The sea resides in the village. As for the train, it has set times, appearing and then disappearing, like the night-haunting ghoul. We are disturbed by the roar of its engines as it approaches, the earth’s shaking as it passes, the friction of the wheels on the rails, its whistle bursts, the hiss of the brakes because it is stopping. The train passes through the town daily, and has a station in the east, in Zummarin. Sometimes it carries local people like us; mostly it is ridden by English soldiers or settlers with business in Haifa or Jaffa, who come and go by train. My two brothers ride Abu Isam’s bus once a week, going to Haifa at the beginning of the week and returning at the end, to spend Thursday and Friday night with us.
Less than a month after I met the young man who sprang from the sea, we were visited by the sheikh of Ain Ghazal. He drank coffee with my father and asked for my hand in marriage for his nephew.
My mother said, “His name is Yahya.”
I muttered, “I know his name is Yahya.”
My mother didn’t notice. She continued with what she was telling me.
“Your father wants to know what you think before he gives him the answer. He said to them that the alliance honors us, and God willing, good will come of it. Your father agrees, but he says, if Ruqayya accepts we will only read the Fatiha now and we’ll hold the marriage in a year, when she will be fourteen.” My mother said that she had objected and said, “Why would we marry her to a young man from Ain Ghazal?” and that my father said, “The people of Ain Ghazal are our maternal cousins, they have married our daughters before. And the boy has a good mind, he’s educated and he’s studying in Egypt.” “When he said Egypt I shouted, ‘Will you send your daughter away, Abu Sadiq?’ He said, ‘I won’t send her away. The boy will finish his studies before the marriage is consummated.’ I objected again, ‘As long as the boy is studying in the university he won’t work as a fisherman or a farmer, and he won’t live here or in Ain Ghazal. He’ll get a job in Haifa or in Lid, and he might go farther away, his job might even take him to Jerusalem, and frankly I don’t want to send my daughter far away. It’s enough that the two boys are away in Haifa and that I don’t see them more than a day and a half each week. If she’s going to leave the village let her marry Amin. The father’s nephew unseats a groom riding to his bride, as they say. Amin is better for her, and Beirut is closer than Cairo.’ He said, ‘He won’t stay in Cairo, he will return to Ain Ghazal. And if he gets a job in Haifa you can take the train and reach your daughter in less than half an hour.’ I said, ‘And if the Jews close the road to us?’ His face got red, and he scowled and said, ‘God forbid! Enough talk! We’re buying the man, not the location of his work. The boy is nineteen and educated, the family brings honor and distinction, his uncle is the sheikh of Ain Ghazal, an upstanding man with a reputation like gold. Ask the girl, and if she agrees, may God bless it.’”
“What do you think?” My mother was directing the question to me.
I did not say, “Even if he were working at the ends of the earth …,” rather I said, “I agree.”
My words came out clear, in a loud voice. She scolded me, “Good God, where’s your shame! Say, ‘Whatever you think,’ say, ‘It’s for my parents to decide!’”
On the next visit the sheikh of Ain Ghazal came with his brothers and with a large group of his most important relatives and of men of their village. They were received by my father, my uncle, my brothers, and the elders of our village. They read the Fatiha. The formal proposal was made with Yahya pursuing his university studies in Egypt. My mother and my aunt were absorbed in preparing the feast, for which my father had slaughtered two lambs. My mother was coming and going, repeatedly whispering in my ear, “You’ll have a bad reputation among the women, they’ll say you’re a lazy, good-for-nothing bride. Look lively, show them what you can do.” I slipped out of the house and headed for the sea, sitting cross-legged and staring at the boy as he approached, wet and golden. I recalled the scene and then recalled again, against the background of the sound of the waves and the women’s songs and trills of joy coming from the direction of our house:
2
The Night-Haunting Ghoul
I imagine my mother during those days. I recall what she said, and what she did not say. I hear her as she repeats to one of the neighbors what she has already said to my aunt: “I said to him, ‘You’re sending your daughter all the way to Haifa, Abu Sadiq!’ He said, ‘You’ll take the train.’ Good God, I’ll travel from one town to another to see my daughter? And what if she goes into labor in the middle of the night? What if she gets sick, God forbid? Besides, how will I take the train, and who will tell me how to take it, and how to get off, and how to get from the station to her house? And how can I take the train when most of the passengers are English soldiers or Jewish settlers? Even if they left me alone and no one bothered me, how would I dare ask any of them a question? They might not understand me when I ask, they might make fun of me, they might intentionally mislead me so that I get off at the wrong station and get lost between towns. I might find myself in one of the companies they call ‘settlements,’ what would I do then? Knock on the Jews’ door and tell them to bring me back home? Why did Abu Sadiq choose the hard way and say, ‘Accept my choice’? Why shouldn’t my daughter live near me, so I wouldn’t have to do anything to go see her except put on my sandals and put my scarf back on my head? She would put on the coffee when she sent for me and I would arrive before it boiled! And he says, ‘Take the train’!”
I don’t know if this anxiety that possessed my mother was the normal anxiety of a woman who had never left her village, or if it was complicated and deepened by a reality weighed down by fears, a reality that led her as it led others to take refuge in all that was familiar to her and associated with her. The distance separating her from Haifa — which was twenty-four kilometers, no more and no less — seemed like a rugged road surrounded by dangers, more like Sinbad’s voyage to the land of Wak Wak, or like going to the hiding place of the ghoul lying in wait for Shatir Hasan. These fears were not solely caused by the probability that her expected son-in-law would live in Haifa; after all, the young man was studying in Cairo, and neither she nor anyone else knew what work he might find, or where. In fact, God would spare her the trip to Haifa and its twenty-four kilometers; the young man would not work in Haifa and her daughter would not live there. My mother would live and die without taking the train. She would never visit Haifa, and no mount or automobile would take her to Ain Ghazal or to any of the other neighboring villages, except for al-Furaydis.
She would go there in a truck.
I tell my grandchildren tales about their great-grandmother, to amuse them. I tell them about their great-grandfather too. I say, “He used to love to tease her. Was it an old habit he had acquired when they were little, since he was her cousin and only four years older, or was it something new that came after marriage? I don’t know. He would intentionally pick a fight with her and she would take his words seriously. He said, ‘Take the train.’ Of course he was toying with her, because Abu Isam’s bus went from the village to Haifa every morning and came back in the evening, and no soldier or settler rode it. There were two Dodge cars that could be rented, that would take anyone who wanted not only to Haifa but also to Acre or Nazareth, or to Jerusalem or Jenin or Safad, or to Jaffa or even Gaza, usually to greet the pilgrims returning from Mecca by way of Suez. But he said, ‘Take the train.’” The grandchildren laugh and I join in, even though my awareness of the irony is like a lump in my throat. They don’t need to get used to traveling from town to town to see their grandmother or to visit their uncles or to attend a wedding or a funeral; they’ve never known any other way. I have not gotten used to it. Even after all these years, I have not gotten used to the movement of airplanes, which sometimes seems to me like a sky that the sky itself hides behind. I mutter to myself, “God rest you, Mother. If God had lengthened your life you would have known another time, and it would have taught you to know distant cities thousands of kilometers away from you. You would have stumbled over their names and clung to them, because the children are there.” Did I say I have not gotten used to it? I take it back. I have become accustomed. No one can resist being tamed by time.