Mornings in Jenin

by Abulhawa, Susan

  Darweesh stripped Fatooma of the sacks saddled on her back and laid their contents next to the gold and other valuables. “The horse! Leave the horse,” a soldier ordered. Not the loudspeaker god, but his disciple, surely.

  “Please!” Darweesh had no pride left.

  Fatooma was worth begging for, but the begging irritated the soldier. “Shut up!”

  “Please!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Please.”

  The soldier fired his pistol twice. One shot between Fatooma’s eyes, on her white streak. She fell instantly dead. The other through Darweesh’s chest. His pregnant wife, Basima’s niece who had been betrothed to Hasan, shrieked, screaming by her bleeding husband as people gathered to carry Darweesh a distance away, where someone produced a jar of honey to prevent infection and bandaged him with strips of his own clothing. The bullet lodged in Darweesh’s spine, condemning him to motionlessness, to a life plagued by unsightly bedsores, a life tormented by the burden of his wife’s cheerless fate, bound to a husband who lived only from the chest up. And even from the chest up, he lived on memories of horses and wind.

  Panic rose from the shots and the birds of terror were supplanted by clouds that made Yehya hope for rain. It wasn’t the season yet, but his trees needed water. At times rain had been everything in Ein Hod, other times it was merely precious. Then he saw his son Darweesh and nothing had meaning. Rain be damned. Yehya dropped the basket from his back and began to cry for that strong boy of his, that impressive rider and beloved son.

  Dalia still hadn’t caught up. The panicked throngs had separated her from Hasan, but she could still see the top of his kaffiyeh ahead of her. He was taller than most men; she’d always liked that. God, what is happening? The clouds passed as suddenly as they came. The sun stung like a scorpion. Dust was high, cactus low, and Dalia thought of water.

  In an instant.

  One instant, six-month-old Ismael was at her chest, in her motherly arms. In the next, Ismael was gone.

  An instant can crush a brain and change the course of life, the course of history. It was an infinitesimal flash of time that Dalia would revisit in her mind, over and over for many years, searching for some clue, some hint of what might have happened to her son. Even after she became lost in an eclipsed reality, she would search the fleeing crowd in her mind for Ismael.

  “Ibni! Ibni!” My son, my son, Dalia screamed, her eyes bulging in search of her son. Dust at her face, cactus at her feet. “Ibni! Ibni!” She scanned the ground, looked up, and Hasan’s tall figure was not there. “Ibni! Ibni!” Some people tried to help her but gunshots tolled and Dalia was shoved along. Is this a dream? Nothing seemed real because it was unbelievable. She looked at her arms again to be sure. Maybe he’s crawled into my thobe. She felt her chest. No Ismael. Her son was gone.

  Dalia stopped and so did time. She screamed like she hadn’t when her father burned her hand. A loud, penetrating, consuming, unworldly scream from a mother’s deepest agony. From the most profound desire to reverse time, just a few minutes. If there is a God, he heard Dalia’s wail. Hasan ran to her and searched the crowd as desperately as Dalia had. Afraid for his older child, Hasan held Yousef close as he looked for Ismael. Yousef squeezed his father tighter, afraid to speak, and the three of them at last made it to safety on Hasan’s strength and will, but without Ismael.

  The villagers sat on the ground in the valley. The land was as beautiful and peaceful as it had always been. Trees and sky and hills and stone were unchanged and the villagers were dazed and quiet, except Dalia. She was mad with anguish, questioning people and uncovering other women’s babies in hope of revealing a boy with a scar down his right cheek, around his eye. She searched with frenzied foreboding, even though Yehya tried to reassure her that surely someone had picked up the child and surely it was only a matter of time before they would be reunited. Surely, Yehya knew, you can’t hold on to words.

  Dalia spent the last of her energy on tears, replaying that instant, over and over and over. Little Yousef, not comprehending the sudden hell that had befallen the whole village, agreed to let go of his father and sat in his jiddo Yehya’s arms, both of them dazed and teary.

  Hasan shuffled restlessly between his wounded brother, Darweesh; his inconsolable wife; his terrified son; and his bewildered father, until finally he succumbed to exhaustion and slept on the ground among merciless mosquitoes, a stone to rest his head. But not even sleep could assuage the inadequacy he felt. He had failed to protect his family. He could not provide assurance, nor could he bring Ismael back.

  “Jiddo, can we go home now?” Yousef asked his grandfather.

  Yehya could not lie, nor could he tell the truth. He kissed his grandson, pulled him closer, tighter, to his chest, and said, “Get some rest, ya ibni, get some rest now, ya habibi.” My son, my beloved.

  They tried to go back the next day, but the guns behind them forbade a return home. For three days and two nights, they made their way up and down unforgiving hills, under the sun’s glare and the unseen but sure watch of snipers. A diabetic boy and his grandmother fell and died. One woman miscarried and the dehydrated bodies of two babies went limp in their mothers’ arms. Jenin was as far as they could go, and they rested wherever there was space among the flood of refugees converging from other villages. Residents of those towns helped them as much as they could, giving away their food, blankets, and water and fitting as many as possible into their homes in that time of crisis. Soon Jordan, Iraq, and Syria gave out a few tents, and a refugee camp sprang up in Jenin, where the villagers of Ein Hod could stand on the hills and look back at the homes to which they could never return.

  So it was that eight centuries after its founding by a general of Saladin’s army in 1189 a.d., Ein Hod was cleared of its Palestinian children. Yehya tried to calculate the number of generations who had lived and died in that village and he came up with forty. It was a task made simple by the way Arabs name their children to tell the story of their genealogy, conferring five or six names from the child’s direct lineage, in proper order.

  Thus Yehya tallied forty generations of living, now stolen. Forty generations of childbirth and funerals, weddings and dance, prayer and scraped knees. Forty generations of sin and charity, of cooking, toiling, and idling, of friendships and animosities and pacts, of rain and lovemaking. Forty generations with their imprinted memories, secrets, and scandals. All carried away by the notion of entitlement of another people, who would settle in the vacancy and proclaim it all—all that was left in the way of architecture, orchards, wells, flowers, and charm—as the heritage of Jewish foreigners arriving from Europe, Russia, the United States, and other corners of the globe.

  In the sorrow of a history buried alive, the year 1948 in Palestine fell from the calendar into exile, ceasing to reckon the marching count of days, months, and years, instead becoming an infinite mist of one moment in history. The twelve months of that year rearranged themselves and swirled aimlessly in the heart of Palestine. The old folks of Ein Hod would die refugees in the camp, bequeathing to their heirs the large iron keys to their ancestral homes, the crumbling land registers issued by the Ottomans, the deeds from the British mandate, their memories and love of the land, and the dauntless will not to leave the spirit of forty generations trapped beneath the subversion of thieves.

  FIVE

  “Ibni! Ibni!”

  1948

  IN THE DAYS BEFORE the attack, in late July 1948, the hot winds of el Naqab swept toward Jerusalem as Israeli soldiers came to the village to consolidate the truce. September was only weeks away, and it always arrived with dry southern winds and baskets of rain.

  Rain, just a hint of its coming, was a reminder of hope. And the feast of the truce, thought the villagers, will mark a peaceful beginning.

  As soldiers of this Israel ate, the one named Moshe watched an Arab woman. At her legs, a small boy clung to her caftan. In one arm, an infant nestled to her chest and with her free hand, the Arab woman served la
mb to Moshe and his comrades. In his soldier’s tan uniform, he thought how unfair it was that this Arab peasant should have the gift of children while his poor Jolanta, who had suffered the horrors of genocide, could not bear a child. It made him weep inside.

  Moshe wanted Jolanta to be happy. Jolanta wanted a child. But Jolanta’s body had been ravaged by Nazis who had forced her to spend her late teens serving the physical appetites of the SS. That nightmare had saved her life but had left her barren. Having lost every member of her family in death camps, Jolanta had sailed alone to Palestine at the end of the Second World War. She knew nothing of Palestine or Palestinians, following only the lure of Zionism and the lush promises of milk and honey. She wanted refuge. She wanted to escape the memories of sweaty German men polluting her body, memories of depravity and memories of hunger. She wanted to escape the howls of death in her dreams, the extinguished songs of her mother and father, brother and sisters, the unending screams of dying Jews.

  Moshe understood her pain. He saw it in the eyes of orphaned, widowed, devastated Jews arriving by the hundreds each day on the shores of Palestine. But Jolanta was special. So fragile and pretty. He fell in love with her and the two married within months of her arrival.

  “Jolanta, you are safe now,” Moshe comforted his wife on their first night together.

  “How can you be sure, Moshe?” she cried in his arms.

  “We will live to see the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River with nothing but Jews.” He held her tighter. “Palestine will be ours. You will see. Together, we will raise a family. We are starting a new life. Go to sleep now. Dream of the children we will have, my darling. We will never be persecuted again.”

  Moshe held Jolanta close and considered their plans to oust the British.

  First the British, he thought, then the Arabs.

  He was right. Zionists succeeded in getting rid of the British and most of the Arabs. He and Jolanta saw the birth of Israel. Indeed, Moshe helped deliver the new state, a Jewish state rising from Europe’s ashes. Still, they could not conceive a child of their own.

  Moshe left Ein Hod with his comrades, the image of the Arab woman and her children lingering in his mind. Jolanta had suffered so much; how could God deny her the elemental gift of motherhood while granting so many healthy children to Arabs, who were already so numerous? The injustice of it all solidified in him a resolve to take—by force if necessary—whatever was needed.

  After the bombing the following day, in the crowd of fleeing villagers, he saw that Arab woman, her baby held tight to her chest, her defiant ankle bracelet as pretty as she.

  Moshe made his way toward the crowd, coming up behind the Arab woman. Before he reached her, the throbbing crowd jostled the baby from her arms, into that fateful instant. In a flash, Moshe snatched the child, tucked it in his army sack, and kept moving without looking back. He heard the woman yell, “Ibni! Ibni!” and that made him believe that she had seen him take her baby.

  But she had not. The crowd pushed on, more gunshots rang out, and the woman was shoved along.

  The baby cried. Moshe could feel little kicks inside his sack as he made for the jeep, away from the eyes of his comrades. The Arabs had already moved on from the center of town. He had the idea to pacify the child with alcohol the soldiers had stashed to celebrate their imminent victory that evening in Ein Hod. Dripping gin into the baby’s mouth, Moshe noticed the scar on his face. It was still red and his eye was still swollen.

  “The Arabs are gone!” shouted a soldier.

  The inhabitants of Ein Hod were removed from the land. It was now time to celebrate and that was Moshe’s opportunity to get the baby out of sight.

  “I left the liquor. I’ll be back,” Moshe yelled.

  He secured the intoxicated child in the sack rustling about in the backseat of an army jeep as he sped toward the kibbutz where Jolanta was likely sleeping. Moshe thought she slept too much. Ate too little. Rarely smiled anymore.

  Young life to care for will bring her back.

  The young life was Ismael, son of Dalia and Hasan, fellaheen from the Palestinian village of Ein Hod. Moshe did not know their names, nor would he or Jolanta, ever. The Arab woman’s face, and her scream of “Ibni, ibni,” would haunt Moshe’s years and the awful things he had done would give him no peace until the end. But for now, Moshe was propelled by love to steal a child. To chase people from their homes, he had been commissioned by an omnipotent edict. A land without a people, for a people without a land. He said it until he could have believed it, but for that Arab woman.

  But for Dalia.

  Jolanta’s face opened like a spring blossom. Her nurturing instincts overtook her depression, her ghosts, her misery. She held the precious child, half-drugged, dirty, and maimed. She enfolded him with her deepest yearnings, caring not that he was an Arab. That day she learned the first thing she ever knew about Arabs: that they circumcise their boys.

  Jolanta fell in love. “He’s beautiful, Moshe.” She trembled with delight.

  “He . . . the baby . . . his parents . . .” Moshe was not sure what he was starting to say and was grateful when Jolanta interrupted him.

  “Stop. I don’t want to know anything. Just tell me, is he our son, Moshe?”

  “Yes, my love. He needs a mother.”

  “Then his name is David, in memory of my father,” Jolanta decided, and Moshe returned to Ein Hod with the liquor, happy. He felt complete.

  First the British, then the Arabs.

  And now Jolanta had a child.

  As the people of Ein Hod were marched into dispossession, Moshe and his comrades guarded and looted the newly emptied village. While Dalia lay heartbroken, delirious with the loss of Ismael, Jolanta rocked David to sleep. While Hasan tended to his family’s survival, Moshe sang in drunken revelry with his fellow soldiers. And while Yehya and the others moved in anguished steps away from their land, the usurpers sang “Hatikva” and shouted, “Long live Israel!”

  SIX

  Yehya’s Return

  1948–1953

  WHILE A FOREIGN MINORITY went about building a new state in 1948, expelling Palestinians and looting their homes and banks, the five major powers—the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, China, and the United States— appointed a UN mediator to recommend a solution to the conflict.

  “He’s Swedish,” Yehya said to a group of men who gathered each morning near his tent for the latest news. “Who is Swedish?” asked a passerby. “Shut up. Hasan is reading the newspaper to us,” someone snapped. Yehya nodded to Hasan. “Continue, son.” Hasan read:

  Serving his commission, the Swedish UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, stated, “It would be an offense against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who had been rooted in the land for centuries.”

  There was a pause filled with the persistent hope of return before someone spoke again.

  “It’s about time someone spoke up against this foulness.”

  “I just hope the Jews didn’t mess up my house too bad.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll fix my house. I just want to go home.”

  “Let me go tell the family. Um Khaleel will be so happy. She’s been so worried about her lemon and almond trees.”

  But just as the men began to disperse, a small, five-year-old voice stopped them. “Jiddo”—little Yousef looked at Yehya— “can we go home now?”

  It was the assumption they all had made, but being confronted with the question, now they were unsure of the answer. So they turned to Yehya and Haj Salem sitting next to him. Yehya looked at Hasan, then turned to his grandson and said, “The truth is, Yousef, we just don’t know yet. We have to wait, ya habibi.” My beloved.

  * * *

  Gathering for the news became a morning ritual in the refugee camp. Women had t
heir own groups, as did children. But to the men, it was the most important event of the day. It was a time and place where the hope of returning home could be renewed. Even when those hopes were perpetually dashed. Even when the old began to die off. And even when hopes grew fainter, they continued to gather in this routine of the Right of Return.

  A few days after they heard of the Swedish mediator, they listened to another news item.

  Hasan read:

  The Swedish UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, was assassinated by Jewish terrorists.

  Israel would not allow the return, and the family waited captive in that interminable year, with its surreal twist of fate and tentative conclusion, stretching on and on, renewed each morning with the news.

  Yehya aged tremendously in those confused months that stretched into years, until one day in 1953, when he realized that his miserable tent in Jenin had turned into clay. The symbolic permanence of the shelter was too much to bear. He would rather have stayed in the cloth dwelling, its leaky top and muddy floor confirming only a temporary exile.

  In the years of waiting in the tent city, Yehya would awake at the adan and idle through the day, playing the music of his nye between rationed meals and five daily prayers. He found some comfort in the love of his family and daily games of backgammon with Haj Salem and Jack O’Malley, the UN director of operations in Jenin. The three men were inseparable from midafternoon until eight or later in the evening, depending on how well the game was going, or how well-prepared the hookas were that day.

  But in more than sixty years of life, Yehya had become accustomed to the daily activities of agrarian self-sufficiency. The aimlessness of captive dispossession warped his mood and bent his posture. The string of broken promises and UN resolutions, not worth the paper on which they set down demands of return, wore at his spirit and made him taciturn, and he shuffled about with the qualities of a man defeated by the wait. Defeated by the quiet nag of his hands wanting things to do.