two was overpowering. He wished he could have brought his father with him.
“I am the son of Haj Taher Kamal,” he began, and as he sat he immediately wished he hadn’t, since it left Haj Nimr standing. “Grandson of Muhammad Kamal.” He half turned in his seat to address Nimr, who was still waiting by the door for the juice and glass, but ended by announcing to the entire company: “My father owns the Kamal store in the khan and the Kamal store in Cairo. I have recently returned from France, from Paris, where I studied medicine, and philosophy, and history.”
Abu Omar Jawhari turned down the corners of his mouth at Hassan as if to say, not bad. Midhat tensed his leg to stop it shaking.
“I know your father,” said Haj Hassan. “He is my friend. Haj Taher is one of the municipal hospital founders, Abu Omar.” He turned back to Midhat. “He helped me in the war.”
“Did he?” said Midhat. This news of their families’ alliance should have made him braver; and yet, knowing nothing of the episode, and with no one making any effort to explain it to him, he felt confused. And ashamed, as if his lack of intimacy with his father had just been exposed. There was a silence. He turned to Nimr. “I would like to ask—May I speak to you in private, ya Haj?”
“Oh yes, of course.” Nimr glanced at the door. “Please, follow me.”
As Midhat rose, Abu Omar poured himself the little juice that remained and held it up to the light.
Nimr led him to a narrow, humid room with a sloped ceiling. The window gave a view of the street, and Midhat peered down at the oval front steps that he had climbed only a few minutes before.
Haj Nimr folded his hands: Midhat saw a resemblance to Fatima. The eyes, the lips. He breathed deeply.
“I would like to ask for your daughter to marry me.”
Nimr’s expression did not change. Gradually, the eyebrows went up.
“Ah. Unfortunately, the answer is no.”
Midhat looked down and tried to assemble a neutral face. He had failed, so fast. His mind ran in slow motion. He heard kitchen noises and women’s voices from below, and when he looked up Haj Nimr was still watching him. The answer, unfortunately, was no. “If you can,” Jamil had said of Fatima. The words echoed in Midhat’s ears, hot with new meaning. At last, he managed:
“I see.” His voice was very quiet.
Haj Nimr gave a genial grunt and smiled. “Thank you for your visit. How about that juice?”
“No. Thank you. Thank you for your time.”
Midhat wished very much to bolt down the steps. But he bowed at Nimr’s wife and stared at her hand as she opened the front door; a delicate hand, the wrinkles very fine, the fingernails sharpened and polished. When he reached the street he gave in, and broke into a run.
One person saw those little legs alternating, shuddering to a halt as a car passed; and on again, crossing the road. That person was at the top of the house, sitting in the third of three arched windows, using a tiny brush to rub olive oil into a basin of powdered kohl, and looking out over the town. Her sister Nuzha, half reclined on one of the beds, wiped a pale cream over her cheeks.
“What are you looking at?” Nuzha made an exaggerated sad face at a pocket mirror to stretch out the skin beneath her eyes.
“Nothing,” said Fatima.
The figure disappeared and reappeared beyond the trellis. And then it ran, one arm raised, its hand on the tarbush.
7
Midhat started up the mountain at a run. As the road steepened, his momentum failed, and he lapsed into a jog. He had tried what they wanted. He did not belong in Nablus. This life, this system, it was not for him. He fell from a jog into a walk, and kicked a pebble. Of course, Teta would never see it that way.
“It’s not my fault,” he said aloud. “He’s a snob. It’s not my fault if she’s going to marry her cousin. You want me to propose when she’s already engaged? Teta, it’s not my … I think it’s actually your fault—”
A dark figure, like a tree with one thick branch, appeared against the twilit sky up the mountain ahead. It could have been a tree, only it registered in his vision as an alien shape on a known horizon. And it was moving. Midhat came out past a cluster