Sadiq took me to a large shopping mall to buy some things for Maryam. He said that he would come to take us home two hours later, and told us about a coffee shop on the second floor where we could sit to rest, or to wait for him if we finished shopping before he came back.
I finished buying what Maryam needed in less than half an hour; we went down to the second floor and headed for the coffee shop. As soon as we went in I noticed him. He was sitting alone, with a kufiyeh on his head. He was wearing a qumbaz with a leather belt around his waist and a jacket over it, like my father and my uncle Abu Amin. We sat at a nearby table; I ordered the ice cream Maryam wanted and a cup of coffee for myself. I thought, he might not be Palestinian, maybe he’s Syrian, from the country; but I thought it was likely that he was Palestinian. His face seemed familiar, similar to many of the elderly men in Ain al-Helwa and Sabra and Shatila. He was between sixty and seventy, maybe older but not showing his age. He was tall and thin, his face dark and gaunt, his forehead broad. He had a penetrating look in his lively eyes, despite the prominence of his forehead and his bushy white eyebrows. I turned away my eyes; what would the man say, with me staring at him like that?
“Yes, Maryam.”
She protested, “I’m talking to you and you’re not listening!”
“Yes I am, I’m listening.”
She returned to her chatter, but I only followed a little of what she said. I interrupted her, “Do you see that man sitting at the table to our right?”
She pointed with her hand, “That man?”
I suppressed a laugh. “Maryam, when will you grow up? It’s not polite to point to him like that. I wanted to tell you that he reminds me of your grandfather Abu Amin.”
Maryam looked at him directly.
“Don’t look at him like that, he will realize that we’re talking about him!”
He realized. Perhaps he felt awkward and wanted to change the situation, so he greeted us: “Hello.”
I said, “Hello, how do you do?”
He said, “I arrived in Abu Dhabi yesterday. One of my acquaintances asked me to take a letter to his son, and I called him on the telephone as soon as I arrived. He said, ‘I’ll meet you in the shopping mall, in the coffee shop on the second floor.’ It’s half an hour after the time he gave me, and he has not appeared. Is there another coffee shop on this floor?”
Maryam ran to one of the employees in the shop, and asked. She returned to her seat, and said, “There are many coffee shops in the complex but this is the only one on the second floor.”
“No problem, I’ll wait.”
Maryam asked him, “Do you live in Lebanon?”
“I’m Palestinian, I’ve never visited Lebanon in my life. I’ve come from the West Bank to visit my son. I live in Jenin. Originally I’m from Tantoura, do you know where Tantoura is, girl? It’s …”
Did I scream or shout? Did I laugh? Was I preoccupied by the thought that I would not have looked at him like that if I hadn’t known him even though I didn’t know him, because blood calls to blood? I invited him to sit at our table, and it was easy to talk.
When the man looking for the letter came and took Abu Muhammad to another table, he seemed to me like an uninvited guest who had no right to spoil our meeting like this. I kept waiting, looking at my watch every few minutes, only to discover that just a few minutes had passed. Why doesn’t he take his letter and leave? Why doesn’t he leave Abu Muhammad to me, so I can ask him if he knew my father? He’s younger than my father, maybe ten years younger; or maybe he was of the same generation, and just doesn’t show his years. How had he escaped the massacre? Maybe he was not in the village on the night of Saturday to Sunday; where was he? Had he lost anyone in his family? Why was the recipient of the letter sitting so long with Abu Muhammad? He came an hour and ten minutes ago, and he doesn’t seem ready to leave. He got the letter, what does he want now — and what if he took Abu Muhammad with him? Maybe it would be wisest if I got up now and took his telephone number, or a way to reach him. Will he live in Abu Dhabi, or is it just a passing visit? I was becoming more and more tense, and Maryam was complaining that I was not following what she was saying. I said, “I’m listening to you, Maryam, I’m listening.” But her words came to my ears as a handful of sounds, which did not translate into any meaning in my head.
At last Sadiq appeared, and I introduced him to Abu Muhammad. They spoke a few minutes, and before we left the coffee shop Sadiq invited him to visit us with his son, exchanging telephone numbers with him.
The next day as we were having lunch, Sadiq said, directing his words to me, “It’s a coincidence more amazing than the one yesterday. Muhammad, Abu Muhammad’s son, works with us as an accountant in the company, a young man in his thirties. The predicament is that I’ve never invited any of the employees, and now it will seem like clannishness for me to invite him because he’s from our village.”
I looked at Sadiq, “Where’s the predicament? How can it be clannishness to invite a person from your village whom you want to get to know?”
Sadiq laughed. He seemed split between embarrassment and pride, “Mother, your son is the president of the company!”
“So?”
“I can invite an employee on some occasion, but can’t favor a minor employee by inviting him to my house unless he’s my brother or my cousin.”
I said, “Consider them your uncle and his son!”
“The problem is that his colleagues will feel as if it’s favoritism.” He laughed suddenly, not without embarrassment, “Should I explain that my mother wants to meet his father because he’s from Tantoura?”
I was not comfortable with his words, and I didn’t understand what he meant.
After Abu Muhammad and his son visited us, I was careful to return the visit. I took Maryam with me and I met Muhammad’s wife and two children, and asked them all to lunch at Sadiq’s house. I said that I would cook, and I prepared a feast worthy of people from Tantoura. Sadiq did not seem to welcome my conduct; maybe he considered it rash, unjustified, and incomprehensible. That’s what I sensed, though he did not add anything to what he had said previously. But I decided to leave him to his confusion and worry, and to do as I pleased, visiting them and inviting them to the house. The day Abu Muhammad left for Amman, Sadiq took me, unwillingly, to the airport to see him off. He said, “Didn’t you say goodbye to him yesterday? I sent the driver as you asked, didn’t you go?”
“I did go.”
He smiled. “You forgot to give him the wool sweater you made for Wisal?”
“I gave it to him. I asked him to look for her, and to give it to her.”
“So?” He was looking at me in surprise. I said, “Sadiq, humor me, I want to see him off at the airport.”
“As you wish.”
38
The Prisoner’s Tale
Abu Muhammad told me his story.
“I was among the forty they stood against the wall. I no longer remember if I had resigned myself to death and pronounced the shahada, or if I was still clinging to God’s power over everything, to his ability to change one state into another, in the blink of an eye. I only remember that we were standing, raising our hands as we had been ordered, our faces to the wall, barely seeing what was going on behind our backs: the rifles leveled at us, the contempt on their faces and the look of fear and bloodthirstiness. Yes, Sitt Ruqayya, they were afraid — how else can you explain all this killing after the battle had ended in their favor, after they had killed some and occupied the town? They were talking at the top of their voices, as if they were in the desert or as if they thought that everyone around them was deaf. They were shouting insults and curses and pushing this one with the butt of a rifle and beating that one on the head. We were standing near the village center, which was suddenly invaded by a strange odor, stronger than the smell of the sea. Then suddenly they said ‘Yalla, yalla, let’s go,’ and drove us under the threat of arms into trucks, we forty who were to be executed at the wall and others from the town. They stuffed us into the trucks like sheep and took us to the Zikhron Yaakov colony in Zummarin. We were several hundred, maybe three or four hundred men.