The door finally opened.
A woman appeared: about fifty years old, dark complexion, large eyes, black hair streaked with gray.
Fawzi said something in Hebrew.
“Why are you speaking to me in Hebrew? Speak to me in Arabic,” said the woman with a strong Lebanese accent.
“Excuse me, Madam. Is your husband here?” asked Fawzi.
“No, he’s not here. Is everything all right? Please come in.”
She opened the door wider.
“You know Arabic,” Umm Hassan whispered as she entered. “You’re an Arab, Sister — aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not an Arab,” said the woman.
“You’ve studied Arabic?” asked Umm Hassan.
“No, I studied Hebrew, but I haven’t forgotten my Arabic. Come in, come in.”
They entered the house. Umm Hassan said — like everyone else who’s gone back to see their former homes — “Everything was in its place. Everything was just how it used to be, even the earthenware water jug.”
“God of all the worlds,” sighed Umm Hassan, “what would Umm Isa have said if she’d visited her house in Jerusalem? Poor Umm Isa. In her last days she spoke about just one thing — the saucepan of zucchini. Umm Isa left her house in Katamon in Jerusalem without turning off the flame under the saucepan of zucchini.”
“I can smell burning. The saucepan. I must go and turn off the flame,” she would say to Umm Hassan, who nursed her during her last illness. And Umm Hassan, who had felt pity for the dying woman, stood in her own house in front of the earthenware water jug that was still where it had been, smelled the zucchini in Umm Isa’s saucepan, and said that everything was in its place except for those people who had come in and sat down right where we’d been sitting.
The Israeli woman left her in front of the water jug and returned with a pot of Turkish coffee. She poured three cups and sat calmly watching these strangers whose hands trembled as they held their coffee. Before Umm Hassan could open her mouth to ask a thing, the Israeli woman said, “It’s your house, isn’t it?”
“How did you know?” asked Umm Hassan.
“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. Welcome.”
Umm Hassan took a sip from her cup. The aroma of the coffee overwhelmed her, and she burst into sobs.
The Israeli woman lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the air, gazing into space.
Fawzi went out into the garden where Rami was playing with the video camera, filming everything.
The two women remained alone in the living room, one weeping, the other smoking in silence.
The Israeli turned and wanted to say something, but didn’t. Umm Hassan wiped away her tears and went over to the water jug, which stood on a side table in the living room.
“The jug,” said Umm Hassan.
“I found it here, and I don’t use it. Take it if you want.”
“Thank you, no.”
Umm Hassan went over to the jug, picked it up, and tucked it under her arm; then she went back to the Israeli woman and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” said the Palestinian, “I don’t want it. I’m giving it to you. Take it.”
“Thank you,” said the Israeli, who took the jug and returned it to its place.
The silence was broken — the two women burst out laughing. Umm Hassan started looking around the house. She stood in front of the bedroom but didn’t go in. Next she went to the kitchen. In the sink were piles of dirty dishes. Umm Hassan turned on the tap and watched the water flow out, and the Israeli woman ran in saying, “I’m so sorry, it’s a mess.” Umm Hassan turned off the tap and said, laughing, “I didn’t leave the dirty dishes. That was you.”
The two women went out into the garden.
The Israeli woman gave Umm Hassan her arm and told her about the place. She told her about the orange grove where Iraqi Jews worked, the new irrigation projects the government had started, their fear of the Katyusha rockets, and about how difficult life was. Umm Hassan listened and looked and said one word: “Paradise. Paradise. Palestine’s a paradise.” When the Israeli woman asked her what she was saying, she answered, “Nothing. I was just saying that we call it an orchard, not a grove. This is an orange orchard. How wonderful, how wonderful.”
“Yes, an orchard,” said the Israeli.
Then Umm Hassan began telling the Israeli woman about the place.
“Where’s the spring?” asked Umm Hassan.
“What spring?”
Umm Hassan told her the story of her spring and how she’d discovered water in the field next to the house. When her husband had built the house, close to the eucalyptus tree, there had been no water. It was Umm Hassan who had discovered it. And one day she saw water welling up from the ground. She told the men, “We must dig here,” and they dug, and water came gushing out. So they built a little stone wall around the spring, and it became known as Umm Hassan’s spring.
“Where’s the spring?” she asked.
The Israeli woman couldn’t answer. “There was a spring here,” she said, “but they dug an artesian well around it and laid some pipes. Could that be it?”
“No, it’s a natural spring,” said Umm Hassan, and told how they’d decided to plant apple trees after they discovered the water. But the war.
Umm Hassan guided the woman to where her spring had been.
She didn’t find it. Where it had been, she found a well walled with pipes and iron with a small tap on each side. Umm Hassan bent over to open the tap, and when the water gushed out, splashed her face and neck, sprinkled the water on her hair and clothes, and drank.
“Drink,” she said. “Water sweeter than honey.”
The Israeli woman bent over and washed her hands, and then turned off the tap without drinking.
“This is the most delicious water in the world.”
The Israeli woman turned on the tap again, drank a little and smiled.
Later Umm Hassan would say the Israelis don’t drink water, just fizzy drinks. “They only drink out of bottles, even though Palestine’s water is the best in the world.”
In vain we tried to explain to her that they drink mineral water not fizzy drinks and that the people of Beirut have started to drink water out of plastic bottles, too, but she stuck to her guns and said, “They don’t drink water. I saw them with my own eyes. You want me to question what I saw with my own eyes?”
After they’d had a drink, the two women walked around the house. Umm Hassan told the woman about the eucalyptus tree and the olive grove and pointed out the stone that looks like the head of an ox. She took her around behind the house and showed her the cave on the other side of the hill.
Umm Hassan talked and the other woman discovered, astonished that she’d never noticed the ox’s head, or had even gone into the cave. Then Umm Hassan told her how she’d learned her profession as a midwife from her grandmother on her father’s side, Maryam, and that she had an official license from the British government. She recounted how she’d gotten married at fifteen “to chase away the chickens from the front of the house,” as her mother-in-law had said when she’d asked for her hand.
Umm Hassan told her stories, strolling from place to place, and the Jewish woman followed along behind, listening and nodding her head but not uttering a word.
Umm Hassan would tell her guests that she had seen her life dissolving in front of her: “What’s life? Like a pinch of salt in water, it just melts away.” She slipped back as though no time had passed. She saw again the young woman who’d gone to live in her new home. At twenty, she told her husband that she wanted a house of their own — “I’m no good for chasing chickens anymore and I am no longer a little girl.” They got the land and built the house with their own hands, and she discovered the spring and the cave and the ox’s head, and became the midwife for the whole district of Acre.