At ten o’clock on the morning of the appointed spring day, she appeared at his doorstep: a lovely young lady in her mid-twenties, tall and slim, wearing tight blue jeans, a white blouse with flaring long sleeves, and a red silk scarf around her neck knotted on the left side. Her short, dark-brown hair fell on her cheeks in two curves almost meeting at her chin, and her smile made her honey-coloured eyes shine brightly. She carried a writing pad in a folder. William shook her hand and asked her if she did not mind sitting by the swimming pool in the backyard.
“No. That’ll be lovely,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“We’ll have tea there. Or would you like coffee?”
“Tea is fine,” she said as she allowed him to lead her to the pool.
They sat at a white, wrought-iron table under a large white-and-yellow umbrella, and a maid soon brought a silver tea set while they engaged in conversation.
William felt he knew this young lady very well and was comfortable being with her. For her part, she felt equally comfortable talking to him after several months of email correspondence, in which she had lately addressed him as “Dear William” or “My very dear William” or “Dearest William.” He was more than four decades older than she, but she strengthened within him a consciousness that he was her age through the way she spoke to him. He sensed that her respect for him was infused with a great measure of admiration. And judging from his kind voice and sympathetic attention, she felt that his interest in her was inspired by tenderness and affection.
Little did they know that their admiration and affection were to last a lifetime, and that they would become an unusual twosome. For that meeting of theirs was followed by others, then by going together to movies and restaurants, and by attending Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal’s entire year-long programme at Place des Arts. William bore all the expenses, of course, but he could not prevent Lena from buying him a present for his birthday, a lovely silk tie he wore with pride and his usual panache.
He felt he was living the best days of his life after Lena became his friend and almost constant companion. His friends noticed his diminished attention to them; even his email contact with them became sparse and tepid. Many of them saw him with Lena and wondered about his relationship with her, but in the end discovered that it was utterly above board. His servants accepted Lena’s frequent presence and always asked politely whether she was expected at any of the day’s meals when setting the dining table.
Lena was also happy with William’s companionship and affection, which did not deter her in any way from keeping up her friendly relationship with others. She was mature enough to appreciate William’s care and kindness and to develop a deep and warm feeling for him in her heart. In emails that she continued to send him when they did not meet, she often signed off with, “I send you my love” or “With all my love” or “Much love” or simply “Love.”
At first, William did not know what to make of these sign-offs, for as a man who still retained Arab values, he associated love with marriage and sex, and these were far from his mind in his relationship with Lena. In his emails to her, he signed off with, “Your sincere friend” or “Your friend who cherishes you infinitely” or “With deep affection” or simply “Affectionately.” Later on, when he caught on to Lena’s Canadian language and signed off with “Love” or, more bravely, “With all my love,” he felt elated, but deep down he felt he was somehow betraying Margaret, his first and only love.
One morning at the beginning of autumn, when the leaves had turned and the trees were a glorious sight of blending colours, Margaret came to see him at home without prior arrangement. The maid showed her into the drawing room to wait for him. When he came downstairs from his bedroom, the air became redolent of the fresh fragrance of the Parisian eau de cologne he was wearing, and he greeted Margaret amiably, hiding his deep surprise. This was the first time since her marriage that William had seen her in private. She stood up and shook his hand.
“I’m sorry I’ve come without prior notice,” she began as they both sat down near the fireplace. “But I hope you don’t mind, William.”
“Not at all, Margaret,” he said, trying to put her at ease.
“Well, you see, it’s about Lena,” she continued. “I’ve only recently learned of her relationship with you.”
“Oh ...”
“You know Lena is my daughter.”
“She never told me, but I suspected it. And I didn’t want to bring it up with her because I felt she didn’t want me to, and she seemed to have her reasons.”
“She’s my only child, you know, and I’m worried about her infatuation with you. She has told me how you’ve helped her immensely in gathering information for her Master’s thesis, and I’m grateful to you. She speaks so highly of you and keeps reminding Jack and me that she’ll invite you to her graduation ceremony at McGill’s convocation next spring.”
“It will be my honour to be present at her graduation. She’s a clever and mature young lady and I respect her a lot. As for her special relationship with me, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, Margaret. It’s not an ‘infatuation’, as you put it; it’s real friendship, which I appreciate very, very much and am determined not to lose, for it makes her and me happy.”
“But don’t you think it’s going beyond the bounds of usual friendship when you spend so much time together, considering the difference of age between you two?”
“No, Margaret. And age has nothing to do with it. This is real friendship, real appreciation of each other’s company,” William said firmly.
“Do you mean you don’t love her?”
“Of course, I love her. But I’m not in love with her as I was with you.” Then William summoned up his courage and added, “You may not believe this, but I still love you, Margaret, and I don’t think anyone will ever take your place in my heart.”
Margaret was taken aback and flustered as she stood up and muttered, “Oh, William. What an unlucky girl I was and what a stupid and silly woman I am now!”
William went up to her to comfort her. She put her arms around him, and he hugged her and patted her back gently. Then he looked into her eyes, and their lips met in a warm, long-desired kiss.
Then he let go of her and said, stiffly, “This has never happened. Please go home to your family, Margaret.”
“I should have gone up with you to the summit of Mount Hermon. Oh, William. I should have waited for you in Rashayya, I should have waited for you in Montreal too. I still love you, William.”
Looking away, he said, “I didn’t hear that.”
Then, moments later, he took out a key from his pocket, gave it to her, and said, “Please, open the safe behind that painting on the wall.”
Still flustered and confused, Margaret opened the safe and, when directed, she took out the top document and began to read it.
It was a copy of William’s last will and testament. Upon his death, the American University of Beirut was to receive, by a previously signed agreement, one million dollars to establish a Shibli Chair for Business Administration. As for the balance of his estate, including his villa in Westmount, he was bequeathing it to Lena McConnell “in appreciation and friendship,” and further “in recompense for her pleasant companionship over a long period of time.”
As William took back the document and placed it in the safe, he said, “Please, Margaret. Don’t breathe a word about this to Lena or anyone else.”
“I won’t,” she said. “But I have told her about our own love story, long ago. I hope you don’t mind?”
“She never told me anything about that,” he said. Then he added, “Why did you call her Lena, I always wondered?”
She said, “Lena, as you know, is a diminutive of Magdalene—Mary Magdalene, that is. When Lena was born, we gave her her name because Jack and I liked it on account of the pure love it symbolizes, the deep pure love between Mary Magdalene and Jesus.”
“This is a good
description,” he said. “This is the love, the real friendship, between Lena and myself.”
Margaret’s eyes were welling up with tears, and so were William’s. However, he composed himself and managed to say, “Please go home, Margaret. Take care of your family, and take good care of Lena for me.”
OH, SALEEMA!
And finally, Khalil al-Ibrahimi died.
Nobody knows how he died. They found him after midnight, fallen on his face, in the Khan al-Zait market in the Old City of Jerusalem. Abu Saif, the night watchman of the shops, recognised him, and a few Arab passers-by helped him carry the corpse to his brother’s home in the dark and without noise. They all knew him and knew his story. They also knew his brother and respected him for taking good care of him for so many years. They did not want to allow the police authorities of the Israeli occupation to interfere by investigating his death, lest that should create additional problems for the family, which it could do without in current conditions during the Palestinian uprising against the occupation. They surmised that his death was natural and caused by heart failure.
When I heard the news, the image of him from when I first got to know him about twenty years ago came back into my mind. On that day, he knocked at my office door at school. The door was open, and I raised my head from the reports I was writing.
He immediately said, “Good morning, sir. Would you please give me a few moments of your valuable time?”
He said that in a polite manner and in a voice full of a strange tenderness. He was tall, clean-shaven, and well-dressed. He stood at the door looking at me through his glasses with affection and hope, waiting for me to permit him to enter.
I thought he was one of the students’ parents, coming here to ask about something or other. But I didn’t recall having seen him before.
I said, “Please, come in.”
He entered slowly and stood in front of my desk respectfully until I motioned him to a seat.
He said, “Have you seen Saleema?”
I asked, “Saleema? Who is Saleema, sir?”
He said, wondering, “Don’t you know Saleema? Everybody knows Saleema. I’m surprised that you don’t know Saleema.”
I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know her. Saleema who?”
“Saleema Rizq,” he answered seriously. “I’ve been looking for her since I lost her in 1948. Nineteen years have passed, and I haven’t ceased asking about her and searching for her.”
I began to wonder whether the man was as serious as I had thought him to be. I hastened to say something to prevent him from playing games and pulling my leg, wasting my time; I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know her, sir. Am I the mukhtar of this neighbourhood of Jerusalem to know all its inhabitants? I’m a headmaster. I have over four hundred students in my school, and they are enough for me to know by name and by face. It is more than sufficient for me to try to understand their personalities and fathom their problems. My limited time does not even allow me to take care of them as well as I wish.”
He took courage and interrupted me politely, “Please, sir, forgive me. Today you’re my only hope, for I spent all last night thinking whom I should ask today among the people I have not yet asked about Saleema. And I have chosen you because you know people, because you have spent many years teaching and working at this school, and you’ve become acquainted with the people of Jerusalem living in this neighbourhood and elsewhere—students, parents, and others. You must know someone from the family of Rizq, even if you have never been acquainted with Saleema herself.”
I said, “I know individuals from the family of Razzuq, but from the family of Rizq, none. Who is Saleema Rizq, anyway? And who is she to you?”
He said, like someone drowning who has finally got hold of a rope to pull himself to safety, “She is my fiancée, sir. She is my sweetheart whom I intended and still intend to share my life with. She has a white complexion, a graceful neck, long black hair, and eyes that weave radiance into love. When she speaks, her heart’s tenderness and her mind’s discernment are evident. And when she falls silent, beauty reigns and increases her charm. She is Saleema, sir. You must have seen her at work in the main Post Office on Jaffa Road in the last days of the British Mandate in Palestine. She was the only woman working with the public. She was twenty years old at that time, and I was twenty-one, and that’s when we became engaged.”
He stopped talking and looked at me, expecting a response on seeing me drop the pen from my hand and on noticing some readiness on my part to reminisce. For I, too, was of his age at that time; and that beautiful young woman at the main Post Office used to attract my attention, as she did everyone else’s. And in truth, she was all tenderness and good manners. But I did not know her name and had no relation with her other than those few moments during which I bought postage stamps from her to affix to my letters to my own fiancée, who was then a student at the American University of Beirut and who is now my wife and the mother of my children.
I nodded and said to the man, “Yes, I now remember that young lady. But I haven’t seen her since those days and I don’t know what happened to her.”
He said, “This is my calamity, sir. I, too, haven’t seen her since those days and I don’t know what happened to her. And I have continued to search for her since that time.”
My interest in knowing more details grew, so I asked him, “And how did you lose her?”
He said, as if he were telling the story for the first time, “We had agreed to meet at six o’clock in the evening at the end of her office hours, so that I would accompany her to her home in Qatamon, where she lived. The people of that Arab neighbourhood had begun to leave it to escape the bombs, the explosives, and the sniper bullets of the Zionists, during that last period of the British Mandate, when chaos was increasingly spreading in the country.
“The Arab fighters were becoming weaker and weaker every day, and they had fewer and fewer weapons and less and less ammunition. They were withdrawing from one section after another in Qatamon and leaving them to the Zionists. Some Qatamon inhabitants has moved to other Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem for refuge; others had left the country altogether seeking safety. However, Saleema and a few others from her neighbourhood had stayed put. That’s why I used to meet her daily to see her safely home.
“But she did not come to meet me that evening. I was worried and waited for her more than an hour. Then I decided to go to Qatamon myself, after I’d ascertained that she had left the Post Office. She wasn’t at any of the nearby hangouts that we sometimes frequented. I did not find her at home, nor at any of her friends’ and neighbours’ homes in that beautiful Arab suburb of Jerusalem.
That night was pitch-black and terrifyingly quiet. Suddenly a loud explosion resounded nearby, illuminating the sky and shaking the ground. And lo and behold, the Semiramis Hotel was up in the air in bits and falling in ruins onto the ground, with fire breaking out in what remained of it and smoke billowing over it in clouds. There were screams everywhere.
I rushed like many others to the scene in order to help rescue people, give first aid, and extinguish the fire. I saw shocking scenes that are still present before my eyes because of their horror: disfigured corpses, bodies with terrible wounds, fragments of dead limbs, blood mixed with soil, stones piled on skulls, bones crushed under steel beams, remnants of broken furniture here and there on top of splinters of glass, porcelain shards, and broken pipes with water gushing out. All was chaos, weeping, and stunned people: people who hoped for the safety of loved ones and people who had lost the dearest beings in their worlds, people who gave orders and people who implemented them, all gathered in the wink of an eye to lament the loss of life that was there moments before, that was snuffed out, that was smashed, that was annihilated.
“I happened to turn around, and my eyes fell on a silk handkerchief I had given Saleema as a gift with her name embroidered on it. I saw it lying on the shreds of a torn carpet. I picked it up immediately and began calling ‘Saleema�
� repeatedly and anxiously in every corner of the ruins. ‘Saleema, where are you, Saleema? Why didn’t you wait for me, Saleema? Why did you break your promise, Saleema? Do you hear me, Saleema? Oh, Saleema! Oh, my sweetheart! Oh, Saleema!’
“Someone took me aside and tried to calm me down. He remained with me until morning dawned and the rescue operations ended. No one had seen Saleema. Some said she had been at the hotel, others said she had not. As for me, I don’t know even now whether she was or was not. But I continue to ask everyone I see about Saleema, everyone whom I deem to know people. Perhaps one day someone will lead me to her.
She is now thirty-nine years of age. If you see her, sir, you’ll recognise her: she has a white complexion, a graceful neck, long black hair, and eyes that weave radiance into love. When she speaks, her heart’s tenderness and her mind’s discernment are evident. And when she falls silent, beauty reigns over her and increases her charm. She has been silent now for nineteen years.”
The man suddenly stopped speaking, and I saw him trying to control himself while his chin trembled and his lips quivered. I was at a loss. Was he a rational person I could console? Or a crazy person I should humour? And I wondered, Why does love so torture us? We love a woman, and all kinds of obstructions rise to face us. We love Palestine and are miserable because of this love. We love to build on its land, but the enemy destroys what we build and leaves us in the ruins. We love peace in Palestine, but the enemy imposes war on us. We love life, but our rightful share is taken from us by force. Are we a generation of victims? Who are we?
And I heard myself telling him, “I can’t lead you to Saleema, my friend. But you will be led to her and will meet her one day. All you have to do is to continue searching for her and keep the beacon of hope shining before your eyes.”
True Arab Love Page 6