Miral (18 page)

She did not have long to wait. Blows from a riding crop began raining down on her back, on her legs, on her neck. The pain quickly became unbearable, and Miral could not keep from crying out every time the whip struck her. She could feel her T-shirt ripping, and shortly after that she felt blood running down her back. After a few minutes, she fainted, and when she regained consciousness, her T-shirt and trousers were gone. She felt ashamed and tried to cover herself, but her hands were still tied behind her back. Stunned as she was, she had no idea how much time had passed. Two female soldiers ordered her to kneel on the cold, dirty floor. “You mustn't sit down. If you do, the blonde will come back. She's not finished with you yet,” they told her, laughing. After an hour, Miral could take no more and fainted again. This time she woke up lying in an extremely small room. Behind a grate, the same policeman as before repeated the same questions, over and over, but without success.

“I want to go home. I want to wake up from this nightmare,” she kept telling herself. “I just have to hold out a few hours longer.”

But it wasn't long before a new torturess entered the cell. As the hours passed, the torments became more and more refined. At one point, a hood was put over her head and removed after half an hour. Miral found herself surrounded with blinding light and deafening music interspersed with other detainees' cries of pain. The sound and light prevented Miral from sleeping. To escape mentally from her situation, Miral began envisioning some of her life's happiest moments. She thought about the warm room she'd had as a child, about its bright blue walls, about photographs of her friends, about her sister on the beach where they played games in the water. She couldn't remember when she had hidden Hani's gifts, especially that book,
My Home, My Land
. As she kept searching her mind for a way out, for an escape from that place, she imagined the colors red and yellow, the colors of the big carpet that hung on the wall of her family's living room. “That carpet's much older than you, Miral. It's at least eighty years old,” her father would remind her proudly.

As she was traveling in a dream to escape the physical pain that throbbed in her wounds, a different police officer came by every half hour, shook her, and asked her the same questions. Her answer was always the same, too: she knew nothing. Her collapse began several hours later, when she asked for permission to go to the bathroom and was denied. She could go, they said, if she gave them something, and at that point Miral started crying hysterically, overwhelmed by shame and humiliation at the sight of her wet legs and the puddle of urine under her.

She was unable to calm her anxiety. Weariness hung over her, but she wasn't through yet. She was brought back to the first room. “How disgusting! What a smell!” the officer said. “Do you want to wash up? Do you want your clothes?” When she said yes, he asked, “So will you cooperate, or shall we continue?”

“But I don't know anything!” Miral replied. “You've got the wrong person.” At those words, he struck her violently with the back of his hand, knocking her to the ground. As Miral was trying to get up from the floor, using one hand to wipe away the blood that was flowing from her nose, two female soldiers entered, raised her up, and handed her a wet towel so she could clean her face. Then they roughly helped her into a sweatshirt and a pair of pants.

It was time to go before the judge, as the law regarding minors required.

D
uring those same hours, Jamal was sitting in the waiting room of the police station, asking every ten minutes for news of his daughter, but no one knew anything about her. Miral was in another building, the interrogation center, which stood across the way. The entrance to the station was a long corridor, spartan but fairly accommodating. Jewish music filled the air, perhaps to prevent the most piercing screams from reaching the ears of the detainees' relatives. Jamal waited together with other parents, some of them still in their pajamas, sitting in chairs and trying to console one another. Someone announced that an important person had been arrested carrying compromising documents and trying to get into Jordan. Jamal realized that it was useless to remain where he was and that he had to do something more than wait. When he saw the first light of dawn spreading over the Galilean hills, he decided in desperation that the best course of action would be to leave the station and find a lawyer. He realized that to stay in that waiting room, where he was helpless, was nothing but an exercise in futility.

He found a lawyer. Although still young, this man had acquired a great deal of legal experience since the outbreak of the intifada, and he was quite familiar with cases involving Palestinian militants who were under arrest. “Don't worry, Jamal,” the lawyer told him over the telephone. “If your daughter's a minor, she'll go on trial today, and if she doesn't have anything on her record, they'll let her go with a warning.”

And as the lawyer had predicted, Miral, escorted by two police officers, was brought into court on the afternoon of the following day. The courtroom was empty except for a small number of people, one of whom was the judge. He never looked at her but kept his eyes on the documents he was perusing. She caught a glimpse of her father in the corner, sitting next to two other persons, and as soon as the judge raised his head, looked at the prosecuting attorney, and asked, “What do we have here?” the man next to her father approached and declared himself Jamal's lawyer. Instinctively, Miral saw that this was her chance and resolved to act innocent and submissive, casting aside all defiance. And when the prosecutor began to state his case to the judge, Miral took off the sweatshirt that covered her bruises. The officers glared at her threateningly, recognizing her attempt to display for the judge's benefit the marks of her mistreatment, which were clearly visible, including those under her white, bloodstained T-shirt. Jamal had seemed dejected, but when he saw Miral's condition, he had to make a great effort to keep from crying out. The lawyer gripped his arm and told him to remain calm. He could see that Miral had been beaten and probably tortured, but the lawyer whispered that this was practically routine procedure for extracting information, and that nobody was spared, not even the youngest.

Miral was trying to avoid her father's eyes, but out of the corner of her own she saw him trembling in his chair.

The judge very brusquely asked the prosecuting attorney if Miral had made a statement of confession or if there was any evidence of her involvement in the disorders of the intifada, and the prosecutor replied that he needed another twenty-four hours before he could produce such evidence and offered the judge a photograph that showed Miral, in profile, at a demonstration. The judge gazed at Miral for a moment before turning his attention to the dialogue between the two attorneys. Miral's lawyer asked the prosecutor if there was any other evidence or if there were any witnesses against his client. The prosecutor contemptuously avoided answering him and continued talking only to the judge, but the judge told the prosecutor to reply to the lawyer's questions. That same morning, the Israeli daily newspaper
Haaretz
had published a long denun ciation of the abuses committed by Israeli officers in charge of interro gations, some of whose victims were minors, all in the name of national security. The title of the article was “How Far Are We Willing to Go?” and a copy of the paper lay on the judge's desk. After listening to the arguments on both sides, he said that since the accused was a minor who had not confessed and had committed no prior offense, he would grant her the benefit of general mitigating circumstances. Jamal's lawyer gave him a satisfied smile.

“You're free to go,” the judge said, specifying that she pay a fine amounting to three thousand shekels, or about seven hundred dollars. Then, with a stern look in Miral's direction, he added, “I don't want to see you in my courtroom again. The next time, the sentence won't be so light. Therefore you had best make sure that you stay far away from trouble from now on.”

 

A weight lifted from his chest, Jamal gladly paid the fine and waited for Miral to be set free. When the gate opened and he saw her appear, his heart leaped into his throat, and tears rolled down his cheeks as he embraced her with all the strength he had. The tension of those interminable hours was finally dissolved. Miral could not suppress a cry of pain because of the burning wounds on her back. She was brought at once to an outpatient clinic, where a doctor dressed her wounds, and then she was finally able to go home.

Jamal understood that danger still hung in the air. He couldn't take a repetition of such events. Miral washed and went to bed, and as soon as she fell asleep, Jamal asked Rania to stay with her sister and went to Dar El-Tifel. He wanted to discuss with Hind his decision to remove Miral from Jerusalem for a time in order to keep her safe for the immediate future. Hind received him in her office, and after an exchange of cordial greetings, she asked him for news of Miral.

While Jamal told her the story, recounting what had happened and describing Miral's physical state, tears filled his eyes. With every detail he added, Hind's face showed greater distress and worry. She agreed about the necessity of sending Miral to her aunt in Haifa for a time. Until exams began, Hind said. Jamal asked if a few weeks would be long enough. When Hind said yes, he wanted to know if it would compromise Miral's grades. Hind told him not to worry. Miral knew what the syllabus required and would be fine if she studied on her own while she was at her aunt's. Jamal left with a knapsack full of books and notebooks to take home to his daughter.

Haifa was an ideal place, a calm city free of the heavy political air that one breathed everywhere in Jerusalem. The city of Haifa was considered something of a civic laboratory, where Israelis and Palestinians managed to live in peaceful coexistence.

 

Miral's departure was fixed for three days later, and she remained in bed during that time, letting her wounds heal—those that had marked her body, but also her dignity. She seemed like an injured bird; any movement cost her great effort, and she hardly spoke. She asked Rania for news of those who had been arrested in the neighborhood, and Rania told her that many were still in jail, while others who had not been found that night—Hani among them—were living as fugitives.

This news landed on Miral heavy as the whip, and after listening to her sister, she pulled the covers over her head and began to weep. Rania tried to soothe her, rubbing her sister's feet and assuring her that she would do just fine in Haifa.

Several hours before the scheduled departure, while her father was in the mosque leading the morning prayer, Miral received unexpected visitors: two of her former PFLP comrades, Jasmine and Ayman. For the first time in days, Miral smiled, but when she tried to embrace them, they seemed cold and aloof; then, when they started firing questions at her, Miral understood that this was not just a visit from some old friends but an interrogation. They asked her to tell them exactly how her arrest had been conducted, what methods had been used to make her talk, and whether she had been confronted with anyone else. Above all, they wanted to know what evidence and what names the Israeli agents had in hand. This was a standard procedure utilized by the PFLP to compare information and to determine whether any of their members had confessed under questioning, or even worse, had been forced to collaborate. Saddened and disappointed, Miral told them everything. She revealed that she was about to be sent to Haifa to study and prepare for her final examinations. When she asked for news of Hani, her two questioners exchanged enigmatic looks and informed her that he had been relieved of his post as secretary of the Jerusalem section of the PFLP. They warned Miral to be on her guard against him because of his turncoat attitudes and his speeches in favor of negotiations with the Israelis, which the Palestinian left considered high treason. Finally, before leaving, Jasmine and Ayman asked Miral not to try to contact any of them and to await a future communication. Immediately after they left, Miral asked Rania to leave a message for Hani with the proprietor of a certain café in the Armenian Quarter; Hani was to know that she had gone to Haifa, that she would be back in a few weeks, and that if he wanted to communicate with her, he would have to do so through that café. On his way home after the prayer, Jamal saw Jasmine leaving his house. His face darkened, and without saying a word to Miral, he advanced the time of their departure and personally accompanied Miral to Haifa.

 

At the moment when they passed the city limits of Jerusalem, Miral was choked by the sensation that she was abandoning everything dearest to her. And while the bus, puffing and snorting, crossed the dusty roads of Samaria on the way to Haifa, she felt a rising anguish. To keep her father from seeing her tears, she spent the whole trip with her forehead glued to the window.

Miral knew that Haifa was near when she spotted the white and red flowers of the oleander bushes that lined the last stretch of road before the bus entered the city. The vehicle's windows seemed almost caressed by those plants, and then the first houses appeared, scattered along the edge of the beach. For an instant, Miral caught a glimpse of the Arab cemetery and its sand-beaten gravestones. That was where her mother was buried, a few paces from the sea and the beach she had loved so much, and where she used to bring her friends in summer to take long walks on the shore.

The sight of that cemetery strangely brought a hint of serenity to Miral's mind.

M
iral felt at home in Haifa, where she and Rania had spent most of their summers at Aunt Tamam's house rejoicing in the slower rhythms that replaced their strict school schedules. The girls were always curious to see their mother's native city again and discover how it had changed since the previous year, how much their cousins had grown, and how many new buildings had been constructed on Mount Carmel. But their preferred place was the beach, where they passed entire days swimming and chasing each other.

The atmosphere in Haifa was completely different from the climate that prevailed in Jerusalem, for in Haifa, the new and the old mingled together in harmony. The city was always in motion, searching—like its inhabitants—for an identity. Despite the fact that the Arab neighborhoods with their picturesque alleyways, potholed streets, and peeling plaster had been partially razed and replaced with modern residential buildings, life in Haifa was more pleasant than it was elsewhere. The city was sunny, convivial, joyful, with its colorful shops always open and the long green stretch that ran from the sea to Mount Carmel decorated like a Christmas tree with restaurants of every kind, one after the other on both sides of the street, where songs could be heard in every language. On paper, Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel had equal rights, but in Haifa coexistence between Arabs and Israelis was a reality, not a utopia, and it was the result of the courageous decision to include the Arabs who had remained there in the State of Israel. Here the wounds left by the war and by the Arabs' abandonment of their homes—homes that were immediately assigned to Jews who immigrated to Israel from the ruins of Europe after World War II—seemed to have the ability to heal.

Whether due to the cosmopolitan character that the port gave the city, the fact that its annexation went back to the distant past of 1948, or the warm, bittersweet sea air, there was a cultural ferment in Haifa that made the place open and welcoming to diversity of every kind. A lot of people spoke both Arabic and Hebrew, and people mingled with one another not only as work colleagues but also as friends.

But this time, Haifa represented for Miral a place of exile from her world. She didn't know how many hours she had spent on the bus, but when she saw her aunt, who had come to the station to welcome her, Miral understood that her immediate fate was sealed. Jamal left the following day. Miral had watched him as he whispered to her aunt Tamam and had seen the worry and sorrow in his face.

Miral fell into a trancelike state. She spent entire days lying on her bed with the windows closed, eating very little. There was apparently no one she wished to see, not even her beloved cousin Samer, who ordinarily kept her occupied for days on end with his singing and chatter. Tamam tried to distract her, lying on a nearby bed and telling her stories about her mother. Nadia, Tamam said, had been fascinated by Israeli women and their style of life, by their independence, their clothes, their beach parties, and she recalled how Miral's mother had been capable of understanding linguistic nuances that others missed in the songs performed by the bands along the seafront. “Your mother always used to say, ‘When I watch people dancing, their swaying bodies look to me as if joy is possible in this world.' Your mother loved dancing.”

 

Tamam noted how much her niece had grown since she last saw her, and it seemed to her that she could detect in Miral's eyes the same lively curiosity she remembered in her sister Nadia. Similarly, Miral could glimpse—in certain attitudes her aunt assumed, in the imperceptible movement of her hand before she said something she considered important, in her way of smiling—traces of her mother, of the little that she remembered of her. What Miral appreciated most about her aunt was her open mind, which sometimes led her to drop her traditional woman's values. While speaking to Tamam one day about a neighbor notorious for having extramarital affairs, Miral was stunned to hear her aunt declare that such behavior was the result of unhappiness and loneliness, not wickedness.

Tamam described to her niece what life had been like for the family after 1948. She related amusing anecdotes about herself and her husband, in hopes of persuading Miral to leave her bed and take a walk, or perhaps to go shopping, but the girl refused. And so Tamam turned to her son, Samer, for help. Cousin Samer was in his first year at the university, a young man of twenty-two, with a sleek, muscular body and long lashes that emphasized his black eyes, whose radiant appeal did not pass unobserved. He had become quite popular in the family for his good nature, helpfulness, and good looks, but his most endearing trait was his clumsiness. He was continually breaking things at home, to the chagrin of his mother and the general amusement of the rest of the family.

Samer and Miral were cousins but really bound by a relationship of friendship and deep affection. It therefore saddened him to see her in such a state, and he resolved to intervene. Entering her room with a cup of coffee, he opened the windows, snatched off her covers, and said, “Get up now, or I'll be forced to pick you up and carry you to the bathroom! Come on, get up, I'm taking you to a place I know.”

“Leave me alone!” Miral shouted. “Stop it, please! I'm not in the mood. I'm too tired to do anything and my back still hurts.”

“Get over it,” Samer said, and then he lifted her off the bed forcefully and carried her into the shower. As the jet of cold water drenched them both, Miral started laughing, “All right, let me wash up and I'll go with you. But get out of here and leave me alone!”

Samer, dripping, exited the bathroom, calling out as he closed the door, “I'll give you ten minutes and then I'm coming back in. Consider yourself warned!”

Tamam was overjoyed to see them going out together again. Once they were in the car, Miral asked, “Now where?”

“We're going to a beach party,” Samer replied. “You have to meet some friends of mine.”

Miral said, “Let me out! All this so I can meet your stupid friends?”

“Miral, I want you to see my fiancée.”

This declaration stopped Miral, and she smiled as she thought about her friend Maha, who had had something of a fling with Samer the summer before. Miral hadn't realized that things had gotten serious. Maha was a girl from Dar El-Tifel. As she was an orphan and had no other relatives, she spent her summers at the school. But the previous year, she had graduated and gotten a scholarship to study at the university in Haifa, and had accompanied Miral and Rania there. Miral thought back to her long walks with Maha through the streets of the commercial district, behind the port, where most of the clothing stores were located. She remembered her friend's sensitivity and shyness, and how she had become embarrassed when she saw young people kissing in public or observed the scanty clothes favored by the women of Haifa, who wore miniskirts and even bikinis to walk around town. As the days passed, Maha, who had been pale and always sad-eyed, seemed to be reborn. The sun and the sea air had done her good, giving her a healthy color and what seemed like a permanent smile. Now Miral understood why.

As happened whenever she was in Haifa, Miral's curiosity was aroused by everything around her. She noticed even the smallest changes that had taken place since the previous year—a freshly plastered house, a bar with a new sign, a bench on the seafront that hadn't been there before. Her body, too, seemed to respond positively, not just to the warmth of the sun but also to every facet of her native city, which constantly revealed some new, iridescent marvel, like a meadow after a summer shower.

Samer parked his car far from Carmel beach, and so they had to walk for a good distance along the seafront to reach their destination. It was a warm spring evening; the sun had not yet completely sunk behind the horizon, and a light breeze was stirring the branches of the tall palm trees. The two young people walked along slowly, chatting about this and that, until Miral suddenly stopped and stood still, pricking up her ears and listening to a song that was coming from a bar on the beach.

A girl with delicate features and loose, shoulder-length blonde hair was setting the tables and moving to the rhythm of the music. She was a couple of years older than Miral and appeared unaware of her surroundings, transported, following a harmony that seemed to come not so much from the radio as from inside her. Leaving Samer, who had stopped to greet some other friends, Miral went up to this young woman and asked, “What song is that?”

The girl looked up, saw Miral, and smiled at her. Then she placed the last glass on a table and said, “‘Here Comes the Sun,' by the Beatles.”

“It's wonderful,” said Miral, who had never heard a song she liked so much. “You know, the music I'm used to is a little different,” she added, and then she quickly bit her upper lip. She didn't want the girl to ask her too many questions. This evening she didn't want to think about Jerusalem and the demonstrations; she just wanted to be like a normal teenager on her way to a party.

Perhaps sensing Miral's embarrassment, the other girl made no inquiries and simply introduced herself. “I'm Lisa,” she said, holding out her hand, which was pale as alabaster. Miral, surprised by this unexpected familiarity, shook the extended hand with some force and stated her own name in the same tone of voice she used in school at roll call. Then she said good-bye and went back to Samer and his friends.

“Where were you?” Samer asked.

“Do you know that girl? I think she's an Israeli.”

“Of course I know her. Very well, in fact. I'll tell you all about her later,” Samer replied.

“I'm sorry I walked away. It was just that I heard that sweet song and I wanted to get closer to it.”

“Well, look, it's about time for you to discover that patriotic hymns are not the only kind of music in existence,” Maha exclaimed, embracing Miral and greeting her affectionately.

The two young women looked into each other's eyes for a few seconds and then burst out laughing. Samer hugged them both and said, “Dinner's all ready! Ron's been grilling!”

 

Miral noticed that almost all the guests at the party were Israeli Jews, but after her initial embarrassment, she stopped paying attention to that fact, and everyone had a good time. Maha told her how her life had changed since she came to Haifa, but the music, which was very loud, prevented Miral from hearing much of what her friend said. After they had eaten, Samer invited them to dance. Miral didn't feel like it, but she was dragged onto the floor by Maha and Lisa. At the end of the evening, they all sat around a fire, chatting, their voices mingling with the general babble. It became clear to Miral that everyone either intentionally or obliviously avoided any reference whatsoever to politics, right up until the moment when a boy questioned her about a pin she was wearing on her dress. “What does that symbol stand for?” he asked, coming closer to her so that he could see it better.

He must have already guessed what it was, because she could hear that the tone of his voice had changed. “It's the Palestinian flag,” she replied, as naturally and ingenuously as she could.

“Ah,” was all he said in front of her. But as he moved away, she heard him muttering: “Hard to believe. We give them citizenship and they don't appreciate it.”

The girls started laughing, and despite this little incident the party went very well.

 

Maha's presence during those days changed many of her friend's habits. Miral had never spent so much time talking to anyone, not even her sister, and now the afternoons seemed too short to contain all their conversations. Maha helped Miral study for her final examinations; she knew all sorts of memorization techniques and was able to remember the questions that she'd had to answer the year before. And although Miral wasn't able to concentrate very well, Maha's help obliged her to make a greater effort. Within a few months, she would have to decide what course of study she would pursue in college. Maha suggested that she enroll at the University of Haifa, but that would mean distancing herself from Hani forever. She wasn't ready for that. Observing the other girls her age, watching them serenely joking among themselves, she thought that perhaps they made fewer problems for themselves than she did, that their blissful ignorance spared them from the cruelty of life outside Haifa. Besides, a few weeks before she hadn't a trace of her current lightheartedness, which in reality had little to do with who she was.

Miral consoled herself by thinking about the great inner freedom she had gained, imagining that many of those girls would marry men chosen by their families and would accept those arranged marriages without complaint. They would stand by their husbands even if they didn't love them, and they would be as faithful to them as dogs to their masters, not by choice, but of necessity. As she was slowly walking home one evening, and the sun was turning a stretch of the sea's horizon an intense red, she realized that she—like her mother, who had always been an independent woman—had no intention of following a track laid out for her by someone else.

Samer appeared more and more evasive and nervous, especially if Maha was around. Miral could see that something between them had been lost. One night he confided to Miral that he had fallen in love with an Israeli girl. The shock made her jump. “Are you serious? Your mother will have a heart attack!” Samer replied that Tamam already knew and that the time had come to move beyond prejudices. He told Miral that he had invited the girl to lunch the following day.

Miral's aunt was in a state of profound agitation. She was walking back and forth in the room, straightening the sofa cushions, shining the silver; she asked Miral to help her with the preparations. Miral had risen very early that morning and found her aunt already busy in the kitchen. Miral could read in her movements an uncharacteristic anxiety, bordering on hysteria, as she dashed about the kitchen preparing the most traditional Arab dishes: couscous with fish for a first course, then chickpea soup, salads, and falafel followed by walnut- stuffed dates, with lemonade and mint tea to drink. In the end, it turned out to be practically impossible to help her in any way, seeing that she wanted to supervise everything, including the setting of the table, dictating literally to the millimeter the position that every object must occupy. Then she put on the traditional garb for festive occasions, thus causing her niece even greater amazement, because Miral's aunt Tamam, like many of the women of Haifa, always dressed in Western clothing.