Salwa. He himself should exert more effort to find whatever job he could be lucky to get—clerk, waiter, even errand boy. Whatever. Some of his classmates were shining shoes for a meager living. Some didn’t even have shoes to wear. He looked at himself in the mirror and hated his image. He hated himself. He was getting thinner. His long bushy hair badly needed cutting; instead, he drenched it with water and smoothed it down to postpone a trip to the barbershop. The humiliation of knowing that he could ill afford a haircut swelled and remained immovable in his chest; again, his fist pounded the wall.
“What was that?” his mother asked from behind the closed door. When he opened it, he found her standing anxiously just outside.
“I hit the wall,” he told her.
“Why . . .?”
“Because I’m sooo happy. Listen, Mother. Forget about the Red Cross. It’s volunteer work.”
“Oh, no!”
“Still, go and see them. They might have changed their policy. Besides I understand they’re trying to help refugee families reunite. I meant to go and see them myself. Now, you can ask about Salwa.”
Her face brightened. “And what are you going to do today?”
“Continue my search from town to town. Today it’s Zarqa.”
But before he boarded the bus, he stopped and had a haircut. He didn’t think his haggard looks would appeal to Salwa.
Zarqa was as dreary as any town he had seen in Jordan. It was warm and dusty and full of refugees: either in rows upon rows of tents or sitting on the sidewalks swatting flies. He moved from street to street, from shop to shop, from coffeehouse to coffeehouse. Though he did not run into anybody he had known back in Ardallah, he questioned anyone who would talk to him: “Have you seen Salwa Safi? Or her mother, the widow of Anton Taweel?” He even described their looks and mentioned the names of her two brothers, Akram and Zuhair. It was all to no avail.
Despondent, he returned to Amman. Against his better judgment, he stopped to see his closest friend, Amin, at the ramshackle Basman coffeehouse which had been opened above two or three stores. Climbing the outside steps to the roof, he debated whether he could afford three piasters for a soft drink or a cup of coffee. He might even get stuck paying for someone else’s drink. Amin looked very busy weaving between tables with a tray of coffee to serve customers. Yet he mouthed to Yousif that he had something urgent to tell him.
“Have you seen Ustaz Sa’adeh?” Amin asked on his way back to the kitchen. “He’s looking for you . . .”
The noise was too loud and Amin was at a distance, Yousif had difficulty hearing him. When Amin reappeared, he pinned Yousif against a wall for moment to tell him what was on his mind.
“He came here yesterday and this morning,” Amin explained, taking a deep breath. “He said he’s opening a school . . .”
Yousif looked surprised. “And . . .?”
“You’d have to ask him. He wanted to know where you live and I told him I didn’t know.”
Amin went to deliver the cups of coffee and then returned.
“Frankly I was a little hurt,” Amin confessed.
“Why?”
“He’s probably recruiting teachers but didn’t bother to ask me. I must not be good enough, although you and I were neck and neck in class.”
Yousif empathized with his friend, not only because of his amputated arm but also because he actually had been one of the poorest students in school.
“We don’t know what’s on his mind,” Yousif said, smiling.
“It doesn’t matter,” Amin said, “I plan to go to Kuwait where so many refugees are going. I’ll probably make more money than all the teachers in the school put together.”
In September Yousif became a teacher. He was assigned to teach the sixth and seventh graders Arabic, history, and sports, although the schoolyard was no more than a rocky, empty stretch of land between ramshackle two-story buildings that had been converted overnight into a new school. Wearing a recently purchased jacket but no necktie, he arrived half an hour early. The mustache he had grown since his appointment added a couple of years to his face. His was a headlong immersion in school life, a fact that made him less self-conscious. A mammoth job was awaiting him and the other teachers, strangers who seemed to share his awkwardness and uncertainty. Students still had to be registered, classes had to be shifted from room to room. They accepted students in the order they came, dropped the minimal tuition whenever questioned, and qualified students on word of mouth instead of school records. Confusion and chaos were rampant.
A week after the school opened, a demonstration broke out. Through the window Yousif could see a mob of men and women approaching. Fists were flailing and voices were rising, but he could not understand a word. As they got closer, he went downstairs to see what was happening.
Seething with anger, hundreds of men and women surrounded the faculty. “We want to go home,” the mob shouted. “We want to go home.”
Yousif failed to make the connection. Another teacher shrugged his shoulders, equally puzzled. Within minutes Ustaz Sa’adeh himself came down to face the outraged demonstrators. Women, both villagers and urbanites, were shouting louder than the men. Apprehensive, Yousif moved closer to his principal.
“We want to go home . . . we want to go home,” the mob repeated.
“Who doesn’t want to go home?” Ustaz Sa’adeh asked. “We all do. What does this have to do with opening a school?”
“It’s collaboration with the enemy,” shouted a tall, lanky man wearing a tarboush cocked to the back. He shoved his way closer to where Yousif was standing.
“If you don’t know what kind of signal you’re sending to the enemy,” hissed a slender woman in a blue dress, “you’re not fit to be a principal.”
Most people in the rowdy crowd were incoherent. Ustaz Sa’adeh climbed back to the upper step so that they all could see and hear him. He gestured to them to be quiet and listen, but they shook their fists and one insolent creep dared to call him a traitor.
“You’re legitimizing our forced exile,” protested a short man wearing a soiled jacket two sizes too large. Many seemed to know him, Yousif noticed, for they allowed him time to speak and gesture wildly with rolled-up newspaper in his hand. “It gives comfort to the enemy. It tells them we’re willing to start new roots away from home.”
“Y-E-S,” the mob roared.
“It’s like asking us to settle down and forget about Palestine.”
“HELL, NO. HELL, NO.”
“It’s like replacing the temporary tents with concrete houses. We want to go back to what’s ours.”
“I have a key to my own home. I want to go back.”
“We all have keys to our homes.”
“WE ALL HAVE KEYS TO OUR HOMES.”
Though in total agreement with them,
