The Inheritance Read online

I said, “Lebanon is lost.”

  “And Salma, too,” he muttered sadly.

  “Who is Salma?” I asked gently.

  He said, as if” talking to himself, “Beirut’s Salma, Jubran’s Salma, Salma from the Lebanon of the seventies. But Salma’s Beirut is lost and Lebanon is lost and today we are in the nineties. Guevara returned to the bottom of the valley, carrying a rock that Sisyphus had pushed to the point of exhaustion. You have come back as we did; you’ll soon discover that we have lost our dreams in a stolen market and that the seventies aren’t the nineties and that we’re getting older.”

  I looked at him and saw a head swaying with every step he took in the silence of the night. I began to experience his feelings; his pain and fears were transferred to me. They made me swallow the silence and refrain from asking questions or digging up memories that would bring back stories. I didn’t want to hear what he had just said or remember that this valley was Wadi al-Rihan, a stolen market that we had lost, that the seventies were not the nineties, and that we were getting older.

  My cousin went to his room, leaving me alone in the night, a dark night, an oppressive night. I heard him bang against the furniture, then collapse on his bed and drown in silence. I kept walking around the house trying to calm down and restore my heart to its regular rhythm. My thoughts were torn between pity and fear. Should I feel sorry for him or fear him? I wasn’t sure. I was even more confused when I heard his story from someone else and from another point of view. Coincidentally, I heard the two versions of his life story on the same night.

  While he told me the story of Beirut and the revolution, she sang the story of a house and children, the ingratitude of the boys and the worries of the girls. His was a love story, and hers was a story of hunger for a loving touch. His was the story of a leader and a rock, and hers was about small concerns of a schoolteacher who began her life a radiant woman and ended a spinster. A spinster? A spinster! A flat word that conjures selfish personal worries and a barren woman, one like the fallow land, unappealing and uninspiring, like a land without rain.

  Her room was lit and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, with a photo album placed over the comforter. She wasn’t looking at the album but staring at the mirror. She stood as stiff as a statue in front of the armoire mirror. She remained there motionless for a few minutes, while I stood near the door observing her without curiosity. The impact of my cousin’s story made me withdraw from the atmosphere of the house, from Nahleh, and even from myself. The world he had evoked had transported me to Beirut’s echoes, the departure of the ships and the port. We had seen them on television, we had seen them carrying guns and olive tree branches, and wearing kufiyehs. We had seen them after a heavy bombardment and a sky bristling with lights and bombs. Much had been said, much had been written about them, and meeting upon meeting had been held. Then had come the departure of the ships and the caravan on television, just like in films, like at the movies, like in a play.

  She spoke to the mirror, angrily, “What a shame! What a shame! Is this what it has come to?”

  I watched her from behind the shutters that were kept ajar, standing behind them under the cover of night. She repeated her words as if she were talking to me or talking to someone who could hear her, saying, “Is this what it has come to?”

  I thought she was talking with someone or on the phone, but she was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, wearing her dressy shoes. She was looking at the mirror, totally dazed, repeating those words over and over again. I raised my arm and knocked at the shutter, but she didn’t turn toward the sound and continued to stare at the mirror, repeating, “Is this what it’s come to?”

  I knocked once more and whispered, “Nahleh, Nahleh, what’s wrong with you?”

  Then she turned very slowly to me, still dazed, her eyes wide open in a strange way.

  “Nahleh, Nahleh, what’s wrong with you?” I asked again.

  She didn’t answer and continued to look at the mirror, seeming somewhat disoriented. I rushed to the door, then through the hallway to the living room and, finally, to her room. I pushed the door, entered and said, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

  She didn’t reply, remaining motionless. I took hold of her shoulders and shook them, but she didn’t respond or look at me, only turned her eyes toward the wall. She just repeated, almost nonsensically, “Is this what it’s come to?”

  I put my face close to hers, and asked, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

  She turned to me and said straight into my face, “Is this what it’s come up to? You two hide from me?”

  Hide from her? We, hide? Who is we? Mazen and I?

  She went on repeating bitterly, as if the matter were a crime or a catastrophe, “You ran away and went to the party.”

  I immediately sat on the floor, overcome by her words. This reasonable woman with an honorable history in the family, who spent years away from home in Kuwait, earning a good salary, winning her father and her brothers’ respect, was sitting here during the night, looking like someone who had just buried a loved one simply because she didn’t go to the party, because we didn’t take her with us? She looked me in the face and said with suspicion in her eyes, “It was Violet’s birthday, wasn’t it?”

  Then she added with deep anger, almost hatred, “It was Violet’s birthday and you didn’t tell me.”

  I didn’t reply but looked down, trying to understand the situation from her point of view. Then I remembered that when Umm Grace invited me she asked not to tell Nahleh. I understood that Violet and Umm Grace didn’t want Nahleh at the party. Could the matter really justify this dire response?

  I said apologetically, trying to comfort her, “You did not miss anything, the party was boring.”

  She shook her head right and left, still gaping, “Don’t say a thing, this isn’t the point. I don’t care about the party or Violet’s birthday, or even Umm Grace and her stories about Grace, America, Santa Claus, the Christmas tree, and everything she says to prove that she is important and high-class. Neither she nor her daughter is high-class. Her daughter is a hair stylist, nothing more. So why does she act haughty and important—because she’s a hair stylist? Because she’s celebrating her birthday? Since when do hairdressers celebrate their birthdays? High class? That is like Americans and foreigners—so stupid and inappropriate. Even if she celebrates thousands of birthdays, she’ll still remain Umm Grace—Sarah the nurse, whose life was like that of a maid, sleeping in the hospital. Who does she think she is? She doesn’t invite me? Don’t I have anything better to think about than Violet and Umm Grace? How ridiculous would it be for me and you to stand with them before the cake, blow out the candles, and sing ‘Happy Birthday!’ My God, we’re becoming civilized and important! That’s what it’s come to! Happy birthday? Did you all really sing? And you too—did you sing or didn’t you?”

  I didn’t answer her, listening to her anger in total consternation. What lay beneath that deep resentment? Was it Violet? Or the party? Or was it Mazen? There was something hidden deep within her that hadn’t yet surfaced. All this foam and froth was only the surface.

  She insisted, “In God’s name, tell me, did you sing with them or didn’t you? Tell me, tell me.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Despite its tragic and its mysterious aspects, the situation was funny. She stretched her arm and grabbed my skin above the shoulder, saying with deep hatred, “Don’t smile and pretend not to understand. You understand Arabic better than I do and you understand what I’m saying and the whole story.”

  I stopped smiling and looked at her innocently, “What story? I don’t understand.”

  She stared at me suspiciously, and said, “No, you understand very well, but you pretend not to understand. You understand that Mazen is bedazzled by her, by them all. He goes there to drink, eat, and enjoy himself. He acts like a sultan there, sitting on the sofa, laying back and listening to our Arab singers Fairuz, and Umm Kulthum singing al-Atlal. He acts like he�
�s an important man and speaks in riddles. He’s completely foolish and tactless. He’s unemployed, doing nothing with his life, and he acts as if he were Guevara and Layla’s Qays.

  “Is this what I get in life, is this what I spent my youth for—living in exile! Is this why I gave him hard-earned money and sweated in Kuwait! Is this what I end up with? He and they, all of them, all squeezed me like a lemon and then left me behind. They loved and hated, had relationships with more women than the hairs in their beards. They became engineers, with God’s grace, while I worked in Kuwait, being milked like a cow, teaching and bringing them up, but they paid no attention to me and did what they wanted.

  “Each one of them has a large family, one or two wives, and I'm here like a billy goat, cajoling the stricken man, and spoiling the rotten Guevara. He pretends to be a freedom fighter, a fidai, and an intellectual concerned with the grievances of the whole world and yet he can’t handle his own! Instead of going around courting and wooing women, making a fool of himself, he ought to look for a job that will provide him with an income. All he can do is write bad checks while I cover up for him as usual.

  “All my life I raised them, paid their debts, and said amen. I used to say to myself, ‘They’ll be there for me when I need them; after all, no one is safe. I could become ill; I’ll grow old, become senile, and they’ll be there for me in my old age.’ But here I am, with no one who cares about me or asks after me. They didn’t care then and they don’t care now. Goddamn me and them, it’s a miserable life.

  “I sacrificed my life and raised them with my work and now I can’t find anyone to talk to me. Imagine, imagine, even Grace who was first unemployed and then worked as a waiter in Israel has become somebody. Every year he sends his mother and Violet a ticket to visit him in the U.S. When they’re there he loads them with gifts and takes them everywhere, to Florida, to New York, to Disney World, and Epcot Center and other places I’ve never even heard of. Though I funded my brothers’ education with my earnings and sweat in Kuwait, not one of them even thinks of inviting mc on a trip. When they needed me they would send me letters and call me beloved sister, my soul, my eyes, you’re the best of all the most understanding, you Nahleh, the most beautiful and kindest Nahleh, the best Nahleh, by God, I am hard up and I need some money. I would say all right, here you are my brother, take this. Money for that one the money for that one, the father hard up also, with a bad season and my mother ill, needing surgery and hospitalization and the stupid brother wanting to become an industrialist, to make candy and chocolate. Guevara wanted to become a revolutionary, leave his university and wear jeans. Help us Nahleh, only one year to go, may God help you.

  “But one year followed another, claiming a good part of my life. It is slipping away. I suddenly realized this and woke up to find myself old, with many years lost. I woke up and found myself old, without a husband, without a house, and no one to call me Mama. This is how it ended. Do you hear what I’m saying? This is the end for your cousin Nahleh, a forgotten Cow in a barn, now that her breasts are dry. Go tell Guevara that instead of telling people about his philosophy and his worries, he ought to remember me, at least once. He never even once thought of my problems, do you understand what I’m saying? Go tell him.”

  I no longer knew what information to collect or what I had come looking for in my country of origin. In the midst of this overwhelming welter of people’s problems and worries, I lost track of my objectives, which scattered in many directions. If I were ever going to organize my thoughts and understand what was happening around me, I would have to analyze the material, applying the methods of research available to me.

  The first tool for understanding people is their language, their expressions, their news and conversation. Because I spoke broken Arabic, hardly adequate for my personal quest, I undertook to learn my native tongue using books and audiotapes. I began with classical Arabic, then moved to colloquial to understand the language of the street. In time, the spoken language proved insufficient for my research, which convinced me to return to classical, only to find myself lost between the classical and the colloquial. My preoccupation with people’s worries compounded matters. I became aware of the gap between the classical language and people’s worries, and the colloquial language and its capacity to understand people. In other words, classical Arabic offers no insight into people’s worries because it is the language of the censor, the same censor who checks over politicians and the self as well. Thus what escapes the scissors of the censor is trimmed by the scissors of the self. As the language of censorship, classical Arabic lacks truth, while colloquial Arabic is feeble because it has neither commas nor question marks. I had difficulty figuring out what I was hearing, saying, and feeling. Was this the result of America’s influence on me, my research tools, or the language of the people? Was it because I was lost between the two languages, the two awakenings, and the two time zones that I had lost warmth and emotions? Or was my past catching up with me?

  This may explain why I didn’t cry when my uncle announced the tragic news of my father’s death. He said, saddened, “May you be safe, your father died.”

  As I didn’t react, he put his hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes to make sure I had understood what I had heard. I turned my face away from him lest he see my own surprise at my lack of reaction, my inability to feel anything. I even wondered whether that man was truly my father.

  Nahleh came in but didn’t look at me, probably embarrassed by the memory of the birthday night, or she was afraid to mention the word death. She held me firmly and whispered to me sympathetically, “This is life, this is how it ends” She cried intensely, but I believe that she was crying not for my father but for her broken dreams, as I had in my youth. Then Futna came in and delivered the earthshaking news, that she was pregnant; it had been confirmed by her doctor in the Hadassa hospital. Everyone gathered around the deceased discussing the situation with gestures. My cousin Said, the factory owner, rubbed his hands nervously, and said with some anger, “By God, she won’t get what she wants!”

  I smiled and thought that the cunning woman had done it! I smiled to her discreetly, recalling our past conversation about the effect of a male child on the issue of inheritance. My uncle accepted the matter without comment, but opened the palms of his hands in a sign of submission to God’s will and said, with affection and compassion, “God be praised, life is born from death!” Mazen finished his father’s sentence with realistic gloom, saying, “And the dead is born of the living.”

  Nahleh, on the other hand, unable to hide her anger, could not help saying, “We’ve lived long enough to see people become pregnant through wishful thinking!”

  The news spread as fast as the plague, transforming the mourning gatherings into noisy beehives, and people’s whispers sounded like the buzz of flies as they repeated, “Futna is pregnant, Futna is pregnant.” Some gulped, others stared, while Nahleh mumbled in the midst of the buzz, “We live and see.”

  My uncle’s wife was as pale as saffron and her cousin got hold of my uncle in the kitchen where the sugarless, cardamom-filled coffee is prepared. He said words we didn’t hear, but his whispers lasted for a very long time.

  The news of Futna’s pregnancy spread in the streets and houses. Women peered through their windows, salesmen stood still in their shops, talking, inquiring, gulping. Some objected, saying, “It’s impossible, this is a conspiracy, she did it to get the inheritance, but Abu Jaber and his children are more deserving of it. As for his daughter, neither she nor his wife count—his daughter is from an American seed and his wife is a prostitute without a permit. One is a stranger and the other is a judgment, a judgment from God. What a shame!”

  The family gathered in the sitting room after the burial and ate the traditional mansaf, mounds of rice and meat. Futna sat on the sofa in a focal place of the room and placed a cushion behind her back to support her. She was pale without makeup and her blonde hair resembled straw after her lamentations ov
er her husband’s death. The mourners sat quietly; we could only hear the clack of their prayer beads and their angry breathing. The loudest breathing, however, was my uncle’s, caused by his stroke and old age, and Said’s due to his excessive weight, the narrowness of his nasal passages, and a stomach stuffed to the rim with mansaf.

  Nahleh, dressed in black from head to toe, inquired of Futna, “How far along are you in the pregnancy, may God protect you from the evil eye?”

  Futna arched her back to reveal her pregnancy, but her belly was as flat as a tile. Neither deterred nor insulted, she said, apprehensively, “It’s still at the beginning, maybe two months.”

  Said’s breathing rose and his prayer beads fell to the floor, but he didn’t say a single word. Unfazed, Nahleh continued her inquiry, “Maybe two months? But my uncle has been bedridden for two months and he was unconscious from his stroke for sixty days.”

  “Fifty-eight,” corrected Futna.

  “Oh!” said Said mechanically, while his eyes popped behind his glasses until they almost reached the lenses.

  My uncle commented in his usual kind and affectionate way, “Poor Muhammad, in God’s name, everything is a matter of fate. I wish he had lived to see the son he had hoped for. He married seven women, but they gave birth to girls only. Well, you might give us a boy that would carry his name.”

  Looking toward the window, Said repeated, “A son who inherits his name.”

  Staring at his son, my uncle said, “A son who would inherit his name and his money—it is his right, his own. All we wish for is safety and Muhammad’s son.”

  Said shook his head nervously and repeated angrily, “Muhammad’s son!”

  No one commented, but Futna blinked and I continued to watch the others in excited anticipation.

  Total silence fell on the place, broken by Nahleh’s inquiring words, “I would like to know, dear Futna, why we learned of your pregnancy only after my uncle died?”