The Woman from Tantoura: A Palestinian Novel

by Radwa Ashour

  “Better, Ruqayya? He has his wisdom that his servants cannot fathom. Say rather, ‘Thank God, the only one we thank in adversity.’”

  I said nothing.

  My uncle went by sea to Port Said, and returned after three weeks, receiving the people who flocked to him as if he were returning from the Hajj. He presided over the room and told his story: “I visited Port Said and Port Fouad and Port Tawfiq and Ismailiya and Suez, and of course, Cairo.” He said, “I saw the Canal and swam in its waters.” He said, “I took the train to Cairo and attended a concert by Umm Kulthum. I went to the movies and before the show I saw a film called The Talking Newspaper, where I saw Abd al-Nasser as if he were standing before me in person, when he was speaking from the pulpit of al-Azhar Mosque and people were shouting for him, and then when they were carrying him in his car. And I saw the planes when they were bombing Port Said.” He would say, “I asked about the neighborhood where Abd al-Nasser lived, and I walked in it.” One of the young men asked him, “Why didn’t you ask to meet him?” My uncle said, his face a little red, “Cairo is big, I didn’t know who to contact to take me to him. And anyway he’s busy, and those who love him are many—imagine if everyone who loves him asked to visit him, would he attend to the visitors or concentrate his efforts on running the country?”

  Two months after my uncle’s return, Ezz confided in me that his father had sold half the boat to cover the cost of his trip to Egypt. “He didn’t tell me. If I had known I would have managed it for him. I can borrow the money and then return it, since I’m employed and have an income. But he didn’t tell me.” Ezz laughed, long and loud, and said, “Well done, Abu Amin! Always acting like a king!” I laughed too.

  12

  Enter the Girl from Saffurya

  My uncle looked at himself in the mirror one last time. He raised his hand to the cords of his headdress as if he were going to adjust it a little on his head, and then lowered his hand without touching it. Ezz laughed and commented on his father’s concern for his appearance, “They’ll think you are the groom, Abu Amin!”

  His father answered, smiling, “They should. I’ve never seen a groom like you going to propose like that, with no kufiyeh or cords, not even a jacket—a shirt and pants, as if you were one of the railway workers in Haifa.”

  “It’s hot out.”

  “But you’re the groom. Wear a suit and they’ll respect you.”

  “Let’s leave the respect to the army and the Second Bureau.”

  Sadiq clung to his father and insisted on going out with him. I refused and he cried. His grandfather said, “Let’s go, Sadiq.” He took his hand and headed for the door, followed by Amin and Ezz. I stayed at home with my aunt and Hasan. My aunt began to ask me about the bride for the tenth or twentieth time, her hair, her height and weight, where she was from, all the details.

  “Are her eyelashes long?”

  “She’s pretty, Aunt, her eyelashes are long and her eyes are deep black. She’s light-hearted and charming.”

  “Is her voice loud enough and does she speak distinctly, or is she like the neighbors’ daughter, who speaks fast in a low voice? I can’t understand her.”

  “She speaks clearly, Aunt.”

  “How many sisters did you say she has?”

  “Six sisters.”

  “All their children are girls, God save us. What will Ezz do with a wife with six sisters? God help him!”

  She was silent for a few minutes, withdrawn, as if she were thinking over the description of the daughter-in-law she had yet to see. Then she returned to her questions, “How far is Saffurya from our town?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it in the Haifa region?”

  “No, near Nazareth.”

  “When they took over the town, did they take them out?”

  “They besieged the town and then they struck from the air.”

  “They fled?”

  “They left on foot for Lebanon. They got to Rumaysh and lived with people they knew. Some months later they went back.”

  “They went back to their town? What forced them out to Lebanon a second time?”

  “They caught them before they got to Saffurya and considered them infiltrators. They put them in prison in Nazareth and then loaded them into trucks and threw them over the border.”

  “And they came to Sidon?”

  “The Lebanese put them with others in an army barracks for a year or more, in an area named Qaroun, then they moved them to Ain al-Helwa.”

  “It’s the first time anyone from the village has taken a woman from Saffurya.”

  She went back to her questions, “Is her hair soft or rough, like the neighbors’ daughter’s?”

  I laughed. “I haven’t touched it, Aunt, I don’t know. It looks soft. She braids it. Will you have coffee with me?”

  She sighed. “Yes, I’ll have some.”

  I gave her Hasan and got up to go to the kitchen and boil the coffee. I was suppressing my laughter. It seemed more like a judicial inquiry—why didn’t she wait two days and see her son’s bride for herself? She couldn’t wait. My poor aunt dreaded having a strange girl move in with her, sharing her house and her kitchen and her son. She kept saying, “If we were in the village Ezz would have married one of the girls there, or he would have taken one of the girls from Ain Ghazal or Ijzim or Jabaa, our maternal relatives. We’ve married among them before and their customs are like ours. Saffurya? I’ve never heard of that town and I don’t know a thing about it. God protect us!” She was openly worried. As for my uncle, I did not understand the reason for his distress on the way to Ain al-Helwa to ask for the girl. What was upsetting him? Asking for a bride for his son from strangers he had never met, or missing his brother and relatives from the village, the customary large group that accompanies the groom when he goes to ask for the bride? Or did he dread going to the camp?

  Perhaps he was not distressed, but rather something else had settled in him, like coffee after it’s boiled, when the dregs are dark and concentrated and bitter, separate from the drink and the flavor we enjoy. My uncle was merry and cheerful over the marriage of his younger son, and the thought of the bride who would live with him in his house. But when he went to ask for her on the evening of that spring day of 1957 he had to go into the camp, which he had not entered before.

  After they recited the Fatiha, my uncle wanted to expedite writing the contract and celebrating the marriage, but his in-laws told him that they needed some time to send the news to their relatives in the other camps. The girl’s father leaned over to my uncle, “We have to do what we must, Abu Amin. The invitation must reach everyone from the town. If they can attend then that’s good, and a blessing; if they can’t get the permits, then that’s God in his wisdom.”

  “What permits?”

  “Slowly, slowly, Abu Amin. We have to get a permit from the Second Bureau to allow our guests to enter the camp, a hand-written permit. We’ll submit the request tomorrow morning. Our guests also have to submit requests to get permits to leave their camps, and praise God, the people of Saffurya are many, scattered from Ain al-Helwa to Mieh Mieh to al-Burj al-Shamali near Tyre, to Wavel in the Beqaa and Nahr al-Bared in the Tripoli region. We have to contact them to find out what their situation is and when they can get the permits.”

  I was not present for this part of the talk since I was in an inner room, changing Hasan’s diaper. But Ezz accompanied Amin and me on our way home in the evening, telling his mother and father that he wanted to stretch his legs a bit. When we arrived he said, “I want a cup of coffee from Ruqayya’s hands,” and he went up with us. He was burning to talk. He repeated the bride’s father’s words to me, and looked at Amin, “You noticed how discouraged everyone became.”

  “I noticed, and I didn’t entirely understand what happened. I tried to distract them by talking about the agency’s projects for better health care for families, and how I hope to organize training sessions to prepare young people to administer first aid, s
omething that could possibly turn into a nursing school later on. They were interested, in fact, but Mother was still upset.”

  “Father was discouraged when Abu Karima talked about the permits, not because he hadn’t heard about them before but because every time he heard about them, he decided to drop the matter and forget about it, as if he had never heard of it. Suddenly he finds that his son’s wedding and the preparations for it depend on permits from the Lebanese military intelligence. He’ll be forced to live with the details, so how can he let it drop?”

  “And what’s bothering Mother?”

  I joined in, “Aunt is worried that the bride’s family will be larger than the groom’s, as if we had no extended family around us. I heard her saying to my uncle, “Why don’t you send for the people from Tantoura in Syria? Maybe some of them would be able to make the trip.”

  Ezz laughed, and said, “Mother whispered in my ear, ‘Who will cook for all these people? What if a hundred people came—we’re not at home and I only have Ruqayya and our neighbor, who’s ill, and her daughter, and I can’t understand her.’ So I whispered, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll arrange things later. We shouldn’t whisper something that might reach the ears of our guests.’ She whispered back, ‘They have relatives that are coming from the Beqaa and from Baalbek. What if they turned out to be a thousand, what would I do?’ So I got up and sat in another place!”

  Ezz burst out laughing, and got up.

  “I’ll go home and reassure them before they go to sleep. I really needed to talk about that sudden anxiety; I couldn’t sleep without talking about it. I’ve gotten it off my chest and now I’m relaxed. Good night.”

  Some of the people got their permits and some didn’t. Most of those who were invited from Tripoli and the Beqaa weren’t able to participate in the wedding, so my aunt wasn’t obliged to cook for a thousand people. Despite her constant worry she was singing and humming and welcoming the guests. They bridged the distance from the bride’s house and the surrounding houses, where her family and relatives lived in the camp, to my uncle’s house in old Sidon. The young men set up the dabka circles in the camp and in Sidon, where the people of the neighborhood shared in the dabka and the call and response of the ataba, miijaanaa, and ooof songs. Even the wedding procession was held according to custom. My uncle brought a horse from one of his friends; they decorated it and Ezz rode it, after his friends had taken him to the public bath and sung the customary songs to him: “The handsome young man comes from the bath, God and his names protect him,” and “O you with the kufiyeh and cords, where did you hunt this gazelle?” I sang with my aunt and the bride’s mother and sisters:

  Say to his mother, rejoice and be glad,

  Perfume the pillows and bring henna for our hands.

  The wedding is here and the couple is smiling,

  The home is my home and the houses are mine—

  We are engaged, let my enemy die!

  Little Sadiq was clapping his hands and joining in the singing.

  My aunt outdid herself when she sang Ya Zareef al-Tuul—O Tall One. She added some lines to the familiar song which I had not heard before:

  O tall one, O handsome, stop and let me say,

  You’re going abroad, when your country would be best.

  I’m afraid, O tall one, that you’ll settle there,

  You’ll live with another, and let my memory go.

  O tall one, O handsome, you with the laughing smile,

  Tenderly raised by your mother and father,

  O tall one, the day they took you far away

  My hair went white and my back bent low.

  O tall one, O handsome, you’re far from your own.

  Don’t travel far away and leave us the blame!

  If God wills you’ll return, we’ll return to the vines,

  We’ll harvest the wheat, and gather what we grow.

  O tall one, O handsome, you who’ve been spoiled,

  If you go to the well, think how to climb out.

  We’re scattered, it’s for God to bring us back;

  Our Lord scatters and he gathers, that we know.

  The girl from Saffurya came into the house, lived in it, and spread out. My poor aunt found herself cramped in a space that was ever smaller, as “the stranger” (as she called her in her absence) shared in ordering the house, and what will we cook today and how will we cook it, and “this couch is better here,” and “having this window closed makes the house stuffy, it’s better if we keep it open,” and “never mind, Aunt, I’ll cook.” My aunt complains to me in whispers, looking around her. “She has your uncle and your cousin completely fooled. Even the kids are fooled. She’s strong, the girl from Saffurya!” Or again, “Thank God they live in the camp. If Ezz had married her when we were in the village he would have lived in their village, and we would only have seen him on holidays.”

  Since most of the residents of Saffurya were refugees in Lebanon, the whole village and not just the bride came into Abu Amin’s house. It was a dense presence that made my aunt feel as if she didn’t have any extended family around her, and that my uncle welcomed joyfully. His daughter-in-law brought him her family who became a family for him; in fact she brought Saffurya itself with her, to become part of his story. He would recount what happened in it, and it came to seem as if he had been there when the people were forced to leave it for Rumaysh. In fact, one morning he decided, “We have a duty that we cannot neglect,” so he went to Rumaysh to meet the family that had hosted his in-laws the day they left their village, taking with him a “worthy” gift of fish. He thanked them and invited them to visit him in Sidon, and held a banquet for them as if they were his in-laws and not a family who had hosted the family of a girl who would become his daughter-in-law, nine years later.

  But he did not go often to the camp. He only went there if he had to.

  13

  An Essay on Waiting

  “He was standing in the station waiting to get on the train, returning to where he had come from, so how absurd it was to ask him to register his stop and to get an identity card for waiting.” I said that before, describing my uncle Abu Amin. I re-examine it. It’s not absurd for us to get an identity card to wait. And anyway, an identity card is always condensed, a summary of a long, complicated story, stretched out over time and not susceptible to a summary. It’s an insufficient shorthand, but it’s an indication.

  Waiting.

  All of us know waiting.

  To wait an hour, a day or two, a month, or a year or perhaps years. You say it’s been a long time, but you wait. How long can we wait? Maryam told me about a woman who waited for her husband for twenty years. I said, “Tell me more.” She said, “It’s a well-known story in ancient literature. The man went to war, and the war lasted ten years. On his way home he got lost.” “Who got lost?” I asked. She said the man’s name, a strange name that’s hard to remember. She said, “He was lost for ten more years, and the wife was still waiting. Men were hovering around her, desiring her and asking her to marry them, and she was weaving on her loom, saying, ‘When I finish weaving I will accept one of you.’ She would weave on her loom during the day and at night she would undo the weaving.” I was drawn to the story, but I said to myself that it fell short, that waiting is not like that, it’s inseparable from life and not a substitute for it. You wait at the train station, and at the same time trains take you east and west and north and south. You have children and you raise them, you study and move on to a job, you love and you bury your dead, you rebuild the house that collapsed on your head, you erect a new house. A thousand details take your attention, that’s the wonder, as you are waiting in the station. What are you waiting for? What is Ruqayya, in particular, waiting for?

  Thinking exhausts her. Putting it all into words exhausts her, but she knows that while she was waiting, she had three children. At the station. Amin planted the sperm, and under the umbrella of waiting she bore a child she named Sadiq, then followed him with a second child she
named Hasan, and after them came Abd al-Rahman.

  Like a newborn puppy whose eyes are still closed, the boy looks for the nipple of the breast, knowing his way by feel or scent, and learns how to nurse. He grows a little and his small, soft hand closes over her finger, gripping it with his fist. He crawls. He coos like the birds. He walks. He forms meaningful sentences, then takes off talking. He runs. To school. To the university. To women. To a home of his own, and children. The scene shifts as if in a film that sums up whole lives in two hours. Ruqayya at less than fourteen, following her mother on the way to Sidon, without speaking. Ruqayya at less than fifteen being married to Amin. Ruqayya at twenty-four with three children, the youngest a nursing baby. With Amin in Beirut. The children in schools. The children in universities. In the demonstrations. Behind a barricade, threatened by another barricade in front of them. The children in airplanes. Ruqayya sitting on the stairs during the shelling of Beirut, bent double until her head nearly touches her knees, holding Maryam who had fallen to her as if from the sky. We begin again. Maryam crawls. Maryam walks. She forms meaningful sentences. She runs to school. To the university.

  A story that can’t be summarized.

  And then, what is the place of fear in the way station?

  Fear is hidden away like inner waters, present in waking and in sleep. Open fear when the city suddenly shakes. A few moments and then she notices that the building that has turned into a heap from which smoke and flames are rising, by some incomprehensible accident, is the neighbors’ building and not the one she lives in.

  A story that can’t be summarized.

  Waiting had an independent existence, true, more like the earth we stand on. But that other thing also had always been there, piling up intentions that announced themselves suddenly. How else could I explain my uncle Abu Amin’s behavior and what happened after 1967, and that sudden change in the camps? (Was it really sudden, or was it a natural move, the result of what had gone before?) The change was clear in the faces of the girls and the young men, in the look in the eyes, in the stance, the walk, the gesture, and the sense of the place. Would that Maryam were here so I could ask her to give me more details of the story of the woman who waited twenty years. Penelope. She said that her name was Penelope. No one undoes their weaving even if it looks that way. No one is frozen in the act of waiting.