Three Daughters: A Novel

by Consuelo Saah Baehr

  He had nothing to gain by knowing. And there was everything to lose. That afternoon, staring at the back of his precious granddaughter, he met the idea without flinching and put it to rest once and for all. He was, as Slivowitz said, a lucky man. He wouldn’t change a thing about his life. He had read somewhere that we are all—even those who would deny it—blindly adoring of our own lives exactly as they are. He knew this was true for him.

  If Nijmeh had been a boy, Samir would have sent her to the École des Frères to be toughened up. But for his daughter Samir wanted no outside influence and hired Mr. Setapani from the School for Oriental Research to tutor her in French, mathematics, philosophy, literature, and history. They worked outside his office, where he could keep an eye on them. When lessons were over, her outdoor education began.

  At eight she learned to shoot. The man hired to instruct her had mixed feelings. He considered it bizarre for a girl—who should have been playing with dolls and jumping rope—to spend so many hours with her still-dimpled knuckles curled around a six-pound gun that could, with no trouble, blow a man’s brains to kingdom come.

  When she was nine, Samir decided she must learn to use a knife. They isolated a small lamb who, sensing separation from its mother, rooted itself to the ground. Muffi finally carried it to the back of the house and Samir showed Nijmeh how to hold it. One hand went between the front legs, the other, with the knife in position, arched the neck. “You have one opportunity. One,” said Samir. “It must be deep. It must be quick and clean.” She had practiced repeatedly on an old stuffed sack, but now her legs trembled dangerously.

  The first stroke wasn’t deep enough and the animal danced around bleeding until Muffi finished it off. She was going to ask not to do it again but her father’s eyes were determined. With the second victim, her stroke was swifter and deeper but too arched and ragged. She had to do it once more to get it right.

  Afterward, Samir walked away without a word and dinner that night held no conversation.

  During those years, Nadia and Samir had two lives. One was centered on their precious child, but there was a core where Nijmeh was excluded and all that existed was their mutual dependence. Over the years, Samir fell in love with Nadia anew. He had never known another face that so clearly revealed its understructure. It represented very nearly what she was—thoroughly open. Her honesty was part and parcel of her sensuality. It was the reason she opened herself to him without setting limits to her sexuality. She didn’t know how to hide behind coyness and this was the quality that had always aroused him with staggering intensity. When he wanted her and she was wearing that expression of utmost earnestness, unaware of his thoughts, his heart swelled with something close to adoration. Here was the nourishing center of his life. The one true thing that mattered. His wife.

  Delal had a different upbringing from Nijmeh. At three she was enrolled in the progressive Montessori School. By five she spoke passable French and could plunk out “Sur le pont d’Avignon” on the piano. She could read and print simple words in legible block letters and sat with Peter many nights deciphering the important stories in the newspaper. At seven she began tap-dancing lessons and transferred to the small but prestigious L’École Francaise.

  She had distaste for the outdoors and was bored by the business pursuits her mother would inherit. While Nijmeh was visiting Bedouin tents of her father’s business partners, Delal was visiting Beirut with Peter and buying faddish clothes brought in by the French. She was the first girl in Jerusalem to own a pair of American dungarees (which even she hadn’t the nerve to wear outdoors).

  Nijmeh knew the lineage of every horse on the farm. Delal knew the words to every song on the Hit Parade, an American program she received over the Armed Forces Radio. Her favorite song was “Hubba, Hubba, Hubba, Hello Jack,” sung by Perry Como. She had no clue to its meaning, only that that it was modern! The swingy tune and antic words made her feel as if she had her fingers on the pulse of the world.

  “Julia!” Samir rose from his desk and came around to kiss his sister’s cheek. “What a surprise. You haven’t been here since we redecorated.”

  “No.” She wasn’t interested in looking around. She had a mission. “I wanted to see you alone and this seemed the best way.”

  “What’s wrong? Is Peter all right?”

  “Peter’s fine. Delal is fine. I’m fine. I came to talk about something that’s none of my business but in my heart . . .” She massaged her upper chest. “Someone should speak to you about Nijmeh.”

  “What about Nijmeh?” He looked surprised. “She’s here, no? Outside. There’s nothing wrong with Nijmeh,” he said emphatically and Julia shifted her weight and looked for a place to sit down.

  “There’s nothing wrong with Nijmeh yet but Samir—how can I say this without making you angry? You’re not allowing her to be a child. Oh! I’ve put it badly.” She pushed herself to the edge of the chair. “That sounds awful, because I know you love her, but she can’t shoot and ride and slaughter animals and go around in braids and long dresses all her life. Who is going to befriend her? She should be surrounded by girls her age. She should be allowed to dress up and go to dancing parties. I love and respect you. You’re my ideal of what a brother should be, but it needs to be said. Even if it just makes you stop and think. I know why you’re doing it. Baba sent you to the Bedouins to be made self-reliant, but you were a twelve-year-old boy. And strong. Nijmeh isn’t even ten—a girl.” She was rushing to get through it.

  “Calm down.” He took her hand. “I’m not going to hit you. You think I’m too restrictive with Nijmeh, is that it?”

  She nodded. He let go of her hand and went to stand by the window. “Julia, for the first time in my life I’m fearful.”

  She inhaled deeply, undone by this revelation. “Of what?”

  “That I have no control of my life. That because of some devilish caprice one morning I’ll wake up and there’ll be no family left at all. Baba’s dead. We have no brothers.” He ran his hand through his hair. “For the first time, I’m furious with my mother for not having had more children. She was unforgivably selfish. It wouldn’t have meant that much to her and it would have made such a difference if we had a brother.” He turned around.

  “But Samir, you can’t put that burden on your daughter’s shoulders. She can’t single-handedly carry our entire family into the future.”

  “I want her to feel deeply rooted. I want her to feel that her roots are above everything else.”

  “Perhaps they shouldn’t be. Perhaps her happiness should be first.”

  “If I do the job right, her loyalty and her love of her culture will be her happiness.”

  Julia sighed. “I haven’t helped at all.”

  “You have. I’ve been thinking of putting Nijmeh in a boarding school during the week. I think it would be safer with all the bombings and sniping going on. Did you know Joseph Lam was injured coming through the Damascus Gate? I’ve thought of L’École Française. It’s a small school and well supervised. The girls wear a simple jumper uniform, so she’ll look like everyone else.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful.” Julia laughed. “Have you told Nadia? Oh, Samir. She’ll be so happy in school with all the other girls her own age. Delal will look out for her. Ooh, wait until I tell Delal.”

  The worst day of my life, wrote Delal in her diary, was the day Nijmeh came to my school. It’ll be all right though, because I can take care of her. She’s dumb in many ways. I gave her my test just to see if there was any hope for her. There isn’t. I asked her, “If you had a cracked glass and a good glass and a guest came, which one would you drink from?” She immediately said, “The cracked one.” She’s one of those idiotically “good” people who are either murderously boring or murderously dumb. There’s no hope for her, which suits me fine. She’ll never understand that she has to pay attention to what’s going on. Ha, ha, ha.

  When Nijmeh
’s mother came into her room on Saturday mornings, it was for one reason. “Would you like to go with me to the farm this morning? You could have a riding lesson and we could help Farid with the horses.”

  “All right.”

  “Are you sure you want to go?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Nijmeh would rather have done ten difficult things than ride those horses. Her mother expected her to love it and to say she didn’t would have crushed that look of expectation.

  She had been given a complete riding outfit—boots, breeches, coat, vest, shirt, and hat—and felt ridiculous in it. As quickly and efficiently as she learned from her father, that was how clumsy she was at learning to ride from Nadia.

  On Saturdays her mother appeared at the side of her bed already dressed in jodhpurs and a linen shirt. In the fall and winter, she wore a thick black sweater over the shirt and her pale face stood out like a cameo against the black. Her long hair was loose and plentiful, overflowing her shoulders like a cloud of sunlit copper. Her mother was perfect.

  She spoke in a low, husky voice that Nijmeh tried to match but couldn’t. It wasn’t as low and silvery as Teta’s voice, which she also loved, but it was the voice she would have wished to have. That voice made any word, any name—it made Nijmeh—sound extraordinary.

  The ceiling of Nijmeh’s bedroom was high and the floor was made of polished stone. Her mother had done everything to make it cozy—drapes and canopies and heavy rugs—but it still wasn’t cozy, and Nadia always stopped and looked around the room as if she were disappointed by the way it had turned out. Nijmeh thought the room was like her life—large, open, and cool.

  Once her mother had said, “Darling, you do like riding, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope you would tell me if you didn’t. Otherwise I would feel very bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because then I would feel that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.” Nijmeh didn’t respond. “Part of the reason I love you so much is that I know you. I loved you when you were a baby but much, much more now that I know you.”

  Nijmeh looked alarmed. “What do you mean? You know what I’m thinking?”

  “Sometimes. The expressions on your face give you away. I know what they mean from years of watching you. I know when you have good news to tell me. I know how you eat and how you sleep.

  “Do I snore?” asked Nijmeh. She felt relieved. Her mother didn’t know much.

  “No.”

  “That’s good.”

  Nadia had two feelings about riding with her daughter. There was the pleasure of passing along her expertise but also an ever-present fear. Suppose they were to ride too far and reach the spot where the plane had crashed? They might come upon some forgotten bit of debris and Nijmeh would want to know what it was.

  30.

  IN THE MORNING, IN THE EVENING, AIN’T WE GOT FUN?

  Very early—she couldn’t have been more than three or four—Delal learned to tap-dance and sing like Shirley Temple. “On the good ship Lollipop . . .”—tap, tap, slide—“It’s a good trip . . .”—tappety-tap, tappety-tap—“to a candy shop . . .”—hop, hop, knee up, turn, turn.

  She did it very well and looked very cute, but it wasn’t enough. They had always been examined as a pair. She was the funny-looking one. If Nijmeh had walked in, eyes and minds, including those of her parents, would have flown to that astounding face.

  Nijmeh’s face was never boring and Delal knew with a grudging respect that this was because she wasn’t empty-headed. Her father put her through hell. She had to play soccer (ugh!) and go on idiotic hiking marathons to chart all the desolate desert spots where no human had trod for hundreds of years. On Saturdays she had to swim at the YWCA. Her mother’s demands were crazy, too. She made Nijmeh train in the art of dressage—got up like a man with a bowler hat and sitting on a stupid horse to coax it to show off. Two crazy parents who let their daughter choose clothes that were old-fashioned and never urged her to have a more modern haircut. Nijmeh didn’t own even one chemise or a pleated skirt or buckle loafers. What galled Delal more than anything was the waste. Nijmeh wasted everything about herself. She was fundamentally without any awareness of the effect she had on people or could have on people. She was fundamentally stupid. Squandering her looks. Squandering her brain. Delal could look around a room and know what was going on. She always knew where there was opportunity and took advantage of it. That’s what made her life exciting.

  There was something else she felt about Nijmeh that she couldn’t even stand to think about, because it brought such a wave of confusion and discomfort. It had to do with the queer feelings she had for Uncle Samir. She had concocted a fantasy that she played out before she fell asleep. She was seated on his lap and then his hand would circle her shoulder, at which point he would bend to kiss her cheek. She would have turned her face so that he met her lips instead. He couldn’t help but stay there. On her lips, that is. Then of course he would pull away, but ever afterward she would imagine that he looked at her in a special way and tried to find ways of being alone with her. The humiliating part of this fantasy was that when she wasn’t wanting to play it out, she loathed Samir for making her feel so queer. He had never even asked her to sit on his lap, whereas her own father was always picking up Nijmeh around the waist so that her rump was in the air and plunking her down on his lap and stroking her hair and hugging her without ever thinking twice about it.

  Delal was blessed with the genes for academic brilliance and was easily the smartest girl at L’École Française, but nobody envied her. It didn’t take her long to discover that brains were OK but the teachers were more responsive to the pretty girls. They listened to them more carefully, called on them more often, and made more of their accomplishments.

  One day she was sitting in the locker room after a game of lacrosse that Helene Haddad had caused them to lose. Helene, riddled with guilt, kept rehashing the highlights of play, hoping to be reassured. Delal wanted only to scream at Helene, but instead she said, “Your voice is clear as a bell. It’s really beautiful.”

  The rapt look of appreciation on Helene’s face was so profound that Delal was embarrassed to see it.

  On another occasion she approached Maria, a popular girl from the inner circle. “Gee, you have great hair,” she said. “It bounces when you walk and it hangs just right.”

  Maria, who had never considered her hair any big asset, hesitated for a moment and then her mouth stretched out a mile in a grin. Delal sought out Sonia and zeroed in on an unlikely attribute, her long graceful neck. People devoured praise. They seemed starved for it. She wasn’t sloppy with her words. She found the very best thing to say and then said it sincerely. Many of the girls had never had such a heartfelt and imaginative compliment. They decided Delal was fun to have around. She never complained. If anyone asked how she was, she answered, “Splendid.” To admit to unhappiness would remind them that life wasn’t rosy for unpopular girls. She played the French horn in the school band because it was big and shiny and made her stand out.

  Her daily litany in front of the mirror was, “You’re a master of illusion,” a line culled from a billboard for Binky Bonaventure, a local magician. She always gave the impression of being in a hurry with many things to do. She kept away from Nijmeh. She wasn’t rude, but she was distracted or busy—whatever it took to discourage chumminess.

  The spring she turned eleven, the school presented Peter Pan, and the coveted role of Peter—with a costume of green tights, a glamorous spiked green tunic, and a jaunty cap—went to her cousin. Delal was distraught. In her mind the pinnacle of achievement would be to appear on the stage wearing that fabulous costume and uttering those humorous lines that made the audience respond with helpless laughter and adoration. She wanted to be Peter and nothing else would do. She memorized all of Nijmeh’s lines and mouthed them with her during rehea
rsals. At night, unable to check her imagination, she slapped that perfect face until it was red and swollen.

  A few days before the play there was a half-day holiday. Emir Abdullah (with Britain’s blessing) was being crowned king of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Delal invited Nijmeh to visit for the afternoon. “My father got me some new records,” she said. “We’ll play them on the Victrola.”

  Nijmeh went gladly. To her, Delal was witty and outrageous. Delal was family.

  Delal put on a record of Eddie Cantor singing, “Ain’t We Got Fun?” “Isn’t that fantastic?” She did a little pirouette and began singing along. “ ‘In the morning, in the evening, ain’t we got fun?’ Do you like it?”

  “Yes,” said Nijmeh.

  The record stopped and Delal said, “Let’s go outside and I’ll show you a magic flower that will bring you any wish you want.” Nijmeh laughed—a reaction that annoyed Delal.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d believe in magic.”

  “Why is that?” asked Delal curtly.

  “You’re too smart.”

  “What wish would you want?” asked Delal.

  “I’d have to think,” said Nijmeh. “I don’t have any particular wish.”

  Delal frowned. “See, that’s where we’re miles apart. I have at least ten—fifty—wishes at my fingertips.”

  They walked to a small patch of brush behind the courtyard. She took a leaf in her hand, held it near her forehead, closed her eyes, and chanted, “Shiny, shiny flower, all aglow. Bring my wish before I go.” Delal opened her eyes. “Now you. Take the leaf.” Delal urged Nijmeh to break off the largest leaf, “rub it hard so that the juice comes out on your fingers and rub it on each cheek. When you’re done, close your eyes and make a wish.”

  It never occurred to Nijmeh not to do it. She wanted to please Delal and show her that she liked having fun, too.

  By the following evening, Nijmeh was in an agony of itching. Her face had swollen dangerously and her hands and arms were covered with patches of blistered skin. She couldn’t open her eyes wide enough to see her way across the stage, much less play the role of Peter. “Oh, dear.” Madame Boulanger looked around helplessly. “Does anyone know some of Nijmeh’s lines?”