What should I say about Umm Hassan?

Should I mention the tears, or the memories, or say nothing?

Seated in the backseat of the little blue Volkswagen, she was looking out the window and seeing nothing.

“We’re here,” said Fawzi.

Her brother got out of the car and held out his hand to help her out. Umm Hassan moved her stout body forward but couldn’t raise her head. She seemed unable to do so, as though her breasts were pulling her down toward the ground. She was bent over and rooted to the spot.

“Come on, Sister.”

Fawzi helped her out of the car. She remained doubled over, then put her hand to her waist and stood upright.

He pointed to the house, but she couldn’t see a thing.

Her tears flowed silently. She wiped them away with her sleeve and listened to her brother’s explanations while his son played around with the camera.

“They demolished every single house, and built the Beyt ha-Emek settlement-except for the new houses, the ones that were built on the hill.”

Umm Hassan’s house had been one of the new ones up on the hill.

“All the other houses were demolished,” said the brother.

“And mine?” murmured Umm Hassan.

“There it is,” he said.

They were about twenty meters from the house. The branches of the eucalyptus tree were swaying. But Umm Hassan could see nothing. He took her by the arm and they walked. Then suddenly she saw it all.

“It’s as if no time has passed.”

Of what time was she talking about, Father? Can we find it in the videocassette tapes that have become our only entertainment? The Shatila camp has turned into Camp Video. The videocassettes circulate among the houses, and people sit around their television sets, they remember and tell stories. They tell stories about what they see, and out of the glimpses of the villages they build villages. Don’t they ever get sick of repeating the same stories? Umm Hassan never slept, and, until her death, she would tell stories, until all the tears had drained from her eyes.

She said that suddenly everything came back to her. She went up to the front door but didn’t press the buzzer. She stood back a little and walked around the house. She sat on the ground with her back against the eucalyptus tree as she used to do. She’d been afraid of the tree, so she’d turn her back on it. Her husband would make fun of her for turning her back on the horizon and looking only at the stones and the walls. Her brother took her by the hand and helped her up. Again, it was difficult for her to stand, as though she were rooted to the ground. Her brother dragged her to the door and pressed the buzzer. No one opened, so he pressed it a second time. The ringing reverberated louder and louder in Umm Hassan’s ears; everything seemed to be pounding, her body was trembling, her pulse racing. The brother stood waiting. The door finally opened.

A woman appeared: about fifty years old, dark complexion, large eyes, black hair streaked with gray.

Fawzi said something in Hebrew.

“Why are you speaking to me in Hebrew? Speak to me in Arabic,” said the woman with a strong Lebanese accent.

“Excuse me, Madam. Is your husband here?” asked Fawzi.

“No, he’s not here. Is everything all right? Please come in.”

She opened the door wider.

“You know Arabic,” Umm Hassan whispered as she entered. “You’re an Arab, Sister-aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not an Arab,” said the woman.

“You’ve studied Arabic?” asked Umm Hassan.

“No, I studied Hebrew, but I haven’t forgotten my Arabic. Come in, come in.”

They entered the house. Umm Hassan said-like everyone else who’s gone back to see their former homes-“Everything was in its place. Everything was just how it used to be, even the earthenware water jug.”

“God of all the worlds,” sighed Umm Hassan, “what would Umm Isa have said if she’d visited her house in Jerusalem? Poor Umm Isa. In her last days she spoke about just one thing-the saucepan of zucchini. Umm Isa left her house in Katamon in Jerusalem without turning off the flame under the saucepan of zucchini.”

“I can smell burning. The saucepan. I must go and turn off the flame,” she would say to Umm Hassan, who nursed her during her last illness. And Umm Hassan, who had felt pity for the dying woman, stood in her own house in front of the earthenware water jug that was still where it had been, smelled the zucchini in Umm Isa’s saucepan, and said that everything was in its place except for those people who had come in and sat down right where we’d been sitting.

The Israeli woman left her in front of the water jug and returned with a pot of Turkish coffee. She poured three cups and sat calmly watching these strangers whose hands trembled as they held their coffee. Before Umm Hassan could open her mouth to ask a thing, the Israeli woman said, “It’s your house, isn’t it?”

“How did you know?” asked Umm Hassan.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. Welcome.”

Umm Hassan took a sip from her cup. The aroma of the coffee overwhelmed her, and she burst into sobs.

The Israeli woman lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the air, gazing into space.

Fawzi went out into the garden where Rami was playing with the video camera, filming everything.

The two women remained alone in the living room, one weeping, the other smoking in silence.

The Israeli turned and wanted to say something, but didn’t. Umm Hassan wiped away her tears and went over to the water jug, which stood on a side table in the living room.

“The jug,” said Umm Hassan.

“I found it here, and I don’t use it. Take it if you want.”

“Thank you, no.”

Umm Hassan went over to the jug, picked it up, and tucked it under her arm; then she went back to the Israeli woman and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” said the Palestinian, “I don’t want it. I’m giving it to you. Take it.”

“Thank you,” said the Israeli, who took the jug and returned it to its place. The silence was broken-the two women burst out laughing. Umm Hassan started looking around the house. She stood in front of the bedroom but didn’t go in. Next she went to the kitchen. In the sink were piles of dirty dishes. Umm Hassan turned on the tap and watched the water flow out, and the Israeli woman ran in saying, “I’m so sorry, it’s a mess.” Umm Hassan turned off the tap and said, laughing, “I didn’t leave the dirty dishes. That was you.”

The two women went out into the garden.

The Israeli woman gave Umm Hassan her arm and told her about the place. She told her about the orange grove where Iraqi Jews worked, the new irrigation projects the government had started, their fear of the Katyusha rockets, and about how difficult life was. Umm Hassan listened and looked and said one word: “Paradise. Paradise. Palestine’s a paradise.” When the Israeli woman asked her what she was saying, she answered, “Nothing. I was just saying that we call it an orchard, not a grove. This is an orange orchard. How wonderful, how wonderful.”

“Yes, an orchard,” said the Israeli.

Then Umm Hassan began telling the Israeli woman about the place.

“Where’s the spring?” asked Umm Hassan.

“What spring?”

Umm Hassan told her the story of her spring and how she’d discovered water in the field next to the house. When her husband had built the house, close to the eucalyptus tree, there had been no water. It was Umm Hassan who had discovered it. And one day she saw water welling up from the ground. She told the men, “We must dig here,” and they dug, and water came gushing out. So they built a little stone wall around the spring, and it became known as Umm Hassan’s spring.

“Where’s the spring?” she asked.

The Israeli woman couldn’t answer. “There was a spring here,” she said, “but they dug an artesian well around it and laid some pipes. Could that be it?”

“No, it’s a natural spring,” said Umm Hassan, and told how they’d decided to plant apple trees after they discovered the water. But the war.

Umm Hassan guided the woman to where her spring had been.

She didn’t find it. Where it had been, she found a well walled with pipes and iron with a small tap on each side. Umm Hassan bent over to open the tap, and when the water gushed out, splashed her face and neck, sprinkled the water on her hair and clothes, and drank.

“Drink,” she said. “Water sweeter than honey.”

The Israeli woman bent over and washed her hands, and then turned off the tap without drinking.

“This is the most delicious water in the world.”

The Israeli woman turned on the tap again, drank a little and smiled.

Later Umm Hassan would say the Israelis don’t drink water, just fizzy drinks. “They only drink out of bottles, even though Palestine’s water is the best in the world.”

In vain we tried to explain to her that they drink mineral water, not fizzy drinks, and that the people of Beirut have started to drink water out of plastic bottles, too, but she stuck to her guns and said, “They don’t drink water. I saw them with my own eyes. You want me to question what I saw with my own eyes?”

After they’d had a drink, the two women walked around the house. Umm Hassan told the woman about the eucalyptus tree and the olive grove and pointed out the stone that looks like the head of an ox. She took her around behind the house and showed her the cave on the other side of the hill.

Umm Hassan talked and the other woman discovered, astonished that she’d never noticed the ox’s head, or had even gone into the cave. Then Umm Hassan told her how she’d learned her profession as a midwife from her grandmother on her father’s side, Maryam, and that she had an official license from the British government. She recounted how she’d gotten married at fifteen “to chase away the chickens from the front of the house,” as her mother-in-law had said when she’d asked for her hand.

Umm Hassan told her stories, strolling from place to place, and the Jewish woman followed along behind, listening and nodding her head but not uttering a word.

Umm Hassan would tell her guests that she had seen her life dissolving in front of her: “What’s life? Like a pinch of salt in water, it just melts away.” She slipped back as though no time had passed. She saw again the young woman who’d gone to live in her new home. At twenty, she told her husband that she wanted a house of their own-“I’m no good for chasing chickens anymore and I am no longer a little girl.” They got the land and built the house with their own hands, and she discovered the spring and the cave and the ox’s head, and became the midwife for the whole district of Acre.

The women went back inside the house and sat in silence.

Umm Hassan got up and went into the bedroom. She looked at the bed that occupied the center of the room. It was the first bed she’d slept on in her life. At home with her family, and then in her husband’s house, she’d slept on bedding on the floor, folding it up each morning and tucking it away at the far end of the room. But in this house the bed couldn’t be folded up.

“A room just for sleeping in,” her husband had said.

The other woman sleeps here every night, thought Umm Hassan, with her husband, in the same bed, in the same room, in the same house, in the same-no, not in the same village: The village didn’t exist anymore. Umm Hassan could no longer see the close-packed houses of the village-the houses were gone. Nothing was left of al-Kweikat.

When she finished her tour of the house, Umm Hassan wept. She sat in the living room and wept. Her brother came in to hurry her up so they could return to Abu Sinan and found her weeping. He wept, too, and the son with the camera wept.

“Do you know what she said to me?”

Umm Hassan would relate the same conversation every day, adding a word here, deleting one there, choking back her tears.

“She asked me, ‘Where are you from?’

“From al-Kweikat, I told her. This is my house and this is my jug and this is my sofa, and the olive trees and the cactus and the land and the spring- everything.”

“‘No, no. Where are you living now?’

“‘In Shatila.’

“‘Where’s Shatila.’

“‘It’s a camp.’

“‘Where’s the camp?’

“‘In Lebanon.’

“‘Where in Lebanon?’

“‘In Beirut, near Sports City.'”

When the Jewish woman heard the word Beirut, she gave a start and her manner changed completely.

“You’re from Beirut?” she cried, the words tumbling out of her mouth and her eyes filling with tears.

“Listen, Sister,” the Jewish woman said. “I’m from Beirut too, from Wadi Abu Jmil. You know Wadi Abu Jmil, the Jewish district in the center? They brought me from there when I was twelve. I left Beirut and came to this dreary, bleak land. Do you know the Ecole de l’Alliance Israelite? To the right of the school there’s a three-story building that used to be owned by a Polish Jew named Elie Bron. I’m from there.”

“You’re from Beirut?” Umm Hassan said in amazement.

“Yes, Beirut.”

“How did that happen?”

“What do you mean, how did that happen? I’ve no idea. You’re living in Beirut and you’ve come here to cry? I’m the one who should be crying. Get up, my friend, and go. Send me to Beirut and take this wretched land back.”

Umm Hassan said she talked with the Israeli woman for a long time.

The woman’s name was Ella Dweik. Umm Hassan’s was Nabilah, daughter of al-Khatib from the family of al-Habit-the fallen-wife of Mahmoud al-Qasemi. Al-Habit isn’t the family’s real name, but my grandfather used to spend all day sitting down so they used to call him that. Our real ancestor was Iskandar, and before Iskandar there was al-Khatib.

Nabilah al-Habit talked of al-Kweikat.

Ella Dweik spoke of Beirut.

Ella said then that she’d married an agricultural engineer who worked there, that they’d been given the house, that she hadn’t had any children. Her husband was Iraqi, from the outskirts of Baghdad; she’d always wanted to see Baghdad. She had a brother who worked in Tel Aviv, but she never saw him. Umm Hassan told her about Beirut. About the sea and the Manara Corniche, the shops on Hamra Street, the wealth and the beauty and the cars. She said the war hadn’t been able to destroy Beirut. It had destroyed a lot, but Beirut was still as it had always been.

Umm Hassan said that there, in al-Kweikat, she saw once again the Beirut that she didn’t know very well. “All I know is Umm Isa’s house on America Street, near the Clemenceau cinema.”

“In al-Kweikat I saw Beirut, but I don’t live in Beirut, I live in the camp. The camp? It’s a grouping of villages piled up one on top of another.”

The Jewish woman stood up.

When someone stands up, it means it’s time for the guest to leave. Umm Hassan didn’t grasp the meaning of the signal, however; when her brother said they had to go, she looked at him in amazement and didn’t respond.

“And now, what can I do for you?” said Ella.

“Nothing, nothing,” said Umm Hassan as she began ponderously to get up.

The Jewish woman took the earthenware jug and gave it to Umm Hassan without a word. Umm Hassan took it without looking and went back with her brother to his house in Abu Sinan.