I said to my granddaughter Huda, commenting on a silver ornament the size of a chick pea that she had put on the end of her nose, “If your great-grandmother saw you now!” She looked at me questioningly, not knowing if the comment showed admiration or implied criticism. I smiled and said, “I was a lot younger than you, maybe four or five at the most, when the Nawar came to our village.” She stopped me: “The Nawar?” “The Gypsies,” I explained. Then I continued, “They set up their tents in the village square, and there was a woman with them who put a basket of seashells in front of her, the kind that are small and spiraled. She would say, ‘Blow on them and give them back to me and I will read your fortune.’ That seemed very exciting, and she herself seemed different, arousing curiosity by those green marks on her face. There was a little round mark on the end of her nose and others more like two horizontal lines under her lower lip, and there was a crescent earring, not placed as usual — a pair with one in each ear — but fastened on the side of her nose. Her accent was different and so was her garment; it was different from our mothers’ long dresses. She said that she could read the unknown and uncover hidden things, and that it was possible for her to tell us what would happen to us when we grew up. Everyone ran to his house; one came back with a stone-baked loaf, one carried an egg, one brought dates. She read our fortunes, but even after we learned our good luck, we didn’t disperse but stayed in a circle around her. Then I found myself pulling on the edge of her dress and pointing to the green marks on her face and asking her, ‘How did you color that, Auntie?’
“She laughed, ‘I didn’t color it!’
“‘Were you born like that?’
“‘That’s a tattoo, and we inscribe it whenever we want. It beautifies the face. Do you want one like it?’
“‘Yes, I do.’
“‘What will you give me in exchange?’
“I flew to the house and came back with a copper pot that I gave to her. She made the tattoo for me. I went home and when my mother saw the tattoo she stood screaming at me, threatening to beat me. When she found out about the copper pot she made good her threat and beat me with a stick until my brothers rescued me from her. For years I didn’t understand why my mother was so angry, and why she kept saying, ‘Now people will think you are one of the Nawar girls.’”
What did Anis say? He was my grandson who lived in Canada, and he had been following what I told his cousin. He said what would never occur to me, nor cross my mind: “It’s clear that Great-grandma was racist. What she said about the Gypsies is racist talk, it’s not right, and beating children is also unacceptable.” He added, in English, “It’s politically incorrect!”
I burst out laughing and laughed a long time, until the tears rolled down my cheeks. I said as I was wiping away the tears, “Your poor great-grandmother! God rest her soul and bless her and her time.”
I wait for Maryam to return from the university. I wait for her to finish studying her lessons. I wait for the calls from the children. I wait for the six a.m. news broadcast, and for the news at eleven at night, and then for the news at six the next morning. The hours pass slowly, in loneliness, as if I were moving about in a cemetery. The summer comes, or more precisely a certain summer month comes, and the house comes to life. We have to organize comings and goings to avoid traffic congestion, and the conflict of temperaments and desires. “What will we cook tonight?” What the girl wants, the boy won’t like. One smokes ceaselessly and one can’t stand the smell of cigarettes, one wants to watch a soccer match and another wants the news, while the third group wants to watch movies. One calls from an inner room, “Lower your voices a little, I want to sleep,” and one asks for help from the kitchen because he has caused a minor disaster, with no great consequences. I say, “A madhouse!” and notice the confusion of Mira’s face, my granddaughter who wears glasses, who reads a lot, and who takes everything that’s said seriously. I explain, “I’m joking, your being here is as sweet as honey for me.”
We laugh, we laugh between the jokes, the silly stories, and the recalled foolishness. We fill the gaps of months of absence with the stories of what happened to them, or to me, or to others of our family and friends who live in Ain al-Helwa or in Jenin or in Tunis or who stayed in the area of al-Furaydis, or who are scattered among the villages nearby, those we know and see from time to time and those we never meet, whose stories reach us and which we repeat, so they become part of the shared fabric of the family.
My neighbor, a young woman, a doctor to whom Maryam introduced me, asked me, “Your oldest granddaughter is in college, when did you get married?”
“Before I was fifteen.”
“God forbid, you were a child!”
I changed the subject as I didn’t think it was appropriate to present the story of my life, with a full accounting, to a neighbor who had met my daughter less than two weeks before, and then had surprised me with a visit, saying that she wanted to meet me. There was plenty of time for us to become closer, to become friends, and for her to know some of my story — or to be satisfied with polite neighborliness, “Good morning” and “How are you?” when we met by chance in the elevator or at the door of the building, each going her own way and knowing no more of her neighbor than her name and the broad outlines of her life.
After the month of vacation, which might be a week more or less for one reason or another, I say goodbye to the children. The schedule of arriving flights is exchanged for another one, for departures to Abu Dhabi, to Toronto, to Paris, to Lid via Larnaca or Athens, to Nablus via Amman and the bridge. We go to the airport, then we go again, then we go a third time and a fourth and sometimes a fifth. Weeping has been worn out, maybe because the tears have become ashamed of themselves, there’s no place for them. The children kiss my hand and move away with unhurried steps, not turning around so I can see their faces one more time. The grandchildren, Noha and Huda and Amin Junior and Anis and Mira, follow their families with hurried steps, turning their necks again and again: “Goodbye, Teta.” I look at their smiling faces. I wave. They wave.
I hold Maryam’s arm as we come home together. A space of calm to recover the usual rhythm, to contemplate, to bathe, to put the house in order, to repair my relationship with the plants which I’m convinced get angry, like children, if you neglect them.
Usually it all takes two weeks, after which the house regains its cleanliness, the window glass and the wooden shutters and the doors, the carpet and the curtains and the furniture. And I spoil the plants, seeking to please them until they are satisfied.