“The house was decorated inside in traditional Arab style: some old red sofas of material like carpet, with embroidered cushions scattered over them. The lady, who spoke reasonable English, quickly apologized for the décor, explaining that in just a week she’d be undertaking a renovation of the house and changing all the furniture, as she’d decided to turn it into a small guest house for tourists. It would retain its Oriental flavor, though, which tourists liked, especially Europeans in love with the magic of the East, so she’d be keeping some of the acquisitions that were there before.”
“You mean your grandfather’s furnishings are still in the house?” Walid asked.
“Not only that, the woman surprised me with something that would never have occurred to any of us. I wish Ivana had known it before she died.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Samiya will be naming the hotel after my mother, Walid. Can you believe it?”
“You’re joking!”
“Not at all, she told me so. She’ll be calling it ‘Ivana’s Guest House.’ But listen, can we please eat?”
Walid called the waiter and ordered an assortment of traditional Greek and Syrian starters for both of them, and shrimps grilled with sesame, and garlic sauce. While he talked to the waiter, Julie looked at the sea, like a soul hovering over the the water. She gathered together inside herself the various emotions that her visit to her grandfather’s house had left behind—all of which she was hiding from Walid behind this story that she had invented and was trying to believe in, so as not to shock her husband or collapse in front of him when she related it.
Julie dabbed at her eyes as the waiter went away, but Walid noticed the teardrops on her cheeks. She resumed her story, false happiness disguising her confusion.
“Samiya took my hand and led me to an iron staircase in the middle of the house. She gestured at it, saying, ‘Since your mother has told you the layout, go on up. Turn left, then follow the directions that you know already.’
“At the top of the stairs, I turned left, and my eye fell on an old wooden grandfather clock standing against the wall. My grandfather’s grandfather clock. I couldn’t believe it, I almost collapsed weeping. I lifted the statue a little over my head and placed it on top of the clock. It was as if I were looking at my mother after she had put her make-up on just before leaving the house. That image made me think about my grandfather leaving the house for the last time, hurrying toward the sea with so many other residents of Acre, under threat of bombs, thirst, and hunger, to be either swallowed up by the sea or cast into exile. And while I was wallowing in contemplation, I imagined I was hearing the dawn call to prayer in the city’s mosques, but there was no one left to pray.”
5
At Terminal 3 in Ben Gurion Airport in Lydda, the four of them—Walid, Julie, Jamil, and Luda—paused to reflect on their visit. In a few moments, Walid and Julie would leave behind them their two friends, as well as several others they had met during their ten-day trip, and the cities they had fallen in love with as if they had both been born there. During the short silence, they all exchanged looks, preparing the way for their parting, until Julie broke the silence with a proposal that astonished Walid:
“Walid, darling, what do you think about selling our house in London and coming to live in Acre?”
Walid’s face was colored by a sort of neutral surprise, to which Jamil and Luda added their own astonishment, without any of them breaking their silence. Julie took advantage of the other three’s reactions to her proposal to explain that the time had come to go back to her roots—even though she had actually been born on a British military base rather than in Abbud Square. Somehow, though, she read what was going on in Walid’s head, and quickly added that she would like to add a few new touches to the image she presented to others—the daughter of an Englishman who had been a colonizer in his youth, and of a disgraced Palestinian-Armenian mother, who had fallen in love in a moment of human weakness—that is, to rewrite her past in a way worthy of both of them.
As Julie spoke, she organized her emotions, gathered them together, and arranged them neatly in a hasty small celebration of joy. Her lips twitched with an equivalent optimism. With the movement of an adolescent turned sixty, she slipped her right arm under Walid’s left, and gently pulled it toward her, just as she had done in the days when they were engaged, squeezing his hand.
Walid listened to Julie carefully. He
