The Woman From Tantoura

by Radwa Ashour

  When I listen I’m no longer outside of the train. I don’t jump inside it, because the train I used to express our situation has disappeared. The earth becomes rounded like an embrace, an irony I do not understand and which confuses me, because the elderly women were telling the stories of the theft of the land and of those they lost among their families and children. They also talk about the camp in the beginning: the tents they weighted with stones so they would not fly away, the zinc roofs, standing in lines for water, the fist of the Second Bureau and its agents, and “It’s prohibited for you to visit each other in the evening, it’s prohibited to sit in front of your houses, it’s prohibited, it’s prohibited … .” They recall their fears the day they heard that the government intended to drive the people out of Shatila and destroy the camp; the day when talk circulated about building a high wall around the camp, because it didn’t look right in Beirut or for the tourists, who wanted to enjoy the city’s beauty; the day when the army encircled the camp and began to fire on it for no known reason. The story reassures me, in some strange and wondrous way I can’t understand.

  Umm Muhammad laughs as she tells the story of enrolling her second son in the camp school the year following their arrival. She says, “He was four years old, and he looked younger than his age. He was very articulate, no one better. He got up in the morning and asked, ‘Where’s Muhammad?’ ‘He went to school.’ ‘Why didn’t you wake me to go with him? Where’s the school?’ I didn’t tell him; he was angry and he left the house. He kept asking until he found the school. It was one room, originally a bath, and the teacher was a patient young man. He saw a barefoot boy about as high as a hand span and a half coming in, and he asked him, ‘Where are you going?’ He pointed to his brother and said, ‘To Muhammad. I’m his brother. My name is Said, I was born on Laylat al-Qadr so they named me Said, ‘Fortunate,’ but my grandma calls me Mabrouk, “Blessed.’”’ The teacher laughed and said, ‘Go home, Said, and come back tomorrow with your father and your papers, and we’ll register you in the school.’ He said to him, ‘My father leaves the house at dawn because he’s a baker and doesn’t come back before night, when I’m fast asleep. What should I do? Friday, before prayers, I’ll bring him with me.’ ‘School is closed on Friday.’ ‘Why is it closed? Open it so my father can come. Anyway what do you want with my father? Is he the one who wants to go to school or me?’ ‘He has to bring your birth certificate and sign the application for you to go to school.’ ‘Can I sign?’ ‘Do you know how to write your name?’ ‘Not even my father can sign his name. He stamps his finger. Give me the blue ink and I’ll stamp for you!’ The teacher laughed, and said to him, ‘Instead of your father, bring your mother and the papers, and we’ll register you in school. And put on shoes or sandals; boys in the school must …’ Said interrupted, ‘But Muhammad is wearing the shoes!’ ‘Okay. Go home, and tomorrow we’ll have a chair for you to sit on. How can you learn when you’re standing?’ Said said, ‘There’s room.’ In the back of the class there was a sink without any water in it and without a faucet. Said went straight over to it and jumped up and sat in it, cross-legged. He said to the teacher, ‘I’m comfortable here. Please go on with school, however you like.’”

  Umm Muhammad laughed, and her pleasant face became rosier and her full breasts shook. She raised the edge of her sleeve and wiped a tear that had escaped her eye. She said, “See how it was fate, Sitt Ruqayya. He went further in school than Muhammad, the older one. He completed elementary school and middle school and high school, going to school in the morning and working in the evening. He went to the university and graduated and got a job, thank God.”

  18

  Family Concerns

  My aunt did not forgive the woman from Saffurya for two things. The first, as she said, was that “The girl from Saffurya wasn’t satisfied until she dragged your cousin to the camp, to her family.” She did not believe Ezz, who told her time and again that the move to Ain al-Helwa was his idea and that his wife had not suggested it, because the school where he taught was there, and because he had to stay in the camp until late at night because of his work with the young men, telling her that “Living in Ain al-Helwa is more convenient for me.” But Umm Amin did not believe him; and that was connected to the second reason, which my aunt would hint at, with sneers and innuendoes. Finally she stated it frankly, and Ezz said to her, “We went to the doctor, Mother. I have a problem. I’m thankful that she’s going to stay with me, even though I can’t give her any children.”

  When my aunt heard that her distress and anxiety grew. She said, “That’s unbelievable, unreasonable. It has never happened to any of the men of the family.”

  “We’ve gone to the doctor, Mother, and he confirmed that it’s my problem.”

  “Go to a different doctor. For sure he’s a doctor she bought from her community, and they agreed with him that he would say that.”

  Then she changed her mind, “But why go? I’ll look for a bride for you and in a month or two you’ll know you’re fine. Your wife will get pregnant and in nine months you’ll have a son.”

  Ezz laughed, and said, “What do you say we go together to the doctor of your choice, so you can hear from him in person that your son can’t have children?”

  At that point my aunt decided there was no use talking, even if she didn’t say that to her son, because the girl had bewitched him. She had tied him to her, and he wouldn’t leave her and would end up “with no family of his own.” She turned it over to God, although that didn’t prevent her from calling on him to witness what the girl from Saffurya had done to her and her son.

  We would go to Sidon on the weekend, Amin driving us in his Renault. The boys loved Sidon. Hasan was the one who was most attached to the city, saying that he loved its smell, the narrow lanes of the old city and its architecture, the gardens stretching around it, and the sea. He would say, “In Beirut we barely notice the smell of the sea. Here the smell of the sea is clear and sharp, it mixes with the scent of the orange blossoms.” Hasan loved the scent of orange blossoms. When they were in season he couldn’t wait for the weekend, he would come home from school and say, “I miss my grandfather, I’m going to Sidon.” “And your homework?” “I’ll do it when I get back.” I know he wasn’t lying and that he really did miss his grandfather, but why did he miss him more during the season of the orange blossoms? An hour going and an hour coming, then an hour or two there, and when he came back he would have to stay up late to finish his homework, not finishing sometimes until morning.

  When the family went to Sidon to spend the weekend or to stay with my aunt and uncle during the summer vacation, Hasan would go out for an hour or two and then come back to be with his grandfather. He never tired of listening to his stories. Sadiq and Abed were different, no sooner did they arrive in Sidon than each was off looking for his friends, and we would barely see them before bedtime. When we went back to Beirut and my aunt and uncle would say goodbye, my aunt would say what she always did at the end of every visit, “What’s your rush, Amin, why do you need to work in Beirut? Come back and work in Sidon. We’ll all be together, and you might be able to convince Ezz to come home, instead of living there among strangers, in the camp.”

  On the way home, Hasan repeats his grandmother’s words. He doesn’t understand the reason for leaving Sidon, and he pesters his father to reconsider our living in Beirut. I glimpse sly smiles in Sadiq’s and Abed’s eyes; years later, only years later, would I understand why they were smiling.

  While we’re in Sidon Ezz complains about my uncle Abu Amin’s behavior; the matter of his participating in demonstrations has become a source of tension in the house. “Because you’re no longer young, Papa. In one of these demonstrations you’ll be killed by the army’s bullets. You can’t run when they fire on us. Consider me your representative, all the young men represent you.” It’s no use talking. My uncle doesn’t confine himself to participating in demonstrations starting from Bab al-Sarail Square in old Sidon or from Ai
n al-Helwa, rather he travels from town to town, “Because it’s a duty.”

  The army decided to close down the Fatah office in al-Khiyam. My uncle declared, “I’m going to al-Khiyam.”

  “The army has set up checkpoints and barriers all along the way, how will you go?”

  “How can I not go? The people of al-Khiyam are demonstrating for our sake, should we just watch? Besides, I know roundabout ways that will avoid the checkpoints; I’ll show them to the driver.”

  The scene would be repeated in later years, Ezz’s words and my uncle’s answer. Ezz would speak and my uncle would stubbornly take a taxi and set off for the demonstration in Tyre, or al-Khiyam, or Nabatiyeh, or Bint Jbeil, or al-Rashidiya. Even when Imam Musa al-Sadr organized a demonstration a year before my uncle died, in which nearly 100,000 people participated to demand political reform and arming the residents of the border villages, my uncle could not be convinced that the demonstration was for the Shii residents of the southern villages. He answered Ezz, “For shame! They did not fail us, how can we fail them?”

  Demonstrations became part of my uncle’s weekly schedule, and worry became a fixture on Ezz’s schedule. He complained, “He’ll die by an army bullet in one of these demonstrations. He has constant pain in his knees. He won’t be able to run and avoid the bullets. God, my heart nearly stopped the day of the protest demonstration against the siege of the fedayeen in Kfar Kila. The bullets from the army were like rain, the demonstrators were falling by the dozen, killed and wounded, and I was worried about Abu Amin, and Abu Amin was completely oblivious, he was at the head of the demonstration shouting as if he were twenty. It came out okay. But he was five years younger, now he’s over seventy and I don’t know how to keep him from going.”

  Ezz laughed bitterly. “They’ll kill him. What can I do, imprison him in the house? Tie him to the foot of the bed?”

  My uncle did not die by an army bullet in a demonstration. He was not hit, unlike dozens of young men who were better able to run and maneuver. Ezz was not obliged to imprison him in the house or tie him to the bed; illness forced him to stay in bed. He would ask my aunt to call me on the telephone in Beirut three or sometimes four times a day. He would say, “How are you, Ruqayya? I wanted to hear your voice.”

  I would speak to him for two or three minutes and then he would give the receiver to my aunt.

  I decided to go to live with him for a while.

  I sat down with Sadiq and Hasan and Abed, and told them that I would stay in Sidon a week or two or three, or maybe more, until my uncle got better. Abed protested, “He has my grandmother and my uncle Ezz and his wife. We need you too!”

  Sadiq commented, mocking him, “Abed needs to nurse every three hours, how can you, he won’t be able to bear it!”

  Abed hit him on the shoulder and said, without smiling, “Ha, ha, ha, you’re really funny!”

  I scolded them both.

  Hasan said, “Don’t worry, we’ll manage.”

  I said, “Hasan knows how to prepare a quick meal for you. If you could, Hasan, or you could buy them something to eat. Sadiq is responsible for straightening the house and Abed will wash the dishes.”

  “Every day?”

  “Yes, every day! Because Sadiq will straighten the house every day and Hasan will take care of the food every day!”

  Abed said, “And the wash?”

  “Bring it on the weekend and I’ll do the washing and ironing.”

  “Why aren’t you giving Papa any job? That’s discrimination.”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself. Your father works in the hospital from daybreak until night.”

  Abed went back to his grumbling. “We’ll die of hunger. We’ll live for two weeks on macaroni and rice and eggs and fried tomatoes? Hasan doesn’t know anything else.”

  “Enough, Abed, you’re fifteen years old. You are to cease all this childish nagging and listen to Sadiq and Hasan.”

  “On top of everything!”

  “And if I hear that you quarreled with either of them I’ll stop speaking to you!”

  “As if I were Israel!”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “Okay, but I have a condition… ,” he corrected himself, “Two conditions: When we come to Sidon on the weekend you’ll make me maqlouba once and musakhan once and kubbeh bi-laban once.”

  “Agreed. And the other condition?”

  “You’ll make us thyme tarts and spinach tarts and kubbeh to bring back with us when we return to Beirut.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Every week.”

  I laughed, and so did Sadiq and Hasan. Abed looked at his brothers and said, smiling proudly, “Learn the art of negotiation. I’ve secured tarts and kubbeh for you that will help us on the days of famine and culinary catastrophe produced by Chef Hasan!”

  19

  1975

  Amin and the boys were not able to come to Sidon the next weekend nor the following one. The roads were blocked between Beirut and Sidon. Automobile traffic stopped, and strikes, demonstrations, and fires spread through the streets of Beirut, Tripoli, Tyre, and other cities. In Sidon dozens fell in clashes between the civilians and the army. The battles continued for five days and stopped only after the withdrawal of the army from the city—a short truce that allowed the civilians to bury their martyrs, count their wounded, inspect the damage to their houses, and gather the information coming from the hospital in Beirut.

  The previous Wednesday had seemed like an ordinary day, cloudy and laden with rain. In Sidon there was a demonstration; nothing new. The people of Sidon often demonstrated to express their opinions.

  The populist political leader Maarouf Saad was at the head of the demonstration, as usual, with Dr. Nazih Bizri, Sidon’s representative in Parliament. It was a demonstration for needy fishermen against the government, which had granted a monopoly on fishing for ninety days at the height of the fishing season to a private company belonging to powerful men and headed by Camille Chamoun, the previous president of the republic. Rain was pouring down, and the demonstrators were few. Then a single bullet flew, seeking Saad. He was hit. They took him to the hospital of Dr. Labib Abu Zahr, and in the afternoon transferred him to Beirut. It was said he had suffered bleeding and a sharp drop in blood pressure.

  Sidon ignited, Lebanon blazed.

  My aunt stayed long at her prayers because she was beseeching God to heal Maarouf and return him to his home and family safe and sound. “O Omnipotent, O Generous, O Kind, O Merciful, O Compassionate.” I was overcome by silence, silence steeped in clear, heavy fear; and my talkative uncle was suddenly silent, like me. He stayed in bed and kept his eyes shut, so we didn’t know if he was awake or asleep. My aunt would call to him, “Are you awake, Abu Amin?” and he would answer her with a sigh, without opening his eyes.

  On Thursday, March 6, nine days after being struck, Maarouf became a martyr.

  The news spread before it was broadcast officially. It was said that the government was waiting for his body to be taken to Sidon before announcing the news, but it reached people in the south and they marched toward Beirut. They met the body halfway and continued on behind it, returning to Sidon, where the funeral was held the next day in the Great Mosque of Umar.

  I went to the funeral. I hadn’t advanced a single step into the house on my return or even closed the door behind me when I heard my uncle calling me: “Come here, Ruqayya.”

  “I’m coming, Uncle.”

  “How was the funeral?”

  “All of Sidon was there. The leaders of the National Movement came from Beirut, and thousands of civilians and delegations from the south and the Beqaa and Jebel al-Shouf and Beirut and Tripoli. They carried his bier in a fishing boat; the fishermen carried a boat draped in black and filled with flowers. The young men carried pictures of him and signs saying “Hero of the Battle of al-Malikiya” and “Martyred for the Poor” and slogans of the Lebanese National Forces, of the Palestinian resistance groups, and of the delegations that
came from the Arab states. The men were crying and shouting, and the women were crying and trilling and scattering rose petals and basil leaves and orange blossom water.”

  My uncle suddenly sighed, and said, “Our hope lies in the youth. I’m going to sleep.”

  I called Beirut, and found only Hasan at home. He said that the funeral in Beirut was very large. They carried a symbolic bier from the Mosque of Umar to the Martyrs’ Cemetery, and there were processions and parades and symbolic funerals in many various places.

  “Was there gunfire?”

  “Gunfire and anthems and loudspeakers broadcasting stirring words and speeches.”

  “When your father and Sadiq and Abed get back call me, even if it’s late. I won’t be asleep.”

  From that Friday to the next my uncle Abu Amin kept silent. My aunt said that maybe he had lost the ability to speak. She would sit next to him on the bed, talking to him and asking him questions, and he would not answer. When she insisted he would reply by a terse expression, and then close his eyes and turn his back to her as if he was going to sleep. But when Amin and the boys came on the next Friday night he greeted them and told them that he wanted to talk to them. He said, “Tomorrow, if we live.”

  In the morning my uncle asked me to help him change his clothes. I took him a basin of warm water, soap, a small jug, and a towel, and I helped him wash and change his clothes. He had breakfast and then asked that I make him a cup of coffee. He drank it and said, “Call the boys.”