The Inheritance Read online

  They all fell silent as if the raven of gloom had perched on their heads. What could they tell the engineer, that he was lying? He wasn’t lying, he was educated and informed, he was well-traveled and knowledgeable about science and industry. He had specialized in chemistry and geology. They, on the other hand, were in this condition because they had lost touch with civilization. They knew that the outside world was either a paradise or a world of djinns, while they lived in a prison, a big prison. They had become like cave men after a quarter of a century under occupation and the years of the Intifada with the chaos it caused.

  The engineer turned to Mazen and asked him, “What about you, would you join in?”

  Mazen looked at him surprised, and asked, curiously, “Me, join in?”

  The engineer replied, enthusiastically, “Yes you, who else, why won’t you join in?”

  Mazen explained, with a hesitant and stupid smile, “How would I join in? With what? I have neither money nor capital.”

  He turned to Nahleh, winked at her and said, “I didn’t leave Kuwait with a compensation, either.”

  Nahleh replied, “Well, well, well, it’s your turn, Bint Hamdan. We’re back to the usual story: Dear sister, beloved sister, would you lend me money to get through this difficult time? Get off my back, you disgust me. None of you has a claim to the compensation. By God, I won’t join such a group.”

  Mazen said laughingly, “Come back, come, why are you running away?”

  The father and the two brothers laughed as well.

  The following day, the engineer heard the same story from visitors who filled the house. He insisted however, wondering, “Is it possible, Father, that you refuse to sell a small piece of land that is two to three dunums in size?”

  The father replied angrily and stubbornly, “I won’t sell even half a dunum, or a speck of earth, or even a mint growing near the pond.”

  The visiting realtor started paying attention and began his calculations. Those words are worth thousands, what did they say, two to three dunums?

  The engineer said enthusiastically, “I have already said that modern agronomy does not require dunums or hectares. You can plant the largest tree in a small bucket.”

  The father asked, surprised. “Since the land has no value why are the Jews killing themselves over it?”

  The realtor asked, curious, “But why are you upset?”

  Nahleh explained, gently, “They want Dad to sell, but he doesn’t want to.”

  Her father heard her and replied, sharply, “I’m not a seller or a trumpeter. He who sells his land sells his soul, and I’m not selling.”

  Mazen intervened saying, “Alright, alright, Father, who said sell?”

  The realtor understood and began shifting his eyes between the brothers and their beloved sister, between the father and his beloved daughter. In brief, the father wouldn’t sell the land, which means that the deal wouldn’t materialize. Why should he bother then? There was another deal, rather two deals in one, the factory and industrialization. This is a period of industrialization, when everyone was singing the praises of industry and industrialization. The West Bank would become the Hong Kong of the Arabs, and Gaza would be the Taiwan of the Middle Fast. All this would happen with industry and scientists. The engineer has the knowledge and he, the realtor, has the money. If he were to combine his money with the knowledge of the scientist, the industrialization project would be in his pocket. The realtor, son of a shepherd and a peasant, would become the owner of one factory, then factories, and later a prominent industrialist, with an educated wife from a prominent family who knows about perfume and caviar. He turned to Kamal and asked him seriously, in a sharp voice, “Do you want a partner?”

  Everyone paid attention and silence fell on the place. He added, “I would be your partner.”

  Nahleh smiled smartly and whispered to herself, joyfully, “By God, he is a man, the best of all men, a planner, that’s what you are, my man.”

  The news spread like lightning, like a tire in dry stalks. People were saying, “Abu Jaber’s son and the realtor plan to build a factory as big as this country. Abu Jaber’s son is like the Germans, he studied in Germany and is considered a genius. He was always the best in his class. He was ranked first in the high school exam and received a scholarship to study in Germany. When the Germans discovered his brilliant mind they kept him in their country.”

  People were respectful of countries that took care of their bright youth, but they resented the fact that their countries would be left with the garbage. They repeated constantly, “Those who have brains run away overseas, to study, work, and live, but for whom? For the others, and only the useless, the worthless, and the helpless stay-in our country. But aren’t we exaggerating? Look at Mazen, one of Abu Jaber’s children, he was the best and most handsome of them all, he was called Mazen Guevara, Mazen Hamdan Guevara, his fighter’s name. Enough about Guevara or Barara, we’ve had it with theories and meaningless talk, we want to breathe, to live, to have streets m good repair, we don’t want streets that look like those of a stone mine or a fish market. Everything is broken, torn, and worn out. There isn’t a clean street, a clean house, or clean air. This is no way to live. Let’s see, does this genius engineer work like the Germans or is he more like his brother—full of himself and delivering only words? You say he’s like the Germans?”

  When the nature of the factory became known, people were astounded. They said, “By God! Are you kidding? I can’t believe it, man, what are you saying? Is it possible? A recycling and sewage factory? Are you serious? A factory to can garbage? Can sewage be canned, as well? Like beer? You don’t say! Oh man, God is great! A factory to can sewage, garbage, and scrap iron. Who buys it after that? Who eats it? Will the garbage be used as fertilizer and the sewage water for us to drink? Don’t talk nonsense, is this all Abu Jaber’s son is offering us? Is this what he brought from overseas, from Germany? A recycling and sewage factory? What a story!”

  The news spread from house to house and from one catéé to another, and around the city stores. The conversation went this way, “A sewage factory and a shit factory, this is what Abu Jaber’s son brought from Germany. It means that your shit comes back to you in a can like the beer can and you would drink it and get drunk from its smell. This is how Germans are, this is a science, sir. This world is crazy! What’s worse is that the realtor was fooled by the project and believed the story. He’s going around bragging to everyone that they’re working for the future, for history, for the people and the country on the best project ever. But did the best project have to be a shit project? A project to can garbage and shit? Garbage in sardine cans and shit in sealed bottles! A factory for canning garbage!”

  Kamal’s problems didn’t end with the people’s comments. He faced serious resistance from the municipality, whose position puzzled and shocked him. When he applied for the permit the council was divided; half of its members agreed and the other half objected. Those who voted against the project argued that garbage was public property, like sewage, the sources of water and springs. If Abu Jaber’s son was allowed to open the sewage, scoop from it and industrialize it, how can we guarantee that another engineer would not ask for a permit to open the springs and the water reserve! Water is, naturally, public property belonging to the municipality and to both sides of the government, the Palestinian Authority in power and the authority over its power, in other words, an authority that rules but doesn’t govern. If a person satisfies the Authority, he might upset the power, and if the power is not pleased, it will not trust you or provide you with facilities to deal with the environment and its sewage. It won’t even allow you to enter the municipality. As a result you would become entangled in multiple layers that would only lead to headaches.

  To make a long story short, the counsel was internally divided, and Kamal, Abu Jaber’s son found himself fighting a battle he didn’t understand. He didn’t know the reason for the delay in issuing a permit. In his mind things were very
clear: everyone, on both sides of the political power would benefit from the reduction of garbage. The German-educated engineer truly did not understand the way things worked over here and what knowledge meant. He did not comprehend the logic of the bureaucrats, that of the administrators, the security officer, and all those entrusted with such matters: the protectors of the green line, the red line, and the color of blood, the blood of the Israelis. All that meant stepping into layers of interaction much more complex than the layers of the earth. Abu Jaber’s son was familiar with the geological earth layers because he had studied them in Germany and received the highest grade in the subject, but he didn’t know these other layers because he wasn’t gifted in that art. Such gifts are either innate in a person or can be picked up from one’s environment, then assimilated. Kamal’s environment, as we know, didn’t prepare him to work in this field because he was brought up by Abu Jaber and educated by the Germans.

  The realtor, on the other hand, was qualified and had made his money using the system. He had bought the land from the peasants for almost nothing and had sold it at the price of gold. He had acquired experience and a good knowledge of people, both in the rural and urban areas. City people were of a different kind, there were the rich and the poor, the honest and the dishonest, but there were fewer of the former and more of the latter. It’s possible to sort them out and discover their true intentions by waving of a dollar. It then becomes easy to buy and sell and acquire anything for a price.

  The two partners sat in an office facing a computer, a fax machine, and a cordless telephone. Feeling grim, the engineer exclaimed, “I can’t understand, I’m either crazy or retarded! It’s only a permit, a plain, simple permit. Look at the quality of the offer, the machines, the sophisticated designs, even the Germans said that they were a masterpiece, but the ignorant council doesn’t like them and says that they’re incomplete. Incomplete! How can the designs be incomplete? Their brains are what’s incomplete. They’re ignorant, illiterate and corrupt.”

  The realtor stared at his partner with the piercing eyes of an eagle, those of a merchant and a real estate agent. He knew that he would face many problems with his partner because of his naivetéé and stupidity. Despite his university education and his brilliant project approved by the Germans, he was stupid and conceited, stupid because he believed that knowledge and maps alone suffice, and conceited because he described the members of the council as ignorant, as if it were a shame to be ignorant! Let’s see who’s ignorant! To test his partner, the realtor said, “Come with me to learn the art of real work.”

  The engineer looked intently at the realtor and saw before him nothing but a heap of angst, a legally blind old man, yet he was a man who could see well through his seemingly closed and malicious eyes. When he aimed his eyes at a target, he hit it with the force of a bullet. He wasn’t that old either, his colored hair didn’t indicate his true age. His erect stature exuded liveliness ever since he-had fallen in love, so that he now appeared even taller than Mazen Guevara. His quick, hopping walk was definitely faster than Guevara’s, forcing anyone walking with him to run to keep up. No one could keep pace with him as he climbed the stairs of the Custom Offices or the municipality.

  The distinguished engineer thus found himself tagging along with the realtor, climbing the stairs of the municipality short of breath, moving from one office to the other and from hallway to hallway, shaking hands, saying, “Thank you,” “Excuse me,” “Whatever you want,” and “Amen.” This German university graduate was imitating the realtor, echoing his words like a parrot, saying, “As you like sir,” “I owe you, tell me sir, what you want.”

  When the realtor would say, “There is an abundance of goods and people are supportive of one other,” the engineer would echo his words as if dazed or bewitched, repeating, “People are supportive of one other.” He would then seethe banknotes roll above and under the table, in the hallways and behind the partitions. Then, suddenly, and without much ado he held the permit in his hand. He was extremely happy and ran down the stairs of the municipality laughing and shaking his head, saying to himself, “What a story! What a permit! What a people and what a municipality!”

  The realtor watched him, smiling and feeling somewhat sorry for him, as he said proudly, “Let this be a lesson for you, Mr. Engineer!”

  There was a frenzy of projects, everyone thinking of nothing else, talking and dreaming projects. The citizens and those relocated, and even the settlers thought of nothing else: how to seize the opportunity during this construction frenzy, in an atmosphere of peace and a general aversion for the poverty caused by wars, the Intifada, chaos, and broken bones. They were seeking projects with a guaranteed and quick gain. This was the question on everybody’s mind as they rushed to be the first to seize a long awaited economic opportunity. They were impatient, repeating the same story everywhere: “We are fed up with words; today, only money talks. Let’s see, do you have a project? Do you want a partner? Count me in.”

  Everyone was swept up in a whirlwind of activities, in projects needed by the country, whether they required cement, bricks, aluminum, or iron. There were housing projects, hotels, parks, restaurants, some small, some big, one for grilled food and chicken, and another for tikka and tandouri with spice, and tikka without tandouri and spice, a pizza restaurant, and an all-salad, falafel, ful, and shawirma restaurant. Why all those restaurants, people wondered? It appeared that the government had liberalized the import market and made it custom free. This meant that cement was available for all and so was aluminum, but it was better not to even think about a textile factory or dream of opening a canning factory. Where would one find a lot to plant and water to irrigate it? Even cucumber is imported nowadays and so are corn, zucchini, and okra. Everything is imported tax-free. Everything is open at present, everything!

  People scurried to projects that specialized in providing services in tourism and food, with no other aim but financial gain. The dream of industrialization, the Taiwan of the East, Korea, and Hong Kong were things of a past filled with obsolete dreams. Others, in Moscow, Cuba, Iran, and Algeria had similar dreams that were like delusions at first, then turned into nightmares; let this be a lesson for the renegades.

  Mazen surprised me with a new project. Pointing to his head, he said, “The project begins here.”

  According to him, the mind is man’s treasure, the most valuable of our possessions. It” it moves, we move, it is the leader. He told me stories about the effect of the camps on the minds of the youths, he said that education in the camps is the latest earthquake, and he wondered why we shouldn’t try to shake people up? So we started planning for the project. It consisted of a large house or an old abandoned castle that we would renovate and transform into a cultural center, a home for intellectual and artistic activities. That same evening we told my uncle that we were looking for an old castle to bring the past into the present, to refresh people’s memories through art and culture and prove that we were still there despite failures and a maze of losses. He looked at us and asked, bewildered, “Art and a stage? With spectators looking at us? Is this how low we have fallen?”

  I immediately started working on the project. I found a castle, or rather a fortress, located on a forgotten hill between Natanya and Wadi al-Rihan, overlooking valleys and mountaintops. The place had been inhabited by a tax collector dotting Ottoman rule. We could see the lights of the sea, those of the port, the western fog, and the clouds of winter from its highest window above the stable, and from the soldiers’ rooms and the guards’ rooms. Fall was beginning to reveal itself on the hills and in the trees, we could see the apricot leaves looking like gold leaves under the sun before they broke and fell. Then came dust and wind from the west, blowing drizzle, accompanied by the warmth of the sea and the taste of salt. After the drizzle, the weather cleared up and the sun returned resplendent, covering the valleys in red.

  We renovated the courtyards of the fort and redrew the partition of the open spaces in the hallw
ays, the rooms, and the entrances. We transformed the stable into a theater, and the cells at the entrance of the fort became welcome stands and ticket booths. The roof above the wheat storage rooms and the soldiers’ cells became a summer caféé and a cafeteria. As for the reception hall and the garden, they were reserved for musical performances, summer festivals, and poetry recitals.

  Mazen commented on the project in these words, “They defeated us through the war but we will defeat them with our culture. This is a cultural struggle.”

  I smiled, as despite my doubts I had no other choice. What would I do other than go back to America and return to a life of estrangement? That was definitely not my choice.

  Mazen said again, enthusiastically, “By God, this is cultural struggle!”

  I smiled, exasperated by Mazen’s ability to give things, events, and situations unusual names that sounded almost like advertisements or slogans lifted directly from a decree or a pamphlet. His stripping things of their innocence and freshness by giving them those names often disturbed me. Yet, when I remembered how he had been brought up, how he had lived, and how he had been defeated, I told myself to get control of my emotions. He has had the satisfaction of having lived the glories of the revolution and of having given to it generously. He didn’t hold anything back. I don’t care how he was brought up or how he explains things, what counts is his ability to give generously. Let him call things whatever he likes, what counts now is action.

  We were dreaming of a grand opening with music, a play, poetry reading, folk poetry, and dance. We wanted a festival that would bring the notables of the country and artists from all over the world. We knew, however, that this dream couldn’t become reality before the end of winter or the beginning of the following summer. It would take time to pave the mountain roads, to level the fields, to prepare the parking lots, the entrances, and the booths, as well as the halls and the cafeteria. All that required the efforts of hundreds of workers and technicians. Yet, in spite of the availability of workers due to the closure of the West Bank and the hiring of Koreans to work m Israeli factories to replace the Arabs, work didn’t advance fast enough because construction materials were difficult to find. We were faced with many problems in connection with the telephone fines and the sewage pipes. Visitors created a problem as well, first my uncle came, then Nahleh, Kamal, Said, Umm Grace, and the realtor. Then there was Violet with her undecided and melancholic personality, besieging me with looks of doubt and anticipation at seeing Mazen springing back eagerly to action after his past apathy. Was I the cause of this enthusiasm? Was the work in this castle the cause of the interruption of his visits to her? Had I invented the idea of the cultural center to take him away from her? She didn’t ask me these things in so many words but I could read the questions in her eyes. Then came the day of the confrontation, the day the accounts were settled, an unforgettable experience and one that opened my eyes about Violet, Nahleh, Futna, and myself, that is, my future here as a single woman without a man.