Read us what the poet says. The Jews fought us with ten thousand guns and we fought them with ten thousand lines of poetry. Tell us who won. Read us the poet’s verdict. Maybe he knows something we don’t know. Maybe we won after all.”
Yousif did not read the poem. Instead, he folded the paper and rolled it. His lips felt tight against his teeth.
“You disagree?” Abu Fahmy asked. “You think poetry is proper at a time of war?”
Yousif stood his ground. “There’s always a need for good poetry.”
Sensing a reservation on Yousif’s part, the store proprietor pressed on. “But . . . ? Go on.”
“Each of us has a role to play. And poets are fighting the best way they know how.”
Abu Fahmy was quick to redress his earlier position. “You’re right about that. I’m not ridiculing the poet. I’m ridiculing—even condemning—our Arab nation in general. We should be tired by now from allowing foreign powers to keep kicking our asses one century after another.”
Yousif returned the smile. “Amen to that.”
As he started to walk away, he heard Abu Fahmy tell his uncle, “Your nephew is a bright young man. I’m sure you’re all proud of him.”
“Yes we are,” Uncle Boulus replied.
Walking home, Yousif thought about Abu Fahmy’s cynicism. At times, he admitted to himself, poetry (especially bad poetry) did sound pretentious, or superfluous. It even seemed indecent when front-page atrocities were staring one in the face. Yet he wanted to confront all those jokers who had done nothing to protect their homeland. How dare they sit now and criticize and blame and belittle! What the hell did they do themselves? He knew of one poet who was relevant, a Jordanian, living in Amman. Ah, he would love to meet him. Almost as much as seeing Salwa again, or finding out where Basim was. He knew of this particular poet from his own father, not from school. A rebel from birth, this impassioned and radical poet was a devout nationalist, and a pitiless critic of the king’s and his government’s policies. Above all, he was infuriated by the Allies’ breach of faith. The Arabs had been promised independence after World War I, but after helping the Allies win the war, they had been pilloried. The poet rebelled, attacked the throne and its allegiance to Britain, and was harassed and imprisoned. During his stormy lifetime he was in and out of jail as often as he was exiled. What a man! A true Arab who had refused to be silenced. A free spirit who aroused people with his impassioned, iconoclastic poetry. His poetry was more than relevant, Yousif felt. It was necessary.
At the end of the town square, Yousif turned onto a less-crowded street. It was a long street, full of small shops with considerable merchandise displayed on the sidewalks. Sacks of wheat were next to rolls of colored cloth which in turn flanked big brass trays of pastries from adjacent stores. Porters were there too, with bent backs from the heavy loads they were loading, unloading, or carrying inside the stores.
Suddenly, several jeeps approached, each full of colorful Bedouin soldiers with their guns at the ready, looking in every direction. Pedestrians in the street hurried to the sidewalks for safety. There was a flurry and all eyes turned to the direction from which the jeeps had appeared. Applause broke out as a convoy of cars advanced.
“Sayyedna . . . Sayyedna,” the onlookers chanted.
A man noticed the puzzle on Yousif’s face and pulled at his sleeve to let him know that His Majesty himself was passing. Yousif caught a glimpse of his profile as the sleek black limousine slipped by them. His white turban, wound around his head with one end hanging rakishly loose, was a style unmistakably his. No one else in Jordan wore a turban that way.
Yousif wished he could have had a closer look at the face of the Jordanian monarch whose every whim had such an impact on the fate of his people.
Money, which was so precious, melted like a bar of soap in their hands. The smaller it got, the more time Yousif had to spend reassuring his mother. The optimism he had to pretend almost made him puke. Yet every day he had to paint a less bleak picture. The job with Abu Mamdouh had yet to materialize, not for lack of trying. While waiting for the former tycoon in the orange grove business to line up a small fleet of trucks to haul citrus fruit from Jericho to Syria and Lebanon, Yousif worked a couple of weeks as a brick layer and less than a month as a house painter. The few pounds he earned pleased his mother, yet she cried. Had their circumstances been so reduced that her only son had to become a common laborer? What would his proud father say had he been still alive? No matter what Yousif told her, she cried. She was getting more edgy, her prayers more fervent, her fanning more frantic. And the suffocating heat did not help her blood pressure. Her face, Yousif thought, was often as red as a pomegranate.
Seated on a small settee in her bedroom, she told her son that the two hundred and eighty pounds they had when they reached Amman had shrunk by more than twenty-five pounds a month—not to mention the seventy-five pounds they loaned Uncle Boulus and Salman to start a grocery store. Even if they were more frugal, in three months they would be destitute. He reminded her of the seven pounds he had earned as a laborer and she shrugged it off as inconsequential. He felt agitated, yet he told her not to worry. He would do whatever it took to provide for both of them. No matter, she insisted, shaking her head. She needed to get a job.
“I need to apply for a job with the Red Cross,” she said, trying to summon her will. “That’s exactly what I’ll do. When I tell them who my husband was—they may even know about him—they’ll give me a job. Yes, that’s what I am going to do.”
“At your age?” Yousif said, searching for a better argument. “Why, you never worked outside the house one day in your life.”
“What of it? There’s always a start. And I have made up my mind. We’re in a dire need.”
What would people say, he wanted to tell her, then thought better than to utter such banalities. Anyone with common sense would respect her for it. Survival was at stake, was it not?
“No question about it,” she continued, almost to herself. “I’m no longer the wife of a prominent doctor living in the biggest villa in Ardallah. Now I’m a mere widow of a forgotten husband and a homeless refugee. Come winter we’d be as hungry as a fasting man in Ramadan.”
Sniffling, she reached for the handkerchief in her purse but couldn’t find it. Yousif opened a small drawer, pulled one out and handed it to her. Then he sat next to her, put his arm around her shoulder, and let her sob to her heart’s content.
He went to the bathroom not to relieve himself but to satisfy an urge to pound the wall. He did so until his knuckles ached and turned red. If he and his mother felt that desperate, he thought, how was Salwa coping? Yes, he could look for menial jobs here and there, but he also needed time and money to travel and search for his wife. Feeling suffocated, he opened the window to breathe fresh air. The sight of the rows upon rows of tents on the field facing him and the beggars on the sordid street below failed to impress upon him his good fortune. In comparison, he and his immediate family were living far beyond the means of those unfortunate tent dwellers. A prison was a prison, he told himself, no matter how clean or large. He and his mother were prisoners—they who had had more than ten thousand pounds in the bank, an expanse of fertile land, a villa that was the envy of anyone who saw it, a car in the gated driveway, and jewels under the bedroom floor. Should they not be able to pay their share of the rent, or Uncle Boulus or Salman not come to their rescue, they would end up in a dismal tent in one of those miserable
