Hasan asks me on the phone, and I say, “It’s the same, the sea, the castle, the Khan al-Afranj, the old quarter, and the vegetable market.” A moment of silence, and then I add, “There are new buildings, with many floors.”
“And the camp?”
I keep silent; he repeats the question.
“The situation there is difficult.”
He asks about the site of our new house; I tell him the name of the street and the number of the building.
“How far is it from the old city? Tell me the way, Mother.”
I laugh, and say, “Are you going to surprise me with a visit? You won’t get lost in Sidon, Hasan. As soon as you arrive ask for the street and not one but a thousand people will tell you the way.”
“Tell me where it is from the Jad Building.”
I can’t find an answer that satisfies him. The buildings that were destroyed, were destroyed, and new buildings were put up in their place. Why does he remember the Jad Building specifically? I no long remember where it was. What does Hasan want, to imagine the site of our new house or to redraw the city on paper, in a map like the many maps he excelled at drawing when he was little? How will he combine the city that was destroyed and the new city that was built on the ruins in one map?
He can’t come to Lebanon to visit me, Sadiq was right about that; he had caused a huge commotion. Sadiq had called me in Alexandria, and said, “Call Hasan and try to talk him out of this stupidity. We don’t need to add complications to our lives, by our own free will. He doesn’t want to listen to me, but maybe he’ll listen to you.” Hasan had decided to travel with his wife, saying he would visit Palestine. Sadiq went crazy, and said, “You’re visiting Israel. Yes it’s Palestine, but officially it’s Israel, and once they put the state stamp on your Canadian passport in their airport you won’t be able to visit most of the Arab countries. You’re not Canadian, even if you have a Canadian passport. Your name is Hasan and you were born in Sidon. Go convince the passport officer in Syria or in Lebanon that you just wanted to visit your country! Use your head, Brother, that’s just the way it is, there’s nothing you can do! Your visiting Palestine is a luxury we can’t afford. How will you visit me, how will you visit your mother? And if Maryam got married in Syria or Lebanon, how would you visit her?” Sadiq was repeating to me the conversation he had with his brother on the phone. “He told me, ‘Mama lives in Alexandria, and I can visit Egypt with no problem.’ I didn’t tell him that you’re living there temporarily, and that as soon as Maryam graduates you’ll come back to live with me in Abu Dhabi. I didn’t tell him because my blood pressure was sky high, so I ended the call.’”
Now Hasan asks me to describe our house; he can’t come to Lebanon, and my heart aches for him. I think, Sadiq was right; then I take it back. Hasan had wanted to visit Palestine; how did it look to him? He did not call me in Alexandria during his visit, he did not telephone me to say, “I’m in Tantoura, Mother, I’m standing on the seashore there.” He did not write a letter about his trip, and he didn’t even talk about the trip when he visited me later in Alexandria. He didn’t tell me about Tantoura, or al-Furaydis or Haifa or Lid, even though Fatima told me that he spent a month going everywhere. She said, “He visited the coast from Acre to Gaza, the West Bank from Nablus to Hebron. He spent three weeks in Jerusalem, and visited Wisal in Jenin. He went to Randa’s family in Nablus, and met relatives in al-Furaydis, and met friends he had met in Canada, going to meet them in Nazareth. He visited the Negev.”
But Hasan did not tell me. Strange! As if he were stricken with the same silence that once struck me.
57
Light and Shadow
The doorbell woke me. I looked at my watch, it was one a.m. Who can be knocking on the door at this hour? I open, and I scream — Abed and Maryam are standing before me! Abed laughs and Maryam says, “The jack-in-the-box only pops up in the middle of the night!” After hugs and laughter and flying half sentences and a quick tour of the house, “because we want to get to know our new home,” we move to the kitchen.
“I’ll make supper for you.”
“We ate on the plane.”
“We want coffee.”
Maryam insists that she make the coffee: “Where’s the coffee, where’s the sugar, where do you keep the cups?”
The talk takes us far and wide, and the coffee boils over. We make another pot and take it to the living room.
Abed says, “Now we have a problem, and we want a solution.”
Is he joking? He’s speaking seriously; what’s wrong? I’m apprehensive.
“Maryam resents me!”
So they’re joking. Maryam says, “There are well-founded reasons for resentment, and also for fear. My vacation is five days, I’ll take off and leave Abed with you for a whole month. First, that’s not fair, second ….”
I began to laugh.
“Second, there are real reasons to fear that he will take advantage of my absence to occupy my place, even though it’s known, proven, and confirmed by your very own words, that the three boys are one thing and Maryam is something entirely different. I’m alerting you to his evil intentions.”
Abed jumps up and sits on the back of my chair, putting his arms around me.
“I will begin immediately to execute my evil intentions. I believe that Sitt Maryam has occupied the throne long enough, and the time has come to depose her. I’m a democrat! What do you say, shall we smuggle her out like kittens? We’ll get rid of her and live without a nagging censor.”
We didn’t go to sleep until the break of dawn.
When they went to bed I made myself another cup of coffee and waited for daylight, then I left for the market. A boy helped me carry everything I bought to the house. Maryam was sleeping; as for Abed, he had bathed and changed his clothes. We had breakfast together, and then, “By your leave, Mother.”
“Where to?”
“I have work, I’ll see you at lunch.”
Maryam doesn’t know Sidon, she never lived there like her brothers. Maybe she only visited it once or twice, when she was less than five. She says she doesn’t remember it.
I take her to old Sidon, to the Bab al-Serail Square, I say, “It was here ….”
I point to the Bab al-Sarail Mosque, to the Khan, to an old sign on the closed door of an apartment on the ground floor, which says: al-Irfan Printers, Ahmad Arif al-Zain, Proprietor, Founded 1910. “Your grandfather knew Sheikh Ahmad Arif al-Zain personally. He told me about him, and he said ….”
We go down a few steps and walk through a dark archway. This is the Abu Nakhla neighborhood. I point to the Abu Nakhla Mosque on my left and the oven on my right; I say, “When your grandmother made a vow she would inform the Abu Nakhla oven, and they would make as much bread as she asked for and distribute it in the mosque.”
A few steps under the arches that connect the two sides of the lane. “Here is the Sabil neighborhood, and this house on your right is where your grandmother and grandfather lived.”
We keep walking. “This is what’s left of the public bath where your uncle Ezz bathed the day of his wedding. It was destroyed by the Israeli shelling in ’82.”
I take her to the Great Omari Mosque, and say that the men gathered here on the day of … here was the funeral of ….
Then the Maqasid Islamic School next to the great mosque. Maryam tries to convince the guard to let us in, but he says he’s sorry, it’s not allowed; school is in session and the students are studying. Maryam looks through the gate at the school buildings to the right and left of the courtyard. I point to the sea behind the courtyard: “This is where the boats carrying the weapons would anchor at night, and ….”