Sumana writes regularly to her family. Once a week she holds out her hand to Sadiq with two sealed envelopes, and he takes them from her. She waits for his return so he can reassure her that he has put the envelopes in the mail; and as long as he is going to the post office, he might find letters from her family in the box. Generally he brings her a letter, but sometimes he says, “I’m sorry, Sumana, nothing came for you.” She thanks him and gives him a courteous smile.
One day traces of weeping appeared in her eyes. I asked her and she said, “It’s nothing.” I asked Randa, and she said, “I scolded her because she broke a plate and burned the kubbeh she was frying. She’s been holding a wake since yesterday night because her mother sent her a letter saying that her husband is living with another woman. Evelyn told me. Men are like that, you can’t rely on them. As long as she was worried about her husband, she should have stayed with him! In any case I called her in and told her that personal matters have nothing to do with work.”
I said to Randa, “And if she got news that her four children had died in a traffic accident, would she be allowed to cry, or would she have to be careful to serve kubbeh that’s not burnt?” Randa was surprised by what I said. She picked up her purse and said that she had an appointment with the hairdresser.
I was sharp. I acknowledge that Randa and Sadiq put up with my sharpness. It would surprise me; I didn’t speak much, and I would be surprised by what I said as much as Sadiq or Randa would be surprised by it. Sadiq tries. Sometimes he says, “Let’s go, Mother.” “Where to?” He takes me in his car, usually to an air-conditioned coffee shop. During the two months of winter, when the scorching heat and humidity retreat, he drives his car to a spot on the beach where we can walk in the sand. We take off our sandals and walk beside each other. Sometimes then the knot in my tongue comes untied and I talk to Sadiq, and he also talks to me.
36
A Lesson
I said to Maryam, “I want to talk to you. Don’t go to the club with Sadiq and his children tomorrow morning; we’ll sit and talk.”
“Is it a punishment?”
“Not a punishment, but a talk that will take time.”
“Why on Friday morning? Let’s talk now, or Friday evening.
“I want you on Friday morning.”
“Mama, the talk won’t go away. I wait for Friday all week, so I can go to the club and meet my friends.”
I ended the discussion firmly: “No club this week.”
She left me, grumbling in protest, but she obeyed.
I was amazed that when Maryam recalled what happened and told her brother about it, she remembered the conversation down to the smallest detail. She was talking to Abed in my presence more than ten years later, flavoring her words with some of the Egyptian expressions she had picked up since we had moved to live in Alexandria.
Maryam told him: “She cornered me in the room and beat the hell out of me. It was a lesson in morals and history and geography and the family tree: ‘Your father was … your grandfather Abu Sadiq was … your maternal uncles … your grandfather Abu Amin was …,’ and the refrain: ‘We’re Palestinians. Refugees. Children of the camps.’ And me, ‘Mama, what did I do?’ She said that she had noticed that I was putting myself above the Sri Lankan maid and that I had begun to act like the girls here in the Gulf. ‘And if our living here is going to change you into one of them, we’ll go back to Lebanon. We’ll go back to Sidon and live in Ain al-Helwa, and the camp will cure you, it’ll teach you who you are.’ It was heavy, Abed, and your sister was completely lost! I didn’t understand why Mama was so angry. I was twelve, and I couldn’t comprehend the nature of the crime. She hauled me before a court where she was the judge and the prosecutor, and I was seeing stars.”
I broke in, “Stop exaggerating. All I did was point out that you were slipping into a style of life that we don’t belong to, and that we can’t belong to. I don’t remember the details, but I remember that I heard you calling Sumana as if you were issuing orders, and I was horrified. I didn’t sleep all night.”
Abed laughed. “We’ve all graduated from that institute before, with the same book and the same lessons!”
Maryam said, “You were three, you could get it off your chest with each other. Poor me, who could I complain to?”
“So which actress should play you, Fatin Hamama or Shadya?”
“Fatin, she’s an orphan and wasn’t treated fairly.”
“And Mama?”
“Mimi Shakib, the stepmother. She’s fat and mispronounces her R’s and wears tighter clothes than she should, to call attention to the size of her breasts and buttocks. She leaves her hair disheveled on purpose and dyes it bright yellow, and she persecutes me!”
They dissolved into laughter. Then Maryam realized that she had gone too far, so she jumped from her seat, put her arms around me and kissed my head. She bent over my ear and said, “Thank you. You were right.”
I was afraid, that’s for sure, and being away from home made me more worried. I brought up the children as well as I could. I held each one’s hand and accompanied him on the path from childhood to youth without any unfortunate accidents, and now each was responsible for himself. That left Maryam; I wanted to bring her up properly. Was I afraid for her only, or was I afraid that she would go over to the other camp and leave me alone and completely isolated? It was absolute isolation, utter and complete, in a two-story house with two servants who had come from the Far East, where a single one of the banquets given cost a sum that would have been enough for a large family in the camp to live on for a year, or maybe two.
I did not spend time alone with Sadiq as I did with Maryam, to raise her. My mission and my role in life, and maybe the meaning of my life now, was Maryam. As for Sadiq, my attitude toward him was ambiguous and strange. I thought about it, and it seemed as if I had entered a maze and become lost. He was an architect and a contractor, successful in his work, his company growing day by day, bringing him money in amounts that were inconceivable to me. He helped his brothers and supported his sister and me. He made contributions to this or that Palestinian foundation. He took responsibility for the education of three young men from Ain al-Helwa, following their progress and guaranteeing them a job on graduation — and then he took on three others. What did I have against him? He had worked hard, and had been helped by his education, his acumen, and by luck. In short, he had strived in an oil-producing country and been rewarded — what was the problem, what was wrong with that? Use your mind to judge, Ruqayya, and reckon calmly: Would you have preferred that he suffocate in the tank truck on the way to oil country? Or that he stay in Ain al-Helwa, looking for work, falling afoul of the law, and not finding anything? Or that he bear arms and end up in one of the offices in Tunis, or as a besieged fighter in the camps in Yemen or Algeria, with no way to see his wife or children? I jumped over the maze, or sneaked outside its walls, but it caught up with me, became larger, and threw up new walls around the area I had run to. Don’t they suffer from isolation in Ain al-Helwa, too? I wonder where Haniya is now? Has she found a job in another place, or has she been forced to deny that she’s Palestinian to find work in one of the hospitals in Beirut? Where will I go, where will we go?
37
Abu Muhammad
It was chance, pure chance, that brought us together.