Three Daughters: A Novel (7 page)

“You’ll think of something else,” she said reassuringly, but it sounded hollow. “Perhaps at another time of year it won’t be so dangerous.”

“I have no heart to risk the road,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster. “It isn’t a good idea for a man who wants to remain alive.”

Miriam baked fresh bread for his food pack at dawn. She stood on the dusty road and looked after him until he was a small dot of color in the distance. Twice she called out to him on the pretense that she had forgotten some inconsequential news, but she really wanted to see his face once more and reassure him that he had not failed in her eyes.

No blows could have hurt her as much as his calm forgiveness for her outburst. He was a decent man who worked hard to make their life as secure as possible and she had paid him by insulting him.

The carriage was jostling her, so she held her stomach protectively, fearful it might bring the baby prematurely. Khalil had fallen asleep against her but when they reached Jaffa Gate she put him in a sling and walked inside the walls to St. James Road. As she passed the ancient cathedral of the same name, she shuddered. It was said that the martyred apostle James’s head was entombed there.

Past the old Crusaders’ Church of St. Thomas was a screened window with metal bars behind which was located a branch of the Austrian post office. Once or twice a week mail from Europe arrived in Jaffa by boat. At daybreak a three-horse carriage brought it to the line of hopeful persons waiting for letters or packages. Consulates and patriarchates would send their
jawasses
, the armed protectors assigned to foreign delegates by the Turkish government, to receive their mail. The heads of Jewish institutions dependent on outside financial aid were always in line. After these came the private citizens who waited for the clerk to call out their name.

“A letter for Hanna, the weaver,” or “A packet for Yusef, the barber,” he would shout. Addresses were imprecise: “the third house behind Christ Church,” or “in back of the Pool of Hezekiah.”

During the day, while Nadeem was in Bethel, Miriam had begun her secret trips, telling Zareefa that she was going for the heated tiles in the bathhouse to ease a painful back. Some days she left Khalil—screaming—with Zareefa so she could walk the distance and save the carriage fare. On her third visit, she had waited patiently through the distribution. As always, she was fascinated by the personal dramas that took place. There was a letter for David the blacksmith from his cousin in Brazil. Nabile the carpenter had received some tools from Germany. Farida Saah received a letter from her daughter Mary living in America and she began to cry so loud and hard the others couldn’t hear the mail calls. Finally someone realized she was crying because she couldn’t read the letter and a young man offered to do it for her.

When all the mail had been distributed, the postal official returned to his warren of mail slots behind the counter and began to shuffle and reshuffle several soiled and tattered envelopes. Miriam approached the counter but was too embarrassed by her obvious pregnancy to speak.

“Madam?”

“We are expecting mail from France.” As with anyone who had never heard her speak, the man immediately took a closer look intrigued by that haunting sound. “In whose name, madam?”

“In the name of Mishwe. Nadeem Mishwe. Perhaps the address is the Hotel St. Anselm, outside the walls, on Louis Botta Road. It would come from France. Paris, France.”

He took the envelopes he had been shuffling and inspected each one closely. Suddenly, he grunted triumphantly. “That is the name. You see”—he directed Miriam’s gaze to the spot with his finger—“right here. Mishwe. The
m
and the
i
are almost gone; the ink has been washed out. The hotel returned it to us. This mail has been on two trips, madam. Why didn’t you inquire before?”

“We don’t live nearby,” she said distractedly, not daring to take her eyes off the envelope.

“Well, here you are then. One mystery completed. I wish all the rest would be united with their owners. I don’t like to have mail left uncollected.”

“Thank you,” said Miriam. The envelope was so undistinguished she felt none of the exhilaration she assumed would result from the letter. She tucked it in her sack and began the trek home. When she had fed Khalil and put him to sleep, she looked closely at the envelope. On the back was printed, “
M. Freneau et Frères, La Maison de Trousseau
, 22 Avenue Victor Hugo, Paris, France.”

She went down the road to meet Nadeem and began calling to him, waving the letter in the air. “From France,” she called. “Europe.”

He examined the envelope and looked quizzically at Miriam. “How did it come?”

“I went to Jerusalem for it.”

“What prompted you to go today?”

“It wasn’t just today. I’ve been going for several weeks.”

“I see.” He stared at her face, which appeared almost detached in the pink light of dusk.

“Today I got the idea to ask the postal clerk. As it turned out, the envelope became wet and part of the name was obscured. Since it was addressed to the hotel, they had no idea whom it was for and sent it back to the post office. It’s been lying there unclaimed.”

“You believed that Freneau would respond?”

“Yes.”
Not always.
“It didn’t seem likely after all this time, but I was compelled to go. I wanted to be the one to get it for you.”

He put his arms around her as best he could, for her belly kept him at a distance. “Let’s eat dinner,” he said, “and then we’ll open it.”

“You’re going to wait to open it?” she asked, incredulous.

“If it’s bad news, it will spoil my appetite. If it’s good news, it will be just as good on a full stomach.”

“Bad news? How could it be bad news?”

“Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps he couldn’t sell the soap.”

When he opened the envelope a bank note fell out and with it a letter.

My dear Mishwe,

Your prompt shipment was gratefully received. As I expected, the soap was an immediate success. Each customer who bought it brought in five more who wished it as well. We were able to charge thirty cents per bar and even this was conservative given the demand. It would have gone for twice the price. In any case, the receipts for ten gross came to roughly four hundred fifty dollars. I am sending you half this amount, plus thirty dollars to cover your shipping costs. If you are agreeable, I could dispose of ten gross three times a year.

Yours most sincerely,

Pierre Freneau

Nadeem stared at the bank note a long time. “I can repay the money you loaned me,” he said finally.

“It isn’t necessary,” she said. As he had been reading, she remembered all the moments when he had reiterated his faith in the Frenchman and had received only skepticism.

“I will repay it,” he repeated. “And we will build a proper kitchen and our own cistern so you won’t have to go to the spring so often.”

“I would like a divan,” she said unexpectedly.

“A divan?”

“Yes. I would like to put it over against the wall with a lamp next to it. When Khalil is ready he can read there. I feel sad that I never kept up with my reading and numbers. I want Khalil to be at ease with reading. Not to always struggle as I do.”

Nadeem looked at his wife a long time. Her face had a different look each day—some days pale and distant with the blue eyes so dark they resembled the sky just before the stars became visible. Now, however, she appeared tenderly young and trusting. “Very well,” he said, his heart aching with love, “a divan, too.”

She didn’t miss the catch in his voice and she, too, felt a new emotion—a letting go and a desire to give herself to him.

When the building in Bethel was completed, Nadeem abandoned masonry once and for all and worked to expand his exporting business. Through a friend in the offices of Messrs. Singer—expediters of packages that couldn’t be trusted to the Turkish postal system—he connected with a Greek who wanted to be supplied with crèche figures, rosaries, and other sacred items. He commissioned the best olive-wood carver and the best rosary maker and within a month sent shipments to both Freneau and K. Theodopolous. Still restless, he visited the new suq—a sumptuous space with a flowing fountain and scheduled musicales—and spoke to the merchants who sold expensive goods to the Europeans and the elite class who were building mansions outside the Old City walls. Why not ask M. Freneau to reciprocate with merchandise from France? In all the specialty shops that lined Jaffa Road, there was none that sold luxury linens and undergarments from the Continent.

That afternoon he slipped into the Hotel Petra and wrote to Freneau suggesting this arrangement. Next he looked at several empty shops elegant enough to receive the families who might buy such expensive merchandise. The Grand Hotel had empty space but the rent was astronomical. However, the proprietor of the apothecary shop that sold perfumes and toiletries was interested in subletting a corner of his shop, with the warning that the public was fickle, ill mannered, and slow to pay.

Nadeem thanked him and accepted the offer. Within a few months he was able to place a modest sign outside: “Fine Imported Linens and Trousseau Apparel. N. Mishwe. Prop.”

7.

I WILL HAVE TO CLOSE THE SHOP.

T
he first years of the new century brought change to the village. The Society of Friends, whose fine girls’ school was attracting pupils from as far away as Nablus, opened a fledgling school for boys in more humble quarters. Tamleh became a district seat for the surrounding villages and the new
mudeer
widened the roads and made people paint their houses and not throw their dirt into the streets.

“Come,” said Zareefa to Miriam one morning. “Nicola Khoury has installed his mechanical mill. Let’s go have a look.”

Miriam was reluctant. “The baby could come at any moment. My shape is indecent.”

“Never mind,” insisted Zareefa. “You’re so thin normally, it hardly looks like anything. Drape your shawl over it. Here.” She arranged the fabric over Miriam’s jutting belly. “And bring some wheat. As long as we’re going, let him grind the flour for tomorrow’s bread.”

They walked slowly to the market street, each with a child in a sling, but when they arrived there was a long line of women and they decided not to wait. On the way home there was an ominous rumbling and they felt the earth tremble. A woman ran out of the house screaming, “The whole room is shaking. Everything is crashing to the floor.”

“It’s an earthquake,” said Zareefa soberly. “We’re better off outside.” The sensation lasted no more than thirty seconds, but when they reached the house, the floors were sprinkled with fallen whitewash that had broken off from the plaster. Later, Miriam learned that the roof of Nabiha’s house had caved in and she was killed instantly. Daud, who still lived with her, was not at home.

The day her beloved grandmother was laid to rest, Miriam gave birth to Hanna, a placid, chubby boy with the features and coloring of the Mishwe clan. “He has my mother’s eyes exactly,” Nadeem said with mixed feelings.

“This one isn’t going to give you trouble,” said Zareefa. “He looks so peaceful and content.”

It was a blessing that Hanna was good-natured, for Miriam was filled with a deep, brooding melancholy over Nabiha’s death. Calamity could come at any moment and human beings had no protection against it. Earthquakes, famine, illness—random evil, as Nadeem had portrayed it—directed at no one in particular and with no apparent cause and without any warning or defense. While still in the fragile emotional limbo of a new birth, Miriam resolved to have more children, for they were the only solidity. They were the only protection against fear. As it turned out, she had reason to be apprehensive, for within two years she experienced a deeper sorrow.

When she became pregnant the third time, Miriam prayed for a daughter, but her prayers were answered cruelly. A girl was born with the cord wrapped around her neck, and the face that emerged was ghoulish, wizened, and a deep purple in color. Miriam named the creature Mary and held her until she died. She was barely twenty-two years old, but she felt as if she had lived a much longer time. She developed unusual fears about Khalil’s and Hanna’s safety and awakened several times during the night to check on them. Whereas before they had seldom embraced, now she often wept in Nadeem’s arms and it seemed that the tears came without rhyme or reason. It was almost a year before she was herself again. A year before she could wake up in the morning and not immediately experience the feeling that her heart was sinking down, down, down.

“The next time you give birth,” said Zareefa with her usual cheerful confidence, “God will reward you. You’ll receive an angel from heaven.”

In 1906 the Sultan Abdul Hamid had his thirtieth anniversary and the Turks celebrated by building a clock tower forty feet tall over the gatehouse at Jaffa Gate. The clock had four faces, two showing Eastern time and two showing European time. Nadeem brought Miriam to see it, but she was pregnant again and went into labor during the carriage ride. She had to return home immediately. Esa was born an hour later, an adorable child who had received the best combination of genes from that vast pool. His skin was the color of new ivory, a dense creamy white. From Nadeem’s honey-colored eyes and Miriam’s deep blue ones, Esa came out with round hazel pools of clearest light. His long lashes were tipped dark at the ends. It seemed this baby was born smiling.

Miriam, who had never fully recuperated from Mary’s birth and quick death (not to mention Esa’s birth), felt permanently tired. Heavy limbs and grainy eyes were daily companions. She walked—always carrying a child or a bundle—from fields to house to ovens to garden to kitchen to bed. The days passed unnoticed, yet there was a pleasant security in the predictability of her life. Daud rebuilt Nabiha’s house and married a very pretty girl who was as short as he. Diana, Nabile’s obese wife, who could no longer raise herself from a seat without help, still embroidered every day and made cheese from dried leben
and appeared daily at the
taboon
to make bread she could have easily bought.

Little Esa grew more beautiful in looks and disposition. At two and a half, he followed his mother for long distances without complaining. Hanna, at seven, could read Arabic and French. True to Zareefa’s prediction, he was a quiet boy who felt deeply. He wanted to make his parents happy and always looked for ways to help. Khalil didn’t do as well in school as his brother. He had difficulty reading and also a tendency to write his numbers and letters backward. He often balked at going to school and Miriam had to coax him with sweets and a promise to walk with him and meet him halfway on his return. With all his shyness, he had a reckless streak and loved to chase the carriages that now traveled regularly on the new road to Nablus, hitching a ride on their back bumpers and jumping off at the last moment.

Now that Nadeem was part of the business community and circulated in Jerusalem daily, he was full of news and opinions of the world and society, and especially the government at Constantinople, which the shopkeepers chewed over constantly. Even before Faidy Alami, the tax collector who came to assess the crops, predicted a revolution, Nadeem had already heard rumors. At one of the Sunday gatherings, Nadeem told the family—whispering as if it were censored information—that the sultan was considered insane. “They say he wanders from room to room during the night, calling up his astrologers and attendants to get consolation from some new terror.”

“Perhaps his conscience has the better of him,” said Jameel bitterly. Although Abdul Hamid had little interest in Palestine, he had bankrupted the country and ruled with an army of spies.

“In any case, it’s of little importance to us,” said Nadeem’s father.

“You advocate that a madman head the country?” asked Jameel.

“I prefer a known evil to an unknown one. Besides, the sultan has never bothered with Judea. There’s never been a threat of revolt from us, which is all that interests him. We are free to educate ourselves as we like. And to punish our wrongdoers. The police are greedy but not unnecessarily cruel.”

“What will happen to us if there is a revolution?” asked Nadeem.

“Who knows? The same thing that would happen to you if there isn’t one.”

Even with all this speculation and discussion, the events that came late in that year of 1908 were a surprise to everyone. A week after the conversation at the Mishwes’ Sunday dinner, a group of young, liberal Turks, many of whom had been exiled in Paris, successfully overthrew the sultan and pledged to put the empire on the road to modernization and reform. The peasants were certain something good would come of it, even though they had never before felt connected to the far-off government that didn’t even speak their language.

The regime of the Young Turks and their Committee of Union and Progress was received with riotous joy. There were celebrations in Jerusalem with fireworks, music, and long speeches. “Long Live Liberty, Justice, and Equality,” wrote Gad Frumkin in his newspaper
Habazeleth
. Jameel and Nadeem took their families—as did everyone—to Manera Square to celebrate.

For the next year, life did improve. Tamleh was incorporated into a city and Elias Hanna was chosen its first mayor. A representative from each clan formed a city council that began to clean and modernize the town. The shop and inn owners were paid to sweep the street and install kerosene lamps. Trees were planted in the public places and gardens created. The livestock market was limited to Thursday and scales were inspected for irregularities. Two new roads were built—one that led to the orchards and one to Bireh.

Zareefa and Jameel, who now had three daughters, built a larger home near Miriam and Nadeem and the two women were daily companions. They cooked together and sewed and discussed their motherly concerns. Miriam’s pleasure was to sit in the evenings and read for twenty minutes with Khalil, struggling against sleep. Her children were everything to her. Nightly she prayed for their welfare, naming each individually and expressing her hopes for their future. Hanna’s legs turned inward and each night she would rub them with oil so hot he cried out loudly, but that didn’t stop her. Hanna had such a peculiar gait that Khalil, deeply embarrassed, insisted on carrying him on his back when they went in public. Miriam prayed that Hanna’s legs would straighten, that Khalil would lose his streak of recklessness, and that Esa, her beloved golden boy, would always stay with her. It was better that she didn’t know so soon that none of her prayers would be answered.

The populace had believed so strongly that the Young Turks would be their salvation that it took a while to see the dark clouds forming. They were already deep into 1910 before the signs of despotism affected daily life and people began to awaken to a new mood and a new frustration.

“Father Ricard says he can’t teach us Arabic history anymore,” Hanna told Nadeem. “A soldier came and talked to him. He said we must learn to speak Turkish.”

“Hanna,” said his father circumspectly, “when you have the story correct, tell it to me again. You’re talking nonsense.” But then, noticing Hanna’s hurt expression, he questioned him more closely.

“It wasn’t a soldier,” said Hanna, trying to be precise. “It was an official. He took Father Ricard for most of the morning to show him the list of new laws.”

“Why would he give a priest laws? That’s for the police.”

“These are new laws for teaching children. They are laws for all the denominational schools. Father Ricard read them all to us and then . . .” Hanna looked at his shoes in embarrassment. “He cried.”

“Who cried?”

“Father Ricard. He said it was the end. No. He said it was the beginning of the end.”

Hanna’s story and Father Ricard’s prediction were substantiated many times in the months following. The Turks decided, rather belatedly, that they wanted an all-Turkish empire and all non-Turkish subjects would become second-class citizens. Gad Frumkin’s
Habazeleth
now openly criticized the regime it had so recently praised because censorship had become stricter and taxes—that in the old regime had sometimes been collected twice or reduced at the whim of the collector—now became ruinous.

One day Miriam was walking with Esa to meet the boys coming from school and two Turkish soldiers on horseback were waiting at her door. In former days a squad of soldiers was sent out to do police duty, but for the most part they had dealt with the sheiks who negotiated for clan members accused of wrongdoing. The villagers were always suspicious of any government representatives and refused to believe they came with good intentions because every entanglement with the government ended with a demand for money.

“Madam?” A stout Turk, wearing the sashed uniform and saber of the local Jerusalem police, sat on a restless horse. She had seen the soldiers many times around the barracks near the citadel. But now, in front of her house, peering at her through narrowed eyes, they became a symbol of tyranny and her mind hardened. “We must find Nadeem Mishwe,” he said.

“For what purpose?” Miriam asked, looking to see that all the boys were safely inside the house.

“Conscription. We are rounding up the able men for conscription.”

“But we’ve paid the head tax,” she countered indignantly.