by Claire Hajaj
She turned onto Warwick Street and walked past the Our Lady of Assumption Chapel, where one of her Polish Catholic classmates used to go for Mass.
It had amazed Judith when she learned that church doors are always unlocked. It spoke of a welcome she could not imagine in her own faith, a world of open arms where no one was an outsider. The heavy brown door of the chapel swung inwards at a touch, drawing Jude across a glowing threshold into the clasp of warmth and candlelight.
Inside, the room was filled with a cloying calm. Candles flickered in the half-light, and rosy-stained windows showed saints reaching out to figures robed in blue and gold. To Jude they looked strangely antiseptic; their impassive white faces gazed down on the penitents huddled in the red pews below.
She edged into one of the rows and sat on the worn cushion. What would Jack and Dora say if they could see her now, their precious daughter and only blood sitting before a statue of the Virgin Mary? Dora had always reserved a special disdain for Christ’s mother; she insisted that Jesus was a product of young Mary’s sleepwalking in a Roman military encampment and an unintended encounter with a foot soldier. ‘She used to walk in her sleep all the time,’ she’d told Jude during a dismissal of her friend Kath’s religious beliefs. ‘She was known for it.’
This Mary did indeed look sleepy, her eyes half-closed and a sad curl to her lips, nearer to a wince than a smile. The cowls over her head made Jude think of a woman in mourning, of hidden sorrows.
Jude felt those unshed tears come back to her eyes again – the traitor tears that always seemed to come when she wanted to scream instead of weep. Now she did not try to stop them flowing down her cheeks. Tell me what to do.
She pushed the thought up towards the ageless Mary in her blue shawl, her skin so white and clear, her hands reaching out to Jude with comfort. Around her the murmur of sorrow and thanksgiving filled the air. It grew around her like waves on the shore at sunset, after the storms of the day have passed.
She asked him to meet her at Virginia’s the next morning.
When she arrived he was already sitting there, his face downcast. Her heart went out to him, but she steeled herself.
‘How are you?’ he said as she sat down.
She nodded quickly, and said, ‘I’m okay.’ What a stupid answer. But he was too distracted to notice.
‘I’m sorry for yesterday,’ he said, a slight hint of belligerence in his voice. ‘You know it wasn’t my fault. There’s just no point in arguing with Hassan. You should have left it alone.’
She fingered Rebecca’s chain for courage.
‘But that’s just it, Sal,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘They won’t leave us alone. Our families will never accept us like this. I thought yours might, but I don’t think so any more.’
He bit his lip, and threw his hands up.
‘Jude, you have to understand Hassan. He’s an idiot, a peasant. Please, please don’t do anything because of him. We can fix all of that, in time.’
‘It’s not just Hassan,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s all of them. My family hears Arab and all they see is angry people killing Jews. And yours think I’m just another Israeli. I can only think of one way to prove them wrong.’
He looked dubious. ‘How?’
‘Do what Hassan says we can’t,’ she answered. ‘Take me home with you. To Israel. Palestine – you know what I mean. It’s the best way to show we don’t stand with one side or the other. We can stay with my uncle on his kibbutz and see how things work there. Then we can stay in Nazareth, with your sister. I want to see Jaffa and the place you grew up.’
‘We?’ He looked at her in such blank disbelief that she felt her certainties shudder. She’d been up half the night thinking about it, turning their lives around like a broken picture, trying to make the pieces fit.
‘We have to show them,’ she pleaded. ‘That Hassan and my uncles are all wrong.’ He has to understand. ‘I’ve had Israel rammed down my throat all my life. My parents wanted me to go, Max – everyone. But I never wanted to. It was meaningless to me. Until now. When you talked about your home, it changed how I felt. I want to see this place through your eyes. And if we can convince our families over there, no one here could argue – and all of this hiding would be done forever.’
She felt him pull his hand away from hers, the table suddenly cold beneath her fingers. ‘How could you even think this, Jude?’ The words came out like a slap. ‘I was driven out of my home. I never went back. Now you tell me that the first time I should go back, I should go with a Jew? To stay with Zionists? Are you mad?’
She was frozen to the spot, her palms cold with sweat. ‘Not with a Jew,’ she said, her voice quiet. ‘With me.’
He pointed to the chain around her neck. ‘You can’t hide that thing there. You don’t even try. Here, together, maybe something’s possible. If we go back there, it’s just you and a Palestinian traitor.’ He pushed his chair back from the table.
‘Is that what you care about?’ she said. ‘What these people you’ve always laughed at think of you?’
‘They’re my people,’ he said, his black eyes furious. ‘You care more about your family’s approval, about this Jewish thing, than you do about me. You want to take me to your uncle’s kibbutz, to prove I’m a tame Arab. I see. Hassan was right. We don’t understand each other at all.’
As if in a dream she saw him stand up and begin to walk away. For a moment he slowed – the door was just in front of him, and a tiny, lost thought came to her: he will come back.
But then he walked on, and when he passed her in the window she might have been a stranger sitting there, still as a statue, just an empty blur beyond the dirty glass.
Beirut
He felt as if his legs did the thinking for him that day, walking him away from the sight of her, pounding down a tunnelled vision of Soho’s gloomy streets, and driving him two weeks later to the very place he’d sworn never to go: the airport and a journey to reawaken the dead.
Even the letter he’d eventually opened and the telephone call with Rafan were foggy recollections. He’d wanted to bury the image of Jude in his mother’s touch, in the embrace of a brother who used to curl up next to him. As he read Rafan’s cheerful prose he pictured them both, waiting for him in a warmer world.
Rafan himself was all enthusiasm. ‘Just let me take care of everything, big brother.’ Down the hissing line his voice sounded deep and eager. ‘I promise, you’ll never want to leave.’
Salim replayed that voice many times during the five-hour flight, trying to read the man from his buried memories of the boy – the face he’d last seen smiling in a dark basement in Nazareth. How would they even recognize each other? It was a bitter idea. From take-off to touchdown at Beirut’s Aéroport International, he tried to wrestle his memories into submission, letting them go to make space for new ones. I will have a brother again. A mother again. That’s all that matters.
But when he saw the stranger waving from the humid arrivals hall, for a moment his disappointment was sharp as a knife in the ribs. ‘Big brother,’ the tall stranger said, moving towards him with open arms.
Everything about this Rafan was jarringly familiar, like a favourite tune in a different key. The green eyes were still wide and guileless. And the mouth turned up at the corners in the way that Salim remembered – the tantalizing secret smile. But above his silk shirt the full baby cheeks had thinned and shaped a face as striking as his mother’s. His jaw was dark with stubble and expensive sunglasses rested on his fair head.
He greeted Salim with an easy laugh. ‘My big brother,’ he said again, kissing him lightly on both cheeks. ‘I never thought I would see the day.’ His lips had become as full and smooth as a girl’s.
‘Rafan.’ Salim found his voice choked with an emotion he did not expect. ‘I can’t believe you’re here.’ Why did it take so long for you to look for me? That was what he longed to ask.
‘Everything happens in its own time, big broth
er,’ Rafan said, his hand tight on Salim’s back. ‘Now you’re here, you’ll see. Come on, the car’s waiting.’
They headed towards Beirut’s white skyscrapers, listening to the radio in Rafan’s new Mercedes. The airport was a dwindling speck in the distance, vanishing in a blaze of light. Outside, the southern highway whipped by under dark blue skies. A woman was singing, a sound full of strange memories. I know that voice. Umm Kulthum, the mother of music, had been a legend since his mother was a girl. Once the whole Arab world had stopped to listen to her. Now – maybe there was no one left to hear.
The sadness of the song infected him too, as he leaned his forehead against the warm glass.
My heart, don’t ask where love has gone,
It was a citadel of my imagination that fell,
Pour me a drink, let’s drink to the ruins,
And tell the story for me, while I cry
Rafan was talking over the music; he rhapsodized about the warm seas, about Jounieh’s white beaches and champagne at the Saint-Georges Yacht Club. Salim let him talk. This was why he came, to wash the pale English dust off his body and float in carefree Arabian waters.
Tantalizing glimpses of the Mediterranean sparkled out of the window, looking left and west into the falling sun. Ahead of them, the glamorous curve of the city stretched out in a wide embrace.
Beirut! Warm sun and warmer women, Hassan had said. That suited him perfectly.
The scenery had changed to their right; Rafan had turned off the highway, and now the Mercedes was crawling past a dirty sprawl of low corrugated roofs, spreading out as far as Salim could see – a filthy brown rug at the white feet of the city. The refugee camps. Tens of thousands of Palestinians sheltered there, or so he’d read. More were coming every day, fleeing Israeli tanks in the West Bank. Salim imagined them closing their front doors for the last time, wondering what the future might hold. It was supposed to be just for a short while, he thought, remembering the slam of the gate in Jaffa. And then it turned into the rest of our lives.
It put a sharp edge on his mood; the view out of the windscreen darkened as Umm Kulthum wailed over the roar of the engine. Beirut’s tall skyline loomed ahead.
Rafan paid the camps no attention. ‘Change of plan, big brother,’ he said. ‘It’s too early for the house. I don’t know about you, but I fancy a drink.’ Salim found his accent strange, almost French, with husky, slithering syllables. ‘We’ll go to Hamra later. Now I want to show you the real Beirut.’
Hamra was the richest part of the city, the home of old Arabic money. When Salim first heard that Rafan was living there, he said, ‘How come?’ before remembering that he didn’t really want to know. Rafan’s grin had been audible even over the telephone. ‘Hey, big brother. What can I say? Mama did well for herself.’
Beirut had done well for itself too. The jammed road into town gradually unfolded into wide, white boulevards lined with palm trees, brilliantly green in the sunshine.
Everywhere, Salim heard the throaty, thrilling snarl of expensive cars and saw the flash of bronzed legs striding smoothly through the traffic. Around the Place des Martyrs, in between its circulating buses, parked sedans and brand new motorbikes, people moved to the pulse of life in all its fullness, on their way to meetings, to trysts, to coffee houses and shops. Salim’s eyes followed them. Going to dance, to play, to love.
Beyond the city centre, the Corniche swept the brothers out to the vast blue playground of the Med. New hotels were springing up on the Promenade, and fairgrounds on the beach. Out on the sea waterskiers floated back and forth as silent as a dream, sending white wisps of spray up into the air. A green-capped mountain rose above the shimmering haze. Below the road, on the long sands, Salim could see men and women rushing headlong into the sea together, their bodies warm and lithe in the heat. It reminded him of Tel Aviv, all those years ago – the same brown limbs, the same heedless dance.
They pulled up outside one of the smaller hotels. Salim followed Rafan out onto the patio overlooking the Corniche. They sat quietly, sipping their drinks under a picture of the Virgin Mary. Salim could see the notorious Hotel Saint-Georges on the tip of the bay, glowing roundly in its pink and white shell.
‘Look at that,’ Rafan said to him. ‘It’s just like a nipple begging to be sucked.’ Salim laughed. How could they be the same person, the little boy who wet the bed and this worldly man? Salim felt strangely elated by his brother’s transformation. He sat back in the chair and relaxed. The sun is warm and the women are warmer, he thought. Jude was cold. Here he could be himself.
‘The Frenchies built this place, you know. The Christians.’ Rafan gestured out to the Saint-Georges. ‘They’re the ones with the money round here. Muslims have never been smart with money, unless they had oil to play with.’
‘The Muslims seem to be doing okay too,’ Salim said, looking at his brother’s silk shirt and heavy gold watch. ‘Hassan told me this place was an Arab paradise.’
‘A fool’s paradise,’ Rafan said. ‘Although you might say they are one and the same thing. In Israel it’s the Jews over the Arabs. Here it’s the Christians over the Muslims, with the Druze stirring the pot. One day it will all boil over. But until then…’ He picked up his drink, raised it. ‘Sahtein,’ he said – good health.
‘The English think all Arabs are either emirs or beggars,’ Salim said, as the sour cocktail slipped down his throat and warmed his stomach. ‘They can’t get used to the idea that I’m just an accountant.’ Although he’d been a beggar when he’d arrived there. He would never forget that.
Rafan laughed. ‘I can’t get used to it either. Salim Al-Ishmaeli, counting English pounds? But I guess it’s better than being Tareq in Nazareth, counting up his master’s shekels.’
‘And what kind of money do you count, then?’ Rafan had never told Salim what he did for a living. He had a Lebanese passport through their mother, which allowed him to work or study – whichever he wanted. But Rafan didn’t dress like a student. Nor did he carry himself like a businessman.
His brother ran one neatly buffed fingernail over the rim of his glass.
‘There’s only one kind of currency worth counting, big brother,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think they deal it out at the bank.’ Behind his head, a waterskier sent a white plume up into the sky; Salim heard a tiny shriek of joy or fear come drifting across the water. He wondered again what he wanted from Rafan. An apology? An explanation? He looked at him, trying to see the boy who’d needed him so, the one fed on secrets and false hopes. The son their mother had chosen to keep.
‘Is that why Mama left?’ he asked suddenly, pushing his glass to one side. ‘Because our father’s money wasn’t enough for her? Come on, she must have told you. Was that it?’
Rafan leaned back in his seat. He stretched his arms behind his head and regarded his older brother.
‘You know, Salim, Mama always says the past is the past. Why do you want to sit here, in this nice place with your nice drink, and talk about all the sad shit we’ve been through? Does it really matter now?’
‘I have a right to know,’ Salim said, a spark of anger flaring inside him. ‘I looked after you every day for eight years, remember? All this time, and never a word. So why now? What made you write? Don’t tell me it was Baba’s death, because I know that’s bullshit.’
Rafan wagged his finger at Salim. ‘What you want to know, I can’t give you, Salim. I was only a kid. I don’t remember anything about that time, just a bed that stank and bad dreams.’ His eyes were impossible to read behind their amber glass, but his words stung nonetheless. After all that love and care, hadn’t Salim earned a place in Rafan’s memory?
Rafan leaned forward and slid Salim’s drink back in front of him. ‘But I can tell you what I learned after we came here, big brother. The Arabs in Palestine are living like rats. Tareq and Nadia were mice, our father was a rat and we were his little baby rats picking up crumbs from the Israeli table. Is that a way to live? Isn’t it better to be a
free man among the Arabs than a fellah on a white master’s farm?’ He lifted his glasses onto his forehead and looked calmly at Salim, green eyes narrowed against the sun.
‘Free?’ Salim said. ‘I saw those camps. It looked like there were plenty of rats living there.’
Rafan shrugged his shoulders.
‘You can’t see everything there is to see from the roadside, big brother,’ he said. ‘It’s like in your English forests. The wolves may hide. But their teeth are still sharp and in the end they rule the other beasts.’
‘Wolves, rats,’ Salim laughed. ‘What are you trying to tell me? That you joined the PLO?’ The Palestine Liberation Organization had reached the English news recently. Once Salim had thought it was a joke, another faint-hearted Arab struggle. But Nadia had written to say that young people in the occupied West Bank were joining up after the latest war, and she worried what the future might bring for them.
Rafan laughed too, his mouth opening wide. ‘Ya Salim,’ he shook his head. ‘Life is too short for politics, old bean.’ He spoke in English now, and Salim had heard him conversing with the barman in French. But then his voice became serious. ‘I can’t explain it all now, big brother. You have to see for yourself. You should know that I never forgot you all these years, not for a minute. I’ve always wanted you to come here. Yes, to repay you. Whatever happened before, we are family still, the same blood. So come on, drink up. One day the dogs will eat us all.’
When the first glasses had been drained to their rattling ice cubes, and the second, and the third, the sun had dipped under the horizon. The sea turned a violent red and sucked at the shore.
They went into Hamra for dinner. Two smiling girls calling themselves Leila and Dalia joined them, and Rafan ordered for all of them: grilled steak, rich red tomatoes, hot bread and spicy peppers. Later, a young man arrived in a white suit and soft cream car to take them to a club downtown.