Fatima looked back at her, sensing that she was torn between her wish to complete her task and her fears. She started to say something, then hesitated. She was relieved to have done so, for it spared her the need to say what she was going to say (though if she had said it, the account that Julie later gave to Walid when she got back to the Akkotel Hotel would certainly have been different). In the end, which came quickly enough, Fatima merely gestured to Julie to knock on the door, then turned around the corner of the house and walked away, without waiting to find out what happened after that.
It was Fatima who had shown Julie the building that had been the house of her mother’s father, Manuel Ardakian, and had taken her to it. In Acre, they knew her as ‘Fatima the Know-all’ and sometimes called her ‘Sitt Maarif.’ People referred to her in her absence as ‘Lady Information’ and correctly described her profession as ‘popular guide.’ Some said she knew all the features and details of Acre better than any history or geography book. Others praised her philosophy of distributing historical facts to foreign tourists free of charge, and kept on the tips of their tongues her saying (as well known as she was herself): “We give them accurate information free of charge, it’s better than them buying lies from the Jews for a price!” The people of Acre would make use of this quotation of hers when they needed to.
What a rare resident of Acre she was! She had passed through Julie and Walid’s life like a gentle breeze, although a raging storm could not have borne her away. Walid had got to know her just a day before Julie visited her grandfather’s house. He had introduced her to Julie on the advice of Jamil Hamdan, his old friend from a period with a leftist flavor, when they had been students in a school that trained Communist Party cadres in Moscow, where they had shared a passion for the Russian Jewess Ludmilla Pavlova—Luda, now Jamil’s wife.
“My dear Walid, there’s no one who can help you except ‘Sitt Maarif.’ Here’s her telephone number, keep it on your cellphone!” Jamil had said as he drove them—Julie, Luda, and Walid—to Haifa.
He went on: “You’ll love Fatima, Walid. A woman from Acre, dark as coffee roasted over coals. She drives you crazy and blows your mind! True, she’s round as a truck tire, but she’s an encyclopedia, my friend! And her tongue’s quicker than a Ferrari!”
Everyone in the car had laughed.
When Walid and Julie reached the Akkotel Hotel in Acre, after a night spent at Jamil’s house in the Kababir district of Haifa, Walid phoned Fatima, then took a taxi to Rashadiya in New Acre, where Fatima lived in an apartment in a building outside the city walls. When he got out of the taxi, he found Fatima waiting for him at the bottom of the building. It wasn’t difficult for him to recognize her. Jamil’s description of Fatima was enough. Her friendly smile fitted the description perfectly.
With no hesitation, she kissed him on both cheeks, and before withdrawing her lips—slender as plucked eyebrows—whispered in his ear: “A kiss from a girl in your city will keep you in Acre for the rest of your life!”
He was astonished. “Do you want to lock me up in the Old Acre prison?” he asked her. She laughed.
Most of the men of Acre left the city in ’48 and are in exile, he thought. What use for them were all the kisses they received before they left, or even all the wild parties? He smiled with a sadness as wide as the distance that was later to separate them.
Walid outlined to Fatima the reason for his and his wife’s visit to Acre. He explained that Julie was half English, and that her other half was from Acre.
“And is the Acre half on top or underneath?” she asked him.
Walid laughed. “You must have been watching The School for Scandal! In any case what I see is the genuine half!”
“Very diplomatic,” she commented, and rolled her eyes.
He talked to her a bit about his late mother-in-law, the British-Palestinian-Acre-Armenian, Ivana Ardakian Littlehouse, and about her will, which was why Julie would be visiting her grandfather’s house. They quickly arranged the details of the visit in the street, Walid politely refusing the cup of Acre coffee that Fatima invited him to take in her apartment.
Walid learned from Fatima that after Manuel and his wife Alice had left the city on 16 May 1948—two days, that is, before the city had fallen into the hands of Jewish forces—the Ardakian house stayed closed up for several years. The house was one of around 1,125 houses that had remained in good condition after the end of the war. Half of them were by now in need of repair, and a few of them were in danger of collapse. One of them had fallen in on the occupants the previous year, and five people had been killed. He also learned from her that a Jewish family by the name of Laor, comprising five people, had taken the house from the Israeli housing company Amidar, which together with the Acre Development Company had responsibility for managing eighty-five percent of the houses in the city that the state counted as ‘absentees’ property.’ It still controlled 600 properties, and was keeping another 250 properties closed up to prevent Palestinians from living there.
The Laor family was one of several Jewish families, refugees from the Nazi genocide, who were living in the Old City—the previous occupants having fled under the pressure of the Jewish artillery bombardments that had preceded the occupation. The family included two sons and a daughter, all three of whom had been raised in the Ardakian house. They had all left the house and the city, one after the other, after completion of their compulsory military service and their
