Balcony on the Moon Read online

  “Do you like to teach history?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she replies. “I like it more than any other subject I teach. With history one learns that nothing lasts. So it is only a matter of time before we will become free again. I do not know how long from now. But it will happen. Big change is the rule in history, not the exception.”

  “Do you dislike anything about history?”

  “Yes. It also shows me that everyone loves freedom, but mostly for themselves and not for others. I read about the French and their great revolution, and then they went on to occupy so many nations and deprive them of freedom and rights. The Americans fought the occupation of the British but do not hold the same value for others.”

  I am learning things she never says in the classroom. She continues.

  “Arabs also, we do not like to admit that our dominance over others was undesired by those who had to tolerate it. And the Ottomans, when they ruled over us, wanted to control the world. It seems that the idea of freedom for everyone everywhere is more hated than loved, resisted than encouraged. Talk of it is one thing, and refusing to grant or share equal freedom with others is behind most wars and difficult history.”

  I thank her and then, without hesitation, run in the direction of the demonstration to discover for myself what happens during one.

  As I get closer to the city center I hear loud chanting. My heart pounds with the desire to be in the middle of the crowd. But I am only at the edge, moving slowly. Shopkeepers are standing on the sidewalks in front of their stores, ready to close up if there is trouble.

  The older students who are demonstrating have covered their heads and faces with kufiyyahs so they won’t be recognized. Someone is waving a large Palestinian flag back and forth. The flag is so big that I tremble as though all rules have been broken at once.

  Listening to people speak around me, I learn more about what the boy mentioned in my classroom. A man says that if someone living in the Tal al-Zaatar camp goes out to get water from a well, even if it is after midnight, Lebanese militia snipers will kill him, hoping he will fall into the well and his blood will pollute the water. Bombs target the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon day and night. Outside the camps, people’s dress codes, areas of residence, dialects, and ID cards, which specify their ethnic and religious affiliations, are all cause for instant assassination of those thought to be Palestinian.

  “Why are the Lebanese doing this?” I ask the man. “Aren’t they Arab like us?”

  He explains that the political conditions in Lebanon are complicated, and not all the Lebanese are involved in the attacks against the camp. Some groups, like the militias called al-Kata’eb, the Phalangists, resent the many Palestinian refugees who went to Lebanon after the wars of 1948 and the Six-Day War in 1967. And then when the Palestinian fedayeen who escaped Jordan after Black September in 1970 went to Lebanon to fight Israel from the Lebanese border, it complicated the country’s politics even more. But mainly, after we became refugees in other countries, we became easy targets for mistreatment. If we do nothing, the world ignores our plight. If we fight to regain our home, we cause problems. If we ask to be citizens in the countries where we are refugees, we are often rejected because these states do not want to grant us equal rights and and have us live with them forever.

  The crowd starts to chant “Tal al-Zaatar” over and over again. Car tires are set on fire in protest. People in the crowd sing songs with a thousand emotions in their voices. I do not know the lyrics but catch a few lines, which I write in a notebook, hoping to learn the entire song later. Then army jeeps come. Israeli soldiers fire gunshots in the air. I rush home, thinking about the boy who came to our school and hoping that he is okay.

  After that I begin to listen more closely to the news and the the hushed political conversations of the grownups and I try to understand what it means to be Palestinian. I gather that many groups of Palestinians are scattered in many, many places around the world. The word that describes our condition is shatat, diaspora.

  I also begin to pay more attention to the graffiti on houses, shops, stone walls, and doors all over Ramallah, written with symbols and names and events and dates. These are references to shreds of our history as it was and as it unfolds. But it is hard to understand it. It is like a broken glass: endless small pieces that need to be put together.

  At the end of the school year, I am no longer just focused on academic responsibilities. I am filled with bigger questions: Is being Palestinian bad? Would the world be happier if there were no Palestinians at all? I tell Ustaz Khaled my thoughts. He says that I must keep these matters out of my mind. The best triumph for a Palestinian is to finish school, he insists, and to stay alive, too, in order to do that. “Our lives are as important as anyone else’s, as important as those of the prophets and scientists, army leaders, presidents of countries, and Adam and Eve in heaven. They are our parents. Yes?”

  I nod, but I do not believe him. I do not feel that our lives are important to the world. What is important about a life without freedom?

  Ustaz Khaled changes the subject and asks me what I plan to do during the summer.

  “I want to work,” I reply. He acts surprised, so I ask, “Should I not?”

  “I am only wondering if your family will let you do it. But work is the best teacher,” he says. “And I think that you can do anything you decide to do. So I will await a report from you when you return to school in September.”

  We wave goodbye and I run home determined to find a way to have a job, learn much, and surprise Ustaz Khaled.

  Daring

  “Biddy ashtghel, I want to work,” I beg Mother. “You let Basel and Muhammad have a summer job selling ice cream, and you should let me have a summer job, too.”

  “How many times am I going to say no?” is her answer.

  “Until you finally say yes, because I do not want to wear used clothes anymore.”

  A few times a year, we go to the UNRWA office to pick up a bundle of used clothes that people in other countries donate to the poor. When Mother opens it we are all hopeful for a near-new item that is our size.

  Often we find things we can’t wear, such as a dazzling blue party dress of sheer fabric that has a completely bare back. A girl in Ramallah cannot wear such a dress and walk near other girls covered in hijab and scarves without attracting everyone’s ridicule. Once, I found a skirt adorned with rows of small beads, scarabs, and buttons that could have been donated by the queen of Palmyra from the third century. Washing it would have been impossible. Another time I found a pair of padded pants with zippers up to the knees. Later, I learned that they were ski pants. Had I worn them, everyone would have known that they weren’t mine because no one skis in the West Bank.

  Even so, the clothes are strange, pleasant, and surprising to look at, because they come from other countries and have the feel of other people’s characters and lives in them. But they are also humiliating. I want outfits that I choose, that are completely mine from the first day they come from the shop until they fade and lose all their buttons.

  The biggest present donated by people in other countries, however—and much better than clothes—is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I saw a summary of it posted on a wall at the UNRWA office. I read it and copied every word from it into my notebook. Later, I wrote the key words on a piece of paper I keep in my pocket.

  I take it out often and think: All these thirty rights belong to me, too! What went wrong to have so many of them not present in my life? Having this paper encouraged me, so instead of saying I have the right to do something, I began saying I have thirty rights to do it. I read from the declaration to my mother and father and siblings, always personalizing it.

  People of Ramallah are born free, that is article 1. All Palestinian refugees have the right to a nationality, that is article 15. My father has the right to rest, article 24. Everyone has the right to work, article 23. That is what I quote to Mother as we argue about my getting a job.
I emphasize the word everyone.

  “But what will people say about us?” she says. “The Barakats send a girl to work! What a scandal!”

  But I know that the final decision will come from Father, so I go to him.

  “Yaba,” I say. “Many nations in the world have agreed that I have the right to work. And it is written in this document.” I point to the unfolded paper.

  He raises his eyebrows.

  Before he says anything, I tell him: “Biddy ashtghel, I want to find a summer job.”

  “Nothing that applies to other nations applies to us here under the occupation,” he says. “Besides, it is aayb, socially wrong.” He is annoyed by the very thought of a girl working.

  Aayb is a reply I hear more than any other expression. This is the one word that can stand in the way of a girl like a roadblock. Aayb has thousands of years of people believing it, strengthening it. I don’t think aayb should ever be said to someone wanting to work.

  “Please let me work, even for a short time,” I beg.

  “You want men to laugh at me for not being able to support my family and protect my sharaf, my honor?”

  Honor is the main reason something is described as socially wrong. Women in traditional Arab families represent the honor of the men in those families, and so many men, like my father, keep close watch over the actions of their female family members.

  “But having a job is an honor,” I protest. “Wasn’t Khadeejah, the Prophet Muhammad’s first wife, a businesswoman, and he was employed by her, too? That was many centuries ago. Do we move back in time or forward?”

  “You are only twelve and a half years old. You do not know anything about the world.”

  “I want to begin now, and to know it from my own experience. You started working when you were eight.”

  “Khalas! The end!” He closes the conversation as if he were slamming a door.

  I think about the dangerous word honor. I have heard stories of families who killed their daughters for what they called honor. When I hear this word, how I wish I were a boy. Not only would I be freer then, but I would argue and fight to help the girls in my family and in the world gain more freedom and more rights.

  I do not argue with my parents about having a summer job again, but I begin to speak about my house chores as though they are paid work.

  “Mother, I will do the dishes, and the compensation is that for one day, you do not criticize anyone or anything, especially me,” I tell her.

  “Only one hour, and only if I choose to,” she bargains.

  I decide to take the biggest risk I can imagine. One morning, when Basel and Muhammad wake up early to go sell the ice cream that they carry on their backs in thermoses, I get up with them. I wish I could sell ice cream, too. But I know the difference between daring and dangerous. Roaming the streets with my brothers would be dangerous for a girl my age.

  Ten minutes after Father goes to work and my brothers leave, I tape a small note on the door for Mother: Gone to find work. I run out of the house to al-Manara, the center of Ramallah, and then to al-Sharea al-Ra’eesee, Main Street. The shops are not yet open, but there is a small group of women on one side of the street, and a group of men standing a short distance from them. I ask the women: “Is this where people wait for the bus to the industrial district?”

  “Yes,” a few reply.

  “Which factory are you going to?”

  “Tako, the paper tissue factory.”

  “Do you like working there?”

  “We need the money.”

  “Nobody says bad things about your honor?”

  “One cannot stop people from speaking, but we need to help feed our families.”

  I am now more at ease. The bus comes and in fifteen minutes we are at the entrance of Tako. Everyone punches a card to show their exact arrival time. I stand at the end of the line, and when I am the only one left, I ask the secretary who was supervising the workers checking in if I can have a job.

  She says that I must wait. A man then comes and looks at me from head to toe. “How old are you?” he asks.

  “Twelve and a half.”

  “You will be the youngest on the floor. Take a few days to do simple tasks and learn. Do what the supervisor says and avoid the big machines.” As he walks away he turns around to add, “And no gossip. It distracts you and costs us money.”

  * * *

  Inside the factory is an amazing world. Giant rolls of paper, the size of small cars and wider than bedsheets, are fixed on huge machines. There are hundreds of thousands of facial tissue boxes. An electric saw cuts cardboard. A conveyor belt moves pocket-size tissues like fish in a stream. Colorful boxes are stacked high. There is a whole wall of toilet paper rolls. The dust from cutting the paper looks like snow on some areas of the floor.

  Abu Mousa, the supervisor, decides I should start at the station where tissue is tucked inside boxes. He points to a woman and says, “Work with her.” Nahla is a tiny woman with a big smile. She appears to be in her twenties. Her complexion is purple dark, only a few shades lighter than night black. Her clothes are colorful, mixing red and orange and yellow like a basket of fresh fruit. “Ahlan! Welcome!” she says.

  Nahla teaches me the proper way to fold a stack of facial tissue and put it inside a box. She warns about various machines, mentioning with extra seriousness that one factory worker damaged his hand by looking away for one second while cutting paper with a saw. “Don’t let your mind wander while working with machines! If you can’t help it, then stay at the folding and boxing tables.” When Nahla is certain that I understand what I am supposed to do, she starts to gossip.

  She mutters words under her breath while looking at her hands, so it doesn’t look like she is speaking. But I can hear her clearly.

  “That man, Qazem, over there with the thick hair like a short broom, and big muscles, avoid him! He follows girls and has a mean side although he pretends to be good when inside the factory. That thin boy with the light brown hair, Sergio, is the politest person you will ever meet.” Sergio could not be much older than me, I think. “The older man carrying a mountain of boxes is a good man. He often works overtime to feed his many children.”

  Nahla comments on each person on the floor, including her sister, Laila, who is operating a machine and smiles from a distance as though she knows what Nahla is saying and doing.

  “The secretary is always having a bad day and she thinks she is above us because her work is ‘clean office work.’ Can anyone say that our work is not clean? With all this tissue paper?” Nahla jokes cheerfully.

  “The owners of the factory are three Armenian brothers. The man over there with the extremely curly hair is the big boss. His name is Vahan.” I tell her he is the one who hired me. She nods. “He makes all the decisions. He never smiles, and one look from him is enough to make us double our production. When he’s especially angry, he berates everyone for all kinds of reasons, including using too much toilet paper in the restroom.”

  I cover my face with my hands and giggle.

  “That tall, good-looking man, he is the second brother. His name is Serob, and he is the friendliest of the three. He speaks gently, says please and thank you, as though we are his friends, and does not shout at anyone. He plays the guitar. All the girls in the factory think he’s attractive.”

  “My father is more handsome than he is,” I say.

  Nahla laughs and continues. “Then there is Levon, the third brother. He is extremely quiet and does the bookkeeping. If you ever hear him speak, you will qualify to win a prize.”

  After the half-hour lunch break, Nahla asks me about singers I like.

  “Abdel Halim Hafez,” I reply.

  Like me, she knows many of his songs by heart. So we begin humming “Ahwak,” or “I Love You.”

  We nod our heads and tap our feet gently to harmonize the pensive lyrics that paint the picture of a lover who tells his beloved that he wishes he could forget her, but not without forgetting his soul.
If someday she forgot him, causing him to lose his soul, he would see that as an agreeable sacrifice for her love.

  In the middle of the song she asks: “Do you like any boys?”

  “I like the boy in The Old Man and the Sea, but he is imaginary.”

  “What?”

  “He exists only on paper and in readers’ minds. I can tell you the story sometime. And you?”

  “I am having a difficult time getting married because my faith is Druze and there are not many Druze families in Ramallah. Besides, look at my skin, too dark for many men to find beautiful.”

  “You are beautiful,” I tell her.

  “I have a great life anyway.” Nahla smiles, consoling herself. “And I believe in fate.”

  I ask about the Druze faith. She explains that in this religion you learn its core beliefs when you turn forty years old. That is when a person becomes responsible enough to decide to commit to it. She also explains that the Druze believe in the reincarnation of souls.

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  Nahla speaks and I open my eyes wide as she describes reincarnation stories. One Druze woman Nahla mentions is fluent in many languages without ever having learned them. She had done so in a previous lifetime … A young girl sees an old man and announces that she was his mother. She knows his name and the names of everyone in his family and the games he liked to play when he was a child.

  I am mesmerized and cannot get enough details. “You are certain that anyone can come back?”

  “Yes,” she assures me.

  Nahla says that Farid al-Atrash, the famous Arab musician and singer, is Druze like she is. So we hum one of his songs about a lemon tree that knows the singer’s suffering. I wonder if the lemon tree could have been another tree, pomegranate or pear, in a previous lifetime, too, and been reincarnated.

  At the end of the day, I clock out and ride the bus to the center of Ramallah, then run home. I stand for a few minutes before entering the house because I have no idea what to expect.