The Woman from Tantoura: A Palestinian Novel

by Radwa Ashour

  The plants preoccupy me. When I go to bed I think about them and about my relationship to them, and say to myself, “A garden in prison, why not? No harm done.”

  Less than a week after we arrived in Alexandria I saw Abu Ammar at the White House shaking hands with Rabin and Perez, with Mahmoud Abbas on his left and the American president in the center. They had signed the Oslo Accords. Moments after the end of the live television broadcast of the White House event Sadiq telephoned. He said, “What has the old one done? The sole legal representative eliminated the coast from the agreement. Who represents Tantoura, then? Who represents Safad and Tiberias and Galilee and Haifa and Jaffa and Ramla and the Negev? Who represents Acre and Nazareth? Who represents us?” He was angry. He commented bitterly about Abu Ammar’s insistence on shaking hands with Rabin and Perez, and their avoidance, as if they were condescending to shake hands. “What a farce, what an insult!” No sooner had I hung up than the telephone rang again. This time it was Abed on the other end. He swore and cursed, and as usual he spared no obscene expression, he used them all. Hasan did not call, and I knew that he was nursing his grief in his own way, shrinking like a wet dove chick. I called him. “What do you think, Hasan?” I asked. “It will take a long time, Mother. It will take a long time.”

  Hasan was right. In Alexandria, over the same telephone, from the very same seat and over the same television set I would follow the news of the Hebron massacre, the killing of Rabin and his funeral, and Abu Ammar’s insistence on offering his condolences. He bent over the widow’s hand and kissed it; I saw him. Then the events of the new Israeli incursion into South Lebanon, the Cana massacre, the funeral of the martyrs. I followed in silence, repeating Hasan’s expression. “It will take a long time,” I mutter.

  I called Wisal in Jenin. Her voice comes over the phone and dispels some loneliness, or some lump in the throat that was about to choke me.

  I continue to write because Hasan asks how far I’ve gotten, how much I’ve accomplished. He asks every time we speak. Sometimes the telling seems simple, it flows easily and the words are written as if of their own accord. Or it’s a pleasure, as I relive some intimate or lovely moment with the children or Uncle Abu Amin. It’s as if I summon them and they come, and fill the house for me. Then I stop; the writing is hard, and weighs me down. It seems like a weight of iron that I’ve placed on my chest of my own free will. Why, Hasan? I don’t have to obey you, I can stop; why do I obey? I sit in front of the notebook and look at an empty page, open like an abyss. The writing will kill me, I told you that, Hasan. He said, “Writing does not kill.” Why does he seem so confident?

  I flee to the plants, to the sea. I suddenly decide that the window glass is dirty and makes the house dark, separating me from the sky. I bring the ladder and a rubber squeegee and both the short-handled scrub brush and the other one with a long handle, and a bucket of water and soap. I wipe the glass with the cleaning liquid and rub it well, polishing it. I dry it with the squeegee. I don’t look up until Maryam comes home. She says, “Oh no, just a week ago you cleaned all the windows in the house and washed the glass.” I say, “Just a moment, by the time you heat supper I’ll have finished.”

  52

  New Jersey

  Hasan called me and told me that he was sending me two copies of his new book, “one for you and the other for Maryam.”

  A moment of silence, and then: “It’s not a study or a research work, Mother. It’s a novel.”

  “A story?”

  “Yes, a story.”

  I was amazed, and even more amazed when the book arrived. Unlike his previous books, it was small in format and size, ninety pages at most. He said that it was about the attack on Lebanon. How? Is it possible to tell what happened in these few pages? How could a small book, or a large one, bear thousands of corpses, the extent of the blood, the quantity of rubble, the panic. Our running for our lives, wishing for death. Anyway, New Jersey, what was this strange title? What relationship did it have to what happened in Lebanon? Does he speak about his father in his novel? Does he set aside a larger place for Acre Hospital, or does the whole novel center on what happened in Acre Hospital? Does he talk about Beirut, or write about Sidon and Ain al-Helwa, did he listen to the details from his uncle Ezz? I don’t know much about stories and novels; before that I had only read the two stories by Ghassan Kanafi that Ezz lent me in Sidon. I no longer remember more than the title of the short story: “The Land of Sad Oranges.” The longer story was about three Palestinians who wanted to be smuggled into Kuwait, so they hid in the empty tank of a water truck. The border employees delayed the driver so the three died of suffocation, without daring to knock on the sides of the tank.

  I was preoccupied with Hasan’s book all day long, but I did not try to page through it or read any of its paragraphs. At night I sat in the seat next to the bed and opened the book, and read. I did not sleep until I had finished it.

  The novel centers on a battleship named New Jersey. It was an amazing seagoing vessel, the size of three soccer fields put together, 887 feet long, forty-five tons, and as high as a seven-story building. Its main battery had nine canons, all sixteen inch, and its secondary battery had twenty smaller canons. Each of the large ones shoots missiles weighing 1,200 kilograms, with a range of thirty-seven kilometers. As for the smaller canons, they can reach fourteen kilometers.

  The battleship is the heroine of the story. We follow the history of its birth, even its prehistory: it was one of six vessels that surpassed everything that went before. The United States decided to build them at the beginning of the Second World War, to support its forces in the probable theater of operations in the Pacific Ocean. On December 7, 1942, it was commissioned and christened, and its name was recorded on the rolls of the American Navy. Its official birthday was not celebrated until it was delivered for duty and assigned its first task in the war, on May 23 of the following year. The battleship took part in all US wars from the middle of the twentieth century on: the Second World War in Japan and the Philippines, in the forties; the Korean War in the fifties; Vietnam during the years 1968 and 1969, after an overhaul. Then at the beginning of the eighties there was another overhaul with the addition of launchers for long-range Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles, and afterward it went to the Mediterranean, bound for Lebanon. In 1991 it headed for the Gulf.

  The account of the life of the battleship is gripping. We follow its movements, a floating structure wandering the high seas with more than two thousand men on board. It carries them to the Pacific Ocean, to the Atlantic, to the Caribbean, to the Mediterranean, and to the Gulf, clear under the sun, foggy and cloud-covered in the rain, shining with lights in the dark of night. We observe it closely as it carries out its task with zeal, precision, and competence: it points its guns and fires. It hits. Its crew—officers and soldiers, sailors and doctors, mechanics and janitors, those in charge of the food service and cooks—is a lively crew. All of them work. In the kitchen, for example, they produce 1,800 loaves of bread daily and 250 gallons of ice cream.

  At the end of its service the New Jersey was retired, its record filled with the decorations it had collected, more than any other American battleship: nineteen medals. Two stars for its outstanding role in the Second World War, four stars for its performance in the Korean War, two stars for its accomplishments in the Vietnam War and four stars for its services in the Lebanese War and the Second Gulf War.

  In the second part of the story we come to know the battleship better. In the next stage it was decommissioned and turned into a museum in Camden, New Jersey, where it’s anchored on the shore of the river. The visitors are men and women, young and old, school excursions meant to give the pupils patriotic knowledge and education. Families with their children tour all parts of the ship, going down into its depths, passing through its corridors in files. They see the officers’ rooms and the soldiers’ beds, the steering and control rooms, the admiral’s and the captain’s quarters. The dining rooms, small, comfortable room
s where the officers had their meals and the large mess where the soldiers and sailors ate. The engine room, the clinic, the repair shop. They go up to the deck and climb the towers, looking down from windows here and there. They look out at the waters of the river, at the Seaport Museum nearby, at the sky. They return to the deck and stand in front of the guns, raising their heads, dazzled by their hard steel and wide mouths. They listen carefully to the explanations of the tour guide or to the recordings they hear via small earphones. They chatter and laugh, or someone records observations in his notebook, or takes pictures of his family and friends.

  It’s not only a museum open for visits after purchasing a ticket, more costly for individuals and less expensive for school trips or tour groups. Part of it can also be rented for a dinner party, a small one in the captain’s room for no more than twenty guests, or a big one on the deck of the ship, with dinner for four hundred people seated or a reception for eight hundred, most of them standing. A wedding can be held, or a hotel stay can be arranged on the weekend for young people who want to spend the night in the soldiers’ beds. School groups and individuals can buy inexpensive, prepared meals from the canteen. Anyone who wants to can bring a little brown bag, with a sandwich he’s prepared at home or bought from a grocer; when he enters the battleship he hands over the brown bag, and at the end of his tour he takes it back to eat whatever is in it.

  After that comes the third part of the book: three pages. The battleship, refitted to add sixteen Harpoon rockets and thirty-two long-range Tomahawks, enters the Mediterranean in 1983. It approaches the Lebanese shore and joins the American fleet, which can be seen from the beach in Beirut. The task this time is not war but peace, supporting the multinational peacekeeping forces. Because the war in Lebanon has ended, because there is a ceasefire, because Israel, after the aerial bombardment and the invasion and the siege, can depend on an allied Lebanese government and an allied army. The Druze are not its allies, so how will they take control of the mountains, Jabal al-Druze, where they live? These are details the leaders will decide. The New Jersey executes its tasks as always: its lively crew loads the missile into the launcher and closes it carefully, then boom. The missile is fired, leaving an enormous block of dark red flame in the sky over the sea, which quickly becomes mixed with orange and yellow, then a thick black devours the colors and gradually changes into smoke. Afterward there’s silence, crossed by clouds like tufts of white cotton, without any thickness, dispersing near the ship and disappearing. The sailors put another missile in the launcher and close it carefully. Boom.

  In the mountains, in the piled-up houses of the Banu Maarouf, are the residents of Jabal al-Druze: old men with their traditional turbans; farmers who resemble their grandfathers because they never changed the look of their shirts and trousers; young men who, unlike their fathers and grandfathers, wear shirts or tee shirts and running shoes; grandmothers; mothers; girls with braids or childish short hair; the very young, who cannot yet walk or talk; the toddlers who have learned to walk and talk. The walls cave in on them and burn. They die, burned or bleeding or because something in the body suddenly failed, so they die even though their form is intact.

  53

  The Visit

  Maryam said, “You’re being ridiculous, Mother! You have money!”

  I said, “What I have is sent by Sadiq for your school fees and our living expenses. I won’t invite my friend to come at Sadiq’s expense.”

  She laughed, “The bracelet you sold was bought by Sadiq; it’s his money in both cases!”

  I nearly said that he gave me the bracelet, so it had become mine, to do with it or its value as I pleased, but I did not speak. I called Wisal again to set the date for her trip. She said, “We’ll harvest the olives and press them, then I’ll come to visit you.”

  I bought the airplane ticket and sent it to her, and began to count the days and wait.

  Maryam said with a laugh, “The tutor’s in luck.”

  I said, “I don’t understand Egyptian proverbs.”

  She said, “The tutor, that’s the Qur’an teacher, is in luck when he has two completions of the Qur’an on the same night. That means he’s invited to recite the Qur’an twice and he’s given two feasts on the same night.”

  I laughed. Maryam amazes me with how fast she picks up the Egyptian dialect, with its proverbs and idioms. Yes, it was two completions in one night; as I was waiting for Wisal, Fatima called and said, “I’m in the country,” adding that she would come to visit us for three days.

  “Only?”

  “I have to get back to Canada, to my work and the kids and Hasan.”

  “Fatima, can I ask a favor of you?”

  “Please do.”

  “Can you visit Tantoura and take some pictures?”

  “Hasan asked me that, and I did it.”

  “You visited it?”

  “I did.”

  I nearly asked her to tell me what she saw, but I refrained. What would I ask about?

  Maryam remarked on my absorption in preparing for the visits of Wisal and Hasan’s wife, “Are they coming to us from a famine?” She laughs; I answer, “This is our way to honor a guest!”

  I buy meat and chicken, and clean it, season it, and put it in the freezer. I think, the leg of lamb for the first day, and I’ll stuff the breast for the second day. The chicken for the following day. I think, Wisal likes mulukhiya soup and okra; I buy them. I pull the leaves off the mulukhiya and remove the stems of the okra, and wash them. I let them dry two hours and then I put them in the refrigerator. I buy grape leaves and summer squash; I roll the grape leaves, and put off the squash until later. I make bread dough, form it into a ball, and let it rise, while I prepare the spinach stuffing; I fill the discs and put them into the oven. Every time I finish baking one set of the tarts Maryam eats a quarter of them. I scold her: “You’ll finish them off before the guests come!” She pays no attention, and I shoo her away, and she comes back. I think, Fatima likes pickled eggplant. I buy small black eggplants and stuff them with walnuts and pepper, then I put them with lemon juice and olive oil in two large glass containers. “And the kubbeh?” asks Maryam. “For sure the guests will like kubbeh!” I laugh; for sure Maryam likes kubbeh! I soak the cracked wheat kernels, grind the meat and season it; I form the meatballs and stuff them, and put them in a plastic bag in the freezer. I go to the grocer, thinking I’ve forgotten such-and-such, then I go again. I go to the fruit seller and buy, then I buy again. I mutter, “What’s missing?”

  As soon as we entered the house I asked Maryam to make us coffee, but Wisal said, “Put off the coffee, Ruqayya, let’s put the things away first.” She rolled up her sleeves and took one of the two suitcases she had brought to the kitchen, the larger one. She squatted down beside it and started to take out the food she had brought. She handed me three plastic bottles, tightly sealed, containing olive oil, and three others in which she had put olives. She said, “I have a neighbor in the camp with a daughter-in-law from Egypt. I tell you, I went to visit her and have coffee with her, to ask her. I said, ‘What do they lack in Egypt? Should I take okra and mulukhiya?’ The Egyptian laughed and said, ‘There’s nothing more plentiful than okra and mulukhiya in Egypt.’ I said to her, ‘Oil and olives from our trees, I would take that to Ruqayya even if she were living in an oil press!’ Then I asked her about the things that aren’t available and she told me.” She brought out a big plastic jar: “Naboulsi cheese.” It was hard, molded pieces of cheese lined up in a jar, in three layers. I began to wrap up each set of pieces and put them in a plastic bag in the freezer, leaving out six to soak in water, to remove some of the salt. Then the bags: domestic thyme, dried and mixed with sesame and sumac; green thyme; sage; sumac; dried wheat grains. Last there was a large bag; Wisal laughed jovially. “I would have made musakhan, if it weren’t for the distance—the bridge, then Amman, then Cairo, then Alexandria; I thought it would spoil. My neighbor’s Egyptian daughter-in-law told me, ‘Take sumac; in Egypt they don’t
know it and don’t use it.’ I asked, ‘How do they make musakhan?’ She said, ‘We don’t know it.’ So I decided to buy you some bread from our ovens.”

  Wisal had even brought bread from the old ovens with her from Jenin.

  Maryam laughed and said again, “It’s obvious we’re in a famine, Auntie Wisal!”

  I said, “We aren’t in a famine, but we love the food from home. If you don’t want it, leave it for me.”

  She retreated hurriedly, “I want it and then some! When will you make us musakhan, Auntie Wisal?”

  “Now, if you like.”

  “No, now you’ll drink coffee.”

  We sat on the balcony. Wisal said suddenly, “Ruqayya, I haven’t seen the sea of Jaffa since we left Tantoura!”

  54

  By Donkey

  A passing story, one of thousands of little anecdotes that pass by every day, only to fall into the crowd. Suddenly it surfaced; I recalled it, and then I ruminated on it, saying why not? The man was over a hundred and I haven’t even reached seventy. The story gave me ideas; I would have liked to hear it again from Karima, in case she could add other details that had escaped her.

  It was the story of her father’s uncle, Abu Khalil. He left for Lebanon with them, and stopped like them in Rumaysh. He went back across the border with them, heading for Saffurya, and was arrested with them and put in prison in Acre. From prison they sent them to Lebanon, and the Lebanese authorities put them in Qaroun, taking them from there to Ain al-Helwa. Karima said, “We were in Ain al-Helwa when Abu Khalil announced that he was going back. My grandfather said, ‘How will you go back? They’ll kill you on the borders, or imprison you and send you back again.’ He said that he was determined: ‘If you want to come with me you’re welcome, but if you decide to stay, then I’m going.’ ‘Will you go alone?’ He said, ‘My father and mother are there, and my first son and his daughter.’ He was referring to the dead in his family, so the adults thought he had lost his mind. Then one day we woke up and couldn’t find him. We thought he had lost his way to the camp—I said he was over one hundred, and he might even have been 110. We looked for him in Ain al-Helwa and in Sidon, there was no one we didn’t ask. A week went by with no news, not a thing. Then we heard that he had bought a donkey and gone back. We didn’t rest until we found the man who had sold him the donkey and the person who showed him the way out of Sidon. We nearly accepted that the Israelis had killed him on the borders or that he had died; how could a man over a hundred cross the border alone, sleeping under an olive tree, with no provisions and not even a drink of water? He didn’t have a penny to his name, because he had paid everything he had for the donkey, and everything his wife had, too (she discovered after he left that he had taken the few liras she had hidden in the mattress). His wife said, ‘Don’t worry, he’ll manage.’ My grandmother condemned her sister-in-law’s words when she was alone with my mother, and said she had a heart of stone. ‘How can she sleep all through the long night when her husband is wandering among the hyenas and the soldiers of that state? For shame, a man of a hundred, and his wife just lets him do as he pleases! If I were in her shoes I would go to him.’ We little ones began to make jokes about what she said, imitating my grandmother’s words mockingly, because the woman she wanted to take care of her husband was over eighty and toothless; she had to lean on our shoulders when she wanted to go from her house in the camp to our house next door. The family gave up on Grandfather Abu Khalil, and accepted that he must have died on the way or been killed. Four years later, when new refugees thrown out by Israel began to come to Lebanon, we learned that Grandfather Abu Khalil was still among the living. Someone from around our village said that he had seen him, and that he lived in the cemetery of Saffurya and said that he was the cemetery watchman. We asked how he managed, and they said, ‘We don’t know, but he was in good health, smoking and insisting on inviting anyone who visited the cemetery to a cup of tea!’ My grandmother talked it over with my mother, and said, ‘For sure Abu Khalil went back to get rid of his wife, because she’s spiteful and miserly and no one can put up with her.’”