“You do know, Mahmoud, that mother’s a man?” Awni would say to Mahmoud, with an inherited astonishment that, like the stubborn gene, distinguished the Dahmans and governed their emotions.
Mahmoud would respond wickedly, “Of course, look how our father—tall and broad as he is—trembles when he stands and talks to her!”
The young males of the family called her Hajja Safiya, despite the fact that she was not a hajja and died still hoping to perform the pilgrimage. When she heard herself called Hajja Safiya for the first time, she searched in every direction, looking for who it might be. And she was right to, for she had not yet reached the age when people look for some means of cleansing their consciences and ridding themselves of their sins. Most likely, everyone called her Hajja because she was the wife of Sheikh Ibrahim, and she had a pure heart, white as his was, clean as a piece of calico cloth, or so people thought. A clean conscience, purer than that of many who had performed their religious duties and had hurried to shake off the mountains of sins that had piled up in their lives like dust piling up on an old carpet.
The Dahmans gave Safiya the title ‘Hajja’ without her having to shake any piled-up sins from her body. She clung to her hopes as the dew clings to the end of summer or to the fruits of the fig tree, and said, “God willing, He will grant us a pilgrimage, us and all Muslims.” And then one day she found herself bearing the honorary title of ‘Hajja’ without even having tried to visit Mecca.
Hajja Safiya was not pleased by her elder son Awni’s marriage to Aisha al-Faq‘awi from Gaza, and only accepted it at the time under duress. She gathered together the fuel of her hatred for Aisha and lit a fire in the heart of her son.
The day Hajja Safiya had been waiting for came two months after the birth of her grandson Saeed, Awni’s second son. For Saeed wasn’t happy, as his name implied he should be. He emerged from the womb to a rumor that had accompanied his mother’s pregnancy, and which became a fact talked about by everyone: “Saeed’s not his father’s son. Aisha’s had a secret lover.” The whole camp said it: “The boy’s definitely not a bit like his father.” Even people who’d never seen him said it. The view was that, after so many years of his wife not becoming pregnant, Awni was no longer able to father children to add to the son he’d already been blessed with. Within a couple of months, this opinion had become stronger than a fatwa from Sheikh Amin, the imam of the camp mosque. Hajja Safiya was delighted by the rumor, and confirmed it: “Aisha has never been faithful! From the day she married Awni, she’s never loved him, never been able to stand him.”
So Awni divorced her, and Aisha left the marital home that had held them together for more than fifteen years, took the ‘rumor child’ with her, and disappeared.
In Khan Younis, where Mahmoud Dahman went to repair the familial links that had been broken since the nakba, he found the old story of his brother Awni waiting for him.
His brother Rajab, who was three years younger than him, told him that Awni had gone mad and divorced his wife, but after no more than a month he had regretted what he had done. Whenever he recalled Aisha’s name, he would beat his head with clenched fists and sometimes slap his cheeks with his hands like a woman who had lost a child. One dark morning, Awni got up early and went out, leaving his four-year-old son Fayiz asleep in his grandmother’s bed. He took a taxi to Gaza, and went straight away to the Shuja‘iyya quarter, where he made for the house of his father-in-law.
To calm himself, he told himself that he was ready to grovel on his knees in front of his father-in-law to get back his divorced wife. He would ask his Lord for mercy, and say to Aisha, “I have brought you back to my authority as your husband.” And his father-in-law would say to him, “Take your wife, Awni, my son, and return home. May God guide you both.” Then he would take her hand, which would tremble with her desire. He would take their child, Saeed, in his arms—a child cleansed by his words, and by his rejection of divorce, from the rumor that had clung to him all his life. Then he would take them both back to Khan Younis.
He passed the butcher’s shop belonging to Bashir al-Fahmawi (Abu Umar). He greeted him and asked him to lend him a knife, which he said was to slaughter a sacrificial sheep. Abu Umar lent him the knife, but when he reached his father-in-law’s house, Awni didn’t ask his wife to gather her clothes, pick up the child, and come back to their house in Khan Younis. Instead, he stabbed her and killed the child in a way that even the police who arrived later had never come across before. The details of the crime were too horrific to be released. Awni was arrested, and a medical examination showed that he was insane, so a week later he was sent to the Khanka Psychiatric Hospital in Qalyubia in Egypt.
That incident had remained a powerful marker in Mahmoud’s life. The tragedy of his nephew Fayiz never left him—a young boy who grew up with a dead mother, an insane father, and a brother killed by his father because of a rumor.
The Remainer had never imagined that his brother Awni would be the first Palestinian to honor the psychiatric hospital in Qalyubia with his presence. Indeed,
