Balcony on the Moon Page 6
Two boys appear within minutes, and one of them is my brother. Surprised, Muhammad looks at Father, the truck, and all of us now rushing to greet him. We embrace him, pat his hair, pretend to bite him, and tell him that he smells like a Bedouin from the pre-Islamic times who has just stepped into this century. But he is not happy to see us.
“Your son came here and asked to stay with my son, Najeh,” the man explains. “They are classmates, and I know that many families are torn up by the political conditions, with many fathers who resist the occupation being arrested or disappearing, leaving behind children and wives. I didn’t know about your situation, and I thank Allah that Muhammad has an intact family.” He looks at us, and when we don’t respond he continues: “These two boys have been doing much work together. Muhammad is a hardworking boy and is sure to turn into a good man.”
Father nods his head and fights for words. “It is time to come home,” he finally instructs Muhammad.
“I do not want to,” Muhammad replies. “I am happier here away from people, away from everything. Please let me stay and live here.”
“Ya bnayie, my young son, you must come home with us. It is enough generosity that your friend and his father hosted you for five days.”
The Bedouin man tells Muhammad to listen to Father, and Muhammad finally gets into the truck.
No blaming happens when we get home. No questioning. Muhammad is only asked to bathe and eat. My parents tell us not to talk about Muhammad’s running away so that we can put it behind us. But Muhammad’s return is never complete. To me, he looks like he has aged five years in those five days. He seems different, and I wonder when he’ll next feel overwhelmed and decide to run away.
“Let me read you a story,” I tell him as I bring a book and open it, pretending to begin. He looks on as I murmur: “What did you do and see and learn? I wished I could run away with you so you would not be alone.”
He smiles. “All that time, I felt afraid, but more than fear I also felt free and strong. I wished we were still Bedouins, like the old Arabs. I learned a song that shepherds sing, smoked cigarettes, drank bitter coffee, climbed hills, milked a goat, drew on the ground with sticks, and Najeh and I made thick mustaches above our lips with cold charcoal from the fire pit and pretended to shave.”
“You smoked cigarettes?”
“Yes. I even rolled one. It made me happy, and I forgot about the anxiety that fills me without my knowing why.”
“Please do not continue. It smells terrible and can make you sick. You will start coughing and will not be able to run and play soccer after a while.” He pretends not to hear me, so I ask, “What else happened?”
“A stray dog carried my jacket away. I ran after him and then stopped because I thought he might attack me. I watched him disappear with it. My favorite jacket! I cannot run away again without it because I cannot ask you to watch for a gray spot on the horizon.”
I laugh. Then a dog barks in the distance, and to make Muhammad laugh with me I say it is the dog with the red jacket, hoping that Muhammad will give him a pair of pants to go with it.
* * *
In a few days, my parents decide it is time to move back to Ramallah. They do not want Muhammad riding the bus after school with Najeh every day, even though Najeh’s father now knows that Muhammad has a family and won’t let him stay overnight again. The owner of the truck Father drives lets him use it for the move. He also recommends Father to a friend of his who will give Father a new part-time driving job in Ramallah. Father will have a second job cutting stones and building houses.
Before we leave, I go to carve my name on the fig tree in the yard, but I can’t bring myself to injure the trunk this way. Standing there, I remember Mother’s favorite book, The Good Earth, which she read repeatedly under this tree. “I shall name you the Good Fig,” I whisper to the tree as I embrace its trunk.
When Muhammad and I descend the forty-five steps for the last time, I tell him, “We move so often, we are like Bedouins anyway.”
“By the time we graduate from high school, everyone in the country will have been our classmate or neighbor for thirty seconds,” he jokes.
The minute Father drives away from Beitunia, all of us children in the back of the truck lean on the piled-up furniture and sing out loud. We look not at the road behind us, but forward to the city of Ramallah. We are going to begin the adventure of residing in the Ramallah neighborhood Ein Musbah, Spring of the Lantern. As our truck navigates the winding road toward Ein Musbah, the word lantern glows in my mind and I imagine I could read a book by its light. This makes me eager to get there.
PART III
Spring of the Lantern
1975–1980
Demonstration
Our apartment in Ein Musbah is in the middle of Ramallah on top of a hill. It is on the first floor of a three-story building that is surrounded by giant houses—some of them five or six stories tall. In the afternoon, the wind blows from the valley below, where the spring is located, and creates music as it travels through the television antennas on the roofs. If Beitunia is wealthy, our street in Ein Musbah is wealthy squared or cubed.
I thank Allah that we do not have one of the big houses with many floors because that would take from morning to evening to clean.
There are also tin-roof shacks tucked around us in Ein Musbah. They look like make-believe houses built by children, but they shelter families and are hidden between the large homes. I do not know why this great contrast exists. It is as though there are many different Ramallahs.
Mona and I are happy that once again we are going to an UNRWA refugee school for girls. No one there will tease us for wearing the same shoes every day, or give us derogatory glances because our winter coats are worn out and our shabby schoolbags have holes that our pens fall through.
When Mona and I walk to school, leaving behind the affluent neighborhood, we pass a stark area with abandoned homes that belonged to people who left during wars and have never come back. The yards are overgrown and the doors are open. The buildings appear filled with mystery.
Near the abandoned houses are fenced-in homes, indicating that people live there. But the only person we ever see is a man Mona and I call the shabah, ghost-man. Sometimes he shouts unexpectedly from his windows and startles us as we walk by on the road. He thinks we want to trespass.
After the ghost-man’s house, we pass a bakery where the aroma of freshly baked bread fills the street. The aroma quickly disappears when we cross through a big bus station full of exhaust fumes.
When we enter the central street of Ramallah al-Tahta, Lower Ramallah, with its outdoor market and shops, the air is scented with roasted pistachios, almonds, peanuts, and pumpkin and watermelon seeds. We see pyramids of herbs and spices—green thyme, burgundy sumac, golden cumin, and orange saffron. Big barrels of freshly roasted coffee make the street smell like a morning kitchen.
As we pass the small hesbeh, farmers’ market, vendors line our path on both sides. The vendors are always singing funny lines to attract people’s attention: Asabeea al-bubu ya khyar, cucumbers as soft as infants’ fingers. Ala al-sikkeen ya batteekh, the knife has cut the melon; come taste before buying.
Mona and I always stop to buy an apple. Mother insists that we eat an apple a day because it “keeps the doctor away.”
At the farthest end of the market is our new school, Ramallah Middle School for Girls, nicknamed Um Nader’s School, after the name of its principal. It is an elementary and middle school with classes up to the ninth grade. I am starting the seventh grade and Mona is going into the fourth grade. This school is in a small house with a few extra classrooms built onto it, and has a big yard. Each grade stays in the same classroom all day and the teachers come to us.
Um Nader’s School has more learning opportunities than Beitunia’s, including a science club, a cooking class, a knitting club, a dabke folk dance group, and a beginners’ music class. The school owns one small melodica and one flute, and students can ta
ke turns practicing.
The principal asks me what hobbies I have. I tell Um Nader that I like to learn everything, but if I had to choose, then I especially love sports and writing in Arabic and English. She says I can start a pen pal club in the school. That will encourage other students to begin corresponding and improve their writing skills. Our club members can choose to write in Arabic for local pen pals or use English to write internationally through a global organization in Europe.
Um Nader’s school also offers me the new experience of studying with Ustaz Khaled al-Tahhan, who is the only male teacher among the school’s staff of female teachers. The word ustaz means a male educator. Ustaz Khaled comes every day from Jerusalem to teach us science and English. Blond-haired with a light complexion reflecting his name—Tahhan, one who grinds flour—he is clever and energetic, and has a sense of humor that he occasionally mixes with a dash of mockery, enough to leave some girls in tears for the rest of the day.
Iman, who sits next to me and has green eyes and curly hair that she irons every morning as though it is a dress, spends a lot of time criticizing Ustaz Khaled. She thinks he humiliates us, and she complains that he directs all his mean comments to her in particular.
“Impossible!” I say. “He likes you as much as he likes everyone else.”
“No, he does not,” she says, frowning.
For several weeks, I listen closely to how Ustaz Khaled treats her to see if she is right, but in spite of what she says, I find no reason to think that he picks on her.
I decide that Ustaz Khaled acts in humorous ways mostly to entertain himself, so that he can tolerate teaching thirty-one girls who sometimes do not understand a science concept or an English grammar problem but do not say so. “All is clear and understood?” he asks. “This will be on the midyear exam.” Everyone nods. He then quizzes us to see if everyone really grasped the new lesson, only to realize that many have nodded their heads to move past the question or because they are too shy to speak to a male teacher.
So in every class he paces, explaining things again, and always injecting his signature words: “Banat, girls—your brain, use it or lose it.” He also tosses pieces of chalk from the back of the classroom over our heads, all the way to the edge of the chalkboard. If the chalk lands on the tray of the board, he celebrates as though he’s made a shot in a basketball game. If it lands on someone’s head, he pretends it did not happen and looks away. Some girls cry when it hits them and some giggle. Ustaz Khaled has never hit me with the chalk, but if he does I will throw it at the board and hit the tray.
I like Ustaz Khaled, and although he never shows that he favors me any more than Iman or anyone else, he often encourages me to challenge him, which I have no problem doing because, thanks to Mother, I (and my siblings) know how to talk back, argue, and fight. Mother does not want us doing this with her, but because she does it, we have learned to do it.
Ustaz Khaled likes to help our class improve in every way. When it is exam time, he tells us it is easier to remember things backward, suggesting that we start from the most recent information to the oldest when we review, not the opposite. Regarding winter, he explains that heat leaves from our heads and ears, so he encourages us to wear hats and forget how our hair looks. About color, he tells us that green rests the eyes, so he reminds us to look often at nature.
Rumor has it that he and Sitt Wasfeyyah, our history, geography, and social sciences teacher, like each other. The girls can’t stop gossiping about it.
Sitt Wasfeyyah appears shy and has a reserved smile. But she is also the school’s fashion model, and every piece of clothing she wears becomes the topic of great conversation: Were too many of her shirt buttons undone? Did the charm on her necklace match her nail polish? Her earrings, her high heels, even her handwriting on the chalkboard are a source of fascination.
When we return from the midyear break, the gossip is confirmed. Ustaz Khaled and Sitt Wasfeyyah come to school together, wearing gold engagement bands.
Despite all the adoring attention he gives Sitt Wasfeyyah, and even after they marry and move their rings from their right to their left hands, Ustaz Khaled does not change the enthusiastic way he teaches us. He seems to love teaching as much as he loves Sitt Wasfeyyah.
One day in the spring he arrives in class with no books or papers. “I have a riddle,” he begins. “And I am one-hundred-percent certain that only one person in this class will know the answer.” We all listen to him intently as he tells the riddle: “A man came to a merchant in a money market and gave him a rare gold coin dated 500 B.C. The merchant studied the coin, flipped it back and forth noticing the minting date etched on both sides, held it in his palm to check its weight, tossed it on the ground to hear its ring, then told the man that the coin was fake, and refused to take it. How did the merchant know?”
Everyone in class raises their hands to answer, and I do, too. I also think that Ustaz Khaled is mistaken: the question is easy, and I expect half the class will know the answer.
He calls on every girl but me, and after each answer says: “Wrong.” When the bell rings, he looks at me. “Ibtisam, tell them the right answer!”
“How can you know, before I speak, that my answer is going to be right?”
“Because I am a smart teacher,” he says, smirking.
I give my answer: “How could the maker of the coin know that in five hundred years Jesus would be born? This is impossible. So the merchant refused the coin because no one would make coins with a date predicting an event happening half a millennium in the future.”
Class is over. Ustaz Khaled concludes: “Many of you will be cheated by fake coins and false ideas if you do not start thinking harder. Banat, girls—your brain, use it or lose it!” He tosses a piece of chalk to the tray to emphasize his point, then leaves the classroom.
* * *
A few days later, another unexpected challenge to our thinking appears at the door when we are waiting for Sitt Wasfeyyah to arrive and teach our history class.
“Walad! A teenage boy!” Some girls gasp. “This is an all-girls school, and you should leave immediately,” one girl shouts at the young man, who appears to be a couple of years older than us.
But he waves his hand to dismiss her, comes into our classroom, and stands in front of the chalkboard. He looks at our questioning faces and begins speaking. “I am a student in high school and care about my education, too. I am here to let you know that most of the students in Ramallah schools have taken to the streets today. A huge demonstration is forming.” He uses hand gestures to emphasize his words. He urges us to leave school and join in the protest.
There is silence now.
“But did Um Nader, the principal of our school, permit you to come to our class and announce this news?” I ask.
“No,” he replies with a tense smile. “I climbed over the barbed-wire fence in the backyard of the school.”
I smile back because his answer reminds me of the time my older brothers and I climbed similar army fences near our stone house. The sense of triumph in being able to jump to the other side in spite of torn-up clothes and bleeding hands is unforgettable.
The young man then explains the urgent news about the Tal al-Zaatar refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. Created by UNRWA after the Nakba, it is less than one square mile and holds over fifty thousand Palestinian refugees. “The camp is under siege by armed Lebanese militias that want the Palestinians and the fedayeen out of Lebanon,” he says. “The militias claim that there are fedayeen among the camp residents. Hundreds of people got killed, and the refugees inside are now starving and dying of thirst as we speak. We must all join the demonstration in the center of Ramallah,” he urges. “We need to let our people in Lebanon know that they are not alone. And we need to chant loudly so that this world, which pretends deafness when it comes to our people, can hear us.”
The young man waits, but none of us make a move to leave class. I do not know what to think, especially because I have never been to a dem
onstration, and Mother always warns against political involvement or doing anything with boys. I have heard that older students from high schools and colleges go to demonstrations often, and because demonstrations are about demanding our freedom, I am moved to join in though uncertain what to do.
The young man knocks on a desk three times, half begging, half commanding: “Yallah, yallah, come on! Stop being cowards!”
When we still don’t speak or move a millimeter, he pulls out a piece of cloth from his pocket and unfurls it. “This is the Palestinian flag. We are not allowed to raise our flag anywhere because of the military occupation. But we will raise it no matter what during the demonstration. Let’s go!”
I want to touch the outlawed flag, but I also worry that our school and especially our principal will be penalized if anyone finds out what is happening in our classroom. According to the military rules, we can go to prison for having a Palestinian flag or even drawing it. I have not seen a real cloth one before, although I have seen it drawn in graffiti on walls. But each time it is drawn differently, so I have never been certain until this moment how it really looks.
The young man bolts out of our class when Sitt Wasfeyyah comes. But now several other young men gather on the street outside the gate of our school and begin to throw stones at our school’s playground and shout for everyone to join the demonstration. “Learn something about Palestine,” one of them yells before he throws leaflets over the fence. Then the young men all disappear.
Um Nader comes and says we should go home. It is likely that clashes will happen, and perhaps a curfew will follow. “Take the shortest way,” she instructs.
We begin packing our books to head out of school. I go to Sitt Wasfeyyah and ask her: “Why do you teach us geography and history about every country in Europe and Asia and nothing about Palestine?”
She stares at me with tears in her eyes, then puts her hand on my shoulder. “We do not choose the books or topics we teach and have strict regulations about what we can and cannot discuss in the classroom. If we teach about Palestine, we will be punished.”