My First and Only Love: A Novel

By Sahar Khalifeh and Aida Bamia

A deeply poetic account of love and resistance through a young girl’s eyes by acclaimed writer, Sahar Khalifeh, called "the Virginia Woolf of Palestinian literature” (Börsenblatt)

Nidal, after many decades of restless exile, returns to her family home in Nablus, where she had lived with her grandmother before the 1948 Nakba that scattered her family across the globe. She was a young girl when the popular resistance began and, through the bloodshed and bitter struggle, Nidal fell in love with freedom fighter Rabie. He was her first and only real love—him and all that he represented: Palestine in its youth, the resistance fighters in the hills, the nation as embodied in her family home and in the land.

Many years later, Nidal and Rabie meet, and he encourages her to read her uncle Amin’s memoirs. She immerses herself in the details of her family and national past and discovers the secret history of her absent mother.

Filled with emotional urgency and political immediacy, Sahar Khalifeh spins an epic tale reaching from the final days of the British Mandate to today with clear-eyed realism and great imagination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hoopoe
• Release date: Apr 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649030887

Sahar Khalifeh

Sahar Khalifeh was born in Nablus in 1941 and is the author of eight novels. She holds a Ph.D. in women's studies and American literature from the University of Iowa. She divides her time between Amman, Jordan and Nablus, Palestine.

Book preview

1

I returned to the family home to repair what was crumbling and being eaten by termites. I wanted to turn the house, the family home, into a livable place, a place to be remembered for its historical significance. I couldn’t bear the possibility of life away from home anymore, sitting in planes and airports, and starting anew wherever I went. I had lived in Amman and Beirut; then I went to London, Paris, Washington, and Morocco. I finally returned to the West Bank. It is annoying to feel you are treated like a human parcel while moving between airports. As soon as you settle down in one place, you have to leave and start all over again. As soon as you get used to a place, you have to leave, to go to another place, and another one, continually, without an end in sight.

A colleague in Cairo invited me to have tea in her house. There I saw books and bookshelves, dusty books and pots of creepers and ferns in a derelict corner of the house. I saw a small garden behind the house where a million-year-old tree stood, and where a cat was sleeping quietly and peacefully in its shade. I was envious of the cat, the tree, and the house. I asked my friend about the age of the house and the number of years she had lived in it. Ten, she replied.

Ten years in the same house! I exclaimed.

I was born in this house, and so were my mother, Widad, and my grandmother, Zakiya. This house has seen many generations come and go, an occupation, and a terrible earthquake that turned our city upside down. The house was surrounded by destruction, splinters, and thick dust. Occupation is akin to an earthquake, and so are immigration and desolation and everything people leave behind. Some family members left, some died and have become a memory from an ancient past, like our travels; in other words, their lives have become a series of trips, phases, and human parcels continually moving through stations, trains, airports, and places.

I was here from the beginning of history—I mean year after year, fifty years, sixty years; numbers do not make a difference in the span of time. But as a human being I am a dot; rather, a comma on a new line and in a new paragraph. However, what was written on the first line in the past remains with us like history, and so do memories, our childhood memories, and our old photos taken before the wrinkles, before the downward movement of the lines in our faces and the dimming of the twinkle in our eyes.

I lived here when my grandmother was as old as I am now, or probably younger, much younger. She was still in her forties. At that time, in the late 1930s, a forty-year-old woman looked old. Women in their forties wore their hair in braids—some were reddish, dyed with henna, others were gray or white, a yellowish white. Their dresses were gray or brown or navy blue, without trimmings or flowery prints, in a simple cut that never changed. A dress that looked like a sack, without any special design. In short, a woman at forty was a grandmother, a hajjeh, a mother-in-law, an old woman.

My grandmother was not at all old at that time. She was a mother to me, and my mother was like a sister. I was young and lonely, living in an environment filled with the stories of heroes, martyrs, and battles. The word revolution spun around us like the hands of a clock, like a scorpion that never stops moving in circles. It begins at the top, then descends and goes back up to the number twelve, exactly like a pointer; it moves in a circle only to return to the same number, then goes down again.

There was no one living here in those times except my grandmother, my two uncles—the third one was in Saudi Arabia—and my mother, Widad. Who would stay here? Everyone had left, emigrated, and become a mere memory. Here I was, many years later, returning to repair the damage caused by the earthquake and the damage that existed before the earthquake and after the earthquake. I wanted to renovate the house and return it to its past splendor.

My grandmother used to spend time in this spot every morning, sitting on a mattress stuffed with soft wool and covered with a striped honey-and-mulberry cotton case. It was located below the eastern window. But when she got up for the dawn prayer, she usually sat by the kanoun, prepared her coffee, and sprinkled the fire with cardamom seeds and orange peels to cover up the smell of charcoal. She would prepare a delicious traditional breakfast of white nabulsi cheese, za’atar, olive oil, labneh, and halva.

My mother usually woke up in a bad mood and uttered an unfriendly Good morning. She would sip her coffee sitting on a small straw-seated chair near the fire. I usually sat at her feet to have her comb my hair into two braids that fell behind my back. My grandmother would ask her gently, "Shall I make you an arous? My mother would not reply but I would ask my grandmother for a labneh arous."

The word arous usually triggered my grandmother’s journey with dreams—what she had dreamt last night and the meaning of the dream. She would begin with my grandfather, then the forgotten dead, mentioned one by one, and then she would turn to the living, to my uncle Wahid, then my uncle Amin and my uncle Samir in Saudi Arabia, followed by my mother, and finally me. My mother would hurry to finish combing my hair, while my grandmother asked her, Do you hear me, Widad? I would hear my mother blow steam through her nose, then give me a light, painless tap on the back and say quickly, as she got up, I heard you, I heard you.

I would rush to my grandmother while my mother hastened to put on her uniform and headscarf, saying as she moved toward the door, Today and tomorrow I am on guard, while my grandmother shouted after her, "Take a small bite, something to put in your stomach. Have pity on yourself! Shall I make you an arous?" She would have the arous ready as she called her, but I would end up eating it.

My grandmother would then look through the window, beyond the jasmine and the poppy tree, and whisper sadly, Poor Widad, she is not lucky. I would ask her quickly, to help her forget her sorrow, What about me, Grandmother? What will I be?

She would reply, gently but somewhat sadly, "Arous, arous. Take this arous and eat it. I would reply angrily, No, Grandma, I mean when I grow up what will I be? She would smile and say, A bride. A bride dressed in white from head to toe. I would ask, concerned, You mean I’ll wear a uniform like my mother’s? No, Grandma, when I grow up I want to be—" And I would stop because I did not know what I wanted to be, and because I saw my grandmother wipe tears from her eyes and mumble some Qur’anic verses. My heart would ache for her and I felt extremely sad.

On that summer morning, after my mother had left for work, my grandmother said, I saw it in a dream. God only knows.

She was immersed in her thoughts, looking through the window. I watched her, examining the color of her eyes, her tightened lips, her skin color, and the parting in her hennaed hair. The hair that she sometimes neglected, revealing gray like chalk lines. Her hennaed hair, on the other hand, looked like corn cockle flowers and contrasted with her skin, which was as white as marble, accentuating her blue, clearly visible veins.

She whispered, Last night I saw your grandfather in my sleep. He told me to go visit your uncle Wahid.

As I had gotten used to this kind of talk, I did not ask her how a person who had died many years ago and had turned to dust in his tomb could tell her to do this or that. The souls of the dead roamed around her everywhere, and I took her with me wherever I went: to religion classes and Qur’an-memorization gatherings, to calligraphy and sewing lessons, and even to my history and geography lessons. I graduated from level five and I memorized Sakakini’s books, The ABC book, The Clean Boy, and The Golden Sun, all by heart.

I begged my grandmother, Would you take me with you?

She replied forcefully, Of course, of course! You are grown now. You are moving to level six without a remedial exam. You are intelligent. Give me a lemon peel; your grandfather used to like the smell of lemon.

I rushed to give her the lemon peel because I wanted her to continue depending on me. I wanted to be with her everywhere she went. I continued to observe her face lovingly and eagerly while I ate the labneh arous.

She was distracted again, and looking through the window she said softly, as if talking to the deceased, His soul is in the house and his eyes are with me. He can see me.

Can he see me, too? I asked.

She smiled as she turned the coal in the kanoun, shaking her head, Sometimes, sometimes.

When? When I misbehave or when I am well behaved?

When the conversation turned to that topic and my mother was at home, she would shout from afar, We have had enough talking about spirits and all this nonsense! Let’s live like normal people.

My grandmother would whisper, Poor Widad! I wish you better luck than her. Her luck is rotten, may God help her.

I never asked my grandmother what she meant by deficient luck, because I knew the story from A to Z. It was the story of my abandoned, forgotten mother and my father’s marriage to a Jewish woman; this was when my mother joined the hospital staff in order to forget what had happened to her. But my mother did not look like an unlucky woman. She seemed happy to me—happy with her work, and very busy. She once took me to the hospital with her because my grandmother had to go to a wake. There, I saw my mother laugh, jump, and move like a butterfly, a white butterfly without wings, in a hat that looked like a crown. She rushed here and there, and everyone was calling her: Widad! Widad! A famous doctor asked her who I was, and she told him bashfully, This is my daughter Nidal. He said in disbelief, Your daughter Nidal!

When we returned home, I asked her, Why did he say ‘Your daughter Nidal,’ as if he did not believe I was called Nidal? The name Nidal is given to girls and boys alike. When I was growing up, names such as Nidal, Kifah, and Wisam could be used for either boys or girls and they had a meaning. It was as if the doctor did not believe that my name was Nidal. Why did she insist I call her by her name, Widad? Why did the doctor say, with a malicious tone, as if he did not believe her, Your daughter Nidal? As if my name were strange or odd.

They called me Nidal, which means struggle, because my name described a certain phase in our history, followed by numerous similar phases. But who chose that name? My mother was still young, and too distressed and preoccupied with bigger worries, and my grandmother was torn between her daughter and her nephew. My uncle Wahid was busy with the revolution and the revolutionaries. Who was available, then? My uncle Amin, the educated one. People used to say he was a communist, a Baathist, a Syrian nationalist; I can’t remember which one exactly. He escaped to Syria, and later went to Beirut and stayed there. In a few words, he emigrated like me, but I returned to settle down in a place that was part of my homeland. I wanted to die here like camels do. Where did the expression Die like camels come from? Was it Khaled ibn al-Walid? Amr ibn al-As or Saladin? Who said it? All those names have a history except mine, because it is an irregular verb like kana, ma-zala, and ma-infakka. As if struggle occurs only in violence and as if violence occurs only with the sword, the gun, and laying mines!

I inherited nothing but my name, which came from an irregular verb, and I carried, in lieu of a gun and laying mines, a small brush with which I painted the house, the family house, photos of the living, nature, and the marketplace. When I was young, they said I was an artist. I believed in art and befriended it; I adopted it and carried it like a sign on my forehead. I confronted the world in order to carry a small brush, colors, music, light, breezes, and mawawil.

I drew my grandmother and the sea, I painted the mountain and the river, I drew women in any pose you can imagine. I drew women and men, and festivals without harvests, in fallow lands. I drew the plants and the flowers, I drew still lifes against backgrounds that did not convey the beauty of the flowers. I carried my paintings everywhere I went. I organized exhibitions and workshops. I drew for newspapers and magazines. One of my paintings, a huge one, is on display at UNESCO, a bigger one is at UNIFAM, a third one, smaller, very small, is hanging in a corridor of the Arab League building. I am an artist. This is what is said about me and this is what I have become, and this is how I will die.

I find myself now, at this age and after having moved around like a bee, after all the hubbub and the lights, after the media and the headlines, the magazine covers and the publicity, I find myself without a friend and without a home. I am alone, like a sword. Members of my family had left and I too left, like many others. Who stayed behind? All that is left for me is this house, and that is why I returned. I want to make of this house—the family home, my first home and my last home—a gallery with pictures, paintings, and frames. In short, a museum.

The carpenter said the wood was decayed. I said, Change it. The blacksmith said the metal had rusted. I said, Change it. The tinsmith told me the conduit pipes were damaged and old-fashioned, and so were the bathroom, the kitchen, and the toilet. I told him, Remove all that is broken, decayed, and moth-eaten, and carry it down. Then came the tiler, the glass specialist, and the engineer. I told the used furniture merchant to take everything except the altar, my grandmother’s commode, the metal brazier, and a few paintings.

The work began, and the place looked like a beehive, while I withdrew to the upper floor, eating and sleeping there, and organizing the family documents and the letters kept in boxes. They had left a huge number of documents, photos, letters, and keys. I found a lot in the drawers and the cupboards. I found souvenirs, and my own unpublished handwritten poems. I inherited a house, stories, photos, forgotten poems, and forsaken souvenirs.

2

We will go to Asira today, to visit Umm Nayef and inquire about your uncle, my grandmother said.

I did not reply, but felt a combination of suppressed joy and mysterious fear. Stories about the revolutionaries were circulating throughout the mountains; stories of detonations, kidnapped soldiers, shootings, hangings, and prisoners. The British planes were roaming the sky like ravens, throwing bombs and pamphlets onto the villages located on top of the mountains. Nablus was surrounded by its villages like a mother and her children, while the villagers moved around. When the bombardments began, I would see them in the city market and Bab al-Saha, mainly women and children carrying baskets filled with grapes and figs, yogurt, cheese, and a type of mallow called mulukhiyeh. My grandmother told me that country women were stronger and feistier. Feistier than whom? I asked. Feistier than city women, because the baskets of grapes and figs contained forbidden items destined for the revolutionaries like your uncle. Did this mean that my uncle was one of the revolutionaries? Did it mean that the revolutionaries were like my uncle? Did this mean that my uncle was in the village with the revolutionaries? It meant that my uncle was somewhere in the villages, among the revolutionaries, on the top of the mountain, among the rocks, the caves, the thorns, and the cactuses.

My grandmother and I would go there on foot because the mountains had no streets or cars or even donkeys. A funny story had been circulating about mules and donkeys being arrested. When I heard it, I laughed, my grandmother cried, and my mother shouted, Damn them, they arrest even the donkeys? The British had arrested a villager and his donkey; they searched the villager and his donkey and found an old, rusted, broken razor. They considered the razor a weapon, and the peasant the carrier of a forbidden weapon, while the donkey was classified as a means of transportation. They arrested the villager and his equipment, and also his means of transportation.

My grandmother tapped her left hand with her right and said, as her eyes filled with tears, May God be their judge. One day their turn will come. And that day arrived almost immediately, as the revolutionaries attacked a reconnaissance squad that same night and killed all its members; no one knew how many they were—ten, twenty, thirty, forty, the number kept growing. It increased from house to house, from neighborhood to neighborhood, and from the village to the city. The number of victims continued to increase, and so did the number of revolutionaries, the intensity of the attacks, the killings, and the number of planes.

My grandmother said, Today we visit Umm Nayef.

Umm Nayef sold yogurt, figs, and cucumbers. In the summer she also offered grapes and butter. In winter she sold fenugreek, lentils, bulgur, and freekeh. In spring she brought mulukhiyeh. She joined my grandmother in the living room as soon as she ended her tour of the village houses. They started the preparation of the akkoub, cleaning the wheat and the freekeh as they told stories: Abu Hamzeh had taken a second wife; Umm Jaber visited her sons in the Ramleh prison; there was a raid in the mayor’s house at dawn—when the call to prayer was heard, they turned it upside down, they poured the rice into the ghee, they slit the mattresses and the pillows and overturned the cupboards and the dubbiyat, and they even turned the jars of oil and the pots upside down. They scared away the chickens! What can we say, ya Hajjeh?

My grandmother would reply, as she continued to sift the grain and blot the sweat on her forehead, They are accountable to God Almighty. He is mightier than any oppressor; their turn will come one day.

Umm Nayef would wonder eagerly, "When will this happen, Hajjeh? When will that day come? It won’t be today or tomorrow or even after tomorrow. We are fed up, and we can’t take it anymore. We can’t catch our breath and our situation is going from bad to worse. It would move even a nonbeliever to tears. Umm Wahid—as she called my grandmother, using the name of her eldest son—they are atheists: the Jews are atheists and the English more than them. They are faithless, they have no God, and don’t even have a Kaaba they can visit. They have even denied it. God sees and hears everything but remains silent! What can we say about them, Hajjeh?"

My grandmother would say, to appease her, He takes His time, but does not disregard matters. He will settle His accounts mightily on the day of the resurrection. Their day will come.

But Umm Nayef replied, almost in tears, "When will that happen, Hajjeh? People are exhausted, our children are scattered in the mountains, the prisons are overflowing, the farming season is lost; the olive trees did not bear olives and there was no oil in the stem—aridity and barrenness and the Jews and the English. God, what have we done wrong? What about your son Wahid, the pride of our youth? How is he?"

My grandmother would watch her carefully, saying, You are the one who knows, Umm Nayef. You have the news of all the fighters.

Umm Nayef would laugh and raise her arm, revealing an old tattoo, and then say, I know nothing about them and I have no news. May God reward them and grant them victory. Say, ‘God willing.’

But my grandmother did not say God willing as asked; instead, she lifted her head and stared at her, saying, I am concerned about Wahid. I want to know his news, any way you can get it, Umm Nayef.

Umm Nayef gave her a cautious look and said, It is good to be patient, Umm Wahid. Say, ‘God willing.’

3

We left the house at dawn while the city was slowly waking up as if in a spiritual submissiveness. The streets were empty, except for us. The old market was still without customers, but some merchants were hanging out their merchandise while others were sweeping and watering the ground in front of their stalls, forcing us to jump and take long steps to avoid the water.

One of them shouted in a scratchy, sleepy voice, "Good morning, Hajjeh!"

My grandmother was not a hajjeh, a person who had completed the hajj pilgrimage, but every year she talked about going on the hajj, a project she continually postponed because of her concern about Wahid or Amin or Samir or Widad, each one, in his or her own way, a source of worry for her.

People addressed her as hajjeh because she belonged to a noble family that counted many hajji among its members. She was also the daughter of the late so-and-so, the widow of so and so, and the mother of the freedom fighter nicknamed the chief of the youth and given the title Sheikh and Hajj So-and-So. And so, she acquired the title hajjeh as well. If it were up to them, they would have given her the title of sheikha too.

We walked through the market and left the heart of the city, heading in the direction of the eastern cemetery at the foot of the mountain. We reached the dirt road close to the quarries and Sheikh al-Emad, then Asira, Umm Nayef’s village and that of the revolutionaries. That was its nickname: they called it the country of the revolutionaries. The British stormed it more than once, but the revolutionaries were everywhere, here and there, in the mountain caves, between the rocks and the cactuses, among the people in the old market, in the city and the merchants’ quarter. No one knew exactly where; the revolutionaries were like ghosts.

We sat on a rock to catch our breath and have a bite. We hadn’t had our breakfast yet. My grandmother got out her arous sandwiches, pieces of cheese, and cucumber. She was out of breath from the steep climb; I too was out of breath and took time to scratch the tops of my legs, scored by thorns and prickles. I was happy despite the thorns; the visit was like a day out at the end of May and the beginning of the summer vacation, no school, and getting out of the old house and the old market, to wander in the open country in beautiful weather. The mountain would be covered with burgeoning red and yellow flowers and delightfully scented plants, some edible, such as thyme, fennel, and seba’a, while others, such as chamomile, were medicinal plants, used for cough, stomach cramps, and diarrhea. There were also decorative flowers such as anemones, a pleasure for the eyes.

My grandmother was familiar with all those plants; she had a great respect for them and talked about them with awe, as if they were endowed with a soul. She would say, "May God bless this fennel, it is good for coughs and shortness of breath; as for this sage of virtue, it is used for colic and the kidneys. It was called meramiyeh after our mother the virgin Mary, mother of the prophet Jesus, peace be upon him. As for this fenugreek, it helps increase the milk of new mothers; women in childbed boil it and drink it and their breasts fill with milk like cows. I laughed, exclaiming, Like cows!" But my grandmother did not laugh and went on talking about plants with a great deal of respect, as if they were endowed with souls.

I looked at the city from the top of the mountain and felt as if I were riding in a plane, although I hadn’t been on a plane in my life. It was my understanding that riding in a plane was an activity reserved for pilots—in other words, for the English and the Jews. A plane meant bombs! But there, in those surroundings, among the flowers and the plants, the white rocks and the May breeze, it was like a Nairouz, that was what my grandmother said: it was like a Nairouz, the feast of spring, roses, and flowers for the Baha’is in Haifa. They were neither Muslims nor Christians, nor even Jews. What is their religion then? I asked. She did not know, and I did not know either; I only knew that Nairouz was the feast of spring—the air of the mountain, the smell of the grass and wildflowers, and all the colors. It was like a Nairouz.

My grandmother said, Look there, in the distance. There is the edge of the sea; do you see the blue?

I looked intently, but could not see the blue shore; I could not see a sea or a river or a ship, but my grandmother told me that her brother who lived in Haifa owned boats and ships and launches that transported merchandise. He was wealthier than us, much wealthier. But we were fine, satisfied with our situation; we were our own masters and much richer.

She turned to me and asked, Have you eaten?

I looked at her and she looked at me and we exchanged that look, a look of love, a look of admiration akin to passion. She used to tell me, You are my soul, and I would reply, You are my life. This is how we truly felt toward each other. As far as she was concerned, I was more than a young girl; I was the only grandchild, the love of her old age and the passion of her graying years, as she used to say. I was the breathing space for the feelings of an aging woman, widowed at twenty, a hajjeh, and a woman on the edge of her grave.

Whenever I heard her say on the edge of her grave, I would get upset, because to me, my grandmother was not at all old. She would carry sacks of flour and sugar without help, effortlessly. She would climb the garden ladder in order to pick the lemons and bitter oranges. Widad, my mother, would shout at her, Mother, do you want to fall and break your pelvis or a leg, and I would then have to take care of you?

My grandmother would look away from the tree and turn to me and wink, saying, Do you hear what your mother said? She is not concerned about my wellbeing; she worries only about me becoming a burden for her. Don’t even think about it.

I did not forget the matter, because I felt torn between the two. Like my mother, I was truly concerned for her safety, but I also recognized her right to climb the ladder and pick the lemons, as well as to carry cases to the attic and walk long distances to visit the eastern and western cemeteries, where our ancestors were buried. There was also the visit to al-Aqsa Mosque whenever we went to see my uncle Amin, the visit usually followed by our meandering through the alleys and markets of the old city. My grandmother was intelligent and energetic, much stronger than my mother, and also more beautiful than my mother. She was sweeter and gentler than my mother; my grandmother was full of emotions. But she did not feel toward Widad, her daughter, the way she felt toward me. Whenever my mother was jealous of my grandmother’s love for me, my grandmother told her, with a blank face, as if she were confirming her right to love her granddaughter more than her daughter, that the child of one’s child is dearer to us than our own child. Widad did not reply, but I smiled because my grandmother winked at me and whispered, You are my soul, and I replied, You are my life.

4

We entered the village with the call for the noon prayer and saw the men walking in the direction of a small mosque in the center of the village, which was nothing more than a narrow asphalt street—or rather, it had the semblance of asphalt, with holes, gullies, dirt, straw, and sheep droppings everywhere. It was surrounded by kharafish al-rabie and mulukhiyeh plants. Modest shops lined the street on both sides. They were facing the backyards of mud houses, hidden behind peach, fig, and apricot trees, with the fields of lentil, fava beans, and tomatoes beyond them.

Our presence attracted the attention of some of the young men, but the older men lowered their gaze. The children, who were standing by the shops and the displayed merchandise, looked at us as if we had landed from Mars. With my dress, braids held with ribbons, shiny shoes, and socks, I had the look of a city girl, very different from the village children, most of whom were barefoot, their hair uncombed and without ribbons. My grandmother was wearing her usual ghutwa, her face totally concealed beneath a thick veil.

The young children followed us on both sides of the street, quiet and curious. I noticed a young girl standing on a platform who stuck out her tongue, making fun of me. A young man, showing off, shouted at the children, telling them to go away and saying, It is a shame to behave this way. But the children kept following us, on both sides of the street, until we reached a grocery shop that was playing an Egyptian song. My grandmother stood in front of the shop and greeted the owner like a man would, saying, Peace be upon you.

The shop owner seemed surprised and answered in a somewhat exaggerated manner, curious but welcoming: Peace upon you, too. May God’s mercy and His blessings be with you.

Then he turned to the children and scolded them. Go away, all of you. Your behavior is shameful.

The children paid no attention to him and continued to examine us.

My grandmother, clearly upset, said, Tell us where Umm Nayef’s house is, may God bless you.

One of the children shouted, I know where Umm Nayef’s house is!

We know, too! others chimed in.

The grocer pointed and said, It is at the end of the street, to your right. One of its walls is made of bricks, surrounded by olive trees. He then shouted at the children, telling them to go away.

The children ran in front of us toward the house to announce our arrival to Umm Nayef and to prove to us that they truly knew Umm Nayef, as well as her house, located in the midst of the olive trees.

Umm Nayef came out into the street to see who was visiting her. Her sleeves were pulled up, leaving her arms uncovered, while one side of her dress was tucked under a thick belt made of saya. Her pulled-up dress revealed another garment, dusty white, that reached her feet and resembled a serwal. Her hair was parted in the middle and combed into two thin black braids, without any sign of gray, despite her old age. She was as old as my grandmother, maybe older, but she still had some of her teeth, and there was a green tattoo on her chin.

She covered her eyes with her hand to shield the bright sun and allow her to see who we were, while the children surrounded her, waiting impatiently for us to arrive. She wanted to know who was visiting her but they wanted to know who we were. As soon as she saw us and recognized us, she clapped and put her hand before her mouth and ululated discreetly, uttering low and short sounds. They were meant to express her joy and surprise and show how honored she was by our visit. Here was this city lady, from a well-known family, visiting her—her, a poor country woman who made a living selling milk and green wheat! Was there a higher honor?

At that moment, I felt someone’s hand tugging at my dress. Frightened, I quickly tightened my dress around my knees and turned. I saw the little girl who had stuck out her tongue at me earlier. She was very young, younger than me, and much shorter, her bushy hair uncombed. Her face was on the dark side. She was wearing a shapeless, buttonless dress, mulberry colored, with yellow flowers, and she was barefoot. Our eyes met in a cautious look. I was scared and shy, while she seemed fearless, looking at me with expressionless eyes, still pulling my