My God, she’s no longer a child, but a young woman with a full voice. It’s strange, Wisal was thinking the same thing. She leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “Has she reached puberty?” I said, “Yes. She was thirteen two months ago.”
“O protect her from the evil eye!” Wisal was saying it in an audible voice, as if she was talking to herself. Samir was creating a parallel rhythm with his loud expressions of appreciation for the singers and the dancers. From time to time “God is great!” would suddenly burst out, or “My beloved!” “God bless the Prophet!” “The pick of the nobles!” “Welcome, young men, welcome!”
We all repeated, as if we were a chorus or a group singing anthems, or perhaps a crowd or a large audience:
What did Maryam’s voice do to me? I had never danced in my life. I mean, I had not danced since they threw us out of Tantoura. I used to dance there, but then I forgot.
I announced, “I’m going to dance with Fatima.”
I danced.
Did complete calm suddenly come over the place, or were my five senses occupied with celebrating the bride, so that I went to her sincerely unaware of the presence of anyone else? Even the sound of the flute, which continued, seemed as if it was coming over a long distance, reaching us from afar, or trying to. I put out my hand to the bride, my fingertips touching the ends of the fingers on the hand she stretches out to me. I turn her around, and I turn, slowly. I bend lightly with her, and she bends. It was as if my body had become a light breeze. She inclines, and I incline. I lead her shyly, and surrender gladly.
Why did I dance, and how? Was I dancing, or doing something else? I don’t know. All I remember is that when I returned to my seat at the table Hasan got up and faced me without looking into my eyes, then bent over my hand and kissed it. I noticed a light moisture on the back of my hand.
The next day, Wisal said to me, “Give me a cigarette.”
As I handed her the cigarette I said that I didn’t know that she smoked.
She said, “A cigarette every few months. Ruqayya, everyone says that Wisal knows how to talk, that she can express herself with ease.”
I smiled, and said, “It’s true. If only I were like you. I’m the opposite, and you know it.”
“I know. But yesterday … I wanted to put what I saw into words, but I couldn’t. What happened?”
“You mean the party?”
“I mean your dance with Fatima.”
“I didn’t know that I was able to dance, or that I knew how.”
Wisal looked at me and said, “It’s strange.”
“What’s strange?”
“That dance. In your dance you said what words can’t express.”
40
The Battle of the Dress, or What Do You Want Me to Say?
We were walking on the beach, and a man of medium height was following us, looking toward us and smiling. The man went up to Samir and spoke to him, then said goodbye and left. Wisal stopped and asked, “What does he want? He keeps staring at us, and at me in particular.”
Samir said, “He spoke to me in English and asked, ‘Are you from Israel?’ I wondered at the question, and he pointed to your dress, and smiled, and said, ‘I knew from the dress.’”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything, I let him go.”
“How could you let him go?”
Wisal hurried toward the man and we hurried after her as she was calling, “Sir! Sir! Hey, Mister!”
The man looked around and stopped, waiting for the lady whose thawb had caught his eye. He was smiling broadly.
Wisal grasped the collar of her thawb and said, “This no Izrael. This is a Palestinian thawb that I embroidered with my own hand. Translate, Maryam.”
Maryam translated.
“Izrael is a thief, it stole our land and turned us out and slaughtered us, and it even wants the clothes off my back! Translate, Maryam.” She pointed to her chest with her finger. “This stitch ….”
Maryam interrupted and said in despair, “Aunt Wisal, I don’t know how to stay ‘stitch’ in English.”
“It doesn’t matter, say ‘embroidery,’ say ‘handwork.’ I worked late many nights to embroider this. It’s called ‘peasant embroidery,’ and this is a Palestinian peasant thawb. What does Izrael have to do with it?”
She pointed to the man with her finger and asked, “You Izraeli?”
The man shook his head and said, “No.”
“Then why do you smile when you say Izrael? Any respectable man is grieved when he hears the name Izrael. I’ll tell you what Izrael means. Translate, Maryam.”
Wisal began to enumerate what Israel does in the West Bank and Gaza, and what it did before the West Bank and Gaza. The words flowed from her in a torrent, as Maryam tried to catch up, saying, “Slowly, Auntie, slowly, translating is hard.”
Wisal said, pointing with her finger to herself and then to each of us, “This, and this and this, everyone is Palestinian. Do you know Tel Aviv?”
The man nodded his head. His smile had disappeared and his face had darkened; he was in a hurry to bring this situation to an end.
“Tel Aviv itself is stolen. They stole Jaffa and named it Tel Aviv. Translate, Maryam.”
We drew Wisal away so she would let the man go. When he moved on Wisal noticed Samir’s presence, and asked him, “Don’t you speak English?”
“I speak it.”
“For God’s sake! Then why didn’t you tell him what Israel’s worth? Son, don’t you know better than anyone else what Israel means?”
The young man blushed, and we decided to go back to the hotel.
But the incident that had made Wisal so tense turned into the subject of jokes. Samir told it to anyone who hadn’t been there, and they insisted that Wisal tell them again what happened. Her skill in telling the story astonished me, for it seemed livelier and more detailed when she told it: “The man was no more than three hands high, his forehead was just a dent in his face, his eyes only a hole here and a hole there. And he was opening his big mouth, his face flushed for his dearly beloved! Maybe if his mouth was a little smaller it would have been okay, or if his face was a little bigger it would have only been half a disaster, but his big mouth swallowed up three quarters of his face! That was at first, before he discovered that we weren’t his dearly beloved, but their cousins. The more I insulted Israel the more his shoulders sank, so he looked shorter; his eyes became narrower, and his face turned colors — it went red like a fez, then yellow like a lemon, then the color drained and darkened.” She stopped suddenly and asked me, “Was he cross-eyed or did I only think so?” She laughed, then ended with a deep sigh, “Oh well, you don’t need to tell me that we can’t bring Palestine back with words!”