chicken feathers. He proudly holds up a freshly plucked chicken.
“Wonderful.” Hussein slaps the boy on the back with more enthusiasm than is necessary. He wraps it up, saying, “Fine, Mrs. Habash, just fine,” and hands it to her.
She has already counted out the change. “I only ask because there are rumors, you know.”
As she leaves she holds the butcher’s door wide open. Hussein is sure she is going to remark on the sorry state of the van. So to save himself the embarrassment, he turns his back toward her. Without a ready audience, the screen door slams shut. The sound brings Khaled in from the back with the speckled bird he loves clucking in his arms.
The boy might not be so dumb, Hussein thinks, but his satisfaction doesn’t last long. “Put it back. We’ve wasted too much time.”
Together they pack the mutton into clear plastic bags. The meat is destined for the kitchen of Hussein’s friend Matroub and tonight’s feast celebrating his eldest daughter’s wedding.
Normally Hussein reminds Khaled not to stray on his errands. Today Hussein promises more kindly, “If you hurry they’ll give you ma’amoul.” Khaled’s face lights up at the prospect of semolina cookies. Hussein follows the boy out of the shop and stands on the main street.
The other stores and stalls have opened, as a queue forms outside the bakery. Down the street in front of the pilgrims’ hotel, baseball caps and sun visors board one of the Holy Land tour buses. In front of him, on the other side of the street’s only asphalted section, looms the Marvellous Emporium, a storehouse of untold proportions owned and operated by Abu Za’atar. Hussein wants to go over immediately, to demand his uncle’s attention and pour out his troubles, but the sight of a large truck from Iraq parked beneath the emporium’s neon display stops him. He is all too familiar with Abu Za’atar’s priorities. Drivers bringing loads of potentially profitable goods take precedence over family matters. This truck has an added bonus. It comes from a place known for its American swag—recycled military attire, packaged food beyond its sell-by date, even spare parts from defunct air-conditioning units—which is highly coveted and requires Abu Za’atar’s undivided attention. For it is in the few minutes between refreshment and unloading that a deal is struck. “What a hungry man clings to a full belly gives away” is another of his uncle’s cherished aphorisms.
In the past, Hussein would have been amused. However, since their business venture has become troublesome, he finds himself wondering whether he is just another victim of Abu Za’atar’s avarice. In any commercial transaction his uncle always takes more than his fair share of the profits—that is to be expected. In this one he has managed to avoid both the inconvenience and the social stigma enveloping Hussein. The butcher purses his lips in disgust, mainly with himself. He knows there is no point in being annoyed by Abu Za’atar’s behavior. The new uneasiness in their relationship is not his uncle’s fault. He’s always acted exactly the same way. The problem is that Hussein is finding it harder to accept his relation’s philosophy of profit above all else. Sighing, he retreats back into the shop.
Alone before the morning crush, he crouches down behind the counter and reaches behind one of the refrigerators. Making sure that no one sees him, he surreptitiously extracts an ordinary jar, unscrews the lid, and drinks, long and slow. The neat arak is like fire in his throat, but with the burning comes the savage calm he always finds, temporarily, at the bottom of a bottle. People like Abu Za’atar and Mrs. Habash shouldn’t have a monopoly on a decent future. He wants the same opportunities not so much for himself—it is too late for that—but for his sons. So he did what many would have found inconceivable: he sold his father’s land. Through his own initiative his family resides in a new house. But no amount of money, as his uncle continually reminds him, is ever enough. Hussein glances around again before quickly reaching for the jar and taking one more potent swallow.
From the moment Abu Za’atar showed him the pig, Hussein knew it was not going to be an easy road to riches. He had not really thought any further than the first litter and assumed the piglets would be fattened up for a one-off bonanza sale. Then the business would end. He had not reckoned on the pigs’ natural behavior. No sooner were the young boars weaned than they acquired the mounting reflex. First they tried their mother, then each other, and finally turned their attention to their own sisters. Hussein watched them and began to wonder whether there might be more to the project than he thought.
He knew castration was the best way to ensure that the boars fattened up properly, but he decided to spare two of them from the knife. He left them with their mother and five of their sisters and moved the other thirteen piglets into different pens. The males mated with an uninhibited, libidinous indulgence, reveling in their thirteen-minute orgasms. Fascinated, Hussein timed them on a fancy Taiwanese stopwatch (accurate to one-tenth of a second) borrowed from the Marvellous Emporium. The experiment paid off. At the end of the fifth month, the mother and three of her daughters were pregnant. The rest of the litter was ready for market, but Hussein made a peculiar discovery: he did not have the heart to kill them. It was strange that the son of a farmer, accustomed from an early age to the necessities of slaughtering animals, should be so squeamish; stranger still that a former soldier schooled in the accoutrements of death, from small arms to switchblades, would be incapable of cutting a pig’s throat. Irrationally, he had developed affection for the creatures, born out of respect for their intelligence. There was no question of going to Abu Za’atar; his uncle would not have understood.
Hussein wondered whom he could safely approach with his problem. Then he hit upon the idea of asking the head of the family who rented his father’s mud brick house. Hussein had overridden strenuous objections from Laila when he originally leased the building to one of the oldest Palestinian refugee families, who had arrived in the town during Al Jid’s lifetime. His wife could not understand why he charged so little rent or why, when there was a surplus at the shop, he took gifts of meat to his tenants. It was more than welfare relief on Hussein’s part. By using his father’s house to benefit the less fortunate, he hoped to atone for selling off Al Jid’s beloved land.
Whatever the reason, the family was grateful for his kindness and the husband, a man of about sixty, was more than willing to care for the pigs and get one of his sons to slaughter them for a small remuneration. In this way Hussein took on his first employees, and Ahmad proved to be a capable worker. Nine months and a hundred piglets later, there was more to do than ever before. The retail side of the business was growing, and it looked as though Abu Za’atar’s prediction of easy wealth had not been unfounded.
There remained, however, one apparently insurmountable problem. Hussein scrupulously examined each new litter. He measured each piglet’s weight and size, inspected hooves and tails, and checked eyes, looking for signs. So far he had been lucky, but he knew that his chances of producing another generation without some evidence of inbreeding were very slight. As Laila put it: “Who would want to eat a two-headed beast with six legs?” The gold mine would have closed prematurely if not for Abu Za’atar’s intervention.
The wily emporium proprietor had already made numerous contributions. He provided, at only a fraction above cost, feed, antibiotics, a large and rather noisy freezer, and even an electric prod that Hussein didn’t have the heart to use; but the solution he devised totally eclipsed his previous efforts: through his cross-border contacts Abu Za’atar managed to discover a supply of frozen boar semen. Hussein had not been too keen on the idea—there was something unnatural about it that made him feel queasy.
When the first consignment arrived aboard a Damascus-bound truck, Hussein’s misgivings multiplied. Both the label on the box, which contained the vials of sperm, and the instruction booklet that accompanied it were written in Hebrew. Although there was also a religious prohibition of pork on the other side of the river, it was marketed as basar lavon—“white meat.” At first pork was sold secretly in butcher shops, but when eight hundred
