Qissat Read online

  ***

  Baba takes me, that last afternoon on the bank, to the cemetery plot. Sido’s grave has a wooden plank with his name and a sura carved onto it. It is the opposite of Yia Yia’s grave. It has a Muslim Man in it, instead of a Christian Woman. I stand with my hands folded over my chest and recite the fateha, wondering if my Baba’s baba is comfortable under all that dirt. I then recite, in my head, all the verses I’ve learned, like a show-off, because I want Sido to know I’m good, so he won’t worry about me. We take a short walk past the cemetery and the shrub-dotted land to a tiny house on a hill. Baba opens its gates and shows me the big room inside.

  ‘This is where I grew up,’ he says. ‘Here, with my sisters. And whenever a brother would die, since three of them did, they buried them in that lot over there.’

  ‘Where we just were,’ I gasp, scared by the thought that Baba’s little brothers are buried already. Where would Gamal be buried? Would we all be buried separately, far away from each other the way Mama and Baba’s families are?

  ‘And we went to the bathroom outside.’ He looks around at the room and bites his inner cheeks. He doesn’t look sad. Mama says Baba is the kind of man that is happy being sad. Maybe she’s right. I look around the room and try to picture nine bodies sleeping on the wooden floor, six girls with all their girl problems.

  ‘All my sisters,’ Baba says, ‘got married before they were fifteen. No, I’m lying; Kameela was seventeen. They got married against that whitewashed wall outside … like prisoners awaiting execution.’ Baba stops and exhales wearily. ‘The minister came and married them to their husbands, who were usually ten years older, twenty times uglier, and a ton less sad about the entire deal.’ The wall is the one on the east end of the old house, the end facing the valley. I scan the scratched-up floors, touch the worn door handles, and try to imagine Baba as a child.

  ‘I walked to school, or rode the ass. I carried my book in a length of rope over my shoulder.’

  ‘Did you miss it here when you had to go to Egypt?’

  ‘I’m glad you mention that, my girl. I was sad, but going to Egypt, going to university, gave me my freedom. Your aunts never received such an opportunity. I want more than anything in the world for you to have that opportunity.’

  I stare at the hills outside.

  ‘Do you understand this?’ he asks me, his voice filled with urgency, and I nod.

  ‘It’s hard to explain this to you,’ Baba says, leading me outside. ‘Although I lost my home, I gained an education, which later became my home. This can also happen for you,’ he pauses, mines his mind for better words. ‘War is terrible. Terrible! But good things can come of it too.’

  He wants to take a picture of me: he tells me to lean and rest my back against the once-famous, now-dirty white ‘wedding’ wall. I stick my chin out and smile, my hands like soldiers at my sides. The flash makes me see stars. When I look at this picture closely now, I see that there is a ladder at the left-hand side of it, propped up against the yellowed wall. Baba had left me an escape route.

  HUZAMA HABAYEB

  A Thread Snaps

  There are the same number of plastic slippers as usual – no more, no less. Nuwwar won’t collect them now. After the water has reached the narrow drain at the doorstep she’ll pick them up, along with the sandals with a broken buckle. Her back is about to part company with her bottom. If only the broom were a bit bigger, she wouldn’t be forced to bend over so far. But the broom grows skinnier day by day, just like her. Its coarse hair falls out each time it sweeps the wet floor. Nuwwar’s back is on the point of parting company with her bottom on a daily basis, but when she’s finished sweeping it remains straight and upright and firmly attached to her skinny buttocks.

  The water loiters at the doorstep now, cooling its steamy breath. Nuwwar straightens up slightly, so that the blood drains out of her lean cheeks into the rest of her body. The water rises and falls. Nuwwar’s chest rises, and with it the plastic slippers. Her chest falls, and with it the sandals. Broken bristles bob playfully around the opening of the narrow drain. The water lies above the drain, which is partly choked, rising and falling. The volume of water increases, rising and falling more, and the drain doesn’t drain it away! Nuwwar hurries to open the door and the water races over the doorstep onto the raised porch, then out into the street, but the slippers stay behind. Nuwwar picks them up two by two, slapping them together so that the fine spray bathes her face, or wiping their soles on the side of her dress, which is tucked into her long trousers, then putting them all with the sandals into the crate and lifting it out onto the right-hand side of the porch, the side that gets the sun, so they’ll dry quickly. They’ll go a bit hard and crinkled, but as soon as they’re worn again they’ll soften up. Now she reaches her hand into the narrow drain which opens out in the porch, scooping up grit and sand and bent and twisted bristles. She reaches in further – a green bean pod, stringy heads of okra, clumps of hair. The sluggish film of water trapped behind the doorstep begins to dwindle as the drain carries it slowly out into the porch. Nuwwar bends lower over the porch, watching as the water gushes out of the drain towards her feet. Her toenails are getting more brittle. They aren’t long like Umm Shihab the matchmaker’s, but Umm Shihab doesn’t clean floors, so her nails grow and she paints them.

  The murky water extends slowly over the porch, with broken bristles floating in it. Nuwwar’s body bends sulkily over the stunted broom, her head almost touching the ground, and she sweeps: swish, to the right; swish, to the left; swish, in front; swish, further in front. Swish, swish, swish. With her uneven nails she scrapes at a squashed piece of chewing gum.

  ‘God give you strength.’

  ‘The same to you.’

  But Nuwwar doesn’t look up. Head down, she continues sweeping. Even Rasmiyya keeps walking without turning around, hitching up her long dress well clear of her ankle with one hand, while with the other she tries to steady the tray of roast chickens on her head so that it doesn’t slip off the square of cloth placed under it. The smell of chicken is delicious. Every Thursday Rasmiyya’s household roasts a tray of chickens or spleen at the baker’s. Nuwwar’s family have their own oven, on the roof, in the laundry room itself, and Nuwwar is the one who roasts the chickens, but often her mind wanders, she forgets them and they are burnt to a crisp! The squashed chewing gum resists her, so she leaves it.

  There’s a lot of water on the porch now. She rolls her trousers up to her knees. Her legs remind her of her last geography lesson, two years ago – savannah grass – it’s meant to grow in the tropics, but she noticed afterwards that it grows on her legs too!

  She scrubs, and the chewing gum doesn’t dissolve.

  ‘Wipe me!’

  ‘Bring some paper.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘There’s a newspaper on top of the radio.’

  He bends over, raising his bottom up towards her face, and she wipes between his two small buttocks with a crumpled scrap of newspaper.

  ‘Didn’t you clean it with water?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘I did it very well. I swear! The spout of the plastic jug even went up inside when I was trying to pour out the water. It really hurt!’

  ‘You’re six years old, and you still don’t know how to clean yourself!’

  ‘But it hurts.’

  ‘Fine. Put your pants on.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Go indoors then.’

  ‘I want to stay on the porch without pants.’

  ‘It’s rude. We’re in the street, and there are people going past.’

  ‘I like the feel of the cool air on me. It tickles.’

  She likes to try and spend a long time in the bathroom too: the door’s locked and there’s nobody chasing after her with a stick. ‘Upset stomach’, she says, if someone bangs on the door. She lets her bare thighs squash against her stomach and breasts, and flattens her bottom un
til her buttocks nearly break loose, and the scraps of cool air coming in under the door make them feel sticky. She closes her eyes and imagines that her smooth behind is salep cream stretched tight, with drops of water falling on it, cool and slow. When she cleans herself, she deliberately lets the spout of the plastic jug tickle her between the thighs, especially the two fleshy bits protruding opposite each other like a black woman’s lips, and a strange drowsiness creeps through her limbs, a drowsiness she’s only noticed recently. Nuwwar doesn’t understand it, this feeling, but it’s a short thread beginning far away, from deep down somewhere, and twisting rapidly into shape. Sometimes the thread begins when she catches sight of Ibrahim in the distance. She knows he is going to pass by their porch. She is bent over the broom, the water swirling around her feet. She straightens up quickly, rolls her trousers even higher, stuffing her dress down inside them, pushes her sleeves above her elbows, and pulls back her headscarf so that a few brown curls escape onto her broad forehead. Ibrahim is coming closer. And the thread is spinning from far away. And the drowsiness increases. She hides her hands behind her back, as they’re a bit rough, the nails almost non-existent. If only she could paint them so they’d be like Umm Shihab’s! Umm Shihab’s are hard, long, and painted bright red. Umm Shihab visits them constantly. She brings up the subject of Ibrahim with her mother. She says Ibrahim’s mother is looking for a wife for her son. A strong wife, fair-skinned, tall and from a decent family. She must be strong, a good housewife and nice-looking, as Ibrahim – God bless him! – is a strong construction worker, his powerful chest muscles clearly accentuated by his tight-fitting cotton shirt when he heaves a sack of cement onto his shoulder.

  Ibrahim is getting closer, and the feeling of drowsiness increases rapidly.

  ‘God give you strength, Nuwwar.’

  ‘And you, Ibrahim!’

  ‘God give you nothing, girl!’ shouts her mother from inside the house.

  The broom starts out of Nuwwar’s hands, the thread snaps, and the drowsy sensation plummets into the dirty water at her feet.

  ‘What are you doing out there?’

  Nuwwar bends over the broom again and sweeps. Swish – swish – swish. Ibrahim is walking away. She sweeps faster. Swish, swish, swish, swish.

  ‘Washing the porch.’

  ‘Does it take you all that time to wash the porch? Are you planning to finish today? To hell with you, you useless girl!’

  ‘I’m going up on the roof now.’

  Nuwwar climbs up to the roof terrace, but before she goes she makes sure she buries one of the newly washed slippers in the muddy earth beside the porch. There’s a flight of steps twisting up from one side of the yard onto the roof, and from the roof the whole valley is visible. The jumbled throng of colours is at its most striking at this hour of the day, exactly between daybreak and noon. The neighbouring rooftops outstrip theirs in the broad panorama of the lives spilling out from them. The women’s heads bob up and down untiringly. In every direction the air is thick with the smell of bread. Orange and beige rugs are spread out on the walls, jostled by grey blankets shaking off last night’s damp. Yellow pee stains flutter in and out of sight on the bedding hung to air on washing-lines. Nuwwar goes into the laundry room, confident in the knowledge that she’s alone. She takes off her wide trousers and bundles her dress into her knickers. She smiles, seeing herself with a triangular stomach and distended bottom like her cousin. Her cousin is pregnant, and her stomach tapers to a point. Nuwwar feels her own stomach, but it’s soft. A cottonwool stomach, not hard and protruding like her cousin’s. With her foot she pokes the bundle of underpants lying in a corner of the room, and keeps prodding at them until they reach the middle of the room, then kicks them hard so that the neat bundle bursts apart like a split football. She feels foolish. That’s a silly way to behave, she thinks. She picks them up again, this time sorting them into pairs, then puts them into the plastic washbowl. She sits on the floor, spreading her legs wide, and turns on the tap fixed low down on the wall, putting the washbowl underneath it and holding it between her legs, her thighs pressing tight against it. Her mother always tells her to be economical with the washing powder. Why should she be? For whose benefit? Who’s going to count how many packets of Surf she uses? She could swallow a whole packet with no questions asked. Her father buys it for only eight piastres a packet, that is four and a half piastres less than it costs in the shops, because he gets it from a friend of his in the army. Everything in the army is cheap. For more than three years now they’ve bought most of their provisions from the army: chickpeas, beans, tins of tomatoes, whole lentils, split lentils, pasta, sesame pastries, perfumed soap, tins of sardines, matches, army biscuits (even though they taste disgusting).

  ‘Oh, the naughty boy! It’s useless.’

  Nuwwar rubs at the dried shit on the small underpants. He’ll never learn to clean himself. He doesn’t even want to learn! She scrubs the pants. The white foam gradually billows upwards, rising above the surface of the water and overflowing onto her thighs. Transparent, purple-looking hemispheres rise up like dough and fall away again almost at once, to slither down either side of her thighs in a thin trickle of water which comes to a halt at the edge of her underpants, or maybe sneaks beneath them and goes inside. Her eyelids droop: a flash of coolness, then a prolonged sensation of warmth, and at last the shit breaks up.

  Her father’s pants are large. Their elastic is loose, and the opening at the front enormous. She puts her hand in it. Should it be that big? She scrubs. Underpants. Three. Four. Five. Six. Nine. All with big openings. Her own pants don’t come clean easily. The milky mucus remains stuck on them for a while, until soap and water and scrubbing finally shift it. They reach her waist, covering her navel. Umm Shihab buys frilly ones embroidered with little hearts for her newly wed daughter, hardly big enough to cover a clenched fist.

  Her mother’s shrill voice urges her on again: her father’s on his way. Nuwwar hurriedly wrings out the pants and hangs them on a small washing-line. The smell of garlic being fried with basil reaches her from below. Her heart races. In half an hour’s time Ibrahim will walk past on his way back home from the building site to have a bite to eat and a couple of hours’ rest before returning to his work once more. The lad’s a hard worker and – a man! The thread begins from far away. Nuwwar feels it taking shape. It grows longer, but comes from far away, very far. Her mother calls her: ‘The jug, Nuwwar! Your father’s home!’

  She’s got half an hour then. Nuwwar rapidly empties out the washing water onto the cement floor of the roof terrace. She descends the steps, carrying the washbowl. Minutes pass. She goes to the bathroom. She holds the jug under the tap and waits. The tap is choked and the water comes out haltingly, and Nuwwar waits. And the minutes pass.

  The jug is filled. Nuwwar squats at her father’s feet.

  ‘God give you strength, Dad.’

  ‘And you, Nuwwar.’

  She turns up his trousers and places his feet in the bowl, then pours water over them. She massages his toes, washes between them, scrubs his heels and ankles. And the minutes pass. Ibrahim is at the head of the valley now. Soon he’ll be coming towards the porch. The drowsiness is beginning. She has to be there, waiting for him.

  Her father feels her hands relax.

  ‘Rub harder, Nuwwar.’

  ‘Okay, Dad!’

  ‘More. Press harder.’

  ‘Okay, Dad, okay.’

  She rubs hard. She presses, hard, her whole body hunched over her father’s feet. The water comes wanly out of the spout, and Ibrahim is getting nearer, and the thread is getting nearer, becoming clearer, longer. She wants to take hold of it, but the water is thin and sluggish. Suddenly she puts the jug down on the floor. She stands up and makes for the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I left a slipper on the porch. I’m going to fetch it. I’ll be back in a second.’

  ‘Not now. You can do it later.’

  ‘But I’m afraid it’ll
get lost, or someone’ll steal it.’

  ‘Who’d want to steal a single slipper? Don’t be silly.’

  ‘But, Dad, I …’

  ‘I said later. That’s enough!’

  ‘Okay, Dad.’

  She picks up the jug again, clasping it to her stomach, burying its spout in her navel, then it slides gradually down below her stomach. She inserts it slowly. Her eyelids droop. Then the thread snaps and the drowsiness thuds into the washbowl. The minutes are over. Ibrahim is going past the porch and walking away.

  She’s not there waiting for him, and he’s not meeting her.

  ‘That’s enough, girl! What’s wrong with you, standing there like a dummy?’

  ‘Okay, Dad.’

  Nuwwar bends over his feet and rubs hard and presses, hard, all her limbs arching over his toes.

  ‘Rub harder, Nuwwar.’

  ‘Okay, Dad.’

  ‘Harder, girl.’

  ‘Okay, Dad. Okay. Okay.’

  Translated by Catherine Cobham

  LIANA BADR

  Other Cities

  The children kept begging, ‘Please, Mama! Take us to Ramallah.’

  Even her eldest daughter, Manal, who pretended not to care, stopped what she was doing to glance at her mother hopefully. Chewing thoughtfully on a piece of Arabic gum, Umm Hasan finished nursing the baby, the youngest of her six children, then drew back the curtain from the small window looking into the cramped neighbourhood. This time she didn’t scold them, as she had many times before. Instead she brushed aside their pleas good-naturedly, saying, ‘Later. You know what the situation is like these days. Later!’

  Little by little, the idea had begun to take hold in her mind. To actually go to Ramallah. To thumb her nose at Israel, and go – whether her husband, Abu Hasan, liked it or not.