Gate of the Sun (52 page)

Many years later, she'd tell me that this adventure had taught her to see.

“You know, Son, it was there that I saw. Before I hadn't seen, and after I left the village I didn't see again.”

“And what did you see, Grandma?”

“I saw everything there. It's difficult to explain, my boy. With one look I saw all the houses and all the trees, as though my eyes had pierced the walls and could see everything.”

On her journey to al-Ghabsiyyeh, Shahineh walked bent over. She bent over to avoid the branches of the olive trees, she bent over because of the night, she bent over out of fear, she bent over for water from the Bubbler, and she bent over for the lotus tree. When she passed the mosque, however, she suddenly straightened up. She held her head high and walked calmly into the village as though she'd never left it. Her frightened panting subsided, and she saw everything. She saw the houses and the trees and the orchards, and she heard the voices of the people and the cries of the children. The woman walked calmly toward her house. The door was open.
She ran into the room, opened the chest, and reached in. There she found her money and her jewelry – her gold signet ring, her twisted bracelets, and her necklace of pearls. She put everything inside the front of her dress and decided to go back. No. She was famished. She took the crust of bread out of the front of her dress and started to gnaw on it. Then she hurried to the kitchen, found the bread in its place, looked around for the molasses, mixed it with tahini and stood in the kitchen eating. She ate three pieces of bread with tahini, and then made some tea. She sat and drank and began to feel sleepy. Overcome by drowsiness, she stood up heavily and found herself stretched out on the bed slipping into unconsciousness. She slept like someone who doesn't know she's asleep – that's how she'd describe it later. She didn't shut the door and she didn't take off her clothes. She lay down as she was, her hands sticky with molasses, and drowsiness overcame her. When she awoke, darkness had started to steal into the house. She opened her eyes and was completely disoriented.

“I was lost, I didn't know where I was.”

For a moment, she didn't dare move. She opened her eyes and went rigid.

“I slept on the only bed we owned. My husband, God rest his soul, bought a brass bed unlike any in the whole village. I didn't sleep on it after he died, because, in our day, the bed was for the man. He'd sleep on the bed, and I'd sleep on a mattress on the floor. Then he started asking me to sleep in the bed next to him. He said it was because he loved me. In our day, Son, no one used that word. A husband loved his wife, but he wouldn't tell her. But your grandfather Khalil, he made me sleep up there.”

That day Shahineh slept on the brass bed. “I hadn't slept in the bed since his death. It was his bed. I used to make it every day and wash the sheets once a week, but I never slept in it. That day, though, when my eyes grew heavy with sleep, I threw myself down on it and slept. You can imagine what it was like when I woke up and saw darkness everywhere. For an instant I didn't know where I was; it was as though my husband had never died, the village hadn't fallen, and the children weren't waiting in a field in Deir
al-Qasi. I forgot everything and found myself at home. When I remembered where I was and where I'd come from, I was struck by fear and started shivering. I jumped off the bed, patted my chest, found the jewellery in its place and thought I'd better go back.”

Shahineh said she regretted one thing. “I'm sorry I didn't make the bed. In my fear and haste, it was like I didn't care. I know my husband was angry with me: I dreamt of him, Son. We were here in the camp, and he came to me in a dream and said, ‘Even so, Shahineh, is that any way to leave my bed? Where am I going to rest now?' I went to the Green Sheikh, God set him straight, and told him about my dream, and he reassured me and said the dead don't return to their houses, and that my husband was a martyr, and the martyrs are in Heaven, and he asked me to come and visit him from time to time. I didn't visit him, though. I'd seen that look in his eye; praise God, I didn't visit him even once. He looked me up and down and licked his lips, saying, ‘The martyrs are in Heaven, where there's ease, and houris. Your husband, Shahineh, is enjoying his fill of the houris now.' As he said
houris
, he licked his lips as though he were, God forbid . . . ! Is that how to behave with martyrs' widows? I mean, who did that old lecher think he was? No, dear God, I spit on his beard and the beards of all like him. He picks up the Book of God and then looks with that lustful look?”

Shahineh said she came to her senses and started to shiver.

“I got up, drank some water, and left.”

She said the village was empty – no one. Not a sound, nothing. Only the wind whispering to the branches of the trees and the sound of her footsteps.

In front of the mosque, she heard someone quietly clearing his throat. She threw herself on the ground, and saw the man coming.

“Who's there?” whispered the man.

Shahineh couldn't find her voice to reply. She tried to make herself as small as she could. The White Sheikh was coming toward her, carrying what looked like a rifle in his hand.

Shahineh said she closed her eyes and started reciting the Throne Verse in her heart to conjure away the Evil One when a stick tapped her and she heard her name.

“Get up, Shahineh my daughter. What are you doing here?”

She opened her eyes and screamed, “I seek refuge with God against Satan – I beg you, please not me! Don't take me, Aziz! Please, I have children.”

He held out his stick as though he wanted her to take hold of it to raise herself up.

“What's the matter, Daughter? I'm Uncle Aziz Ayyoub.”

“But you're dead, Uncle. Leave me alone. I have children.”

“Me, dead! Have you gone crazy? Did you ever hear of a dead man talking? Here I am in front of you. Get up.”

“I beheld my uncle, Sheikh Aziz Ayyoub, and discovered that Yasin had lied to me. Aziz Ayyoub hadn't died; there he was, taking me inside the mosque, lighting a fire, giving me tea, and asking after my children. But you know, Son, not one person believed me. They said I'd seen a ghost. Even his daughter, Safiyyeh, laughed at me and said that he was dead and gone, but I'm sure. I saw him, and he gave me tea and said he couldn't leave the village because he had to guard the mosque and the tree.”

Nobody believed her, Father. Even I didn't believe her, and, finally, she started to doubt herself. Poor grandmother. She died before Umm Hassan returned from her journey over there and confirmed the man wasn't a ghost, and that he died in a strange way.

Aziz Ayyoub told Shahineh they'd been guarding the tree for five generations and they couldn't abandon it. “I asked my wife to stay on here, but she refused because she was afraid of the Jews. ‘What can the Jews do?' I asked her. ‘The worst has already happened.' And she said, ‘I'm afraid of Deir Yasin.'”
^*

Sheikh Aziz said he wasn't afraid. “I'm the fifth generation and I won't leave the lotus tree. Who will look after the holy saints? Who will pray in the mosque? Who will wash the graves?”

Shahineh listened to what the man said as though she were in a dream,
and in dreams words have no meaning. “He asked me to tell his wife he was still alive. I didn't ask him anything. It was very strange – whenever I was about to ask him something, I'd hear the answer before I could ask. Merciful and Compassionate God, it was as though he could read my heart. He said the Jews came from time to time. A patrol of three armed soldiers would come, roam around the village, then go into the houses and loot the gold. ‘You found your gold by God's will, my daughter, but the gold's disappeared. They think I'm insane. When they see me, they run away, so I climb the minaret and say the call to prayer; the call frightens them and protects me. Off with you now, Daughter. Go to your children.'”

My grandmother said the journey back to the fields of Deir al-Qasi was as quick as a flash. “I ran the whole way. I ran, without looking back once. I felt there was someone running behind me. I couldn't hear a thing, as though my ears had been blocked by the wind. I ran and the wind carried me until I arrived. I arrived at our camp and saw my four children sitting there, waiting for me. I arrived and threw myself among them. I took them into the tent and told them to sleep. They leaned close to one another in silence. It was then that I smelled myself. It was sweat; it had stained my clothes, and the smell of it spread inside the tent. I was embarrassed and asked Munirah to get up and help me wash. That day I divided the wealth between the two of us. I put ten lira into the front of my dress and ten into the front of hers. I took the signet ring and the pearl necklace and gave her the twisted bracelets. With this money we were able to live for a whole year in Qana before my girls had to go and work in the stone quarries.”

You don't know Aziz Ayyoub, Father, you never told me anything about him or about the life he led alone in our village. Didn't you visit al-Ghabsiyyeh? Didn't you hear the story of the holy saint who was killed? If it weren't for Umm Hassan, I'd have known nothing. You ought to have heard her telling me. How wonderful Umm Hassan was – I wish she'd been my mother! At least I'd sleep comfortably. Did you know I'm afraid of sleeping? I told you, I'm scared of sleeping and waking up to find myself in a strange land whose language I can't speak. I'm scared I won't wake up. I'm
scared I won't find my house or I won't find you or I won't find the hospital or I don't know what.

With Umm Hassan I would have slept. My grandmother used to scare me at night. I'd hear the sound of her footsteps in the house as though she couldn't sleep and couldn't let me sleep. She'd walk and walk, then come to my bed and ask me if I was asleep. I'd awaken with a jolt to find her at my side saying she'd remembered something, and she'd start to repeat her tedious stories about Yasin, of his life and of his death, on and on.

With Umm Hassan, sleep comes to you. With her you feel the world is stable, not about to be dislodged. Oh, where are you now, Umm Hassan? And where's the nursing certificate you kept from the days of the British Mandate? Umm Hassan told me about my grandfather's uncle, Aziz Ayyoub. She said he'd become a saint and that people made oaths in his name and that he could cure illnesses. She said that during her visit to her brother in al-Jdeideh, she'd remembered her promise to my grandmother to visit al-Ghabsiyyeh and light a candle under the lotus tree.

Have you seen the lotus tree, Father?

Have you tasted its fruit?

Umm Hassan said its fruit was called
doum
and were like medlars, or even more delicious than medlars.

Umm Hassan told the people in Jdeideh that she had to go al-Ghabsiyyeh to fulfill her vow under the lotus tree, and she went on her own because her brother was afraid to go with her. He told her that since the Ayyoub incident and the building of his tomb there, the Israelis had started to clamp down and stop people from visiting the village. Al-Ghabsiyyeh was a military area, and if anyone was found there they were taken to prison and had to pay a huge fine.

Her brother took her to the village of al-Nahar and showed her the way. She said that when she reached the tree, she made a prostration. She saw melted candles and ribbons hung over the delicate small leaves, which covered the branches. She made a prostration there and then entered the mosque, where she knelt in a corner and prayed.

When she returned, she told me about Ayyoub.

She said the people in al-Jdeideh talked about him. They told her about a white man with a white beard and white clothes who guarded a tree and talked to its branches. People would come from the surrounding villages to fulfill their vows to the tree and see the man. Umm Hassan told them it was Aziz. “It's Aziz,” she'd say. “No. His name's Ayyoub,” they'd say.

Umm Hassan said Aziz cleaned the mosque every day. The Israeli settlement that had been built on the edge of al-Ghabsiyyeh used the mosque as a cow pen. Ayyoub would get up every day and start cleaning the mosque first thing, picking up the dung with his hands and throwing it into the fields. Then he'd sprinkle water and pray.

Umm Hassan said that at first the people thought he was Jewish, for he resembled the Iraqi Jews who were common in the area and had set up the settlement of Netiv ha-Shayyara. They thought he was the guard for the cow pen. Then they discovered the truth because whenever more than three women gathered around the lotus tree, he'd climb the minaret and give the call to prayer. Many, both men and women, had attempted to talk to him, but he wouldn't speak. He seemed to be from another world, a spirit, with his eyes sunken in his oval face and his shoulders that drooped as though his body were no longer capable of holding them up.

“That's Aziz Ayyoub,” said Umm Hassan, and she told them his wife and children lived in the Burj al-Shamali camp near Tyre, and that she'd seen his son, who'd grown into a fine man and worked as a broker for the lemon growers in Tyre.

The people of al-Jdeideh couldn't believe that their Ayyoub was this Aziz Ayyoub.

Their Ayyoub was a phantom; our Aziz was a man.

Their Ayyoub was a saint; our Aziz died when the young Yasin left him and fled into the valley.