The Woman From Tantoura (17 page)

Sidon ignited, Lebanon blazed.

My aunt stayed long at her prayers because she was beseeching God to heal Maarouf and return him to his home and family safe and sound. “O Omnipotent, O Generous, O Kind, O Merciful, O Compassionate.” I was overcome by silence, silence steeped in clear, heavy fear; and my talkative uncle was suddenly silent, like me. He stayed in bed and kept his eyes shut, so we didn’t know if he was awake or asleep. My aunt would call to him, “Are you awake, Abu Amin?” and he would answer her with a sigh, without opening his eyes.

On Thursday, March 6, nine days after being struck, Maarouf became a martyr.

The news spread before it was broadcast officially. It was said that the government was waiting for his body to be taken to Sidon before announcing the news, but it reached people in the south and they marched toward Beirut. They met the body halfway and continued on behind it, returning to Sidon, where the funeral was held the next day in the Great Mosque of Umar.

I went to the funeral. I hadn’t advanced a single step into the house on my return or even closed the door behind me when I heard my uncle calling me: “Come here, Ruqayya.”

“I’m coming, Uncle.”

“How was the funeral?”

“All of Sidon was there. The leaders of the National Movement came from Beirut, and thousands of civilians and delegations from the south and the Beqaa and Jebel al-Shouf and Beirut and Tripoli. They carried his bier in a fishing boat; the fishermen carried a boat
draped in black and filled with flowers. The young men carried pictures of him and signs saying “Hero of the Battle of al-Malikiya” and “Martyred for the Poor” and slogans of the Lebanese National Forces, of the Palestinian resistance groups, and of the delegations that came from the Arab states. The men were crying and shouting, and the women were crying and trilling and scattering rose petals and basil leaves and orange blossom water.”

My uncle suddenly sighed, and said, “Our hope lies in the youth. I’m going to sleep.”

I called Beirut, and found only Hasan at home. He said that the funeral in Beirut was very large. They carried a symbolic bier from the Mosque of Umar to the Martyrs’ Cemetery, and there were processions and parades and symbolic funerals in many various places.

“Was there gunfire?”

“Gunfire and anthems and loudspeakers broadcasting stirring words and speeches.”

“When your father and Sadiq and Abed get back call me, even if it’s late. I won’t be asleep.”

From that Friday to the next my uncle Abu Amin kept silent. My aunt said that maybe he had lost the ability to speak. She would sit next to him on the bed, talking to him and asking him questions, and he would not answer. When she insisted he would reply by a terse expression, and then close his eyes and turn his back to her as if he was going to sleep. But when Amin and the boys came on the next Friday night he greeted them and told them that he wanted to talk to them. He said, “Tomorrow, if we live.”

In the morning my uncle asked me to help him change his clothes. I took him a basin of warm water, soap, a small jug, and a towel, and I helped him wash and change his clothes. He had breakfast and then asked that I make him a cup of coffee. He drank it and said, “Call the boys.”

They sat around him, and he said, “I want to tell you something.”

I glimpsed a smile starting on Abed’s face, and for a moment it seemed to me that the boy would be silly enough to say that there
was no need, because we know it. I scolded him with a look; he received the message and kept silent.

My uncle began to speak about Maarouf Saad. He said, “I met him for the first time in ’35 when he was teaching in Madrasat al-Burj in Haifa. For two years he was teaching and participating with us in the armed resistance. He would go back to Lebanon on Thursdays and Fridays and during the summer vacation to share in implementing the boycott decisions, and to work with the youth here in the south to prevent the export of fruits and vegetables over the Palestinian–Lebanese borders, to the settlers and the occupying British authorities. They would wait for the trucks coming from Beirut at the Awali River or in Tyre or Nabatiyeh or Marjayoun, blocking the roads. They would make the driver get out and would throw out the cartons of fruits and vegetables.”

Strange, by God it was strange. My uncle talked two or three hours, or maybe four. He gathered the beads of his words from here and there, stringing them before our eyes like a rosary. He specified the place and the time, moving from one time to another and from place to place, from a well-known date to personal events he had witnessed and in which he played a part. He would mention the leaders and commanders, “May God not forgive them,” and his companions, “God have mercy on the martyrs.” He would visualize their images and leave them hanging on the wall in the background of his words. He continued speaking.

I said to myself, my uncle will live a thousand years. He’ll recover from his illness and be just fine.

Suddenly Hasan said, “Rest a little, Grandfather. Rest now and in the evening you’ll finish the story for us.”

He said, “The time for rest has passed, Hasan. Listen, boy, listen. Maybe you’ll tell the story one day to your children.”

I imagined I saw tears in Hasan’s eyes. I looked, and then averted my eyes, and listened like the others.

In our country they call it “sweetness of the spirit,” the last outpouring of energy. I had heard the expression often, thinking that I
understood it; but I did not understand it before that day.

After Amin and the boys returned to Beirut, my uncle spoke to me only of Tantoura and his father and mother and brother. He told me long stories of his childhood, with abundant details. He ended only by recalling the day he differed with his brother about leaving, the day he returned from Sidon to take the women and children and his brother drew a weapon on him. He said, “You were with us, Ruqayya, you saw it. Have you forgotten?” I said, “I have not forgotten, Uncle.” But he repeated for me everything that happened, as if I had told him that I had forgotten. He would always end his words with the same expression, “My brother didn’t understand me. He was angry with me and left before I bade him farewell. Whenever I sneaked back into the village, I visited my mother’s and father’s grave, but I didn’t know where his grave was, to propitiate him and make peace with him.”

My uncle cried, so I moved from my seat to sit near him on the bed. I rubbed his shoulder and calmed him.

Then he passed.

Years later Ezz would say to me, “It seems to me sometimes that Abu Amin knew by intuition or inspiration that he could not bear the terror of the coming days. Would he have been able to bear it, Ruqayya, ‘Free Lebanon’ dependent on the Israelis? Would he have been able to bear the siege of Tall al-Zaatar and the alliance of Syria and the Phalange? Did he realize that Arafat’s group and Amal would fight each other in the south, or that Amal would lay siege to the camps? It’s as if he knew intuitively, and said to himself: ‘Your time has ended, so go with your friends and your contemporaries.’”

20

The Spring

I know my aunt maybe better than I know myself. As soon as she moved in with us in Beirut, I told her that I was exhausted from the housework. I suggested she take over the kitchen. She refused at first, and then accepted. I was sure that this was the first step to make her feel that she was in her home, and not a guest.

Abed protested, “I don’t like Grandma’s cooking.”

I chided him. He said, “Everyone has certain likes or dislikes, it comes from God.”

Sadiq laughed loudly, “Abed has become a philosopher!”

The boy went on, “Mother, you love the scent of wild lilies, right? And Hasan loves the scent of orange blossoms, no one can deny it! Uncle Ezz loves mulukhiya, so you make him mulukhiya. I don’t like Grandma’s cooking! Should I die of hunger or force myself to accept what I hate?”

I said firmly, “You’ll get used to her cooking, and when you get used to it, you’ll like it! If you don’t want to eat her food, you’re free not to. Die of hunger. You have olive oil and thyme, or let salt be your supper. Do what you like! The discussion is over.”

The battles in the house intensified, and blazed up all the more because we were forced to put the three boys in one room, to empty a room for my aunt. Since the room could not take three beds, in addition to the two desks where Sadiq and Hasan studied, we commissioned a carpenter to make a bunk bed. When the new bed arrived, Abed decided he wanted the top bunk; he liked the idea of climbing the wooden ladder to his bed, and the possibility of looking down on his brother from above, as if he were the older. A week later he said that his knees hurt him from climbing up and down, and that he preferred the lower bunk; since Hasan shared the bed with him, he gave up his place to him calmly. After a few days Abed began complaining about the bed again.

“I get nightmares when I’m asleep, the whole time I feel as if Hasan is going to fall on my head and I’ll die. Besides, he farts in his sleep. The smell hits my nose directly, as if it were aimed at me intentionally. Anyway, how can you expect me to get A’s when I don’t have a desk? The desk is in Grandma’s room, and she goes to bed with the birds after the evening prayer, so I sit at the dining table, or in the kitchen. If I fail, it’s your fault.”

The problems of the bed and the desk, which came up whenever the question of “my room, which Grandma is occupying” arose, did not go beyond our circle to reach my aunt. But the enmity in dozens of other instances was open and acknowledged, and like a vicious circle. Abed would behave badly with his grandmother and I would chide him and punish him, so he would attribute the punishment to his grandma and mutter that she was “an illomened old woman who brought us nothing but upset stomachs and bad moods.” I would pretend that I hadn’t heard him, because acknowledging that I had meant another round of scolding, calling to account, and punishment.

Sadiq said laughing, commenting on the situation, “Abed isn’t satisfied with the civil war we’re living with in the streets, he’s decided that we should live with it at home.” He used English for emphasis: “A ‘super’ war outside and a ‘mini’ war at home!”

Abed was annoyed by his words. “I am not starting wars. Your grandmother is old and it’s hard to get along with her, and besides, she’s occupying my room!”

“You’re like the Phalange, you create a disaster and then you’re the first one to cry ‘They attacked me!’”

What happened? Abed seized his brother by the collar and screamed at him like a crazy man. “Don’t compare me to the Phalange! How can you compare me to the Phalange? By God, by God, if you weren’t my brother I’d kill you!” Sadiq pushed him away and knocked him down; Hasan separated them, shouting. I entered the room to find Sadiq kneeling above his brother. I quarreled with Sadiq and Abed for a full week. Sadiq would walk behind me in the house, saying “Why are you angry with me? I’m the elder and he attacked me.” I would say, “Because you are the elder you ought to have behaved better.” He tried to appease me; as for Abed, he decided that everyone in the house was allied against him, even Hasan: “He told the story wrong, he claims to be neutral and there’s no such thing as neutrality!”

Were there other sides to Abed, or was the difference between him and his brothers that he was at the height of adolescence, and he was unable to hide the turmoil that we all hid? I did not understand him, I didn’t understand his foolish little wars nor his need to create problems. I look back from afar and feel that tickling that I first felt the day that Sadiq was born. Because he’s far away? Because he has become a handsome man, despite the torment he’s endured? Because I’ve understood, if only recently, that the boy didn’t know what to do with himself, with the wrath inside him? His manhood was in its tender, green beginnings, asking him if being a man required him to bear arms and kill.

Sadiq commented, “You can’t confuse the younger and the older. The proper positions must be maintained, just like sizes!”

Hasan answered, “With the exception of shoe sizes!”

Sadiq said, looking slyly at Abed, “If the measure were shoes sizes, then Abed … .”

Abed broke in, interrupting him, “And if the measure were intelligence then the ranks would be reversed. The smaller would be greater, and the greater, smaller. The middle would stay in the middle!”

They were laughing as they continued their usual verbal fencing. They were certainly unaware of the action of the spring inside, and its surprises. It was released in the knees, and here was Abed, in just two years, moving from a short, thin boy who seemed the smallest among his classmates at school, to a young man taller than his brothers and his father. Was the action of the spring restricted to the height and breadth of the body? I don’t know if Abed desisted from his childish foolishness because of the action of the spring that enlarged him from one day to the next, or if he stopped because he found another outlet for his energy. He suddenly became busy: a student part of the time, bearing arms to guard the spot assigned to him part of the time, and a cadre in the camp with responsibilities part of the time. He would come home late, eat what was available and sleep a few hours, waking to the sound of the alarm. “I have a test tomorrow and I haven’t studied enough.” Amin said to me, “I nearly advised him to focus on his schoolwork, at least until he finished the baccalaureate, and then I was ashamed of myself. It’s as if we were saying that our children are for the future and the children of the camp are to defend us, unto death if necessary.” Amin’s words rang in my ears. I said to myself that he was right, but my heart didn’t listen to the words. There were barricades in the streets, movable barricades and permanent ones. People were killed and kidnapped on both sides, because of what was written on their identity cards. I would be in the house, as if I were safe, and then I would hear the rattle of gunfire in this or that direction, or the sudden, heavy sound of an explosion. One of the boys would be away from home or else they would all be I knew not where, or Amin would be in the hospital, or have just left, or the time would have gotten late and he might be on his way home. I would panic, and my imagination would run wild.