At any rate, Awni wouldn’t be there to receive Mahmoud in Gaza, to rejoice at his return, embrace him, and cry on his shoulders as he used to when his father beat him as a miserable young boy.
Mahmoud himself had sometimes had cause to beat his own son, Filastin, who had inherited his features, habits, and nature from him, as well as a lot of his stubbornness—indeed, he surpassed him in it.
Filastin often told the story of a particular incident which reminded him of his superiority:
One morning, I had an argument with Adil, our neighbors’ son, over who should captain the Taba team in the quarter, and we came to blows. Adil insulted me in a way that was a slur on my father. “Why should you be our captain, you son of a laundryman?” he asked me, looking at me in a provocative way before running off. My blood boiled, and I could feel it almost bursting my veins. I picked up some stones from the ground, threw them, and hit him on the forehead. He started bleeding at once, and I could see blood flowing from between his eyes as his screaming grew louder. I was afraid he’d collect the whole quarter together around me, Jews and Arabs alike, so I fled toward Lydda station and didn’t go back home until after sunset.
My father found out what had happened, and when I got back he shouted angrily in my face, “Are you mad or just stubborn, to hit the lad on the head with a stone and draw blood? It’s a good thing you didn’t kill him and get us into real trouble!”
“I’m not crazy or weak-minded, father,” I replied. “You’ve told me a thousand times not to put up with anyone who insults you—and if anyone lifts a finger against me, then break it. And once you even said to cut it off! Well, Adil insulted us both.”
“You idiot, I just meant that if someone crosses you, you shouldn’t put up with it. Insult him, curse him, call him names, damn all his ancestors. You can slap him in the face, punch him in the chest, spit in his face, humiliate him, and wipe the ground with him—but don’t put a hole in his head!”
“What have I done wrong? Do you want me to get beaten up by the children of the quarter?”
“Get out, you idiot! I don’t want to see your face, you donkey!”
I ran away into our quarter, which was now half in darkness. From there I slipped into my maternal grandmother’s house, which was near Lydda station. I spent the night there and told her everything.
In the morning, my grandmother prayed that I would find guidance, and advised me to go back home and apologize to my father, but I put off going until just before noon; I was lucky, for I didn’t find anyone at home. I stole some money from my mother’s drawer and took a taxi to Gaza, where I spent two days with Fayiz, my cousin.
Finally, I went back to Ramla, weighed down by a mountain of fears inside me. I was afraid of my father’s reaction—he would certainly never forgive me. I crept into the house like a thief, one step at a time, with Fayiz creeping behind me, adding his fear to mine. I stopped and asked him to lead the way.
My father swallowed hard when his eyes fell on Fayiz. He smiled as wide as his lips would go. I followed Fayiz in and shut the door behind me. You’re in luck, Abu Fils, I said to myself. Yes, I really was in luck, for Fayiz’s unexpected appearance on the scene changed my father so much that he was like a different person; Fayiz made up for my father not seeing his brother, uncle Awni. Fayiz was a miniature reproduction of his father, and he made my own father forget our neighbors’ son Adil, his open head, the wound that hadn’t healed yet, and the way I had left the house and stolen money from my mother.
I smiled at this outcome. It was I who had brought Fayiz to see his uncle, who was delighted. He sniffed at him, searching for the smell of his brother in him. Here was my opportunity.
“Look, I’ve brought you my cousin Fayiz, in the flesh!” I said to my father, with considerable pride and satisfaction.
My father hugged and sniffed Fayiz again and again, until I called out in jest, “That’s enough, father, Fayiz really smells horrible! Leave him, let his mother heat some water for him to wash.”
My father’s tear-filled eyes blinked, as he replied to me with an affectionate threat, “Go inside, you scoundrel, and watch you don’t do it again or you’ll break up the family. I’ll forgive you this time for the sake of your cousin, but next time I’ll hang you from the ceiling by your ankles if you wound another child. Understood?”
Then he looked again at Fayiz, searching in his face for his brother, who had been destroyed by my grandmother Safiya and the slander of the quarter.
Tired now, I put the pages to one side, and went to sleep thinking about Jinin’s stories, The Remainer, and Jaffa, which we would visit the next morning.
5
Jerusalem
In the early afternoon, crowds of people poured onto Sultan Suleiman Street from all the side roads, alone or in groups, distributing themselves among their destinations and livelihoods. Some surged like waves of the faithful as they poured toward the Damascus Gate. I saw Jerusalem celebrating the noise of the cars, and the carts of the street sellers as they marketed their wares with their traditional musical cries, and the shouts of the drivers’ assistants as they gathered passengers from the doors of wide, spacious depots, herding them into the buses that would take them to the cities and
