“Shu Ramadan? Kif faj’a nat lak Ramadan?”‡ The women laughed, amused by how easy the Jew thought it was to become a Muslim. “You have your Yom Kippur, Professor. What’s Ramadan to you? Er-ruz matbuh, u’lahm el-haruf ala ’lnar.”§
The Orientalist stuck to his guns. He was not eating now. He had already told Rashid. His wife had flown abroad early in the morning, as a result of which he hadn’t slept all night. If he ate now, he would need to sleep, which was not the purpose of his visit.
But why shouldn’t he sleep? The women took to the notion enthusiastically. “In fact, why don’t you do it the other way around, Professor, and sleep first? If your wife is out of the country, you’re in no hurry to get home. Have a light snack, and we’ll give you a nice, quiet room to lie down in. That way you’ll be fresh for the exam.”
“The exam? What exam?”
“The oral exam for Samaher’s final grade. . . .”
But the Orientalist, well aware how Arab guile was concealed behind the innocence of the desert, was quick to squelch, even at the risk of his newly won popularity, the illusion of a final grade.
“I’m not giving Samaher any exam. She knows as well as I do that she’s still a long way from a final grade. I came here today to hear the oral summaries that she can’t write. And to take back the material.”
The messenger gasped. “You’re taking back the material?” So that was why the professor had agreed so easily to come to the village.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
It was an awkward situation. Rivlin turned to his student, who, though she hadn’t missed a course of his in five years, lay staring at him as though she had never seen him before.
“You can still finish your assignment,” he said to her. “Rashid can photocopy a new set for you. The poems you’ve translated aren’t bad at all. In fact, you’ve done a good job. In a minute we’ll see what you’ve done with the stories.”
There was a ripple of relief that the professor was not proposing to reject Samaher’s term paper. Fearfully, the young girl returned again to place a jug of cold water and an infusion of herbs in front of Rivlin. “Even the greatest saints,” Afifa assured him, “have been known to drink during the fast.” A small boy, dressed in a fez and a festive holiday robe, entered proudly bearing a narghile, which Samaher’s grandmother had ordered as an antidote for the Jew’s hunger. The growing acceptance of his determination to observe the fast caused Rivlin to fear that he might have to leave the village in the end on an empty stomach.
Meanwhile, Samaher, greatly cheered by his compliment, dismissed not only the women, but her cousin as well. Before shutting the door behind him, Rashid pulled down the colored blind on the window, leaving the teacher and his student pleasantly bathed in a golden Galilean gloom.
9.
“DO YOU HAVE enough light, Professor?”
“That remains to be seen.”
He leaned back in his armchair and smiled at his student, who removed her hairnet and shook her hair out with a brisk, free movement. Above her bed was a picture of an ancient dignitary, a patriarch belted with a dagger. How, he wondered, had she managed to lure him, first to her wedding, and now into her bedroom?
“Well?” He could not resist taking a dig at all the lies. “This pregnancy of yours—is it definite?”
“Almost . . .” The answer was diplomatic.
“How are you feeling?” he asked in a fatherly tone.
“Better.” A tear shone in her eye.
“Then let’s begin.” He took some of the herbs, crushed them between his fingers, and inhaled their scent. “First, where are the originals of the poems you’ve translated? I don’t doubt you’ve done a faithful job, but I have to check whether the Arabic is quite so modern.”
“But why shouldn’t it be, Professor? Do you think we’re always going to remain . . . primitive?”
“What a word to use, Samaher!” Her forwardness startled him. “Who said anything about primitive? I merely wanted to see the originals.”
“They’re in the binders on the table. I’ll call Rashid and tell him to find them.”
“That can wait. By the way, I like your cousin. He’s a fine fellow and very devoted to you. How come someone like him isn’t married?”
Samaher shrugged. “He hasn’t found a wife.” In an irritable whisper she added, “He doesn’t want one. What can I do about it? Nothing.”
“You’re quite right,” the Jewish professor admitted. “There’s nothing you can do. Let’s move on. You say that you’ve read two stories . . .”
“Two? A lot more than that.”
“You mentioned two in your note to me: a realistic one about a feud between village clans, and one that’s more like a folktale.”
“A parable.”
“Of a political nature.”
“In my opinion.”
“Let’s start with that. Do you remember where you summarized it in your notebook, or do we have to call Rashid?”
She was insulted. “Why Rashid? Of course I remember.”
She leafed through some pages and found it.
The story had appeared in a mimeographed periodical, a quarterly or biannual named Katarna,* put out with French backing in the 1940s by the Railway and Post Office Workers Union of Algeria. Besides information on the postal and railway services and their development, the volume included articles, stories, and poems written by union members. In January 1942, one Ibrahim Ibn Bakhir, a ticket clerk at the Sidi Bal-Abbas station, published a tale titled “El-Tifl el-Faransi el-Murafrif.”
“‘The Floating French Baby’?” Rivlin translated doubtfully.
“That’s correct. It’s one of the stories you marked, Professor.”
Forbearing to point out that most of the markings were Suissa’s, he sat back in his chair.
The Tale of the Floating French Baby
In a small village near Sidi Bal-Abbas lived a hardworking farmer named Yusuf with his wife, Ayisha. Although the two were good, fine-looking people who loved each other greatly, they had no children. “I’m afraid,” Yusuf said to Ayisha, “that I’ll have to take another wife to bear me children.” “That,” Ayisha replied, “is only natural. But to prevent my life from being consumed by jealousy, let me first travel through the countryside. Perhaps I can find an abandoned orphan to be mine.” “You’re right, my beloved wife,” the farmer said. “Go look for an abandoned child. Just make sure you return to me. Although by then I will have taken a second wife, my love for you is assured until your dying day.”
The farmer’s wife decided that the best place to look for an abandoned child was a railway station. People in stations are always in a hurry and often forget suitcases, bags, and even babies. So as to remove all suspicion from herself, and escape being molested because of her beauty, Ayisha cut her hair short, dyed it white, and stuck a beard on her face. Then she sewed herself a short cloak, found a big walking stick, and began wandering from station to station, disguised as a Sufi holy man, in search of an abandoned child.
At first all went well. The old Sufi was treated with respect, and no one suspected a thing. After a while, however, attracted by the Sufi’s bare legs, which were unusually smooth and shapely, people began to follow him and seek his blessing. Afraid of being given away by her soft voice, Ayisha stopped talking and only smiled. But this only increased the number of her devotees, who accompanied her from station to station.
Meanwhile the train management, seeing that the silent Sufi had increased the number of passengers, gave him a free lifetime ticket.
“How very strange,” Rivlin chuckled. “You can see the author was a ticket clerk.”
Yet how was Ayisha, now surrounded day and night by loyal disciples who expected her to work wonders, supposed to find an abandoned baby to comfort her for the many children that her husband’s second wife would bear? And so one night, hatching a plan, she talked. In a thick, slow voice like an old man’s, she told her disciples that she was planning to work a
wonder such as no one had ever seen. She would make a little baby too small to stand on its feet float outside the window of a train. Yet who would agree to volunteer their offspring for such a risky miracle? She had to find an orphaned or abandoned child with no mother. If her disciples would bring her such an infant, she would do the rest.
Several days went by, and then Ayisha’s disciples kidnapped a baby. It wasn’t an orphan, however. It was French, because only the French leave their babies lying in baby carriages. It was far easier to steal an infant from a Christian pram than from the shoulder sling of a Muslim mother.
This frightened Ayisha greatly. She had intended to get hold of an abandoned child, a poor, dirty little waif whom she could save from hunger, and now she had been brought a big, fat, blond, well-dressed, conspicuous baby. And the police were already searching for its kidnapper!
Nor was that all. Ayisha had planned to wait for her disciples to fall asleep at night and then rip off her beard, change her hermit’s cloak for a dress, veil her face, and slip away to her husband’s village. How, surrounded by boisterous disciples, with the French police and army on her heels, was she going to do that with a fat, blond French baby?
And what would she tell her angry followers when they discovered that they had kidnapped a baby for a wonder she couldn’t work? And so, sitting down beneath a distant tree, she prayed to Allah to have pity on the French child, whose miracle was planned for the next day.
Samaher was leaning cross-legged against the plumped pillows, her long hair grazing the embroidered flowers on her nightgown. There was new color in her cheeks, and her voice had grown stronger, as if this bizarre and tedious tale were now carrying her along with Ayisha’s disciples and the trains.
The next day, Ayisha boarded a train with several of her disciples. As soon as it picked up speed, she took the French baby and tossed it out the window. Yet Allah had heard her prayer and had pity. He did not let the child fly away but kept it floating outside the window, laughing and playing with the wind until Ayisha took it back into the train. At the next station it was given to a ticket clerk and brought to the police, who had posted a large reward.
“There’s that ticket clerk again,” laughed the visitor.
Ayisha, now a famous—though still childless—wonder-worker, was very sad. Everyone who heard about the floating French baby became more devoted to her than ever. A house was built for her on a mountaintop, and pilgrims came to kiss the hem of her cloak and the dainty soles of her feet. Even her husband’s second wife, who also was childless, came to kneel before her without knowing who she was.
“That’s the end. Nice, isn’t it?”
“Let’s not exaggerate,” he said, his headache back again. It was a story for One Thousand and One Nights. “What strikes you as political about it?”
“Well, you see, Professor, I thought that if it was written in 1942, during the Second World War, when the French were as helpless as babies, it was a story about how sorry the Arabs felt for them.”
“Sorry? Didn’t they throw the French baby out the window?”
“Yes, but only because Allah would save it. The God of the Muslims,” Samaher said gently, “who has mercy on the whole world. I think that’s the point of the parable, don’t you?”
He recalled how, in her first years as an undergraduate, she had kept getting into political arguments until, tired of them, she had stopped.
There was a profound silence.
“Tell me, Samaher,” he asked. “Do you believe in God?”
She blushed, her eyes flashing. “Why ask me? Ask the man who wrote this story, Ibrahim Ibn-Bakhir. Ask his readers. They were believers.”
“That may be. But are you one, Samaher?”
“In God?” She smiled her Mona Lisa smile. “Not exactly. . . .” Realizing where she was, she checked herself. “But during Ramadan, when we’re fasting, I do try to believe . . . And when I’m not feeling well, too. . . .”
10.
RIVLIN ROSE FROM his chair and began to pace up and down as though he were in a seminar room at the university. His sleepless night pounded in his temples. What had made him come to this place?
He stumbled across the narghile on the floor. Lifting it, he gave it a sniff, put it carefully down in a corner, went to the tray of medicines by Samaher’s bed, picked up a small bottle that rattled with blue pills, and stood there assessing their purpose. “Are these for your depression?” he bluntly asked his student, who was following his every movement with concern.
“I’m not depressed . . . just moody. . . .” She smiled anxiously at the Jew standing so close to her bed. “My mother and grandmother take them sometimes, too. They’re good for when you feel blue.”
Did he feel blue? He took a pill from the bottle, licked it with the tip of his tongue, and popped it into his mouth without asking permission. It had a bitter and sour but clean taste.
The pleasant gloom was pierced by the coal black eyes of the trusty messenger, sent to inform Rivlin that his bed was ready. An afternoon nap was a welcome prospect. Before retiring for it, however, the Orientalist wished to hear the second, realistic story, the one about the feuding clans. Perhaps realism was better suited to uncovering the spark that had kindled the Algerian conflagration.
“Your cousin,” he told Rashid, possibly hoping that his praise would spur the young Arab to continue his efforts on Samaher’s behalf, “has quite an original interpretation of the story of the French baby.”
Not that Rashid’s loyalty or admiration needed spurring. “Leave it to Samaher,” he said. “She has a B.A. in Arabic language and literature.”
“Then this will be an interdisciplinary project,” Rivlin said. And to prevent them from thinking that he was being ironic at their expense, he suggested that he stay until the end of the day’s fast. “After all,” he added, “if you’ve lured me all the way to your village, I may as well enjoy some good food.”
“A baby lamb, slaughtered just for you!”
Rashid was ecstatic. Going to the table, he carefully collected the large binders to bring to Ma’alot, the nearest town with a photocopier. He did not want a single day to be lost in the career of his cousin, by whose bed he hovered like a dark bird, gently helping her to ease the pressure of the pillow crumpled behind her back. The visitor watched the coals of his eyes burn hypnotically into themselves as he bent over her, as though examining the pimples on her throat. Recklessly turning her on her side, he scooped her up in one arm before she could stop him, while airing and straightening the sheets with his other hand. Rivlin, enthralled and aghast at the passion between the two young Arabs, could not bring himself to turn away.
But it was time for the second, realistic story, which he hoped would be more plausible than the first. If it lacked the rumble of trains and the din of stations, which the author of the first tale knew well, at least it would have no miraculous babies or beautiful women disguised as saints. Set in a remote village in the mountains, it had been written by an author named Yassin bin Abbas and published in the spring 1948 issue of a short-lived Oran literary magazine called Al-Huriya al-Thalitha, or “The Third Freedom.” (What the first and second freedom were remained unclear.) Its language, according to Samaher, was highly colloquial, with so many odd local expressions that Rashid had gone with it to a relative in the Gaza Strip who had spent years working for the PLO in North Africa.
The Story of the Poisoned Horse
There was once, Samaher began enthusiastically, a small village on a mountain called Jebl Musa. She had abandoned her prone position and was now sitting up in bed with her notebook on her knees and her bare feet dangling. Its poor, simple farming families barely eked out a living from the arid soil. Yet one of them, the Sidik family, had sheep, goats, and two horses. The other farmers hated the Sidiks, whose flocks and horses, they were convinced, ate the villagers’ crops at night. No matter how often the Sidiks promised to keep their animals out of the neighbors’ fields and graze them only in natura
l pasture, the farmers did not believe them. It got so bad that hardly anyone even spoke to them.
The Sidiks had a daughter, a lovely girl who had been named Leona after a French prime minister called León who was a great friend of the Muslims in Algeria. Yet so great was the village’s hatred and suspicion of her father and brothers that none of its young men could think of marrying her, despite her good looks and good nature. “Never mind,” her father said to her. “If we can’t find you a husband in the village, we’ll find one somewhere else.” And so he sent one of her brothers to an old uncle in a far-off place, hoping that someone there, perhaps a cousin, might agree to marry her.
Samaher looked up from her notebook to see whether her teacher was listening. He had removed his eyeglasses and was wearily sprawled in his chair, fascinated as always by the Hebrew spoken by her generation, which alternated between a clumsy translation of her native Arabic and a true command of Israeli idiom.
Meanwhile, this plan became known to a fine young man named Ahmed ed-Danaf, the son of farmers in Leona’s village. Ahmed ed-Danaf was secretly in love with Leona and was tormented by the thought that she would marry someone else far away. Leona, too, had set her eye on this young man, even though she never spoke to him. How, thought Ahmed ed-Danaf, could he keep his beloved from marrying? Not that he believed that his father would let him marry her himself. But at least, so he hoped, she would not be taken someplace else, where he could never see her again. And so he did something desperate.
The Liberated Bride Page 20