The Inheritance Read online

  Translated by

  Aida Bamia

  The American University in Cairo Press

  Cairo • New York

  English translation copyright © 2005 by

  The American University in Cairo Press

  113 Sharia Kasr el Ami. Cairo. Egypt

  420 Fifth Avenue. New York. NY 10018

  www.aucpress.com

  Copyright © 1997 by Sahar Khalifeh

  First published in Arabic in 1997 as al-Mirath

  Protected under the Berne Convention

  Second printing 2006

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Dar el Kutub No. 2842/05

  ISBN 978 161 797 210 2

  Designed by Sarah Rifky / AUC Press Design Center

  Printed in Egypt

  Translator’s Note

  Although a translator does not need to justify the choice of any of Sahar Khalifeh’s novels, I feel somewhat compelled to explain the selection of al-Mirath (‘The Inheritance’). As the world moves toward globalization and U.S. Society becomes increasingly multicultural, Khalifeh’s novel seemed an appropriate response to some of the issues faced by offspring of mixed marriages. The protagonist, Zayna—product of an American mother and a Palestinian father—is confronted by situations of the sort that arise in culturally diverse families, regardless of the country of origin of the parents. A constant search for identity is shared among the children of such families, who are torn between two worlds and struggle to adapt to one or the other. For immigrant families from developing countries, the challenge of living in the United States is significant even when both parents belong to the same culture. For children pulled in two different directions, with each parent trying to assimilate them to his/her culture, the difficulties can be insurmountable. Khalifeh addresses many of those issues in al-Mirath.

  The novel explores some of the consequences for Palestinian women of the year of the Nakba (1948), when men found themselves unable to sustain their families. Young women just out of high school stepped up and gladly chose to work in distant lands, assuming the role of the breadwinner. Many of these women helped brothers and sisters acquire higher degrees and succeed in their professional lives, but their siblings, in turn, often paid scant attention to the young women responsible for their success. Often these women sacrificed their futures to guarantee that of their Siblings, turning down marriage proposals to provide for their families. It is this poignant aspect of the first generation of Palestinian young women that Khalifeh artfully portrays, delving deep into the psyche of that generation through the character of Nahleh and providing a frank and often raw description of her experience and feelings.

  With the same directness, Khalifeh takes a highly critical look at the post-Oslo conditions in Palestine, unreservedly delineating the mistakes and the shortcomings of the Palestinian Authority.

  The translation of the novel was challenging to say the least, due to the extensive use of Palestinian dialect, even in narrative text, contrary to the practice adopted by many Arab novelists of limiting the spoken language to the dialogues. Khalifeh’s style in The inheritance is characterized by very long sentences and complex meanings and expressions that do not always find their match in English. Despite the temptation to rewrite the novel, I have stayed as close to the original language as possible while preserving the intended meaning. In this spirit, I have often made use of very long sentences in English and, at times, seemingly interminable paragraphs as I have sought to reproduce the mood of the Arabic style. I have tried my best to recreate the high-spirited and sarcastic undercurrents that run throughout the novel, an important aspect of Sahar Khalifeh’s inimitable style. I have chosen to include Arabic words in the English translation to convey a deeper sense of authenticity in a novel concerned, among other things, with cultural heritage.

  Those words are explained in a glossary at the end of the book. In the same spirit, I observed the Palestinian dialect in the transliteration of colloquial words. Therefore, for the reader used to saying ‘kunafah’ instead of ‘knafeh,’ I beg patience and understanding. I hope I have imparted at least a small sense of the beauty and flow of the original language. If I have failed, the blame rests entirely on me.

  Part One

  Without Heritage

  I went to the West Bank looking for him, looking for them, searching for my own face in the land of exile. I wanted to know how it would look. I had received a letter from a man saying that my father was somewhere; in other words, that he was still alive. He said that he was my father’s brother from Wadi al-Rihan.

  A huge gap separates Wadi al-Rihan from New York and Washington. I had always visualized Wadi al-Rihan as being the opposite of New York, as a small clean town inhabited by simple people, good-hearted and nature-loving, not like New York. Whenever I heard my father talk about the place in the evening, I would run down the stairs, shouting “We’re going back home, we’re going back, we are going back,” But we never did because my father ran away or, to be accurate, I ran away.

  The story began in New York, when my father came from his village and married an American woman, my mother, and as a result acquired a green card and became a resident alien. Then came the divorce, predictably, then the grocery store and other wives and an army of children. Before he had the grocery store, my father sold small items, which he carried on his back, going from door to door. He sold all kinds of merchandise, regardless of its origin, as products of the Holy Land. He would fill small bottles with water and sand and call in the streets, “Holy water and holy sand from the holy river. Do you know Jordan, Madam? Holy water and the baptism of Jesus Christ. Is there a baptism in your family? We have many baptisms in ours, we get baptized every day.” Then my father would add, “I am from Jerusalem and I have brought water from the Jordan River.”

  He had trouble speaking English but managed to communicate in a typical Middle Eastern glib manner. He would display his wares—shiny clothes, pins, and threads—and say to the American housewife, “Look, lady, how beautiful it is! This caftan is hand-embroidered in Arabia, far away, do you know Arabia? The land of sand and camels, dates and incense, gum and the Qur’an. Do you know Mecca?”

  Seduced by the exotic appearance of the man and his merchandise, she would answer with great enthusiasm, “Oh! Mecca! Arabia! Of course, of course, let me see, let me see.”

  “Easy on them lady, look at this and this and this.”

  Then, as if by pure coincidence, he would happen upon something of little importance, an old, faded photo of Husayn I. He would ask her, “Do you see this, lady? It is my father’s photo, he was a great prince, but died. A Bedouin tribe seized his emirate while I was still a young boy. I ran away to Jerusalem, then to Cairo, and later to Marrakech. From there I took a boat to America. Do you see, lady, I am a poor beggar while my father was a great prince!”

  The lady would stare at the photo with eyes wide, seeing a noble face, a white beard, and a large turban on his head. Deeply moved, she would repeat, “Oh dear! Oh dear!”

  My father would say again, broken-hearted, “Do you see, lady, I’m a poor beggar while my father was a great prince.”

  “No, no, never!” the lady would object. Her eyes moving between him and the picture, she would comment, “No, no, never. You’re not a beggar.”

  Looking at him again, she would stare at his black eyes and his glittering dark mustache and whisper to herself in amazement, “His father was certainly a prince, he looks like a prince too. I’ll bet anything you’re a prince!”

  At th
is very moment he would wrap a piece of silk around his head and, standing in front of her, ask flirtatiously, “like so?”

  Visibly moved, the woman would exclaim, “Oh! Goodness me, I can’t believe it! I'll bet anything that you’re a true prince!”

  He would move toward her, saying, “You too are a princess, a sultana, the goddess of beauty and charm, by God Almighty!”

  He would then take another piece of silk, tie it around her waist and swear, by the Prophet Muhammad, master of all Prophets and Messengers, that she looked exactly like Sheherazad, with all her majesty and glory, that she was even the jewel of all Arabs and Muslims, amen. He would swear three times that he would divorce his wife if he were wrong. He would repeat it over and over again, each time saying, “Let’s try this one again, one more time, one more time.”

  This is how he was able to sell Hong Kong merchandise as products of the Holy Land made by former “princes” such as himself. In a few years he was able to open a grocery store in Brooklyn containing everything one could imagine.

  He was naturally successful, not because of his knowledge of English and his fluency, but rather because of his eyes and his mustache and his ability to make up stories and invent dreams.

  I was born to inherit all this. I became a well-known writer in the field of human civilization; in other words, I am an anthropologist. Yet, before becoming what I am now, I made use of my father’s tricks. The story began when I felt the pain of my budding breasts. My stepmother said that that was a hereditary chronic illness in the family. The illness progressed to the point that it made me peep through keyholes and windows that were ajar.

  One day, while I was standing on the roof spying on two lovers kissing in the dark and learning from them, my father caught me red-handed. I had no choice but to invent a story about me fasting and waiting on the roof for the call to prayer. I asked him innocently what time the sun set for iftar, the evening meal at sunset on a day of fasting, in order to break my fast. I explained that I was waiting for Bilal’s call to prayer.

  Bilal was our senile and clumsy neighbor who said he was trying to convert America to Islam by making the call to prayer every day, five times a day. My father looked at me, perplexed, but chose to believe me. I convinced even myself and almost choked with tears from pangs of hunger. I said in a strangled voice, “I’m hungry, I’m so hungry!”

  At night I heard my father reprimand his wife, saying, “Show some mercy—the girl is killing herself with this fasting! See how small and thin she is! Is it acceptable that she prays five times a day, fasts the whole month of Ramadan and makes up for missed days?”

  My stepmother turned in bed making the springs squeak under her huge weight, and said to my father, “Isn’t that what you want her to do?”

  He replied anxiously, “Me! And also to make up for the missed days!”

  She said angrily, “What? What missed days? Why? Pray tell me do you think that your daughter really fasts? She eats like a horde of locusts. She could gobble me up in a single bite as though I were an appetizer. Before lunch she gobbled up seven ears of corn at one go. I tried to stop her but failed. My God, how stubborn she is and unbearable. She is headstrong, a liar, crazy; she never tells the truth. May God protect us from her. I’m afraid she’ll do something like Hoda and embarrass us in the neighborhood.”

  Hoda was the daughter of our neighbors living in the same complex. Like me, she was half-American. She became pregnant at fifteen and we all saw her father run after her in the street like a raging bull, carrying his longest knife. My father tried to stop him, but couldn’t. Finally, with the help of two neighbors they were able to prevent him from Killing her. My father constantly said, whenever he had the chance, “He should have killed her, she sullied his name, stained his honor, and humiliated him among his people. Had I been in his place I would have gone after her to Hell.”

  Hoda was able to escape, however, and took refuge in her American grandmother’s house. We did not see her in Brooklyn again, but we heard rumors. Some said she had kept the baby, others said that she had given him up for adoption. Still, others said that she had had an abortion. Regardless of all the rumors, everyone agreed that Hoda’s father was no longer a man since he had not washed his honor in her blood.

  I heard my father mutter, from his bedroom, “God forbid, God forbid. She said that she was waiting for the call to prayer while I stood there like a billy goat. All I needed was a turban!”

  The following morning my father announced the news, “To hell with America and the Americans. That is it—I’m going back home.”

  He was sitting in front of the grocery store with two of the neighbors, smoking a water pipe. I stood in a corner, watching them expectantly. As I heard the words “old country” I jumped for joy and almost flew up the stairs to the second floor. The words “old country” were music to my ears, as melodious as the long stretch of a mawwal. It was like a miracle, a story similar to that of Aladdin and the magic lamp, with its magic words, ‘shubbayk, lubbayk,’ one of father’s stories, enveloped in smoke, incense, and butterfly wings.

  I pushed open the door and shouted, “We’re going back home, we’re going back home!”

  My stepmother came toward me holding a big wooden spoon that she waved threateningly, “A liar goes to hell, you will go to hell and melt like a candle.”

  I started crying but repeated, stubbornly, “We’re going back home, by God Almighty. I heard my father say it with my own ears. Go listen to him.”

  She hesitated for a few seconds, then rushed to the window, looked below, and heard my father saying, “What are we waiting for, friends? Haven’t we had enough of America and its trash? We all have boys and girls, do you want your daughters to be loose like American girls? Do you want to protect your girls, keep them pure, and bring them up strictly and marry them well?”

  The two men nodded approvingly, and my father became very emotional. He shouted in a voice that could be heard at the end of the street, “There, one really lives, brothers! There you speak Arabic, eat Arabic, drink all-Arabic coffee. Everything is Arabic! If you need help, you find a thousand hands stretched out to help you. It you need money you can take it from a friend, no banks, no checks, and no headaches. At the end of the day you can sit in the cafe for hours on end, then go the mosque or to the diwan. There, people are genuine Muslims, even the Christians are good-hearted and know God exactly as we do. We worship God in a mosque and they worship Him in church. There’s not much difference. As for here, God Almighty protect us from what is here! Is there anything here, please tell me?”

  One of the two men growled, “Hah!” and my father shouted, “Well, well, we all gorge ourselves. I eat and you cat and everyone of us eats to the point of saturation. But pray tell me, the Americans in Saudi Arabia, what are they doing there? Are they defending the Kaaba? Are they being baptized in the River Jordan? Or do they perform the tarawih prayers? Do please tell me what are they doing there?”

  The two men shook their heads without saying a word, provoking my father’s anger. He shouted at them, “Don’t shake your heads like Bilal! Just tell me what they’re doing there?”

  One of them exploded, saying, “They eat our food and take us for a ride! This, in a nutshell, is what they’re doing there. We Arabs, on the other hand, are as stupid as mules and donkeys, and deserve more than that. That’s what they’re doing: they’re screwing us openly and shamelessly.”

  “God forbid,” commented my father.

  The other retorted, “They’re screwing us? I’m the one doing the screwing. I don’t spare anyone, white or black, and I screw them all.”

  My father shouted, “That’s the intention—you screw their daughters and they screw yours. Isn’t that the plan?”

  “God forbid!”

  The first man shouted, “I won’t let anyone touch a hair on one of my girls!”

  “Well, what about Hoda?” my father asked, “What happened to her?”

  The three men bowed t
heir heads for a few minutes until my father ended the discussion, saying, “I want my daughters to be brought up as Arabs, clear and transparent as a candle. I want them to marry Arabs and Muslims, according to the Prophet’s teachings. I want them to be impregnated by Muslims. To hell with America—I’m going back home.”

  My father didn’t return home, however. He opened another grocery in New Jersey, bought a new house, and married a new woman. Then he ran after me in the street, holding the longest knife he had. I was fifteen years old, and pregnant.

  My language was lost before I was lost and so was my identity. My name and address followed suit. My original name was Zaynab Hamdan, and with time it became Zayna. My father was called Muhammad Hamdan and with time I was left with neither Muhammad nor Hamdan. My father’s birthplace was Wadi al-Rihan and mine was Brooklyn. As Zayna I was caught between two languages and two cultures—my father’s Brooklyn and the West Bank on one side and my maternal grandmother’s American culture on the other. I was later left without any culture and lived in a vacuum. My father’s songs, the Qur’anic verses, and the praises of the Prophet were meant to protect me from the negative influence of American culture. Obviously, they did not. There was a simple explanation for this: I didn’t understand the meaning of the words and I didn’t respond to the melodies. There was also my new stepmother, a person who considered the ability to speak English a sign of education, good upbringing, and civilization. Her own English was poor, however, and so was her upbringing. She pronounced p as b and the k as a strong guttural sound. She would say, “abble bie,” “panana sblit,” and “bark your car in the barking lot.”

  As for us children, we were able, thank God, to distinguish a p from a b, but were unable to put together a single meaningful sentence. Our conversation consisted of a strange mix of the two languages, so strange that our American guests wondered whether we went to school to learn reasonably correct English or not. Our relatives didn’t hide their dismay that we did not join the Arab club and learn decent Arabic. To counter such criticism, my father would ask me at the end of each gathering to prove to our honorable American friends my mastery of the English language. I would spend part of the evening standing on a chair, surrounded by bottles of araq and plates of mezze, and the cheers and laughter of the visitors as I recited the verb “to be,” then the verb “to have,” followed by “Twinkle, twinkle little star” and “Row, row, row your boat.” I used to end the show with the American national anthem, accompanied by the loud singing of all the guests. The noise would be so loud that our new neighbors would call the police and the fire department. The scene was repeated with our Arab relatives. I would stand in their midst and stun them with my knowledge of Arabic grammar, enumerating many defective verbs and conjunctive particles, reciting the laudations of the Prophet, and tala‘a al-badru, al-Hamd, and the Fatiha—the first sura of the Qur’an. I would end my performance with an Andalusian muwashshah accompanied by the enthusiastic participation of all those present. By this time dawn had come and the police officers would have returned to the apartment to escort our relatives out of the building and possibly out of New York.