Against the Loveless World

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Against the Loveless World Page 28

by Susan Abulhawa


  “Is this it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  He took his time kissing all my parts, his lips lingering around the scar. Bilal changed everything, rearranged my world. I think it was the first time I desired a man truly. My body desired him emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, and, at last, physically.

  We made love many times before we made love. Our bodies often melted together when he read to me, when we kissed, talked, hugged, undressed, bathed, slept. And when it finally happened, when he slid inside of me, I fell into the sublime abyss of him. The rush of fire through me made me sob.

  “Shall I stop?” he said.

  “No,” I whispered, still crying. He kissed me hungrily, pushing himself deeper into me. I consumed him and learned a sexual yearning made insatiable by love so vast, as if a sky.

  We barely left our bed for the next few days. We read, listened to the radio, watched television, made food, ate and bathed together. Ariel Sharon was still laying waste to the country. Now they were invading the refugee camp of Jenin. Bilal was on and off the phone with comrades, speaking in code, planning from powerlessness. Then we made love again. We found ways to love despite his physical limitations, which frustrated him but not me. I was almost grateful for it, because each time he could not have an erection or an orgasm, it seemed to push us closer, deeper into love and trust. Five million people like us were locked inside their homes, and perhaps they too were oscillating between rage and love.

  It is not easy for me to speak of those weeks of my life without slipping into clichés, mostly because I don’t have the right language. I don’t have sufficient words to explain how thoroughly and exquisitely I unraveled in love.

  I know, even now in the Cube, that he stayed with me, unseen, loving me still. I know the things they told me about him weren’t true. I know he didn’t give me up. I know. I know. And that knowing will not yield, not even now in this unnatural gray place.

  Food had dwindled significantly by the third week of the curfew. But we were still luckier than most. We had a vegetable garden within reach and enough olive oil to last a year or more. Once a week, Bilal made bread dough, and we baked it together.

  “This reminds me of when Saddam occupied Kuwait. There was a bread shortage and we baked whatever we could at home,” I said as I flattened a sphere of dough with the roller. “That feels like a lifetime ago now. Almost like it happened to someone else.”

  He continued kneading the dough, balling it into spheres, listening.

  I grabbed more dough, rolling it out. “Um Buraq is the one who got me into it.”

  He looked at me inquisitively.

  “She used to book appointments and take us to parties with men,” I said.

  Bilal stopped midmotion. His right hand quivered. He kept his eyes on the dough. I held my breath.

  He said, “I won’t lie to you, it’s hard to hear some things. But I love you, Nahr, more than you can imagine. Whatever you want to tell me will go into that well of love.”

  I told him everything. Not then, but later. I wanted him to know what I could never tell anyone. All of it. I couldn’t stop myself. Abu Nasser, the panty sniffer. Abu Moathe, my rapist. Saddam Hussein, my savior. The money. Um Buraq, my procuress, my friend. How I hid it from my family. Why I did it. Why I stopped. Why I went back. I told it as I tell it now. As if it were someone else’s life, something distant from me. I didn’t feel the shame, pleasure, or trauma of it. I wasn’t holding back tears. There simply were none.

  Bilal listened, intermittently stroking my hair, without sympathy or empathy. With patience, and at times maybe with judgment, though he didn’t say.

  It grew dark. We had missed the television news and didn’t eat. Finally I got up to go to the bathroom, but he pulled me back. “I love you all the more for what you survived, what you did to support your family, and for trusting me,” he said.

  Bilal put on a kettle to make tea, just enough for two small cups because our water tank on the roof was low. We made a mezze dinner with the fresh bread we had baked earlier—fried tomatoes, garlic and zucchini from the garden, boiled eggs, the last of our Nabulsi cheese, zeit-o-za’atar, labneh with olive oil and paprika, sliced cucumber, beets, and pickled vegetables. We spread the plates on the floor by the terrace door to feel the cool breeze of the outdoors we could not roam, lest unseen snipers spot us with their night vision. We ate in the dark, by the glow of a small candle, and listened to the news report on the radio.

  The Israeli military hinted we might be granted a two-hour reprieve from curfew the following day to stock up on food. The announcement was followed by a stern warning that anyone outside at the end of the reprieve would be shot on sight. Bilal and I made bread dough, timing it to rise sufficiently to bake it fresh at the bakery when the curfew was lifted. He ventured into the garden to collect as much as he could to share with friends and family. An announcement came the next day that the reprieve was canceled until further notice.

  Fighters in Jenin had heroically resisted Israel’s invasion of the camp, killing dozens of soldiers. But the fighting was over and Israeli soldiers were on the rampage in the camp, exacting vengeance. Bilal turned off the radio. It was dark now, and we didn’t turn on the lights. No one did unless the windows were blacked out. Bullets and missiles, like moths, were attracted to light.

  We took the food tray through the darkness to the kitchen. “Leave it,” Bilal said when I started to wipe the dishes (only enough water remained for consumption). He kissed me, lifting me onto the counter as I wrapped my legs around his waist. When our kisses deepened, he pulled back, stroking my cheek. I could see the contours of his face in the moonlight filtering through a window. “Will you dance for me?” he whispered.

  He carried me into our bedroom, still limping but strong, pulled the heavy dark drapes across the window, gathered as many candles as he could find, and lit them around us. He put a tape mix into the boom box and played it low. It wasn’t dance music, but tarab, the classical Arabic songs from the Levant and North Africa. He tied a kuffiyeh around my hips. I danced first for him, but quickly, as always happened, I danced for the music, for the sake of dance, for the sake of my body, the air, and the night. For the sake of memory and the moon. For love of Bilal and longing for my family. It felt good to dance. I gathered up the hours past with my hips, rolled them into my body. Bilal’s hands brushed against me, but I wasn’t yet ready for him. I wanted time with the music. It had been too long since I had danced. I shed my clothes, my dishdasha falling with a swoosh to the floor. Naked now, but for the kuffiyeh Bilal retied around my hips, I returned to the music and danced. He watched. For a long time. There’s music that I can hear, listen to, enjoy. Then there’s something else. It’s when the deft, small movements of instruments invoke a kind of beauty that fills the room. It calls on history to join in. Centuries gone and maybe time yet to come arrive. It takes my breath away. And all I can do is let it seep into my skin, close my eyes, watch beauty expand inside of me, and feel it animate every part of me. At some point, it always happens, the music closes its eyes too. It takes a breath too—maybe with the plaint of a violin, the call of the ney, or the quiver of an oud—and settles so gently on my heart.

  Bilal whispered, “You are the most magnificent woman I have ever laid eyes upon.” As Abdel Halim Hafez sang from the speakers the lyrics of “El Hawa Hawaya,” Bilal kneeled next to me and held my leg, kissing my ankles, calves, knees, taking his time moving up my thighs, between my legs. The music kept playing. Candles flickered and burned out as we made love under curfew, behind blacked-out windows, hidden from the tanks and jeeps and snipers hemming in our town.

  Temperatures soared, and we struggled to keep ourselves cool. I worried about the trees in this sun without rain, especially the vulnerable burned trees still recovering and the saplings with shallow roots.

  As we sat drinking our morning coffee the fourth week of curfew, the radio broadcast: “International condemnation of
the Zionist entity is increasing. Zionist occupation forces are rumored to be planning to lift curfew for a few hours to allow evacuation of the sick, burial of the dead, and for people to buy supplies.”

  “When they lift the curfew, one of us should go water the almonds and olives,” I said to Bilal.

  He looked searchingly into my eyes. I could feel words gathering on his tongue.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “We’ll water the trees, but then I am going to reverse the pump,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sit down.” He touched my shoulder gently. He began rambling about chemical compounds with names I couldn’t pronounce and scientific terms like anti-androgenic that were meaningless to my ears.

  “Stop. The only thing I understood is that you’ve been making compounds in the upstairs bathroom,” I said.

  He took a breath and started again.

  “Wait.” I stopped him again. “I have to go make my own compounds in the bathroom.”

  He laughed as I hurried off.

  This is what I finally understood: The compounds he was cooking up were called phthalates. They are anti-androgenic, which means they will feminize men and weaken their sperm. Androgens are male hormones. Phthalic anhydride is a phthalate. Phthalates are found in nearly everything we use, from glues and home cleaning supplies to personal care products, building materials, children’s toys, paint, and medical supplies. Years ago Bilal had synthesized a variation that turned out to be too toxic for consumer use.

  “The right phthalates in high enough concentrations disrupt endocrine functions, and—”

  “What are endocrine functions?”

  “It’s the system of hormones in your body,” he said, adding, “Like androgens.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  He looked blankly at me. I stared back, until I saw behind his eyes and understood. “Are you going to pump your special phthalates into their water?”

  “Shhh.” He put a finger to his lips and came close. “Don’t say that out loud. But, yes, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Will it kill them?”

  “No. But it might fuck them up.” He didn’t wait for my reaction before launching into a defense. “These people are trying to wipe away all traces of us. I’m going to do whatever it takes. Even though they pump poison and sewage into our wells and springs, all I’m trying to do is spook them enough to make them leave. So, yes, that’s what I’m doing, and I thank you for having the brilliant idea in the first place.”

  I remembered the day we had picnicked, when I had suggested pumping our sewage into their water.

  Bilal and I split up during the three-hour window when Israel finally lifted the curfew. It hadn’t rained in weeks. One of us had to get to the orchard. The whole southern edge had to be watered more intensively because the saplings there were struggling to survive. I thought he would do it, but instead he wanted to bake the bread at the store and go to town for food and supplies. The plan was for me to drop him off in town and take the car to the tree groves, then pick him up at the bakery. In part, he thought it would look suspicious if he went to the trees instead of the bakery, when the reprieve from the curfew was so short. They would think he was up to something. But there was another reason, which I would only learn later.

  We loaded the car with four empty five-gallon water jugs, the buckets of dough, and bags of vegetables from our garden. Then we unloaded everything but the empty jugs at the bakery, and I left as lines of people formed for fresh bread. Foreign reporters scurried around the town like bugs with cameras, zooming in on faces scribbled with misery and on people shopping frantically, trying to get as much as they could in preparation for another uncertain stretch of curfew.

  The tree groves were about a ten-minute drive away, and luckily I didn’t have to go through any checkpoints. But the streets had been torn up by tanks. Electric pylons were broken everywhere, and I had to watch out for sparking, jumping wires. Pipes were busted up and precious water poured into the streets. Cars parked on the streets had been smashed like toys by the tanks.

  I parked our car at the top of the hill and walked to the tent. The water tank had been knocked over, which meant either soldiers or settlers had been there. But the rock formation where the tubes were hidden was undisturbed. I pulled the tank upright and activated the pump to fill it with water. I put on a show of struggling to lift the empty water jugs from the car, as if they were full, and, to the best of my acting ability, emptied their heavy make-believe water into the tank. One could never be sure when and where soldiers were watching, but we knew they had eyes on Bilal and everything he did. The last thing we needed was for them to discover a full water tank without an explanation of how it got that way.

  When the tank had filled sufficiently from the pipe, I switched tubes so the water would trickle to the trees, and pushed the other tubes back into the ground, under the small rock formation.

  It took me two hours to finish, mostly because I decided to walk the length of the hill to check on the trees at the far edges. I was happy to see the saplings were still alive, and below the crust of sunbaked earth, the soil was moist enough to sustain worms.

  There were still lines of people at the bakery when I arrived, with less than forty minutes before curfew. Bilal hadn’t had time to buy supplies, but there were bags set aside for us. He had distributed the vegetables to his aunts and to Ghassan, and they had brought cheeses and pickles for us, and some spices and rice. Ghassan’s sister and I tended to the last customers while Bilal and Ghassan loaded our car. There was just enough time for me to hurry down the street for ice cream, and I got enough for us all.

  “Thank you, my sister, you made me a happy man!” Ghassan said. It was rare to see Ghassan effusive. Who knew ice cream was all it took?

  There was not enough time to see Jumana, but we talked on the phone. She had checked on the salon and actually found one woman who wanted to spend her precious three hours getting her hair colored and fixed, her face waxed, and her nails done.

  “I told her the salon wasn’t open, but she was so pitiful I changed my mind,” Jumana said. “She paid me well, but I wasn’t able to do what was on my own list. Luckily Faisal stocked up on food for us. I didn’t even get to see Wadee. His wife is pregnant, and she’s having a hard time with the nausea. I had planned to check in on her, but I suppose the woman at the salon needed me more.”

  I would have liked to get pampered at the salon, and tried to thread my own eyebrows when I got home. But it was no use. Threading isn’t the kind of thing you can do to your own face. My hair had been graying, and I wanted to dye it. I was in need of a full body wax, and though I could do that on my own, depilatory sessions had always been social events with friends. I began to plan how I would spend the next three-hour curfew reprieve, and realized I had stopped thinking about a total lifting of the curfew. Tragic, how we adjusted our sense of normal.

  “You’re brilliant, my wife!” Bilal said, pulling out the ice cream. “This is what I love about you. We’re all fighting and rushing for the basics, but you have enough sense to remember the sweetness.”

  “El hilw ma byinsa el halawa,” I said. The sweet do not forget the sweets.

  Bilal turned on the television news as I unpacked the bags. The reporter was interviewing a young woman when the military came through with loudspeakers on their jeeps. The girl immediately ran away. The reporter argued with the soldier that they still had fifteen minutes, but the footage ended abruptly with the camera being thrown. The announcer came on just as I pulled some strange white plastic containers from one of the bags.

  The latest statistics were being read off on the television. The body count, the number of injured; people who’d died under curfew and had to be kept in their houses until the curfew was lifted; the number of people transferred to the hospital during the last three hours; how many doctors and nurses were living at hospitals during curfew to take care of their patients. A t
eenager in Nablus had been shot only moments before for remaining in the streets after curfew was over. It turned out he was mentally disabled, and his family didn’t realize he was out. Soldiers shot people even when we were allowed out. Yousef Iyad and his wife, Jameleh, left their children in the Dheishe refugee camp to buy food when Israel lifted the curfew there the previous day. On their way, soldiers shot up their car and the couple ran to the nearest house for refuge. The curfew was reimposed, and the couple were now separated from their children, the youngest of whom was a breast-fed two-month-old who hadn’t been fed in eighteen hours. The reporter was interviewing the eldest sibling over the phone and we could hear the baby crying.

  “What are these?” I held up the plastic containers of white powder. The English label said: PHTHALIC ANHYDRIDE.

  “An Israeli professor brought them.” He put the containers back in the bag.

  “It’s a little annoying how you say things that make no sense and expect me to understand,” I said as he walked upstairs with the bag. I followed him. “Bilal, where did the professor deliver them to?”

  “The bakery.”

  “Does that mean Ghassan knows?”

  “I had to tell him for practical reasons, but also because if he knows how you’re helping he’ll stop doubting your commitment,” Bilal said. I figured that’s why Ghassan had been extra friendly to me. I had thought it was the ice cream.

  Moments later Bilal went to the kitchen and emerged with a large bowl and two spoons in one hand and the other behind his back.

  “If that’s ice cream in there, you’re not getting your fair share, darling. You might as well go get yourself a separate bowl because I’m an ice cream eating machine. I have to work hard to get thighs and an ass this big,” I said.

  “I knew you were going to say that.” He revealed another bowl in the other hand.

 

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