to divulge any news. He did not tell them where he had been or what he had been doing. All he said, with characteristic nonchalance, was that Palestine had been sold and delivered. He pitied the refugees who thought they would be going home for Christmas. Yousif paid attention to the tone as well as the words. Ultra secretive by nature and hardened by underground experience, Basim was hinting, not informing; happier to be with his family than with the discussion.
“Salman, where’s your flute?” Basim asked. “I want to hear you play again.”
“Flute . . .!!!!” several voices exclaimed.
“You’re lucky to hear his voice,” Abla said. “He’s not the Salman we all knew. Just ask them.”
They all agreed that Salman had changed most of all.
“I’m not so sure,” Basim said, looking around. “From what I can tell there’s been a significant change in Yousif . . .”
“That’s because he still can’t find Salwa,” Maha said.
“Poor Yousif,” Abla said, her eyes twinkling. “He’s heartbroken.”
“I should be,” Yousif said, going along with the humor.
They all laughed.
“That can’t be it,” Basim said. “Look at the mustache. Listen to his political awareness. And I hear he’s now a teacher. I’m impressed . . . But tonight I want to hear Salman play.”
Silence descended upon them like an unseasonable mist. Basim ran his fingers through his daughter’s long, soft, brown hair, humming a well-known folk song. The girl was now fast asleep on his chest, and her mother tried to carry her back to her room. But Basim shook his head and held onto her.
It was an unusual scene, Yousif reflected. Basim’s low, hushed voice flowed like balsam, soothing and yet lifting the scabs off old wounds. The humming turned into melancholy singing, first by Basim alone, then by Yousif’s mother. She matched him verse by verse, and they alternated in a duet of infinite sweetness. How enchanting and genuinely touching, Yousif felt, tears welling in his eyes. Scenes of Ardallah and fragments of his past, particularly those of the night before his wedding, flooded his mind. Salwa haunted him and would not leave him alone, nor would he let go of her image. He looked around and found the others rapt in their solitudes, their own memories. The two singers segued from song to song each emotion giving rise to a deeper one. The balmy night was quiet, except for two tormented voices, too fragile to take wings and soar.
Only after the coffee had been served was Basim willing to let them carry his daughter back to bed. The coffee seemed to wake him up and to shift his mood back to reality.
“Our Jordanian brethren have chosen the name,” Basim told them, taking another sip from his demitasse cup. “The war is technically still on and they have already picked out a name for the new country. Soon the Arab parts of Palestine will be annexed to Jordan . . .”
“By popular demand, of course,” Yousif commented.
“. . . The new country will be known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Very few people know this, but take my word, it’s official. Only the signatures are still to be affixed.”
The silence was deafening.
Yousif and Basim exchanged looks, while the others looked as if dynamite had been detonated in their midst.
“What if we leak the story to the newspapers?” Yousif suggested. “What if we circulate a rumor? Would that slow the last-minute negotiations?”
Yousif’s mother was aghast. “The only thing it would do is lock you up in jail. Please, habibi. Please don’t get involved. Please, Basim, don’t listen to him. Sometimes . . . sometimes, I just don’t know what to think. His ideas worry me.”
Yousif concealed his anger and tried to lighten the deadly serious moment.
“Why, Mother!!!” he said. “I didn’t realize how badly you want to be a Hashemite citizen. Well, I’ll be . . .”
His mother would not be placated. “Stop fooling, will you?”
“Where did they get the name?” aunt Hilaneh wanted to know. “What’s a Hashemite?”
“Named after the House of Hashem—descendants of the Prophet,” her husband explained to him. “The king’s ancestors.”
Between the European Zionists and the Jordanian Bedouins, Palestine was lost, Yousif thought. A line from the New Testament struck his mind: “They parted my raiment among them, and for my vestments they did cast lots.”
At that moment, as if the heavens had been listening, the electricity was turned off all over the city. Only a lamp was burning in a far corner of the house.
Yousif and Basim stared at each other, their eyes fixed and glowing in the dark.
When winter arrived, Yousif was convinced that the heavens had no mercy. Over a hundred thousand homeless people were beaten down by stormy weather. The wind howled and played havoc with the tents: tearing many to shreds, and blowing more away. Day after day, night after night, with a few breaks in between, hailstorms, blizzards and strong winds pounded them. For a whole week, Yousif expected the spindly trees behind the house and in the field below to break or be uprooted. If human beings could be uprooted, he thought, why not trees? And there was no Salwa to share with him this new experience. Her absence made his life more calamitous.
In the midst of that ghastly weather, some refugees were on the run again, this time away from, not toward, the horrific camps. Some could find shelter, many more lived on the sidewalks, with few canopies over their heads. They remained pitted to the ground while the gods or demigods or the devils played their mischievous games. The camp on the other side of the road below Yousif’s apartment became a huge puddle of mud. Most of its tents were trampled on, and those that were miraculously still intact, were circling and retreating from the wind like two ballerinas enacting a love-hate romance on the dance floor.
Next morning, as Yousif passed the camp, he counted dozens of legs sticking out from under the tents that were home to so many. Smoke billowed out of some, and the sound of children crying penetrated the sound of the wind. Yousif carried a black umbrella as a cane, but was ashamed to open it. He handed it to the first mother he met with a child in her arms.
The school building was teeming with families seeking shelter. The hallways and classrooms were filled with families. Desks were pushed against the walls, children and their parents were huddling to keep warm. Coal was burning in a brazier in the middle of the floor. Bedsheets were hung on a clothesline stretching from door to window to keep the wind and rain out. Soaking wet, Yousif stopped by the principal’s office. Standing at the doorway, he wiped his neck and face with a handkerchief.
“Ah, Yousif,” Ustaz Sa’adeh, smiling and wiping the mud off his own shoes. “This is just November. The best is yet to come.”
December arrived with other shocks of greater magnitude. Yousif read about them in the newspapers and understood their dimensions. The ineptness, the sloppiness, of the Arab leaders infuriated him. He was getting restless by the day, wanting someone other than Hikmat with whom to share his thoughts. Uncle Boulus
