Seven
I needed an espresso. I walked uphill from our old house, turned right on to Ahlia Street, named after the Ahlia School which I attended for a few weeks as a child, and climbed to the fifth floor of the building opposite the old school gate to Capers Restaurant, owned by Ramzi and Nahida Jaber’s sons. On the terrace an olive tree was planted in a large pot that could be rolled in and out for the summer and winter seating. From there I had a panoramic view of this part of Ramallah, of our old hara and beyond to the Mediterranean coast, with Tel Aviv’s high-rises lining the horizon. At one time it was possible to enjoy this view from the ground. Not any more. Now the ground has to be suggested by placing an olive tree in a large pot on the fifth floor; only then can one see it.
Ramzi Jaber was a rich, down-to-earth romantic. He loved birds and kept a thriving aviary until fear of bird flu made him dispose of all of them to protect his family. It was a sad day for him but he felt he owed it to his children and grandchildren. Before he died he tried to purchase all the empty plots and houses in his hara to preserve it as he knew it. His success was only partial. He purchased the house where the Harbs used to live, with its long front balcony. Had he not bought it, it would certainly have been sold to others and repurposed. The previous owners, the Totah family, had emigrated to the US, all except two of the sons. Their father was a brilliant electrician who was renowned for working extremely fast. After my father helped him with a legal dispute and refused to charge him, we returned home one afternoon to find that he had replaced all our electric switches with new fluorescent ones. Next to the Harbs’ house, the one where the Bahu family lived was still standing. The father had owned the sky-blue Buick. For years after his death it remained parked in the driveway. Only one of the sons has remained in Ramallah; the others are in the US. Even Najla Al Bansa is no longer there. The building I was now in had been erected on the land where her shack once stood.
The only house Ramzi could not buy was the one across the street from our old house, where we moved two years prior to the start of the occupation. It was there that my father drafted the first proposal for a Palestinian state to be established in the 1967 occupied territories and submitted it to the Israeli government. The house where this historic event took place was demolished soon after the Oslo Accords came into force. A telling coincidence.
Many people from Ramallah who emigrated to the US return only to sell their land. And when they sell, they do little to contribute to the city’s development. They do not pay capital gains or capital transfer taxes to the Palestinian Authority. And many manage to find ways to smuggle out the money so that they don’t have to report the proceeds of the sale for US taxes either.
I asked for the bill and paid the equivalent of a Jordanian dinar (£1.10) for my coffee. When I was growing up a dinar meant a lot to us. Despite the fact that my family had to deal with difficult conditions after the Nakba, they kept their pride and dignity. I was never made to feel inferior to anyone or felt I had to look up to those who were materially better off. Surely my parents’ life would have been happier had they not been forced out of Jaffa. The combination of personal tragedies and economic straits that left my grandmother in the care of my mother and forced us to live in cramped lodgings made for trying conditions.
At one point my parents were so short of cash that my mother had to sell one of her rings. The only goldsmith in Ramallah at the time was Abu Jirius, whose workshop was in a stone building on Main Street. You climbed two high steps to enter. The workshop was in the back, the display area, where the gold was sold, in front. The tight-fisted old man still wore a serwal. My mother always said she did not get a fair price for her diamond ring, which she had brought with her from Jaffa. She was loath to part with it, yet at the time she had no option. Stories about this man’s avarice and meanness proliferated. One day a friend of his from a nearby village came to visit. It was after the Nakba, when the economic situation was bad for most people. When the friend entered his shop, they embraced and the man said, ‘I have a favour to ask of you.’
Abu Jirius replied, ‘Ask whatever you want.’
‘You know how bad the situation is. I need to borrow 100 dinars from you.’
‘Why not?’
And he counted the money out and put the pile of notes on the counter.
The man was thrilled. But when he reached for the money, Abu Jirius put down his hand over it. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Why?’ asked the man. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Not before you kiss my hand. You cannot take the money until you’ve kissed my hand.’
‘Why?’ asked the man. ‘Why are you asking me to kiss your hand?’
‘Because before I get it back I’ll have to kiss your arse, so I want to get this kiss now before it’s too late.’
After paying for the espresso I took the lift down to the street, intending to head off to Main Street and retrace the steps I used to take as a child with my grandmother when we returned from an afternoon at the Grand Hotel.
Ahlia Street was congested with Mercedes and BMWs that were most likely financed by loans from the Cairo Amman Bank, whose branch was in the lower floor of the building I had just left. Negotiating his way between these fancy cars was a bent old man. He didn’t appear to know what he was doing and seemed to be circling around the slowly moving line of traffic as though he was lost. He was overweight and he hobbled. His red cheeks were puffed and he had a vacant look in his eyes. He had a lot of ginger hair on his head that could have been dyed with henna. He seemed bewildered. Then I noticed someone going to rescue him from the maze of vehicles. The old man looked familiar. I caught up with him and, looking more closely, realised it was Abu Hassan, whose family were renting the house we once lived in. He had a frozen grin, with eyes focused on his next conquest. A pair of open scissors dangled from his belt. I didn’t feel like greeting him, for fear of getting caught in endless chatter, and instead decided to retrace my steps to Ahlia Street and follow him to see whether he still lived in our old house.
At the corner just before starting downhill, Abu Hassan stopped. He stooped down and picked up an empty plastic water bottle that was lying by the pavement. I admired his public spirit in picking up rubbish. He ambled over towards the green recycling bin, deposited the bottle carefully beside it, then tried to poke about inside. But it was too high for him, so he held on to the sides and made to pull himself up. He couldn’t manage that, so he stood on tiptoe, sliding up and down and losing his balance. What was he doing? He was clearly not going to throw away the rubbish he had picked up in the street. Then I saw him extend his right hand and rummage through things. He pulled up an old wooden chair, but it was too heavy to retrieve with one hand so he dropped it. Then he went away and returned with a rock. He stood on it, bent down and scooped out the chair with both hands, pulled it up and dropped it on the ground next to the plastic bottle. This seemed to exhaust him. He stepped down from the rock and took a breath. Then he looked for the bottle and slipped it under his arm. Clutching the chair, which I now saw was half burnt, he set off, dragging it behind him.
When he reached the corner, the neighbours’ boys saw him approaching, left the garden where they were playing and came running. ‘Abu Hassan, Abu Hassan, here is an iron rod we found for you,’ one of them said.
He turned to look. As he began to examine it, another boy came up with a cardboard box. ‘For you, Abu Hassan, for you.’
Soon there was a throng of boys, like an army of rubbish collectors, each with something for the old man, who stood among them like the commander of trash. They were laughing and enjoying themselves. Abu Hassan was befuddled. As each of the boys approached, he examined carefully the booty, reluctant to waste any of these offerings, though he must have known that they were making fun of him. Abu Hassan led the procession, still with his prized possessions, the burnt wooden chair he dragged behind him and the bottle under his arm, and the boys followed closely, carrying the rest. I followed too, though I
kept at a safe distance. Once the old man was behind the gate of his house, the one we had lived in, the boys dramatically threw their items over the wall in turn, crying, ‘Here, Abu Hassan, take, enjoy.’
I was worried that something would hit him, burying him beneath a pile of trash, but the boys were not malicious. Now that the man had gone, the party was over. They turned and ran back up the hill into their garden. I lingered. I could not imagine what use any of these items could be to Abu Hassan’s family. But it seemed that, out of habit, this hoarder dragged something back with him every time he went home. The yard was already so full of junk, if the old man lived much longer it would spill over into the house.
Hoarding has now been classified as a medical disorder, characterised by an ‘accumulation of possessions due to excessive acquisition of or difficulty discarding possessions regardless of their actual value’. Abu Hassan was most definitely afflicted. In retrospect, I should have been more sympathetic, especially because I too have that tendency.
Returning to Main Street, I stopped at the corner by the Karameh sweet shop and café. My office was just a five-minute walk from here, but it was still too early for my meeting. I lingered and scanned the row of shops close to the office, some of which have been there since I was a child. I could see Hinn’s barber shop with Iskandar, whom I have known since he was a boy studying at the Ahlia School, sitting on a chair outside his shop, sunning himself. This was an opportunity to have a haircut without having to wait my turn. I crossed the street and walked over.
He had started working with his father just after finishing his studies at university. Now he worked with his two younger brothers. A few years ago his father collapsed and died at work after a massive heart attack. Iskandar had tried to save him but failed. I remember how he described to me washing his father’s corpse before the burial. This was his last service to his father, with whom he had worked side by side for many years. To wash the body prior to sending his father to the grave was an opportunity for a real farewell before going ahead with his own life. I listened to him saying all this, aware that I had failed to give a similar parting to my own father. Perhaps, had I done so, I wouldn’t spend so much time looking backwards.
As I sat on the traditional heavy barber’s chair, I could see how many more of my hairs were white as they fell on the black robe in which I was wrapped. When I looked up, my eye caught sight of the photograph of Iskandar’s father on the wall. It’s traditional to hang a picture of the deceased in his last place of work. One can see pictures of dead fathers in the hardware shop, the sandwich place and at the fruit juicer’s. When my father died, I broke with tradition and did not put up his picture on the wall, even though I continued to work in the same office. I felt his strong presence throughout the office; it could not be confined to a single picture hanging on the wall. After I moved from my small room to my father’s more spacious one with the large old wooden desk, friends of his visiting from abroad who stopped by, hoping to see him, commented on the close physical resemblance between us: ‘You are the spitting image of your father. If only you would gain more weight you would be like a carbon copy.’ They stared as though looking through me at him, even when I had done away with the dark curtains that created a dim background and replaced them with more cheerful hangings on the wall. Nowadays I can see more of this resemblance when I look in the mirror. My grin and the grooves around my mouth are giving me that same forlorn look that my father’s face began to have at around the age I am now. How sad that times have not improved, confirming all our worst fears. Perhaps in view of the close resemblance between us, I could be forgiven for failing to hang my father’s picture on the wall above my desk.
In the chair to my left, Issa, Iskandar’s younger brother, was attending to a sixteen-year-old who was getting his first shave. I was reminded how shy I was when the man in the picture on the wall asked me whether I wanted my moustache shaved. This boy was not at all embarrassed. He was proud of his facial hair and was boasting about how he managed to mobilise his cousins for an attack against boys who sent threats to his Facebook page. Issa listened in silence without commenting. But the paternal Iskandar turned to the young man and said, in a preaching voice, ‘Just remember that it is only the weak who do not forgive.’ There was a pause, then Iskandar followed this with more advice, saying that in future he would do well to show such messages to his parents.
‘My father is always against me. Only once did he side with me,’ the young man said.
‘Why didn’t you tell your teachers or the headmaster about this?’
The young man answered, ‘I would have been dismissed for bringing shabab [young men] from outside the school on to the school grounds.’
I looked more carefully at the father’s picture on the wall. I could see a strong resemblance with Issa, the less talkative brother, who throughout the exchange continued to perform his work in silence.
When I was done with the haircut I turned right, walking towards the old city. Soon I got to the corner of Friends Street, which leads to my old school. But I didn’t want to go that way. Instead I continued straight along Main Street, passing by a Chinese restaurant on the corner run by young proprietors who had worked in Israel at a similar establishment. They were mixing sliced vegetables and slivers of meat in a wok to make a stir-fry. It was there that Batshoun’s upmarket textile shop had been, where my mother used to go to buy material for her dresses.
I can still see her marching down Main Street with a strong sense of mission, her stiff rectangular handbag dangling from her left arm, which she held up against her waist as though its sole purpose was to serve as a hanger for that gleaming black bag.
I also remember how bright-faced Batshoun would meet her with a broad artificial smile, his round puffed cheeks glowing with health. At that time most people bought fabric and had their clothes made by tailors who were scattered all over the town, their number in proportion to the town’s population. Few of these places had mannequins in their shop windows, but Batshoun did. Women could be more imaginative with their clothing. How many trips my mother would take to this and other shops before she made up her mind which fabric to buy. Half the stock would be unfurled and spread over the counter as she disdainfully lifted one piece after another with her long fingers while the owner looked on expectantly, wondering whether or not he was going to make a sale today. I could tell that in her mind’s eye she was trying to imagine herself in the dress that she had conceived for herself. Eventually, when she had narrowed down the choice, she would pick up the whole roll and ask Batshoun to carry it for her to the long mirror where she stood. Then she would spread the cloth over her body, put one leg in front of the other, arch up her right foot and pose. In the mirror I could see my mother making a sweet face and the head of the owner behind her, with a big grin, exclaiming how well these colours suited her complexion and the tones of her hair, waving his fingers gracefully through the air near her face to emphasise the point: ‘Madame Shehadeh, these colours are perfect. They suit you. And this fabric is the best. It was made especially for you.’ There would be a tense moment as my mother paused before she thrust the material away, rejecting it, only to have the whole process begin once again at the next stop down the road.
In Jaffa my mother had Dora, a Jewish seamstress. In Ramallah she had Um Azmi, a real artist in dressmaking who made the most beautiful dresses. She lived off Irsal (broadcasting) Street in the northeastern part of Ramallah. The house was surrounded by a cluster of pine trees. She had a very old and tranquil husband who had a pharmacy in Main Street that must not have been doing well because his was one of the few shops left without a plastic awning when all the other shops installed them. A few years earlier, the couple had lost a son. The dressmaker once told my mother that the only way she could forget that moment, when he was brought dead to the house on a stretcher, was to work all the time. She had the saddest, most intense face of a woman I ever knew, but she was an artist in her own right, as her daughter,
Samia, also turned out to be.
Years later, when I looked at the old family photographs, I couldn’t help thinking how odd it was that in this small town of Ramallah there were people like my parents who dressed so fancily and hosted such dancing parties. My mother had a red and black pleated dress which was fit to wear at a real ball. My sisters had those red velvet dresses with stiff white collars, while I wore the golf trousers that made me look hilarious. And all this at a time when the place was impoverished and my parents were not so well off. Now that I’ve experienced my share of difficult times, I cannot but admire how, in a small town with limited resources, they lived it up, hosted parties, dressing well and managing, despite everything, to have a good time.
Somehow my parents found ways to keep themselves entertained and for my mother to show off her carefully tailored dresses. She would put on a dress in the evening and father would be wearing a suit, then they would go out for the night. We, the children, would be left alone in the house, having been told to ‘lock up well’.
My eldest sister would be responsible for us. I slept top to tail in the same bed with my younger sister and our older sister slept alone in the bed next to us. One night, we heard movement in the house and someone walking up the stairs to my grandmother’s house. My elder sister left her bed and went to call my parents. She was brave. I cowered in bed, half asleep. In the morning they said they could see footprints on the stairs. It was a thief, they said. A thief coming to burgle us at night.
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