Balcony on the Moon Page 10

  The neighbors see Mother studying all the time. She tells them she has a dream and is working on it. They raise their eyebrows and say nothing. She prefers to think it is the silence of admiration.

  Girls at my school hear about Mother studying the same subjects we are and ask me with a giggle: “Is it true? Is your mother in the same grade we are?”

  “Yes,” I reply. “What grades are your parents in?”

  They giggle more.

  During the three months of the summer vacation after eighth grade, I tutor Mother intensively. I create quizzes and tests for her, and she completes the eighth-grade curriculum with ease, proving better at history, geography, and Arabic than some of my classmates. Her smile is so big she looks like a different woman. “Go have a photo made of you smiling this way,” I tell her. “We have a new person in the house, and she is the student you.”

  But she disagrees. “Only when I get my Tawjihi certificate will the day be worth remembering.”

  When I begin ninth grade, continuing to tutor Mother month after month, not even the shocking visit of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem makes Mother and me change our focus. While the West Bank is put under curfew to prevent any street protests during his visit—leaving everyone in Ramallah to lament that President Sadat broke the previous Egyptian commitment to help the Palestinians gain freedom from Israeli occupation—Mother says that education is the only real hope for Palestinian independence.

  But then our relatives in Jerusalem learn about Mother’s plans and come to visit us to voice their opinions. A few say they are proud of her. Grandma Fatima comes, too. Her basket is filled with plump purple grapes. She tells us that Aunt Amina in Jordan now has two sons in addition to her eleven daughters. But all Mother wants to talk about is education. Grandma says that Mother cannot be stopped. She encourages Mother by telling her that she would have done the same if she had had the chance. Father nods his head in wistful agreement.

  But other relatives disagree. “You have seven children. It is aayb, shameful,” they admonish. To Father they say, “How can you let her do this?” and warn him of the consequences.

  They say the problem is that women should not do certain things and that they must honor the traditional social expectations.

  Father replies that it makes no difference to him if Mother reads novels she likes or reads schoolbooks. Because Mother studies at home, he does not see a problem with her actions. Father does not say that he and Mother have had fewer fights since she began studying and that he enjoys the new peace her studying offers their relationship. But I know that.

  As I listen I see that Mother is a mix of extreme upholding of traditions and extreme rebellion against traditions. I am certain that no one else has a mother like mine.

  She argues with our relatives, defending a woman’s right to work, to speak, to say no, to do anything she needs to be strong and independent. I do not remind her of how she resisted my working earlier. She does not like anyone to point out her inconsistencies.

  I am glad that Mother has changed. The more I learn, the more I change, too, I tell myself. She is also growing. Studying helps expand the mind by offering new perspectives and the bigger picture. By changing our own lives, Mother, Mona, and I are struggling to change what a girl can do.

  But in the spring of ninth grade, the entire West Bank is astonished by news of the actions of a twenty-year-old Palestinian woman, Dalal al-Mughrabi. In comparison, Mother trying to go back to school, Mona finally knowing how to distinguish between the numbers 2 and 6, me working, or even all of us climbing Mount Everest—if we were ever to do so—feels like nothing more than boiling an egg in the kitchen.

  Dalal, a young woman from a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, infiltrated the Israeli border, leading a group of armed fedayeen. She and her group hijacked an Israeli bus to avenge the killing of a Palestinian military leader.

  There was more than thirty hours of shooting and fierce fighting, with blood in the streets, sirens everywhere, many people injured, and others killed, including Dalal. Everyone in Ramallah is shocked that a young woman would do all this.

  The girls in my school are moved to tears by Dalal’s story. They whisper that if we had a country and an army, she would be one of the heroes, like the men who carry arms and fight and die for their people’s freedom. We would name a street after her. Had she lived, she might have become the head of the country, like Menachem Begin, the current Israeli prime minister, who once led a group that committed many massacres in the struggle to create the nation of Israel.

  Some of the girls want to name their future daughters Dalal. But it is not the name that shapes a person, I think, for I have an aunt named Dalal. My aunt cannot even get her husband to stop smoking in their bedroom.

  Dalal’s name, however, on Palestinian tongues, begins to mean courage and resistance rather than its dictionary meaning, which is flirtation. The Israeli newscasters, while mourning their dead, describe Dalal and her group as the most dangerous of terrorists. Israeli military leaders promise severe retaliation against the Palestinians.

  I ask myself what I would say to the world if I published a newspaper. The thought fills me with possibilities. So I bring home a newspaper and cut out articles, words, pictures, headlines, ads, different fonts, and numbers.

  I decide to put the words in different places. Now the word Palestinian is in the place of the word Israeli, and Israeli in the place of Palestinian. What a new world! Menachem Begin, the name of the Israeli prime minister, is switched with Dalal al-Mughrabi, and now he is the terrorist. Dalal al-Mughrabi is in another column about fashion, hair rollers, and beauty.

  I write an article in which she is being interviewed by angels and she says that she did not want to die or to kill anyone, but all the sorrow she saw in her twenty years of life as a Palestinian refugee made death better than life for her.

  Then I put the words violence, retaliation, and terrorism in the obituaries section. Among the dead I place military occupations from anywhere in the world. Among the dead I place all weapons. Among the dead I place cruelty. Among the dead I place discrimination. Among the dead I place history that repeats itself.

  I write a commentary under the headline “The War of the Cousins.” Awlad ammna, our cousins, is the name we call Jews because we come from the same father, Abraham. Their mother is Sarah; ours is Hagar. The article shows how all the violence among people is family violence.

  In an interview with Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite, I spell dynamite in the headline as die-na-might, and he asks forgiveness for the damage his invention has caused many people.

  There is no editor to fight with me about the news. No censor. So I continue. Among the birth announcements, I place freedom for everyone, and a hospital for everyone’s visible and invisible wounds. Whole nations can be admitted free of charge to this hospital so that they can recover from harsh histories.

  Now I publish my newspaper. I realize the pair of scissors and bottles of glue I got from the contest are real presents. The paper looks like it has gone through an operation and is healing, all of its wounds closing. I call it a muse paper and continue creating muse papers, changing painful articles about Northern Ireland, Cuba, Lebanon, Iran, and many other places in Africa to different ones, reversing verbs, rearranging sentence structure, and even changing the horoscope. There is a big section for girls, and one page for ce-liberat-ions: when people liberate themselves from things they do not like and gain new freedoms.

  * * *

  The time comes when I publish an end-of-the-summer issue of my muse paper, dedicated to Barakat family accomplishments: Mother and I have completed the ninth grade, me with a certificate and she without. She will be able to start tenth grade, our first year of high school, along with me, except she will enroll as a full-time student at al-Urduneyyah.

  Basel has finished high school and is getting ready to enter Birzeit University. He is the fi
rst one to go to college in our family, and no one can give him any advice because neither of my parents knows what college life is like. Basel has decided to study commerce. Mother sells one of her gold bracelets to help him with his first-semester tuition. After that, he must manage on his own. He will still be living at home because his college is only a short bus ride from Ramallah, and it is too expensive for him to board there.

  Mona has finished the sixth grade and will enter middle school. Her school uniform will change from blue and white to green and white. Najm has turned six and will begin first grade. He is the only one in our family who writes with his left hand, and he is proud of it. Jamal, the youngest in our family, is now five years old and will enter preschool. He is already eager to be away from home. He wets his hair with water and combs it to the side, and plays at being a teacher by imitating me teaching Mother. With Jamal going to preschool, no one will need to be at home during the day, and that makes it easier for Mother to take the next big step and start attending school. But that big step comes with a big obstacle, too.

  Separation

  For tenth grade, I have to go to a public high school run by the Israeli government, since the UNRWA-run schools for refugees in the West Bank do not extend beyond ninth grade. I now study at Ramallah Secondary Girls School, known for its strict principal and high standards. It was originally founded by the municipality of Ramallah before the city was occupied by Israel. But now, like the rest of the public high schools in the West Bank, the school, including its staff, textbooks, and student activities, is controlled and monitored by al-hakem al-askari, the Israeli military governor who oversees the management of the Palestinian cities that were occupied by Israel after the Six-Day War. I must also leave Mona, who will continue at the UNRWA school and is happy that she won’t be supervised by me. I am content that Mona is growing and can rely more and more on herself.

  But Father has been slowly seething about Mother’s studying at a co-ed school. She told him about al-Urduneyyah only after she applied and was accepted. She explained that if there was an all-girls school that would take her, she would go to it, but there isn’t. Father was upset but said nothing. Since then Mother has been changing before Father’s eyes; she is no longer the woman in the kitchen studying while baking bread and cooking meals for nine people every day, cleaning nonstop, and washing by hand unending piles of dirty clothes. Now she is busy sewing herself a pair of tight pants, to make herself appear closer to the age of a high school girl. She is also on a diet to lose weight so that she can look her best.

  We know that Mother has always believed she looks like a movie star and wished she could be one, or at least be treated like one. She loves to speak about Zubaida Tharwat, Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, and Elizabeth Taylor.

  A big shortcoming of her marriage is that it does not give her the opportunity to dress up often and show others, women especially, how beautiful she is: her small nose, high cheekbones, thick black hair accentuating her rose complexion, coffee-brown eyes, perfectly square teeth, and small feet.

  Mother teases me that my feet are bigger than hers and insists that by all standards she is more beautiful than me and Mona. When I reply that I have big feet for a big journey ahead, she raises her voice: “I am more beautiful.” She also compares the shape of her face, the size of her hands, and the length of her fingers to ours. She never forgets her ability to dance.

  In my heart, I know she is as beautiful as a crisp ray of sunshine in the middle of a freezing winter—hard to ignore. No one can deny that. Father is especially alert to her appearance because many men steal glances at her. While some Muslim women wear the hijab, my parents never speak about Mother’s clothes. The idea of her covering her beauty might create a civil war in our house.

  But one day after Mother has been going to al-Urduneyyah for a few weeks, Father explodes. “I refuse to let you continue to go to this school. You must quit!” he shouts. “I can’t have you sitting near those men who spent time in prison, exchanging notes with them and spending hours in the same room breathing the same air! How can I show my face?”

  My parents now begin to battle in a new way that is more alarming than ever before. Every word they say adds to the distance between them. “No one is going to bury my future alive,” Mother says. She quotes holy sayings to support her dream. “‘Seek education even if it is in China,’ the Prophet Muhammad said to all Muslims, not specifying only men. Al-Urduneyyah is in al-Bireh, much closer than China!”

  When Father does not agree, she takes off her gold wedding band and sets it on the table. Her face is firm like the metal and as radiant with determination. She demands a divorce, then walks out of the room.

  Father stands shocked. According to our family’s Islamic tradition, it is the man who has the power to initiate a separation period or a permanent divorce. He can do so by speaking his intent out loud once, or repeating his words two or three times. But for a woman, unless her wedding agreement grants her aaessmah, equal-divorcing power, she cannot choose to divorce without petitioning an Islamic judge or going to a court of law to seek a legal ruling. My parents’ marriage agreement does not grant Mother aaessmah rights.

  In response to Mother’s defiance, Father gathers a few pieces of clothing, packs them inside a brown paper sack, and leaves the house. He does not say where he is going. Horrified, my siblings and I try to stop him, but his expression tells us that he needs to be alone more than anything else. I pray that he will find the hope he needs in his heart, and also I ask Allah that Father not harm himself in any way. I know what the feeling of despair does to his mind.

  My father is like my mother in that he has two extreme sides. He is sensitive and kind, warm and playful, yet he is also traditional and his temper can erupt beyond his control. We do not know which side will appear, or when.

  As I consider that my parents are going to divorce, I am reduced to muddy confusion. In my mind I see my family about to fall like a chopped-down tree, our home split in two. It would no longer be a place where we gather for happiness or sadness. How will we continue? Who will take care of my younger siblings? How can I do well in high school exams if this trouble continues?

  My parents’ worlds have always been separate in some ways because of their differing educational backgrounds, abilities, ambitions, and ways of reasoning and of solving problems. They are also twenty years apart in age. But the idea that they could leave each other, or one of them leave us, is beginning to destroy even the way I write my name. My hands shake from anxiety.

  Over the years, I have tried to understand my parents. Some days I thought that I grasped their differing perspectives, but now I know I am a child battling the world of grownups without understanding it. Because I don’t understand, I feel betrayed by life—realizing that growing up takes years, not days or minutes.

  My father ignored his illness and made himself go to work no matter what obstacles he had to face. He tried to live day by day. He thought about death as much as he thought about life. He felt lonely and abandoned when Mother did not want to join him in his view of the world. I can never begin to know Father’s great burdens.

  Mother fought endless daily battles to make peace with father’s dangerous illness and the unpredictable life of raising children under the occupation. I can see more clearly than before what she might have felt marrying so young. It is like being thrown into the desert and asked to find her way. How painful it must have been for her to have one child after another, and be responsible for all of us every day.

  But one thing remains clear to me: I support Mother continuing school. That is her right. In my mind I recite article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, personalizing it to her: The Palestinian woman named Mirriam who is married to the man named Suleiman has the right to an education.

  But I also support Father’s need to feel a sense of dignity. He did not invent our society’s conservative traditions.

  “There must be a way to speak
to Father so that he can hear you and remember that his dignity and yours are not different,” I tell Mother.

  She whips around to look at me: “You go talk to him, then!”

  I feel powerless and turn away.

  “I mean my words,” she flares impatiently, then commands: “You. Do. The. Talking!”

  So I become the ambassador between my parents.

  * * *

  After we find out where Father has rented a tiny room, I begin to visit him to convey what Mother says and feels. He responds, and I carry the words back to her.

  I carefully consider the questions and answers they ask of and give to each other: hearing them from Mother’s side, from Father’s side, making sure, when I deliver them, that each word has only the good effect I hope for—that my parents will go back to each other and we will continue our life as a family. When Mother says that Father is anany, selfish, I delete the word and never deliver it.

  She also complains about the culture, her weight, and the many women who settle for small lives and so make her appear strange for wanting to follow her dream. Mother complains so much it is as though I have ears the size of an elephant’s. I do not deliver these thoughts either.

  Father complains differently. He wants to tell old stories about himself and the loss of Palestine. And he has the belief that it is humiliating to tell anyone about desperate fears or feelings; he can only share those things with Allah, to whom he speaks all the time. So I realize that it is through religion that I can get Father to understand.

  I offer that our first mother, Hawwa, Eve, in heaven, ate from the fruit she was curious about and for that she sacrificed living in heaven. She sought knowledge. Mother does not live in heaven. She lives in the West Bank, and also seeks knowledge. The first instruction in the Qur’an is the word iqra’, a command to read with the goal of gathering knowledge. It is the most sacred thing anyone can do: study. Why would he try to stop Mother from doing that?