Yasmine (36 page)

When we reached Jericho we ran into a roadblock. A young Israeli soldier demanded our identity cards. Yasmine handed him her papers and French passport which immediately aroused his suspicion, and he told her to get out of the car. I got out with her and gave him my identity card. He looked at the photograph and the personal details, looked at me closely and handed it back to me.

“It's all right, you can leave,” he said.

“She's with me, friend,” I said in an informal tone.

“I'm not your friend and I don't know you.”

“I know her, her father is —”

“Sir, I'm doing my duty and you are obstructing me.”

“I tell you she's my friend. What's the problem?”

“How many times do I have to tell you you're obstructing my work?”

“Listen, soldier, you don't know who I am…” I produced a document issued by my Minister and another one authorising me to enter any military compound in the territories.

“Sir, to me you're a citizen like any other, I'll have to take steps against you,” he threatened.

“What do you mean?” I raised my voice.

Yasmine shushed me. “You want to light a fire or to put it out?” she whispered.

The soldier searched the car thoroughly. The camera and the
rolls of film fanned his suspicions, and he asked a girl soldier to take Yasmine into a hut and check her out. “There's a gang of terrorists in the area,” the girl soldier explained.

“Does she look like a terrorist?”

Yasmine signalled to me to move away. I'd promised to do everything for her, and here I was paralysed. I wanted to scream, but stood by helplessly as my love was led away to be questioned and physically examined. She was detained in the hut for a long time, and when she came out she walked slowly, her head bowed.

We got back into the car without a word. I stopped near the little square in the centre of Jericho. “I need coffee, my love.”

“Please just take me home.”

“I'm so sorry for what happened.”

“What could you have done?”

Invariably, when debating with Abu Nabil, Abu George maintained that it was necessary to do some real soul-searching after the recent cataclysm. Why was Israel flourishing while the Arab world was languishing? He thought about it constantly, trying to decipher the secret of the Jews' success. Was it democracy, which respected the individual, rather than repressing and exploiting him? In our society, he argued, and throughout the Arab world, there was neither place nor hope for the individual – all were subsumed in the clan, in the mass, in the painful history.

Perhaps the secret of the Jews' strength was in their women, playing an active role in society. A woman felt equal to a man. Among us the woman is silenced, veiled, bundled in a robe of shame and honour and chained with religious and traditional prohibitions.

Yasmine had once accused him of being a collaborator. Of late, so it seemed to him, her attitude towards the enemy had changed and grown more clear-headed. She appeared calmer, and perhaps she too was beginning to understand that life mattered above all else, and it made its own demands. Perhaps
it was young Nuri's influence. They exchanged views, sometimes dined together at Al-Hurriyeh and met to discuss their work. Just yesterday they travelled together to the north of the country. This was unexpected, but he had not intervened, afraid to spoil his relations with his daughter and encourage her to return to the Fatah crowd in Paris…Perhaps when she was occupied with her own youth village and the magazine her world would be complete.

The telephone rang. It was Abu Nabil. Unexpectedly, he suggested a trip to the Israel Museum in West Jerusalem. To see an exhibition of Islamic art.

During the drive to the museum that afternoon he felt that Abu Nabil wanted to say something but was holding back. After the exhibition they went to the King David Hotel, and there, on the terrace with the view of the walls of the Old City and the church steeples, he suggested to Abu Nabil that he join him and another partner, a Jew, in opening a fish restaurant in East Jerusalem.

Abu Nabil smiled his cynical smile and twirled his moustache. “Half my money belongs to Um Nabil, who is after all my life's partner. Of the remaining half, a quarter belongs to Nabil, my only child. Of the remainder, I save a half and invest the other half, and since we haven't done any business since the war, I'm holding on to what's left of my assets against a rainy day.”

“Come on, Abu Nabil! Who knows how long this damned occupation will last? You rejected my suggestion to build a hotel on Mount Sacobos, refused to start a tourist transportation company. How long are we going to sit here doing nothing?”

“
Ya akhi
, brother, their government is behind it all! They want
to pull our teeth, take over the business and the newspaper and use them in their propaganda. Can't you see that?”

Abu George was simmering with frustration.

“Patience, brother,” Abu Nabil went on. “Soon it will all be ours, without any effort on our part. Israel has swallowed more than it can digest, its stomach is about to burst and its heart will stop.”

“Forget Israel for now. Let's talk about our business.”

“My son Nabil, Allah preserve him, is fighting against them – how can I do business with them? You know,” he said in a low voice, leaning closer to Abu George, “it was Nabil's group that placed the landmine under the school bus near Be'er Orah.”

“How can you let him risk his life like that?”

“Will he listen to me?” Abu Nabil sighed. He lit a cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. “You've no idea of the pressures I'm under…” He stopped, not wanting to tell his friend, in his delicate state of health, what Abu Ammar's people were saying about him and his daughter. But when could he speak? Every time they met he intended to get it off his chest, but held back. Then he heard himself saying, “Listen, brother, they are saying Yasmine is collaborating with the Zionists.” He paused, to give his friend time to rally, and added: “I gave them my word of honour that if Yasmine knew how to use a gun, she would be fighting the Jews just like Nabil.”

Abu George was horrified. “They're crazy!” he snapped.

“I said to them, ‘By Nabil's life, kill me, but don't touch a hair of Yasmine's head.' But I must ask you, why does she work for them in that youth village?”

“My friend, she is only doing her practical work there, for her doctorate. There is no suitable institution on our side,” Abu George explained, but sensed that his friend was not convinced.
“What else are you keeping from me?” he asked, and began to cough.

Abu Nabil felt his heart melting with compassion. “How come the doctors can't find a cure for you? By Allah, I wish I could raise our genius Abu Bakr Mohammed al-Razi from his grave to take care of you.” He sipped his coffee, then went on, “
Ya akhi
, brother, you're as dear to me as my flesh and blood, and Yasmine is as precious to me as my son Nabil. Did I not want her to be his wife? I do have something more to say to you.” He lit a cigarette.

Abu George clenched his jaw.

“Brother, people in this town gossip, they drip poison. What has Yasmine to do with that Jew Nuri, curses upon him?” Abu Nabil asked, puffing smoke.

“Can I tell her what to do?”

“Who else but you? You're her father!”

“And you cannot tell Nabil what to do, is that not so? Yasmine is not a child, she's a grown woman, an independent person,” Abu George argued. “That's the problem. We treat women as we did in the Middle Ages. If we allowed them to be independent, as the Jews do, our lives would be transformed.”

“There's no comparison, brother! She's a woman! I'm talking to you about her honour, your honour, everything that is precious to you and to us, and you babble about women's liberation…That would destroy the foundations of our society!”

“Or give rise to a new, advanced, enlightened society, without vendettas and the enslavement of women,” said Abu George.

“Forget society, I want to talk about Yasmine. You should know that people are talking about her, saying bad things. Something must be done to stop it.”

“The devil take them, what business is it of theirs? Abu
George's heart sank and he was filled with helpless rage. “They are smearing her because they are not real men. An educated independent woman like Yasmine scares our little cockerels. And the fact that she's a widow makes their jibes all the more vicious.”

“Did you know that she has been meeting that Jew at night?” Abu Nabil did not let up.

“I know. They eat at my restaurant, meet for coffee at the American Colony. She makes no secret about it. It is nothing but a friendship. So what?”

“Make it stop now!” said Abu Nabil firmly. “You must cut off the snake's head before it grows too large. Don't let things get out of control!”

Abu George remained silent.

To lighten the mood and ease the tension, Abu Nabil reverted to the suggestion of starting a fish restaurant with a Jewish investor. “Understand me, brother, how can I do business with them? I'm a Muslim. The Muslim is superior, the Muslim rode on a horse and carried a sword, while the Jew walked on foot. A Jew may not carry arms, he may not walk in the rain lest he splash a Muslim. How can he be my partner?”

But Abu George's mind had drifted away. On his way home he felt people's eyes on him, as if he had sprouted a hump. If his friend and partner talked to him about Yasmine and Nuri, and went on and on about it, that meant the whole town was talking.
Ya rab al-alamein
, O Lord Almighty, she is due back this evening! What's to be done? Anxiety was corroding his veins. He had known suffering, had been deeply hurt when his friends denounced him and almost ostracised him as a collaborator, but the attack on Yasmine's reputation was a knife thrust into his heart.

But perhaps all the rumours had been started by the gang of that scoundrel Arafat, and were meant to drive him out of the newspaper business? The Fatah people wanted a newspaper of their own, full of lies and propaganda, like the Russian papers. How can you build a national identity on foundations of falsehood and fantasy? His anxiety turned into anger. These fanatics, he fumed, they would destroy everything and prevent others from building anything. Things were falling apart and nothing would satisfy them. Perhaps he really should retire from the newspaper, avoid public activity, spare himself further anguish and damage to his health…But how was he to tell Um George about the malicious gossip, and what would happen to Yasmine?

I couldn’t get over Yasmine’s humiliation at the Jericho roadblock. I was torn between hope and anxiety, belief in the power of our love and despair in the face of the inevitable complications. I couldn’t wait for the morning, hoping she would telephone before leaving for the youth village. At six, after my brisk walk, having picked up my favourite, slightly scorched, rolls at the grocery, I went out on to the balcony.

It was a fine morning. I stood and watched the red kestrels. They came to Jerusalem from thousands of miles away and built their nest under the tiled roof opposite. The male had his work cut out, coupling with his mate many times. The eggs had recently hatched and the parents were feeding the fledglings with such care and devotion that I was touched. Before long they would all spread their wings and fly away, to return the next winter.

And here was my Orthodox neighbour, back at home. She came up to the window and showed me her new baby, turning its face for me to see. “Mazal tov! Congratulations!” I said aloud, and she smiled.

I put the kettle on, made Noumi Basra tea and took the halva out of the fridge. The phone rang – Yasmine? No, it was Levanah, kind-hearted as ever. She had just returned from
abroad and brought me some chocolate. “Come in here before you start your day. The chocolate will sweeten it.”

Levanah greeted me with her lovely smile. “I’m glad you came in. The Minister wants to see you.” She took a packet from her drawer and put it on the desk. “The chocolate is waiting for you.” I smiled at her and went into the Minister’s office.

“Good morning, sir.”

He did not return my salutation and looked worried and annoyed.

“Is it true,” he asked grimly, “that you appeared at a political forum in Jerusalem at a conference of the Labour Party’s youth wing, alongside your uncle, the ‘prisoner of Zion’?”

I felt as if I’d been hit in the stomach. “It’s true.”

“It’s against civil service rules.”

“I asked the civil service regulator, and was told I could appear as an expert. Anyway, I didn’t get to speak because the audience became unruly,” I said, breaking into a sweat.

The Minister took a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and read out some quotes from my lecture at the kibbutz. “Are these quotes accurate?” he asked, piercing me with his big eyes.

“They are.”

“Is it true that in that lecture at the kibbutz you said we should give up the liberated territories and give the Arabs a state, and that Jerusalem, our people’s eternal capital, should be an open city and fly the flags of the Arab countries and the Vatican?”

“True.”

He threw his pencil down on his desk, laced his fingers together and looked at me as if I were a stupid child. “I promoted you, I appointed you to an important post, I opened
doors for you, trusted you. Tell me, how can we go on working together? How did you dare speak like a defeatist in public? You, my advisor and the head of my office in East Jerusalem! Do you know how much political damage you have done to me, and to my status as a public figure?” He was deeply agitated.

“I am very sorry if I caused you any distress. I never intended to do so. I have no earthly reason to want to harm you,” I said. He closed his eyes as if to say, That’s irrelevant. He took a paperclip and started cleaning his fingernails.

“Have I not followed your instructions? Have I acted in defiance of your policy?”

“We’re not talking about your loyalty or your actions, but about your views! Why can’t I get through to you?”

“Because I think otherwise, Minister,” I said quietly. “We are orphans and they are orphans, we suffer from the victim complex and so do they, we have the refugee complex and they do too. The difference is that now our belly is full and theirs is empty. We have a home and they don’t. They are consumed with envy and hatred and frustration. We have a saying that you should open your umbrella before the rain begins. If we do not give up the territories and help them establish their state, and do not help to solve the problem of the refugees, even God will be unable to sort out the mess.”

The room was silent. The Minister threw down the paperclip and began to tear at his eyebrows. “We can’t continue like this,” he said at last.

“With your permission, Minister, I’d like to go out for a smoke,” I said and went out into the front office. I stood by the window, immobile, my thoughts racing in the effort to reassess the situation in view of his attack. This was not a discussion, it was a confrontation between world-views. He refused to
legitimise my position, and I’d have to sell my soul, become a chameleon. Once again I was a refugee, the son of refugees, one who for a little while seemed to belong, seemed to be one of the bosses, but only conditionally. He wanted me so long as I followed in his footsteps, since I was little more than his factotum, to be periodically reminded whose hand fed me.

I took a sheet of paper from Levanah’s desk and wrote a short letter of resignation. In the afternoon I collected my belongings from the office in Sheikh Jarrah. I never went back there.