It’s not only a museum open for visits after purchasing a ticket, more costly for individuals and less expensive for school trips or tour groups. Part of it can also be rented for a dinner party, a small one in the captain’s room for no more than twenty guests, or a big one on the deck of the ship, with dinner for four hundred people seated or a reception for eight hundred, most of them standing. A wedding can be held, or a hotel stay can be arranged on the weekend for young people who want to spend the night in the soldiers’ beds. School groups and individuals can buy inexpensive, prepared meals from the canteen. Anyone who wants to can bring a little brown bag, with a sandwich he’s prepared at home or bought from a grocer; when he enters the battleship he hands over the brown bag, and at the end of his tour he takes it back to eat whatever is in it.
After that comes the third part of the book: three pages. The battleship, refitted to add sixteen Harpoon rockets and thirty-two long-range Tomahawks, enters the Mediterranean in 1983. It approaches the Lebanese shore and joins the American fleet, which can be seen from the beach in Beirut. The task this time is not war but peace, supporting the multinational peacekeeping forces. Because the war in Lebanon has ended, because there is a ceasefire, because Israel, after the aerial bombardment and the invasion and the siege, can depend on an allied Lebanese government and an allied army. The Druze are not its allies, so how will they take control of the mountains, Jabal al-Druze, where they live? These are details the leaders will decide. The New Jersey executes its tasks as always: its lively crew loads the missile into the launcher and closes it carefully, then boom. The missile is fired, leaving an enormous block of dark red flame in the sky over the sea, which quickly becomes mixed with orange and yellow, then a thick black devours the colors and gradually changes into smoke. Afterward there’s silence, crossed by clouds like tufts of white cotton, without any thickness, dispersing near the ship and disappearing. The sailors put another missile in the launcher and close it carefully. Boom.
In the mountains, in the piled-up houses of the Banu Maarouf, are the residents of Jabal al-Druze: old men with their traditional turbans; farmers who resemble their grandfathers because they never changed the look of their shirts and trousers; young men who, unlike their fathers and grandfathers, wear shirts or tee shirts and running shoes; grandmothers; mothers; girls with braids or childish short hair; the very young, who cannot yet walk or talk; the toddlers who have learned to walk and talk. The walls cave in on them and burn. They die, burned or bleeding or because something in the body suddenly failed, so they die even though their form is intact.
53
The Visit
Maryam said, “You’re being ridiculous, Mother! You have money!”
I said, “What I have is sent by Sadiq for your school fees and our living expenses. I won’t invite my friend to come at Sadiq’s expense.”
She laughed, “The bracelet you sold was bought by Sadiq; it’s his money in both cases!”
I nearly said that he gave me the bracelet, so it had become mine, to do with it or its value as I pleased, but I did not speak. I called Wisal again to set the date for her trip. She said, “We’ll harvest the olives and press them, then I’ll come to visit you.”
I bought the airplane ticket and sent it to her, and began to count the days and wait.
Maryam said with a laugh, “The tutor’s in luck.”
I said, “I don’t understand Egyptian proverbs.”
She said, “The tutor, that’s the Qur’an teacher, is in luck when he has two completions of the Qur’an on the same night. That means he’s invited to recite the Qur’an twice and he’s given two feasts on the same night.”
I laughed. Maryam amazes me with how fast she picks up the Egyptian dialect, with its proverbs and idioms. Yes, it was two completions in one night; as I was waiting for Wisal, Fatima called and said, “I’m in the country,” adding that she would come to visit us for three days.
“Only?”
“I have to get back to Canada, to my work and the kids and Hasan.”
“Fatima, can I ask a favor of you?”
“Please do.”
“Can you visit Tantoura and take some pictures?”
“Hasan asked me that, and I did it.”
“You visited it?”
“I did.”
I nearly asked her to tell me what she saw, but I refrained. What would I ask about?
Maryam remarked on my absorption in preparing for the visits of Wisal and Hasan’s wife, “Are they coming to us from a famine?” She laughs; I answer, “This is our way to honor a guest!”
I buy meat and chicken, and clean it, season it, and put it in the freezer. I think, the leg of lamb for the first day, and I’ll stuff the breast for the second day. The chicken for the following day. I think, Wisal likes mulukhiya soup and okra; I buy them. I pull the leaves off the mulukhiya and remove the stems of the okra, and wash them. I let them dry two hours and then I put them in the refrigerator. I buy grape leaves and summer squash; I roll the grape leaves, and put off the squash until later. I make bread dough, form it into a ball, and let it rise, while I prepare the spinach stuffing; I fill the discs and put them into the oven. Every time I finish baking one set of the tarts Maryam eats a quarter of them. I scold her: “You’ll finish them off before the guests come!” She pays no attention, and I shoo her away, and she comes back. I think, Fatima likes pickled eggplant. I buy small black eggplants and stuff them with walnuts and pepper, then I put them with lemon juice and olive oil in two large glass containers. “And the kubbeh?” asks Maryam. “For sure the guests will like kubbeh!” I laugh; for sure Maryam likes kubbeh! I soak the cracked wheat kernels, grind the meat and season it; I form the meatballs and stuff them, and put them in a plastic bag in the freezer. I go to the grocer, thinking I’ve forgotten such-and-such, then I go again. I go to the fruit seller and buy, then I buy again. I mutter, “What’s missing?”
As soon as we entered the house I asked Maryam to make us coffee, but Wisal said, “Put off the coffee, Ruqayya, let’s put the things away first.” She rolled up her sleeves and took one of the two suitcases she had brought to the kitchen, the larger one. She squatted down beside it and started to take out the food she had brought. She handed me three plastic bottles, tightly sealed, containing olive oil, and three others in which she had put olives. She said, “I have a neighbor in the camp with a daughter-in-law from Egypt. I tell you, I went to visit her and have coffee with her, to ask her. I said, ‘What do they lack in Egypt? Should I take okra and mulukhiya?’ The Egyptian laughed and said, ‘There’s nothing more plentiful than okra and mulukhiya in Egypt.’ I said to her, ‘Oil and olives from our trees, I would take that to Ruqayya even if she were living in an oil press!’ Then I asked her about the things that aren’t available and she told me.” She brought out a big plastic jar: “Naboulsi cheese.” It was hard, molded pieces of cheese lined up in a jar, in three layers. I began to wrap up each set of pieces and put them in a plastic bag in the freezer, leaving out six to soak in water, to remove some of the salt. Then the bags: domestic thyme, dried and mixed with sesame and sumac; green thyme; sage; sumac; dried wheat grains. Last there was a large bag; Wisal laughed jovially. “I would have made musakhan, if it weren’t for the distance — the bridge, then Amman, then Cairo, then Alexandria; I thought it would spoil. My neighbor’s Egyptian daughter-in-law told me, ‘Take sumac; in Egypt they don’t know it and don’t use it.’ I asked, ‘How do they make musakhan?’ She said, ‘We don’t know it.’ So I decided to buy you some bread from our ovens.”