Haifa Abu Draa had been struck. I didn’t know who had dared tell her the news. Her brother was an only boy among five sisters. How could anyone possibly have told her? It seems some woman came to her door and told her that her brother had been wounded. Haifa screamed once and fainted. She knew right away he was dead. The relaying of bad news always began lightly, to minimise the blow. If they said that so-and-so had been taken to the hospital, it meant he was dead as a doornail. The real news was written all over the bearer’s face, and Haifa was very good at reading faces.
The news struck Haifa and then finished its tour, hitting in every direction. It reached us a few minutes later with my little sister who had been on her way to the store to buy goat’s milk yogurt, which was just coming into season at that time. She turned back. She told us she didn’t know why she turned back. Something in the air made her do it, something in people’s eyes told her ‘Go back home, little girl.’ She came in, quite frightened, and looked at us, expecting us to already have heard the news. She almost stumbled and fell flat on the floor. She was as yellow as saffron and looking around as if something were trying to hunt her down. We didn’t get anything out of her because she couldn’t speak. Her tongue in a knot, she flung herself onto the couch. She hadn’t heard anything and hadn’t seen anything.
The mute knew more than her; he knew everything. He came in behind her. He was our neighbour and one of my mother’s distant relatives. He was barefoot as usual. Whenever he crossed our doorstep, the smell of reeds and the river came in with him. He liked to fish for eels and weave baskets. He had words written on his face as he headed towards my mother.
Every day when she was finished her with housework, my mother sat with him. He would leave his basket weaving and come to her. They would drink coffee together. He was completely deaf and dumb and she was the only person who understood his language and communicated with him. They were a beautiful sight. He had taught her his language. A language he had completely made up himself. He knew how to characterise so-and-so as stingy or so-and-so as the one with glasses or such-and-such a woman as one who lies all the time. Whenever he had a good catch, he brought us a part of it.
He came in, eyes shining. He began waving his hands around rapidly, all excited, his eyes flitting around, tracing out signs in the air — sometimes as if he were turning the steering wheel of a car and other times imitating the sound of gunfire in all directions with his mouth. He was telling my mother about a long chain of events. My youngest sister was still sprawled on the couch, completely powerless. The mute tilted his head to one side, stuck out his tongue and rolled his eyes, possibly alluding to Haifa Abu Draa who had screamed and passed out.
He went to the window, pointing right and left at the various houses in the quarter, waving his fist in the direction of the mountain, in the direction of Burj al-Hawa. I understood later on that he was threatening that town, was angry at it the way one man gets mad at another man for insulting him. My mother followed his story, understanding him, widening her eyes and nearly choking with fright. She had to cover her mouth to stop herself from screaming. I couldn’t bear to see my mother that way any longer. ‘Mum! What’s he saying?’ I shouted at the top of my lungs. ‘Tell us!’
My little sister also had her hand over her mouth. My mother hesitated, not knowing where to begin. She’d gone mute, too. I looked over at the mute hoping I could read something on his face. He was standing there smiling. That’s the way he was, from the very first time he set foot in our house. Whenever he succeeded in getting his message across, he smiled.
Then we started to hear some commotion. An obscure rumble. Then suddenly we heard a car horn, beeping without pause, coming from a car speeding down to the city. The people of the quarter were coming out of their houses, wanting to find out what was going on. The square filled up with people crossing the street. Women propped their hands on their hips as if they were no longer able to hold their bodies up on those narrow street corners, or they stood with their arms crossed over their chests, expecting the worst. They were waiting to hear the names of the dead, and they’d heard there were many. I didn’t dare think about anyone anymore. Were there any of our men who had not gone up to Burj al-Hawa?
‘Muntaha!’ Kamileh called to me from the balcony.
I ran to her, still wearing my house clothes.
‘Yusef is gone!’
That moment, every woman with a husband who had gone up to Burj al-Hawa assumed he was now dead.
‘Don’t leave me, Muntaha!’
Kamileh’s mother hadn’t arrived yet. Her mother’s house was far away, down near the riverbank. How could I leave her? I’d been her neighbour ever since Yusef al-Kfoury brought her to our quarter. Whenever anyone was looking for Kamileh, they knew they could find her at Muntaha’s. We would sit in the corner over there, in the shade of the grapevine. We would sit on the bench and talk. We wouldn’t spare anyone from our sharp tongues. She had a bitter tongue, that Kamileh. She didn’t want to hurt anybody, but she did want to ward off evil from us.
I went inside her house and found her sitting on the floor. I tried to calm her down and take the broom from her hands. It seemed that when Kamileh heard the screams and the news reached her, she was in the middle of sweeping away the leaves and flower petals that had littered the balcony as usual. Her legs buckled under her and she sat down on the floor with the broom still in her hand. She was sitting there on the floor, her legs stretched out in front of her, holding onto the broomstick and lifting it up high. Like a flag.
‘Don’t worry. Your husband doesn’t like trouble. People love him…’
But she wasn’t listening. I couldn’t bear the sight of her with that broom.
‘Give me that broom! Calm down!’
She wouldn’t release her grip. She kept banging the broom against the floor, methodically, one thud after another, until screams came from the direction of the main road, indicating that the dead and wounded had arrived. Kamileh was forced to stand up and go out into the streets with everyone else.
There was an armoured police car parked in the square with a security guard watching the crowd from its turret. The guard had a handlebar moustache, just like the odd-looking king of spades in a deck of cards. He examined his surroundings, completely baffled. He looked comical, but he was either afraid or stunned by us and our dead, I don’t know which.
We asked a lot of people. Kamileh begged people she knew and people she didn’t know to tell her what happened.
‘Did you see my husband? Yusef al-Kfoury?’
No one answered. No one knew anything. And those who had heard something didn’t dare tell. She screamed at them to answer. They avoided her.
At around five-thirty we heard a rumbling sound coming our way.
The dead had arrived.
A small truck drove through the crowd. The bodies were piled up on top of each other.
Waves of people crowded around the truck, and a man standing on the truck bed shouted at them to back away because not all of them were dead. ‘Let the truck get to the city hospital quickly. Maybe we can save one of them.’
We got as close as we could. Kamileh pushed her way through with me right behind her, trying to find our way to the truck. A number of people were able to grab hold of the protective metal bars on both sides of the truck bed and they walked along with the truck as it dragged them behind it. The dead had been piled up with their heads to the inside of the truck bed. A white sheet had been thrown over them, but their legs were still visible.