Yasmine (16 page)

He made a habit of visiting the
chaikhaneh
every day. Before long he succeeded in befriending the waiter, and after bribing him with a few coins he asked him to introduce him to merchants, border crossers and members of prominent Iraqi families who happened to be in Khorramshahr. He found partners for games of backgammon, dominoes or cards, and discovered which of them were compulsive gamblers in chronic need of cash. He would tell them stories about himself and his business here and in Tehran, and soon they responded with stories of their own, so he learned who could be tempted with what bait, and for whom he should wait until he got into trouble. In this way he acquired a couple of agents, if only for minor missions, but it was a start.

Among those introduced to him by the waiter was a Shi’ite of Iraqi origin, a native of Khorramshahr, a well-groomed,
well-dressed
man of about forty, who claimed to have connections in Basra, as well as relations and friends in Baghdad. The man, named Shahin Pur, crossed the border surreptitiously from time to time and was involved in smuggling – tea and jewellery from here, carpets and other goods from there. Kabi discovered that he was a gambler who dreamed of travelling to Las Vegas to play backgammon with the biggest gamblers there. “Here in Khorramshahr,” he would say, “I’ve no worthy opponents.” Kabi pretended to be a mediocre player, although he had been familiar with the intricacies of the game since childhood.

His relationship with Shahin Pur grew closer, and thanks to him he was able to expand his activities and set up a network of
smugglers from Baghdad to the Shatt al-Arab, and from time to time Shahin Pur brought him a suitcase full of dates and other delicacies.

One day Shahin Pur told Kabi about a casual meeting he’d had with a relative who had been promoted to the post of governor of the prison at Nograt Salman. Kabi could hardly believe his ears – this was the prison where Uncle Hizkel was held! He took a deep breath and hoped Shahin Pur had not noticed his excitement.

In flagrant violation of the rules of the profession, but not without the caution that had become his second nature, Kabi determined to try and find out what had happened to his uncle.

Almost every morning on the way to my office in Sheikh Jarrah, my eyes would automatically turn eastwards, to Mount Scopus, following the sun rising over the ridge that fronts the desert, and the face of a sweet girl would come to mind – Ghadir. What had happened to her? Was she still there? Did she remember me, the boy doing his national service nine years earlier?

I had met her on the mountain my first morning there, when I woke up at dawn to see the sunlight polishing the mountains of Jerusalem. Suddenly, beyond the barbed wire fence that surrounded our enclave in East Jerusalem, a shepherd girl appeared with her flock. Her walk was supple and springy, like a wild colt's, and her long dress flapped in the morning breeze. She seemed mysterious and secretive, and she charmed me from a distance. When I approached the fence she stopped where she was.

A young girl, her complexion the colour of ripe wheat with a beauty spot on her cheek, she stood facing me, staring at me curiously but uncertainly from the other side of the barbed wire fence. We looked at each other in silence. The flock stopped nearby, some twenty sheep and goats – one goat was sneezing repeatedly in a pitiful attempt to say something I didn't understand.

The next day, at the same time, when I was standing guard in
the watch post near the entrance to the enclave, I saw the girl approaching with a big basket on her head.

“For you all,” she said, laughing, pointing to the heaped spring onions, mint, parsley and other vegetables in the basket.

On the third morning she appeared wearing a straw hat on top of the kerchief on her head.

“
Sabah el-khair
, good morning,” I greeted her.

“
Sabah el-nur
, morning of light…How come you speak Arabic?”

“
Ana ibn arab, Baghdadi
. I'm of Arab descent, from Baghdad!”

“Then what are you doing here with the Jews?
Inta
jasous
, a spy?” she picked up her staff as if ready to leave.

I told her I was a Jew, born in Baghdad, and my name was Nuri.

“An Arabic name! Nuri, it means light, fire. Are you their spy or ours?” she inquired with a cheeky smile. I laughed and asked her her name.

“Ghadir.”

“Ghadir – stream. A beautiful name, musical, like water running through gullies.”

“Stream and fire, water and sun,
ya salaam
, it's beautiful!” she smiled, showing brilliant teeth.

Twice a day, morning and evening, she appeared – once from the east, wearing a white straw hat like an English lady, and once from the west, in a kerchief that matched her special beauty, and always with her flock. The lambs and young goats danced around her, bleating in chorus, obedient to her staff as a choir to the conductor's baton. Now and then she brought a basket full of vegetables, and once a week I paid her.

“Maybe you'd all like goat's milk too, or fresh eggs?” she suggested one day.

“I'll ask and let you know.”

She picked up a stone and tossed it in my direction provocatively, her brilliant green eyes flashing. Her proud upright form, the long dress that hid her whole body, the intense life in her, everything about her captivated me. I sensed a mysteriousness that was much more intriguing than the provocative behaviour of women in our society. Suddenly she looked serious and turned to go.

“Stay a little longer,” I pleaded.

“It's almost night.”

“The darkness is good for talking,” I persisted.

“I must go.” She shook her head and walked away.

In the morning a vapour rose from the Dead Sea and spread below the rising dawn, finally surrendering to the white rays beating on the mountainside. A spring day. The birds were beside themselves with glee, the mountain was still a rich green sprinkled with vivid wild flowers, and you could hear your own heartbeat. But she wasn't there. I waited beside the barbed wire fence, and at last the flock arrived and behind it Ghadir appeared from the scrub, graceful and full of mischief.

“I hear the song of the desert, warm as the sound of the flute,” she sang, weaving and gyrating like a dancing snake.

“
Ya majnuna
, crazy girl, where's the music?”

“Listen carefully and you'll hear it too,” she said. “Yesterday I went with my mother to the Dead Sea. Down there, you see it?” she asked, still whirling, pointing to the blue abyss gleaming in the dawn light. “Jewish soldier, tell me, is Jaffa beautiful?”

“Very!”

“And the sea there?”

“Beautiful!”

“My mother doesn't want to bathe in the Dead Sea, only in the sea of Jaffa.”

“When there is peace I'll take you and your mother to the sea of Jaffa,” I promised.

“Liar. You're like all the soldiers, you come here for two weeks and then you vanish,” she smiled and swayed like a flower in the wind.

In the afternoon she returned, bringing wafer-thin pittas. While I bit into the brittle dough she pressed her shepherd's staff to her belly and began to sing the stanza:

“The eyes,” I said, but she shook her head. “The heart.” No again. “Both!” I tried once more, sounding like a petulant child. But she shook her head for the third time and smiled with her smouldering eyes.

“It's the smell! Smell is like love, fleeting and blooming!” She picked up one of the young goats and stroked it. “Tell me about your life,” she said.

So I told her.

“Water and light, stream and sun,” she said, her eyes full of tears.

“Pretty gazelle, why are you crying?”

“What does any person cry for?”

“
Ana aref
, how should I know?”

“For himself.”

“And what does a person laugh at?” I asked.

“At himself if he's clever and at others if he's stupid. That's what my mother says,” she replied, smiling again. “Oh what
rotten luck!” she exclaimed, suddenly alarmed. “Night is falling, what am I doing here? They'll kill me.” She turned, picked up a stone and threw it far down the slope, then another and another, and raced after them.

That night the “king of the mountain”, as our commander was nicknamed, told us that the scheduled exchange of convoys would not be taking place, so we would have to stay here another week. I was pleased. I loved the place, the tranquillity, the ideas opened up to me by Professor Shadmi, and of course, Ghadir, the wild colt on the other side of the fence.

The next morning I woke up late. I've missed her, I thought, and hurried to the western side of the mountain.

“You're late this morning.”

“I had a nice dream.”

“And I had a horrible one. They want to marry me to a cousin in Amman. He has pimples on his face and I don't like him.”

“Don't agree to it then.”

“I'm an Arab girl, not a bee that can drink from any flower she chooses. My mother understands, she says it's better when a girl marries the man she wants, but when my father hears any such talk, there's uproar. Who can say anything to him?” She picked a flower, sniffed it and threw it over the fence. Then she told me about her family – they were refugees who had fled from Jaffa to the slopes of Mount Scopus and set up a tent there. It was the first time I had met a refugee like her from '48.

On my last day there I told her I was finishing my tour of duty, and gave her my colourful silk scarf. “A present to remember me by.” She held it in both hands, sniffed it, rubbed it against her cheek, and then flung it back. “You want them to kill me?”

“God forbid!”

“Kind soldier, may Allah protect you and give you His blessing,” she said in parting and ran down the mountainside.

I waved to her and threw the silk scarf over the fence. Perhaps one day she would find it. I looked down but she was already out of sight. I stood there a long time, moved and confused by what had and had not happened between us.

I knew that Mount Scopus had been besieged during the most recent war and heavily shelled too, but in my dreamy way I kept on hoping that I would still find Ghadir on the slopes, herding her flock as before, wearing her kerchief or white straw hat, or even the silk scarf I'd left her. I wondered what she was doing now, nine years later, and what she looked like.

One day in the summer I went to look for her. I walked past the Ambassador Hotel, where the military government had its headquarters, turned near the Mount Scopus Hotel, which had been standing empty since the war, passed Nashashibi Lane, the home of Abu George and Yasmine, and started climbing the mountain not far from there. My path was blocked by legions of yellow thorns with high stalks, cheeky hands, sharp fingers and faces ugly as the faces of spiders. A dry wind rose from the desert and whipped my face, while pulsating waves of hot air clutched at my throat.

I stood and stared for a while at the wall of thorns. Perhaps I'd taken a wrong turn? I left the open field, found the old access road and reached the mountaintop exhausted and sweaty. The old approach to our camp had been erased, just like the wall separating the two parts of the city. Bulldozers and tractors were working there and raising clouds of dust. I climbed up on a big rock and looked eastwards, trying to retrace the shepherd's path used by Ghadir. Perhaps she had
married the spotty man she disliked and had moved to Amman, I told myself, and turned back.

Then one evening I met her by chance. I was walking, deep in thought, not far from the villa of Senator Antoine, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with my last memo to the minister – had my Hebrew let me down, or were the facts too complex to summarise – when suddenly a woman covered from head to foot stopped in front of me.

“Nuri?” she said, doubtfully.

“Ghadir!” I couldn't believe it.

“
Allah yinawer alaik
, may God shine his light upon you! Light and water, stream and fire,” she smiled. “I worried about you.”

The evening sun lit her tawny face, and her wolfish smile delighted me. She was even more beautiful, taller, more mature. The beauty spot on her cheek was more prominent.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. I told her.

“I'll pray to Allah that you succeed in opening hearts, yours and ours. We poor Palestinians have no
wali
, no protector, this one kicks us here, another kicks us there…Is your office in our city?”

“Here, in this alley,” I pointed.

She bent down, picked a blue thistle and gave it to me. “I waited for peace. Maybe my fate would turn around. I didn't want to marry, didn't want children, didn't want a house. They thought I was crazy. In the end they married me to my cousin.”

“The one in Amman?”

“Yes, the spotty one I told you about. Since the war he's been stuck over there, in Amman.”

“I thought about you,” I said.

“Naughty!” she laughed. “How many children do you have?”

“I'm not married.”

“Impossible.”

She looked at me, blushed and lowered her eyes. Evening fell, a pungent smell of heat and dry dust hung in the air. We looked at the horizon, at the sun sinking like a burst pomegranate behind the mountains, slowly draining away.

“Nuri, Allah sent you to me from heaven. Maybe you can help me. I won't tell you what my problem is now, I've got to go home, but I'll come to your office.”

The pretty pair of canaries at the entrance to Al-Hurriyeh were singing happily, unaffected by the heavy midday heat. I stood on the threshold, enjoying the sweet chirping, seeking out Yasmine in the packed restaurant. I found her sitting near the cashier’s desk, deep in conversation with a young woman, probably her friend Nehad whom Abu George had mentioned, and wondered if it would be all right to disturb them.

“Hello Yasmine,” I said finally with a nod.

She gazed at me absently as if she didn’t recognise me. Perhaps it was my new haircut, I thought. The day before I had dozed off in the barber’s chair and when I opened my eyes I had a shock – the man had got carried away and chopped my hair and sideburns short, setting me back several fashion years.

“Ah, the advisor,” she recollected. “This is my friend Nehad.”

I bowed slightly to Nehad, who returned a brief smile.

“Please,” Yasmine said in a low voice, but it was unclear if she really meant me to join them.

“Thanks, I don’t want to disturb you,” I said. “Maybe later.” Flustered, like a shy schoolboy, I passed a hand through my hair and looked for a waiter to show me to a seat. Yasmine fixed me with a stare that I countered with a forced grin, trying to avoid her gimlet eyes, but she wasn’t letting up. I lowered
my eyes but she still kept staring. Why was she looking at me like that?

I usually avoided eating at Al-Hurriyeh, because Abu George refused to charge me but on this occasion I decided to order something and wait for Yasmine to be free, so she wouldn’t suspect that I’d been sent by her despairing father. Once I had sat down at a corner table near the pomegranate tree she became absorbed in her conversation with Nehad and never gave me a glance. With her friend she was lively and free, totally unlike the frozen woman I’d met at the American Colony. Her black hair was shiny, and now and then she pushed it aside gracefully, laughing. I had with me the latest issue of
The New East
devoted to Egypt and tried to read it.

Eventually Nehad got up to leave, shaking her head like a puppy coming out of the water. Yasmine walked with her to the door, then turned and looked around at the customers till our eyes met. She came to my table, like a gracious hostess, but her walk betrayed her tension. I laid down my knife and fork to show I’d finished eating, leaned back and invited her to join me with a gesture.

“You don’t like our food?” she asked, looking at my plate.

I quoted the old Chinese saying: “In the morning eat like a king, at midday like a prince, and in the evening like a pauper. Which means that I should now be eating like a prince, and the food here really is fit for royalty, but I’m simply not hungry. Where is Abu George? How is he? I’m worried about him.”

“My father is well,” she said brusquely.

“When we came to Israel, my father suffered from a similar cough.”

Her look became colder, spurning the opening of intimacy I was offering.

“Will you join me if I order watermelon?”

She shook her head stiffly, her expression deadly serious.

“It was good to see you looking so cheerful with Nehad.”

“I like sitting with my friends,” she said, looking away. Her eyes fell on the magazine with the picture of Gamal Abd el-Nasser on the cover. Her curiosity aroused, she picked up the magazine with both hands. “What’s this?”

“There’s an article here about Nasser’s resignation,” I said. “It says once he resigned he shouldn’t have changed his mind so quickly about being re-instated, that the downfall needed time to sink in…”

Her response struck me like a whiplash. “Don’t you speak to me about downfall.” She glanced again at the cover photo. “Jesus, it’s the picture that appeared in
Le Monde
the day he resigned. He looked so sad and so tired…I’ll never forget that night. Every proud Arab who loves freedom can tell you where he was that night.”

“As for me, I was at home, listening to his speech with my father.”

“And I was about to go to a Beatles concert. When Father phoned me in Paris and said Nasser was about to make a speech, I rang my friend and cancelled. I usually looked forward with excitement to hearing Nasser speak, but that evening I was anxious and restless. It was his first speech after the war…”

“And what a speech!” I broke in and, lifting my hand, began quoting whole passages from it. “O my brothers! We have been together in times of triumph and distress, in the fine hours and the bitter ones, we are accustomed to sitting together, to speaking to each other with open hearts…O my brother citizens, I have decided to retire finally and completely from
every position, official or political. I shall return to the ranks of the masses…Imperialism fancies that Gamal Abd el-Nasser is its enemy, and I want to make it clear that the entire Arab nation is opposed to it, not Gamal Abd el-Nasser alone…The hope of Arab unity began before Gamal Abd el-Nasser and will persist after Gamal Abd el-Nasser…”

Yasmine stared at me in disbelief, tears in her eyes, and I fell silent. She swallowed. “No outsider can understand this,” she said. “My whole world collapsed that evening. I cried and cried…”

“My father and I were shocked too,” I said, surprised to see her softening.

“What went wrong?” she said bitterly. “Nasser himself announced the defeat. The father of Arab unity, the leader who gave us back our pride, stood up and admitted defeat! What went wrong? Who made the mistakes? Who was the traitor? I saw the pictures – people tearing at their clothes, pulling out their hair, weeping and whipping themselves bloody, like the Shi’ites on Ashura. Everything collapsed like a sandcastle.” Words failed her for a moment. “Everything was wiped out – the hope, the honour. I couldn’t bear to stay inside. I walked and walked through the streets, feeling I was thousands of miles from my people, blind in a foreign city…” I poured her a glass of water. She passed her fingers over the photo of Nasser, sipped and fell silent.

I sat hunched, leaning towards her.

“Yasmine, can you explain this to me? How is it that when Nasser announced his resignation millions poured out into the streets and pleaded with him to take it back. A Western leader wouldn’t have survived such a defeat. Even Churchill, the great victor of the Second World War, wasn’t re-elected after it. Th
e
British wanted another leader in peace time. Even our Ben-Gurion, the founder of the state, was deposed by his colleagues when they thought he was making too many mistakes. How could Nasser survive, promising such great things but then inflicting disaster on his people and the entire Arab nation?”

She thought a moment, then said, “He restored our honour, made us stand tall, he was our great father. We don’t throw father figures on the rubbish heap as they do in the West!”

“You remember the ending of that speech?” I asked, and the words came to me by themselves: “My heart is entirely with you…I would like all your hearts to be with me…May Allah be with us, sow hope in our heart and give us light and guidance…”

“Light and guidance…” Yasmine echoed and sank into a world that I was not a part of. Her hair was strewn around her smooth neck, and her lovely elongated face was blank and immobile. Suddenly she shook herself. “Jesus, you know the whole speech by heart! And your accent, when you declaimed it, pure Egyptian! Tell me, did you learn that at spy school?”

“That speech was a masterpiece,” I explained.

Her turquoise eyes looked at me searchingly, and for a moment they softened and a smile lit up her face. In the brief moment that flashed past, the world was full of possibilities, and countless hopes blossomed.

She leaned forward, as if to speak in confidence. “Masterpiece, you say? I say, it’s a statement of life. The scholars in the West, including your people, understand nothing about the Arab soul. You dissect us as if we are a corpse on the mortuary slab, not a living soul,” she sighed.

“You’re right. My older brother Kabi says the same. He argues that all those university scholars who look so important
wouldn’t even be able to order a glass of tea in real Arabic. They’re products of the West and Western culture, they don’t know the life of the Arabs and can’t understand their minds.”

“None of you will ever understand our frustration, the damaged honour, the humiliation, the need for achievements and recognition, as well as the need for revenge,” she said and motioned to the waiter to bring a jug of water.

“Why do you need revenge? We’re educated people, we’re supposed to enjoy life, love, raise children, dance, sing. Not die or avenge.”

We looked at each other and she blushed. I looked down at the watermelon the waiter had brought, which was still untouched. I offered her a share, but when she ignored me I took a big chunk and bit on it.
Ya salaam
, I wanted to say, but instead said in English that it was excellent. She picked up a piece and chewed it slowly. I looked at her mouth and wondered who she reminded me of? Ah, Jeanne Moreau! Princess of my youth, in a childish hairstyle with a centre parting, a girl of twenty, her big eyes peering through round glasses, her arched lips pouting like a baby’s.

“I dreamed of such a watermelon in Paris. With salty cheese and a fresh pitta in the evening on the terrace,” she said in a low voice in which I thought I sensed an opening to be exploited. I brought my chair closer, but she sat up straight and her eyes became veiled.

“Mister Advisor, do you know how much harm you caused my father when you persuaded him to open up his businesses?” she asked.

“Your father is a patriot and a practical man. He knows people need to raise their children and bring bread home,” I said, hoping to lead on to the subject for which I’d come.

“It’s bread kneaded with poison.”

“You have greetings from Michelle. She’s expecting you.”

“Michelle? Ah, the Frenchwoman you planted in the youth village to recruit me into your
mukhabarat
!”

“That’s an interesting idea. I hadn’t thought of it,” I smiled.

“I can hardly remember anything about that visit, except the children. Everything seemed very suspicious to me – Michelle, and the director, and you. Why should you want to help me?”

“You’re very distrustful, like an amateur spy. It’s really quite simple. I saw that your father is anxious to keep you here, as you’re his only child…”

“Oh really? And your sympathy as a father made you decide to help him…”

“I’m unmarried,” I said, and suddenly felt annoyed. “I like your father. Can’t you understand that?”

A faint smile appeared at the corners of her mouth.

I picked up her cigarettes. “May I?”

“Help yourself. Mister Advisor, can you tell me how many Jews there are in Israel?”

She was trying to crack a watermelon seed but couldn’t.

“About two and a half million.”

“Impossible. The restaurant is packed, the markets are bursting at the seams, the goods are flying from the shops, the West Bank is flooded with Jews.”

“We lived in a cage for twenty years, now everyone wants to go outside.”

She didn’t try to crack the next seed, just turned it over and over in her mouth, her lips opening and closing, pouting and pursing.

“There must be at least ten million of you,” she said and swallowed the seed. “I wanted to ask you something else. Could
you help me locate an old friend of mine, Edna Mazursky? I knew her when I was a child, in Talbieh. Her name doesn’t appear in the telephone directory,” she added apologetically.

“I’ll try. By the way, did you count the names in the directory and reach ten million?”

She grinned and crossed her arms on her chest, uncrossed them and toyed with the match box. Her lips continued to communicate a mysterious message. She spat out another watermelon seed and put it into the ashtray. Then she looked at her watch. “We’ve been talking for more than an hour. Don’t you have to work to do?”

You’re my work, Yasmine, I wanted to say, but stopped myself and instead made a promise in a solemn tone that surprised both of us: “I’ll do everything I can to find Edna Mazursky!”

Yasmine stood up and took out her car keys. “I’m going home. Can I give you a ride?”

“No thanks. I like to walk after lunch.”

Outside, a dry desert wind competed with the crazy pitiless sun. My nostrils dried up, I walked in a daze. I tried to reconstruct what she’d said to take it in, and above all to purge myself, to shake off the burdens of hatred and anger, spite and incitement, humiliation and defeat which were piled on our forefathers and on us, in distant times and in our time, and which had built up the jagged partition between Yasmine and me.

An Arab woman sitting on the sweltering pavement was selling fresh, juicy figs. I bought a few and on my way to the office couldn’t resist eating them unwashed. As I sucked the soft ripe fig I wondered if Eve could have tempted Adam with an apple – surely it was a fig?