Mornings in Jenin (15 page)
“Girls, show her around and make sure she knows the rules,” Miss Haydar commanded, then pivoted away on her high heels. The girls came toward me and I cowered inwardly.
The closest one to me, a redhead with translucent skin and a soft smile, caressed my head. “Your hair is pretty. My name is Samra.” I would soon learn her name was an unending joke in the orphanage because “Samra” in Arabic means “the dark-skinned one,” and her carrot top stood out like an orange balloon in a dark ocean.
“What’s your name?”
I didn’t answer.
“Where are you from?” another asked. Then another and another.
“Why are you sad?”
“Will you be my friend?”
“Did Haydar give you her stupid dissertation?”
“Are you an orphan, too?”
Not getting answers from me, they started answering themselves.
“Of course she’s an orphan, stupid!”
“Her name is Amal. I heard Haydar talking on the telephone.”
“Why on earth would she want to befriend you, bucktooth?”
“Haydar is full of shit.”
An admonition resonating with seniority came from a pretty dark-skinned girl with a silky blanket of black hair. “Get away from her!” she ordered. “Can’t you see she’s upset? Give her some space, you leeches.” Everyone obeyed. That was my first encounter with Muna Jalayta, who became my dear friend.
Before she turned to leave, Muna assured me that it wasn’t so bad here at the orphanage and that she would hold the girls off as long as she could. Then she smiled and left.
Alone and red eyed, bewildered and dizzied by life’s turns, I opened the package that Ammo Jack had given me. Inside the crackle and hiss of tearing newspaper, inside a flimsy box, was an olive-wood smoking pipe. I lifted the pipe, holding the fragile memories of Baba, the two of us with his poetry and the rising sun. Near the mouthpiece, a line was worn in the pipe’s shaft where Baba’s mustache had rubbed against the wood over the years. The pipe still smelled of the honey apple tobacco that Baba had smoked, the scent of my father’s labored breath and tired clothes when he unleashed his love through the pages he turned for me at dawn. I knew that smell so well that I had unknowingly come to think of it as the aroma of the sunrise. I curled up with Baba’s love in my new bunk, letting that soothing waft of my father envelop my wounds and lull me to sleep on that first night in that Jerusalem refuge for Palestinian girls.
I never saw Ammo Jack again to ask him by what circumstance he had come to possess my father’s pipe. In the summer of 1971, two years after he had escorted me to Jerusalem, I learned that Jack had died in his sleep. I could not return for the funeral because Jenin was under curfew. I also did not have money enough to make the trip, but news reached me that thousands of people had turned out to bid him farewell in a display reserved only for martyrs. Ammo Jack was deeply loved by everyone who knew him, especially the refugees in whose service he lived the last years of his life. Even some Israeli soldiers who frequently manned Jenin’s checkpoints had gone to pay their respects to his daughter, his only relative, who had traveled from Ireland to bury him—for he had specified that he be buried in Palestine.
Haj Salem wept at Jack’s funeral. After that he never returned to Beit Jawad’s coffeehouse, where the two of them had shared countless hookas in the manufacturing of friendship—a dainty thing they had created from the playful grouchiness of men growing old in the tedium of a timeless battle to leave the world a better place for the young.
1969–1973
MUNA JALAYTA WAS RIGHT: the orphanage wasn’t so bad; and from the beginning she took me under her wing. It was sometime during my second year, a hot summer night suffused with humidity and the sounds of vigilant bugs, that I could hear Muna tossing in the bunk above mine.
“You awake?” I whispered.
“Who the hell can sleep, besides the snoring dumbasses around us!” she huffed, dangling her head from the side of her bed. “Let’s try the cool tile.”
“Good idea,” I said, getting out of bed and removing my night shirt.
“Even better idea. Naked on the tile.” But the floor space was too cramped. “The balcony?”
“Sure, why not.”
We stepped through the double doors into the open air and were instantly embraced by the moon.
“Wow! I’ve never seen the moon so close,” she said, gripping the wrought-iron bars of the balcony. Her womanly form was outlined against the night’s lantern sitting low in the sky.
“Full moons remind me of my father. Even though I can’t really remember him. Isn’t that silly?” she said, inhaling the night, eyes shut. “He told my sister that a full moon is a portal to God’s ears. Silly.”
“Let’s complain to it about fat-ass Haydar. Maybe it’ll suck her up into outer space,” I said clumsily.
“And who says Abulheja doesn’t have a sense of humor!”
“How did they die—your parents?”
A pause. “My father was a professor who lectured the truth about King Abdullah’s dirty dealings with Golda Meir. The Arab leaders betrayed us just like the British. Sold us up the river. Sons of bitches. I’d kill every one of them if I could, from the Hashemites to the House of Saud.” Another deep breath in the night. “Students loved my father and lined up for his classes. I suppose that made him a threat to the Hashemite monarchy.
“It was a February day and rain had started on our way home from my aunt’s house. My mother, father, my sister Jamila, and I were hurrying under umbrellas. Mother was yelling at me to stop splashing in the puddles when an agent of the Hashemites of Jordan called out, ‘Ahmed Jaber Jalayta.’ ”
When Muna’s father reacted to the call of his name, the agent shot him once in the head. A second bullet tore through Muna’s mother’s lungs as she tried to shield her husband. Two quick gunshots and terror muffled by rain inaugurated Muna’s first memory, at the age of four.
We lay on our backs, her head on my belly, mine on the ball of our nightshirts as the moon poured light on our dark skin. “I’m sorry, Muna,” I said, stroking her hair and wiggling my sweaty toes against the metal balcony rail.
I remember that night clearly, the comfort between two friends. At the edge of Muna’s memory, I felt an unstoppable evolution inside of me. No longer a girl, not yet a woman, I wondered which of us was better off—she who lived with the detailed terror of her father’s death or I who lived without the knowledge of what had happened to mine. I leaned into Muna’s hurt and kissed her forehead. We held each other on a carpet of moonlight and in quiet wonderment, I put my arms around her. She kissed my scar and we fell into sleep.
Muna took me into the folds of her clique, which was something akin to family. Among my new friends were the “Colombian Sisters,” Yasmina, Layla, and Drina. They had been living at the orphanage for three years prior to my arrival. Following the 1948 war, their father had been able to emigrate to Colombia, where the three girls were born and had blossomed to the spicy beat of the salsa and merengue—which they taught me to dance. But their South American life had come to a halt when their father had died of cancer. Rather than use what little money he had on medical treatment, he had spent it to secure his family’s return to Palestine, where an uncle had helped them find a small flat and sent the girls to the orphanage because it was the only route to continue their schooling. Their two oldest brothers, already out of school, had remained with their mother in Ramallah.
Whether the Colombian Sisters fought or got along, it was always drama. I could never get enough of Drina’s laughter. It was a disorderly thing that tumbled off the walls like a drunken echo and always erupted from a wide-open mouth with head flung backward. She was the oldest of the three sisters and, with a strong athletic body, was also the toughest girl in school. Though I don’t recall that she actually hurt anyone, her crass approach to everything often gave the impression that she was gearing up to maul the first person to annoy her. What I remember most about Drina was the quick snap of her head that positioned her eyes in a straight burning focus on the object of her scrutiny, demanding honesty and loyalty.
She snapped that look toward me once after I emerged from a grueling interrogation by Miss Haydar, who had held me for five hours in the dorm basement, the “dungeon,” to persuade me to rat out my accomplices. The five of us, Muna, the Colombian Sisters, and I, had broken into the art studio the previous night, as we had been doing every night of Ramadan. It was during the last week of that month of fasting that Miss Haydar had discovered us, and it was because of a pot of stuffed grape leaves brought to us by a French nun.
That nun was Sister Clairie, whose name I could never pronounce correctly. She had taken a special liking to Layla, the middle of the Colombian Sisters, during Christmas that year when a group from the convent had brought gifts to the world’s less fortunate: us. Recognizing in Layla that spirit of giving, Sister Clairie had approached my friend with an extended hand. “My name is Clairie,” she had said, uttering her own name as if water gurgled in the back of her throat.
“May I help?” she had asked, motioning to the nameless infant girl in Layla’s arms.
“Thank you. She was left this morning at the front gate,” Layla had said, carefully placing the baby into the nun’s arms.
“Layla always takes the babies,” Drina had said. “You’d think she’d given birth to them for all the fussing she does.”
It was true. Layla’s nurturing instincts were so pure and well-known to us that every wounded girl, physically or otherwise, was put into her care.
The same black hair, thick eyebrows, and full lips that fixed themselves around Drina’s penetrating eyes were transformed on Layla’s face by her sensitivity. The same features with distinct edges on Drina were soft and rounded on her little sister, Layla. The thick curls of hair, which all three had inherited from their mother, sprang from Drina’s head in confused, reckless coils but fell as obedient tresses against Layla’s back.
The good nun returned to the orphanage nearly every week after she had met Layla. Each time, Sister Clairie brought a box of goodies. Often, they were things to replenish Layla’s medical supplies for the odd scrapes and cuts on girls who sought her out for mothering and bandages. But always there were chocolate treats and candy, which Layla shared with her sisters, Muna, and me.
To ease the hunger of Ramadan, Sister Clairie came each evening to the eastern wall of the orphanage and passed a warm pot to Layla through a small hole in the stones. Her charity was a delicious secret among the five of us friends. In Pavlovian fashion, we arrived at the hole at least half an hour before five, when the good nun was due to arrive. Already it was February, the crisp breeze chilling us on our reconnaissance mission as we gently shoved one another for a peek through the hole.
“She’s coming!” I whispered when I spotted the fair skin and rosy cheeks in brown habit, a face that looked only for God and thrived in cloistered piety.
Drina pushed me out of the way. “I hope it’s grape leaves and stuffed zucchini like yesterday,” she said, peeking through the hole.
“Anything beats the crap Um Ahmed makes,” Yasmina chimed in.
We all moved aside for Layla to receive the coveted pot of food, which she immediately passed back to us so she could speak with her Christian friend.
“I got it!” I assured everyone, hiding the pot in my blanket.
“Mmm, smells good,” Drina mused, her nose in my blanket.
As we had been doing all month, we broke into the art studio to eat our meal. Yasmina, the youngest of the Colombian Sisters, the most practical and organized of us all, divvied up the food in five equal portions while we waited for the adan to beckon us with permission to break the fast. Muna fasted with us in solidarity even though she was Christian. We had no plates, so we used paint trays from the art supply closet and sat in a circle, our eyes tightly fastened to Sister Clairie’s perfect gift and our ears keenly tuned to the first notes of the adan.
“Alllaaaaaaaho akbar . . . alllaaaaaaaho akbar . . .” poured in a musical lilt from the sky over us and we broke the fast “in the name of Allah the Most Merciful and Most Compassionate.” We devoured the food in brief minutes, finishing together with the realization that we were all eyeing the pot for the last few drops of juice and flavor. Again, Yasmina stepped into her unofficial role as mediator. “Here’s what we’ll do,” she said, rising to her feet, her black curls forced into a ponytail so tight it slanted her eyes and exploded behind her in a shaggy mop of wanton swirls.
“We’ll play a game and the winner gets the pot,” Yasmina announced. Looking around the room, she took her cue from a child’s painting of balloons. “It’s called the balloon game,” she began, and assembled the rules, snatching ideas from the air. “To play the game,” she explained, her bony form pacing, “you have to hop on one foot in a straight line and say the word ‘ballooooon’ in one breath until you run out of air. The one who hops the farthest wins.”
I don’t recall who won, except that it wasn’t me. I do remember Drina’s devilish look just before she sprayed paint on Yasmina, who fell out of the game as Drina erupted in her disorienting laughter. I jumped to Yasmina’s aid with tubes of blue paint, which we squirted at Drina, while Layla threw paint randomly from behind the protection of her sister. Muna took no sides and hurled wads of papier-mâché at anyone in her line of fire. The images of that evening are paint-splattered and full of laughter that turned my voice hoarse for several days following. We stayed late that night, trying to clean up the remains of the paint fight, and many years later when I returned to visit the orphanage, I saw a group of young girls playing the balloon game in the courtyard outside the art studio.
Miss Haydar caught me returning to the scene of the crime the next morning to retrieve my blanket. She was waiting when I climbed through the art room window, which we kept unlocked on a rig. The pain of Miss Haydar’s five-hour interrogation was finally eased by Drina’s approval once she realized that I hadn’t told on anyone. Earning Drina’s respect was a prize.
Though we had so little and often went without food, my memories of those years are ultimately happy ones, rich in spirit and substance. Jerusalem’s winters were white and bitter, and we fought off the frigid nights with one flimsy gray blanket each. It was against the rules to share beds or push them together and there was hell to pay if we were caught, but that was one rule we frequently broke, sharing blankets and body heat. A new girl came to the orphanage a year after me, and she peed all over us on one such night when we were massed together in warm sleep. Her name was Maha and she only stayed for a few months, but after that incident, we were more selective about who we let into our throng.
Um Ahmed, the cook, prepared three meals each day for some two hundred growing girls. Breakfast, for which I was often too late, consisted of one slice of bread and unlimited hot tea. Dinner was the same, with an added slice of mortadella. Rarely did the content of these meals change over my four years in residence. Lunch, on the other hand, was the time to really eat. It was always some kind of stew, cooked in a huge metal cauldron, served over rice. We could eat as much stew as we wanted until it ran out. Problem was, the only meat it ever contained was from the cockroaches that lived in great abundance in the kitchen.
I got used to that, too. In fact, we frequently held contests to see who could pick the most bugs from her stew. The dark menaces could be spotted easily in dishes like okra and tomato stew. But for mulukhiya, a dark vegetable stew, the task was infinitely harder. On those days, some hapless girl inevitably ate a roach by mistake.
Muna had that unfortunate distinction once. Satisfied that, having picked out three bugs, she had found them all, she ate her whole plate. To everyone’s audible horror, she dislodged from her teeth a dark filament that turned out to be a hairy cockroach leg.
Someone yelled, “Muna Jalayta got one!” and the whole dining room erupted in laughter and jubilant chanting—“Muna! Muna!”—until Miss Haydar burst onto the scene ordering us “animals” to be quiet. It didn’t last. As soon as Haydar was out of earshot, the ruckus resumed as girls came to our table, expressing condolences and paying homage to Muna, like a soldier wounded in battle.
Prior to meals, we had to line up single file in a tiny courtyard outside the dining hall. At Miss Haydar’s insistence, we were required to stand in five equally spaced rows before she allowed us to enter. We accepted her bizarre behavior as some still unidentified form of dementia, for she actually took the time to measure the distances between girls in each row. This exercise was particularly painful in the wintertime for everyone except the three girls who made it to the courtyard in time to get the “pipe positions.” These were the spots around a thirty-inch metal pipe that ran up the wall in the courtyard to vent hot steam from the kitchen. If you stood next to one of its three exposed sides, you had a source of warmth while Miss Haydar prattled about with her ridiculous yardstick. My tardiness did not afford me the luxury of a pipe position, and I could never get used to standing in the cold for half an hour like that.