Three Daughters: A Novel (3 page)

“I killed her mutt. He was digging in the garden.”

Miriam was standing by her mother’s shoulder. “No,” she said firmly. Jamilla was startled as much by the quality of the voice as by the fact that she had spoken. “Lie,” said Miriam.

“Take her to see the doctor,” Nabiha said after hearing her granddaughter rasp out a few words. “It’s a strange voice, but not unpleasant.” Miriam’s voice was deep but with a lovely silvery underside.

Dr. Hanser, who had been brought to the village by the Society of Friends, examined Miriam’s heart and lungs and looked into her ears and eyes. He took her pulse and recorded her reflexes. Finally, he inspected her throat and had her repeat the vowel sounds. “She speaks low for a female,” he said. “Perhaps her vocal cords are withered.” He had no idea how to reassure the mother. The patient was in good health. “Send her to the Scotswoman near Sarona. She’ll give her lessons in strengthening the voice.” He turned to the Quaker woman who helped him. “Perhaps Miss Haefling can write a letter on your behalf.”

“Why can she suddenly talk now?” asked Jamilla. She was fearful of having them think she was instigating the muteness to tie Miriam more closely as Mustafa’s natural child.

“It isn’t anything physical,” said the doctor. “She could have talked anytime.”

Jamilla, in her confusion, turned pale with anger. “You withheld it on purpose, naughty girl.” Her hand came across with force and struck Miriam.

Miss Haefling placed herself between mother and daughter. “No one is naughty, madam,” she said softly. “Children have their own reasons and it’s difficult for us to understand them. Nevertheless, your daughter needs to be taught to speak properly. There is a fine school at Sarona affiliated with the German Colony, where she can receive speech therapy.”

“I can’t spare her,” said Jamilla, already regretting her outburst. “I need her to watch the children during the harvest.”

“Then you can send her after the harvest.” The doctor spoke firmly. He knew Miriam would speak with or without the therapy but he saw some value in separating the girl from her mother.

“The expense . . .” Jamilla began. “Perhaps the school’s too dear.”

“The German Colony is a religious community,” said Miss Haefling. “Most likely they will take your daughter without payment. Let me write and explain the situation.” When Jamilla failed to answer, she added, “The best families send their girls to the school in Sarona.”

That night, as Miriam lay in her bed, she heard the monotonous cry of the nighthawk calling to its mate, but she was not frightened. Despite the sadness over the dog and the turbulence she had caused, she felt deep relief. Fear had been inside her all this time. Fear of the silence and fear of breaking it. Now it was done.

2.

WE MUST HAVE A BATH.

M
iriam and Mustafa left for the school early one morning down the el-Tirah Road, going past the fine orderly vineyards that grew the best grapes in Judea. The road curved down and they could see that the cement in the paved roofs had cracked from the summer heat. There would be leaks with the first showers of fall.

Nabiha tucked a bag of sweets into Miriam’s pocket. “Eat them on the way,
habibty
,” she said and began to cry. Jamilla embraced Miriam briefly but was distracted by keeping the twins, George and Salim, from straying down the road.

The trip to Sarona took two days. Miriam, looking pale, began to lag toward dusk and Mustafa carried her to a hostel in Ludd, where they spent the night. In the morning, their breakfast was goats’ milk cheese, bread with olive oil and thyme, and tea. They took food for the road. Every so often they would stop, moved by the sights of the pomegranate and mulberry orchards and the palm trees, which Miriam had never seen. They passed the ruins of many soap factories.

They were used to walking barefoot and saved their sandals for the villages. The difficulty came with the dust. The pulverized limestone that leached out of the striated buttes invaded their noses, eyes and mouths and Miriam had difficulty swallowing. She stopped frequently and Mustafa looked back to keep her in sight.

As they got nearer to the sea, the temperature increased but the air remained dry. They came to the first station of the new railroad from Jaffa to Jerusalem. The locomotive rumbled by, halted, discharged a passenger, and went on again. Mustafa was delighted. He took a small leap into the air and they waited until it was out of sight before continuing to Sarona.

The school was unmistakable. The area was landscaped with orderly rows of palm trees and formal approaches to the main building, which was made of smooth flush stone with double-height arched windows. A gardener stared at them disdainfully. “
Mughbari?
” he asked, taking them for itinerant Muslims working their way through the villages on the pilgrimage to Mecca. Miriam shook her head. “This is a school for Muslims,” he informed them. “Rich Muslim girls.” Miriam ignored him and looked at her father, who was filthy with dust. She tucked her hair behind her kerchief and put on a colorful vest from her sack.

The inside of the building was a revelation. The floors were made of polished wood. Wood! There were divans against the walls for sitting.

Miss Clay, the headmistress, was taller than her father. “
Ma’salamy
,” she said. Mustafa didn’t answer and Miriam pointed to the inside of her mouth. “No speak.” Her voice surprised the teacher, and to make matters worse, Mustafa began gesticulating. Miriam reddened but then she saw Miss Clay moving her hands in the same way. Mustafa smiled and seemed satisfied to leave his daughter. When he walked away, Miriam cried into her scarf and ran after him. He made a little maneuver of leaving and then returning to let her know he would be back to visit and she went inside.

“First,” said Miss Clay, ignoring the tears, “we must have a bath.”

Maha, the maid, was the first to enter her room in the morning. She took one look at the mattress on the floor and shook her head in disgust. “Stupid,” she chided Miriam, who was startled to be attacked by one of her own kind. Maha appeared to be a villager like herself. “If she sees what you’ve done with the bed, you’ll go right back.”

Curiosity fought with pride but finally won. “What’s wrong?” She had pulled the mattress to the floor as it was at home.

“It belongs on the bedstead. Stupid Christian!”

Instead of cowing Miriam, Maha’s attack gave her new determination. She had been selected to be a pupil, while Maha was just the maid.

“Lengthen your neck and throw back your head an inch or so. See?” Miss Clay put her index finger to her Adam’s apple. “You can feel what is happening as you make certain sounds.” She placed Miriam’s finger on the appropriate spot. “We’ll begin with ah . . . aaaaaaaaah.”

“Agh . . . ahgagh . . . agh.” Miriam’s sounds caught and scratched. Sometimes no sound came out.

“Very good. Keep your finger on your throat and feel the tension there. We’ll try eeh. Eeeeeeeeeh.”

“Eh . . . egheghegh.” The room was large and the wooden floors had a chevron pattern that made her dizzy.

“Uh . . . uuuuuuuh.”

“Uughuuuugh.”

Each day, beginning at eight, from October until May, Rowena Clay taught two dozen large-eyed Muslim girls to speak and read the King’s English. At the midday meal, they learned table manners, and after lunch they embroidered. It had become the thing to do among some wealthy Muslims to send their daughters to be exposed to European culture. Miss Clay’s academy was sanctioned by the German Colony at a time when the Turkish government was looking to Germany for alliance. When Crown Prince Wilhelm stopped in Jerusalem on his way to open the Suez, he was given half the Muristan, the site of the Hospitallers, the fabulous Knights of St. John. The gift infuriated many Arabs.

Miriam sat with the others in the reading class but was not expected to participate. Her therapy began at two, when the carriages came to take the others home.

“Keep your neck long and your ribs high. You must speak from here.” Miss Clay touched her abdomen. “Stand straight.” Miriam straightened by example, because she missed almost everything said in such oddly accented Arabic. As they worked, the sun came through the high arched windows in waves that made the air quiver. She looked longingly outside at barefoot Maha, beating carpets in the yard. Maha was the closest link to her old life. She didn’t want to keep her neck long. She wanted to lie down on the floor and go to sleep.

When the weather cooled and the routine was familiar, Miriam began to follow the words in the primer read by the girls in the morning classes. The book related the life of an English family named Highwood who lived in a white house in Surrey. And, she thought with triumph, proving that she understood, Jamilla and Mustafa Tawal lived in a white stone house in Tamleh. “I understand,” she cried out with pleasure, but Miss Clay put a finger to her lips.

The ability to read about the insipid life of Hugh and Sybil Highwood and their three daughters made her feel powerful. She tolerated the speech sessions but was devoted to the reading. She read along with every girl’s halting effort. She was so engrossed in the story she had to be nudged out of her seat when class was over.

At noon she ate lunch with Maha but had tea with Miss Clay after the therapy. She envied Miss Clay’s (and the girls’) adeptness with a knife and fork. “Why don’t you teach me, too,” she wanted to ask.

“Do you wonder why I don’t urge you to eat with a knife and fork?” Miss Clay asked one day.

“No.”

“Tell me,” she said softly, “does your mother eat with a knife and fork?”

This was the last thing Miriam expected to hear. Her mother’s face appeared with such clarity it brought a pang of sadness. Her mother rolled the food into balls and put them in her mouth with her fingers. She kept bread on her knee and tore off bits to dip into oil. Miriam looked down at her feet, dizzy with shame. Mercifully, the subject was dropped.

She tried to convince herself that her mother was infinitely better off than Miss Clay. Her hands were ever in motion, gathering, cooking, watering, washing. What’s more, Miss Clay was just Miss Clay! She had no clan to protect her. To whom could she appeal if someone cheated her or killed a loved one?

There were only a few weeks left to the term and Miriam attacked her voice sessions with new determination. She held her head erect, her throat arched, her rib cage high, her blue eyes focused directly ahead. “Father . . . bazaar . . . calm. Heifer . . . leopard . . . friend. Toe . . . flow . . . note . . . road. Key . . . field . . . pee-pel . . . pee-pel . . . people!”

She was anxious to leave Sarona. “Why is it important for me to speak well?” she asked.

“A beautiful voice delights people of all stations,” said Miss Clay, “but being the odd person in the family is a burden.”

Three weeks before the school term ended, the teacher said something that made Miriam believe Miss Clay wasn’t so bad after all. “Would you like to learn to sign? To use hand language so you can talk with your father?”

All she could imagine were the taunts from Daud if he saw her doing any such thing. “Look.” Miss Clay was holding her hand with the thumb up. “What do you suppose that means?”

“I don’t know.” She looked away.

“It means hello.” She put her hand up and did it again. “Hello.”

Miriam went to stare out the window at the trees and bushes that still looked so alien. She tried to imagine what her father would do if she came home and waved her hand at him like that. “Hello, Baba.” She knew what he would do. He would cry with joy. She turned around. “Show me again, please.”

When Miriam returned home, Nabiha looked much older. Daud looked smaller. The house looked very small and crowded. Uncle Nabile had married the Shihada girl, Diana, and she was very fat.

“How could you spend the entire day learning to speak?” Her mother looked mystified.

“Oh, we didn’t do that. Part of the day, I sat in class with the other girls.” She pulled out a book Miss Clay had allowed her to keep. “I learned to read, Mama,” she admitted shyly.

Jamilla looked at the book with suspicion. It wasn’t unusual to speak several languages. After all, the Protestant schools taught English, the Orthodox taught Greek, and the Franciscans who came from the Levant taught French. The poorest peasant was capable of speaking beautifully accented French. But reading and writing were another matter. Those who could read and write were worlds apart.

3.

A BOY CAME TO THE STAND TODAY.

C
hange comes slowly in most lives, but sometimes there is one decisive moment. One can point and say, “There. My life changed there.”

Mustafa’s life changed dramatically in the autumn of 1894, when Nabiha’s brother, who was childless, gave him two acres on the northeast corner of the village. The bulk of the land was distributed on two sides of a steep hill filled with scrub brush and trees. There was no ready source of water for irrigation. The sole advantage was that the land faced south and west.

Mustafa began clearing as large a portion as possible through the beastly September heat. From dawn to dusk, he uprooted shrubs, chopped down trees, and overturned earth. The peculiar powdery effect of lime rock and the countless stones showing on the surface looked hopeless. To make use of the slopes, Mustafa cut shelves out of the hills and saved the stones to create a ledge that would protect the terraces. He began to sleep at the site and once each day Miriam arrived with a packet of food. “Well, let’s see how far along you are today.” She regularly communicated with him in hand language, but still they were partial to the old methods of drawing and pantomime because Mustafa had come to enjoy it. She seldom saw much change in the land from day to day but she made an effort to show surprise for his accomplishments.

Through the ordeal Mustafa ignored the lack of water much as he had ignored Jamilla’s anger in the first year of their marriage. Often, especially when she was upset, his wife spoke to him as if he could hear perfectly. “My uncle has given you a gift of nothing,” she would say and to illustrate would point her empty palms upward. It was therapeutic for her to vent her feelings and he always appeared to be listening. She also had adopted some of his physical maneuvers. She would visit the site of his garden and mimic the act of digging and shoveling and wiping sweat off her brow and becoming bent over from the strenuous labor. She would walk around in circles, holding her back and looking dazed as if the sun had scrambled her wits. Then she would shrug and throw her hands up as if to say, “For what?” At such times Mustafa would take his hand and erase the creases from her brow. He would point to his head, close to his eyes, and smile, implying he had a vision of good.

He rented a horse and coaxed Daud, who was a fearless rider, to help him uproot the most stubborn stumps. Remembering the dark, loamy soil he had seen in Sarona, he collected his neighbors’ ashes, refuse, and animal droppings and spread the mixture over his future garden. He borrowed a team and plowed with one ox on one level and the other below, for the terraces were narrow. During this maneuver, the stick caught and wouldn’t budge. Mustafa dug out not a rock as expected, but a masonry leader that was connected to a solid masonry pool. These ancient ruined pools, originally built to catch the overflow from the springs, were often used for threshing floors. The largest of them, the Pools of Solomon, south of Bethlehem, when full, could float a battleship. The pool Mustafa found was close to Ayn Fara, a copious perennial spring that didn’t diminish in summer. After several rainstorms, the pool began to fill and Mustafa knew he had a source of livelihood for himself and his family.

He put in early crops—cabbage, parsley, peas, onions—and as the weather warmed, added okra, eggplant, cucumbers, squash, and cauliflower. He experimented with tomatoes, which were new to the country but much sought after by the European colonies in Jerusalem. Every two weeks, he added side dressings of the fertilizer he concocted from his cache of refuse. By May he was able to bring his early crop to the Jaffa Gate and sell it alongside those of the other village farmers.

The plaza outside Jaffa Gate was the busiest spot in all Jerusalem, for here ended the well-traveled road from the ancient port city of Jaffa. Here, diligences—carriages bringing imported necessities and luxuries—discharged their passengers and goods.

Mustafa fashioned a two-tiered cart with long handles to hold his produce and he and Miriam pushed it the ten miles from Tamleh every Wednesday. The spot they chose was at the foot of Suleiman Street in front of the French Hospital of St. Louis.

It was the thriving hub of the city. Jaffa Road, though still unpaved, had sidewalks. In just one small stretch, across from the Russian compound, there was a branch of Barclay’s Bank, the Hughes Hotel, a specialty cobbler, and several elegant shops and cafés. The Greek consulate occupied spacious offices atop one building that housed a branch of the Russian post office below.

Inside the walls, the Holy City was vastly improved in health and respectability as the century drew to a close. Mayor Salim Husseini had laid cobblestones over the winding narrow lanes and instituted regular sweepings, installed lanterns, and hired night watchmen. Camels and donkeys were no longer allowed inside the walls. There was a man hired just to clean the corners where “people laid their waters.” Jaffa Gate was closed at night for safety and those wishing to leave before dawn had to be lowered over the wall by ropes. The fields behind the New Grand Hotel, which previously had been a casual burial ground for countless animal carcasses that putrefied in the sun, were cleared. The mounds of dung and garbage that had threatened health and welfare were diminished. No longer was it necessary to encourage the hyenas to enter at night to eat away at the debris.

Miriam loved the noise, the confusion, and the color. She watched with interest as Turkish strongmen in sashed pantaloons jockeyed huge pallets laden with bales of cotton and other raw materials through the narrow lanes. Monks and sisters of every sect—Copts, Muslims, Orthodox, Latins, Jews, and Dervishes—crisscrossed the square in and out of the Holy City in a variety of clerical dress. The ever-present hordes of Russian pilgrims in dark penitential clothes swarmed in and out of the Russian compound. Villagers looking to alleviate minor ailments and give themselves a thorough washing visited the baths.

Overriding everything were the intermittent clouds of dust created by the carriages and animals, for the road outside the walls was still unpaved. With water collected in a cistern from the roofs of the Citadel buildings, municipal workers dampened the ground several times a day.

Miriam and Mustafa took pleasure in arranging the produce. Crisp okra spikes were laid out like a regiment of sturdy soldiers. Bouquets of parsley were presented in paper cones. Turnips were upended with their rosy points showing over the lip of several large clay bowls. Green beans and peas were kept in the lower tray out of the wilting sun. Cucumbers, midnight green and shimmering with droplets of dew, were laid out in a row along the back. Scallions and young yellow squash, the blossoms still clinging, filled out the colorful assortment. Eggplants were added as they matured, but the jewels of the collection were the tomatoes. Some, weighing almost a pound, formed the base of small pyramids and were quickly grabbed by Europeans who were homesick for this food.

The first few weeks Mustafa sold out his supply before the morning was over and took the opportunity to inspect the competition, whose puny, ill-formed merchandise sold for the same price as his. He began to have repeat customers and some offered advice. Sister Charlotte, a Kaiserswerth deaconess and revered head of the German orphanage, told him to double his prices immediately, for the quality of his goods warranted it. Father Alphonse, head of the Ethiopian monastery, put in a weekly order and added a bonus for delivery to the compound on Ethiopia Street. The doctors and nurses of the St. Louis Hospital scooped up pounds of the
haricots verts
, which were long and tender. The Italian consulate, also on Ethiopia Street, sniffing the glorious basket being delivered to Father Alphonse, demanded the same with a double order of tomatoes.

By the time the second crop of beans and peas came in, both Mustafa and Miriam were spending as much time delivering orders as selling at their stand. Sister Charlotte urged Mustafa to experiment with a new vegetable unknown in Palestine, assuring him she would be responsible for the entire crop. “When the Emperor Frederick visited the orphanage and asked what we most wanted him to send us from Germany,” said the sister, “we asked for two barrels of potatoes. All the Europeans feel the same. It’s a wonderful staple, very easy to grow.” So Mustafa added potatoes to the following year’s crop and had an even more successful business the second summer. He enlarged his clientele to include the consulates of France and England and the Grand Hotel that had opened on the corner of Latin Patriarchate Road.

Two German hotels, the Hughes and the Feil, asked for Mustafa’s wares, but he refused. The debris being excavated for the ghastly German compound at the Muristan was filling the moat around the Citadel of David, infuriating the locals as well as other Europeans. Mustafa’s best customers were still the Ethiopians and he often stopped to sit in the gardens outside their beautiful church. Father Alphonse offered to house and educate his sons, but Mustafa demurred. The twins were barely ten.

At dusk, when deliveries and errands were finished, father and daughter stopped to hear the Turkish military band that played twice weekly in the Baladiyya, a lovely public garden that was another of Mayor Husseini’s innovations.

Miriam often noticed the young nurses coming out of St. Louis Hospital, their breasts jutting out from crisp bib aprons, their caps firmly anchored on their carefully styled hair. They laughed and chattered together and often a doctor would join them. The nurses were charmed beings blessed by the universe to live a life of gaiety and satisfaction. The doctors were celestial. She whiled away the hours dreaming, irrationally, of being part of such a life.

It was the end of September of their fourth year at the stand. The potatoes had been harvested, also the cabbage. A few tomatoes were still ripening. Mustafa closed for five months—November through March—while he tilled, repaired, fertilized, and overturned his garden. This year he planned to build a home for his family. Nabiha’s house, with Nabile’s growing family, was too crowded.

Miriam, at sixteen, was almost as tall as her father, with a slim hard body developed by years of strenuous walking. In contrast, her heavily lashed blue eyes were soft and wistful.

One late afternoon she was tapping her foot to the music coming from the barracks of the Turkish police, where the orchestra practiced. She knew the day was coming to an end when she heard the squeaks and shrieks of the horns (few of the musicians were trained). She had opened the Palestine
Post
and was reading and tapping and wasn’t immediately aware of the young man standing there.

“Are you from the Mishwe family? Dâr Mishwe?” She felt foolish to be caught tapping her foot but also he’d taken her by surprise. She didn’t think of herself as coming from the Mishwe family, although she was connected through Nabiha. “You’re from the Mishwe family,” he said more forcefully. “I’m your cousin.” He wanted some confirmation.

“Perhaps.” If he was so certain, she had no need to confirm it.

“Not perhaps. It’s true.”

She didn’t like his insistent tone and refused to look up.

“You come here every week?”

“No,” she lied. He might come back next week. He might come back every week. “Did you want some beans?” she asked quickly. “That’s all that’s left.” Too late she realized there was also a head of cabbage and sat in a state of numb embarrassment.

“How about the cabbage? Is it reserved?”

Ya Allah
. “No. But it has worms.”
Go away.

“Let’s see how many worms it has,” he said playfully, and her shyness turned to stubbornness.

“One worm or ten,” she said, looking straight at his chest, “we don’t sell bad vegetables.”

“Very well, I’ll take the beans.” He pulled out some coins and dropped them on the cart. “I’ll take all of them and next week I’ll come back and tell you how they tasted.”

She thought he had turned to leave and looked up. But it was too soon. She caught his profile—short brown hair ending in curly innocence at the nape of his neck, an ordinary ear and chin, healthy coloring. His teasing voice, however, was threatening. He had spoken to her as if he had a right to expect a friendly response. She didn’t want to give a friendly response to him or to any young man. She liked her life the way it was.

That night she said to her mother, “A boy came to the stand today and said he was my cousin. He asked me if I was from the Mishwe family.”

“A boy?” said Jamilla. “How old a boy?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look at him. Maybe more than a boy.”

“A man?” asked Jamilla, astonished. “How did he look?”

“I don’t know.”

“You spoke to a man and you don’t know how he looked?”

Diana, who was pregnant with her third child, strolled in and picked up a meat-filled hand pie from a tray. “What man?” she asked casually. “A man wants Miriam?”

Jamilla, who had not yet dared to form the thought, was annoyed that Diana had said it first. “Don’t be foolish. Someone just asked if she was from the Mishwe family. He said he was our cousin.”

“Ah . . . well. Who is it?”

“I don’t know.” Miriam wished she hadn’t mentioned anything.

“Didn’t you ask his name?” asked Diana, overly incredulous. She exaggerated every response to make herself important.

“No,” said Miriam. “I sold him string beans.”

“I wonder who it is,” said Jamilla. She mentioned several names with brief descriptions, but all were eliminated.

“The next time he comes, I’ll find out,” said Miriam.

Both Diana and Jamilla turned in astonishment. “He’s coming back?” they asked in unison.

“He said he would let me know how the string beans tasted.”