Three Daughters: A Novel (19 page)

On the second day of March a man appeared at Miriam’s door and handed her a creamy white envelope sealed impressively with red wax. It appeared too expensive to be from the government and, in any case, she had no one in the army. Something about the writing on the front made her heart behave erratically. She tried to pay the messenger but he waved her away, saying he had already been well compensated. She went indoors.

There was a single sheet of paper and the first thing she saw was the signature—a large
M
and an almost illegible
ax
. The message was brief but urgent:

You must leave tonight. Your village will be quarantined by morning and no goods will get through. The food situation being what it is, you will starve to death if you don’t die of cholera first. Take your family and go before morning!

The signature was well separated from the message, as if there were many thoughts he had wanted to place in between.

She went to Mustafa and Jamilla, to Diana and Nabile, to Daud and finally to Nadeem’s parents. None of them would leave the village. Diana cried bitterly, but the tears seemed to relieve her and she dried her eyes and refused to let the Turkish pigs drive her out of her home.

“No, no,” said Miriam, despairing that she had given the wrong impression. “It’s the quarantine. No food will come through.”

“Miriam, that’s foolish,” she said, recovering from her cry. “They wouldn’t starve us to death.”

Miriam told her husband the message was from the doctor who had treated Khalil and taken an interest in him. Nadeem had heard similar warnings in Jerusalem and needed no persuasion. They gathered what they could load on a donkey donated by Mustafa, but after they were packed the longing to remain in their home was so strong that Miriam begged to abort their journey. She took out the message from Max and read it for the twentieth time. “We must leave,” said Nadeem. “There’s no other way.” They set out on foot with only Nadia on the donkey, heading east to the village of Es Salt, where Umm Jameel’s aunt was a nun and might take them in.

The immediate fear of quarantine and disease had supplanted fear of war, and by the time Nadeem and Miriam were an hour out of the village they saw the signs of the impending cordon. The officials asked their destination but did not detain them. “Watch the fountains and wells,” called out one guard. “Many are condemned.”

It was so hot. The dust on the road attacked their throats and gagged them and they stopped speaking to conserve their saliva. Only Esa had energy and he skipped ahead, sometimes running back to apprise them of some horny-headed lizard or chameleon he spotted on a rock. Toward afternoon of the next day, after stopping to rest at dawn, they reached the great depression of the Ghor that provided a bed for the Jordan. They passed many gorges into which the debris from the hillsides had tumbled, creating a desolate wasteland. Most frightening of all were the narrow defiles with perpendicular sheets of striated cliffs on each side, allowing no place to turn should they be attacked. Nadia crooned softly to herself and stuck her thumb in her mouth, lethargic from the heat and dehydration. The older boys and Nadeem took turns leading the donkey. Miriam kept her eye on Esa but her mind wandered and from time to time she became disoriented.

On first view, the Jordan appeared as a meandering ribbon of grass. There were muleteers who warned them of the muddy bottom, but when their donkey began to slip and flounder and was in danger of drowning, the men made no move to help. Nadeem cut the animal loose from the packages and Miriam saw all of their belongings sink to the bottom. Nadeem saved only the food, and although he submerged himself several times searching for the water skin, the men called out that it was useless. The strong current had already taken their cargo several miles. Nadeem led the donkey back and forth with each of them atop the animal. When they were all safely on the other side, he sat by himself, his wet clothes plastered around his thin body, and wept into his hands.

They had walked for miles without sight of another human. The only sound was the clip-clop of the donkey and Nadia’s sucking and crooning. The glare of the sun added to the air of unreality. Their senses were numbed by fatigue and thirst. Esa was still bouncing ahead, although to Miriam in her weakened state he appeared to be floating away from her, a small spot of color in the monotone of beige.

“Esa, stay near!” Had she spoken or only thought it?

“Esa! Stay near.” Her voice seemed to be coming from far away. Was he skipping along the ground or floating above the air? Finally the images settled and he was very clear. Standing near a well. “Don’t drink from there. Wait for me.”
No one is at the well. Why is it so deserted?

“Mama, here’s water and a cup.”

“No, Esa. No!”

There are classic signs of cholera and the swiftness of the disease is startling. Esa stopped skipping and began to droop by morning, when they were still several miles out of Es Salt. Within a few hours, his lethargy was so complete that Miriam knew. He lay across the donkey like an inert sack. Nadia walked without complaint, but she couldn’t go fast. It was almost dark when they reached a small village with a clinic.

The doctor moved swiftly, pulling the rubber tubing from his stethoscope and snaking it down Esa’s throat, making him jerk forward and gag. “This will do more good as a conduit,” he muttered, attaching a funnel to the end and pouring water into the strangely altered little body.

“He has practically no pulse,” said the nurse, alarmed.

“Most likely, he’s already in acidosis.” The doctor appeared distraught. “Be careful,” he yelled to the nurse. “Look! He’s so dehydrated his skin will crack if you touch him.” Miriam watched dumbstruck, unable to do more than stare at her son’s altered face. He appeared so tranquil, and while he didn’t have the strength to speak, his eyes were alert.

As he waited in between pourings, the doctor talked rapidly. “Normally,” he said, avoiding Miriam’s eyes, “the skin has remarkable elasticity. When you pinch it, it returns to its shape. The natural fluids keep it plump. They also keep the eyes moist. The lips, the inside of the mouth—all the mucous membranes are moist. Madam”—the doctor had taken her arm—“if we could rehydrate him and his body could absorb it, he would be himself in a matter of hours. But”—he threw his arms down helplessly—“his tissues can’t reassimilate water. His eyelids are as dry and brittle as last year’s leaves. He can no longer blink or swallow without pain.”

Miriam shook her head. Even as they watched, the small chest rose more feebly. Was it all preordained? Had God planned this special torture for her all along? Given her this precious, perfect child only long enough to love him completely?

Esa lingered for two days and took his last breath as his mother stood by, aching to cradle him against her but fearful of bruising him. The doctor pulled Nadeem aside. “You must burn everything he touched,” he said brusquely, on the verge of tears, and left the room.

When he recovered, he returned and again spoke to Nadeem. “Are you Muslim?” Nadeem shook his head, knowing the doctor feared the Muslim custom of washing the bodies of the dead and spreading the disease further through the discarded water. “Bury him with all his clothing,” he whispered tersely, “and cover him with six baskets of dry lime.”

They had him in a grave that evening, as was the custom, with a stone slab over the small wooden box to keep the hyenas from exhuming the body. Miriam displaced her deeper grief by fixating on that weight. “No!” she screamed over and over in her sleep, leaping wildly from the mattress in the quarantine tent where they had placed the family. “He can’t push the stone away. He’s only a small boy. Please, Nadeem, help me take it away.”

“Hush!” He held her forcibly. “You can’t remove the stone. He’s dead! He’s dead.”

Years later she would understand that he had submerged his own agony to minister to her. Despite his great love for Esa, he loved her more. For many days, he forcibly kept her from digging up the frail, wasted body.

They remained in the village two weeks before the officials allowed them to continue the five miles to Es Salt, where they were taken into the church building and allowed to sleep. In the months that followed, they all showed the lethargy of weakened constitutions and signs of malnutrition—dry, cracked lips, limp hair. Hanna developed night blindness and couldn’t see from dusk until dawn. Khalil began to limp. Nadia, unable to engage her mother, consoled herself with her thumb and rocked to and fro for hours. She asked in vain for “hordee,” and finally consoled herself with Jilly, a mangy dog that belonged to the rectory. She and the dog became inseparable.

Hanna alone ministered to his parents, gathering chestnuts and boiling them to make a satisfying stew when there was nothing else to eat. He gleaned the wheat fields after the reapers and seemed to find kernels by willing them to appear. Many days he walked the ten miles to the larger city of Amman to trade chestnuts for eggs, which he brought home triumphantly to his father. One day, after making the four-hour trip, he tripped on a stone and broke one of the precious cargo. He knelt beside it, stunned, and hot tears spilled on the ground, making dark spots on the dust. “Poor Mama. Poor Baba.”

Nadeem scooped up the soiled, dripping shell and put it in a cup. “Hush, Hanna. Never mind. The other three will nourish us more. You’re a good son. More precious to me than any food. Come.” He dusted Hanna’s scraped knee tenderly with the hem of his aba and used it also to dry his son’s tears. Miriam looked out at just that moment and, for the first time, submerged her grief and felt deeply for her husband and son.

Each of them had radically different memories of the year they spent in Es Salt. Nadeem, totally absorbed in getting enough food for the family, did odd masonry and carpentry jobs in exchange for anything that could be eaten. He often walked several hours to surrounding villages, looking for work, using up more energy than could be replaced by what was gained. Food was the first thing they thought of upon awakening. It was a yearning to fill that terrible hollowness that never left. The need to find food replaced every other concern and, in the case of Miriam, it finally even eclipsed the wretchedness of losing Esa.

Their lethargy and preoccupation could be counted a blessing, because it kept them from comprehending fully the tragic news that came from home. The disease had visited the village with vengeance. One-third of the population perished. Nadeem’s father was dead. So were Zareefa’s middle girl and Daud’s wife and child. Then came the news that was kept from Miriam until almost four months later: Mustafa, her beloved father, was gone.

15.

MY POOR, POOR DARLING . . .

O
ne night Miriam awoke to find Nadeem thumping Nadia’s back furiously. “She can’t breathe. Listen . . .” A strained wheezing sound, like the creaking of a tree in strong wind, came from Nadia’s chest. “She’s straining for a little air.” There was panic in his voice and when the dog that now regularly slept next to Nadia’s mattress began to mewl at his leg, Nadeem kicked it away, something Miriam had never seen him do.

“It’s what she had before,” said Miriam, dressing to go into the labyrinth of the rectory. “I’ll boil some water and make steam for her to inhale. In the morning, I’ll take her to the clinic.”

“She was fine all day,” said Nadeem, mystified. “It’s an attack. She’s always had something of this sort. Always coughing or sniffling.” He sounded as if he were blaming Miriam for it.

“I was taking her to a doctor that Spiridum suggested the day war broke out.”

“You never told me that. What did he say?”

“Who?”

“The doctor.”

“We didn’t go in. Nadia wouldn’t go in because there was blood on the step leading to his office. I was about to carry her when the news was shouted down the street that we were at war. After that, everyone came out. It was impossible.”

“You see,” said Nadeem irritably to Nadia, but Miriam knew it was directed at her, “you didn’t go to see the doctor and now you’re having big difficulties and there is no doctor here.” Nadia took this opportunity to make a strangling sound that sent both parents scurrying to the hearth to boil the water. Nadeem held his daughter over the kettle on and off for the rest of the night and in the morning he urged Miriam to take her to Jerusalem and try to find the reason for her difficulties.

“Jerusalem? How can I go?” When she thought of Jerusalem, she thought of Max and it was this thought that threw her into chaos.

“Why not? The boys and I will manage.”

“But we are at war,” she protested weakly, for now the idea of having news of Max was beginning to dazzle her. “It’s dangerous.”

“It’s more dangerous to risk many more nights like the last. Suppose we don’t hear her? She could choke to death.”

“Yes,” said Miriam wearily, “that’s possible.”

Mother and daughter left three days later. Nadeem and the boys had sacrificed all their stores of food to give to them and packed everything compactly so that Miriam could also carry Nadia if it became necessary. The priest at the church gave them a letter for a priest in Jericho, who would give them a night’s lodging and perhaps dinner and breakfast to break up the trip.

She had expected to feel frightened; the walking should have been arduous, but to her surprise she welcomed it. After months of focusing on hunger and uncertainty and grief, it was liberating to leave it all behind. Es Salt fell from view and she was suffused with an unexpected lightness, as if she had laid down a burden.

Nadia, remembering what had happened to Esa on the road, was not so eager to make the journey. “Mama, Mama,” she urged, “I feel good now. Why are we leaving Baba?”

“We have to find out what’s wrong with you.” Miriam had no inclination to reason with her. Her only wish now was to be away from all the memories of Es Salt.

“But it’s nothing. See?” Nadia took several quick deep breaths and thumped her chest. “See. Come”—she grabbed her mother’s hand—“let’s go back.”

“No,” said Miriam sharply, and Nadia began to trail after her, sucking on her thumb and crooning softly to herself. After they had gone a mile, Miriam looked back at her daughter with a feeling of tenderness. Nadia was walking as fast as she could, running to catch up when she fell too far behind. Her childish legs were made more vulnerable by scuffed high-topped shoes that had been sent by some relief agency from the other side of the world. She put Nadia in the sling and carried her for a few yards, allowing her to snuggle against her for comfort and brushing her cheeks with kisses.

As they descended into the lowlands to the south, a more luxuriant green began to appear, stray flowers and, unexpectedly—for it was late in the season—large patches of anemones in a shade of lavender that she had never seen. They blinked in the sharp brightness, stopped to eat and slept curled together in the shade of a wild jasmine bush before starting off again. The open road welcomed them and the rhythm of their legs moving one before the other made them peaceful. A farmer, seeing them, ran forward and offered milk and dates.

They smelled Jericho long before they saw it.
It’s the pomegranates
, she thought,
and apricots and bananas ripening on the trees. So many memories are entwined with that sweetly perfumed air. There’s no harm in remembering how it was, is there? I can summon up his face so quickly, the face whose presence blocks out all other life. Oh, no . . . it just occurred to me, he could be dead like all the others. Perhaps he contracted cholera. He treated people every day and it would be difficult to escape the germs. Oh, my God, if I could see him one more time! Just to assure myself that he’s well.
She pulled Nadia into the first church they saw and prayed fervently that Max was alive.

It was a shock to see the effects of war in Jerusalem. The streets were strewn with the wounded. Men of every description—Turks and Englishmen and Germans—lay in filth, begging for medical attention. And there was no one to give it to them. Miriam wanted to put her sack down immediately and place at least a cloth under a wounded head. It was impossible not to feel compassion. The smells were intolerable. Besides the men lying about, there were many more on foot—ragged, weary men with frightened eyes, wearing the tattered uniform of Turkey, mumbling advice, urging those who could hear them to flee for their lives. There were long lines outside several large buildings and when Miriam inquired as to what they were for, she learned they were soup kitchens being run by the American Colony, the same charitable people who had housed Esa when she was running the shop. She realized how hungry she was and decided to stand there, too, pulling Nadia to her when fights would break out, which they frequently did as the hunger-crazed populace waited for food.

After they had eaten, they started to walk to the office of the doctor who had been recommended by Spiridum such a long time ago. The location was in the Old City, back in the Muslim quarter, near Herod’s Gate. She decided to walk outside of the wall, where it was less congested and, short of walking in the middle of the road, it was impossible to move more than a few feet without some poor soul tugging on her skirts. A wounded man was begging for water and the pleading in his eyes stopped her. She bent down to place her own water skin to his lips, holding the back of his head. Then something, a premonition, a flutter in her heart, made her look up and there standing before her—as if it were inevitable—was Max.

She laid the man down gently and stood. Her instinct was to reach for him . . . but no! . . .
oh, Max
. . . for a moment, in her dazed and weakened state, she wasn’t certain . . . her heart was beating unnaturally.
Max, Max!
She was trembling and nothing would stop it. Trembling with joy but also . . .
I must tell him everything. I’ve been waiting to tell him. He will console me now.
The possibility of being consoled by this man who had known her every intimate need opened all the ghastly hurts of the past year; grief and pain washed over her anew and tears began to roll down her cheeks.

“Esa’s dead,” she whispered to break the awful silence. She wanted so much to embrace him that she distracted herself with images of loss and pain.

“Oh, no . . .”

“And my father . . .”

“My poor, poor darling . . .”

“And so many others, Max, so many.”

“I know. I know.” She saw that he was exhausted. His eyes, once so confident, were bewildered. The whites were streaked with tiny red lines and the circles around them a dusky purple color. He must hardly eat or sleep.

“Where is the rest of the family?”

“They’re in Transjordan.” She remembered that it was his note that had sent them away. “We left as you told us to do. I’m sure you saved our lives.”

“You’re here alone?”

“With my daughter.” They both looked down to Nadia, who had placed her face against her mother’s skirt and was holding it with one hand and sucking her thumb with the other. For one thrilling moment Miriam considered telling him.
You’re looking at your daughter. Our daughter. See, she has your mouth, your brow, your coloring. But that’s not so important. You should know her, Max. Her temperament is so much like you.

She bit her lip and looked away. Telling him would hurt so many people and it would only serve her own selfish purposes. No. It would be a terrible mistake.

Right away, he couldn’t take his eyes off the little girl. He bent down and took her sweaty palm in his. She let go of her mother’s skirt and put her hands to her sides, not shrinking from his stare. “So you’ve come to Jerusalem with your mother, is that it?”

“We’re here to visit the doctor,” Nadia piped up in her high but definite voice. “Sometimes I make a lot of noise when I breathe and it scares my baba. He says it’s because I don’t eat what I must. But I do . . . I do,” she said fiercely. “Sometimes I don’t cough for many days but Baba doesn’t remember those times. He remembers only when I cough a great deal.”

Max took a deep breath, straightened and turned away. The sight of that pathetically thin child, her shoes so scuffed it was impossible to determine their original color, talking so rapidly, touched him beyond words. He had to blink to hold back the tears.

He picked Nadia up and, using her as a buffer between them, placed his free arm around Miriam and pressed himself toward both of them. He was making small hurt sounds, weeping as if he didn’t know how. Miriam’s tears were silent.

To her credit, Nadia did not move or cry out or ask any questions.

Max pulled apart and set Nadia on the ground. “Do you have a place to stay?”

“I was going to ask Father Alphonse after we saw the doctor.”

“The doctor? What doctor?”

She was embarrassed to admit she didn’t even remember his name, just the spot where his office was located. “He’s a specialist in allergies. I received his name before the war but now I’ve forgotten it. His office is on Ararat Road.”

“Allergies.” He bent down again, took Nadia’s chin between his fingers to steady her, and pulled down her eyelids. “What is your name?” he asked her.

“My name is Nadia.”

“Tell me,” he said, putting his hands around her waist, “do you have a pet? A dog?”

“Why do you want to know?” Nadia was obviously delighted by the attention of the handsome stranger. For the last year, no one had really been eager to have a conversation with her.

“Because that might be the cause of your coughing. Perhaps the nights that he sleeps near you, his dander—the dust and hair that he shakes off—might make you cough. Does he sleep near you?”

“Sometimes.” She looked unconvinced. “You think Jilly makes me cough? That’s silly.”

“Nadia!”

“It’s all right. Bring her to the hospital. I’ll examine her.” He looked meaningfully into Miriam’s eyes. “She’s so poised and talkative for her age. She couldn’t be more than four.”

“How did you know? I am four.”

“Really? Only four?” He feigned surprise. “But you speak so well.”

“We really must be going,” said Miriam, avoiding his eyes. “We’ll go to the clinic.” She pulled Nadia’s hand forcefully.

“Please stay there.” His eyes were saying that he wouldn’t do anything to cause her anguish. “Don’t put her through any more stress. I’ll find a place for both of you to sleep.”

“Max, I couldn’t. You must be working day and night. You look so fatigued. I don’t want to add to your burdens. I . . . I . . . oh, Max . . . I’ve longed . . .” There was so much she wanted to tell him, but how? And for what purpose? She could not betray Nadeem all over again. Her will was so fragile in his presence. But she must stay strong. She must. She began to wring her hands and bounce the knuckles against her chin in agitation.

“Shh . . . I know. You won’t be adding to my burdens. You’ll be helping me. Miriam, I need nurses desperately. Please stay and help. For every man I treat, there are five others who go unattended. Please. I need you.”

“I can’t stay long. My family is waiting . . .” She was like a captured bird, anxious and ready to take flight. “They need me . . . we just came to see about Nadia because her father is worried that she might choke in her sleep . . . that we might not always hear her in the night.”

“Stay as long as you can. Come.” He picked up the dusty sack she had been carrying, flung it over his shoulder and then, noticing that Nadia was sagging with fatigue against her mother’s skirt, picked her up, too. The little girl’s head fell immediately onto his shoulder. Her forehead, still wrinkled with anxiety, nestled in the curve of his neck. Within seconds, she was fast asleep against him.

Miriam felt a constricting fear all the way to the hospital. What would happen when Nadia was left to sleep and they were free to touch? The idea of being alone with him terrified her. When they reached the hospital, however, it was so congested with people, all pleading for help, that he only had time to show them to a small cubicle with a single cot before rushing off. “Use my apartment to wash and then come to the wards. There are uniforms in the supply closet. I don’t know how clean they are. Even the laundress can’t be spared from helping the wounded.”

After two days on the dusty road, she welcomed the soak in a tub of water. How long had it been since she had such luxury? She stayed submerged until the water cooled and she felt chilled and then dried herself slowly, looking at the body that she hadn’t been aware of for months. How thin she was . . . bones . . . just bones. Her eyes looked double their size in that emaciated face. How could he possibly find her attractive? Perhaps it was for the best. In any case, there was no time for thinking now. The cries of pain and human anguish coming from the vestibule were constant and threatening. There was an air of desperation and the possibility of violence was palpable. She dressed quickly in the familiar striped dress and bib apron, tiptoed to check on the sleeping Nadia, and went to do what she could.