Ishmael's Oranges

by Claire Hajaj

  Tareq’s hands spread out. ‘You would be right, in any other country. Here, you are fighting against an agenda. The Jews made these laws to take the land for themselves – to be sure the Arabs could never return. Security, they called it. Or God’s promise. Now you think you can persuade them to change their minds – you, Salim Al-Ishmaeli? You may have a British passport, but when all is said and done, you’re still an Arab.’

  Salim slammed his hand on the table. ‘Fuck the Israelis,’ he shouted. ‘It was a war – everyone was running. Didn’t the Jews run too, when the Nazis came? And when the Nazis stole what they left behind, did the Jews call that justice?’

  ‘Listen, Salim,’ Tareq was saying, ‘I am not an expert at this. I’m a family lawyer. You need a man who can help you. I have some ideas. But I think you must moderate your expectations.’

  Salim knew Tareq and Nadia did not approve of any of this. They were just like Hassan, happy to sympathize with his difficulties, to rage at fate and join in sad reminiscences. But they did not see the value in any pointless struggles.

  Rafan understood, though. He knew why Salim was here. ‘Don’t bother with the cup of tears these people sell you,’ he’d said the day he left Kuwait. ‘There are sweeter things to drink in this world.’

  Salim put his hand on Tareq’s arm. ‘I know you want nothing but the best for me. You and Nadia were more than my own mother and father. But don’t ask me to moderate my expectations. I’m sick of living like a beggar, thanking the men who robbed me for the pennies they throw. Nothing is more important to me than this.’

  Tareq looked down at his papers, fiddling with the corners. Salim could sense the rebuke.

  ‘“Nothing” is a big word, Salim,’ the older man said eventually. ‘For a man with a family to care for.’

  ‘They don’t care for me and they don’t need me,’ he retorted instantly. ‘They left me.’

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘You weren’t there,’ Salim said, the bitter sting of it radiating through his body. ‘You don’t have any idea how it was, so please don’t tell me.’ Tareq shrugged his shoulders and sighed. ‘As you say. I’ll go and make some calls then, if you’re sure.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Tareq sighed and nodded. Salim watched him walk away towards the television, his frame still lean, but bent. He’d always thought of Tareq as a tall man; he recalled looking up to talk to him, waiting for his answers, his approval and his guidance. But memories were tricky. He’d found himself looking down at this Tareq, just like the tall Jewish settlements looked down on old, shackled Nazareth.

  The news was full of boys in the occupied streets of Jerusalem’s West Bank throwing burning bottles at Israeli tanks. They were just Marc’s age, black bands around their heads and the same wild defiance in their eyes.

  Salim escaped to the balcony to watch the sunset. There, with the skies of the Galilee sweeping out before him, he whispered the words again to himself. I’m sure. In the silence of evening it sounded weak, like a plea.

  It occurred to him that his mother might have said the very same thing in this place, all those years ago, as she took her wish and tossed it out in this endless sky. I’m just following your footsteps, Mama. Would you be proud of me? He tried to remember her face, but all he could see was Jude, her blue eyes hard as ice. But then her image blurred like the western hills as the sunset swallowed them into darkness.

  The next day, Tareq drove to Tel Aviv to file a petition with the Magistrates’ Court.

  This motion, he explained, was to set aside the legal limitation period on land claims. ‘Normally you would only have twenty-five years to make a complaint against the State,’ he said. ‘After forty years you wouldn’t have a hope. But in this case, you might have me to thank! Let me explain.’

  The very year Salim had left for England, Tareq had persuaded Abu Hassan to lodge a claim contesting seizure of his house. ‘Just in case there was any chance, you know. Not that he had the heart for it, mind you.’

  Soon afterwards, his father had become unwell with a series of strokes. Tareq would now be able to argue that the years in which Abu Hassan could hardly hold a spoon should not be counted against his heir’s right to claim.

  With Tareq away, Salim paced the room to calm his nerves.

  In the kitchen, he could see Nadia shaping labneh balls – thick clumps of strained yoghurt rolled into palm-sized ovals and dropped into a jar of olive oil and salt. The sour smell of the buttermilk drifted from the kitchen, as he watched her hands slapping over and over each other, squeezing and moulding in a silent dance.

  Moving to the telephone, he dialled the number of Rafan’s friend, the man his brother said could help him. Rafan was in Jordan now. ‘Living a quiet life, big brother,’ he’d said. ‘There’s nothing to do here but raise sheep and eat them. I’ll be fat next time you see me.’ Somehow, Salim doubted it.

  The name written next to the phone number was Jamil. Rafan called him Jimmy. ‘Jimmy is a good man to know. He’s from Haifa originally, but he moved to Tel Aviv after the war. He writes for everyone. Even for that liberal Jew paper, Haaretz. They love him. He’s a man with more than one face, you know what I mean?’ Salim knew exactly what he meant. With so many masks to wear, how do you remember who you are?

  Jimmy’s voice on the end of the phone was a commanding, cheerful bass.

  ‘Salim Al-Ishmaeli,’ he boomed, rolling the words around on his tongue. ‘Yes, I know your brother. He’s been a good friend. He’s done me some favours, given me some interesting stories. And now maybe you have another one for me?’

  Salim explained his mission, as Jimmy made encouraging noises.

  ‘W’Allah, habibi,’ he said, at the end. ‘That’s quite the tale. I know this guy, this Abu Mazen. He passed away a while ago, God rest him. Or perhaps I shouldn’t say that!’ The laugh was full and throaty. ‘But his boy is still around somewhere, making trouble.’

  Salim pictured the fat face and the black curls. ‘I don’t want to see him,’ he said.

  ‘Sure,’ Jimmy was saying. ‘You have bigger fruit to pick. Rafan asked me to help you out, so let me. First we should meet. Why don’t you come to Jaffa tomorrow? We can have a coffee and talk things over.’

  Tareq returned from Tel Aviv that afternoon, pink with effort and oddly pleased with himself. He’d filed two motions: one with the Magistrates’ Court to challenge the Statute of Limitations on Salim’s case, one to sue Amidar, the government housing corporation that had swallowed their land.

  ‘It’s actually better than I thought,’ he said to Salim over dinner. ‘In fact, I have a surprise for you.’ But he wouldn’t budge when Nadia and Salim pressed him. He just shook his spectacled head and smiled. ‘Later, later. I promised.’

  Salim told him about Jimmy – leaving out the part about Rafan. Tareq was hesitant. But he agreed that the Palestinian press might be useful. ‘The Arabs here still have many papers and radio stations, not that the Israelis care about those. But Haaretz might help. They cover many Arab stories. And I might have something else helpful for you in Tel Aviv. Wait and see.’

  They set off the next day in Tareq’s Nissan, down the rocky shoulders of the Galilee to the wide maritime plains. Salim leaned his forehead on the window, looking ahead as the land grew smooth and broad.

  Car after car rolled by them, glinting in the blue daylight. The road wound down before them like a silver stream through dark fields. Petrol stations and compounds whipped past them, steel and glass where once was only green. The land has been eaten, he thought. Eaten by the Jews, and here am I begging them to regurgitate a mouthful.

  As they reached Tel Aviv, row upon row of white apartment blocks blazed in the bright air, hundreds of windows like blank eyes gazing out over the sea. Ahead of him, the sky was spiked with high towers just like the ones rising over the Gulf sheikhs’ waterfront.

  But not everything was perfect. As they skirted the business district to older parts of
town, signs of wear came creeping in through the window. Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus buildings were once the envy of Jaffa. Even Mayor Heikal had praised them, with their sweeping curves and strange angles, white as the foam on the sea. Now tired awnings draped from their balcony rails, and salt had scored brown and yellow marks into the walls. The sight of them touched Salim with a strange sense of sorrow.

  They came to the crossing from Tel Aviv into Jaffa. Salim could not breathe out, holding the air down in his lungs against the sudden sting of memory. I’m here, he told himself. Home.

  The road rolled on, past buildings he did not recognize into an area that seemed designed for tourists. Someone had lifted out Jaffa’s crumbling yellow brickwork, soaked with the smells of nargile and coffee, and replaced it with new stones buffed to a neat sandstone shine.

  Salim wound down the window, searching, desperate for Tareq to slow down until he could find something familiar, some point to anchor all his hopes. His eyes slid along the strange streets, watching old couples with cameras and girls with tanned legs flocking along the pavements. They left him feeling ridiculous, like a child waiting arms-open for an embrace that could never come.

  Then he saw it at last. The Jaffa Clock Tower, still beautiful, now sitting apologetically in the middle of a busy traffic intersection. Relief surged through him as he traced its unyielding lines. It was smaller than he remembered, but how could that matter? Here they’d sat to lick kanafi from Souk Attarin off their fingers; here he’d played pebblestones through the din of the Mahmoudiya mosque. Here the nargile smokers had kicked his ankles when Mazen dared him to upset their backgammon tables. And here he’d pulled out pieces of rubble after the Irgun’s bomb, never realizing that a bigger disaster was coming for all of them.

  Now tourists, white and plump, stood around taking pictures. Others sat at the cafés, relaxing in the autumn sun.

  They were to meet Jimmy at a nearby coffee shop called Beitna. Jimmy himself suggested it. He’d thought it was funny – the name meant our house in Arabic and Hebrew. ‘It’s a Jewish place, but don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I know them, they’re progressives. And the girl who runs it is a beauty.’ He was right. Girls with short sleeves and long legs were serving coffee to laughing boys with dark eyes.

  A whale of a man stood up as they walked in. His belly bumped the cup of Turkish coffee in front of him, spilling dark liquid into an overflowing ashtray. His bearlike arms reached out as Salim approached, seizing him with cushioned hands. ‘Salim Al-Ishmaeli,’ he roared, as half the café turned to look at them. ‘But don’t you look like your brother!’

  Jimmy insisted on buying coffee and cakes before getting down to business. ‘These Europeans all have bad digestion,’ he said. ‘Their bowels are hard, like their brains. They keep their mouths closed while they eat, like it’s a shame to be hungry. But an Arab does his best work at the table and in the bedroom. Right?’ Tareq shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. Salim caught his brother-in-law’s sideways glance, the quizzical look that said who is this animal?

  True to his word, Jimmy could eat and talk at the same time. ‘I’m no lawyer,’ he said, wiping the crumbs of a honey cake from his mouth after Salim outlined where they stood. ‘So I’ll leave that side of the business to you.’ He nodded at Tareq, who nodded warily back. ‘But I have a few friends, a little organization, you might say, very interested in property rights here. You know the authorities are still moving people out of the old Arab buildings. Slums, they call them. It’s a political issue. Mayor Shlomo’s initiative.’ He flicked a cigarette into the ashtray.

  ‘We have a number of people who have come to us for help, but your story is – how shall I say it?’ He smiled up at Salim. ‘Poetic. I don’t know anyone who can still make a claim from ’forty-eight. No one dares.’

  ‘Rafan said you could help me,’ Salim said, caution ticking in his brain. ‘What kind of help does your organization provide?’

  Jimmy sat back in his chair. His hands rested on the ridge of his stomach. ‘We provide moral support,’ he said. Salim looked blank. Does he think I need a shoulder to cry on? ‘Public opinion,’ Jimmy went on. ‘We rally people to your cause. We get them interested – the press, the local leadership. We make it hard for the courts to ignore you. That’s what we do.’

  ‘And in return?’ Tareq asked. His coffee was untouched before him.

  Jimmy shrugged. ‘What’s good for you is good for us. We’re all brothers here.’ Salim’s back stiffened at the word. He remembered Farouk, in Beirut, with his black eyes and bag full of bullets. Now there was a new Najjada, a boy’s army in the occupied areas – Hamas, the Eager Ones. It sounded like a youth club. But this youth club sent teenagers with stones and Molotov cocktails to face Israeli soldiers with automatic rifles.

  He put down his coffee very carefully, and looked at the man in front of him. ‘Just so we’re clear, Jamil. Whatever Rafan may have told you, I just want my house back. I’d appreciate your help with the press, anything to support my case. But nothing else.’ Jimmy laughed and spread his hands.

  ‘Rafan said you were a clever man! No, nothing else. We support our brothers fighting in the West Bank. But we support them in legal ways, because we are citizens of Israel now. For us, the struggle is for fair treatment and a share of the power. Isn’t that right?’

  Salim sat back again, still troubled. ‘So, what do you want us to do?’

  ‘Just be ready, and keep me informed. I’ll write a couple of stories and when you get your first court hearing, then perhaps we can do something bigger. There are lots of people here ready to get behind a cause. Not all of my friends are Arabs, you know. Hey, Osnat!’ He yelled across to the counter, making Salim jump. ‘This man wants his house back from the State. Shall we help him get it?’

  A Jewish girl with cool grey eyes and olive skin looked up. Her black t-shirt was smudged with sugar from the cakes and her hair was tied in a bandana. ‘Sure,’ she said, a grin sneaking across her face. ‘Why not?’

  As he watched Jimmy waddle away from the café, Salim felt doubt gnaw at him. Why was this friend of Rafan’s so keen to help him? He feared to trust him – but then, he was so tired of fighting his battles alone.

  Tareq tapped his watch anxiously. ‘Salim, we need to get back to Tel Aviv. There’s something I have to show you.’

  ‘I’m not ready to go yet.’ Salim shook his head and thrust his hands in his pockets. ‘I need some time to myself here.’

  Tareq checked his watch again. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you what. Let’s meet here in half an hour. I can make a round trip and come back to get you. It’s portable, this surprise I have.’ He gave a small smile.

  As his brother-in-law walked towards the car, Salim set off down the street – past the Clock Tower and these strange buildings with their fresh, white smell. He headed south by instinct, as if the spirit of his boyhood had stepped quietly into his shoes.

  The old city was surrounded by a high wall, a church spire peeping over its top. To his left, the buildings began to get shabbier and the tourists vanished. He swung around the wall, west, towards his memory of the sea.

  He began to understand where he was. Passing the old cemetery on his right his feet swung to the south again. Now he could see it – the port and the sea. Once he had walked across the port wall with Mazen, on his way to the Square for sweets. But today the wall was blocked off by long, sharp rows of steel containers. Ahead of him, the end of the sea wall was a modern car park a hundred feet wide. Sea birds flocked above it, lifted by the cold air.

  Southwards again, and now he knew he was in old Al-Ajami, or a place that once was Al-Ajami. After the war, the Catastrophe, all the Palestinians in Jaffa had flocked here, making Salim obscurely proud that he’d lived in the Arabs’ last stand in Jaffa. Until, that is, he had come to know the truth – it had only ever been the first prison of their defeat.

  Now the buildings were crumbling, falling into each other, wires running from one to the other like a string
of puppets frozen in a pitiful dance. Most of the land next to the sea had been cleared. Brown strips of scrub still ran downhill, out west into the rushing surf.

  Through the haze, the sea was pale and clear – not a sail to be seen on the ruffling waters. There were no boats any more, no reason for them to come. The sharp, bruised sweetness of the harvest season would never fill the air here again. The trucks now took Jaffa’s oranges to the modern Israeli port of Ashdod, forty miles south.

  The sun was low in the sky, sending waves of blinding light into his eyes. Two small roads headed off towards the shore. He took the second and walked to an intersection. Someone had paved it with tarmac. It felt strange under his feet, and yet he knew it was the right way.

  There it is. The gate was still there, black and solid. Behind it, the pale house rose up two storeys. The old bougainvillea was bigger than ever, leaning in bursts of drunken red against the villa’s side.

  It hit him with a force that threw breath from his body, a violent collision of memory and the physical world. Colours rushed his senses, overwhelming him, the blossoms and the blue sky, the burning white stone. They burned through the fading image he’d cherished so long in his mind’s eye, erasing it like a shadow at full noon.

  He walked up to the gate and put his palm against the cold iron, imagining he could feel a heartbeat. This is where his dreams had always ended. There was no next step.

  Raising his hands, he pressed the bell. A small dog started barking inside, a high, frantic yelping. A Hebrew voice sounded from the speakerphone. He opened his mouth to reply but nothing came out. Eventually the gate rattled, and swung open.

  She was young, Jude’s age perhaps. Her brown hair was caught in a bun, over slacks and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She wore a rubber glove on one hand, and smiled at him through the gap in the gate. Behind her, the trees rustled. Their boughs were heavy with bright orange globes, ready for picking. The evening sun shone through them, dappling the garden with shafts of dark and light green.