The Woman from Tantoura: A Palestinian Novel

by Radwa Ashour

  “After ten days, they opened the door of the cell and blindfolded me again. Then they sat me in a car. After less than ten minutes the car stopped and they pushed me out. I lifted the blindfold and found myself in the vacant land between Ard Jalloul and Gaza Hospital. I walked to the hospital, and they cleaned my wounds and bandaged them and gave me medicine. Then I came home.”

  Yes, Abed was lucky, and I was even luckier. I said, “You should leave.” He said, “I’m going to stay.”

  Sadiq called his brother, every day sometimes, insisting, “Please, Brother, give up, get out of Lebanon now!” but he dug in his heels. Then they took him again; it lasted only three days. After that he decided to leave and he procured a travel document, but to his surprise it was stamped, “No return permitted.” He became like a hyena in a cage, turning around himself in the house and pouncing on anyone who came near him. Then he left.

  Sadiq insists that we move in with him and his family in Abu Dhabi. I say, “We have to stay here to carry on with your father’s case and find out what happened to him.” I’m lying to him; I had accepted that Amin had gone with the thousands who were killed during the three most terrifying days out of the three months of war that paved the way for the fourth month, the month of the massacre. He insists again: “Why stay alone, you and Maryam, in Beirut? The city’s not safe, it’s a war of the militias—a car bomb here and a mine there and fights in a third place and kidnapping in a fourth and fifth. Have mercy on me, Mother, I can barely sleep for worry over you two!”

  34

  To the Gulf

  Suddenly, I accepted. As if I had not spent four years in evasions, alleging real or fabricated reasons for staying.

  The airline tickets and passports are in my purse, and the suitcases are in the back of the taxi taking Maryam and me to the airport. I know the airport, the arrival and departure halls, and the walls, but I don’t know what’s behind them; I have never taken a plane before in my life. I have never extended my hand holding a passport to the officer, as the actors do in films, so that he will stamp it and they can get on the plane. Was I waiting for the Israelis to withdraw from Sidon, so the way would be open for me to visit the graves of my mother and my uncle, Abu Amin? I went to Sidon and said goodbye to them; then I returned to Beirut and visited my aunt’s grave.

  And Amin? He is the one who came to say goodbye to me, on the eve of our departure, in a dream. Perhaps it was not a dream, as I was not sleeping. He kissed my head and asked me to take care of Maryam. I cried, and kissed his hands.

  Maryam is excited by the thought of traveling, the airplane, meeting her brother and his family, and the new school. She chatters ceaselessly. The seatbelt is fastened securely; the plane circles above the clouds. I follow the progress of the trip as if I were in another place, following from afar, hearing Maryam’s chatter and not listening to what she’s saying. The plane lands. When I emerge from its door I’m surprised to find that there is no air, where did the air go? It seems that Beirut on its most humid days is more merciful. But there’s no time to gasp for breath, we must stand in line, present our travel documents, pick up our suitcases. Then comes the meeting, a tumultuous meeting with Sadiq, Randa, and the little ones. Noha is now seven; her knees have raised her up and she looks as if she’s Maryam’s age. Huda, who was stumbling with her words and her steps the last time we saw her, has become a schoolgirl with a backpack who goes to nursery school every morning. Little Amin, whom I have not seen before, has begun to walk and to say a few words.

  We arrive at Sadiq’s house. Coffee, a full table, and more coffee. Conversation. Good night, good night. Maryam and I are in the area set aside for us, which Sadiq calls a suite. Maryam goes to sleep; I open the balcony to smoke a cigarette. There is no air; I put it out and close the balcony. The noise of the air conditioner is like a hidden train. There are no tears, where have the tears gone? I go back to open the balcony and smoke a cigarette, then I get in bed. I wonder what Sadiq would say if I asked him tomorrow to return to Beirut.

  I think the banquet during the week following our arrival settled the matter. It settled it early on, even though it took me years to make the decision and follow through with it.

  Sadiq’s wife wanted to honor me; she meant well. She announced two days after my arrival that she was having a dinner in my honor. She invited her relatives and friends and acquaintances, to introduce them to me and me to them. For three days she was issuing orders and directions and giving instructions, as well as taking part in the preparations. There were two servants in the house. Sadiq explained, “One is an educated Filipina, whom we entrust with the childcare. Her salary is double that of the Sri Lankan; her English is excellent. The Sri Lankan comes from the country, but we have trained and taught her. Her job is to clean the house and cook. When she came she didn’t know anything, just barely how to cook the food of her country; then Randa taught her, and she has become excellent.”

  I wanted to help but there was no place for me in the kitchen. I remembered my aunt and Ezz’s wife, and smiled, nearly laughing, although the situation was different. During the two days preceding the banquet Sumana and Evelyn prepared what was asked of them, under Randa’s supervision. On the day of the banquet two other girls arrived, whom I later learned were the servants of Randa’s sister and cousin, a Sri Lankan and a dark-skinned African. Randa later told me that she was from Somalia: “My cousin is very religious and will accept only Muslim servants.”

  I nearly asked what being religious had to do with the matter, but I didn’t. I asked about her name.

  “Muslima.”

  “Her name is just ‘Muslim’?”

  “She has another name but my cousin decided to call her Muslima. In fact she always names her servants Muslima; she used the same name with the previous one and the one before that also. It’s simpler!” Randa laughed.

  I don’t remember many details of that banquet. Perhaps the details of other banquets floating in my mind have become mixed with them, so that I don’t know if they were part of that day or of other days in which the house was packed with guests. Sadiq is generous and his wife is too; they have banquets once every two or three weeks, to which they invite their relatives and friends and the friends of their relatives and friends. The four servants stood in the corners, at our disposal. It seemed they wore special clothes for the occasion, dresses of the same color and cut, with a starched white apron tied at the waist. They passed around cups of juice, placed the plates and cleared them, took away ashtrays filled with cigarette butts and replaced them with shining clean ashtrays. The dining table was spread with varieties of food, and on a side table were rows of plates, small and large. Each guest took his plate and helped himself to what he liked, then moved to small square or round tables, each of which was covered by an embroidered white tablecloth, carefully starched and ironed, on which were forks, knives, spoons, and cups. Each one took his plate and sat at a designated place at this table or that. They repeated the process when the servants took the plates and they moved to serve themselves sweets and fruit. At that first banquet the whole scene was new to me, in all its details. Before, during, and after the dinner, as the girls passed coffee, tea, and “white coffee” made from orange blossoms, I did not open my mouth to say a single word, as if I had been struck with the old muteness. After the guests left, Sadiq said to me, reproachfully, “They came to meet you—you should have favored them by speaking to them. They wanted to hear about what’s happening in Lebanon.”

  It seemed as if I was not going to answer; then I was surprised to find myself saying, “The news of Lebanon is in the daily papers, and if they are illiterate they can follow it on the radio and television. Are there any illiterates among them?”

  His face paled, and he did not comment. After a while I broke silence, “Thank you, Sadiq, thank you, Randa. Good night.”

  I withdrew to the “suite.” I was angry. Was it because I had wounded Sadiq when he had wanted to honor me? Angry over the scene itse
lf? Angry with Sadiq because he didn’t understand? He didn’t understand. Why, when he’s smart and perceptive, why did he want me to make polite conversation with his guests, why? Didn’t he want his guests to enjoy the delicacies his wife had spent three days preparing? He was angry when I told his wife’s family, the day we went to them to propose in Amman, that we were children of the camps. There were three wars and a massacre between the two banquets.

  There was a sea there, a closed gulf to which we went in an air-conditioned car, which carried us from here to there. The car is always air conditioned, twenty-four hours a day. Between sleeping and waking, I thought to myself that my legs were going to lose the ability to walk. And my hands?

  I’ll put them to work. I look from afar: Ruqayya works non-stop, there in Sadiq’s house, knitting. Next to her is a nylon bag with balls of wool, one or two or three, and in her hands are two metal needles she moves mechanically, the index finger and thumb of her right hand joining in when she loops the thread over the needle, rapidly and repeatedly. Sadiq comments, laughing, “It’s beautiful, Mother. But knitting wool in a country where no one wears wool, that’s comical!”

  I say, “I’m making sweaters for my friends’ children in Lebanon.”

  I finished seven wool jackets which I sent to Lebanon. Then I made a sweater for Hasan in Canada, and another for Abed in Paris. In the future when I looked at the pictures of one of the children in Shatila or one of my children or grandchildren wearing the sweaters I had made them, I would stop and let my thoughts wander. Not just because I was happy that they were wearing what I had made for them, but also because I knew that knitting, during those years, was more like a refuge in which I sought shelter from shelling. I correct myself, how can I say that? Under shelling one is terrified and knows that death is watching. The simile doesn’t suit the purpose, it’s mistaken. But perhaps the image of shelling isn’t far from the truth, for shelling is frightening and earth-shaking, and so was my memory of Beirut during the last year I lived there. The siege and the Israeli planes, even the massacre seemed understandable, reasonable even in their unreason. The enemies were known and specific. You realize they want to get rid of you, to wipe you out if possible, so you rally, because the people who are confronted defend themselves. But the war of the camps crushed me. At first it seemed as if it was a stupid, passing conflict, ridiculous, like the ones that spring up suddenly between the young men of two different Palestinian factions. It starts with a difference or a quarrel, then each draws his weapon on the other, and instead of fighting with words one shoots the other, and the foolish lawlessness turns into a conflict. Oh my God, a conflict! I thought, it’s the first of Ramadan, nerves are out of control, with the accumulated tension and pressure of the last three years. They will calm down and things will go back to normal. But they didn’t calm down; the siege continued, and the army and Amal were shelling Shatila, shelling the camp mosque. The young men in the camp shelled Amal positions. Oh my God, as if the sons of Amal had become Israelis, as if the sons of the camp had become the enemies of the Shia, as if the young men here and there had not fought together, as if their blood had not mingled behind the same barricade. Who was responsible? The leaders of Amal, the policies of Abu Ammar, Syria? I would go to Umm Ali and she would come to me, trying to understand. I left Beirut and I still didn’t understand; I left defeated, with a lump in my throat that would not go away. It was stuck near the uvula, neither strangling me so that I could be done with the whole story nor dissolving, so that I could breathe like other people, and live.

  I ruminate on what happened in the camps. I knit, in a feverish, mechanical movement that does not stop, that might take my mind off questions that drive me mad. I’ve come from Beirut with a heavy heart. Why did I come?

  But Maryam is happy. She says that the new school is bigger and more beautiful. She enjoys her life with Sadiq and his family, keeping the girls company and spoiling the little boy. Sometimes she practices mothering them, and sometimes she asserts herself as their leader. As for the pool I was surprised to find in the garden of the house, that is what makes her happiest. She always loved swimming, and she swims every day. She eats with an appetite, and grows, not exempt from the law of the springs in the knees. I think, so be it; Maryam is happy, so be it.

  35

  Sumana

  How did my friendship with Sumana begin? And why did I befriend her, while I remained distant from Evelyn? Was it because Evelyn often used the word “Madam,” which embarrassed me? Or was it because she spoke English well and fluently, while I stumbled over my words, aware of my broken English? She reminded me of an Asian doctor who worked in Gaza Hospital, whom Amin invited to dinner one night with the other foreign doctors. That night also I spoke in the briefest possible terms. What would I say to these doctors? I confined myself to a welcoming smile, to “Welcome to our home,” and to “You honor us.”

  I understood from Sumana that Evelyn had a bachelor’s degree in science, that she had graduated from the university in her country, and that she wanted to make it clear that she was the children’s governess who taught them English, and not a servant. She maintained her position, correct and distant. Was I annoyed, without being aware of it, that her full responsibility for the children stood as a barrier between me and my grandchildren? Was I jealous of her, or is it that some spirits are in harmony while others clash, for reasons no one knows?

  My relationship with Sumana was different. We communicated in shattered English on both sides, flavored at times with a few sentences in Arabic, fortified by gestures when necessary. I repeated, “There’s no call for this ‘Madam,’” so she began to call me “Mama.” She would ask me to teach her a new way to cook, and I would do it, or she would squat beside me to see how I was shaping the shoulder of a wool sweater I was making. When Randa was out of the house on her morning visits to her friends, Sumana seemed more able to communicate with me. She would make me coffee without my asking, and sometimes I would sit with her in the kitchen while she prepared the food.

  I was sitting with her in the kitchen when she went to her room and returned with a large envelope. She opened it and brought out a pile of pictures, and began to show them to me.

  A colored picture of two boys of ten: “Arawinda and Saminda, at twelve.”

  “Twins?”

  “Twins, but Saminda is a little taller than his brother. Look, Mama … .”

  They looked alike, two thin, dark boys, each with a lock of smooth black hair covering his forehead. They were wearing identical shirts and shorts. I looked closely at the picture; one of them was a little taller than the other and thinner, and he had his arm around his brother’s shoulders. They were laughing in the picture.

  “As beautiful as the moon, may God keep them for you!”

  A single picture of a girl of five or six: “The smallest, Amanti.”

  The girl was not smiling, perhaps apprehensive about the idea of the picture. She was staring with wide, anxious eyes, her hair tied with a white ribbon; she was wearing a beautiful white dress.

  “As if she’s a princess!”

  Sumana laughed happily. “A mother doesn’t love one child more than another, but sometimes I feel as if I love Amanti more. I miss her more.”

  I said, “Because she’s the youngest.”

  She said, “I wanted a girl, and I had to wait. The twins came first, and then a third boy, and at last Amanti. I haven’t seen her for a year and nine months.”

  Then another picture, of a very handsome boy. She said, “This is the third boy. My mother gasped when she saw him, he was so beautiful. We decided to name him Padman; in Hindi, it means ‘lotus flower.’”

  Then a picture of Sumana carrying her daughter when she was an infant. She muttered, as if apologizing, “This is an old picture.”

  She looked like a young girl in it, and she was very thin. It was as if it had been taken twenty years earlier.

  “This is a picture of the whole family: my mother and father,
and this young man is my husband, and the children.”

  I wanted to affirm the closeness. “This is Arawinda and that one is Sawaminda and … .”

  She laughed. “Saminda.”

  She began to repeat the names slowly, as if she wanted to carve them on my head so I would not make a mistake in them: “Arawinda. Saminda. Padman. Amanti.”

  I repeated after her: “Arawinda. Saminda. Padman. Aminta.”

  “Aa-maan-tii.”

  I got up to the stove and filled the coffee pot with water. Sumana caught up to me, and said in confusion, “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “I should have realized that you wanted a cup of coffee. I’ll make it for you.”

  “I want to make it.”

  The coffee boiled, and I poured two cups. I offered her one and she murmured “Thank you,” but I noticed that she did not drink it. She said, “My husband goes out with other women, and that hurts me a lot. I say it’s not right. He denies it, and says, ‘Don’t believe your mother.’ But he takes care of the children and is very affectionate with them. He spends what I send him on them. My mother says that he also spends on his girlfriends. I don’t know who to believe.”

  “What does your husband do?”

  “He repairs bicycles. In our area we use bicycles a lot. But he is suggesting that he buy a motorcycle, so he can do another job too and make a lot of money, taking fish to market, or vegetables.”

  “There’s a sea in your country, isn’t there?”

  “Our village is on the sea. Our house is a few steps from it.”

  When I went back to my room I decided to write down the names of Sumana’s four children so I wouldn’t make another mistake in them. I forgot the name of the third boy; I wrote “Lotus.” When Maryam came back from school I told her, “Ask Sumana about the names of her children, and when she tells you the name of the third boy, remember it well. Don’t say that I asked you to ask her.” Maryam laughed, and asked me, “Have you decided to give Sadiq’s next son a Sri Lankan name?” She was joking, but I was not comfortable with the comment.