by Hala Alyan
His lectures were electrifying.
He spoke of politics, of land lost. “We are pawns in a sick and depraved game,” he liked to say. “We can either play or overturn the chessboard.”
Mustafa became smitten. The man was awfully magnetic, and more than anything Mustafa wanted to be found, wanted the imam to focus on his face among the sea of congregants and recognize something there.
“He’s brilliant,” Mustafa told Aya once. “You should hear the things he says. It’s like a fever goes through the room. I need to talk to him.”
Aya seemed unimpressed.
“Nothing good comes from those sorts of men,” she said. “They lure and lure and if you find yourself next to them, what does it mean? That you’ve got a hook in your lip.”
No matter. He felt starved for the imam’s attention. For months, he yearned to share a cigarette with him. He rehearsed what he would say, practicing different tactics, from contrarian to sycophant.
I think this country is sinking as well.
We are its only hope.
But doesn’t retaliation make it worse?
We need a new approach.
Mustafa fantasized about catastrophes—an earthquake, an assassination—bringing them together, him stuck in the imam’s office. Or, better yet, Imam Bakri making an urgent request, perhaps needing an accomplice or somewhere to hide out, and Mustafa coming through, humbly refusing to accept thanks for his help.
In the end, it was merely a rainstorm in August. Mustafa was walking home from work at the school when the clouds bricked over. Rain began to fall. He stopped at the mosque to wait.
Entering, he found it empty, in those lost hours between prayers, the distant sound of a fan whirring. Just as he was wondering why he’d never thought to come at this time, when no one was around, there were footsteps and Imam Bakri appeared, carrying a cup of tea.
Catching sight of Mustafa, he smiled and shrugged, as though it were expected, as though he’d been waiting for months for Mustafa to show up dripping wet. He bobbed the teacup toward him as he spoke.
“I’ll make one for you.”
His office was plain with dark green carpet, nothing hanging on the walls. They sat across from each other, a desk between them. The imam stirred his tea, the metal clinking against porcelain. “My teta used to say maramiyeh was the earth’s cure for everything. Headache, diarrhea.” He looked at Mustafa with a quizzical smile. “Even heartbreak.”
Mustafa felt driven to honesty. “It’s hard for me to sleep,” he heard himself saying. “It’s like I become louder. I start thinking and it becomes impossible to stop.”
The imam nodded. “Maramiyeh is good for that as well. Helps quiet the mind.”
The men sat in silence, listening to the rain outside. Mustafa grasped for something to say, some glittering insight.
“Are you from Nablus?” he asked.
“My family is from Haifa.”
Another silence. Thunder crashed outside. The imam sipped the tea. Mustafa began to notice a faint, animal smell in the room. It turned his stomach.
“From the sea,” Mustafa said absent-mindedly.
“From the sea!” the imam cried out. He looked impressed with Mustafa. “Yes, yes. From the sea.” It occurred to Mustafa that the imam, at least a decade older than him, must have clear memories of the city he left behind.
“Is it very beautiful?”
Finally—the right question. Imam Bakri’s face crinkled into a smile. He leaned forward.
“Beautiful? Beautiful?” He laughed kindly. “In a way that breaks your heart.” He took a breath. “My father, my grandfather, his grandfather, his grandfather’s grandfather, they were fishermen. They knew the sea as intimately as they knew their children or their own bodies. Every morning they woke before daybreak. The sky would still be dark, and they’d walk barefoot to the water.” The imam’s voice was reverential. “I’d go with them, as a boy. I knew I wanted that more than anything in the world. That life. Every boy should be lucky enough to have a father that he admires. That he wants to imitate.”
Mustafa swallowed the bitterness that rose in his throat. He thought of the wasted body shriveled beneath sheets. What legacy had his father left him? But the imam kept speaking. Mustafa shook his head to clear it.
“They whispered to the fish,” the imam continued. “They spoke prayers before throwing fishhooks into the water. The way they’d throw the lines, it was the most graceful thing you’ve ever seen. And the fish swam to them; I swear they did. They swam like they were grateful. They gave their bodies as though they knew it was sustenance. And my father would always kneel afterward, to the bucket of fish, some of the tails still twitching, and he would thank Allah and thank the fish.”
Abruptly, Imam Bakri stopped talking. He eyed Mustafa with a hint of wariness.
“And then?” Mustafa asked. He felt like he was stepping off a cliff, in glorious free fall.
The imam shifted in his chair. He fiddled with the teabag.
“I’ll tell you a story,” the imam said.
There was a boy, with a mother and a father and a sister. They lived by the sea. The sea was like another member of the household, a recalcitrant child at times, a soothing aunt at others. She crooned them awake; she crooned them to sleep. Everywhere, there was the smell of salt.
The boy’s sister was beautiful. Everyone said so. She had golden hair and fair skin, eyes the color of cinnamon bark. And kind as well, baking almond cakes for the family on Fridays so the smell of sugar filled their little house. The father loved the cakes, would pop them whole in his mouth. Every morning the boy’s father brought home fish and the mother filleted them. The boy loved watching her in the kitchen, her fingers slitting the fish bodies, removing the bones in one long string like jewelry.
April. The family locked their doors as gunfire blared around them. Many of the neighbors packed suitcases. The boy’s father swore he wouldn’t leave, that they would stay by the sea. The father wasn’t one of those angry men who carried flags and broke glass, and he decided that even with the army, the new country, they would stay. They would stay.
For a while it worked. The electricity was cut. The neighbors left. The news reports said everything was lost. Meanwhile, the boy and his family ate fish and drank stale water. They were waiting, the father said, for everything to settle down.
May. The soldiers came. They knocked on the doors of houses where Arabs lived. They knocked on the door of the boy’s home, and when the father opened it, four soldiers came in. Only one spoke, the biggest one. The soldier said the house was built illegally. He used words like deed and eviction. The father remained polite. He told the soldier he didn’t know where the deed was; the house had belonged to them for generations. The soldier began to yell at the father, his face turning red, spittle dotting his lips. The boy and his mother began to cry, but the sister stepped forward. She told the soldiers to sit, asked if they wanted tea. She told the biggest soldier there was no need to shout. They would get him the deed.
The big soldier, he looked at the daughter for a long time. He spoke to the other men. The boy didn’t understand the language, but all the soldiers left. The family laughed in relief. You see, the sister scolded them, everyone responds to kindness. They teased her then, the golden-haired girl who’d tamed the soldier, but they all slept smiling.
Later that night, there was a crash. The four soldiers had come back. They broke the windows in the living room, made the family stand in their pajamas. The biggest soldier shone a flashlight in their faces and the family squinted. The boy found that he couldn’t swallow because his tongue was suddenly sandpaper. One of the soldiers held a rifle to the boy’s throat. The other held one to the father’s throat. The third yanked the mother to the couch and told her if she rose, the same would be done to her.
Of course they all yelled. They all wept for the biggest soldier to stop. The boy tried to punch the soldier and was beaten. The father screamed. After a while, there
was nothing for them to do but turn away, cry at the sister’s naked body, the soldier against her. The mother howled for Allah. At first the sister whimpered. Out of the corner of his eye, the boy could see her legs twitch. The awful paleness of her thighs. He prayed she was dead. But when the soldier finished, she was silent, her eyes unblinking on the ceiling. She didn’t bother to pull down her nightgown. There was blood on her legs.
The family left two days later. They moved to the hills, following the other Arabs, taking their clothes and silver in bags. As they left the little house, the sea didn’t crash or froth to the shore. It just came, noiselessly, and went.
The office was silent. Mustafa felt drowsy from the heat and rain. He ached for his house, for Alia and Atef, to smoke cigarettes in the garden and joke. To not have heard this story.
Across the table, Imam Bakri looked lost in thought. He spoke. “The father salted everything after that. Even his water. He would cry out in his sleep for the sea.” The imam took a long breath. “He missed the fish,” he said simply. “When he died, he was buried beneath the hills he hated, far from the sea.”
“What happened to his family?”
The imam looked Mustafa square in the eye. “The daughter—” He swallowed. “Some say she lost her mind. She stopped talking, never married.”
“And the son?” Mustafa asked, though he knew.
The imam lifted the teacup to his lips. “The son found Allah.”
This time the silence felt endless.
“I try not to remember him like that,” the imam finally said. He narrowed his eyes. “My father. Not as that broken husk of a man, chewed up and spat out by the occupation, making a meager life of the remains. Unable to protect his daughter. Watching the soldiers . . . do the things they did.”
Something clicked within Mustafa: the imam held the key to something. The imam would be the one to change it—everything—for him. In that instant, Mustafa realized just how unhappy he was. How much like a pauper he’d always felt, peering inside a window, watching life carry on while he remained apart, separated by glass. From Alia and Atef, from Aya. He suddenly understood his boredom, the way hours seemed to stretch unbearably in front of him, that, yes, yes, it was all bullshit. The waiting, the talking, the cigarettes, the coffee. What were they doing? The thought shook him with its violence. Sitting around while the years piled up, spending his father’s money and waiting. Waiting. While their land was gobbled up.
“I like to imagine my father died before that. Before we went to Jerusalem. That he died from an enormous wave taking him while he knelt in front of a fish.” The imam’s eyes flashed. “They’ve even taken away our deaths. They’ve robbed us even of the dignity of death.” The imam gestured outside with a jut of his chin. “And our men? They dance to American music and kiss girls in the pool hall. They tell themselves that Palestine is this”—here he waved a hand dismissively—“only this, only the crumbs we’ve been given.”
A peculiar sensation skittered through Mustafa. His limbs tingled. That thing he’d read about in books: the moment when the world seems to sharpen, when colors and objects become vibrant, in focus. He could smell the torched streets, could see the young woman naked and bleeding. The glint of fish scales in the early light.
Finally, he cleared his throat and looked down at his tea. It was cold, an ugly color.
“I want to help,” he said.
Mustafa walks toward the marketplace lights. The temperature is still dropping, cool air raising the hairs on his forearms. Alia was right. Clouds are gathering in the evening sky. It is going to rain.
At the marketplace, before the strip of coffee shops and restaurants, there is a trio of ash trees. Atef is already there, leaning against the trunk of the largest tree, a cigarette between his fingers. He takes a drag and catches sight of Mustafa; his bearded face breaks into a smile.
“Abu Tafi,” he calls out, smoke trailing as he speaks. It is Mustafa’s nickname, earned from a spill during football. Despite Atef’s smile, Mustafa can see tension written upon his friend’s face; Atef is as nervous as he is.
“How are you feeling?” Atef looks concerned. Atef and Mustafa’s meetings before Mustafa speaks at the mosque have increasingly taken on the quality of coaching sessions, Atef treating his friend as though he were some mercurial prodigy. It is a dividing feeling; part of him wants to impress Atef, to make him slightly—in the manner of close friends—jealous, the other part wants to roar with impatience and stalk off.
“Fine.” The hours of nerves put an edge in his voice. Atef, always careful, lapses into silence. Past the entryway, men begin to mill into the mosque, and Mustafa squints to make out faces, blurry in the lamplight. Most are familiar: Samir the professor, Imad the engineer, Ahmad, Bashir. The shabab; the men that gather in his garden. A vendor sells fruit, his voice hawking his wares across the street.
“Bateekh, bateekh!”
Imam Bakri appears, and behind him a group of six or seven, talking among themselves as they climb the stairs into the mosque.
“Must be the Jerusalem men.” Mustafa softens his voice, an apology for his earlier curtness. Atef nods.
“They look more ajanib than the ajanib,” Atef replies. Apology accepted.
It is true. Mustafa had expected older men in dishdashas, traditional headscarfs, and keffiyehs. But these men are his age and dressed like Westerners, button-down shirts, jeans. A couple have longish hair curling over their ears. Imam Bakri stops at the domed entrance and says something; the Jerusalem men laugh as they walk inside.
Panic seizes Mustafa.
“I can’t do this.” His voice cracks.
Atef furrows his brow, concerned. “You want to do a round?” It is their habit for years, walking the small pathway encircling the marketplace.
Mustafa shakes his head. He squats, leans against the tree trunk.
“You need water? You want something to drink?”
“I don’t know what to say.” Mustafa looks up at Atef. The other man’s silhouette is outlined in the faint light. “This whole thing—” His lungs feel drained. He is panting. “I think it’s become too much. I wanted to be part of it, but I don’t think I can. Imam Bakri wants me to talk about fighting. About how things are for us, but I don’t know how things are. I don’t know what to say.”
“You say what you need to.”
“I’m afraid.” The word startles him and he repeats it. “Afraid.”
“You say what you need to.”
Atef speaks with unusual violence. He swoops down next to him. Mustafa recoils.
“They need to hear us. Those Jerusalem men, they need to know we’re with them. That we’re not all talk. They’re going to know they’ve got brothers out here. Kin.”
A thought lights in Mustafa’s mind as if ignited by flint. It reminds him of Aya speaking about the proposal. The realization that someone, one you think you know intimately, wholly, has a mystery within. Has thoughts and fears and loves that belong to him or her alone. He remembers it happening with Alia, and with his mother, when he was younger, remembers how alone he felt at the time. But now, watching Atef’s angry face—his eyes begging and accusing him at the same moment—he realizes that with Atef, it is far worse.
Atef, son of a martyr. Atef, good man. Comrade. Atef, who’d listened to the same speeches, the same sermons. Atef, who had none of the charisma or ferocity of Mustafa.
I am the roar without the bite, Mustafa thinks unexpectedly. The empty lion.
“Listen.” Atef speaks more quietly, as if intuiting Mustafa’s thoughts. “I know it’s hard. We could turn around right now. We could leave. There’s always an easier way. Right?” The line filched from Imam Bakri’s best sermon.
Friends, there is always an easier way.
Mustafa stands. He brushes his hands on his pants. He recognizes distantly that this moment will matter. “Let’s go,” he says to his best friend, who is still crouching in the dirt, and begins to walk.
The room i
n the mosque is overheated. The men sit in rows on the carpet, thirty or so of them, the smell of bare feet souring the air. The fluorescent lighting is harsh and two fans whir above, recycling the same tired air. Mustafa and Atef sit in the fourth row. The imam’s sermon has already stretched over an hour and around them men look tired, as though willing themselves back to their cool homes.
Imam Bakri stops speaking, clears his throat. His eyes scan the congregation, and Mustafa sits up taller. The imam sees him, nods. Atef squeezes his arm and Mustafa rises. He makes his way to the front.
Mustafa is thinking of the curtains in Aya’s room, a soft teal color that seems misplaced there. Something about those curtains has always saddened him, a color too bright for such a place. He pictures Aya in her bed. Asleep. Or, no—he edits the image—rising to the sound of her mother’s cough, dampening a cloth to run over her face.
The Jerusalem men sit in the front row. Mustafa nods at them and one of the men, the long-haired one, nods back.
Aya wearing the creamy nightgown, the one he has glimpsed in her closet but never seen on her. They have never shared sleep. This strikes him as terribly sad, and he looks toward the ceiling.
The imam sits next to the Jerusalem men, mutters something to them. A man sneezes and several voices rise, blessing him.
A small part of him—which he already recognizes as a lost, former self—longs for his mother’s garden, the sound of wind rustling the leaves. He takes a breath, his feet flat against the carpet. His right toe itches.
“Brothers,” Mustafa says.
In his peripheral vision, he sees a glint, but when he turns to the window, it is gone. A storm. He can feel it in his bones, in the hairs of the back of his neck. God forbid, he hears in his mother’s voice, that childhood prayer, and he repeats the words to himself. Another crinkle of light; this time he sees it flowering the sky. Seconds later, a rumble. The air is still. Something is coming. He can feel it in his teeth.