Rabai al-Madhoun is a Palestinian writer and journalist, born in al-Majdal in southern Palestine in 1945. His family went to Gaza during the Nakba in 1948 and he later studied at Cairo and Alexandria universities, before being expelled from Egypt in 1970 for his political activities. He is the author of the acclaimed The Lady from Tel Aviv, which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2010, and has worked for a number of Arabic newspapers and magazines, including al-Quds al-Arabi, Al-Hayat, and Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. He currently lives in London, in the UK.
Paul Starkey, professor emeritus of Arabic at Durham University, England, won the 2015 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. He has translated a number of contemporary Arabic writers, including Edwar al-Kharrat, Youssef Rakha, and Mansoura Ez-Eldin.
Fractured Destinies
Rabai al-Madhoun
Translated by
Paul Starkey
This electronic edition published in 2018 by
Hoopoe
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, 10018
www.hoopoefiction.com
Hoopoe is an imprint of the American University in Cairo Press
www.aucpress.com
Copyright © 2015 by Rabai al-Madhoun
First published in Arabic in 2015 as Masa’ir: kunshirtu al-hulukust wa-l-nakba by al-Mu’assasa al-‘Arabiya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr
Protected under the Berne Convention
English translation copyright © 2018 by Paul Starkey
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 977 416 862 8
eISBN: 978 161 797 878 4
Version 1
First Movement
1
Ivana Ardakian Littlehouse
As soon as Julie’s foot touched the first step of the rusty iron staircase leading up to the door of the house—pale blue, like a sky hesitating between winter and summer—the bells of Acre’s old churches began to peal, announcing a funeral for which a procession had already been held. The voices of the shopkeepers chasing customers in Acre’s old bazaar fell silent. Widad Asfur looked out from the balcony suspended on four wooden columns on the second floor of the adjoining building. “Let’s see who’s died today!” She spilled her bosom out over the iron edge of the balcony and started to collect her dry washing from the dingy-colored lines strung between two old metal posts on either side, throwing it into a metal basket. She noticed Julie climbing the staircase with a porcelain statue in her hands, whose details she could not make out. “She must be a stranger. What’s she doing in our part of town?” she muttered, and pursed her lips. She picked up the basket and turned around to go back inside with her washing. She shut the glass balcony door and murmured a short prayer for the deceased, whoever it might be.
Julie was trembling. Her feelings were confused. Today she was holding a third funeral for her mother, entirely on her own. She wasn’t expecting anyone to offer her condolences. She had even refused an offer of participation from her husband, Walid Dahman, as she was getting ready to leave the Akkotel Hotel on Salah al-Din Street where they were staying. She had claimed at that moment that Ivana had secretly conveyed to her a wish that she should be alone when she put half the ashes saved from her body, which the porcelain statue contained, in the house that would be her last resting place. She had walked toward the hotel’s front door, as Walid, who was standing in the small hallway, watched her. He had been nervous for and about her, and hurried to catch up. Before she could push open the heavy black metal door of the hotel, which retained some of its original decorations, Walid had put his right hand around her shoulders, and with his left hand had pushed the door open. “Might you need me?” he’d asked in English, in a final attempt to persuade her to change her mind.
Julie had shaken her head, said goodbye to him for a second time, and gone out. Fatima had been waiting for her in her silver Rover at the street corner. Walid had whispered to himself: “If you hadn’t been an Englishwoman, with an English father, I’d have said you were stubborn, with a head more solid than the Khalils!” He’d turned to go back in. From somewhere outside had come peals of laughter, growing softer as they moved away toward the eastern gate of the city wall.
Now, Julie heard a song from a street nearby:
Calm, sea, calm.
We have been in exile too long.
I long, I long for peace.
Give my greetings
To the earth that reared us.
Julie stopped. She didn’t understand the words. Suddenly, she shuddered. She brought the porcelain statue, cradled in both hands, close to her chest, and raised her head a little toward the sky. Ten more steps, Julie! she thought. She considered going back and contenting herself with placing the statue at the foot of the staircase, then hesitated: But then Ivana’s soul will be neglected and forgotten. She was ashamed of the thought she had just had, and couldn’t bear it. She pulled herself together and solemnly continued upward. When she reached the final step, her intermittent panting stopped, and she began to calm down, and breathed normally again. She made the sign of the cross over her breast with feeling. The pealing of the church bells stopped, and Abbud Square surrendered to the noonday siesta that visitors to the city never noticed. In the old bazaar, the shopkeepers’ cries resumed, echoing weakly and breaking on the edges of the quarter like exhausted waves reaching the shore.
Julie turned around to look behind her, and saw Fatima al-Nasrawi where she had left her a few minutes ago at the bottom of the staircase near the corner of the house. She had clenched the fingers of both hands together over her belly, below the belt of her slightly too large jeans, from which
