7
Jinin sat in the Harmony Cooperative snack bar during the midday break, eating a fateera she had brought with her. She was beset by fears that the Interior Ministry would continue to refuse Basim permission to work. Several times she had told Basim that her successful work in the Habna Institute, together with his studies and researches, would help them to counter the pressure of the Israeli authorities and the attempts of the Ministry of the Interior to drive them to despair and make him leave the country voluntarily.
It’ll never happen, that’ll never happen! she said to herself. She would be forced to leave with Basim if that happened, to preserve their marriage, and she would have to give up everything she had achieved since their return to the country. She would have to leave her job in the Institute that worked to encourage a common citizenship between the residents of the country, guaranteeing a psychological balance in confronting the current discrimination against the Arabs. The job helped her, with a large dose of imagination, to confront the complexities of life in the country. It guaranteed a reasonable income for her and Basim, which was enough for them to live comfortably.
She cried as she imagined herself separated from Basim or the house that had united them as though Palestine had reunited its ruptured geography. Their house resembled a splendid old royal yacht, decorated with waves and fishermen, boats, and the color of the dawn, all washed by the smells of the sea. It was still during their summer siestas, and lively in the evening breeze. Like them, it looked out over the remains of the day. It watched the lights of the ships drawing nearer, like pearls on a necklace against the sleeping bosom of the night. It confirmed to them the fact of their continuing presence in the country, since it was anchored in their local memories like the Great Mosque of Jaffa, guarding their past and their present.
For a few moments, she reflected on everything she had considered: the possibility of deserting the woman of Jaffa inside her, of going back and renewing her American exile, turning into a refugee. She was frightened, and muttered to herself, “I won’t leave. If Basim decides to leave, let him travel alone. I won’t leave what’s mine, and what I’ve built, just to give it all up for immigrants from other countries to inherit from me while I’m still alive. I’ll argue with Basim if he argues with me. I’ll leave him if he leaves me. I’ll divorce him if he divorces me.”
A colleague of hers who was sitting at a neighboring table in the canteen laughed. Jinin noticed her putting her hand over her mouth so that no one else would notice, using her hand to wipe away any remaining emotion on her lips.
Jinin managed to calm herself down as she convinced herself that Basim wouldn’t actually desert her. He wouldn’t leave her and flee. He wouldn’t divorce a country that he had returned to in order to settle there. Basim was a good man. Stubborn, like the hero of her novel, The Remainer, but a good man.
Both of them were like the Jaffa sea, stormy when touched by a strange wind, then suddenly calm again. But she thought it unlikely that Basim would calm down this time and take a rational position.
“Jinin, my life has become a computer game,” he had said to her once, at the end of an argument between them. “Winning’s no different from losing. I’m living in our country as if I were a virtual citizen. I’m there in the official registers of the Ministry of the Interior and in police stations, filed under ‘General Security,’ maybe with Mossad, God knows. But I’m not represented in the legal institutions, or the health and social security programs. Even you, Jinin, are present though absent, like every Palestinian in the country, but I’m an absent absentee, my darling. I’m an invitation to punish the self. A bad advert for them to distribute free to every Palestinian who’s thinking of returning home as I did. I’m like a website that can be wiped from the face of the earth with the jab of a single finger.”
She had been hurt, and said nothing, exuding a sadness tinged with regret. Basim had taken advantage of her silence and began to deal with his personal regret under the cover of wishes: “Jinin, I wish our relationship had remained as it started off on the internet, when we first met one another. A virtual happiness that turned into reality. But today that reality has started to unravel. I’m afraid a day may come when I just disappear into the ether.”
In the end, Basim had gathered his thoughts and had let out a sigh that summed up the pain of his whole life: “Aaaah, Jinin, aaaah, if only we could have carried on living a virtual life, like the first day we went on Messenger!”
Now, in the snack bar, Jinin took up her handbag. She smiled at the young employee who had sniggered at her, who returned the gesture lazily over the rim of the cup of juice that she was drinking.
Then Jinin left.
8
Jinin had dreamed of designing websites for companies and individuals. Her dream grew as she studied multimedia, and came to fulfilment when she graduated, specializing in the field of computing, website content management, and electronic journal editing. She designed a personal website, which she called jininmultimedia.com, to attract people who wanted to take advantage of the services she was offering.
A long period elapsed before Jinin received anything useful that didn’t revolve around the senders’ wish to amuse themselves. One evening, her attention was caught by a message in which the sender asked her, in simple but elegant phrases, to design a website for him, for a company providing services in the field of economics, accounting, and business.
Jinin sent a brief reply, asking
