Things I Left Behind

By Shada Mustafa

This is young Palestinian author Shada Mustafa's debut novel a free-flowing narrative that interrogates, in short, direct sentences, the memories of growing up, falling in love, that keep forcing themselves out to be reckoned with. Through ceaseless questioning, and the seemingly random revisiting of each of the four “things” she has left behind, the narrator redeems her life from the inexplicable pain and tragic anguish that was her childhood in an occupied and divided land and family. In so doing, Mustafa creates a unique writing style while at the same time allowing the narrative its original, cathartic function, liberating herself from her past, and finding her true self. Why was she always having to cross the Qalandia checkpoint to see her dad or her mom? Why did they divorce? Why was her mom angry? How could she make her happy? Why was her dad a different man when he came out of the occupier's prison? What was more important, the cause or the people? The questions become more urgent when she becomes a student and falls in love. This short novel, original in its subject as much as its narrative technique, has been singled out from the start by being shortlisted for the 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Young Authors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Banipal Publishing
• Release date: Apr 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781913043278

Book preview

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Shada Mustafa

Things I Left Behind

Shortlisted for the

2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Young Author

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Things I Left Behind

First published in English translation

by Banipal Books, London, 2022

Arabic copyright © Shada Mustafa

English translation copyright © Nancy Roberts, 2022

Ma Taraktu Khalfi was first published in Arabic in 2020

Original title: img2.png

Published by Naufal Books, Beirut, Lebanon, 2020

The moral right of Shada Mustafa to be identified as the author this work and Nancy Roberts as the translator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher

A CIP record for this book is available in the British Library

ISBN 978-1-913043-26-1

E-book: ISBN: 978-1-913043-27-8

Front cover painting The Field by Afifa Aleiby

Banipal Books

1 Gough Square, LONDON EC4A 3DE, UK

www.banipal.co.uk/banipalbooks/

Banipal Books is an imprint of Banipal Publishing

Typeset in Cardo

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

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Special thanks to my professor,

the novelist Rachid al-Daif

To my mom, and to my three former homes

I don’t drink milk. Everybody used to think I was too young to understand what was going on. I started believing that after a while. I was supposed to live with my dad. I didn’t know why. I didn’t want to know. Before I went to live with him, I liked milk. When my mom prepared it, I’d always ask for more. But my grandma, after my parents’ divorce, didn’t know how to prepare it the right way. After a bout of stubbornness every morning, my dad would have to force it down my throat. To this day I can’t stand the taste of milk.

***

My mom lived in Ramallah, and my dad in Jerusalem. I was six years old as I recall. My brother was five and my sister was eight. Every weekend we’d pack our clothes in a suitcase and go visit my mom. We’d go from one place to another, one address to another. My dad would take us to the checkpoint between the two cities. We’d cross by ourselves and wait for my mom on the other side. The suitcase was bigger than we were. The looks people gave us were bigger than we were. As I walked along, I’d wonder: Why do we have to carry this suitcase?

1

My mom lived with my grandparents in Ramallah. When we went on our weekly visit, they would always ask us what we wanted to eat, and we’d ask for macaroni. My cousin would get mad because we always asked for the same thing, and because we were depriving him of the chance to eat other dishes on the day he came to visit his grandparents. He’d make other suggestions to get us to change our minds, but we wouldn’t do it. We’d come to see our mom, and we wanted macaroni! We wanted there to be at least one constant in our lives.

2

We lived for two years with our dad in Jerusalem. During those two years, our stepmom used to sing us songs before we went to sleep. She’d read us stories and play with us. Maybe she loved us. But one time my sister said to me: Do you remember when we went to live with our mom? It was when our little brother was born. I didn’t know who to believe: myself or my sister.

2

After we went to live with my mom, my dad would call every other day to check up on us, and we would go visit him every week. After a while, the phone calls and visits grew less frequent. We would only hear his voice when we called him, since he didn’t take the initiative to call us. The weekly visits became monthly, then bimonthly, and finally, I only saw him once a year. I didn’t know how or why all this happened.

2

Sometimes I wonder how the Palestinian cause relates to individual people’s lives or the life of a family. Where does it fall on the scale? Which carries greater weight? The person, or the cause? I want to care about the cause, but I can’t. All I can think about when somebody talks about the Palestinian cause is the fact that it stole my dad from me. I keep going back in time and thinking: If he hadn’t gone to prison, would he and my mom have gotten divorced? Would I be able to look at my dad now and not find mountains between us? If it weren’t for the cause, might I have a father I loved, and who loved me? Would I have a happy family? And then I think: Which is more important? The human being, or the cause?

2

I don’t remember the period my dad spent in the occupier’s prison. I think I was only three years old when he left. All I remember is what I was told, or rather, what my mom told me. My dad had gone to prison and spent a year and half there. Then he got out, but he didn’t get out. She used to say he’d become a different person. He’d changed completely, and she couldn’t live with him anymore. He’d become the person we know today. I never knew my dad in his previous persona, his good persona. I never knew him.

2

I was six years old and it was the first day of the new school year when, to our surprise, our dad took us to a new school. That was in 2000, the year the al-Aqsa Intifada¹ began. My old school had been in Ramallah. Every day we would go from Jerusalem to Ramallah to get there. At that time there was no checkpoint between the two cities, so it was easy to get back and forth between them. The trip only took half an hour. That was before the Intifada. That was before the divorce. After it, my mom moved to Ramallah, and we stayed with my dad in Jerusalem. We also started going to school in Jerusalem. And the barrier that separated my mom and dad – the Qalandia Checkpoint – went up.

¹ Also known as the Second Intifada (September 8, 2000 to February 8, 2005), it is commonly referred to as al-Aqsa Intifada due to the fact that it broke out at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

1

There are a lot of things about that time period that I don’t remember. But I remember well the checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem. It consisted of barbed wire, big cement blocks, and rifle-carrying soldiers. It was quite simple, the barrier that kept me from seeing my mom. It was the first Mother’s Day since the divorce. All three of us pressed my dad to take us to Ramallah. We wanted to be with our mom on this day. We bought presents for her and went to the checkpoint, thinking we’d get to see her. But all we saw was gunfire, clashes, and an uprising. We couldn’t pass through. We couldn’t cross the checkpoint to be with our mother on Mother’s Day.

1

The checkpoint was closed the next morning too, but we kept pressing my dad, saying: We want to get through! So he asked a soldier to let us cross over so that we could see our mother on the other side. The soldier just said: Get out of here before I beat you in front of your kids. My dad came back and explained what had happened. I was seven years old. At the time, I didn’t hate the occupation because of that sort of humiliation. I didn’t hate it because of the people who’d been killed, imprisoned or tortured. I didn’t hate it because of the tanks or the curfews or the demolitions of people’s homes, or even because of the checkpoint. The only reason I hated it was that it kept me away from my mom. I just wanted to see my mom.

1

For two years after that, we’d cross that checkpoint to see our mom once a week. I didn’t always hate the soldiers. There were times when I felt friendly toward them. One day when the checkpoint was closed, we asked a soldier to let us cross over. Seeing that we were just three little kids, he moved the barbed wire to let us through. I was ecstatic. I didn’t care about the line of people who were still stranded on the other side. I’d crossed over and I was going to see my mom. The soldier had let me see my mom.

2

I grew up passing through that checkpoint. Even after we went to live with our mom, we’d cross it to go see our dad. The checkpoint grew with me. It evolved from a barbed-wire fence in the dirt into a building containing scanning equipment like they have at border crossings and in airports. I remember that checkpoint well. I remember it well, since my dad never gave us a chance to forget it.

2

That was