Jinin paused, and a sudden look of pain came over her face, from which she emerged a few moments later with a deep sigh, speaking with a vague regret. “If only it had been like that!”
“What’s that?” I asked her.
She turned to me sharply. “The story.”
Then she took me on to the Second Intifada, which had broken out on 28 September 2000. She reminded me of the notorious incident that had taken place on 12 October of the same year, when a group of angry young men had surrounded two civilians in a Ford car driving near the Friends’ School in Ramallah, suspecting them of belonging to the Israeli special forces. A squad of Palestinian policemen had then intervened, arrested the two men, and transferred them to the nearby headquarters, but several groups of angry citizens had massed around the headquarters, attacked it, and killed the two youths.
I didn’t understand the connection between the incident and her engagement to Sami from Nazareth, so I asked her. She stared me in the face, and replied, “Sami was one of the two men who were killed by the mob at the police headquarters. My fiancé, I mean . . . can you believe that he was . . . ?”
“What?”
“Sami turned out not to be ‘Sami’ at all. His real name was Samuel Samhun. He was an Israeli officer in an Arab infiltration unit, who had taken on the identity of Sami years before, and had lived as Sami—outside Nazareth, of course. That’s how I got to know him, and that’s how he asked for my hand.”
I had read of Arab impersonators and members of Mossad marrying Palestinian girls after adopting Palestinian identities, including some who had studied the Islamic religion in depth in order to perfect their roles. One of them had had children by his wife, and had forced her to convert to Judaism and conceal her past from her children.
“And the original Sami?”
“All I know is that he disappeared from Nazareth some months after his family left.”
“Okay, and what’s the story of the fifth man?” I asked.
“The first four would have to be true for there to be a fifth. Haha, did you believe it, cousin? No, these four are the heroes of short stories that I intend to write, dealing with the problems of women in the country.”
I liked Jinin’s stories, and her deception plunged me into a sudden fit of laughter, which forced her to laugh as well. Finally, I repeated my last question, teasing her in a friendly way: “Okay, and the fifth, Jinin?”
“The fifth will really be the first, Walid. The fifth is the real one, different entirely, although my relationship with him has so far been a virtual one. We talk through email. We spend hours in conversation, getting to know one another better. I want him to be the one to lift the hijab of happiness from my face, the one hijab that every girl likes, because it can’t conceal the happiness of the bride on her wedding night.” And she pointed to a mannequin behind the display window, showing off a wedding dress that would tempt any young girl of marriageable age. “Look how beautiful she is, veiled in white lace!”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Basim.”
We walked on, then paused for some time in front of the entrance to the Ritz Carlton Hotel, as the late morning sunshine escorted the tourists, highlighting the details of the lovely city for them. I thanked Jinin for the delicious coffee and bagel, and for her umbrella of stories.
Then we parted.
Third Movement
1
Small Fires
The plane took off. My neighbor in the seat to my right quickly introduced himself to me, before the fears I always feel when taking off had even subsided.
“Call me Edward. I’m an American from Dallas. You’ll certainly have heard of it. I work in a tractor and bulldozer company in Jerusalem. In fact, I specialize in servicing the famous Caterpillar trucks, you must have heard of them!”
Ha, had I heard of them?
“Of course, of course,” I muttered to him.
Enormous, efficient American bulldozers, capable of changing the geography of the West Bank and Gaza completely. They’d played a part in erecting the ethnic wall. They’d destroyed and swept away hundreds of Palestinian houses and other dwellings. And didn’t your bulldozers, the Israelis’ favorites, kill your fellow citizen, Rachel Corrie, on 16 March 2003?
What was a man like this really doing in Jerusalem? And what might he be sweeping away in addition to what we knew about?
My neighbor, who seemed relaxed, didn’t disturb my musings as he waited for me to introduce myself. But I was under no compulsion to do so.
The man finally broke his silence, and started a rapid rhythmical chatter, like a barber in a Palestinian refugee camp. He wasted half an hour of the time I had set aside to read more of Jinin’s novel, Filastini Tays. I was supposed to have finished reading the rest of what I had of it by the time we met in Jaffa. He chattered on without asking my permission or making any effort to find out whether I wanted to listen to him.
He plied me with unwelcome questions. He enquired in the most precise detail about my journey and my marriage. He was like a bulldozer which didn’t pause between uprooting an olive tree and destroying a house somewhere else in Palestinian territory. In the end, I told him that my wife and I were on a short visit to the country, during which we would stay as guests in the house of a friend of ours.
Instead of shutting him up, my words encouraged him to continue his questions. With a burning curiosity that aroused my suspicion, he asked me if I was an Israeli. He asked me if I was a Jew. He asked me if I had Israeli friends. He
