“I have many years ahead of me, Jinin,” Basim went on, letting out a sad laugh. “You, my darling, will go on working, go on writing, while I pile up loathing, unemployment, and boredom, making of them a heap of pickles which I’ll stuff into jars.”
She chuckled, and tried to stir Basim from his dejected animation. “So what, my darling?” she said. “It’ll give you the best headline in the best newspaper in Arabic and Hebrew: ‘Palestinian with Masters in economics and accountancy sells pickles and a pile of unemployment and laziness.’”
“Very good, and add underneath it in smaller letters: ‘Housework’!”
Basim and Jinin’s quarrels grew more intense as they abandoned their normal pattern: they turned into verbal battles leading them into dangerous territory, as when Basim hinted to her of his desire for a civilized separation, since it would enable him to go back on his own to Washington or New York, and would preserve Jinin’s right to choose between a suspended divorce or joining him. The hint turned into a threat, stirring a nervousness in Jinin that was steeped in unhappiness and obstinacy. Jinin herself said that stubbornness was a gene inherited from Grandfather Dahman, her family ancestor, and that it was something she in turn had passed on to the hero of her novel, The Remainer; Basim’s stubbornness was different.
Recently, Basim had once again been recalling his American exile, flirting with it and pining for it. Jinin responded impetuously to the feelings he expressed by challenging him.
“Do you really want that, my darling? Get up and go, then, and leave me alone!”
Then she felt sorry for him, and made up to him in an original way; she didn’t want to try to make it up with him as she had done before. So she knelt in front of him to beg forgiveness, and presented her apology to him clothed in Japanese ritual. She turned herself into a geisha for him, like those in Tokyo.
She tried to amuse him with a story or two from her novel about Aviva, The Remainer’s Jewish neighbor. Jinin told her husband some amusing stories and others that were less amusing, as well as jokes that didn’t make one laugh. Basim looked at her, as he listened to his heart beating louder than the rhythm of the jokes. “Once it occurred to Aviva not to receive anyone, or let anyone visit her, not even her children. She didn’t want to see Ilan or Guy, let alone Yuri. She wrote on a piece of paper: ‘Aviva lo rotsa li-ra’ot et ehad ha-yom,’ ‘Aviva doesn’t want to see anyone today.’ But instead of hanging it on her front door, she hung it on The Remainer’s door. Her visitors that day didn’t stop banging on her front door. When The Remainer came back from work in the afternoon and saw the piece of paper and read it, he tore it off the door, ripped it up, and threw it away.” Basim didn’t laugh. Jinin went on, paying no attention to his reaction. “Do you know, Basim, that The Remainer once went to check on Aviva before he went home? He knocked on her door, and she answered from inside, telling him that she wasn’t there: ‘Aviva lo ba-bayit.’”
Basim had a grimace on his face like that on the face of a peasant whose land had not seen rain in the sowing season, a frown of misery. His face turned into furrows like those of land stricken with drought. Jinin took refuge in a deep silence, and they contented themselves with a temporary annoyance that was like a suspension of everyday relations between them. They both began to let their eyes wander over the bright stone walls that the house had been built from, counting the number of stones, before being stopped by a moment of love held in reserve, which returned them to the warmth of their realities.
Finally, a night came when Jinin realized that she had started to hate herself.
10
Jinin didn’t sleep that night. The sea matched her wakefulness, the waves tossing noisily beyond the window like heavy breathing while she lay on the bed. Basim had gone to bed before her, rolling himself up in an envelope of despair and sleeping. She had stretched out beside him, watching him breathe.
Earlier, Basim had asked her to move to Bethlehem with him. “Bethlehem is worth the whole world,” he had said. “Come with me. My family, my sisters, and anyone left from my parents’ days . . . they’re all in Bethlehem or nearby. Soon we’ll have a state, we’ll have children there, and bring them up as proper Palestinians, not half and half . . . .”
Jinin had told him to understand that she wouldn’t leave Jaffa and that it wouldn’t let her leave. She’d reminded him of what had happened to her father when he’d left Jaffa. Basim knew the story well; he knew that what had drawn her father to emigrate was the stubbornness of others. Mahmoud Dahman, who hadn’t yet turned into The Remainer, hadn’t been able to put up with his
