from her cigarette and watched a pair of egrets sail in on the wind, slowly descend into the valley and perch on some sheep where they would find their breakfast of tics and fleas. She blew a ring of smoke.
It was not like her to stand around waiting. She should go about her business of foraging. If Tikvah didn’t show, she didn’t show. She knew from the beginning she could not be trusted. But her empathy with a sick woman like herself, her own desire to confide in another, and her attraction to Tikvah’s vibrant idealistic daughter, had caused her to let her guard down. Talya had even called her a few times since their meeting in an-Nasira. Both women had appealed to her softer side, her more hopeful side, and inched their way into her life. It had all been a waste of what precious time she had left. She snickered at what her father had named the tree—Tree of Hope—and at the name of the valley—Valley of Hope. She had let her imagination get the better of her, thinking the woman’s name, her appearance in the valley, was a sign that her father, or at least his spirit, had sent her. What a fool she was. She took one final puff from her cigarette.
“Khalas!” she spat into the air, tossed the cigarette butt onto the dirt, and rubbed it out with the heel of her boot.
“I have something for you!” came a voice from behind her. She had been so absorbed in her gloom that she had not seen nor heard Tikvah approaching. She was with Cane, of course, waving something above her head.
Ruby blinked and looked again. Was that really the diary Tikvah was holding? She closed her eyes, put her palms together in the Namaste gesture she had learned in the ashram, and whispered, “Shukran, Abu Rabia,” into the air, hoping her father’s spirit was still around and was not cross with her for her lack of faith. He deserved her show of gratitude.
Tikvah was almost by her side now. “I went back down to the cellar early this morning, while Alon was out running. After I had some time to think yesterday.” She was panting, trying to catch her breath as she talked. “I’m sorry I didn’t defend you, Ruby, in front of Alon, but the truth is, I can see his side. Things happened in the past that I can’t change now. And I have to think of myself and my family. Alon’s mental health is fragile, and he needs to be able to count on me. But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to have what is yours. It’s your father’s diary, and it belongs with you.”
Tikvah leaned on the olive tree trunk next to the one on which Ruby was leaning. She was still panting as she continued speaking. “I admit I was a bit worried Alon was suspicious we were searching for something, and would look for it himself. But it was right where we left it, behind the rock in the wall.” She held the journal out for Ruby to see.
Ruby sighed in relief. Tikvah could be trusted.
“But I couldn’t read a thing even if I had tried, as you know.”
Tikvah handed the diary to Ruby, whose heart raced as she turned it over in her hands. The leather of the thick journal was soft and cracking. This time, she would have time to sit with it, read it, absorb it. These were her father’s words, his own writing, by his own hand. All before the Nakba. Before his life had been changed forever.
She sat on the flat rock surrounded by the trunks of the olive tree and held the book on her lap for a moment, running her fingers along the binding, over the title he had written on the cover. Yom Asal, Yom Basal. Day of Honey, Day of Onion. Did she really want to read what was inside?
Finally, she had the courage to open it to the first page. There was a drawing. She had never thought her father an artist. He was more a man of words. Although he did doodle simple sketches sometimes, where she could see his natural talent—much like in this one. The drawing was of a chapel with a cross sticking up from its roof. That was peculiar. What reason would her father have to draw a picture of a church? Then she remembered the golden cross hovering over the valley. As a child, she had seen her father gazing at it often. Now she wondered if there was a connection between that cross and the rosary that Tikvah had found with the diary, despite the fact that the names of the nuns’ orders didn’t match.
She looked up at Tikvah, who was watching her with fascination. “Did you bring that rosary with you, too?”
“No,” Tikvah shook her head. “I didn’t know you’d want it. Puzzling, isn’t it? I wonder whose it was. I was hoping to look into that some more, maybe take it over to the convent and see if they have any clue.”
Ruby nodded her approval and went back to the journal. She turned the page. The writing began there. The words were faded, but still legible. It had been written with a fountain pen, over fifty years before. Her hands were shaking. The first entry was dated 1947. Ruby started to read but then remembered she was not alone. She looked up at Tikvah. “I hope you’ll excuse me, but I can’t wait until I get h
ome to read it.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “I totally understand if you say no, but I’d love to hear about it, if you don’t mind. After you read it. Or while you’re reading it.”
Ruby considered Tikvah’s request. Why not? She had nothing to hide, and she assumed her father did not, either. Even if he had hidden it away, that was years ago. What could he have done that would make a difference now, anyway?
“If there’s anything you don’t want to share, I don’t mind. But I’d love to hear more about your father and his family. Life here before the Jewish State. I told you that, and I mean it, even if my art collective idea was premature.” Tikvah was petting Cane down the back as she talked, as if feeling the dog’s presence gave her comfort and courage. “I’m sorry, Ruby. But I can’t go through with it. Not after I saw how Alon reacted. But I also don’t want to stay in the dark. I want to know the truth, even if it hurts.”
“Okay.” Ruby motioned for Tikvah to join her on the rock, in the shaded shelter of the three trunks of the old olive tree. Tikvah sat down beside her, watching Ruby as she read. And Cane sat next to them on the ground, pricking up her ears. “I’ll read some and then give you highlights.”
She read the first entry:
Dear Father Allah,
If I am going to be a writer, I must write. Now that I am out of a formal educational framework, I need to be disciplined about my writing. Written Arabic is not the same as Spoken Arabic. It is one of the richest and most beautiful languages there is, but also one of the most difficult. If I want to master it and take myself seriously as a writer, I must start now. When Mouallim gave me this journal as a secondary school graduation present, he said I was one of his most promising pupils. He told me to write in it regularly, whatever is on my mind, and to write not for an audience, but for myself—to let go of all inhibitions and simply write. He suggested I write as if to a confidant, to encourage the words to flow. So I chose to address this diary to you, Father Allah, as I have already been speaking to you in my head for as long as I can remember.
No one knows my secret name for you. Father is not one of your 99 names. But Father Allah is the only name that rings true when I think of my Christian mother and my Muslim father. Even if I was raised Muslim, Umm Ahmad still crosses herself when she thinks no one is looking, and when I was a young boy, she whispered Hail Marys to lull me to sleep. To this day, I chant “Hail Mary full of grace,” like a lullaby, as I drift off at night. I find the notion of grace comforting, the idea that God bestows gifts from a place of unconditional love and that there is some greater design and meaning that connects all that is. When I feel your grace, I feel held in your embrace, like I did that day when you took me to heaven and brought me back down to earth again . . .
READING HER FATHER’S words as such a young man brought tears to Ruby’s eyes. She had heard him refer to God as Father Allah in his poetry, but never otherwise. And she had no idea her grandmother had secretly remained connected to her Christian faith and passed some of that on to her youngest child. Apparently, there was a lot she did not know about her father.
She read on and then told Tikvah about her father’s near drowning in the village well. “Such a formative event from his childhood, and he never told me about it. No one knows who pulled him out. His parents told him it was Allah who saved him, so he could do great things. It makes me sad, because I know how great he was, but he never did achieve the success he deserved. It lends another layer of meaning to his poem, ‘The Survivor.’”
“What’s the poem about?”
“You tell me. I know all of his poems by heart.” Ruby closed her eyes and recited the poem for Tikvah, translating line by line.
The survivor,
plucked from the bottom of the well
of Hell
itself.
‘Chosen for greater things,’
they said.
What things?
The survivor lives on. To tell the story
While watching trees of hope uprooted around him.
Houses of dead souls burning around him.
Loves betrayed,
crying out to the virgin of all virgins to save her suffering baby
So he too can live on to tell
His story.
Before the beads come unstrung and scatter,
Rolling off in so many directions . . .
Salvation becomes a game of marbles,
A joke Father Allah
Was playing on his children.
“Wow!” Tikvah said. “That well story certainly does shed light on that poem. And all of that Christian imagery. The rosary reference, too. I wonder if it’s related to the rosary we found with his diary.”
“I wonder, too. There’s Christian imagery in several of my father’s poems. But I assumed he used it in a more universal way. I knew he had a familial connection because of his mother’s parents, but I had no idea he felt such a personal attachment to the faith. He never let on as much.”
“Have his poems been published?” Tikvah asked.
“Yes. After the Nakba, there were barely any Arabic books to be had. They weren’t let through the borders after 1948. Not until ’67. My father hung out with a group of Marxist literary folk in an-Nasira, at the shop he took over after working there as an apprentice for a number of years, learning about binding and selling.”
“Yes, you mentioned that.”
“Well, they would copy books by hand, and my father would bind them.”
“I didn’t know,” Tikvah said.
“There is a lot you didn’t know, apparently. The Jews don’t teach this history, do they? Those were difficult times.”
“I see that now.” Tikvah looked remorseful.
But Ruby no longer felt a need to make her feel badly. She had brought her the diary. Still, the facts were the facts. “When printing became possible, my father started printing a literary journal. He published some of his own poems in that. And then my brother, Raja, published the poems in book form later, after his death. He’s the one who followed in my father’s footsteps in that regard, although my father never knew. My other brothers are mostly farmers and shepherds, although one is a science teacher, and another owns a grocery; but Raja is a publisher of Arabic books.”
“I’d love to read more of your father’s poetry,” Tikvah offered.
“Sure. I can bring you some next time we meet, and I can translate it for you.” Ruby heard herself say these words and wondered if she really would come to meet Tikvah again. Now that she had what she wanted, what use did she have for this woman from the moshav? Apparently, part of her wanted more from their relationship than only the diary. And she had told Talya she would do what she could to encourage Tikvah to paint again . . .
“I’d like that.”
Ruby loved discussing her father’s work; she could talk about it and her father for as long as someone was willing to listen. “Most of his poetry are odes to his lost childhood. Love poems to his village. That is why he never was famous. He used to tell me that the only poetry Palestinians were interested in reading was resistance poetry. And his was less overtly so. He was not as popular as some of his friends. Take Samih al-Qasim and Hanna Abu Hanna, for example. Or later on—Mahmoud Darwish and Rashid Hussein.”
Tikvah furrowed her ungroomed eyebrows. “I’m not familiar with those names.”
“You’ve never heard of Mahmoud Darwish? He’s won numerous international literary awards. He’s been translated into many languages.” Ruby shook her head. “Unbelievable!”
“I’m afraid I haven’t. But I’d like to read his poetry now that I know about it. Your father was not as famous as him?”
“Not even close. He was known in his little circle, was even published in a few other Arabic literary journals. But not beyond that. Another poet friend of his, Taha Mouhammed Ali, who also wrote less overtly political poetry, has begun to receive recognition recently. Some of his work has been translated at this late stage in his
life. But my father died without much recognition at all.”
“I’m sorry,” Tikvah said, putting her hand on Ruby’s shoulder.
“I miss him,” Ruby said, smoothing down the pages of her father’s diary with the palm of her hand. “I still can’t believe that he never said a word to me about this diary. He loved to talk about the village, about his childhood. I didn’t imagine he was keeping any secrets from me.”
“I know about secrets,” Tikvah said. “I envy you, Ruby. I wish I knew something about my parents’ stories. They told me nothing.” She shook her head. “I always got the impression that they didn’t want me to know anything. Like the trauma was just too much to bear, they didn’t want me to have to bear it with them. Apparently that’s common among survivors and war orphans. There is no chance either of my parents left something like this diary.”
“How can you be so sure? Maybe your parents have journals hidden away, too.” Ruby gazed up at Tikvah’s bed-and-breakfast on the hill.
“I doubt it. My father is dead, and my mother was the more enigmatic of the two of them. I gave up hope of getting any information out of her long ago.” Tikvah sighed. “At least I can experience it vicariously, through you hearing your father’s story. Please, read on.”
Ruby continued reading, and sharing bits, but not all, as she went along. Some parts she wanted to process on her own. As she read, the father she thought she knew came to life in a new way. She knew he was a complicated man, different than others in the village. How many other men in Bir al-Demue were poets? But she had not understood the extent to which he was different, and she had not known how his dreams as a young man had been shattered. She knew the loss of his childhood village had hurt him terribly and devastated his family, thwarted his educational aspirations, too; but she had not realized the true depth of his loss.
TIKVAH
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