The Woman from Tantoura: A Palestinian Novel

by Radwa Ashour

  My uncle continued his trips infiltrating the country. I can’t report the details because I don’t know them, and because Abu Amin, so enamored of talking and telling stories, kept silent about his trips. He would absent himself from the house, a week or two or sometimes a month; it would seem as if he had gone to sea with the fishermen. Then my aunt’s fears and later the fears of us all as we waited for his return would confirm that we knew what he had not told us, and that he had gone there. To do what? Did he go alone or with others? Did he plan and set a goal that called for the risk, or did he go only because he wanted to? He did not say, and we could only imagine.

  When Abd al-Nasser’s voice rang out from the pulpit of al-Azhar one Friday in the fall of 1956, Sidon and Tyre and Nabatiyeh and Bint Jbeil and other villages and towns listened exactly as they listened in the camps. The little ones, with that wondrous spring in their knees, suddenly leapt from childhood to youth. And it seems that the spring wasn’t limited to the knees, that spring that stretched them not by one hand span but by two. Did the camp also have knees and a spring, to take it from one state to another insensibly and with no notice? Did it demand of the camp also, like them, that it sit once again before the photographer so he could take a picture that reflected its new shape?

  Then came 1967.

  What did it do to us? The girl from Saffurya said that her father and uncles on both sides and everyone she knew from Saffurya, and maybe the people she knew and those she didn’t from other villages in the camp, brought out the keys to their houses and prepared their identity papers and the deeds that established their ownership of their lands and houses. She said that her mother wanted to know, “Will we go back the way we came, on foot, or will a car take us there?” When her father said, “Only God knows,” she became tense and said, “I want to know what to keep and what to get rid of.” She had spread out around her all the clothes and household items they had. This she folded with care because she would take it with her and that she put in a pile to one side because she didn’t need it and would leave it by the door for whoever found it. Then she stopped, suddenly at a loss as she held the sweater she had knit by hand for the youngest girl; it was too small for her now, and she didn’t know whether to get rid of it because no one else would use it, or to keep it because she remembered her joy when she finished it and her daughter’s joy when she wore it for the first time, on Eid al-Fitr after Ramadan. Suddenly she said to one of the girls, or to herself, “We have a stove there in the house that’s larger and better, there’s no need to take the stove. And our bed there is new. No, not new, time has passed; we’ll take the bed. The kerosene heater will be useful in the winter, we’ll take it with us—can we rent a truck to carry the things?” Then she looked suddenly at her husband and asked, “Should we keep the identification from the aid agency? I think we should tear it up, what do you think?” He answered, “We’ll tear it up as soon as we enter Palestine.”

  My aunt did not act like her son’s mother-in-law. She did not sort the clothes or household items. In the afternoon of June 5 my aunt announced, “We will not act as if we had no upbringing and are ungrateful for favors, and leave without a word.” She began a crowded schedule of visits, that included the neighbors and the neighbors’ neighbors, in al-Sabil and Abu Nakhla and the surrounding neighborhoods. Every day she made two or three visits, saying goodbye, expressing her thanks and gratitude, inviting them to visit the village and asserting: “Our house is large, and everyone is welcome. I beg you not to put it off, we’ll be waiting for you.”

  When things happened as they did, and Abd al-Nasser announced that he was stepping down from his post and that his decision was final, it seemed to me that we were going to undo the weaving like the lady in the old story.

  I was stupid. Just a mother of small children, who had as yet learned only a little. I didn’t notice that the outpouring of millions of people to demand that Abd al-Nasser continue on his path was significant.

  I didn’t notice until I was surprised one day to find that the camp had left its place. It up and moved from the edge of town to the center, and settled there. Every time the army besieged it or fired on it, it became more prominent in the story and consolidated its position.

  My uncle Abu Amin began to drink his coffee hurriedly in the morning. Then he would put on his qumbaz and jacket and affix his kufiyeh and its cords; he would grasp his walking stick and say loudly to my aunt, “Don’t wait for me for lunch, Halima, I’ll spend the day in the camp. I have a lot of work to do.” He would raise his staff and then strike the floor with it, and go out. Sometimes he would be there until late in the evening, so he would ask one of the young men from the organizations who had a telephone to call the Abu Nakhla Bakery or the coffee shop near the house; a boy would come and knock on the door, Ezz would open it for him and the boy would deliver his message: “Uncle Abu Amin called to say not to wait for him because he will spend the night in the camp, the young men there need him.” Ezzedin would laugh, and his mother and wife would come to hear the news. Ezz would say, laughing still, “Father’s spending the night in the camp. Watch out, Umm Amin, it looks as if the old man thinks he’s twenty, maybe he has his eye on a girl there!”

  Since Amin and Ezz were working in the camp they told us how popular their father was among the residents and the young fedayeen. His activity branched out in several directions: he would tell them what he had learned from experience about the roads and pathways on the other side of the border, he would help with training in identifying weapons and using them, and perhaps most importantly he would tell his story, giving them details of his memories of Sheikh al-Qassam, of the Arab Revolt of 1936, of the battles of 1947 and 1948, of what happened on a given day in a given village, and the lessons learned. His audience was no longer restricted to his household and a few friends he would meet in the coffee shop in the old town, rather it was the youth of the camp and others among the people of Sidon and the young men who came from far and near.

  My uncle would take Sadiq with him and enroll him in the ‘Lion Cubs’ team, carrying thick white paper for Hasan. He would spread it out in front of him and say, “Draw the map, boy, make it large and use colors.” Hasan would spread out the white paper on the ground and bend down as if he were praying on it, drawing the outline with pencil and using the eraser to adjust the line and make the curves precise. Then he would open the box of crayons and begin with the sea, coloring it blue, moving on to the Negev Desert which he would color yellow, and absorb himself in identifying the cities and the villages. After half a day of concentration he would call his grandfather and say, “What do you think, Grandpa?” Abu Amin would bend down over the map, trying to bend his knees and kneel to study the details; but his knees would not cooperate so he would sit cross-legged in front of the map, staring at it. He would laugh and show his gold tooth that a young doctor had made for him. (He still remembered him gratefully, and would say, “God help him and protect him wherever he is. He studied at the University of Cairo and opened a dental clinic in Haifa.”) Hasan would have distinguished Tantoura by writing its name in larger letters than he used for the names of Haifa or Jaffa or Jerusalem, marking its place with a large circle that he colored in red, as if Tantoura were the district capital and not Haifa. Abu Amin would scrutinize the details more closely, then scoot over and sit on the map, reaching out and taking the pencil from Hasan and adding towns and villages neither I nor Amin had ever heard of. He would say, “Here, you forgot these villages of Jabal Amil; they are Lebanese villages that the Jews captured after the truce in ’48: Metulla, Ibil al-Qamh, al-Zuq al-Fawqa and al-Zuq al-Tahta, and al-Mansura.” He would specify the site of each village with a little red circle, and then his hand would slide a little lower, “Here are Hunin, al-Khalisa, al-‘Abasiya, al-Naima, al-Salihiya, and Zawiya, near each other, no farther from each other than half an hour’s walk on foot.” Then his hand would slip farther, “Below them and a little to the east are Qadas and al-Malkiya. Your uncle Maaro
uf Saad defended them when he was fighting in Pales-tine. The young men would come from Tripoli, Baalbek, Bint Jbeil, and elsewhere and train here in Sidon, in Bab al-Sarail Square; afterward they would head for northern Palestine. Al-Malkiya is important, boy.” He would put a big red circle around it. Then his hand would move to the left part of the page and stop before it reached the blue sea: “And here are Kafr Bir‘im, al-Nabi Rubin, and Tarbikha.” He stares at the map again and says, “Where’s al-Shajara? I don’t see it.” He marks the site with red. “Here, a little east of Saffurya, do you see Hittin? Go down a little and a little to the west. You know your uncle Naji, boy? Naji al-Ali, the cartoonist from Ain al-Helwa? He’s from al-Shajara, and the poet Abd al-Rahim Mahmoud was martyred there. Do you remember what he said, boy?” Hasan falters; it’s hard for him to understand poetry or memorize it. Sadiq intervenes, reciting:

    I will carry my soul in the palm of my hand, and cast it into the chasm of death,

    To live, and gladden the heart of a friend, or to die, and bring to the enemy wrath.

  “Perfect, perfect! Memorize it, Hasan. And don’t forget al-Shajara again, Uncle Naji might get mad at you if you forget it.”

  Then he suddenly noticed that little Abed was sitting next to him on the map, asking for attention, so he said to him, “What have you memorized, Abed? Go on, tell us.”

  Abed sang the anthem “My Homeland,” Mawtani:

  My homeland, my homeland,

  Splendor and beauty, majesty and magnificence

  Are in your hills, in your hills.

  Life and deliverance, pleasure and hope

  Are in your air, in your air.

  Will I see you, will I see you

  Safe and sound, blessed in honor?

  Will I see you, so sublime

  Reaching the sky, reaching the sky,

  My homeland, O my homeland?

  Sadiq broke in, “‘Reaching the stars,’ not ‘the sky.’ ‘The sky’ is a mistake!”

  “Hold on, Sadiq, go a little easy on Abed. Good for you, Abed, excellent!”

  Abu Amin reached into his pocket and gave Abed three sugarcoated almonds. He had begun to make sure to buy them and keep them in his pocket when he had become a grandfather with young grandchildren.

  14

  Abed of Qisarya

  He didn’t give me a chance to look at him. He didn’t allow me to stop and connect the little boy to whom I had bid farewell twenty-five years before in Deir al-Maskubiya in Hebron with the man who stood before me. He opened his arms wide and embraced me, to the surprise of the children and confusion of their father. He held me away a little to look at me. He said, laughing aloud, warmly, “Your eyes haven’t changed, and of course not the tattoo. I looked everywhere for you, I went to Sidon and to Ain al-Helwa, and when they said, ‘They went to Beirut,’ I asked in Sabra and Shatila and Burj al-Barajneh. If I had known your husband’s name it would have been easier for me. I went back to Sidon again and they said, ‘Are you sure that they are from Tantoura? The people from Tantoura live in Syria.’ I was there a whole week until I found an elderly man who said that he knew Abu Amin and who took me to him. He gave me your address in Beirut.”

  Then came telegraphic sentences about Wisal, about his mother, about himself. He asked me about my mother. I said, “She’s passed, God keep you safe.” A moment of silence, then the talk flowed again, naturally. It seemed natural. Then I left him with Amin and the children and went to make dinner. Abed had become taller than I am, how? I carried him to the sea when he was shivering and saying, “I don’t want to go,” and I kept saying, “We’ll swim together, you’ll love the sea, believe me.” The wave came and he held tighter to my neck, and then he began to cry. How could I connect the fearful little boy with this lean, handsome young man who came up unaffectedly and hugged me as if he were one of my brothers, come back from the dead? Had I forgotten him? I had not forgotten him but I had resigned myself to his absence. Or had I? He said, “I knew we would meet. The day I graduated from school, the day I graduated from the university I said to Wisal, ‘How will I send news to Ruqayya that I’ve graduated? I wonder if Ruqayya has married, and how many children she has?’ Wisal has married and she has five boys and one girl, what do you think, Sadiq, shall we ask for her for you?” Sadiq laughed, “If she’s pretty, I agree!” He said, “I’m working in Beirut. God help you, Abu Sadiq, I’m going to keep bothering you with my visits. Consider me Ruqayya’s brother or her firstborn son or an unwelcome guest, stickier than the best bandage. There’s no help for it.”

  Abed descended on the food ravenously. He said, “It’s the most delicious food I’ve eaten in my life.” After he left, little Abed said, “He ate like he was famished, he didn’t leave us anything for tomorrow.” His father scolded him, and I laughed. I was in a good mood, as if I were happy, but I couldn’t sleep that night. Abed had brought the whole village with him as if he were bringing it to me, then he left it, secretly, and went away. What kind of present was that? Why hadn’t my mother thought about taking a little iron box with her, like Wisal’s mother, with our papers in it? There had been a picture of my father and brothers that had been taken of them in Haifa. I remember my father had on a kufiyeh and was wearing a qumbaz, with a jacket that showed the leather belt around his waist. On his right Sadiq was wearing what was appropriate for a young employee in the Arab Bank: a suit and a fez, and on his left Hasan was in shirtsleeves and pants. Why had Abed brought them to me, as if they were his family and not mine? I didn’t look at them a lot; I knew they were there, carefully locked away in some corner of my heart, but Abed had let them loose on me like mad dogs. What kind of image was that? How could I compare my father and brothers to mad dogs? The memory perhaps, the memory of the loss was like mad dogs that gnashed mercilessly if they were let off the leash. How could I pluck the serene picture and the clear smile before the photographer’s lens from the three bodies there on the pile?

  Did my father inspire respect because he was my father? Because he was strongly built and broad shouldered? Because he rode a horse that had a long neck, long legs, and a long tail, and a beautiful face? Or did the kufiyeh and the cords—he was rarely seen without them—inspire respect? (When he washed or made his ablutions or went to sleep he would take them off, and with his black hair loose he would look younger.) I look up at him, slender, his head high, seated on the back of his horse, holding the reins and guiding the horse, who sways with him because he’s nearing the house. I look up as he’s leaving, and I see his back and his shoulders and the kufiyeh from behind. The horse walks with him, gently and softly; then he runs, then he lengthens his stride and gradually settles into the run. I watch until my father and his horse become like a single, spectral body, going farther and farther away, until it becomes an indistinct point in space. Was my father forty? Forty-two? My mother would say that they were married when he was eighteen. Sadiq was the oldest, and he was twenty-two when they took over the village. He did not resemble my father; he was more like my mother, small in stature and less massive than his brother, who was younger in years. Despite his fez and his suit he seemed like a pupil in high school. As for Hasan, who was in high school, his knees had suddenly lifted him up, and he kept growing taller until he surpassed his father. Like him he was broad shouldered and strongly built. The faces are clear; when I summon them they come to me easily, and along with them the picture of them on the pile. Isn’t it possible to separate the two pictures?

  My relationship with heaven became complicated, complicated to the point of being completely ruined since that moment when I saw them on the pile. There was no acceptable or reasonable answer for “why?” however much it rose up, loud and insistent. I did not ask “why.” I mean I didn’t speak the word, and perhaps I was not conscious that it was there, echoing in my breast morning and evening and throughout the day and night. I didn’t say a thing; I fortified myself in silence. And now this handsome young man arrives, laughing and eating too much, to say purel
y and simply, “Abed from Qisarya,” and open the gates of hell on me that I had shut long before. To let loose on me the dogs of memory. Why don’t you keep your distance from me, boy? Why don’t you leave me in peace? I had tried to forget until it seemed that I had forgotten. And then there were Sadiq and Hasan and Abed, others to stare at and busy myself with, as if they were the origin, as if I had forgotten the origin. What do you want from me, boy?

  Amin said, “What’s the matter, Ruqayya? You’re tossing and turning, shall I give you a sedative?”

  I did not answer. I left the bed and stayed on the balcony until the first streaks of daybreak appeared. I made myself a cup of coffee and went down to the sea.

  I said to Abed on the next visit, “Tell me about Wisal.”

  He said, “She’s still pretty, but she seems older than you. Maybe it’s the difference between life in the camp in Jenin and your life in Beirut.” I looked into his eyes—was it a criticism? His expression seemed normal. He said, “She married a farmer from Marj ibn Amir, a refugee like us living in the camp. The first years were hard, and then my mother bought a sewing machine on installments and began to sew for the neighbors. After that Wisal got married and I got a scholarship to the University of Jordan. Things were okay. I would study in Amman and go back to Jenin for the summer vacation, and if I could manage I would go every two or three months. When the West Bank was occupied I sneaked back to Jenin twice.”

  He bound up a quarter century of life events in a kerchief and said, “This is what happened.”