Bilal continued, “We cannot truly know what Mhammad put you through. But we know enough to be ashamed and sorry for how he treated you.”
Mention of Mhammad’s name clearly wounded Hajjeh Um Mhammad. “May God help him find the path of light wherever he is,” she said.
The phone rang. “Probably the neighbors checking up,” Hajjeh
Um Mhammad said.
“Don’t answer, Yumma,” Bilal pleaded. “Let’s have our time with Yaqoot before the busybodies swoop down.”
“You must answer. And don’t refer to our family and friends as busybodies.”
Bilal smiled good-naturedly. “Ha’ek alay, Yumma,” he said, kissing his mother’s hand.
I waited to gather the courage to correct Bilal and finally spoke after a few bites of food. “You can call me Nahr,” I reminded him. “Yaqoot is only on my official documents.” I didn’t mention that I was named after my father’s mistress.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed. “It’s just that Yaqoot is such a beautiful name too—but I will not make that mistake again.”
“It’s fine.” I smiled. “Sometime I’ll tell you the story behind my having two names. Three, if you count Nanu, which is reserved for Jehad.” Almas was long gone by then.
A day or two into my trip, Bilal invited me to early evening tea on a small hilltop overlooking a stretch of cultivated land and a pasture where some sheep roamed. I thought we would just drive to the spot, but I wore my most comfortable shoes for the occasion anyway—sandals with a midsize heel. Instead, we walked for what felt like miles after we parked the car, and my sensible heels were nonsensical. I wobbled over the terrain as best I could, trying to disguise my discomfort, and Bilal caught me around the waist when I almost fell. He suggested I walk barefoot.
“And get stung by scorpions? No thank you.”
He chuckled. “No scorpions in these parts.”
“Snakes, then,” I retorted. “There must be snakes.”
“Well, yes. Sometimes.” He smiled, then tapped his arm. “Here. At least lean on me if it helps.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
He smiled again, raising one eyebrow—he could do that too! “I am.”
“You should have told me my shoes were inappropriate.”
“And miss all this?” He laughed.
It was natural to be in Bilal’s company, away from the rest of humanity. I balanced myself with a hand on his shoulder; he had his arms poised to catch me again, until we reached a clearing near the top, on the side of the hill. He sat on the dirt under a large olive tree, its low branches extending from its knotted trunk. A cool breeze rustled the leaves and blew my hair into a mess. Bilal began pulling objects out of his bag: a dented tin kettle, a small gas babbour, tea glasses, a large water bottle, and plastic bags of loose tea, sage, sugar, and bizir—but no blanket to sit on.
He must have read my mind, because he spread the canvas bag on the ground. “Here, you can sit on this,” he said. I leaned awkwardly on the tree and lowered myself to the ground, removed my heels, and let out a sigh of relief.
Bilal smiled but didn’t say anything. He lit the babbour, poured water into the kettle, and made sweet hot tea with just the right hint of sage.
Ahead, we could see construction activity in a new Jewish-only colony, which, he explained, had started a year before when settlers brought trailers to camp on Bilal’s family’s land and never left. The trucks were some distance away, however. “They’re laying water pipes,” Bilal said.
“Why are the pipes aboveground?”
“It’s cheaper. They invest just enough to keep these settlers here and attract more who are willing to live a bit ruggedly, until they have enough people to justify greater expenditure on infrastructure. Another reason is to fool international and human rights agencies by giving the impression this arrangement is only temporary.” We sat eating bizir, expertly cracking open the salty roasted watermelon seeds for the fleshy insides. I liked to collect the seeds’ entrails in a pile, then eat them all at once, instead of one at a time. Eyeing the small mound of shelled seeds in my lap, Bilal said, “That looks enticing!”
“Don’t even think about it. I beat up a neighbor when we were little kids because he stole a pile of shelled bizir that I had been working on for an hour.”
He laughed. “Thank you for establishing the red line. I will never cross it. Your bizir pile is safe around me.”
Bilal spoke of Areas A, B, and C as the sun began making its way to the sea, painting the sky, land, and life in the colors of its wake. I knew these were designations created by the Oslo Accords, but I couldn’t remember their distinctions. He explained that we were in Area C, which was being heavily colonized by Israel, and that my in-laws’ home was a prime target. It was the only remaining house for some distance in the village. The nearest homes had been torn down, Bilal told me. “Israel has a lot of excuses. Lack of permits, illegal wells, relatives of fighters, whatever they want.”
“How have you managed to keep your property?” I asked, surveying the sylvan terrain stretching before us into the valley.
He turned to me, his gentle brown eyes searching my face. Then he turned back to the land, inhaled from his cigarette, exhaled smoke, and resurrected a name I hadn’t heard in many years.
“Tamara,” he said.
I had promised Mama to make the rounds to visit our own extended family as soon as I got to Palestine, but I found myself putting it off, spending my time with Bilal and Hajjeh Um Mhammad instead, and contemplating the contradictions of this place, my birthright. The landscape that lived in the hearts of Mama, Baba, and Sitti Wasfiyeh didn’t feel like home, though it took hold of me nonetheless. There were no malls everywhere or miles of beaches as I was accustomed to in Kuwait (none that were accessible to Palestinians, at least). No salons on every corner to get my lips and eyebrows threaded, have a full body wax, or get scrubbed in a Turkish bathhouse. Even in depressing Amman, I could still escape to a good lingerie or shoe store. I stumbled awkwardly through the unfamiliar milieu in Palestine, and Bilal was there to pick me up, sometimes literally.
Bilal had been released under the Oslo agreement, but his freedom was conditioned on his never practicing his profession as a chemist in any capacity, not even teaching. He was forbidden to travel outside a specified radius without authorization from the local military authority, could not write or publish any political material, could not under any circumstances enter Jerusalem and, if he ever left the country, could not return.
Bilal complied, as far as I could tell. He had inherited some animals and bought others when he was released. Although he helped care for them, Jandal was their full-time shepherd. Together, Bilal and Jandal sheared them once a year for wool, which they sold to local garment factories. During Eid and for special occasions, people would buy lambs for sacrifice. But Bilal insisted on hiring his own butcher to perform the ritual halal traditions for his sheep. “Because people terrify these animals before killing them. Few butchers actually adhere to halal requirements anymore,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I hate that we even eat meat as much as we do. Sheep, cows, fish, whales, goats—they’re nations unto themselves. They too deserve to be free.” The primacy of humans was only one assumption I had never questioned until I met him.
Most of Bilal’s time was spent at the bakery and pastry café, a small business he had started years ago with Ghassan, Jandal’s older brother and Bilal’s closest friend, who had been his cellmate in prison. Ghassan was a diabetic who spent his time making desserts. People would line up in the mornings for fresh bread, and in the evenings they came for knafe and sweet mint tea or Arabic coffee. Bilal and Ghassan seemed to know everyone, and people treated them with respect and the affection reserved for political prisoners.
It shocked me how many checkpoints there were just to go from one village to the next. It seemed Palestinians could not drive more than five minutes without having to wait at yet another. We had to go throug
h two checkpoints on the way to the shop. The first we crossed by car. Typically the wait was about half an hour, but it could be as little as ten minutes or as much as two hours, depending on the mood of the soldiers manning it. Then we would park the car in a lot by the second checkpoint, which could only be crossed on foot. Sometimes we could just drive through the second checkpoint, but usually we had to gather our bags from the car and walk the rest of the way—about half a mile, no matter the weather. Bilal did not want the soldiers to know we were together, and I’d have to wait in line to cross far ahead of him. “Notice, only the elderly couples cross together,” Bilal said. I discovered the reason on my own. A soldier groped a teenage girl in line with her father, and when he protested, they threw him to the ground and made them both sit on the side of the road for hours. Bilal knew the father and offered to refrigerate their grocery bags until they were released, but soldiers shoved Bilal to move along.
Before going to the bakery and pastry shop, Bilal and I made daily excursions through the countryside early in the morning. It was exhausting at first, but my time with Bilal was so affirming, I didn’t want to miss a moment of it. I set an alarm for 5 a.m., rising daily before the first adan. He would already be making coffee. Then he and Hajjeh Um Mhammad would perform the fajr salat, feed the chickens, and take a light breakfast with the rising sun.
I wasn’t particularly fond of the rugged outdoors, but I began to see those rocky hills differently through the sheer force of Bilal’s passion for everything they held. Most striking was the silence. Absent was the persistent cacophony of traffic, street vendors, pedestrians, construction, and the buzz of streetlights that filled every space of our tight living quarters both in Kuwait and in Amman. Instead, I awoke to the songs of birds and wind chimes, and I was lulled at night by the orchestras of crickets and the calls of jackals and wolves.
It was disorienting in the beginning, because I didn’t know how to be in such openness. I found myself breathing deeply and deliberately in the mornings, inhaling the immensity of that silence. It made me realize how limited my world had been that I could not imagine the need to pack more than house slippers in addition to multiple pairs of heels, even though I knew I would be here at least a couple of months for the divorce proceedings.
My first purchase in Palestine was a pair of green-and-white sneakers, which I wore on my next trek with Bilal. He eyed them with a grin. “Now you don’t need to lean on me,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Pity.”
Bilal taught me to identify individual plants we encountered, which usually had associated folklore, culinary uses, and medicinal value. We picked wild za’atar together and plucked the occasional pomegranate wherever we found them. Life didn’t grow wild like this in Kuwait, or Amman.
I began joining Hajjeh Um Mhammad and Bilal for morning salat, and then again for the dhuhr salat. Soon I was worshipping five times a day. I hadn’t done that for years, not since high school, but I wanted to be part of their lives. And I felt they wanted that too.
After breakfast, Hajjeh Um Mhammad would kiss us each on both cheeks. We’d kiss her hand in turn before setting out. We’d walk to Bilal’s car, typically parked half a mile down the hill. There was no driveway, as Bilal never carved more than a narrow footpath to the house, just wide enough for Hajjeh Um Mhammad’s motorized cart. “It makes it harder for military jeeps and bull-dozers to get to us,” Bilal explained.
Yet despite the difficulty accessing their home, Hajjeh Um Mhammad had visitors nearly daily, a testament to the love and respect she attracted. She attended every wedding, birth celebration, and funeral service for miles around. “That’s just how it was in my day. It’s osool. You always showed up for your people,” she said. Her life was one of a lost era, in some ways too idyllic to be real.
Once a week, I accompanied Bilal to check on the sheep and goats. “I love watching the flock gather around Jandal when he plays the ney,” Bilal said. Then he side-glanced at me. “You’re not wearing lipstick anymore, I notice.”
“Don’t let that fool you. I’m still a city girl,” I said, and wore lipstick the next day to prove it.
Two weeks after I arrived, at my request, Bilal arranged for me to visit my mother’s childhood home in Haifa. I wanted to see what Mama would not speak of. “The most the driver can do is take you to the outside of the house. He’ll stand by if you want to knock on the door. I wish I could go with you,” Bilal said.
I wished I could kiss him.
I traveled with Bakir, the driver, for four hours—two spent waiting to pass one checkpoint. Finally we arrived in Haifa. People call it a “mixed city,” but that isn’t true. It was clear where Jews lived compared with Palestinians; there was no mixing. We drove around a bit looking for the address, entering an area of modern houses on a hill overlooking the ocean. I thought perhaps Bakir had made a mistake, until a cluster of beautiful stone homes came into view, and he pulled to the side of the road. The homes were different but the same. Their ancient arches, masonry, walled gardens, and grand entrances contrasted with the flat, angular new construction with steel beams, glass walls, and sleek European opulence.
“I think it’s this one,” Bakir said, pointing to a three-story home with multiple balconies overlooking the street. Next to it was what looked to be a small tree farm surrounded by a low stone wall with an old wooden gate, slightly ajar, barely hanging on its hinges. In Mama’s photos, the trees weren’t as mature, and the house was more visible from the street. I knew the main entrance was on the side, but one could access the garden from the wooden gate, which used to have an ornate ceramic plaque that read HOME OF EL HAJ ABU IBRAHIM, NASER JAMAL NASRALLAH.
I walked up to the wooden gate. The indentation where the plaque had been was still visible if you knew what to look for. I thought about walking around to the entrance and knocking on the door, but the decrepit gate beckoned me. I stepped into the lush space of our absence. These were the trees my great-grandfather had planted for his children and grandchildren. My grandfather would have planted some for me and Jehad had our destiny not been stolen. I began walking among those trees, looking for the carvings my mother had told me about, but I saw none. At the far edge of the garden was a sycamore fig tree. It bore red fruit close to the bark, unlike the green and brown figs I’d imagined. I looked around before hiking myself up on its trunk to pick one. It was fragrant and much sweeter than regular figs. I climbed as best I could, grabbing fistfuls of fruit and tucking them into my purse as I searched for evidence that this was my mother’s tree.
A commotion in the street distracted me, and I grabbed one last bundle of figs. On the branch where the fruit had been were jagged lines. I pulled away some vines and more fruit to reveal the rest. The noise from the street was growing louder as I made out the words: Rashida, habibit Baba. Rashida, Daddy’s girl. That’s how my grandfather had referred to my mother. This was her fig tree. This tree was a member of my family. I belonged to it. All the trees in that garden were my family.
The noise from the street was now upon me—a middle-aged woman screaming up at me in Hebrew. I began climbing down, fruit still in my hand. Bakir was trying to reason with her in Hebrew, at the same time imploring me to hurry up. “She called the police. Hurry!” he warned me in Arabic. Just as I touched the ground, the woman slapped the fruit from my hand and yanked me by my hair. Unthinkingly, I punched her, then again—and again. She was what we used to call in my school days “a princess,” someone who had no idea how to fight. I wanted to beat her bloody. For taking away our trees. For pulling the land from under us. But Bakir caught my arm and dragged me away, and we ran together to his car. Neighbors were just beginning to gather and might have overtaken us had we left a moment later. Adrenaline pumped through us as we drove away, slowly, as if we were an ordinary Jewish couple going about our day, just in case we crossed paths with the police. When we were far enough away, convinced we had escaped detection, I pulled some figs from my purse, and
we laughed in a way that was somewhat deranged and euphoric.
“You beat the shit out of that woman. Good thing this car has hot plates, so they can’t trace it to me,” Bakir said.
I turned to him with the shock, admiration, and renewed adrenaline of realizing how much deeper the trouble we escaped could have been.
“What? Bilal didn’t tell you? We steal these motherfuckers’ cars all the time and mix up their plates,” Bakir said, laughing, proud of doing his part to make the lives of the colonizers a little less convenient.
We continued to revel in the thrill of return, escape, and figs. I thought about that woman, the commotion that preceded our confrontation. “What was she saying anyway?” I asked Bakir.
“She started out nice, thinking I was Jewish, but wanting to know what I was doing there parked on the side of the road. I told her I was just admiring the houses because I was thinking of moving into the area. I did my best to sound Jewish, but they can tell from the way we talk, or how we stand or whatever. So she started getting louder, telling me to leave before she called the police. She accused me of plotting to rob her house. She asked if ‘the Arab woman’ sent me. I didn’t know what she meant, but apparently an Arab woman came by a couple of months ago claiming that that was her childhood home. Then she—”
“What else did she say about the Arab woman?” I interrupted him.
“That she was a terrorist. Apparently the Arab woman saw the gate open and helped herself into the garden. The Jewish woman found her there crying and, well, you can imagine the scene. I’m sure the Arab woman left in tears.”
Bakir thought for a moment. “I’m such an idiot! Was she talking about your mother? Was your mother here two months ago?”
It was surely Mama. Now I knew why she had refused to speak of it when I asked her in Amman. It was too painful. I wished I had beaten that woman more. I wished I could have walked around the side to see the main entrance, to peek over the mountain and see the ocean as my mother would have done every day of her childhood. I wondered if Mama had done that when she came to see her home, or if she too hadn’t made it beyond the garden.
Against the Loveless World Page 15