“I got out of the camp after a year and a half. I was lucky; two months after I got out of the camp I found my family. They were in Damascus; they were in a very rough situation, but they were all alive — my mother and father and four sisters and the two little boys. They were all among those who had been loaded up and taken to al-Furaydis. By chance, by a lucky chance, none of them died, either in the massacre or from hunger and the difficult journey that followed it. We spent a year and a half in Syria, and then we moved to Jenin. My sister moved with her husband, and then her husband sent word to us that he had rented a house in Jenin and that by the grace of God he had enough money, and he asked us to join him there. In Jenin God comforted us. I worked with my sister’s husband to support the family. I saw to my sisters’ marriages and my brothers’ education.”
Abu Muhammad smiled, perhaps for the first time since he had begun to speak, and said in an apologetic tone, “That’s why I married late. I married only after my sisters were secure and the two boys had graduated from high school. After that I got married, and our Lord blessed me with Muhammad and the rest of the children.”
39
Wedding
My imagination could never have reached Piraeus, however much it circled or took wing, or stumbled and lost its way. How could it ever get there without any prior knowledge of it, or its location, or even its name?
As usual, Sadiq began by objecting. He said, “How can you, Brother? Are you going to spend your whole life in Canada? If you marry her she won’t be able to live with you in Lebanon or in the Gulf or in any Arab country, except maybe Egypt. And in Egypt they won’t give you residency or a work permit, and every time relations are strained between Abu Ammar and the Egyptian government they won’t allow us to enter. God, it’s a big problem, Brother.”
Sadiq advanced his arguments, piling them up in front of his brother, and he said “Impossible!” It was a long call, followed by a second and a third — give and take, like a tug of war. After two days Sadiq agreed.
Hasan had told me before telling his brother. He didn’t mention the subject of marriage; he told me about the girl, and said, “I’ll send you a long letter.”
I understood and said, “Should I congratulate you?”
He was silent, so I knew. I said, “May God bless it for you.”
I heard him stumble over his words: “There’s a problem.”
“What’s the problem?”
It never occurred to me. The possibility that she was older than he flashed through my mind, that she was divorced and had children — or that she was married and had not yet gotten her divorce. She couldn’t be foreign, her name was Fatima.
“She’s from Lid.”
“And so?”
“I mean that her family still live there. We won’t be able to go to them to make the proposal, and she won’t be able to come with me to meet you.”
I didn’t grasp it; I said, “Randa’s family live in Nablus, and we met them in Amman. Didn’t we write your brother’s wedding contract in Amman? It’s manageable, dear, and God willing, good will come of it. I’m waiting for your long letter. Send me her picture. Whose family is she from, in Lid? How old is she? Is she still in school or has she finished? What’s her subject? I’ve kept you a long time. Don’t worry. Congratulations, a thousand congratulations!”
I had plunged into a flood of questions. I didn’t understand that there was any problem, even after I replaced the receiver, and I didn’t stop to wonder what was worrying Hasan. The news excited me and flooded me with joy, leaving no room to think about the details.
Sadiq is the master of details; he becomes absorbed in them. He begins with no, with an absolute no, then in the end he gives in to what his brothers want. He becomes absorbed in carrying out what they want, enthusiastically, as if the idea had been his and he had never opposed it.
I looked up at Sadiq. He was sitting in the chair opposite, wearing reading glasses and holding a pen and notebook in his hand. He was absorbed in the details. He raised his eyes and said, “Cyprus or Greece — I don’t see any other solution.” He picked up the telephone and called Hasan. “What do you think about meeting in Greece? In Piraeus. Yes, we’ll have the wedding there. A week. No, of course not — I’m the head of the family, and I’ll underwrite it. Airline tickets, the stay, the night of the wedding. It’s my responsibility. Slow down, Hasan, there’s no reason for this talk — I’m the head of the family. It’s done, no more discussion of this subject. What matters now is the arrangements — you’ll have to call your uncle Ezz in Tunis first, to get his permission and set the date with him. Then call the girl’s family and see if the date suits them, and find out which of them will come. Don’t limit the number, it’s not right — say that everyone is welcome, and stress the invitation to her uncles on both sides. Of course the bride’s brothers and sisters and her mother and father. Within a week I want the specific number and a fax with their names, so I can send them the tickets. If you have friends you want to invite, invite them. Wisal and Abed? Of course. Call them, invite them. God keep you.”
He replaced the receiver and returned to his notebook. Suddenly he lifted his head, looked up at me and said, “How can I go to the travel agency I work with and buy airline tickets from Tel Aviv to Athens to Tel Aviv?”
I said, in an attempt to ease his mind, “Don’t complicate matters, Sadiq. It’s obvious from the names that they’re Arabs.”
Sadiq did not look like his grandfather Abu Amin, but when he looked up I remembered my uncle the day he went to the camp to make the proposal for Ezz, and Abu Karima talked to him about the permits necessary to leave the camp or to receive visitors in it. Suddenly Sadiq called Sumana in an angry voice, as if he was about to scold her for some mistake she had made. “I want a cup of tea with sage.” He forgot the “please” with which he always ended his requests. He looked up at me with a frown on his face and began to curse Hasan and himself and Tantoura and Lid and Palestine, that had imposed this separation on us.
Piraeus. How had the name acquired this halo between one day and the next? How had it suddenly been transformed from the name of a place to the name of a time we wish we could jump to, passing above all the intervening days to get to it? It was as if I had become a girl again, counting on her fingers every morning the days left between her and the Eid holiday at the end of Ramadan. I had not seen Hasan for five years; I had not seen Abed since he left Beirut in 1985; I had not seen Ezz since he went to Tunis with his wife; and I had not seen Wisal since I visited her in her sister-in-law’s house in al-Baqaa Camp, more than ten years earlier. I’ll see them in Piraeus. How strange; we’ll hold Hasan’s wedding and meet his bride and her family, we’ll ask for the girl and marry the two and become family, all in one week. There in Piraeus.
Abed leaned over and said, smiling slyly, “I’ve had my doubts for years, but today I know for sure.”
I looked at him questioningly. He said, suppressing his laughter,
“It’s clear to see that you love Hasan more than us. What do you think, Sadiq?”
“There’s no think about it, it’s a fact, as clear as day.”
Maryam caught onto the game and joined in immediately: “I can’t compare, because I was little when Sadiq got married. But for sure I haven’t seen my mother this happy since I was born! And I haven’t seen her this beautiful. What ‘Aboud’ says is right — admit it, you love Hasan more than us, we have proof!”