Jerusalem Stands Alone Read online

  Together they walk to school, gliding over the tiles of the market street like a flock of pigeons, and chatter about schoolwork and exams (they’re all afraid of their math teacher). They talk about their dreams; some are happy and others aren’t. Asmahan complains about the pain the settlers are causing her family. Suddenly, she stops talking and apologizes to her friends for ruining their fragile morning.

  Phone Call

  YORAM CALLS HIS WIFE. He tells her that he’s coming home at eleven that night. She says, “Five minutes ago, you said you were coming back at ten.” He’s surprised because he didn’t call her five minutes ago. She received a call from him, she assures him, and told him she’d wait for his return.

  Yoram grows suspicious. He’s sure his double is playing tricks on him again. He calls in his usual troop of men and sets up an ambush around his house that lasts until one in the morning. Then he goes inside and falls asleep in his wife’s arms, but for some reason, she can’t sleep.

  Hymns

  THEY COME FROM THE SETTLEMENTS inside the wall and sit in the indoor market, wearing small black hats and chanting parts of hymns before they fall silent. Their diet is dry bread.

  The air of the market is humid as one of them scratches his beard, carefully examining it while the owner of the Maqsadi Restaurant sits a few feet away. His restaurant is empty (it’s neither lunchtime nor dinnertime), though the smell of falafel suffuses the air. The owner worries that his restaurant will be seized or shut down.

  They sit on chairs and their hymns reverberate in the sultry air. Suzanne shows up with a book in her hand and stands nearby, listening to them sing, their long, heavy beards resting on their chests, before she goes inside the restaurant, descends five stairs, and sits at a table close to the entrance. The waiter brings her falafel pieces and a plate of hummus. She eats slowly, skimming her book.

  She leaves the restaurant half an hour later but the hymns continue until ten at night. That evening, the restaurant owner gets no rest, but the man who is always preoccupied with his beard does. Tonight, he is exhausted. He tucks his beard under the covers and falls asleep.

  If Only

  IF ONLY HE KNEW where he was right now. If only he knew his phone number or mailbox number. If only he knew what city he lived in. If only he knew, he would have called him. He would have asked him to come home. He would have told him about Suzanne, who is renting one of the rooms in the house. He would have told him about her beauty and manners and how much this girl loves Palestinians. He would’ve talked to him as he talks to a friend. “Look, if you like foreign women so much, then come home and meet this girl. Who knows? She might give you her heart and be your support through all the dark times of this treacherous life.”

  If only he knew where he was . . .

  Coffee Cups

  THERE ARE FIVE OF THEM. They come out on the porch carrying automatic weapons, gazing at the neighboring houses with eyes shrouded in darkness and secrecy. They sit in bamboo chairs on the porch and lean their guns against the wall. Silently, they drink their coffee, their eyes alone still speaking, while houses cast vast, cool shadows over the alleys and streets. The men don’t care. They don’t care about the peace of this lovely morning, they just swallow their coffee, grab their guns, and leave, empty coffee cups abandoned on the porch.

  They reappear on the porch in the evening, beards dirty and unruly. The five abandoned coffee cups shiver in the cold (or, perhaps, in the expectation that strange things will soon come to pass).

  Puzzled

  KHADIJA FEELS PUZZLED AND AWKWARD. She hears footsteps coming up the stairs before the door opens and her husband walks in, earlier than usual. She isn’t sure whether the man is her husband or his double. He walks up to her as he always does, comfortably, with no intent to dominate or intimidate, but she looks at him in surprise. He looks back at her and asks tenderly, “What is it, woman?”

  Khadija studies him suspiciously. Her stare wakes something inside him and he tells her, “Come, Khadija, come,” taking hold of her hand to lead her into the bedroom. She grows more suspicious. Should she kick him out? Should she ask him to prove that he’s really her husband?

  He says, “Your look stirs something deep inside me.” She says, “Why did you come home early?” He says he felt tired and came home to rest, then pulls her onto the bed, explaining that rest is only pleasant after hard work.

  Khadija dispels the doubts from her mind, but the incident lodges in her memory for days and then weeks.

  The Search

  IN YORAM’S ATTEMPT to understand everything about the city, he reads a secret log dating back to 1817. The log inventories munitions the Ottomans hid in the Tower of David: 121 barrels of gunpowder (and then another 18.5), 130 crates of lead bullets, and 2,500 cannonballs (some large but most small). The Ottoman commander, Ahmad Agha al-Qutub of Jerusalem, took it upon himself to hide away these munitions for a time of great need.

  Yoram sends his men to the tower to look for the munitions but they find nothing, so he summons the descendants of Ahmad Agha for questioning, hoping that one of them will know the whereabouts of the arsenal.

  Yoram gets nothing out of them but swears he will not rest until he figures out where those munitions are.

  Warmth

  RAIN OUTSIDE, warmth in the bed—the troubles of life are held at bay for now. She loves the fading light at this hour. Maybe that’s the best someone of forty-five can hope for. (He always assures her that she still looks twenty-five.) She lifts the wool covers and sniffs his chest, saying, “You smell fishy, like you haven’t had a shower this evening.” He sniffs her chest and tells her, “The fish smell coming from you is enough for the both of us.” She likes that, so she sidles closer to him and gives in to the sound of long-awaited rain as it soaks the streets of the neighborhood.

  Washing

  A LIGHT DRIZZLE falls over the city and washes the alleys, the markets, and the roofs. It washes the old stones and familiar marble, plays with clotheslines and caresses windowpanes.

  Standing by her bedroom window, Suzanne watches the city bathing unselfconsciously and remembers the rain in another city. Overcome with forgotten feelings, she gets the urge to take a shower and goes to the bathroom she shares with her neighbors, where she spends half an hour clashing with the water.

  Smooth Leg

  I’M IN THE CAFÉ, as usual.

  The wall and market face me, the entrance to the mosque on my left, the road leading up to the old neighborhood on my right. The stones recall a departed world.

  At the mosque entrance, soldiers monitor the market crowd. Prolonged calls to prayer sound, cheap wares are sold, and women haggle with merchants.

  In the café is the thin blonde foreigner, one leg stretched comfortably beneath the table as if she were at home. The smooth leg rests in her friend’s lap and he strokes it as if it were his cat. The owner of the restaurant approaches them, places two cups of coffee on the table, and retreats.

  The soldiers don’t retreat. The worshippers enter and exit the mosque and the woman keeps her leg on her friend’s lap until sundown, while I study everything around me as though it were my first time here, unsure of what to say, and the café looks confused.

  Violation

  THE CITY GATES are unlocked night and day. In the past, the gates would have been fastened by sundown for fear of a sudden raid. Back then, people inside the wall slept in fragile tranquility. (Once, foreign soldiers opened a hole in the wall, broke into the city, and killed many people.)

  Now the city is empty. What good are locked gates?

  The fishmonger fidgets in his chair and wonders: when will the violation of the city cease? He doesn’t like the current situation. He curses and falls silent again.

  Antiques

  I SIT IN MY FRIEND’S STORE, which is packed with Eastern antiques he sells to tourists along with miniatures of mosques and churches, rosaries, some made of beads and others of shells, kaffiyehs and shirts emblazoned with religious pie
ties, woodcarvings, and porcelain and copper versions of city sights. I sit there and watch—the passersby, the wet market, crowded with buildings, the city radiant and women strolling its markets, some to shop and others to distract themselves from the pressures of life.

  Worshippers walk down the Via Dolorosa, following a group of people carrying incense and musical instruments while chanting mournful hymns. I listen to the chants and music incrementally filling the market air. I feel the city slip into a state of numbness and drowsiness, and then I spot her at the back of the procession. My friend, surprised to see me stand up to leave, asks me where I’m going, but I only mumble unintelligibly.

  I approach the procession determined to show her what has been weighing on me for years. I search and search but can’t find her.

  Predictions

  HE SAYS, “We watched our kid grow up before our eyes. He’s our eldest. His mother breastfed him when he was hungry and I bought him the finest clothes in the market.

  “He grew to be a tall young man, with a beard and moustache. He makes a lasting impression on girls and any of them would love to have him as her husband. His mother and I witnessed his every step and always reminded him of our love for him. He was the finest human specimen.

  “Except our beloved son is gone. A foreigner stole his heart and then flew away without him, leaving him to roam the world in search of her. I suspect he hasn’t stopped searching.

  “His mother and I are left to sit here on our porch, and console each other from time to time with optimistic stories of the future.”

  Invisible

  HE SAYS, “I stare at them standing on the porch facing ours, and they don’t look my way, don’t look me in the eyes. They behave as though I’m not there. They look only at the house and examine its stones, windows, and the roof we use for airing the laundry and sometimes for sunbathing. They examine everything that has to do with the house, though I tell them, ‘Look at me. Look into my eyes.’ But they pay me no heed, as if I am invisible.

  “They look at the house like it’s the only thing they see. I scream at them, ‘I belong here! You don’t belong here!’ But they pay no mind to me. One of them stops looking at the house and stares down at his beard, examining it as if it were the first time he has seen it.”

  College Girl

  SHE’S PROUD to have a girl in college. Here, she lives her life one accomplishment after another, speaking to her neighbors of her daughter’s studies in English literature, and her Shakespeare plays. The neighbors find nothing special in what she’s telling them because they have sons and daughters in college, too.

  She would’ve spoken of Rabab and her college for just five minutes if one of the neighbors hadn’t pointed out that Shakespeare had Arabic roots. His real name, in fact: Sheikh Zbeer. Khadija is skeptical and says her daughter never mentioned that during any of their conversations.

  This discussion lasts hardly two minutes but it’s brought up again and expanded upon afterward whenever the neighbors meet.

  Thorns

  WHEN MY WORDS don’t obey me, I am in pain. I age a year or two in one day.

  When my words refuse to leave me, I feel empty. When they patronize me, I feel ashamed and fragile. I look for an exit but can’t decide on one.

  When I can’t think of a single word that feels sweet to my tortured heart, my nights grow long and I lie on a bed of thorns where shadowless words carry no rhythm. I become suspended outside myself in a dark, abandoned well into which no words have rained in over a hundred years.

  A Mirror

  IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR by her bed, she dresses very conservatively before leaving the house with her oldest daughter. Her other daughter is with them, too, and she is starting to develop breasts.

  Rabab goes with her mother to her friend’s wedding. She flicks her head upward like a horse whenever they pass a group of guys, as Asmahan runs in circles around her mother. The mother walks with a dignified air, chest overflowing with desires mingling enjoyment, disappointments, and warnings. The singing alone reverberates in the atmosphere.

  She crosses the court, self-conscious of where the café owner and her husband, the fishmonger, sit with the other neighborhood men who are wearied of harsh days. But their eyes contain a glow that cannot be hidden from her. She will let go of her reservations soon enough and throw herself into dancing, which will take her back twenty years.

  Dancing

  THE GUYS GATHER NEARBY, dressed in their usual jeans and short-sleeve shirts because girls like a rugged look. They hear the women singing in the distance and can’t control themselves much longer. They try to concentrate on dancing to the music played by an amateur band but each boy has a girl on his mind.

  They don’t return home until the band stops playing and they’ve unwound.

  Sweat

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD GIRLS won’t let the night pass without making an impression. They show off their dancing skills to attract the attention of mothers scouting for brides for their sons. They sway to the rhythm of the radio or live music. And they don’t leave the dance floor until they’re sweating, having somewhat soothed their desires and glimpsed a hopeful future.

  Mingling

  THE LITTLE GIRLS stand in line beside their mothers. They dance randomly and then rush outside to play and run around, but the mothers pay them no mind. They’re occupied with the dancing, which mingles memories and a trace of sorrow because what has passed will never return. There’s no time to remember the loved ones who are no longer. Here, sorrow is forever postponed.

  The mothers return to their neighborhood and its secrets that they know so well, aware they are no longer what they were earlier that evening.

  Calf

  SHE LOOKS CONFUSED for some reason. The curtains are closed and her life seems a mystery, fragments of experience crowding her mind, some hers, others she’s read about in books or heard about from chatty women.

  And he’s strutting in front of her in a black suit, hair sticking up like a coxcomb. Her hair rests on her shoulders and she wears a flowing white dress like a thin summer cloud that could float away at any moment. This entire setting implies a particular intent.

  He appreciates her unprecedented nervousness, touches her right leg to comfort her, brushes her calf with calculated affection.

  She asks him to open the window, buying herself time before the inevitable collision.

  Rhythm

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD SLEEPS in a rhythm fraught with visions near and far, weaving recent moments with those a thousand years past.

  In this night flow images of rivers and spacious fields of wheat and barley and corn, and of river mouths and innumerable animals, and of a burning passion that dies only to be reignited with new intensity.

  Porch

  SHE PERCHES on the bamboo chair in her nightgown, and though the humid morning has passed, she remains seated with her legs crossed. On the neighbor’s porch, she sees only laundry.

  The laundry hangs on clotheslines, whispering. She listens carefully but can’t understand what’s being said. She thinks the laundry must be muttering of all the fun nights that will come to an end.

  She stretches her arms like a bird preparing to fly, then brings them back to her side, her hands in her lap, as if she regrets having made a movement that cost her great effort.

  Her clothes, which she has worn all week, lie on the kitchen floor, in the bedroom corner, by the closet, and under the bed. These clothes miss the line. She said that she would put them in the washing machine this morning but morning came and went, and she enjoys gazing at the wall peeking from behind the buildings while the clothesline grows tired of waiting.

  A Lack

  I LOOK UP from my papers to find that the foreign woman left when I wasn’t looking. The café feels empty now. The owner brings me a cup of coffee—my seventh today—and I take a sip, admiring the shaded rooftops of houses that pay me no heed, busy with private affairs they don’t wish to disclose. My mind is torn between my pa
pers and these houses.

  Questions multiply, pricking my mind like thorns.

  Ascent

  ON MY WAY TO LIONS’ GATE, I see him staggering uphill, bearing his cross toward the city that will never forget him. He stops to rest when he’s too tired, then walks forward again to his fate. The good-hearted poor surround him, wrapped in sorrow and silence as the army stands watch over the scene until the end.

  He walks the rough road bearing that cross. Beside the path, a mother grieves while the city stands oblivious to the tragedy unfolding in its streets. He faces his fate without blaming the city, while the city pays no attention to the flowing blood.

  It will wake up soon, though, as if shaken by an earthquake.

  A Passing

  AS I AMBLE through the city streets, I think of paying Sufyan a visit in his store on Via Dolorosa. He tells me, “You’ve come at the perfect time,” without explaining why. Minutes later, I see her walking by the store, tall, hair in two braids. She slows down and glances toward Sufyan, then walks away. He tells me on his way out, “Stay here, I won’t be long.”