Miral (7 page)

 

On the day after she heard Nadia's account of the incident, Fatima was hanging the prisoners' laundry out to dry in a little courtyard. She could see a slice of sky framed by the gray walls and thought at length about what she would do if she were in the same situation as Nadia: able to leave prison in a few months and come to terms with freedom.

When she finished her work, she went back to the cell and stretched out on her bed, waiting for Nadia to return. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, at the pieces of plaster that were about to fall down and the damp stains that highlighted its perimeter.

When Nadia reentered the cell, she smiled at Fatima, who smiled in return. When was the last time she'd done that?

Fatima's influence on Nadia grew daily. Fatima especially tried to persuade her not to resume the life she'd had before, not to go back to dancing in Tel Aviv, but to go to Jerusalem, to Fatima's family; her relatives would surely help Nadia. During the last month of Nadia's detention, when Fatima's relatives came to visit, they asked to speak to Nadia as well. They were cheerful, good-natured people, and Nadia started thinking that maybe her friend was right.

And so, much sooner than either of them wished, the moment of separation arrived. For Fatima, life in prison would resume its monotonous course; she would go back to enduring the hostility of the other prisoners alone. But Nadia was leaving her with something more. Her many questions had made Fatima reflect for the first time on what she had done and on many beliefs that she had never called into question.

The night before her release, Nadia pondered various experiences she'd had during the past six months. Sharing her story with Fatima had made Nadia realize that she had never thought of herself in terms of membership in a group, not until she was called an “Arab whore.” Nadia thought, “Maybe Fatima is right when she says that no one can be free if her own people are not. No Arab is free in this country.” She hadn't thought about that before. And if she hadn't thought about it, maybe it was because she hadn't been thinking, and that made Nadia feel empty. It was a dangerous line of reasoning, though, because it contained the possibility of living as a prisoner in your own land even if you weren't in jail, and of backfiring against anyone who might look for different ways to survive, who might choose to engage in something other than the struggle for her country.

As dawn was breaking on that final morning, Nadia reflected that prison had granted her the luxury of being able to think in the abstract for the first time in her life.

Later that morning, before giving Nadia one last embrace, Fatima told her, “You're going to regain your freedom, but that won't automatically make you happy. Whatever you do, do it in such a way that all the things we said to each other continue to mean something. Don't forget; do it for me.”

N
adia soon felt comfortable with Fatima's relatives and with life in Jerusalem. Fatima had led her family to think that Nadia also had been incarcerated for political reasons. From the very first day, she was on friendly terms with them, and she soon familiarized herself with the narrow streets and lanes of the Old City. She quickly decided to become engaged to Jamal, Fatima's brother, who had fallen in love with her the first time he saw her in the prison. A few weeks after her arrival, Jamal asked her to marry him, and she accepted. She never mentioned to him that she had a child in Haifa.

Jamal Shaheen was a considerate, quiet man, and Nadia envied his serenity, which was accompanied by a rationality she knew was lacking in herself. She was happy to slip into the tranquil life of a future bride, which was made up of preparations, parties, and other weddings for her to participate in. While Jamal worked as an imam in al-Aqsa Mosque, leading the morning prayer, he also worked a second job as a night guard to put aside money for their wedding. Nadia was endearing herself to all and fitting seamlessly into the city's social fabric.

It amazed her to think that prison, against all expectations, had given her the chance to make a new life for herself. Her disquiet seemed to have dissipated without her noticing. The news that she had been in prison with Fatima spread rapidly through the neighborhood and brought her boundless respect from its inhabitants, who forgave her Western clothes, her boldness, and her smoking. They were convinced that she had been arrested for political reasons, and she herself was convinced that her reaction to being insulted as an “Arab whore” had been, in a certain sense, a political act.

 

One day at a wedding party, she met a young man from Bethlehem. Jamal's cousin introduced them, and when their eyes met it was as if they were the only two people left in the world. They talked for three consecutive hours without any of the other guests taking much notice. Hilmi was twenty-two, tall, and dark skinned, with intense, intelligent eyes. He wanted to go to Beirut to study at the American University. Nadia revealed to him that she was already betrothed to another man.

Despite these adverse circumstances, their reciprocal attraction was such that they decided to see each other again two days later. For a while after that, they met secretly in various cafés and restaurants in West Jerusalem and also encountered each other in the Shaheens' home. Fatima and Jamal's mother, an elderly and somewhat naive woman, thought Hilmi was turning up to court her other daughter. Jamal, Nadia's fiancé, occupied with his work at the mosque and busy preparing for his new family, was totally unaware.

Nadia and Hilmi's clandestine rendezvous became more and more intense. One afternoon they made love. Around lunchtime they met at the Damascus Gate and walked to a small hotel. Nadia was tense with fear, and it was obvious that Hilmi, too, was extremely nervous.

Once they were inside the large and handsome room, the couple embraced tightly, ending in a long, passionate kiss. Neither of them had ever been so certain of what they were doing as they were at that moment. Hilmi kissed Nadia's throat and then slowly began to undress her. His movements were awkward, but Nadia thought his the most delicate hands that had ever touched her body. Hilmi gently leaned her back on the large bed. When he saw that she was trembling, he smiled and told her that she should relax, that everything was going to be all right. Nadia didn't stop shaking, and her eyes grew wider. “If you want me to, I'll stop,” Hilmi said. He would not force himself on her. Nadia's only response was to take his hand and put it on her breast.

Time stopped for them.

Before they left the room, Nadia embraced him and asked him not to go away. She would have begged him, but her pride prevented it. “You can study here, in any university,” she said, but he was adamant. He soothed her by telling her that he'd come back for her soon.

“Please, Nadia, wait for me. Don't get married,” he said.

A week later, Hilmi left Jerusalem, and it was difficult for Nadia to keep from showing the great sadness that consumed her. Her disappointment at Hilmi's departure towered over her; once again she felt abandoned. Having lost her faith in men a long while back, she didn't trust Hilmi's promises, and so she decided that she should go ahead with her marriage to Jamal.

She did so a month later, but the day before the wedding she discovered that she was pregnant. She called Jamal and wept as she told him the whole story. It disturbed him profoundly, as he was a good man who had unconditional faith in other people. He rose from his chair and looked incredulous. So many questions were crowding into his brain: Who? And, even more than that, How? How could he have failed to notice anything?

“It would be better for me to go back to Haifa now,” Nadia said. “You've been very generous to me, and I haven't been capable of repaying your trust.”

Jamal made his decision and broke his silence. “I love you, Nadia. Maybe it's partly my fault, because I've neglected you for my work. I still want to marry you, but you must promise never to see him again.”

Nadia felt as though the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. How could she deserve such a good man? “He's gone away, and he's not coming back,” she said with tears in her eyes.

“I believe you,” Jamal said, drawing near and putting his arms around her. “I love you so much. I've loved you from the moment I saw you.”

 

The first year of their marriage passed in great serenity. Nadia became active in organizing various women's groups. She promoted discussions and hosted parties, encouraged the women to be independent and to demand respect from their husbands. In this sense, Nadia was a genuine pioneer, as haphazard and instinctive as ever but effective in offering a contrast to the marginalized, submissive Arab women who were her neighbors. Her miniskirts, the way she rambled around the city by day or night, her total autonomy from her husband, the fact that she drove a car, that she had both Israeli and Palestinian friends—all provoked a palpable ferment in her part of town.

At the end of that first year of marriage, Hilmi came to see her at the family home. He told her that he had found an apartment in Beirut and enrolled in the university. “The city's modern and full of life,” he said. “I know you'll like it.”

Nadia flinched, which made Hilmi pause and look at her more closely. A little behind her, he could see an infant a few months old, apparently a baby girl. “You're married,” Hilmi observed mournfully, “and you have a daughter.” Then a sudden doubt assailed him, a doubt that a quick calculation of the time involved did nothing to dispel. “Tell me the truth, Nadia. Is that baby, by any chance, mine?”

Nadia, who had never expected him to return, was as disturbed as he was, but now it was too late. She fixed her eyes on his and said, with an air of defiance, “No, she's not your daughter. What do you think, that you're the only man in the world?” She wanted to wound him, even though she wasn't exactly sure why. “I've slept with many men, before and after you.” As unconsciously as he had broken her heart, she had broken his.

Struck in his pride and his heart, Hilmi leaped to his feet, determined to go away forever. He wouldn't even stay in Beirut, he thought, but rather start over in some distant place, perhaps in Europe.

 

One afternoon during her second year of marriage, Nadia went to the hammam, remaining in the tepidarium for a long time as she observed the other women, especially those her age, trying to guess which of them wore the veil in public. For many of them, the visit to the hammam was the only time in the week when they were free for a few hours to be what they were, whether good natured or irascible, solitary or extroverted, and not actors performing preordained social roles.

As she was getting dressed again, Nadia looked at herself in the mirror. She was the most beautiful woman there and also the unhappiest. Although Jamal was gentle and kind, marriage had not given her any real sense of equilibrium. One year after the birth of Miral, the daughter born of her relationship with Hilmi, Nadia had brought Rania into the world. Maternity had granted her a new glow and a brief illusion of happiness, but she realized that nothing, not even beauty, could be an antidote to her sadness.

“When a woman is beautiful,” she thought, “everyone expects and almost requires her to be happy as well.” She could not bear the knowledge that her husband, her sister, her daughters, and even Fatima in her own way, all wished her to be necessarily, obligatorily happy, satisfied with what she had become and with what she was doing. They insisted that she should learn to see the beauty around her. Nadia had continued to conceal her weaknesses from others; she appeared strong and self-assured in public, but deep down inside she was tormented by her past.

She tried to be a good mother, but for her serenity was only a distant oasis, an unreachable mirage.

 

Nadia got into the car, not knowing exactly where she would go. She drove slowly along the streets of the city. The shops were closing, and the farmers who had come down from the country to sell their produce were returning to their villages, mingling with the few people who were still out and about.

The radio was broadcasting a traditional song, which reminded her of her belly dancing days in Tel Aviv, when she had admirers who would travel across the country to see her. She felt nostalgic for all that attention—the flowers, the compliments, the dinner invitations—and felt anxiety mounting inside her.

She waited on the beach for dawn, accompanied by a bottle of arrack, and thought that there was no continuity in her life. Fatima had tried to pull her out of the spiral of masochism she found herself in and had even succeeded, but only for a while. The reality was that Nadia was groping in the dark, looking for a way out.

She immersed her feet in the cold, clear water and tried to imagine her future: it looked colorless to her, like the last drop of liquor at the bottom of the bottle. A wave higher than the others soaked her skirt from the hem to above her knees. She smiled and then started laughing nervously as she realized that if there was anything missing in her life it was her childhood. She had no happy memories of herself as a child—no pleasant mental images of frolicking on the beach or playing with friends or smiling or receiving a gift. At that moment, she felt a deep hatred for her mother and even a little for her father, who had gone and gotten himself swallowed up by the sea without having raised her, protected her, or held her hand.

She stayed three days with a woman friend in Jaffa, savoring again the freedom of the good old days, and then went back home as though nothing had happened. Jamal forgave that flight, as he did all the following ones, in hopes that her anguish would subside in time, that she would grow more attached to him and her two daughters.

He bought her the liquor she required to combat her attacks of depression and tried not to ask her too many questions. So he wouldn't be recognized while making these purchases, he would go to a café far from his neighborhood. But because he was an imam, people knew his face. The bartender would invariably slip the bottle into the bag, smile maliciously, and say, “Imam, you are a righteous man,” following this declaration with a loud laugh that spread among his customers, from table to table. The love that Jamal felt for Nadia made him able to bear even these humiliations.

 

Nadia decided one day to visit Fatima in prison. It felt strange to walk through those dark corridors again, inhaling the odors of mildew and low-grade tobacco that rose from the cells. Fatima looked as she always did, alert and round faced. Their meeting was warm and friendly, even though they did not speak to each other with the same frankness as when they had shared a cell. Nadia didn't reveal that she had started seeing men other than her husband, or that she drank arrack into the small hours of the morning, sitting in an armchair with a lit cigarette in her hand. Fatima could see that Nadia had not found the peace she yearned for, but she urged Nadia to keep believing in what she was doing for the other women of the community, and tried as always to raise her friend's selfesteem. But it was all useless. Fatima's smile turned bitter when Nadia told her that the three months she'd spent in prison had constituted the happiest period of her life.

Then Nadia asked a question that caught Fatima off guard: “How could you want to kill somebody you didn't even know?”

Fatima, to make her understand that there had been a purpose behind her act, said, “I don't see them as people, I see them as soldiers. Our people are suffering. They have made a war on us and we have no choice. It's either resist or vanish. Their first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once said, ‘We are people without a land, and this is a land without people.' If this is a land without people, what are we?”

Nadia had already risen to her feet. She moved away toward the door, her long black hair caught up by a red ribbon, her slender figure contrasting with the gray cement cell.

Fatima felt no anguish, neither for herself nor for the fate of her enemies. She had to admit, however, that life in prison had introduced her to a side of the Israeli world she had never known before. The Jewish women who were her fellow prisoners were all thieves, prostitutes, and unfortunate wretches, basically victims in their own right.

 

Jamal searched everywhere for Nadia. At her relatives' home in Haifa, where she told him she was going for a few days, he discovered that she had not been seen, just as she hadn't been there on the other occasions when she'd gone missing. Nobody knew where she might be.

Jamal returned home and stared at the telephone for a long time; then he removed the stopper from the bottle Nadia had left on the night table and poured a little of the whitish liquid into his cupped hand. He raised it to his nostrils, and for an instant, he had the sensation of reliving the kiss his wife gave him the morning she left.