Three Daughters: A Novel

by Consuelo Saah Baehr

  “That could very well be, but you have to go through with it.”

  Their nervousness was for nothing. When Paul saw Nijmeh, he could have been sitting in the Black Hole of Calcutta and it wouldn’t have bothered him.

  He couldn’t help staring. He couldn’t take his eyes away from her without wanting to immediately look again. No one was saying anything and—with the room so small—it could have been excruciatingly tense, but he felt relaxed. He had a drink in one hand and a small plate of appetizers on his lap, restricting his movement. He got rid of both. He had never seen such a perfect face, but even more riveting was the absolute openness and vulnerability behind it.

  Suppose he hadn’t met her? When he considered all the teas and giggling women and then trying to convince himself that Delal, with her pinched little face, could make him an ideal wife because she would be forever grateful . . . at least he hadn’t caved in when the father offered money. He wouldn’t have that on his conscience, though it had been tempting. He convinced himself that he had acted well and this angel was his reward.

  He inched his way along the sofa until they were no more than a foot apart. “I don’t remember you from my childhood.”

  “I don’t remember you either.”

  Adrenaline shot through his body. “I’m mad at myself,” he whispered, leaning over.

  She looked puzzled. “Is something wrong?”

  “I can’t believe I wasted so much of my visit without having met you. Now I only have a month left. That’s a darn shame.” He was still whispering and the others in the room busied themselves in the kitchen and around the table.

  “Was there something you wanted to do?”

  “I wanted to persuade you to marry me.” It was a hard line to deliver seriously, and at the last minute he laughed. Just in case she thought he was crazy.

  She was looking at him with those remarkable green eyes but not really seeing. She had mastered a deceptive attentiveness, but her mind was totally caught up in something else. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said and he knew she couldn’t remember what she had heard. Instead of making him anxious or disappointed, her distractedness made him resentful. He’d put her on the spot.

  “Oh? Tell me three things you’ve heard.” She flushed and looked blank. “Just to show you I’m a nice guy, I’ll help you out. I’m thirty-three years old, unmarried, in good health, and with good prospects of earning a living.”

  “That’s very modest,” she said, “because I know you’re also a doctor. A very good one,” she added to assuage any hurt feelings.

  “That remains to be seen. But the issue here is you. I don’t know anything about you.”

  “I’ll be twenty this summer.”

  “That’s it?”

  She smiled. “Unmarried.”

  “Now that’s what I was waiting to hear.”

  Nadia placed a bowl of rice on the table and glanced discreetly in their direction. “I couldn’t hear what he was saying,” she said to Samir in the kitchen, “but he was smiling and she was smiling.”

  The following day he called her late in the afternoon. “Is this too soon to call?”

  “Too soon for what?” She knew who it was.

  “You’ll think I’m too eager.”

  “Are you too eager?” Her voice was flat. He was being flirtatious and she didn’t want to respond to it. Don’t be eager at all, she wanted to tell him.

  “Absolutely. Can I come and see you?”

  “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.” She didn’t know what to say. “I wish I could say it gracefully.”

  “Say what gracefully?”

  “That I’m not free.”

  “What do you mean you’re not free? Not free physically or emotionally?”

  “Emotionally.” She was talking more than she wanted to talk. Why didn’t he just get off the phone?”

  To his credit he didn’t miss a beat. “You don’t have to be free. I’ll just stop by for a chat. You can stay as unfree as you like. See you in half an hour.” He was unstoppable.

  When he arrived he beeped the horn. She came out and he walked around and held the door. “Hop in. Hop in.”

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Driving. Or dancing. Would you like to go dancing?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How about it? We could go dancing in the dark? Come on, let’s go.” Before she could resist, he had her in the car.

  “I have to get a jacket or something.”

  “I’ll get the jacket. You stay here. I’ll be back in a minute.” He went a few steps and then returned. “Where can I find the jacket?”

  “There’s one on a clothes tree right in the front hall. It’s black-and-white. A houndstooth check.”

  “Righto.”

  He got the jacket, tossed it onto her lap, and then they were barreling down the road with the radio blaring.

  He did distract her, even if it was just thinking how to turn him down. Now it was a relief not to think of James. Time was chipping away at her confidence. At night things got worse and in the morning a little better. She needed to talk to someone and get an outsider’s view of things. Maybe she would call Delal.

  He was driving along and whistling. She was grateful that he wasn’t so talkative. “I don’t know how to dance,” she said and folded her hands demurely in her lap.

  “There’s nothing to it. I’ll show you.”

  “Do you go to dances?” She was surprised. The men she knew might dance at weddings, but they didn’t go to dances. “Are you good at it?”

  “I went to dances in college and I’m pretty good. Not bad.”

  He took her to a small club five miles out of Jerusalem on the road to Jaffa. There was a floor show consisting of eight girls wearing military hats that tied under their chin. They were clad in shorts and halters with bare midriffs and they danced in unison. Afterward the band played some Latin tunes and Paul took Nijmeh’s hand and made her dance. He held her in his arms, but she remained stiff with her back arched so she wouldn’t have to lean against him. She didn’t want his hand across her back and his chest brushing her breasts. He understood but he didn’t let that daunt his good humor and tried to teach her a dance called the mambo. “Look,” he said, “this is a dance you’ll like. You don’t have to touch your partner and he doesn’t have to touch you.” She shrugged off the sarcasm. Whatever he thought was his business.

  The next morning he came to the house without calling and Nadia answered the door. “I’d like to see Nijmeh,” he said. “Is she around?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Nadia. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Thank you, but I’ve already had coffee. I’ll just wait here.” He waited a long time and it became embarrassing, because he could hear voices arguing somewhere in the back of the house. He knew without hearing the actual words that the mother was urging her to come out and she was resisting. He refused to think about it. If he had taken everything at face value, he wouldn’t have gotten this far. She would come out eventually.

  When she finally appeared, her face was determined. “I’ve given you the wrong impression,” she said.

  “That’s not true. Don’t worry about it. I’d like to drive down to Jericho to have a swim and look around. It’ll be nice to get some sun. What do you say? Come along, OK? We’ll have a swim, some lunch, and come back before night.”

  She shrugged. “What can I say?”

  “Don’t say anything. Just get your bathing suit.”

  When they were well under way and the silence threatened to become difficult, she said, “How is it in America?”

  “Like night and day.”

  “Very different from here?”

  “Totally. There’s total freedom from social pressure. Well, almos
t total. There’s a stigma for women who have children out of wedlock. I know firsthand that’s still a taboo. I see real anguish when I deliver the babies.”

  “Are they just nice girls who made a mistake?”

  “Sometimes. Some are girls who haven’t the vaguest idea how babies are made. Just ignorant. They refuse to believe me when I tell them how it happened. They laugh.”

  She noticed that when he talked about his work he was very different. Very serious. “You like delivering babies?”

  “Very much. I never fail to get excited. It’s quite a thrill each time.”

  “Are you lonely in America or do you have friends?” She was just being polite, although she would have much preferred to be quiet and think her own thoughts.

  “I used to work all the time, but now I’ve finished my residency and I’ll be on a different footing at the hospital. When I go back, I’ll be more on my own. My friends are other doctors and their wives. A patient might become a friend, but that doesn’t happen often. It’s a nice life. Very pleasant, but eventually—maybe five, six years—I’ll come back here to practice. This is home.”

  They spent the afternoon swimming in the Dead Sea. The water was so briny they bobbed around like corks and it was impossible not to giggle. He made her wear his shirt in the water so her shoulders wouldn’t get sunburned. “With that skin, you’ve got to be very careful. The shirt will dry before we go home.” There was a little pavilion near the water and he ordered a lunch of chicken smeared with lemon and garlic that had been cooked over a fire. They ate in their bathing suits with the sun warming them. Afterward, they swam again, showered, got dressed, and drove home.

  “What shall we do tomorrow?” he asked when he dropped her off.

  “I can’t see you tomorrow.”

  “Why not?”

  “No specific reason. It just isn’t right.”

  “I don’t see why not. We can go to Nablus. I want to buy that special soap they have there and take it back. It’s so much more fun when you’re along.”

  “I don’t see what good this is doing you. If you’re trying to find a girl to marry, why are you wasting your time with me?”

  “Wasting my time?” He looked astonished. “I enjoy your company tremendously. I’ll pick you up at ten, OK?”

  She nodded. “OK.”

  And he was off.

  On the drive home from Nablus, they stopped at a restaurant on the road and Paul ordered a bottle of wine. They finished the bottle with lunch and it left them more mellow than usual. Nijmeh especially felt her guard was down and she began to analyze her behavior. She had started out feeling nothing at all. Now she felt some respect and liking. When they were leaving the restaurant, he put his hand under her elbow and guided her into the car. She had to admit that she liked having his hand on her elbow. Maybe that was the wine. Maybe it was just that any man was a stand-in for James. She did feel fuzzy headed. When they arrived at her house, he shut off the motor, brought her face around, and kissed her cheek. Then he held on to her chin to keep her steady and kissed her lips. His tongue went zipping along from one corner of her mouth to the other and then he brought it back. She hadn’t exactly returned his kiss, but she hadn’t pulled away. She was able to tolerate it, which seemed an important discovery. It was just a pleasant awareness that an attractive, interesting man was available. She felt very confused.

  He kept showing up—one day at a time. If she wasn’t at home during the day, he’d come back in the evening. Her parents encouraged him, so it wasn’t hard to keep returning. It was Paul’s good luck to be courting her during the most poignant season of the year. The days were sunny, with just enough humidity to be refreshing. In almost any direction just over the next ridge they’d come upon a field crowded with wildflowers as far as the eye could see. He took her to the Easter rituals as if they were tourists. The crowds pushed them together and she got used to having his arm around her waist or shoulders.

  By mid-April, eleven of James’s letters made a neat, crisp stack. Delal held them in her hand and ruffled the edges. She had read each one and sometimes she read them in sequence. It was an interesting study in human nature to see the rise and fall of emotions. Gaiety and anticipation were followed by bewilderment and anxiety. Finally a sense of despair crept in. Despair was a relative word. It wasn’t the sort of despair she felt—the eroding self-esteem, the devastating sense of powerlessness.

  Odd passages from the letters reverberated in her mind. He used Nijmeh’s name frequently. I love you, Nijmeh. I followed a girl several blocks because she squared off her shoulders with your same brave shrug . . . There are three types of weather patterns here. Damp and rainy. Rainy. And damp. The countryside here is mostly desolate. It makes you review your life as if you’ve been told you’re going to die. When I review my life, I keep coming back to you. To your beautiful face, to your eyes that haunt me . . . It’s been two months and I haven’t any news of you. I’ve taken up golf. The first thing a Scotsman tells you when you’re on the golf course is that the Scots invented golf. They want you to be surprised and unbelieving and since it means so much to them, I oblige . . . Are my letters reaching you? I haven’t heard a word and the term is half-over. Not one single word from you. It’s . . . mystifying! Are you there? Are you all right? . . . About my studies . . . I couldn’t have imagined how compelling they would be. The laws of a nation are so . . . organic. You can read the history of the race in laws . . . Are you embarrassed to tell me that your feelings have changed? You’re much too courageous to evade the truth. I’m sure of that. I love you . . .

  It was the most satisfying thing she had done in her life. Keeping those letters from Nijmeh was equivalent to covering her wounds with a soothing salve. In that small community, it didn’t take long for word to get around that the Halaby boy was head over heels for Nijmeh Saleh. Wasn’t that a match made in heaven?

  It took her three days to get the letter just right. It had to be a crusher and irrefutable. She couldn’t take the chance that James would come winging back and invade the Saleh household. The letter had to make him cynical and vengeful. It had to provoke him to get drunk and buy himself sleazy prostitute.

  Dear James,

  It was my fervent wish that I wouldn’t have to write this letter, and if my own inexperience hadn’t made me so impetuous, this whole mess wouldn’t have taken place. But there you have it. The first man who came along brought out all my emotions and I couldn’t distinguish love from infatuation. Now that I’m truly in love, it’s all so painfully obvious. I’ve met someone. He’s a doctor whose specialty is delivering babies. I tell you this so you can see that this is not the choice of a fickle, silly girl but something well thought-out (our relationship, you must admit, was not). Paul is gentle and good and right for me in every way.

  Your sweet letters are stacked next to my bed and I read them and feel sad. Paul has a practice waiting for him in the States and by the time you read this we will probably be married. When you meet the right girl, I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

  My affection always,

  Nijmeh

  When Delal wrote those things about Paul, she knew they were untrue. He had not been gentle or good. He had been a lazy listener and mildly petulant, self-indulgent, and lacking in imagination. Even knowing all this, she would have gladly had him back.

  “Delal, I have to talk to you.” She had tried to reach her cousin the previous evening and all morning, but she wasn’t successful until late afternoon.

  “Why don’t you come by?”

  “I’ll take the bus. Can you meet me? It’s better if we meet outside your house.”

  “Why not? We’ll have a coffee.”

  “So? What’s up?” Delal tried to keep her voice light. One thing she didn’t want was to give any inkling of what she was going through. How many hours had she sat waiting for Paul to call? Especially in those first few days
before all hope had faded. She hadn’t played it right. She had let him touch her in such an unattractive way. How many times had she lifted the receiver and dialed his number and then disconnected before it had a chance to ring? If it rang he would answer. If he answered he would be apologetic and ill at ease. Sickeningly insincere. What did she want him to say—I don’t like you enough? Leave me alone? She felt ashamed for herself and her father. She had warned him not to get so excited, but he had been excited anyway. And now here was the cause of it all, wanting to be consoled and reassured.

  They had chosen a restaurant with dim, private booths. Nijmeh had ordered a lemon Coke and Delal an iced coffee.

  She stirred the Coke round and round. “Do you think I was just dumb with James?”

  “Dumb?” That’s exactly what she was. Dumb. She thought of the neat stack of letters in her desk drawer. You were dumb not to see how much I hate you.

  “Dumb to think it meant more than it did?”

  “You and a zillion other women.” She spoke in a flat, dispirited voice. “Men are faithless. You know that song, ‘If I’m not near the girl I love, I love the girl I’m near.’ Everybody thinks, Oh, that’s so cute. Men are like little boys. It’s not cute. It stinks.”

  “You’re probably right, but I can’t believe it. When he comes home, I’m going to confront him. He has to come home. I keep thinking that when he comes home, everything will be all right.”

  “Then you’re a fool, Nijmeh,” she said with unconcealed bitterness. “You have the idiotic notion that you’re eternally lovable and this is just a little lapse. As a matter of fact, he probably won’t come home. He knows what’s waiting for him here. It’s a sad fact but true that now you’re James’s little burden.”

  This brought a look of grief to Nijmeh’s face. Her mind opened up to accept this appraisal as if it had the seal of a judge. Delal was so wise to see it. All along, she had hung on to the idea that eventually James would come home and he would have an explanation. If he didn’t come home, nothing would ever be resolved. She’d just be left in this limbo. Her face drained of color. “How can he not come home?”