There are some moments that are etched on the mind so clearly that no amount of time dulls their effect. Such a moment came for Miriam on a suffocating day at the end of September 1915.
Jamilla sat at the table, very silent. She was an unemotional woman, but that day her eyes were wild. She had unintentionally clawed two bleeding crescents on the backs of her hands. Miriam stooped down in front of her and looked up into the tortured face. “What’s wrong?”
“Salim is dead.”
“You’ve heard from the War Office?” she asked, shocked.
“No, but Jebra’s son was with him at Bersheeba and he’s written that many are dead and some of them are from here.”
“You’re not certain then.” Miriam expelled a breath of relief and rose. “I’ll ask Nadeem to check with the War Office in Jerusalem. They’ll have to tell us.”
“He’s dead,” said Jamilla. She sat stonily until the characteristic instant blackness of autumn snuffed out the day.
Nadeem went to the War Office and—as when he had gone for news of George the Kurd—it was a madhouse. Women, anxious for news, stood in an untidy double line with toddling children weaving through it. The heat and close quarters created unhealthy smells. When Nadeem questioned the officer, he confirmed too quickly that Salim was dead and made Nadeem suspicious. “Let me see proof. Let me see a list of casualties.”
“Who are you?” asked the official harshly.
“Brother-in-law.”
“Tell the widow to come here.” Nadeem shook his head in frustration. This annoyed the Turk. “Why aren’t you serving your country?” he challenged. “You should wish yourself in the dead fellow’s place.”
That winter was exceedingly mild and in mid-November, a mother who had lost a child and wished to keep its garments took them to wash in the fountain that served two villages near Hebron. Very soon there were a dozen cases of cholera. By the end of the month, word got around that the disease was in the country and Hebron was immediately cut off from Jerusalem. The government issued orders to the villages to clean the streets and burn any refuse. Whitewash was freely used on the buildings, especially in the poorer quarters. In the days following, rumors came that one after another village was attacked by the scourge called the “yellow air,” in the belief that it was a pestilential breath carried by the air. The villagers resisted learning the real cause of the disease—that the bacillus had its greatest opportunity in the running water of the drinking places. It was a somber Christmas and the trees, usually decorated with fat Jaffa oranges, were bare.
January ended with hotly contested reports that the illness was not cholera at all—but people were dying swiftly. “They’re having a very bad time of it here,” reported the local doctor. The bodies—almost fifty a day—were carried out two to a donkey and four to a camel. The railroad on the Jaffa–Jerusalem line was forbidden to stop anywhere between Bittur and Jaffa and a few weeks later service was discontinued altogether. People rushed to the shops and bought up what little food there was at exorbitant prices. Some of the inhabitants of Gaza, which was hit hard, moved out to the seashore and lived in tents. Camphor was virtually unattainable, for the natives bought it to make little bags that they smelled frequently.
On the second day of March a man appeared at Miriam’s door and handed her a creamy white envelope sealed impressively with red wax. It appeared too expensive to be from the government and, in any case, she had no one in the army. Something about the writing on the front made her heart behave erratically. She tried to pay the messenger but he waved her away, saying he had already been well compensated. She went indoors.
There was a single sheet of paper and the first thing she saw was the signature—a large M and an almost illegible ax. The message was brief but urgent:
You must leave tonight. Your village will be quarantined by morning and no goods will get through. The food situation being what it is, you will starve to death if you don’t die of cholera first. Take your family and go before morning!
The signature was well separated from the message, as if there were many thoughts he had wanted to place in between.
She went to Mustafa and Jamilla, to Diana and Nabile, to Daud and finally to Nadeem’s parents. None of them would leave the village. Diana cried bitterly, but the tears seemed to relieve her and she dried her eyes and refused to let the Turkish pigs drive her out of her home.
“No, no,” said Miriam, despairing that she had given the wrong impression. “It’s the quarantine. No food will come through.”
“Miriam, that’s foolish,” she said, recovering from her cry. “They wouldn’t starve us to death.”
Miriam told her husband the message was from the doctor who had treated Khalil and taken an interest in him. Nadeem had heard similar warnings in Jerusalem and needed no persuasion. They gathered what they could load on a donkey donated by Mustafa, but after they were packed the longing to remain in their home was so strong that Miriam begged to abort their journey. She took out the message from Max and read it for the twentieth time. “We must leave,” said Nadeem. “There’s no other way.” They set out on foot with only Nadia on the donkey, heading east to the village of Es Salt, where Umm Jameel’s aunt was a nun and might take them in.
The immediate fear of quarantine and disease had supplanted fear of war, and by the time Nadeem and Miriam were an hour out of the village they saw the signs of the impending cordon. The officials asked their destination but did not detain them. “Watch the fountains and wells,” called out one guard. “Many are condemned.”
It was so hot. The dust on the road attacked their throats and gagged them and they stopped speaking to conserve their saliva. Only Esa had energy and he skipped ahead, sometimes running back to apprise them of some horny-headed lizard or chameleon he spotted on a rock. Toward afternoon of the next day, after stopping to rest at dawn, they reached the great depression of the Ghor that provided a bed for the Jordan. They passed many gorges into which the debris from the hillsides had tumbled, creating a desolate wasteland. Most frightening of all were the narrow defiles with perpendicular sheets of striated cliffs on each side, allowing no place to turn should they be attacked. Nadia crooned softly to herself and stuck her thumb in her mouth, lethargic from the heat and dehydration. The older boys and Nadeem took turns leading the donkey. Miriam kept her eye on Esa but her mind wandered and from time to time she became disoriented.
On first view, the Jordan appeared as a meandering ribbon of grass. There were muleteers who warned them of the muddy bottom, but when their donkey began to slip and flounder and was in danger of drowning, the men made no move to help. Nadeem cut the animal loose from the packages and Miriam saw all of their belongings sink to the bottom. Nadeem saved only the food, and although he submerged himself several times searching for the water skin, the men called out that it was useless. The strong current had already taken their cargo several miles. Nadeem led the donkey back and forth with each of them atop the animal. When they were all safely on the other side, he sat by himself, his wet clothes plastered around his thin body, and wept into his hands.
They had walked for miles without sight of another human. The only sound was the clip-clop of the donkey and Nadia’s sucking and crooning. The glare of the sun added to the air of unreality. Their senses were numbed by fatigue and thirst. Esa was still bouncing ahead, although to Miriam in her weakened state he appeared to be floating away from her, a small spot of color in the monotone of beige.
“Esa, stay near!” Had she spoken or only thought it?
“Esa! Stay near.” Her voice seemed to be coming from far away. Was he skipping along the ground or floating above the air? Finally the images settled and he was very clear. Standing near a well. “Don’t drink from there. Wait for me.” No one is at the well. Why is it so deserted?
“Mama, here’s water and a cup.”
“No, Esa. No!”
The
re are classic signs of cholera and the swiftness of the disease is startling. Esa stopped skipping and began to droop by morning, when they were still several miles out of Es Salt. Within a few hours, his lethargy was so complete that Miriam knew. He lay across the donkey like an inert sack. Nadia walked without complaint, but she couldn’t go fast. It was almost dark when they reached a small village with a clinic.
The doctor moved swiftly, pulling the rubber tubing from his stethoscope and snaking it down Esa’s throat, making him jerk forward and gag. “This will do more good as a conduit,” he muttered, attaching a funnel to the end and pouring water into the strangely altered little body.
“He has practically no pulse,” said the nurse, alarmed.
“Most likely, he’s already in acidosis.” The doctor appeared distraught. “Be careful,” he yelled to the nurse. “Look! He’s so dehydrated his skin will crack if you touch him.” Miriam watched dumbstruck, unable to do more than stare at her son’s altered face. He appeared so tranquil, and while he didn’t have the strength to speak, his eyes were alert.
As he waited in between pourings, the doctor talked rapidly. “Normally,” he said, avoiding Miriam’s eyes, “the skin has remarkable elasticity. When you pinch it, it returns to its shape. The natural fluids keep it plump. They also keep the eyes moist. The lips, the inside of the mouth—all the mucous membranes are moist. Madam”—the doctor had taken her arm—“if we could rehydrate him and his body could absorb it, he would be himself in a matter of hours. But”—he threw his arms down helplessly—“his tissues can’t reassimilate water. His eyelids are as dry and brittle as last year’s leaves. He can no longer blink or swallow without pain.”
Miriam shook her head. Even as they watched, the small chest rose more feebly. Was it all preordained? Had God planned this special torture for her all along? Given her this precious, perfect child only long enough to love him completely?
Esa lingered for two days and took his last breath as his mother stood by, aching to cradle him against her but fearful of bruising him. The doctor pulled Nadeem aside. “You must burn everything he touched,” he said brusquely, on the verge of tears, and left the room.
When he recovered, he returned and again spoke to Nadeem. “Are you Muslim?” Nadeem shook his head, knowing the doctor feared the Muslim custom of washing the bodies of the dead and spreading the disease further through the discarded water. “Bury him with all his clothing,” he whispered tersely, “and cover him with six baskets of dry lime.”
They had him in a grave that evening, as was the custom, with a stone slab over the small wooden box to keep the hyenas from exhuming the body. Miriam displaced her deeper grief by fixating on that weight. “No!” she screamed over and over in her sleep, leaping wildly from the mattress in the quarantine tent where they had placed the family. “He can’t push the stone away. He’s only a small boy. Please, Nadeem, help me take it away.”
“Hush!” He held her forcibly. “You can’t remove the stone. He’s dead! He’s dead.”
Years later she would understand that he had submerged his own agony to minister to her. Despite his great love for Esa, he loved her more. For many days, he forcibly kept her from digging up the frail, wasted body.
They remained in the village two weeks before the officials allowed them to continue the five miles to Es Salt, where they were taken into the church building and allowed to sleep. In the months that followed, they all showed the lethargy of weakened constitutions and signs of malnutrition—dry, cracked lips, limp hair. Hanna developed night blindness and couldn’t see from dusk until dawn. Khalil began to limp. Nadia, unable to engage her mother, consoled herself with her thumb and rocked to and fro for hours. She asked in vain for “hordee,” and finally consoled herself with Jilly, a mangy dog that belonged to the rectory. She and the dog became inseparable.
Hanna alone ministered to his parents, gathering chestnuts and boiling them to make a satisfying stew when there was nothing else to eat. He gleaned the wheat fields after the reapers and seemed to find kernels by willing them to appear. Many days he walked the ten miles to the larger city of Amman to trade chestnuts for eggs, which he brought home triumphantly to his father. One day, after making the four-hour trip, he tripped on a stone and broke one of the precious cargo. He knelt beside it, stunned, and hot tears spilled on the ground, making dark spots on the dust. “Poor Mama. Poor Baba.”
Nadeem scooped up the soiled, dripping shell and put it in a cup. “Hush, Hanna. Never mind. The other three will nourish us more. You’re a good son. More precious to me than any food. Come.” He dusted Hanna’s scraped knee tenderly with the hem of his aba and used it also to dry his son’s tears. Miriam looked out at just that moment and, for the first time, submerged her grief and felt deeply for her husband and son.
Each of them had radically different memories of the year they spent in Es Salt. Nadeem, totally absorbed in getting enough food for the family, did odd masonry and carpentry jobs in exchange for anything that could be eaten. He often walked several hours to surrounding villages, looking for work, using up more energy than could be replaced by what was gained. Food was the first thing they thought of upon awakening. It was a yearning to fill that terrible hollowness that never left. The need to find food replaced every other concern and, in the case of Miriam, it finally even eclipsed the wretchedness of losing Esa.
Their lethargy and preoccupation could be counted a blessing, because it kept them from comprehending fully the tragic news that came from home. The disease had visited the village with vengeance. One-third of the population perished. Nadeem’s father was dead. So were Zareefa’s middle girl and Daud’s wife and child. Then came the news that was kept from Miriam until almost four months later: Mustafa, her beloved father, was gone.
15.
MY POOR, POOR DARLING . . .
One night Miriam awoke to find Nadeem thumping Nadia’s back furiously. “She can’t breathe. Listen . . .” A strained wheezing sound, like the creaking of a tree in strong wind, came from Nadia’s chest. “She’s straining for a little air.” There was panic in his voice and when the dog that now regularly slept next to Nadia’s mattress began to mewl at his leg, Nadeem kicked it away, something Miriam had never seen him do.
“It’s what she had before,” said Miriam, dressing to go into the labyrinth of the rectory. “I’ll boil some water and make steam for her to inhale. In the morning, I’ll take her to the clinic.”
“She was fine all day,” said Nadeem, mystified. “It’s an attack. She’s always had something of this sort. Always coughing or sniffling.” He sounded as if he were blaming Miriam for it.
“I was taking her to a doctor that Spiridum suggested the day war broke out.”
“You never told me that. What did he say?”
“Who?”
“The doctor.”
“We didn’t go in. Nadia wouldn’t go in because there was blood on the step leading to his office. I was about to carry her when the news was shouted down the street that we were at war. After that, everyone came out. It was impossible.”
“You see,” said Nadeem irritably to Nadia, but Miriam knew it was directed at her, “you didn’t go to see the doctor and now you’re having big difficulties and there is no doctor here.” Nadia took this opportunity to make a strangling sound that sent both parents scurrying to the hearth to boil the water. Nadeem held his daughter over the kettle on and off for the rest of the night and in the morning he urged Miriam to take her to Jerusalem and try to find the reason for her difficulties.
“Jerusalem? How can I go?” When she thought of Jerusalem, she thought of Max and it was this thought that threw her into chaos.
“Why not? The boys and I will manage.”
“But we are at war,” she protested weakly, for now the idea of having news of Max was beginning to dazzle her. “It’s dangerous.”
“It’s more dangerous to risk m
any more nights like the last. Suppose we don’t hear her? She could choke to death.”
“Yes,” said Miriam wearily, “that’s possible.”
Mother and daughter left three days later. Nadeem and the boys had sacrificed all their stores of food to give to them and packed everything compactly so that Miriam could also carry Nadia if it became necessary. The priest at the church gave them a letter for a priest in Jericho, who would give them a night’s lodging and perhaps dinner and breakfast to break up the trip.
She had expected to feel frightened; the walking should have been arduous, but to her surprise she welcomed it. After months of focusing on hunger and uncertainty and grief, it was liberating to leave it all behind. Es Salt fell from view and she was suffused with an unexpected lightness, as if she had laid down a burden.
Nadia, remembering what had happened to Esa on the road, was not so eager to make the journey. “Mama, Mama,” she urged, “I feel good now. Why are we leaving Baba?”
“We have to find out what’s wrong with you.” Miriam had no inclination to reason with her. Her only wish now was to be away from all the memories of Es Salt.
“But it’s nothing. See?” Nadia took several quick deep breaths and thumped her chest. “See. Come”—she grabbed her mother’s hand—“let’s go back.”
“No,” said Miriam sharply, and Nadia began to trail after her, sucking on her thumb and crooning softly to herself. After they had gone a mile, Miriam looked back at her daughter with a feeling of tenderness. Nadia was walking as fast as she could, running to catch up when she fell too far behind. Her childish legs were made more vulnerable by scuffed high-topped shoes that had been sent by some relief agency from the other side of the world. She put Nadia in the sling and carried her for a few yards, allowing her to snuggle against her for comfort and brushing her cheeks with kisses.
Three Daughters: A Novel Page 18