Ishmael's Oranges

by Claire Hajaj

  This is a crazy place, he thought, but stirred his coffee silently. The bubbles went round and round, popping like his thoughts – this one the camps, this one Rafan’s face as a child pale in sleep, this one his mother’s cold eyes, this one Jude, always Jude and her faith in his dreams.

  When Rafan came in, he kissed Leila and whispered something in her ear. She looked at Salim, and went out of the kitchen. Rafan came to sit next to his brother and pulled out a cigarette.

  ‘You took me to meet Abu Ziad,’ Salim said to his brother. ‘And I already met Farouk. So, I guess they must have liked me. Or is it because I’m your brother?’

  ‘They liked you. What’s not to like? You’re smart, educated. You speak English like a native. You have an Angleezi passport. You could do great things for them.’

  ‘For us,’ Salim said softly. Rafan smiled. ‘For us, then. For our family.’

  ‘So this Tripoli business, is for what? To see my new offices?’

  Rafan laughed again. ‘Something like that, yes. Just a conversation, for now.’ He leaned forward and handed Salim a cigarette. Salim took it in and felt the heat inside him. Rafan tilted that attractive face of his to one side, just like a hungry bird. He looked at Salim through narrow eyes.

  ‘Think about it, Salim. Why do you want to be an accountant? The Angleezi might give you a passport, but in the end they’ll spit on you just like all the other Arabs and Indians and Africans they’ve fucked. You’re too dark for their clubs.’

  Salim pushed his coffee back across the table. ‘You know nothing about my life, little brother.’

  ‘I know enough to see you aren’t being true to yourself. Israel, England – it’s all the same. You’re just Arabs working for a white boss.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Salim said softly. All night he’d lain wrestling with it – two futures, one of them drawn by the brother sitting opposite him. But within, someone was whispering – this is not the boy you knew. The sweetness and the mischief were gone; somewhere between Nazareth and the camps and his mother’s penthouse, Rafan had become something else.

  ‘I had a life in England,’ he said. ‘I built it myself. Education, respect. Prospects.’ Love, too. He thought of Jude. She’d loved him, and perhaps still did. A clean love, offering everything and expecting nothing in return. ‘You’re asking me to give that up, to help you.’

  ‘You say you helped me when we were children, Salim,’ Rafan said, getting to his feet. ‘Now let me return the favour. Hassan is happy running his garage and humping his fat little wife. But Mama always said you had ambition. What we could do together – it’s more than just revenge.’ He tapped the table with one finger. ‘It’s up to you, big brother. All these years they kept us apart. Now you must decide where you belong – with them, or with me?’

  He straightened up, and looked at his watch. ‘I have to go and finish some business,’ he said. ‘I’m coming back at six. If you’re with me, big brother, we’ll go together.’ He walked around the table, and Salim stood up as Rafan pulled him into a tight embrace. He heard the words brush against his ear: ‘I’ll see you later, Insha’Allah.’ And then his brother was gone down the dark hall, and Salim heard the slam of the door.

  After Rafan left, Salim washed his face, pulled on his clothes, said goodbye to Leila and walked out of the building.

  The drab little flat was hidden in a maze of old streets that coiled away from the glitz and dazzle of central Beirut. He walked with the sun pounding on his head, like a hammer. By the time he came to the open sea, the sun had tilted into the western skies.

  He looked up along the northern coastline, where the sea and land vanished together in the haze. Out there, the modern world waited. He imagined the shore racing up to Turkey and Greece, reaching the Riviera coasts of Europe. Behind him, the sea would sweep past Beirut, Tyre and Israel to the great deserts of North Africa. They really were at the crossroads of the world.

  Where do I go from here? To Tripoli and the brothers? Did that road lead back to Jaffa one day? But Rafan had laughed at that idea. His brother neither had a home nor wanted one. He moved through Beirut’s streets like sparks from a fire, consuming everything he came across.

  Once Salim had thought home could only ever mean Jaffa. But when he closed his eyes he saw something unexpected: blue eyes, open arms and a sweet, frank face.

  He pressed his hands over his eyes, trying to make sense of it all. The towering palm trees above him leaned out west, their green dates ripe for harvest and clustering thickly, and a trickle of sorrow ran through him. I never took in my harvest. I left the fruit on the bough, and it probably rotted and fell.

  It was five o’clock. He hailed a taxi and drove to Hamra. His mother’s apartment building was sleepy in the late afternoon; even the concierge was nodding off at his desk.

  As he rang the doorbell his chest felt light, his heart weightless. She answered, in her dressing gown. Her face was bare and dull in the sticky evening light, and her forehead wrinkled in surprise.

  Salim kissed her cheek and walked inside. She followed him slowly and stood at the top of the stairs, as if hoping he might leave again.

  He turned towards her and took a breath. ‘Mama, you never apologized to me. You left your son and never sent him a single word. Then I turn up here, and you don’t say you’re sorry. Nothing. Why? Do I mean so little to you?’

  Her face hardened, and her chin went up in that old gesture of scorn. But he could see it now for what it was – guilt masquerading as defiance.

  ‘I have finished apologizing – even to you, my clever son,’ she said. ‘I learned long ago – we are all alone in this world and we don’t care about each other.’ She moved to stand in front of him and he saw the loose skin around her mouth and eyes. ‘Your father cared only for his pride. You cared only for the house. Rafan cares only for his games. The Jews for their flag, the Palestinians for their acres of dirt.’ She threw her hands up in the air and clenched her fists. ‘Should I be the only one? To care about the others, and sacrifice myself?’

  In the background he could hear a turntable playing – a woman’s voice filling the hollow space, echoing into dissonance between the marble walls. He took his mother’s thin hand and held it hard when she tried to pull it away. ‘Did you ever love us at all?’ he asked. This time, there were no tears.

  ‘How could I not?’ she said. ‘But love brings nothing to people like us. Our roads are set and there’s no escape.’ He saw her eyes laced with age; they looked through him in fury, the present accusing the past. ‘I followed my road, and I don’t ask for forgiveness. Now you go follow yours, as you must. Please, ya’eini. Run now, and stop wishing for things that could never have been.’

  Run now. Salim left her apartment before sunset and took a taxi back to Leila’s flat. He packed his clothes into a duffel bag and left Rafan a note. I’m sorry, but my road is not here.

  The taxi to the airport took two hours and cost him the rest of his Lebanese pounds. He waited in the airport overnight for the first flight to London.

  Arriving at Heathrow in the gentle light of a late summer’s afternoon, he took the fastest train he could find into the city. The chill of autumn was far away. All around him, people were sitting back in their seats after a long day’s work; he imagined them thinking of home and a sweet night to rest with their loves.

  He reached her door as the sun was starting its earthward fall, dousing the evening air in thick, yellow light. His heart raced as he knocked. And when the door finally opened, he thought for a second his legs might give way.

  Yet, faster than thought, her arms were around his neck and she was crying in his shoulder as he hugged her, held her to him so tightly and felt her heart through her shirt. She was saying, ‘Whatever you wanted, I should have given it to you. I should have been brave, I should have taken you home.’

  ‘No,’ he said, taking her beautiful face and kissing it over and over. ‘You’re my home,’ he said, through his own joyful tears.
‘You’re the only place I’m at peace.’

  ‘Our families.’ Her fists pressed against his chest, half clinging on, half pushing away. ‘Those things you said…’

  ‘I was wrong.’ His forehead was against hers, his senses full of the smell of her – her salt skin, her hair, the warmth of her breath. ‘Please. None of that matters any more. Nothing else matters, do you hear me? This is a miracle, what we’ve found.’

  Her mouth was pressed to his, clumsily, and he spoke his promise to her lips. ‘Jude. My Jude. I’ll make you happy, I swear, my love. Whatever else comes, I swear it. I’ve come home now to you.’

  ‌3

  ‌Reckoning

  He that troubles his own house shall inherit the winds, and the fool shall be servant to the wise.

  Douay–Rheims Bible

  Peace is more important than land.

  Anwar Sadat, to the Israeli Knesset

  after the Yom Kippur War

  ‌

  ‌1976

  ‌Kuwait

  ‘Can I have an ice-cream? You said I could, remember? Not a lolly, a big dahab one, with nuts.’

  By the seashore, the birds wheeled and circled in the gasping heat. The Kuwaiti sun was approaching its zenith in a roaring blaze and not a ghost of a breeze lifted from the oily water.

  Jude fished in her pocket for change. Even the coins are hot. Once, she’d told Marc that their car at midday was hot enough to fry eggs on. The next hour, she had come outside to find him standing by the car bonnet, eggshell in hand, watching the hardening white drip slowly onto the melting tarmac.

  ‘Wait a moment, pet,’ she said. ‘Daddy will be here soon.’

  ‘Daddy doesn’t like ice-cream,’ said Sophie solemnly, leaning into the slim shade of her mother’s skirt. Marc stood in front of her, feet planted apart. The light turned his hair an aching white and his skin transparent. Fierce blue eyes looked up at her and his lips pressed together in tight disapproval. ‘But I want one now,’ he said firmly. ‘Before Daddy comes. He always says no.’

  Jude silently willed Salim to hurry. He’d left the house this morning in his best suit and tie, eyes full of anxiety. Jude’s heart went out to him, even though she desperately hoped his mission would fail. If he failed, then they could all go home.

  She bent down and pinched Marc’s chin. He was both old and young for his six years. Sophie, the elder twin, was her mother reprised in olive tones. Within her brown skin and almond eyes was a quiet, meticulous child, gentle and ready to love.

  But Marc – goodness knows where Marc came from, Salim used to say. Salim had taken Marc’s stubborn paleness to heart – almost as if it were a deliberate affront. Jude understood his incredulous annoyance. Your Arab friends here were already suspicious of your blonde wife. And now they look at your white son and wonder – whose is he?

  Jude loved Marc’s skin, but the feelings that bubbled inside it troubled her. Her little boy had a mind like a bird, full of fever and flight. He did not listen, he could not be still, soaring and plunging through feelings like the desperate gulls behind her skimming the Arabian Gulf.

  ‘Be patient, pet,’ she said. ‘We have to wait here until Daddy comes to tell us about his job, remember?’ Marc dropped his eyes and kicked the ground with his feet. Behind her, Jude heard Sophie shout, ‘Daddy!’ She pushed herself up, her heart leaping in her chest.

  Salim was beaming, kneeling on the dusty ground, his arms open for Sophie as she ran into them. He pulled her up over one shoulder, where she giggled and kicked her legs.

  Jude took Marc’s hand and hurried towards him. He turned to her and kissed her hard and long on her upturned palm – the most he could legally do in Kuwait’s puritan public spaces. ‘It’s okay, my love,’ he said, his voice surging with new confidence. Over the past month, she’d been afraid his courage was leaving him. ‘They agreed to give me a trial. For six months at least, we’re safe. And if it works out – you’re looking at the new Managing Director of Expansion for the Gulf Region.’ He stood taller and slapped Sophie on the backside, making her squeal with laughter. ‘What do you say to that, you pair of pickles?’ he shouted to the children, ruffling Marc’s hair.

  What do I say? Jude squeezed his hand and smiled at him. ‘I’m so proud of you, my love. You deserve it. I hope they’re really sorry about what they did to you.’

  Salim’s face fell slightly, but then he shrugged.

  ‘I suppose they did what they had to. The company has to think of its bottom line, and that division wasn’t making so much money.’ It was almost word for word what his American mentor had said when they’d let him go the month before.

  Three years ago Jude would never have dreamed they’d be living in this empty desert. Their road in England had just started to smooth, the birth of their perfect twins reconciling doubters on both sides. Marc and Sophie had been wondrous, glorious affirmation of their courage. Those first days in the hospital Jude and Salim had been transfixed by them, these two unlikely beings clutching each other, their twined limbs formed by love.

  Everything before had been so hard. Dora nearly had a heart attack when Jude told her of the engagement. It was Jack’s actual heart attack that finally opened the door to tenuous acceptance. Dora stood grimacing at their tiny wedding at Chelsea Register Office as Tony gave her away, and Hassan loomed woodenly by Salim’s side as best man.

  Two years later, Salim came home with a strange look on his face. He’d sat on their white and brown spiral carpet and played with the twins, tickling their bellies to make them wriggle with joy.

  Once the toddlers were in bed, he gave Jude the news that would set them all on an unknown course. A recruitment company had called to ask if he would consider relocating to Kuwait.

  ‘Where?’ was the first thing that Jude could find to say. Salim explained. Kuwait was a small desert nation on the shores of the Arabian Gulf, sandwiched in between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. ‘Small but very rich,’ he said, ‘and getting richer every day.’ An American company was peddling new technologies to the sheiks in their rising business districts. And they wanted someone who knew the region. ‘Although that just goes to show how much Americans know about Arabs,’ he’d laughed. A Palestinian doesn’t even speak the same language as the Kuwaitis.’

  ‘So why go there?’ Jude found herself holding on to the edge of the table, a lump in her throat. She’d been planning to return to her master’s degree once the children turned three, taking all the old books out of the attic and putting them back on the shelf. ‘How could I go there?’

  He’d looked at her thoughtfully, but she could already see the fires of excitement in his eyes burning away reason. ‘You don’t look anything other than English,’ he’d said. ‘There are twice as many foreigners in Kuwait than Arabs – they’d never notice you. We wouldn’t need to say anything, my love.’

  ‘And what about you?’ she’d countered – later, after his first interview had gone so well. On the sofa that evening, in his arms, she’d played her last card. ‘You said you never wanted to go back. You wanted to be free of it, to be your own man.’

  She remembered how he’d taken her hand and kissed it. There’d been tears in his eyes, but his voice was wild with happiness.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he’d said. ‘That’s the point of all of this. I have a British passport. I’m not a poor Palestinian any more, being pushed around. I’m British, a westerner. They’ll have to respect me.’ He was looking up at the white ceiling, smiling at the invisible future he saw gathering there. ‘Just a few years, and we’ll be rich, my love. We will never have to struggle again.’

  And a few days later, Douglas Friend, Managing Director of Odell Enterprises Gulf Division, was buying them dinner at Le Gavroche.

  She remembered – it had been the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur in ’seventy-three. Bombs were once again falling around Israel; Arab forces were surging across the deserts and mountains towards Jerusalem. They were calling to take back their stolen lands and Ju
de despaired of knowing if they were right or wrong.

  Salim had persuaded Jude to miss Uncle Alex’s uptown breaking-of-the-fast to come with him instead. How could she refuse, when their peoples were killing each other half a world away? So she left the twins with a babysitter and ached for them throughout the meal. As they ate and Salim talked, she watched the pale orange candlelight stream through their empty champagne glasses, painting ghostly pictures on the mirrors behind their heads. Later that night, she took Salim’s face in her hands and said, ‘One condition, Sal. If we go, we don’t change who we are. We protect this family. Even in an Arab country… I want the children to grow up with nothing to hide.’

  They’d arrived at the time of the oil embargo that looked set to make Kuwait even richer. Now three years later – three years of diplomatic dinners, weekends at the Equestrian Club, cheap maids and aching loneliness for Jude – the dreams of wealth were slipping away.

  That same Doug Friend, the one promising so much, took Salim into his office to tell him he was out of a job. The division he worked for would be shutting down, and Salim’s contract would not be renewed. Salim had come home crushed, dazed – like the dockyardman Jude once saw knocked over by a swinging crane catching him from behind.

  One thin branch of hope remained – a promise to put Salim forward for a trial position in another part of the company. The weight of Salim’s anxiety had been crushing; he had to impress, or it was all over.

  Now, with Sophie in one hand and Jude in the other, her husband stepped lightly as he led them into the restaurant beside the waterfront. Behind them stood the triple pillars of the new Kuwait Towers. Their sea-blue globes were raised hundreds of feet into the sky, pierced by long white needles like rockets aimed at the heavens.