“Get up! Get up!” said her mother.
The mother took her daughter’s hand and led her out of the tent. Outside the girl listened to her mother but understood nothing.
“I don’t understand a thing,” said Munirah.
The mother explained her plan to her daughter. She hadn’t had a plan when she’d awakened her, she hadn’t known what she was going to say to her; she just wanted to break her solitude and speak to someone about the loss of her dowry. But instead of complaining, she found herself laying out the plan to her daughter. She said she was going to go there at dawn to get her money and her jewelry, and that if anything bad should happen, God forbid, she was to go with her brother and sisters where everyone else went. If they go to Lebanon: “Go with them and ask about your grandfather, Rabbah al-Awad. You grandfather’s still alive, he’s fighting now with the others, I don’t know where. Look for him, and he’ll take care of you.” Munirah proposed that she go instead of her mother, but her mother refused. “No, Daughter. I’ll go on my own. You’re still young, and your life’s ahead of you. Just don’t forget to ask for your grandfather. His name’s Rabbah, Rabbah al-Awad, and he’s with the Sha’ab garrison now, and everyone knows him. Wait for me until tomorrow night. I’ll come back tonight, but something may hold me up. Wait two nights for me. If I’m not back, something will have happened. Forget me, go with the others, and put your trust in God.”
Munirah said she understood and went into the tent and fell into a deep sleep. Shahineh couldn’t believe her eyes. How could the girl sleep after what her mother had just told her? Shahineh went into the tent again and bent over Munirah, who was breathing quietly.
Shahineh put a crust of bread inside the front of her dress and set off. It was dark. Shahineh didn’t know what time it was, but the veil of night was breaking to reveal dim colors. She walked and walked, and no one appeared to stop her — not the camp guards, who kept close to the olive trees, nor the Jews, who had invaded the villages and spread out over the hills. She walked alone on paths she knew. She bent over and stumbled and almost fell but caught herself. She walked for about two hours. Distances in Galilee aren’t great — as you once told me, Galilee is like the palm of a hand. She walked until she reached the Bubbler. She bent over the water, washed her hands and her face, drank, and entered the village.
The spring called the Bubbler isn’t more than two kilometers from al-Ghabsiyyeh, but it was the longest leg of her journey. She walked and walked and never arrived. Shahineh knew the road and could have done it with her eyes closed since she was used to fetching water from the Bubbler every day — but what did every day have to do with that day? Her head felt heavy, as though she were carrying three water jars on it. She kept going, weighed down by her head; her fear welled up and out of her mouth in the form of labored breathing.
Many years later, she’d tell me that this adventure had taught her to see.
“You know, Son, it was there that I saw. Before I hadn’t seen, and after I left the village I didn’t see again.”
“And what did you see, Grandma?”
“I saw everything there. It’s difficult to explain, my boy. With one look I saw all the houses and all the trees, as though my eyes had pierced the walls and could see everything.”
On her journey to al-Ghabsiyyeh, Shahineh walked bent over. She bent over to avoid the branches of the olive trees, she bent over because of the night, she bent over out of fear, she bent over for water from the Bubbler, and she bent over for the lotus tree. When she passed the mosque, however, she suddenly straightened up. She held her head high and walked calmly into the village as though she’d never left it. Her frightened panting subsided, and she saw everything. She saw the houses and the trees and the orchards, and she heard the voices of the people and the cries of the children. The woman walked calmly toward her house. The door was open. She ran into the room, opened the chest, and reached in. There she found her money and her jewelry — her gold signet ring, her twisted bracelets, and her necklace of pearls. She put everything inside the front of her dress and decided to go back. No. She was famished. She took the crust of bread out of the front of her dress and started to gnaw on it. Then she hurried to the kitchen, found the bread in its place, looked around for the molasses, mixed it with tahini and stood in the kitchen eating. She ate three pieces of bread with tahini, and then made some tea. She sat and drank and began to feel sleepy. Overcome by drowsiness, she stood up heavily and found herself stretched out on the bed slipping into unconsciousness. She slept like someone who doesn’t know she’s asleep — that’s how she’d describe it later. She didn’t shut the door and she didn’t take off her clothes. She lay down as she was, her hands sticky with molasses, and drowsiness overcame her. When she awoke, darkness had started to steal into the house. She opened her eyes and was completely disoriented.
“I was lost, I didn’t know where I was.”
For a moment, she didn’t dare move. She opened her eyes and went rigid.
“I slept on the only bed we owned. My husband, God rest his soul, bought a brass bed unlike any in the whole village. I didn’t sleep on it after he died, because, in our day, the bed was for the man. He’d sleep on the bed, and I’d sleep on a mattress on the floor. Then he started asking me to sleep in the bed next to him. He said it was because he loved me. In our day, Son, no one used that word. A husband loved his wife, but he wouldn’t tell her. But your grandfather Khalil, he made me sleep up there.”
That day Shahineh slept on the brass bed. “I hadn’t slept in the bed since his death. It was his bed. I used to make it every day and wash the sheets once a week, but I never slept in it. That day, though, when my eyes grew heavy with sleep, I threw myself down on it and slept. You can imagine what it was like when I woke up and saw darkness everywhere. For an instant I didn’t know where I was; it was as though my husband had never died, the village hadn’t fallen, and the children weren’t waiting in a field in Deir al-Qasi. I forgot everything and found myself at home. When I remembered where I was and where I’d come from, I was struck by fear and started shivering. I jumped off the bed, patted my chest, found the jewellery in its place and thought I’d better go back.”
Shahineh said she regretted one thing. “I’m sorry I didn’t make the bed. In my fear and haste, it was like I didn’t care. I know my husband was angry with me: I dreamt of him, Son. We were here in the camp, and he came to me in a dream and said, ‘Even so, Shahineh, is that any way to leave my bed? Where am I going to rest now?’ I went to the Green Sheikh, God set him straight, and told him about my dream, and he reassured me and said the dead don’t return to their houses, and that my husband was a martyr, and the martyrs are in Heaven, and he asked me to come and visit him from time to time. I didn’t visit him, though. I’d seen that look in his eye; praise God, I didn’t visit him even once. He looked me up and down and licked his lips, saying, ‘The martyrs are in Heaven, where there’s ease, and houris. Your husband, Shahineh, is enjoying his fill of the houris now.’ As he said houris, he licked his lips as though he were, God forbid. .! Is that how to behave with martyrs’ widows? I mean, who did that old lecher think he was? No, dear God, I spit on his beard and the beards of all like him. He picks up the Book of God and then looks with that lustful look?”
Shahineh said she came to her senses and started to shiver.
“I got up, drank some water, and left.”