I think about the pros and cons of the curfew. On the one hand, there’s the boredom. Always the boredom of being stuck at home. Home means chores and dealing with Mama and Baba’s boredom. ‘Clean your room. Help me rearrange the kitchen cupboards. Do your homework. Go inside and study. Stop fighting with Jihan and Tariq. Would you peel the potatoes, please, ya Hayaat? No? Did you say no? Peel them now!’
Then there’s the important matter of meeting Samy’s latest dare to stick a potato in the exhaust of Ostaz Hany’s car. Not one of the peeled potatoes. Any potato will do.
Maybe this seems obnoxious and cruel but Ostaz Hany picks his nose and teaches us Mathematics so it’s not such a bad thing to have a potato in the exhaust of his car.
On the other hand, I’ll have a break from school, and this is also not such a bad thing. ‘I won’t see Khader for a while then,’ I whisper to myself.
‘Who is Khader?’ Mama asks.
Tariq runs into the kitchen and grins up at me. ‘Khader is a pig. He is the poo of a pig. He is the insect that feeds on the poo of a pig.’
I smile at him. His moral support is endearing.
‘Don’t use such language, boy!’ Mama yells.
‘But he calls her potato mash face! He is poo.’
Mama hits Tariq on the nape of his neck. ‘Enough! Where did you come up with such filthy language?’
‘Yesterday you told Khalto Samar that the bathroom smells like poo because—’
‘Enough!’ Mama fixes him with her death stare and he walks out of the kitchen, a puzzled look on his face.
‘Oh God!’ Sitti Zeynab cries from the lounge room. ‘How can Hayaat learn when there is so much disruption?’ For such an old woman I marvel at her hearing sometimes.
‘Yaama, don’t make it worse.’ Mama rolls her eyes and lights a cigarette. She slumps down onto a kitchen chair, stretches out her legs and inhales, closing her eyes and throwing her head back. ‘These wretched curfews,’ she mutters to the ceiling. ‘Being trapped with family for longer than is humanly possible. I will be stuck with your whinging father, my annoying mother, a crying baby, an energetic son and a lovesick, dieting daughter. God only knows how long they will decide to keep it going this time.’
‘Baba isn’t a whinger, Yaama.’
Mama looks closely at me. ‘Do you know what he did this morning, Hayaat? I was simply trying to explain to him that there is an efficient way to extract toothpaste from a tube and he sighed and walked away! “I am not having a conversation about toothpaste,” he muttered! Ah! But he didn’t understand that it was a conversation about toothpaste being squirted out of a tube and splashed down onto a basin I will inevitably have to clean!’
I switch off. I’m used to Mama’s rambling complaints about my father. When Mama’s tirade against Baba has finished, she turns to me and says: ‘Habibti, you are my precious one. May God find you a good boy one day who will ignore your scars and love you for who you are on the inside.’
Mama sucks on her cigarette and smiles affectionately at me, then walks into the lounge room to join Sitti Zeynab.
I make Sitti Zeynab a cup of tea and take it to her.
‘God reward you and heal your face,’ she says.
I grit my teeth and plonk myself down into a chair. Although the curfew is only hours old, I’m already bored – and if I hear one more reference to my face, I’ll scream.
Jihan soon wakes and stumbles into the lounge room, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she surveys the room.
‘Mama, Ahmad called last night. He’s found a reception in Ramallah. But he wants me to approve it first. Can I go?’
‘Baba and I will come too.’
‘Mama!’
‘Do you think you’ll go alone?’ Mama snaps. ‘Just because you have katb al kitaab doesn’t mean you’re married in the eyes of the community! That day has not yet come. Huh! And what if they block the roads and you’re stuck in Ramallah? Or what if you’re delayed at Qalandiya checkpoint or not allowed through? Think, ya Jihan, before you speak and maybe I won’t need to smoke so many cigarettes!’
‘It’s not fair!’ Jihan screeches, dramatically sinking into a chair. ‘From the moment he proposed it’s been like this. Citizenship application? Rejected. Where to live? Where to work? Which road to take? Blue pass road or West Bank pass road? I will grow a head of grey hair by the time I’m married.’
The problem is that Ahmad is an Israeli Arab from Lod. He lives and works there. But Jihan, a West Banker, can’t obtain Israeli citizenship. So they’ve decided that as Lod is closer to Ramallah than to Bethlehem, they’ll live in Ramallah so that Ahmad can keep his job. The wedding will also be in Ramallah as it’s impossible for Jihan to obtain the permit to enter Lod even if it’s only for her wedding.
Before Ahmad arrived on the scene, Mama and Baba brought several Bethlehem suitors to Jihan, but she rolled her eyes over each one. This one’s moustache was too thick. That one’s jawline was too weak. Each suitor had a problem: ‘Only speaks of politics.’ So Mama and Baba brought one who didn’t. ‘Only speaks of body-building.’ The complaints went on: ‘This one doesn’t know who Amr Diab is!’ ‘That one thinks Sitti Zeynab is charming!’
Mama and Baba gave up. Then Jihan bumped into Ahmad – literally. Having come to Bethlehem to attend a wedding of a mutual friend, Ahmad accidentally tripped over her on the dance floor. Three hours later Jihan declared to my parents that she had fallen in love. Mama and Baba spent the next days frantically attending to the necessary investigations: Who was his family? Were they decent, reputable people? Did he work? Could he provide for their precious daughter?
Hany Abdullah, the civil engineer, could vouch for the excellent reputation of Ahmad’s family. Amir, the restaurant owner, could attest to Ahmad’s manners and scandal-free past. So the fatiha was read a month later and Jihan has spent every night since admiring the way her ring sparkles under the light bulb above the kitchen stove.
‘Well, will you come with me today to find a new outfit?’ Jihan says. ‘I hate all my clothes. Every single piece!’
‘Our feet can’t even touch the street,’ Mama tells Jihan dryly. ‘So forget leaving the house today.’ Mama turns to Sitti Zeynab and says: ‘Why did she have to fall in love with a man from the outside?’
Sitti Zeynab gives Mama a sober look and nods agreement. ‘A Bethlehem boy would have been so much easier.’
‘I can’t choose who I love!’
‘You could have chosen Soliman!’ Sitti Zeynab says. ‘What was wrong with him? Did you not notice his eyes were like melted chocolate? And he was polite and tall, which a man must be if possible, and most wonderful of all was that he had a job.’
‘Why didn’t you marry him yourself if he was so perfect?’ Jihan snaps.
Sitti Zeynab grins. She’s accustomed to Jihan’s fiery temper. ‘He wouldn’t be able to keep up with me, ya habibti.’
Jihan tries to suppress a giggle.
Mama sighs. ‘Yes, but, habibti, it would have been so much easier if you had fallen in love with somebody from here. You will move to Ramallah. And I will kiss you on your wedding night and never see you again.’
‘Oh Mama, stop being so dramatic. You can always visit me.’
‘Yes, spend hours on the road and battle Qalandiya checkpoint with Mohammed. Qalandiya? Hell on earth! By the time I arrive my nerves will be frazzled, I will enter your home in a bad mood and Ahmad will complain to his mother about his ill-tempered mother-in-law. And then you will be upset with him for talking badly about me. An argument will ensue, as I know you will leap to my defence, and your domestic bliss will be ruined. So, you see, my darling, this whole Ramallah business is just a disaster.’
Jihan covers her face with her hands and groans.
Sitti Zeynab leans forward. ‘Tell her about the pickled cucumbers.’
‘Eh?’
‘The pickled cucumbers!’ Sitti Zeynab says breathlessly, sinking back into her chair.
‘Ohh! Yes. Not t
o mention the problem of how I am to make you my jars of pickled cucumbers! You know how much Ahmad loves them. He told me that he preferred them over his mother’s. Hers are too salty, he said. Did you know he said that?’
‘No, he never mentioned it,’ Jihan says in a bored tone.
‘Well he did. So I can’t even pamper my son-in-law with my excellent pickles.’
‘Simply buy a box of cucumbers and by the time you get through the checkpoints from here to Ramallah they’ll have pickled on their own.’ Jihan looks at me and winks.
‘Hmm, yes, maybe,’ Sitti Zeynab says in a serious tone. ‘But they will probably ruin in a cardboard box.’
Jihan rolls her eyes and then suddenly lets out a wail. ‘I miss him! I want to see him!’
‘Your fiancé must wait,’ Mama says.
‘Waiting will make him desire you more,’ Sitti Zeynab says solemnly.
‘Desire isn’t what is missing in our relationship. We have too much desire! It’s suffocating!’ She throws her hands up in frustration. ‘I want to be able to see him whenever I feel like it. To drink coffee with him in a cafe and have people walk by and envy the way he caresses my hand.’
Mama and Sitti Zeynab let out hoots of laughter. Jihan scowls at them. ‘What’s so funny? My tormented existence is not funny!’
‘Your tormented existence,’ Mama repeats, letting out another shriek of laughter. ‘Oh, what a luxury it is to be young and so indulgent with words!’
‘What would you know about torment, ya Jihan?’ Sitti Zeynab says. ‘Such unbridled self-pity!’
Jihan restrains herself. She turns on her heel and I scurry after her.
‘I would rather the Zionists than that old hag!’ she whispers in my ear.
Chapter TWO
Baba sits in his armchair, his eyes fixed on a piece of paper in his hand. I’m not close enough to see the writing but I don’t have to. I know he’s holding the title deeds to our land. He strokes the edges like a child stroking a kitten.
I want to throw myself onto his lap and beg him to tell me a story. A story that starts with Once Upon A Time. A story he heard his grandfather tell as the men sat winters and winters ago in the front courtyard of their stone house, exhaling rings of argeela smoke like drowsy dragons, swapping folk tales, singing the song of the oud and telling each other about the beat of the daraboka.
When I was little I climbed the olive trees on the land my father owned in Beit Jala, a town minutes away from Bethlehem. Tariq was in Mama’s womb then, and I’m sure he jealously sucked his fingers as he heard me swinging from one tree branch to the next as I ignored Mama’s pleas to climb down and play with dolls or read a book. My grandfather, Abo Hasan, had scolded Baba for the same thing many summers before. And his father, Abo Murad, had pressed the olives and tended the soil many autumns before that. The land was green and fertile, and more than one hundred olive trees stretched their roots down into the soil.
‘They are holy trees,’ Baba used to say. ‘Part of our heritage. They are also mentioned in the Koran. Mary, beloved mother of Jesus, peace be upon him, took refuge under an olive tree when the pangs of her labour were too much to bear.’
‘It was a palm tree, Baba,’ I corrected.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I learned this in school. She shook the leaves of the palm tree in Bethlehem and ate from the dates.’
‘Oh . . . Well, palm trees or olive trees, what’s the difference? The roots of this land are holy. Oh, and Hayaat?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Don’t mention this to your teacher.’
After the harvest, the olives were ground into paste beneath two huge rolling stones. I would watch in amazement as the olives we had picked with our hands were squashed. Then Baba and his workers would spread the pulp on circular straw mats and load the mats into a press that squeezed the paste to produce thick, yellow-green, fragrant oil, which was later collected in big plastic jerrycans. Mama would invite our friends to breakfast to eat zaatar, bread, cheese and hummus. Baba would sit at the head of the table, watching our guests eat, imploring them to dip the bread in oil, to eat more. His face would beam as the corners of the guests’ mouths glistened with the delicious oil.
One day I begged Baba to take me with him in the morning. We drove out to our land while the sun was still sleeping. Baba told me to stop babbling. ‘Wind down your window and just listen,’ he said.
‘But it’s quiet,’ I said, confused.
‘Yes. Listen to the quiet.’
I listened to the quiet and looked out at Jebal Abo Ghnaim, a luscious, thickly forested mountain circled by softly rolling hills and valleys.
‘Who lives there, Baba?’ I asked. I liked to imagine it was full of fairies and tree creatures who had parties during the night and sprinkled magic on the trees on our land.
‘There are many Christian holy sites on the mountain,’ Baba explained. ‘Shepherd’s Fields, St Theodore’s Well, the Byzantine monastery and the Church of Bir Qadisum, where Mary dismounted before giving birth to Jesus. Tell that to your teacher!’
I found this information too boring, preferring instead to imagine my flying fairies.
‘Did you know that the sun asks God for permission to rise and set every day, ya Hayaat?’ Baba asked me as we sat under an olive tree, watching the horizon burst over Jebal Abo Ghnaim in an explosion of red, orange and coral. It warmed me to sit beside Baba and watch God’s permission unfold.
Bulldozers trampled through Jebal Abo Ghnaim soon after that and there were no more sunrises with Baba. My fairies and tree creatures woke after a party of immeasurable pleasures to be good-morninged by the crushing weight of a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, preparing the way for new settlements.
Our land was trampled soon after. The settlers needed exclusive bypass roads to their new compounds.
My memory of Beit Jala is like a patchwork quilt filled with holes. But my memories of Mama there are the brightest and most colourful. I once rose early from bed to find her in her sewing room, bent over layers of material spread out on her lap, her face scrunched up in concentration. She was wearing the same clothes as the day before; her hair, dyed henna red, flowed loosely down her back, the fringe swept back by the glasses perched on her head. I asked her if she had slept that night and she smiled, stretching her arms up to the ceiling, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. ‘I was bored with the curtains in my bedroom. So I have spent the last twelve hours making new ones.’ She never stopped. She made new upholstery for the lounge room, quilts for our beds, shawls for Sitti Zeynab to wear in winter, baby blankets for friends. She rose early with Baba and cooked hot breakfasts of fried beans, eggs, minced meat encircled by creamy hummus, and warm bread drizzled with olive oil and thyme. Baba and Mama would eat and when they were finished Baba would leave for the field. When Jihan, Tariq, Sitti Zeynab and I woke two hours later, another breakfast would be spread on the table and Sitti Zeynab would sit with us, her hawklike gaze daring us not to eat.
In Beit Jala, Mama was filled with a restless energy. She sewed; she potted in her garden beds. She cooked as though each day was Ramadan.
When that old life was gone, crushed under the new settler road, I wondered if Mama would change. We moved to Bethlehem, where Baba hoped he might find work, and Mama cried and cursed and then, one day, stopped. I think she realised that we would never return to Beit Jala and that she was better off putting her energy into bossing us around and running the household as though a reproachful mother-in-law were watching over her.
Baba, on the other hand, changed. I think that his first offspring was his olive grove, because he mourned the loss of it like a parent mourning a child. In Beit Jala, he was loud and jocular. Working on his land made him happy and we felt that happiness when he came home to us in the evening. But in our apartment in Bethlehem, Baba sits in silence, sucking on his argeela or flicking through the news channels.
When we lost our land, he imploded.
There was no screaming,
throwing things or lashing out at us. He simply caved in. We have no way of seeing the evidence of his demolition – the rubble and ruins are inside him. But he no longer talks and laughs and tells stories as he did before.
He continues to wake early, a habit from the days he tended to his farm before sunrise. He eats breakfast with us, but his movements are those of a self-conscious guest because he has never known our habits in the early hours of the morning. And so after breakfast he usually leaves, returning in the late afternoon for the main meal, ghada. He eats quickly and quietly. After that he collects a few pieces of coal from a bag in the laundry room and places them on the stove. Low heat, delicately balanced. He empties the head of the argeela and stuffs it with fresh apple tobacco that smells like lollies. He squashes the tobacco in and then covers it with a small piece of foil. Tariq or I are assigned the task of finding him a toothpick. He then pricks the foil with several openings. Next, he refills the glass container with fresh water. ‘Can’t you do that somewhere else?’ Mama scolds. ‘I’m trying to wash the dishes.’ But every night he repeats the procedure in the kitchen and every night she scolds.
When the coal is grey and alive with heat, he picks it up with his tongs and places it on the foil, pressing down. Our apartment block has a front porch on the ground floor that looks over a small communal garden. Baba carries the argeela to the porch and sits on the green bench, legs extended before him, one foot curled over the other.
He’s a man imploded and there’s nothing we can do to clear the debris inside him.
Mama sent me to follow him one morning. ‘Go alone,’ she said. ‘For it will bring shame to this family if anyone knew I sent you.’
I told Samy anyway.
We followed Baba to Fréres Street, the highest point in Bethlehem. Baba walked slowly but purposefully, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his grey trousers. He led us to Bethlehem University, to an elevated point fenced by railings. I took a sharp breath as I saw the landscape before me: a panoramic view of Jebal Abo Ghnaim, except that it was now covered with settlements.