Even now I don’t know exactly what happened, but I do know that my mother refused to marry my uncle and that she ran away from the village to Jaljulia. She left my father’s house, left everything behind, taking only me and a small bag of clothes. The family never forgave her. They cut her off. Her family did the same. My uncles on my father’s side and my only uncle on my mother’s side never once came to visit us, not even on holidays when it’s commanded that you visit the women of the family. I remember my mother crying inconsolably when they told her over the phone that her father had died. My uncle came to get me for the funeral but my mother stayed in Jaljulia.
There were five hundred shekels in um-Bassem’s envelope.
“Mom, that’s too much. I feel bad.”
“Just don’t disappoint her,” my mother said, lighting a cigarette. My mother was always bashful when she smoked in front of me. She never smoked outside, only at home. Her eyes would ask permission before she picked a cigarette out of the pack. She was forty-five, but she looked older. She was skinny and her face was furrowed. There was something especially old about her face, about that unchanging look, a look that seemed to be forever apologizing.
My mother had bought meat and charcoal, as she did every year. On every Festival of the Sacrifice, she tried for us to be like everyone else, with smoke and the smell of grilling meat swirling out of the courtyard. “Will you light the fire?” she asked before going inside to prepare the meat and the salads. “Yes,” I said, heading out to the yard. Small children played with cap guns and loud music bellowed out of aimlessly wandering cars. I dumped the charcoal into the grill and my mother came out with the matches and a few blocks of fire starter. “Use this, it’s better,” she said. “The lighter fluid leaves a bad taste on the meat.”
Back when I was little, it was always me and my mother, just us, eating the meat of the Festival of the Sacrifice. We never roasted a lamb because “Who’s going to slaughter it?” as she always asked when I wanted to have the same thing the other kids in the class had.
Now, fire leaped up from the starter blocks and I took the tongs and began building a cone of charcoal, taking the wind direction into account, leaving deliberate air vents in the construction. I used to like that, being in charge of the charcoal. I had to. “On the Festival of the Sacrifice,” I heard my religious studies teacher intoning, “not everyone can afford to buy a lamb, not everyone can afford to buy meat. A true Muslim is considerate of his neighbors, considerate of others, those who do not have. A good Muslim gives meat to his hungry neighbors and does not think only of his own stomach.” I remember wanting to be a good Muslim but I remember, more forcefully, wanting not to be the hungry neighbor on the Festival of the Sacrifice.
Um-Bassem left her house and shuffled, with the help of her cane, toward me.
“Let me help you.” I said, approaching her.
“No strength left,” she said, “you see what humans are?” She leaned on my left arm, the one I had extended to her, and hobbled over to a plastic chair in the courtyard near our house. She panted and wiped sweat from her brow with a white handkerchief. My mother came outside with a brass tray full of skewered lamb and kebab.
“You must eat with us, um-Bassem,” my mother said, knowing that that would never happen. It never had and it never would. The orphan’s food, it says in the Koran, is not to be devoured.
“I wish I could,” she said, “but you know what my stomach is like these days. I can’t eat a thing beside yogurt.”
“We have that, too,” I said, and um-Bassem laughed.
“Thanks, I just had two cups at home.”
Mom sat on a chair next to um-Bassem. I flattened out the mound of charcoal, set down the grill, and rubbed it with a half onion that had been dipped in olive oil.
“So,” um-Bassem said, “months go by and you don’t visit?”
“I’m really busy,” I said.
“Spare me,” um-Bassem said. My mother sat up straight in her chair. “You think that I don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“There’s only one thing that keeps a man away from his mother,” she said.
I said nothing.
“Come on, come out with it already, is she pretty? She must be pretty. You are a good-looking man and you will take yourself a pretty woman.”
I started with the kebab. I lay them down on the grill and a cloud of smoke wafted up into the air. I placed a tomato-and-onion skewer on the side.
“What are you embarrassed about?” um-Bassem asked, “There are no strangers here.”
“No,” I said, “I really have been busy.”
“So there’s no girl? I don’t believe it.”
All I did was shake my head and flip the kebab and the vegetable skewer.
Um-Bassem exchanged looks with my mother, inhaled deeply, and started again. “Now that you’ve finished school and you have a profession it’s time to find the right bride, no?” She directed the question at my mother, who nodded impatiently.
Soon it would all start again. Um-Bassem would voice the words that my mother could not say, make the requests my mother could not make. Bride, home, land — for how long will you continue to surrender to your father’s family? When will you demand what is rightfully yours? How will you ever marry without land? Who would ever agree to marry someone who has no home? You lack for nothing and you deserve the very best. What are you worried about? It’s your father’s land.
“I think the kebab is ready,” I said, and my mother rushed over with a plate.
“How long will this go on?” um-Bassem asked and did not wait for an answer. “It’s time you demand what’s rightfully yours.”
“Nothing’s rightfully mine.”
“It most certainly is,” she said, raising her voice. “It’s yours and it’s also your mother’s.”
“My mother can demand what’s hers on her own.”
“Me,” my mother said. “Why would they listen to me?”
“You should have thought about that twenty years ago,” I said and immediately regretted it but did not apologize, making do with an apologetic look toward my mother, who was quiet, staring into the fire. Um-Bassem mumbled a prayer. After that it was silent. A round of fireworks exploded in the skies above the village.
I set the lamb skewers on the grill, spacing them evenly, knowing that they would not be touched. The thick smell of burning fat filled the courtyard. The wind changed directions and the smoke blew straight into my eyes.
CLEAN DIAPER
I went from being the roommate who spent too much time at home to the invisible roommate. Most days I came home from work at around four thirty, took a shower, got dressed, got my bag together, and left at around six fifteen for Yonatan’s. My time with Wassim and Majdi was cut down to the rare weekends when they were off and didn’t go home, which happened around once every two months.
Occasionally, I still considered quitting on Yonatan. I didn’t really need the money. My social worker salary was enough to live on and the caretaker money went completely untouched. I did not feel the need to save up at the time, though. I had no plans for the future. The thought of the long hours alone in the apartment, waiting for Majdi and Wassim to come back from work, was what convinced me not to quit.
Also, I started to really enjoy my time there, up in that attic on Scout Street. The physical part of the job got easier, much more like what Ayub and Osnat had described: quick dinner for Yonatan, jelly hydration, and a long deep sleep, generally till the morning.
Osnat asked me every once in a while to switch with her on the weekend, or to come in a bit early, at six or even at five, and I was always happy to oblige. Sometimes it worked out that I would spend twenty-four hours straight with Yonatan. Osnat probably thought I agreed so readily because I wanted to work longer hours, to make a little more money, but the truth is that I was willing to take her place because I had nothing else to do and I preferred spending time with Yonatan in his warm room to being alone in the cold, empty apartment in Beit Hanina.