Zareefa rose and pushed her mother-in-law playfully on the shoulder. “Umm Jameel, leave the kusah and grape leaves and come with us for some air.” She yawned again.
Umm Jameel shook her head but gave them a tolerant wave of her hand and went for the water jars. “Tayib, as long as you’re strolling, bring back water.”
“You certainly know how to handle her,” Miriam said when they were out on the road. It was the same town but the vistas were different. There was a charming glen on the side of the road. Now, in midwinter, with plenty of rain in the ground, the lavender crocuses crept around the rocks and tender shoots of wild anemones crisscrossed the slopes.
“We have a truce,” said Zareefa circumspectly. “As long as I might be carrying her grandson, she’ll leave me alone. But”—she laughed ruefully—“God help me if it’s a girl.” She then added airily, “Anyway, Nadeem will make a lot of money and build you a fine home away from Umm Jameel.”
“Do you think it’s possible?” In all of her thoughts of escape, Miriam had never considered this.
“With Nadeem, it’s possible,” she said decisively. “With Jameel, no. Jameel lives to eat and drink. But Nadeem is methodical. He will go, step by step, building something. He’s too serious but you can change that.” Miriam didn’t respond. “It wasn’t a love match?” Zareefa asked delicately.
“He was chosen by my parents. My mother was very joyful.”
“But not Miriam.”
“In the end, perhaps it doesn’t matter. Those that marry for love learn to hate and those that start out not loving perhaps learn to do so.” She was repeating, word for word, something Dr. Malouf had said to her before the wedding.
“For Nadeem, it was a love match. He looks at you adoringly. You have an unusual voice. It drives men crazy.”
Miriam blushed. “His grandmother doesn’t think so. She keeps asking if I’m a man.”
Zareefa laughed. They continued to the spring, but midway Zareefa began to have pains and they returned without the water. Umm Jameel changed her expression. “Is it true? Is it coming now?”
“Yes. It’s coming.”
Umm Jameel was quarreling with the midwife, who wanted Zareefa to sit in a contraption that resembled a chair with a hole in the middle. “The baby will drop down through the hole,” said the midwife.
“Shu . . . megnuneh, ente. You’re crazy. Get out,” said Umm Jameel.
“Please,” argued the midwife. “I know what I’m doing. Every lady in Jerusalem is having her baby this way.”
“Every megnuneh,” said Umm Jameel. She turned to her sister, who had arrived. “Please, Halla, get Dr. Malouf to recommend someone else. Hurry.”
Halla took Umm Jameel out to the garden. “Zareefa is safe. Don’t worry. This is a better position for the baby to come out. Lying down puts the baby in the wrong direction.”
“Suppose he falls on the floor?”
“The midwife will catch him. Any one of us can catch him.”
“We did it the old way for thousands of years.”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps only in our lifetime.”
“Yullah, hullus,” said Umm Jameel. “Let’s go inside.”
In the center of the room was the wooden chair with a crescent-shaped hole in the seat and, under it, a large bowl of water. The midwife squatted beside it. Zareefa sat upright. Rivulets of sweat ran down her back and collected momentarily in the dimples above her round pink buttocks, which were framed by the chair in a provocative way. “I feel like pushing,” she said. Her voice was childishly excited.
“Not until I say,” replied the midwife curtly. Her hand felt Zareefa’s belly. “Now, it’s very hard! Push, push, push! Stop! No more for now!”
There was a half hour more of pushing and stopping and then the midwife went under the chair and became very busy. “Tayib, it’s coming. Ya Allah, look. Such a beautiful face. Come on, one more big push. Yullah, come on.” She eased out a shoulder, the body, and finally the legs. But there were no more exultant cries. It was a girl.
Umm Jameel took the baby. “It’s only the first,” she said with a sigh. “She’ll help her mother with the others. She’s healthy, salamu aleiki. Let God give her happiness.”
When the others had gone inside to eat, Miriam took the baby in her arms. The feel of the infant overwhelmed her. This magical being could insure her happiness. She was so perfectly formed. The mouth was like a small double-peaked heart. The skin was softer than the fleece of a newborn lamb. She wanted one just like this. That would make everything right.
When Nadeem came home for his leave, she was eager for night to come. She arranged herself on the bed in what she considered a friendly position.
Eight months after her wedding, Miriam passed her seventeenth birthday and noticed by the hem of her dress that she had grown an inch or two. She noticed also that her breasts were fuller and her waist thicker, but it wasn’t until her sister-in-law mentioned the possible cause that she realized she might be pregnant.
“When did you bleed last?” asked Zareefa.
“I don’t know. Two months. Perhaps more.”
“Perhaps more is the correct answer. Let me see your profile. Pull your dress tight around your stomach. Aha, there you are. You’re pregnant and you didn’t know it.”
Khalil Nadeem Mishwe was born on the third day of the new century. The narcissus was already pushing through patches of snow, promising an early spring. It was a long labor, for he was facing up. “This one will be a mama’s boy,” said the midwife with frustration. “He doesn’t want to come out.” She tried all her tricks to make him rotate, but in the end she put her hand in and turned him. “He won’t be easy to raise,” were her parting words. Afterward, Zareefa told Miriam that her screams could be heard in Nablus.
He was a serious-faced little boy with his father’s gray-brown eyes and his grandmother Jamilla’s pallid skin. He looked nothing like Miriam. He could have been anyone’s child. Instead of the sweet downy angel she had envisioned, she’d received a cranky, colicky boy who spit up the precious few ounces of milk his mother had made, then howled for more. Each day, Miriam guided her short, tender nipple into his mouth and each day he remained unfulfilled. He screamed and gnawed on his fist. After a week of the noise, Miriam gave him to a wet nurse.
Everyone was waiting to make a fuss—the first grandson—but Khalil didn’t do well with strangers. Even his father made him cry, but that was to be expected, for Nadeem was away for weeks at a time. Miriam washed the baby, swaddled him neatly, rubbed his limbs with olive oil and salt as her mother had taught her. When he slept she washed his clothes and cooked for the wet nurse.
“Leave him with me,” Zareefa urged her. “Go out by yourself.” But Miriam couldn’t relax, knowing he was capable of crying himself into a rage for several hours.
One day she found Khalil smiling broadly and burst into tears. When the baby saw her crying, his chin began to wobble. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I frightened you. Don’t cry.” She rocked him in her arms and kissed his wet cheeks. He hiccuped a few times and then smiled again.
Not long after, Miriam noticed that when Khalil took his nap in the afternoon, she no longer had the energy to wash and cook. Without intending it she would curl up beside him and sleep, too. After a week of this seductive fatigue, she realized with less joy than the first time that she was pregnant again.
6.
IT’S TIME FOR US TO MOVE.
In the spring of 1900, the new government road to Nablus reached Tamleh and Ibrahim Abu Shihady initiated horse-drawn carriage service to the Jaffa Gate for a fare of thirty cents. If a traveler brought his chickens and other belongings, the smells together with the motion unsettled some of the occupants and it was common to see ashen faces hanging out of windows. The service was a great convenience to everyone, especially the sick who needed to make the journey to the hospital.
Miriam was busy with Khalil and the new pregnancy kept her feeling unsettled. The Sisters of Mar Yusef had received four sewing machines from America and invited the neighborhood women to learn to sew. Miriam and Zareefa made European-style trousers, but the pair intended for Nadeem had one leg slightly shorter than the other. “Nadeem loves you,” Zareefa teased. “He’s wearing those terrible trousers.” He wore the trousers every day and Miriam knew she wasn’t the cause of his restlessness.
One night, Nadeem announced at dinner that he was going to build a house for his family. He would put it up himself, he said. His mother stopped eating. “And where do you propose to get the money to pay for this new home?”
“I have enough money to start,” answered Nadeem, deliberately filling his mouth with food. It was the custom for young men to build their homes one room at a time as finances allowed.
“A start? Why start what you can’t finish? And what is a start? A wall? Two walls? What good will that do? You can’t live inside two walls. You must have four. Plus a roof.” She let him digest this information so he could better appreciate her conclusion. “And if there are four walls and a roof that’s an entire room. Not a start.”
“What’s wrong?” asked his father. “There’s plenty of room here.”
“There isn’t plenty of room,” said Nadeem. “It’s crowded and will become more so with the new baby. Besides, Miriam is anxious to have her own home.”
Miriam looked up, startled. They had never discussed a home. Umm Jameel threw her a look. “It isn’t crowded,” she said flatly. “Zareefa and Jameel have moved out.”
“Will you be happy with a home of your own?” he asked Miriam when they were alone.
“It’s what every woman would wish.” She had no way of knowing if he was being foolish or not. Could she depend on him? “But what about the expense? Do we have the money?” It occurred to her that she had no idea if they had money or how much.
“It will only be one room at first but we can add to it,” said Nadeem.
“Of course. That’s all I would expect.” As the idea grew, she became excited. It would be wonderful to have a home of her own. It would be exciting to decide how it would look and to furnish it. “Do you really believe we can do it?”
He was delighted to see her happy. “Yes, I do. In fact I’m certain of it. It’s time for us to move.”
Nadeem ordered a load of mizzi hulu, the hard white limestone that held well with lime cement and was the best for home building. He had the advantage of experience with masonry, but building a house was a haphazard affair. There were no village regulations, no engineers, and no architects. The first task was to dig a hole and make a rainwater cistern, but since this would take precious time away from the main structure, he started with the room.
The wheat harvest was only five weeks away and the fruit harvests would follow, but the haste worked in his favor. He had helped many cousins to build and now they were willing to return the favor.
Miriam was interested in every bit of progress and visited the site daily. Mentally she divided the space . . . we’ll sleep here . . . Khalil there. The table will be here, the khabbiya there.
Nadeem could work on his house only two days at a time. The other days he took the dusty walk to Jerusalem to act as a guide. Unlike Jameel, who welcomed the carriage ride, he preferred to walk and think. Chagrined that his ambitions had no ready opportunity, he had rebellious thoughts. His parents hadn’t prepared him to be competitive or ambitious.
Nadeem’s own father was content to farm a second-rate vineyard that produced inferior grapes. He walked with a small broom with which he swept the dung or snow—depending on the season—from the approach to the Franciscan chapel, where he sat and prayed daily. Nadeem wondered what his father prayed for since his life didn’t change. He and Jameel had been educated without foresight. Father Kuta had come to start the Latin church and had scoured the households to fill his school, hoping to attract the parents away from the Greeks. Nadeem and Jameel had learned to read and write, to add and subtract, to decipher the Psalter in French, and they had acquired a crude knowledge of European history. They knew nothing of the culture of the ruling Ottomans.
When Nadeem became old enough to serve in the Turkish army, his father had paid a head tax through their sheik to have someone else serve in his place. Perhaps Nadeem would have been better off going into the army and seeing something of the world. Perhaps he wouldn’t feel so naive.
Opportunity came in the person of Monsieur Freneau, a vivacious businessman from Paris who wanted to visit Jesus’s childhood home in Nazareth. It was a lengthy trip that required an overnight stay. When they camped for the night, M. Freneau asked to share Nadeem’s sweet-smelling olive oil soap and was so appreciative of its aroma and benefits that he asked to keep the bar. “I’d like to take some back to France,” he said.
“I’ll bring all I have to your hotel,” Nadeem offered graciously.
Two weeks after M. Freneau returned to France, Nadeem received a cable at the Hotel St. Anselm, which was his base: SEND SOON STOP TEN GROSS MT. CARMEL SOAP STOP EXCELLENT MARKET HERE STOP GOOD PROFIT FOR YOU STOP LETTER OF CREDIT TO COME STOP.
Nadeem went to the Crédit Lyonnaise and the Deutsche Palestina Bank, but no letter of credit had come through in his name. There was nothing from France at the Austrian post office either. He had spent his funds on his house. Ten gross of soap together with the shipping charges would come to at least one hundred dollars. He would have to believe that after he sent the soap and expended the money, M. Freneau would honor the debt and add a profit. He stopped at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to think, sitting by himself in one of the side chapels. He remembered that M. Freneau prayed like a child with his hands together pointing up. He slept on his back, his arms and legs spread out, as if inviting only kindness from the world. He had told Nadeem that he sold lingerie and fine linens in a shop on a wide boulevard in the heart of Paris.
That night Nadeem asked Miriam for the money she had received for their wedding. “It’s temporary. I’ll return it to you.” She went to the chest where she kept her belongings—her special clothes and jewelry—and pulled out a small kerchief knotted tightly to hold twenty gold lira. To spend money for pleasure was considered foolish, so what else was there to do with the money? She gave it to her husband.
The roofing bee for their new house took place just twenty-three days after they had begun, and ten days later they were able to sleep under it. How different were her feelings in this pleasant room where everything was hers. She knew each slight indentation in the flat stones that Nadeem had fit so expertly to make a charming floor. The room was large and airy with the daring addition of a mezzanine that allowed extra space for sleeping. The walls were smooth and whitewashed and there were four windows for a cross breeze. The nooks and shelves he built ingeniously into the walls held bedding and cooking pots, and she kept busy rearranging their belongings. She picked flowers, swept the floors, polished and puffed. She put the chairs against one wall and later against another. She washed and scoured and then viewed the results with an interest that never jaded.
When Nadeem arrived in the evenings, she could hardly wait to show him new curtains or a new arrangement in a corner of the room. As she waited to see him approaching up the old pilgrim road, she realized she was eager for him to arrive. It was very confusing. If she didn’t love him, why did s
he feel so satisfied when he ate the food she cooked? And if she did love him, why did she still have moments of intense longing and restlessness? These feelings seemed unnatural. Nothing more was waiting for her. How could her heart play such tricks on her?
One day Miriam walked to her mother-in-law’s at dawn to help prepare for a Sunday dinner. The families were constantly visiting and it was unthinkable not to remain for the midday meal. On this morning she and Umm Jameel had rolled out triangles of dough and filled them with diced lamb or wilted spinach and onions. Miriam took the filled dough to the taboon, together with open round loaves spread with zatar spice and oil, and waited for them to bake.
Jameel and Zareefa came for the meal, as did Umm Jameel’s sister, her sons, and their families. Zareefa took Khalil on her lap and clapped his dimpled hands together. “Let’s see this big boy,” she said. To Miriam’s surprise he allowed himself to be kissed. “You’ve been cooking since dawn,” said Zareefa to Miriam. Miriam inclined her head toward her mother-in-law. She had become more tolerant of Umm Jameel, who in turn was not so quick to criticize the mother of one son with another possibly on the way. “First the wheat for the tabouleh was too soggy and had to be replaced. Then the dough for the pies didn’t rise enough.” Miriam yawned unexpectedly and felt light-headed.
“You’re pregnant again, I almost forgot. Me, too. Perhaps we’ll have them together. You another boy and I another girl.” Zareefa’s voice was high with anxiety. She cared deeply about her standing in the clan.
Umm Jameel, looking flushed and weary, finally sat down. It was a crowded table and everyone became engrossed in eating, with the children scampering in between them. For a moment it was quiet.
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