The Locust and the Bird

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  There were days when we didn’t dare walk in front of the window. We tried to keep laughing and joking, but our fears grew and grew. My fear was so intense that, when Toufic tried to sneak out of the house to meet his girlfriend one day, I pointed his hunting rifle at him.

  ‘Better for me to kill you,’ I told him, ‘than have someone else do it! At least I’ll be able to bury you and know where your grave is.’

  The situation deteriorated to the point where people started calling the events outside the war. The streets were deserted. I was forced to stop visiting Hanan and Fatima. If there was a lull in the fighting for a few days, people would make travel plans, desperate to leave. Hanan took her two children to London, followed soon after by Fatima and her husband. Toufic travelled to America to join his girlfriend and they decided to get married. Majida and Kadsuma went to Kuwait to stay with Ahlam. I remained in Beirut, worried sick that Muhammad Kamal, now sixteen years old, would decide to join the neighbourhood militia, a group made up of Palestinians, Sunnis, Shia and Druze. They regularly fought the Christians,23 like so many teenagers and young men in Beirut. Eventually I took him to Kuwait, hoping we would soon return home. But it was in vain, because the war only escalated.

  In spite of this exodus, my house in Beirut was never empty. Friends and family stayed on, and the door remained open to anyone who needed shelter from the fighting. It became a place of refuge for many and dozens of people held the keys.

  23 At that time there was no Hezbollah – i.e., no Shia militia.

  Battuta’s Daughter24

  IT WAS FEAR that made me leave Lebanon. I wanted to be with my children and to keep Muhammad Kamal safe. So I abandoned my friends, my street, my neighbourhood, carrying with me the secrets of those who’d stayed in my home. I was devastated that I had to leave, and full of anger at the way Muslims and Christians were fighting against one another.

  In Kuwait we stayed with Ahlam. The climate there – boiling hot, sandstorms, humidity – was so extreme that it crushed me. The only time I felt at all relaxed was in the evening, when the wind blew. Then I could open a window and breathe real air, rather than what came out of the air-conditioning vent. As the wind carried the scent of vines and figs to me, I tried to imagine I was at our summer home. But each morning, once again, I would feel as if I was choking, from the dust and sand stirred up by the wind. The dust covered us in a fine white layer. We looked like fish sprinkled with flour, ready to be thrown in the pan.

  In Kuwait we never sat out on the balcony to watch the passers-by, and Ahlam’s lovely house felt like a prison. I took on the task of cooking, preparing elaborate dishes. At first my new role excited me. If only Muhammad could have been there to see me being an exemplary mother and grandmother! But before long the pressure of obligation took away my initial enthusiasm. Once I roasted a chicken and, when I took it out of the oven, it was nicely browned and delicious-looking. But when my son-in-law started carving he revealed, to my mortification, that the small bag containing the giblets was still inside the bird.

  I missed Beirut and the Widows’ Club terribly. To console myself I started watching a television soap opera called The Head of Goliath, about a Bedouin man who is on the run. I became utterly engrossed in his tribal world and began creating friendships with the characters. I got so involved that I even postponed my departure for Beirut for several months. (I would return periodically during a lull in the fighting.)

  Meanwhile Majida and Kadsuma each fell in love with Lebanese men and decided to get married in Kuwait. Then Muhammad Kamal went to join Toufic in America. I felt that my responsibility to my children was coming to an end. After a while I followed him from Kuwait, intending only to be in the US for a short visit. On the plane, I asked myself how it was even conceivable that I, Kamila, a woman from Nabatiyeh who’d never even learned how to read and write, could really be going to America. My heart was in my boots as the plane winged its way across the sky. Terrified, I looked around and spied a man who seemed to be Arab.

  ‘Tampa?’ I asked him. ‘Tampa?’

  A few hours later I asked him the question again.

  ‘Look, lady,’ he told me impatiently. ‘You’re in a plane. Suppose it was going to Brazil. Do you think we could make it change direction?’

  Then I got angry too.

  ‘OK,’ I replied. ‘But remember that our ancestors travelled by donkey and camel, not by plane!’

  When we arrived, I was desperate to conceal from the other passengers that I was illiterate. I pretended that I couldn’t find my glasses and asked someone to fill out the immigration form for me.

  The sheer size of America astounded me. Travelling in the car with my son, I couldn’t help wondering why the earth hadn’t split beneath the weight of the trucks, trains and skyscrapers. I was astonished by the goods on offer in the shopping malls. The shops and supermarkets were miniature cities in themselves. I felt like a voracious locust, eager to buy and buy. But, I reminded myself that, as the proverb went, while the eye may look it’s what’s in the hand that counts. I had to make do with purchasing reduced items, not worrying if the edge of an ashtray was chipped or if a blouse had red lipstick on it. America was one gigantic market; they even used parks to sell things.

  What I liked to do best was to go to the fairground. It thrilled me to win a toy bear or a dog. I’d return home triumphant, clutching my trophy to me. I used my suitcase to store my collection. I called my bag the big whale, and in it I kept things like McDonald’s aluminium ashtrays shaped like leaves; and from the aquarium, a shell shaped like a star, though I was completely unaware it was still alive.

  Before long, just as I had learned to pronounce Tampa, Toufic and Muhammad Kamal moved to San Diego, where Fatima lived. I went with them. When my other three daughters also moved there, I was delighted. San Diego reminded me of Beirut. It had nearly the same weather and nature. I loved the zoo. All the animals I’d heard of in stories I saw for the first time. I loved picnicking in the park with Fatima and her American husband. Once I found myself dancing to music I hadn’t heard before and I was told it came from Cuba. I danced a mixture of the charleston, belly dancing and dabke, the Lebanese folk dance.

  But I soon realised that two of my daughters, Majida and Ahlam, were unhappy in their marriages. I was determined, though, that they would not consider divorce. I did not want my grandchildren to suffer, even though to most people divorce now seemed no more significant than taking a sip of water. But their unhappiness tore at my heart. I could see that their husbands were never going to change. I tried hard not to do it, but I found myself interfering, blaming, cursing, fighting, and soon even encouraging my daughters to file for divorce. ‘You could always come back with your children and live with me, just like when you were children yourselves,’ I told each of them.

  My bitterness towards my sons-in-law and my obsession with seeking revenge against them was compounded by my troubles with Muhammad Kamal. Recently, he had joined a group of hippies living in the neighbourhood. I started spying on him and his group day and night. Ahlam tried to stop me, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know he was all right. I found that I was really alone, far away from the world, cut off and helpless; while in Beirut, I could ask for help from the electric pole or the door or the wall.

  Eventually Majida and Kadsuma returned to Kuwait, but all this family upheaval made me profoundly unhappy. I saw a doctor, who prescribed various pills. Whenever one of my children showed concern at the quantity of medication I was taking, I defended the little round capsules. I believed that the effort of the many people who had produced each pill could only mean that they were greatly beneficial to my health. Still, I continued to feel restless and lonely, especially when Toufic was at work. I tried to strike up conversations with people. I’d always imagined I could communicate with everyone, even a group of chimpanzees. But I failed in America. Aren’t these Americans my relatives? I asked myself. Aren’t we all descendants of the same father and mother, Adam and
Eve? Why can’t they understand me? If I sigh, it means I’m unhappy. If I smile and say good morning, it means I’d like to chat.

  Once, I approached a female neighbour. I smiled and held up a coffee cup, gesturing that I could tell her fortune. All she did was smile back briefly and disappear inside her house. Such misunderstandings caused great amusement within my family, but they only added to my vexation. I couldn’t believe that language could form such a barrier, even with a dog. A huge dog managed to get into the house one day, and my daughter-in-law and I were terrified and hid. All day the dog simply slept on the sofa, until my son got home and shooed it out with the simple command, ‘Go!’

  One day I saw the old man next door weeping as he talked to Muhammad Kamal’s girlfriend. I clutched my chest, terrified that something had happened to one of the children. But Muhammad Kamal’s girlfriend explained that the old man was only recalling how his wife had suffered from cancer and eventually died. I began crying with him, sharing his grief. The elderly man asked her why I was crying, as he was sure I hadn’t met his departed wife.

  A few days later the news came of my own father’s death. I visited our neighbour and tried to let him know that my own father had died, hoping he’d shed some tears with me. But he hadn’t a clue what I was trying to tell him. I wept all the more, because I was so far away. Not even my children would weep along with me.

  ‘Come on now,’ I urged them. ‘Shed just a few tears. Feel a bit sad with me! After all, he was your grandfather. He was my father and now he’s dead.’

  My children thought it strange that I could feel this way about Father, after he’d neglected me when I was little. As I’d grown older, I told them, things had changed. We’d started talking to each other again and I’d seen how I’d inherited some of his character. He loved me, and my love and loyalty meant a lot to him. I wouldn’t dwell on all the misfortunes buried in the past. Instead, I focused on the things I loved about him: his knowledge and the poems and proverbs he’d recite.

  If Father had not so often recited to me a poem by Imam Ali, how would I have known about the five benefits of travel?

  Leave your country in search of enlightenment.

  Travel, for in travelling there are five benefits;

  Dissipation of worry, the gaining of enlightenment,

  Science, literature and the company of the honourable.

  24 Ibn Battuta, a fourteenth-century Arab traveller and explorer.

  The War Has Ended

  I TRAVELLED BETWEEN AMERICA and Kuwait until the war ended. Then, after sixteen years in exile, I returned home. Whoever God allows to travel is indeed fortunate, I thought to myself. Here I was, alone in Beirut, while my seven children continued their lives abroad, exiled from their country and culture by war. The sixteen years of war had made me angry and remorseful. The people who finally ended it were the same people who had started it. And what had they achieved? I realised, with bitter irony, that I had arrived home with sixteen pieces of luggage.

  I stored the suitcases in one corner of my sitting room. But seeing them there, unopened, made me terribly depressed. I hid them under a sheet. I think I felt horrified by the excess. A few days later, after my head had stopped spinning, I opened all the suitcases and scattered presents on the floor.

  I took what I wanted, then called to my neighbours and some relatives and shouted, ‘Go ahead, help me get rid of everything.’

  When only a few items were left, I went out on to my balcony and called to some young children playing below, ‘Hurry and come up and take whatever you want.’

  And the children gathered round, snatching things from each other. I saved a child’s white umbrella from Disneyland to give to Hanan’s daughter. When I finally did, on one of Hanan’s visits to Beirut, we laughed for a long time. Although I had seen Hanan and her family every couple of years when they visited – in Kuwait and then in America – my granddaughter was much older and taller than I remembered.

  In Beirut I reverted to my old routine: entertainment, laughter, and fortune telling. I was happy to be back among neighbours, relatives – my two brothers Hasan and Kamil – and friends. I was delighted to be back in the thick of things. During my period of exile, I’d ceased to believe I’d ever get to sleep in my own bed again, or that my house would be there waiting for me when I returned.

  I converted part of my balcony into a miniature garden filled with potted plants, just as Mother had done in our garden plot at Nabatiyeh. I visited Father’s grave in the south and offered my condolences to his widow. I asked her about Father’s library of manuscripts, some of them handwritten, that he had bequeathed to Ahlam. Each time Father went back to the south after a visit, he’d take with him some books he found lying around in our house, unaware that most of them were actually Ahlam’s school textbooks. He’d loved reading Khalil Gibran, the author of The Prophet, and Mikhail Nuayma. His widow told me she’d given them all to the husayniyya.25

  ‘But why, if they were willed to Ahlam?’ I asked her, in great disappointment. I reminded her that Father had inherited his library from his father and grandfather.

  ‘I thought you were away and were never coming back,’ she answered.

  I wondered whether the presiding sheikh had stumbled across some of the stories and notes Father slipped between the pages of his books – stories of love and erotic passion. His widow told me what Father said to the doctor in his last days.

  ‘So, Doctor, you see these four children standing before you? They’re all from his excellency’s factory and there is a fifth one in America.’ Then he looked down and went on, ‘I could make a lot more too. If you let me get up, I’ll prove it to you!’

  Gazing at his red fez, I couldn’t help chuckling as I imagined the scene.

  After his death, I decided I must close the book on the distant past and the war. But it wasn’t easy. I felt like the monkey I’d seen on television, who would lift a stone and then faint at the sight of a snake cooling beneath it. As soon as he recovered from the shock he would hurry back to the stone, lift it, and faint again.

  I no longer felt the pleasure I’d experienced when I first returned to Beirut, a pleasure that came from simply being at home, on the balcony, in my own bed. Now it was as though being back had reawakened the dormant past, rekindling feelings of guilt that lay buried, deep in my subconscious. I became exactly like Mother, unable to stop the buzzing. I focused on the pain I had caused Mother, Hanan and Fatima; and the insecurity and uncertainty that my five younger children had suffered after Muhammad’s death. And last but not least, I worried about my grandchildren and their troubles in America.

  The more the doctors prescribed pills, the less I slept. It was as if the vividly coloured pills were a microscopic lens that projected bruised old stories and memories in the tiniest detail. In the end I sought peace, confronting Hanan at last with my past, asking her to write it down. Only then did I start to see its wrinkled layers gradually turn smooth, with each word I uttered, with every place I remembered.

  25 A gathering place for the community next to the mosque in Shia neighbourhoods.

  ‘One Stone Takes You Away,

  Another Brings You Back’

  I’D BEEN THINKING a lot about Mother, my old home in Nabatiyeh, and my childhood there, so Hanan suggested we visit the south together. We travelled down to Nabatiyeh in a Range Rover. I told Hanan it made me feel like a contingent of army or police. Gradually I got used to travelling in that big car; it made me feel protected against car sickness, shortness of breath, and the heat. Hanan asked me not to joke around and embarrass Ali the driver. I tried hard to keep quiet, but my tongue got the better of me and I found myself singing a famous popular song, ‘Ali, Ali, the oil vendor!’ We all laughed.

  ‘Mama,’ Hanan said. ‘You’re really very funny!’

  We were heading for the house in Upper Nabatiyeh where Mother had raised me with tender care. I’d once mentioned to Hanan that I’d like to see the house again; I hadn’t set eyes
on it since we’d left for Beirut when I was just nine years old.

  As we turned off the coastal road I exclaimed, ‘Good grief. How on earth did your grandmother – God have mercy on her soul! – manage to walk all the way from Nabatiyeh to Beirut to see her children, even if she did stop for one night in a hostel? It’s a long way. If only I had the strength and will to walk such a distance!’

  On the outskirts of Nabatiyeh, I got out of the car and tried to find the hostel where travellers stayed. I also looked for the market in the square: where we’d chased after Father, where I had seen gold at a jeweller’s for the first time, and where my uncle the cobbler once worked. Hanan remembered the Nabatiyeh market too. She remembered being there on Ashura Remembrance Day, and seeing women spitting on the unfortunate actor playing the accursed Shimr – the man who delivered the fatal blow that killed al-Hussein the Prophet’s grandson.

  The poor man was trying to defend himself.

  ‘Hold on!’ he yelled. ‘This is only a re-enactment. I’m not the killer Shimr, I’m Mustapha the baker!’

  We drove on towards Upper Nabatiyeh, where there are still tobacco fields. Hanan looked for the house of Abu-Ghaleb, the Haji’s childhood friend, but she couldn’t find it. We stopped again when we saw a woman standing beneath an olive tree, shaking the branches so the green olives fell on to a coloured sheet she’d laid out on the ground. Hanan went over to the tree, but I hung back; I wanted to smoke a cigarette in the quiet serenity of the place, beneath the blue autumn sky.