Said ignored Walid’s comment and turned to ask Fawzi, ‘So, how do you know that Sabha doesn’t wear panties? Huh? Fess up! Have you, fine sir, had the good fortune to disrobe the fair maiden in question?’
For a moment, a lascivious smile hung on Fawzi’s fine, delicate lips. Then, wryly, he said, ‘No, sir. I use logic. Simple logic, nothing more. Consider these facts. Sabha comes from a dirt-poor family. Her father doesn’t have a penny to his name. Were she to die, the man wouldn’t be able to afford to bury her in a panty-sized shroud. He couldn’t even do that for Umm Sabha, even though he sleeps with the old woman every night. Thus, I aver that the Farrans are a family that wears no underpants.’
Said continued his story, ignoring Walid’s anger and Fawzi’s sarcastic interjections. ‘A few days later, Sabha ran off. She’d told her mother what had happened — and now her father was determined to marry her to her cousin Yasser. Sabha refused the marriage, fearing that her cousin would figure out that she wasn’t a virgin. She made up a story about wanting to wait until she’d finished high school. Her father stubbornly insisted on going forward with the wedding arrangements, and told the girl that he and his brother, the lucky groom’s father, had already agreed all the details. It was at that point that she ran away to the home of sheikh Mu’min Abdel Aal. There, she went on and on telling stories and pleading with the old man, ‘Have mercy on me, sheikh! Protect me! My family wants to marry me off to my cousin by force, but I won’t consent to it. I’m scared they might come after me and kill me!’
Finally, Said began to talk about the role the sheikh had played in the tale. ‘May God grant that noble gentleman a long, prosperous life and reward him for the principled stand he took while he considered that poor girl’s plight! Even though that man had no daughters of his own, he took Sabha into his bosom like any loving father would do. Then the good sheikh convinced Sabha’s parents to let her remain in his household long enough for him to convince her to change her mind.
‘She took refuge in his home. Long-term refuge — it went on for more than three months. At which point, Sabha began to show signs of being pregnant. No one could figure out who the father was. It could have been Ali — he was the one who had first blazed the trail. But it also could have been the Azhari sheikh’s — there’s no doubt that of late, the industrious man had widened the road somewhat.
‘No one believed the torrent of gossip that spilled through the alleys and streets of the camps and city. No one believed all the chatter about the sheikh and Sabha until the day the sheikh announced — four months after she’d taken refuge in his home — that the two of them were legally married. And this made everyone — his family, her family and everyone else in the city and its camps — face the fact that Sabha had become this man’s wife fair and square.
‘The sheikh said it would be a pragmatic solution to Sabha’s problem, in addition to being a highly commendable legal resolution. Not even the girl’s father could object.’
After feasting for months on the story of Sabha and Ali, people began to view the story in a different light and began to sympathize with the sheikh, who had done nothing more than use religious dogma to smooth over the bumps in the road. Whenever his name came up, people would say, ‘God really owes him one.’
The lights of the city turned off before Said’s tongue stopped wagging. The three friends did not stop talking until Walid reminded them that he was travelling in the morning and had to get up early. It was midnight and the outlines of the streets and alleys had faded into the gloom around them. Only then did they say goodnight and goodbye. Only then did each go off, bleary eyed, in the dark, toward his home.
*
The next morning, after performing dawn prayers, Walid quickly ate the breakfast his mother had prepared for him. He kissed his nine-year-old sister, Raja, and said goodbye to her. He picked up his leather suitcase and went out. His mother went with him to where the taxi was waiting. He put his bag in the boot then turned to his mother and embraced her. The car went off with him in it, but his eyes remained glued to his mother. Her face leapt back and forth in the rear view window, and then got smaller. The shawl she held in her fingers billowed and flapped like a flag in the wind. And then her image disappeared in the distance. Nothing remained but the last words she said to him. They rang in his ears, ‘Go and come back safe.’
Over the Sinai the train carried Walid to Cairo. He travelled in the third-class carriage for nine tedious hours, six of them choked with the dust of the desert.
That was the last time he would take that trip in either direction. He never made it back to Gaza after that.
Tomorrow, he comes home.
Return
1
I throw my little backpack into the overhead bin and take my seat. Row 19. Seat B. British Airways Flight 153, from London Heathrow to Tel Aviv. The plane is supposed to arrive at 7 am local time. I am no longer thinking about how anxious my mother is, nor about how sceptical she was, doubting I would really come. Her feelings had already begun to change into a kind of waiting whose hours were dissolving now, tonight. By now, on this last night of waiting, she must have surrendered to a sleep as restless as her feelings.
It is 11:15 pm, which makes it 1:15 am in Palestine. ‘Believe it, Mama,’ I will tell her as I hold her in my arms tomorrow morning, seeking my childhood somewhere in her embrace. ‘Here I am, I made it.’ And then we will sit down at the squat table to eat. Passengers in my aisle walk right by, taking their seats one by one. Others in the aisle opposite look for their seats there.
I study the passengers as they go by, nervous about which one will be sitting next to me. Their faces flip by like the pages of a book written in different languages and different alphabets. One of these faces belongs to my seatmate, who in all likelihood will be Jewish. Everything points to this likelihood — all the conversations, whispers and thoughts I have overheard since boarding.
I will ignore the issue and my seatmate too. I lean back into my seat and surrender to the half-dozing wakefulness of flying. I might watch a movie once the airplane reaches cruising altitude. I could read the book I brought, Yann Queffélec’s novel, Cruel Weddings. I finished the first hundred pages yesterday, following the strange story of Ludo, cast into the world by the cruel thrusting of the American sailors who raped his mother. After this great and celebrated American victory, Ludo’s mother looks at him and sees only the wrong done her. She rejects him as if he belonged to a complete stranger.
Next to the novel in my backpack is the statuette of Nefertiti, bought so long ago in a souvenir shop in Khan El-Khalili. Today, she travels with me to the friend I bought her for. But I do not reach for the novel, nor for Nefertiti. I might pick up my book later. If someone sits down and wants to talk, I will have to excuse myself from Ludo’s company for a while. But if someone asks me where I am from, I will pick up the book and start reading. Even now, I have no idea how I will respond to that question, should it be asked.
It makes me more and more nervous to think about it. Really, where am I from?
It is my first trip to Israel. It is the first time I have been on an airplane where all the passengers, or at least most of them, are Jewish. Only once did someone ask me that question before. It happened on the Underground, during my usual rush-hour commute to work in central London.
I was on the Piccadilly line, heading toward Cockfosters, when the man got on at Acton Town. He was about seventy, with an old yarmulke and long curly sidelocks. He wore black trousers, a bright white shirt and an overcoat, even though it was summer. The man smiled at no one in particular, then made a bee-line for the seat next to mine Before the train had even left the station, my neighbour began to read aloud from a book that lay open in his hands. The murmurs and whispers streaming from his lips were surprisingly strident. Unlike Qu’ran reciters who rock side-to-side when they read, this man rocked back and forth.