Yasmine (11 page)

Abu George had spoken passionately and when he finished he felt dizzy. He needed to breathe fresh air and prayed that he wouldn’t have a coughing fit. Abu Nabil opened the windows, but a cloud of smoke still hung in the room. It was midnight and they were all exhausted. Abu George wanted to wind up the session and called for a secret ballot, so they would feel free to follow
their conscience. The decision to re-open the businesses passed by a single vote. There was uproar and someone demanded a second ballot. Abu George wiped his brow, stood up and said:

“
Ya jamaat al-khair
, good people, we have debated and decided. Let us respect the position we have adopted. Let us enter into negotiations with them, and whoever disagrees should face his own destiny.” It was plain to see that while disaster had unified them so far, from now on there would be divisions among them, and he would have to confront friends who turned into enemies. As the saying goes, “The stone that hits you is thrown by he who stands closest.”

“You’re afraid of the Zionists. You’re leading us to defeat,” Abu Nabil chided him after the meeting. “Your efforts are in vain. I promise you deliverance will come soon. My father always said that there is no problem without a solution.”

That night Abu George could not sleep. He walked around the house, warmed up some milk for himself, but remained awake. His stomach was upset and he was fearful about the future. Finally he wrote a note to Um George asking her not to wake him in the morning, because he meant to stay at home. He left it on the chest of drawers.

The next morning he felt an invisible wall rearing up between himself and the rest of the board. It was in their eyes, their sudden silence when he entered the club, their whispered exchanges, as though he was no longer their leader and flesh of their flesh.

“What the hell are they thinking – that I’ve been bought? That I’ve become a collaborator? What would they have done in my place?” he protested bitterly to Um George after a day of wandering through the streets.

“Don’t you know, my dear, that people are ungrateful?”

He complained of aches and pains and she massaged his back with a thick, pungent oil that softened and sucked out the pain.

“Bless your hands,” he groaned. “They are charged with electricity!” Her smile soothed and reassured him. This house is my solid foundation, he thought, and said: “I’ll resign my position, I swear by Yasmine’s life. Let them choose a new chairman to do the work.”

“You can’t. It would be like justifying the muck they’re throwing at you.”

“If only Abu Nabil would back me up.”

“Maybe he’s being pressurised. Don’t forget his son is in Fatah,” she whispered, as if she might be overheard in her own house.

Abu George recouped some of his prestige when he led a delegation of journalists, writers and academics to the Hebrew University. The formal invitation came from Professor Meir Shadmi, after he had lunched at Al-Hurriyeh with Nuri Imari, his former student and the Minister’s new advisor. Abu George could hardly turn down the eminent scholar’s invitation, and so agreed to go and see his life’s great enterprise, the
Concordance of Ancient Arabic Poetry.
He was accompanied by Abu Nabil, of course, as well as three journalists, two young poets, three lecturers from Bir Zeit University, and the owner of a
well-known
Nablus bookshop.

Imari and Professor Shadmi met them at the gates of the campus and led them to the National Library, an unimpressive rectangular block with a dimly-lit interior. The erudite academic lectured them at length about rare texts, speaking a high literary form of Arabic with a strange accent. He beamed 
like a young lover as he read them ancient elegiacs set in the
qasida
style.

Abu Nabil, who had been watching the elderly professor with narrowed eyes, interrupted him. “
Ustad
Shadmi, do you have children?”

The professor raised an eyebrow, “I have a son, Menahem.”

“You know so many outstanding Arab poets, and yet you named your son Menahem?” Abu Nabil said provocatively.

Abu George cringed, embarrassed, but the professor did not seem offended. He gave his bad-mannered visitor a look that Abu George thought held a trace of mockery.

“In fact, my son’s name is Mehammed,” he said with a wink.

“How is that?” Abu Nabil grinned.

“Mohammed’s name was Mehammed or Ahmad, Paraklete in Greek, and in Syriac – which is Christian Aramaic and was once Jewish Aramaic – Mohammed is Menahma, or in the short form, Menahem!”

Abu Nabil was speechless.

“Did you know this?” the professor asked with a raised finger, his tone changed to that of a pedantic teacher.

Abu Nabil shook his head, then challenged him: “What about Menahem Begin, is he also Mehammed?” Everybody laughed.

The bookshop owner, a self-taught man who had learned the
Hadith
, the oral tradition of the Prophet, from a great scholar who had been deported from Syria for his extremist views, said “Ustad Shadmi, my teacher heard about you and read your scientific articles, and he says that you’re a secret Muslim.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard all about
El-shakhs yiktum dinu
, ‘the man who hides his religion’. Tradition has it that when such a man dies and is buried in a Jewish grave, angels come by night
and carry his body to a Muslim burial ground,” said the professor.

“So are you a Muslim or not?” the bookshop owner insisted.

“I tell you what. When I’m dead, open my grave and see if the angels have taken me away. Then you’ll know for sure,” he concluded with a smile.

Abu Nabil spoke up again. “Let me ask you a Jewish question, that is, a question about Jews.”

“That is not my speciality, but a guest is a guest. Ask your question.”

“You Jews are a wandering people. When do you think you’ll grow tired of this place and wander off somewhere else?”

Abu George flushed and put a hand to his mouth to suppress a cough. What was the matter with Abu Nabil, why was he behaving like a tiresome adolescent?

“If you want a proper answer, I must introduce you to Jewish issues. So, please, make yourselves comfortable, help yourselves to soft drinks and biscuits.”

Abu George took a honey biscuit and grapefruit juice, but Abu Nabil leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head and waited.

“Time was,” said the professor, “when living in exile was the existential condition of the Jewish people. Survival was paramount. Our forefathers seemed to say, ‘We have no present, so we must interpret the past and ponder the future.’ But then the Zionist revolution returned to the Land of Israel, the place of action, and it said, ‘Now we are the interpreters of the Jewish condition, we are the ones making new precepts, because we have to act. We will bring the Jews to the present by means of the tree that we plant, the war that we fight.’ Herzl was a kind of prophet who said that building a home for the Jewish people
and immigrating to it was the paramount precept for our time. In other words, Abu Nabil,
ya azizi
, my friend, we are not going anywhere else and will not return to the exile. At long last, we’re home.”

“And the Arabs who are here, what about them?”

“Modern history is not my field,” the professor replied evasively.

Working on the newspaper in its new form was good for Abu George, making him feel young again. The first night he and Abu Nabil stayed up till three o’clock in the morning, and jumped like young billy goats when the first sheets emerged from the old printing press. He returned home close to daybreak, and was met at the door by Um George looking excited and pleased, trailed by Senator Antoine.

“What’s all the fuss about?” he teased them with a smile. “And why are you up so early? It’s not the first newspaper we’ve printed!”

“Dear heart, my love, don’t flatter yourself and your papers. It’s about Yasmine – she’s coming home soon!”

“What? When did she phone? What did she say?”

“What does it matter what she said,” the senator linked his arm with Abu George’s. “The main thing is, she’s coming. What a girl! And how much she’s suffered.”

“
Inshallah
, she’ll stay with us now,” said Abu George, hoping he could keep her with them. She had only to submit the results of her research and put in some course-work, and she would have her doctorate. He began to think he might persuade her to do her training in al-Quds in some recognised institute, or in Ramallah. If he couldn’t find a suitable place, he would look in West Jerusalem. There and then he resolved to consult Nuri
Imari, his mediator with Israel. He knew that just as in Arab society, in which you always need a go-between to shorten your path and save your dignity, the Israelis had a similar custom which they called “protektzia”.

The heat struck Yasmine like a physical blow when the plane door opened on landing at Amman Airport, and she hurried to put on her dark glasses to protect her eyes from the searing sunlight. Her father and mother hugged her tight for a long time. How she had missed their love and the reassurance of being close to them. Now she saw that they were looking a little bowed, somewhat sadder. “Yasmine, Yasmine,” her father mumbled, and her mother cried and laughed and patted her cheeks.

After passing through customs they got into Abu George's black Dodge. The scant traffic moved slowly, so very different from the fast-flowing river of vehicles in the City of Lights. Yasmine stared at the sights, looking for graffiti such as decorate the walls of Paris like make-up on a woman's face, but the walls here were mostly bare. Here and there she saw war slogans which brought a bitter smile to her lips:
Al-nasr qarib
! Victory is coming! and
Ta'ish al-wahda al-arabiyya
. Long live Arab unity!

Approaching the Jordan River near the Allenby Bridge, the traffic came to a halt, and they joined a long line of cars that stood bumper to bumper, flanked by families waiting to cross on foot. She didn't remember such scenes in the past. Then she noticed soldiers checking documents, examining baggage and
vehicles. They were older than national servicemen, bareheaded, their uniforms untidy. This was her first sight of Israeli soldiers, and she didn't know they were reservists.

“What's this?” she asked her father.

“The occupation,” he replied.

She closed her eyes. Would they search her baggage? In one of her cases were three secret letters given to her by Fayez, the head of Fatah in Paris. When he instructed her how to conceal them and who to give them to, she felt she was fulfilling an important patriotic mission. Turning round she saw a long queue of cars forming behind them and sighed – she couldn't warn her parents, and there was no turning back; there was a tailback behind her and the occupation troops in front. She tugged her skirt down over her knees and squeezed into the corner of the car, regretting her courier mission. Resting her head on her mother's shoulder, like a tired child, she tried to look apathetic.

After half an hour their turn came. “
Binti
,” said Abu George, “present your French passport and leave your Jordanian identity card in your bag.”

“Documents, please,” the soldier who approached their car said in strangely-accented Arabic, which reminded her of North African Arabs she had met in France. Abu George handed them over and the soldier examined them closely.

“I see you're a journalist, sir?”

“A reporter, also the owner and editor of the
Al-Wattan
newspaper.”

“And what were you doing in Amman, interviewing His Majesty?' the soldier jested.

“No,” replied Abu George. “I brought back my princess.”

The soldier peered into the car and bowed slightly. “Where is the princess coming from?”

“From Paris.”

“Ah, Paris…” The soldier hummed one of Yves Montand's songs as he continued to examine the documents. “What was the princess doing in Paris?”

“She's studying at the Sorbonne. Getting a doctorate.”

“Does your father always speak for you, mademoiselle?” he surprised her by asking in French.

“Madame. Not mademoiselle,” she corrected him drily.

“Why did you enter with a foreign passport? Don't you have Jordanian citizenship?”

“Of course I do,” she replied.

“A friend from your government recommended that she enter with her French passport,” Abu George explained.

“I see.”

A tall sergeant approached them. “Why are you messing around? Get on with it! Can't you see the queue?”

Yasmine pricked up her ears at the sound of Hebrew. But what did “messing around” mean? She didn't remember the expression from her childhood. Could it be a coded expression?

“There's a problem. A Jordanian citizen came in with a French passport,” the soldier said, showing it to the sergeant.

“So what? They wanted to avoid the family reunification process,” the sergeant replied, examining the passport. “All right, take her to the Ministry of the Interior and search her. But get a move on!”

Yasmine felt herself going pale. The soldier instructed Abu George to park on the side and asked her to accompany him. “Madame la princesse,” he said, “please wait until you are called by passport control. When you are finished there, wait for me here by the tent.”

Another thirty-five minutes of waiting outside the Ministry
tent, oppressed by the heat and the crowd, the palpable tension of the others who were waiting like her, the distress of those who came out of the tent with the order to go back to Jordan, Yasmine thought about the freedom of life in Paris, the political ferment at the university, and told herself she was watching the Theatre of the Absurd. The sun beat down mercilessly. Her mother waved to her with a scarf she had taken off, urging her to come and take it to protect her head, but she remained where she was, stubborn, as if punishing herself.

When her turn came, she was interviewed by a fair-haired older woman who was smoking a cheap cigarette. The smell of tobacco prompted Yasmine to take out her own thin filter cigarettes. She lit one and put the pack on the desk. With a gesture, the woman asked for her documents, examined her French passport and Jordanian ID, and looked at Yasmine closely to compare her appearance with the photographs.

“How long have you lived in France?” she asked in English.

“Five years.”

“What do you do there?”

“I live.”

“Okay, but what is your occupation?”

“I'm studying for a doctorate at the Sorbonne.”

“In what subject?”

“Special needs education.”

“What is the purpose of your visit?”

“Do I need a purpose to visit my homeland?”

“All the same.”

“I've come to see my parents and my friends.”

“Okay. How long will you stay?”

“Two, three weeks. Not more than a month.”

“Who are your friends in Paris.”

Yasmine's eyebrows rose, then she shrugged. “The books in the university library.”

“May I see your airline ticket?”

Yasmine handed it to her.

“Are you planning to stay?”

“I just told you I've come for a short visit.”

“Sorry to have troubled you, madam. Enjoy your stay.”

When she reached the door she heard the woman call out, “Mrs Hilmi!” and froze. “Your cigarettes!”

The French-speaking soldier was waiting for her outside. He went with her to the car and helped her take out her three suitcases and carried them to another tent. Inside there were a table, two chairs and a bare lightbulb dangling from the roof. She thought there might be a hidden camera somewhere, such as she had seen in films, and reminded herself not to appear uneasy and to behave naturally. Now that they were alone the soldier looked her over with a cheeky smile on his face.

“Please open your cases.”

Yasmine opened her handbag, took out her set of keys and placed it on the table. “I'm not opening anything. You want to check, go ahead,” she said, holding her head up.

The soldier seemed amused, again asked her to open the cases and she shook her head. “I see you're not just a princess,” he said laughing. “You're a queen.”

The first case was full of neatly packed clothes – elegant dresses, blouses, scarves. The soldier took out one garment after another and laid them carefully on the table. When he reached the silk knickers and bras in the bottom of the suitcase his movements slowed down and his touch became decidedly suggestive. Yasmine felt as if he was groping her breasts, her stomach, her intimate parts. Her skin crawled. The sight of his
fingers handling her underwear made her sick. She wanted to claw at him, to push him away from her personal clothing.

In the second suitcase he found a couple of cardboard boxes and held one of them as if it were explosive.

“What is this,
madame la princesse
?”

“Open it and see.”

He tore open the wrapping of one of the packets. Small white tubes fell out of it and scattered.

“What are these?”

“Cotton tampons. Women use them for their periods. They're more hygienic and convenient than cotton pads.”

The soldier stared at her in disbelief, crushed one of the tampons and grinned in embarrassment. “You can pack your cases. You're free to leave.”

“I'm not packing anything. You opened, you can pack.”

The soldier grumbled but began to pack, stuffing the clothes quickly into the suitcases. She stood like a pillar of salt, staring at the ground. A pair of pink satin knickers fell on the floor. The soldier picked them up delicately, blew on them as if to remove the dust, finally closed the case, locked it and gave the keys back to Yasmine. Then he pointed to the door. This time he did not help her carry the cases.

Her parents had waited in the car, their nerves fraying. Seeing her come out, her father rushed to carry her cases and they drove off. Yasmine's gaze was frozen and her mouth
tight-lipped
. The car crossed the bridge and turned on to the road leading to al-Quds. When they had put some distance between them and the bridge she suddenly remembered something she had repressed during the search – the third suitcase, the one which held the books and the secret letters, had not been examined at all.

“Is there another checkpoint on the way?” Um George asked.

“I don't think so. The worst part is behind us. I was afraid they wouldn't let her enter and we'd have to apply for family reunification, and that's no end of trouble,” he replied. Yasmine didn't know what he was talking about but hadn't the strength to ask.

As soon as they entered al-Quds she felt more alive. She wanted to see and sense the pulse of the city she had left five years before. She was also curious to see it in its new situation – what did an occupied city look like? But before she could ask her father to take any detours, he turned towards Wadi Joz, and a few moments later they reached the little square near their house, and the car climbed up narrow Nashashibi Lane.

Strangely, she did not feel festive or even as excited as she had expected to be. For a moment she recalled the other house, the one in Talbieh, not as a distant memory, but as vivid and attractive. Why think about it now? Would she care to see it now?

The car stopped under the awning. Yasmine hurried back to the iron gate, pushed it shut with her shoulder as she used to do, and stopped to take a deep breath. There – the smell that followed her everywhere, the scent of a hot summer tempered by the fragrance of the water-sprinkler and the fish-pond. The pond was smaller than she remembered, but the trees fringing the garden had grown taller and the roses seemed more vibrantly red. The three wrought-iron seats in the middle of the garden were still in place, but their feet had rusted. A great weariness fell on her. She sank down on to one of the seats, as though her body had been waiting for this moment when she would rest in her garden, surrounded by the stone wall and the
trees. She wanted to drowse, to sleep. But her father and mother came up to her, smiling and eager for more embraces, beaming with joy, as if she'd arrived at just this moment. Here, in their fortress, she was safe at last.

They went inside. Her face looked back at her from a large photograph Azme had taken soon after their wedding. The portrait was radiant with happiness. Why didn't Azme let her take his picture on that occasion? In the kitchen she slipped off her shoes and felt the pleasant coolness of the marble floor. Her father went to telephone the senator and Abu Nabil, to tell them that she had arrived safely. Her mother said to him, “Get it through to them that she's tired, that they shouldn't come today.”

“How can I do that?”

“Simple, invite them for tomorrow evening.”

Yasmine climbed the stairs to her own suite. How spacious it all seemed compared with the poky rooms in Paris. When she opened the suitcase the soldier had rummaged through she wanted to dump everything in the wash, as though he had defiled her clothes, but on second thoughts she threw into the laundry basket only the pink knickers that had fallen on the ground. She took out a negligée and a wash bag and left the suitcase open on the floor. She did not feel up to unpacking her clothes, hanging them up and folding them, and the other two cases remained untouched. After her shower she lay on the bed and tried to sleep.

After dinner the senator arrived with his wife. “Sorry, I couldn't wait,” he said, grinning like a mischievous schoolboy, and hugged her. “Thank God, you look wonderful!” he said and
gave her a present – a rare book on Arab architecture in Andalusia. The old man is trying to console himself and us with memories of our glorious past, she thought compassionately.

Before long Abu Nabil and his wife also arrived. “I waited five years and couldn't wait another day,” he declared and enfolded her in his huge arms. He had always loved her and had even dreamt of marrying her to his son Nabil, and had never stopped loving her even though in the end she had chosen Azme.

After the kisses and emotional exchanges and descriptions of the scenes at the bridge, the three women retired to the kitchen, and Yasmine wondered if she should not join them there. But she was anxious to hear the men and get firsthand information about the situation. Abu George sensed her hesitation and gestured to her to remain.

“Sit with us, daughter, feel like a guest today.”

The conversation quickly turned to politics and the new state of affairs. The senator described a difficult exchange he'd had with the minister of the royal Jordanian court; Abu Nabil spoke in detail about an argument with the editor of the Cairo daily
Al Ahram
, who told him what Nasser was planning in the aftermath of the defeat.