“That’s right,” she answered, clutching her purse. “But don’t take us there. Stop us at Jaffa Gate and we’ll walk up the couple of blocks. I need to buy something for Widad.”
Yousif was surprised. “Like what?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “A robe, a bottle of perfume. Something.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. It’s too dangerous.”
His mother frowned. “You don’t expect me to visit her empty-handed?”
“This is no time for formalities between sisters,” he answered. “Look, why don’t we let Makram drop us off at Barclays Bank. You can buy a box of chocolate from the delicatessen next door. It’ll save us time.”
His mother would have none of it. She was not coming to Jerusalem every day. Now that she was here, there were a few things she needed to do. This was her hometown. She wanted to light a candle at the Qiyameh, Holy Sepulchre. And she wanted to see her parents.
“You wouldn’t come all the way to Jerusalem and not see your grandparents, would you?” she asked, looking him in the eye.
She succeeded in making him feel guilty. He turned around and faced the road ahead of him. A city in mourning zipped by. He felt a lump in his throat. Some of his happiest recollections resonated around this sacred and blessed city of shrines, temples, belfries, minarets, and domes. From childhood, he had loved everything about Jerusalem: the old and the new, the visits with his grandparents in the old district of Musrara and with his cousins up at modern Qatamon. He had loved the exotic and appetizing smells of herbs and foods drifting from restaurants and sidewalk cafes, the sounds of church bells and muezzins, the voices of vendors and heavy traffic, the sight of silks and leather goods hanging in the middle of the streets and touching the pedestrians’ heads, the bazaars in souk Khan iz-Zait and the modern shops at Al-Manshiyyeh, the skullcap and the fez, the priest and the rabbi and the shaykh, the chic and the dowdy, the marble of new Jerusalem and the mud huts of old, the cobblestoned labyrinth of old Jerusalem within the ancient, imposing, wind- and sun-beaten stonewall.
Maneuvering his way through the heavy traffic, Makram seemed to know his way around the holy city. Staying on Jaffa Road, he cut through Jerusalem from almost one end to the other. Strangely, there were no checkpoints along the way, mainly grim soldiers patrolling the jittery, empty metropolis. Government buildings looked like fortresses.
Makram honked and sped around a stalled truck. “Just tell me when and where to pick you up,” he said. “I’m at your service all day.”
“Let me think,” the mother said, checking her make-up in the small mirror she was holding.
Yousif turned to Makram. “Why don’t you pick us up where you’re going to drop us off. In front of Barclays Bank. It has a canopy we could stand under if it rains. Is that okay with you, Mother?”
“What time?” she wanted to know.
“How about three o’clock? That’ll give you nearly five hours to do all your errands.”
She thought for a second, then nodded.
“Look at these sand bags,” Yousif remarked, as they passed the main Post Office.
“Look at the barbed wire.”
Yousif’s imagination ran wild, and his concern mounted.
Carrying a large box of imported biscuits and a brown bag of apples and bananas, Yousif and his mother followed a beautiful young nun in a white habit as she moved silently down the sparkling marble floor of the huge French Hospital. They were the first visitors to be admitted. Because of the quiet, Yousif found himself tiptoeing. The nun stopped in front of room 26 and waited for them to enter, her kindly face turning crimson.
“Thank you, Sister,” the mother said, bowing her head.
“You’re welcome,” the nun answered, smiling. “I hope you’ll find your patient doing well.”
They stepped into a semi-private room with a large window. The outdoor view was blocked by a curtain drawn between the two beds. Aunt Widad was asleep, her long neck bent on the high pillow. Although she was his mother’s twin sister, she looked older. The resemblance between the two sisters was slight. His mother was fair-complexioned, but his aunt was olive-skinned. Aunt Widad must have sensed their presence. She opened her eyes—glad to see them. The two sisters embraced and kissed. Then it was Yousif’s turn.
Aunt Widad told them all about the sharp pain from the gallbladder attack and her subsequent surgery. God must have listened to her prayers, she said. She had felt the pain all that weekend, but she did not have to be rushed to the hospital until after the curfew had been lifted. The first night and the following day after the resolution was passed, the Jews were dancing right under the Widads’ window. Then something strange happened. Their next-door neighbors, Jews they had known for years, stopped talking to them.
“The UN resolution seems to make it illegal or immoral for Arabs and Jews to have any contacts with each other,” she said, frowning.
“Did you try to speak to them?” Yousif asked, standing by her bed.
Aunt Widad nodded. “They mumbled something,” she said. “But you could tell they didn’t want to talk. After that, kindly old Jewish men started walking around wearing black arm bands and carrying guns. We could see them parading through the neighborhood. Then we began to hear firing going on in every direction. Bombs exploding . . . ambulances screaming. It was awful.” She sighed and pointed her finger toward the curtain. “The lady in the next bed is one of the first victims. A sniper’s bullet hit her in the jaw. They had to operate on her for five hours. Look behind that curtain—she doesn’t mind.”
Both Yousif and his mother got up from their seats and walked to see the patient in the next bed. She was up, peering at them from behind a white mask but unable to speak. Her bandaged head looked like a mummy’s. They nodded in her direction. Yousif bit his lower lip; his mother covered her mouth with her hand.
They returned to stand around Aunt Widad’s bed.
“We saw nothing like this in Ardallah,” Yousif’s mother said, her eyes glistening with tears.
“Any place is safer than Jerusalem,” Widad explained, her fingers folding and unfolding the bed sheet. “We’re afraid the worst is yet to come.”
They stayed with her for the next half hour. By 10:30, they hugged her, kissed her goodbye, and wished her a speedy recovery.
“Have a safe trip back home,” Aunt Widad said.
At the door both Yousif and his mother stood silent, absorbing her words. Yousif wondered if they would ever see Aunt Widad other again.
Yousif and his mother walked downhill past Notre Dame until they reached Bab el-Amood, two long blocks away. Like the new Jerusalem, the old city within the ancient wall was distressing. People were shopping and going about their business, but they seemed dispirited. Yousif and his mother walked through the narrow, congested streets, not stopping at any shop but heading for the Qiyameh, the Holy Sepulchre. Suddenly, there was excitement in the street. People began to push each other as if to make room for someone on the run. In a chain reaction, people were elbowing each other or stepping on each other’s feet down the
