On the wall facing the door hung a large black-and-white picture of the mayor. It had been taken in his youth and showed his thick mustache as a deep black. Below the picture were two crossed swords and, between them, a shield with three shining silver studs sticking out like flowers.
Without removing her arm from his as she walked slowly beside him, Hajja Zaynab said, “Sit on the couch, if you’d like. But I prefer to sit on the rug, and I’d like you to sit with me.”
So he did, saying that he too was accustomed only to sitting on the floor. She sat beside him and reached out her hand, searching for his face. Her fingers read the details of his features and in the end she said, “You haven’t shaved your beard yet? Perhaps you would look younger and more attractive without it. Oh well, whatever makes you happy! That’s the important thing. By the way, I know a little Persian from my childhood days in Kurdistan. But maybe it’s better to forget all that.”
Abdullah couldn’t recall having eaten a more delicious meal in his entire life than the one he had there. As a result, he ate with an appetite he didn’t know he had, going from dishes of rice with almonds and raisins to grape leaves stuffed with okra, tomatoes and garlic cloves, from pieces of grilled chicken to salad and milk in a clay jar. After that, they brought him several glasses of cardamom tea, which combined with the smoke of his cigarettes to make him feel more pure than he ever had before.
Grandmother Zaynab asked him whether he was bound by any appointments or had any work to do that evening, and when he said no, she said, “In that case, we need a car to carry us up to the cemetery.”
Without asking her why, Abdullah said, “We can send one of the children to Tariq. He wouldn’t be slow in coming.”
“No,” she said. “We need someone else.”
She fell silent for a little. She called one of the boys, telling him to go to their neighbor Abu Muhammad and ask him to bring his car because his grandmother needed it for an errand. After a few minutes, they heard a car horn honking in the courtyard, and she said to the children, “Invite him to get out and have some tea with us.”
Abu Muhammad entered and shook hands with Abdullah. He kissed the head of Hajja Zaynab and sat next to her. As he sipped his tea, Zaynab told him, “We want you to take us to the cemetery, just me and Abdullah. You’ll leave us there and then come back for us when the sun sets.”
When they got out of the car and were alone, Abdullah looked around while Zaynab leaned mute on his arm. In her wisdom, she understood the need for silence in a moment like this. It was as though she saw Abdullah as he gazed in every direction from that distant elevation: the hilltop, the slopes, the valley, the horizon, the fields, the sky, the village. Scenes from his childhood as a boy, playing in these spots, passed through his mind. He knew every stone and tree here. He didn’t know what to think about this thing or that, or whether any of it had any real value or not. When Abdullah noticed how long he had been standing there without a word, he said, “The cemetery has gotten very big.”
The old woman replied, “Yes—the village too. The dead multiply and so do the living. I don’t know why God created so many people! Wouldn’t half as many have been enough? The Most High has his wise reasons.”
She fell quiet, and then, to break him out of his silence, she resumed speaking conversationally: “Me, I know more of the dead than I do the living. All of them have gone. Only Umm Ibrahim and I are left. As though I were a foreigner, a visitor among the living.”
Abdullah said, “The cemetery is many times as large as when I last saw it. It covers nearly the entire hill.”
“Yes. That’s why they think it necessary to start a new cemetery for the village. They agreed on the big hill on the east side, but up until now, no one has wanted to bury departed loved ones alone up there, saying they want them to be with the rest of the family. So I volunteered to be the first. I told them to bury me there. Just between ourselves, I don’t want to be in the same place as the mayor in death, having shared a home with him in life.”
Her tone as she uttered this last sentence dripped with contempt. Then she became serious again and said, “And now, do you recognize the old cemetery? Do you see it?”
“It’s the part over there, in the middle of the hilltop.”
“Do you see the sea-urchin tree? Do you remember it?”
“Yes. It too has gotten much bigger.”
“Take me to it.”
No one knew exactly who had named it the sea urchin, but that name had become popular early on, even though none of the villagers would have seen the sea in their lives. It was a low, broad tree with thorns, resembling an olive tree. Its leaves were a bright, shiny green all year round. The tree was spiny, but it didn’t look like any other plant with thorns that they knew. Year after year, it sprouted delicate yellowish pods. Abdullah remembered how they used to suck on the pods when they were young. The flavor was a mix of sweetness and burning acidity, like that of lemons. But when the pods got big, they dried out and fell, scattering their seed—or else they themselves would scatter the seeds. But no other tree like it ever grew, so the sea urchin was always alone, slowly getting bigger.
This tree was one of the most prominent features of the village, and people wove stories and songs around it, because it grew precisely at the head of the grave of the man called “the martyr” because whoever died by drowning was considered a martyr. Young people called him “the martyr of love,” and they made covenants of faithfulness to each other there underneath the tree. This man was the father of Isma’il the herdsman. He had raced to his wife Najda, who was washing clothes in the river when a wall of water took her. He tried to save her but instead drowned with her when they were swept away by a wave to the middle of the deep river. Afterward, they found only his body, which had come to rest between two boulders on the far shore south of the village. They buried him here, and the mayor adopted his two dull-witted children, Isma’il and Zakiya. Some said that this thorn tree growing by his head was an apology from the water for what it had done to the two of them. But others said it was proof that he came from the water people. Perhaps the truth of the matter is that they named it the sea urchin as a memorial to his death by drowning, nothing more. Still others said that it was the soul of his wife, which came from the water and grew here because it didn’t want to be separated from him. People recalled that the two of them had loved each other deeply, and that their love had a long history.
When they reached the sea urchin, Zaynab said, “Take me to the right side of the martyr’s grave. Do you see a difference between the space on the right and the space on the left?”
“Well, maybe a small one. There are some plants on the right side, some stems and traces of dry, broken grass that look like they have been planted here. As for the left, it’s like the rest of the ground on the hill, covered in stones.”
“Come, sit with me on the right, but not exactly on that planted spot.”
He led her a couple of steps, and after he had cleared the ground under her feet of rocks and twigs, they sat down. The leaves of the sea-urchin tree hung down above them like a roof. The tree extended until it covered a quarter of the space above the grave. Its leaves were so thick that its branches were only visible from below.
“Listen to me, my son,” she said. “I want you to strengthen your heart and fortify your faith with certainty in God’s wisdom and his will to determine our fate.”
He felt the weight of that moment, which went beyond anything he had previously experienced. He stopped looking at the thorn tree, the cemetery, and what was around him, focusing his attention on Zaynab’s face and especially her mouth, in which there remained only a few rotted teeth.
“How often I have imagined this moment!” she said. “I have waited for it, and I didn’t die because I was waiting for it, waiting for you.”
She laid her cane down beside her. She was sitting right up next to him, with her leg resting against his, their knees touching. She reached her hand over toward
him, searching for his until she found it. She held it tightly, then she stretched her other hand and spread her fingers on the open space between them and the martyr’s grave. “Here lies your mother. Your real mother, who gave birth to you from her womb. This is her grave.”
She swallowed and squeezed his hand harder while stroking the ground tenderly with her other hand.
“She was Zakiya, and this martyr is your grandfather, Zakiya’s father. Isma’il the herdsman is your uncle.”
Of course, she didn’t expect a comment or question now. She imagined the impact of her words, which had caught him unawares. So she went on speaking herself. And despite the calm of her tone, she appeared like someone yelling. He saw tears flow from her eyes, and he realized that she was pouring out words she had been holding inside for years.
“These people are your family on your mother’s side. As for your father’s family, the mayor and I are your grandparents, and your father is my eldest son, Jalal.”
Zaynab fell silent. Drops of saliva had appeared on her lips from the wide gaps between what remained of her teeth, and she wiped her mouth with an old handkerchief she took from the pocket of her shawl. She said, “From now on, this matter is entrusted to you alone. It’s your secret. Yours. You are free to reveal it to whoever you wish, whenever and however you wish. I’ve never told it to anyone, nor will I ever do so, except if you ask me to. I will tell you everything, everything I remember, and you can ask me whatever you want. It broke my heart that you didn’t know. I used to think that my heart would be made whole when I told you, but now as I’m telling you, I feel it will be shattered all over again.”
CHAPTER 12
The Secret of the Scandal that Wasn’t
There, atop the hill in the middle of the cemetery, under the splendid evergreen sea urchin, the air was clean, and the evening sky was a peaceful blend of white and yellow light. Everything looked beautiful and still in such a light, and from that distance, the walls of the houses in the village looked like faces reflecting it back, with black windows for eyes. The light pierced the diaphanous shadows on the valley slopes. Birds soared in flowing circles, not looking for anything, just playing in space, as though watching and listening to the two of them. Voices of distant herdsmen carried from the green fields below.
The calm of the universe that evening was stunning; even the graves looked beautiful, content and assured. As though life—or the universe itself—were a big tent that paid no heed to what happened in it or what was said, including that which Zaynab spoke of to her grandson Abdullah:
“Your grandfather, the mayor, was a young man when he inherited the position of village elder and mayor following the death of his father, who, in his turn, had been mayor and village elder his entire life. It was said that your grandfather was the first child born here when the village started with three houses in this spot. He inherited vast lands too, along with sheep, cows, the wagon, and the plow. And the prestige. He was good at managing all that. He put others to work in his fields and watching over his livestock, while he spent more and more of his time traveling and conducting trade in crops, tobacco, and weapons. The Kurds were among those to whom he sold weapons. That’s how he got to know me, I got to know him, and we got married. I was a young orphan at the time. Like you, I never knew my parents. My grandmother took charge of bringing up my brother and me until she died. Anyway, the details of my former life are not important. But you can take them as an example, if you like—I too grew up without parents, and now you see how large my family has become!
“When I came here I didn’t know a single word of Arabic, nor anything about life except a few household tasks—cooking, baking, sweeping, and washing clothes. The mayor had married twice before me, but there hadn’t been any children. So our first son was the object of all his love and affection. I was the one who insisted that he be named Jalal, after my brother, who went to fight in the mountains when he grew up and never came back. I was told he was killed there.
“The first people I met in this village were your grandparents, the parents of your mother, and her brother, Isma’il. They were young, and never in my entire life have I seen a love like the love they had for each other. The mayor told me they weren’t from here and had arrived from a distant village one year earlier. ‘We are aliens, seeking sanctuary among you,’ they had said, asking protection from the mayor since they were fleeing a tribal difficulty. They had married against the wishes of their families, who were now threatening to kill them.
“The mayor welcomed them and gave them a spot next to the house, where they built a single room out of mud to live in—the room in which Isma’il now lives. Your grandmother was a paragon of beauty! Her name was Latifa, and your grandfather, this martyr of the water, was named Nasir. He was constantly moving and never stopped smiling. He didn’t miss a single moment he could be with Latifa. He cared for her and treated her in a way that no woman in the village had experienced. As a result, they provoked jealousy in every other woman and provided a vision for their dreams. The men laughed about Nasir and called him cowed, even if deep down they envied him on account of Latifa’s beauty and refinement.
“They were very happy. Nasir worked with the mayor in his fields and herded his livestock. Latifa washed clothes and carpets for the villagers whenever their wives became pregnant or sick. She was older than me and looked after me with patience and affection. She was my first and maybe my only friend. She showed me how to dress in these Arab peasant clothes, and she taught me Arabic. She repeated words to me tirelessly and patiently as though she were a mother.
“They bore twins and named the boy after the mayor, Isma’il, as a way of thanking him. The girl they named Zakiya after Latifa’s mother, who Latifa told me was the daughter of an Ottoman pasha who fell in love with a peasant, Latifa’s father. Latifa’s mother ran away with this peasant and married him. Her father’s men kept searching for the two of them until they found them and burned them alive, taking their daughter—Latifa—to her grandfather’s palace. I remember her laughing—may she rest in peace—as she told me, ‘I’ve repeated my mother’s story. Not on purpose, of course, but for the sake of love. I felt my mother’s blood burning inside me. They told me I was very like her, in every way, not least in my stubbornness. Perhaps I also wanted, somehow, to avenge my mother or triumph over the pasha for her.’
“From their birth, Isma’il and Zakiya were very small, like ducklings without their fuzz. They were always sick, and their minds developed slowly. Their parents cared for them day and night, caressing them the way water moves around a bowl when you carry it. They never left them alone and tried to work at different times so that one of them would always be with the two little ones. On the first day they couldn’t avoid working at the same time, they left the twins with me. That was the first and last time, since they never returned. How often I recall those moments of parting, as they said goodbye to the two babies in my arms! They would take two steps away and then rush back to gather them to their breasts, smelling them and kissing them. They repeated their detailed instructions to me time and again, as though they were setting off on a distant journey, as though they had some inkling that it would be the last time, though they insisted they’d be no more than a few hours. But they didn’t come home, and they never will, not until the Day of Resurrection.
“It’s said that Latifa was doing the washing as usual on the shore under the bluffs where Nasir was working in the fields. He would look down at her from atop the steep embankment from time to time, joking with her and singing songs of love. He would frequently sing to her in his melodious voice, strong and sweet and sorrowful, a voice that could make the stones weep. When people asked him to sing at weddings or in some field, he would say, ‘I only sing for Latifa, and if you want me to sing, ask her permission and bring her in front of me.’ Latifa would give her permission, laughing, and they would bring her to sit in front of him. Then, with all the people listening around, he would sing a song, never takin
g his eyes off her, and she not taking her eyes off him, as though it were only the two of them. I’ve seen a woman like that twice, and it is a sight that is impossible for anyone to forget.
“It’s said that when he was looking down at her one time, he saw the current pulling her away along with a big carpet, so he jumped down the bluff and threw himself after her, still wearing his clothes and shoes. The water dragged him out to the middle of the fast-flowing river. A sudden wave enveloped them, and it was not ordained that even the closest farmers could do anything to save them.
“Afterward, they came across his body, but found no trace of her. Undoubtedly, he would have wanted to remain lost with her in the river, in a shared watery grave, or else she would have wanted to be with him. But at least one of them remained behind with their children. Your mother, Zakiya the martyr, clings here to her father, the water martyr, lying in peace. They did well to bury her here. Oh, my sweet child, how they wronged her!
“The two children remained in our care as though they were our own. They were quiet and good, but also slow. They were late in making sounds, learning to walk, their first words, and learning in general, which they didn’t do well. They stayed like that, always developing slowly. Isma’il you know. He’s now an old man, and even so, he is more of a child than an adult. God has His reasons for His creation! As soon as he was old enough, Isma’il began going out to help the shepherds, and then he became the shepherd of his own flock. Zakiya helped me with the household chores and was responsible for things like washing her own clothes and her brother’s.
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