He had told Jinin, “It’s fine, now we’ve got a guarantee for the present and the future!”
“Okay, but my present and my future—who can guarantee them, my darling?” Jinin had replied, and had reminded him, in an imploring tone, that she worked day and night for both of them. “It’s for your sake, Basim. I don’t have a present or a future without you.”
“The Jews won’t let me work,” he’d replied. “And I can’t live on your labors forever, Jinin.”
Now she screamed to herself, My God, how cruel Jaffa has become to us! Can’t it stand two Palestinians born in different places living together here?
She cried to and for herself.
She cried so much that her tears raised the overall level of sadness in the country.
11
Eventually, Jinin went back to continue with her novel. Dawn had broken through the window that looked out over the little harbor. The boats were still snoozing on the surface of the water, and the waves showed no inclination to disturb them. Jinin stretched her arms out in the air, drawing in her exhaustion and the whole pressure of the night.
“I have to make some progress before I go to bed!” she whispered, then pushed her back firmly against the chair and left it there. She picked up where she had left off, with Husniya castigating The Remainer, who was standing in the doorway, about the Jewish woman who was going to destroy them.
The Remainer looked back without saying anything. He was on the point of going out. Husniya stopped him for a second time, his left foot already across the threshold. “May God preserve you, Abu Filastin, and grant you long life, you keep on going out, but not this time, man! No more of this going out and messing up your face!”
He stepped out. “I’m going to Tel Aviv,” he replied from outside. “I’m going! We’re in a democratic country, and I’m free to do what I like. If they don’t like it, I’ll go and stand in the middle of Kings of Israel Square, and turn it upside-down!”
“Oh, do whatever you like,” he heard her say. “But don’t be stupid. I’ve said what I’ve got to say, and you’re a free man.”
“Take care of the children!”
The Remainer closed the door behind him and departed, leaving Husniya’s heart trembling like the stalks of mulukhiyeh that were still between her fingers.
Jinin’s fingers started to shake. She was tired from her dealings with Basim. She stopped her revision, saving the part of the novel she had been working on in a file that she called ‘Filastini Tays.’
She opened her email browser, and selected Walid Dahman’s address.
She attached the file.
Then she wrote a message:
Dear Walid,
Attached is a file containing most of my new novel Filastini Tays. I’d be grateful if you could look through it and let me have any comments. I’ll send you the rest later.
Sea breezes and love from Jaffa,
Jinin
She hit ‘Send,’ then turned off the computer, and went to bed. She lay down beside Basim, and went to sleep with a feeling of oppression as the new day began.
12
I was pleased by Jinin’s choice of Filastini Tays as the title of her novel, but I was vaguely shocked by the opening paragraph.
My father is stubborn. Even my mother said, “Your father is stubborn.” We all laughed in our own way. My mother ignored our laughter and went on. “He left your sister with her mother in Gaza when she was two months old and went back to the country.” She fell silent. Then she pursed her lips and pushed them forward a little. We heard a sound that put an end to our laughter; my mother held the index finger of her right hand upright over her pursed lips, like a school teacher: “Hsssss . . . .” Then we heard the sound of my father’s footsteps and the noise of the key in his hand, struggling with the door lock.
I found Jinin’s language transparent, open, and challenging, sometimes impetuous, a bit like her, in fact. As for her hero, The Remainer, he suggested several questions to me. Was The Remainer in Jinin’s novel actually her father, Mahmoud Ibrahim Dahman? Did Jinin derive the character from him, or import his biography into her novel? Whatever the answer, I believed that Jinin was playing with The Remainer’s secrets, just as she played with the character of Mahmoud Dahman, who had crept into my unconsciousness via other people’s stories when I was a child.
“That’s it, cousin! Mahmoud’s become an Israeli!” my cousin said to my mother in my innocent presence. I hated her for saying it, and I hated Mahmoud as well. I wished I could take revenge on both of them. By boycotting my aunt, for example—by not visiting her; by not greeting her if I met her in a lane in the camp, even if she was coming back from the hajj; by not reciting the Fatiha over her soul when she died. And when I grew up, by joining my own freedom fighter, the Egyptian officer Mustafa Hafiz. I would sneak into Ramla, abduct Mahmoud, and persuade him to return with me to Gaza, telling him firmly, “Your place is here, cousin, not with the Jews!”
I remembered how annoyed my mother had been at the time. She grew angry, looked glum, and stuck her jaw out so that it looked like a duck’s beak, because my aunt wouldn’t stop repeating that Mahmoud had become an Israeli: “Mahmoud’s staying there and doesn’t want to come back!” Whenever his name was mentioned in my mother’s presence, she would refer to him as ‘The Remainer,’ then throw her tightly knit fingers into the air, like someone chasing his life story away from her. I didn’t find it strange that my mother should have become tense and insistently demanded
