with applause and whistles. Madame Atwan was getting to her feet with a smile and several women ran forward to help her, shouting, “Be careful!” Elmas gave an embarrassed half bow, pan aloft.
The light had left an impression on Um Taher’s eyes. Over everything around her, over the women clapping and talking to one another, over the bodies of the young girls and the glittering jewellery, she saw her own capillaries magnified and white, like bolts of lightning.
“How are you Um Taher?”
Um Jamil was by her side.
“Tamam, tamam.”
“Next, all the ladies!”
The rain commenced, little droplets. Around the courtyard, leaves began to twitch.
Um Taher was pulled into the second row beside Um Jamil. She glanced at the assemblage of unsmiling faces, then stared straight ahead as Elmas prepared a second flash mixture. A bang of light, and a loud shivering sound like breaking glass as the rain struck up in earnest. “Oh Mama!” Um Jamil said, and valiantly cast her shawl over Um Taher’s head, as the three lines of ladies disintegrated. But although it was a disruption, everyone applauded the thunder just as they would another spectacle of the night, and whistled at the water rushing down while they ran for shelter by the doors, and the servants helped Elmas to protect the camera, calling: “Ya salam!”
Under the rain all formality dissolved. The laughing horde reassembled in the salon, shaking off clothes and drowning out the storm with their voices. A short woman with a veil entered through an internal door, strode to the centre of the room, bowed at Madame Atwan, faced the rest of the company and sang at the pace of a dirge: “Ishma‘na – ya – nokh.” A pause, and she completed the phrase: “Al-kukay—a—a—ayn – kokh.”
The women applauded and whistled.
Ishma‘na ya nokh al-kukay-ayn kokh
da akul al-mokh halakna
amilu ala ghee—eerna.
“Um Jamil,” said Um Taher.
“Yes habibti.”
“I want to ask you. Did you hear anything about Midhat, recently?”
Um Jamil tilted her head.
“I mean, has there been any, ya‘ni—”
“Ah. No, no, I didn’t hear anything. What are you worried about?”
She waved her hand, as though dispersing a smell.
“I did hear about Haj Hassan,” said Um Jamil. “Did you?”
“No, tell me.”
“Lost all his land in the valley. Sold very cheaply to the Jews.”
“Why?”
“I heard three versions. One, he is worried about his wife, because she has gone insane. Two, the land was not producing enough and he needed the money. Three, he gambles. I don’t know which is true.”
In the middle of this speech, Um Taher noticed Widad and Fatima Hammad standing together a few feet along. Fatima was looking at the floor, but Widad was staring at them. Her face had gone grey.
“I feel sorry for his son,” Um Jamil went on. “Nothing to inherit.”
Only later, after Um Jamil left her on her doorstep, did Um Taher realise the party had been a failure for her. Of enquiries about available girls she had made none at all.
A cough hurtled up through her belly and out through her mouth. At least if she was dying, she would join Um Midhat in heaven. She pictured herself laid out across the board, and Um Jamil, weeping, ministering to her body. A dignified face, eyes closed. No: eyes open. Let them close the eyes before the burial, that was a lovely action. She raised a hand in the darkness and imitated the movement with her fingers. Then, swinging her weight to the side, she thought of Midhat. She could not leave him. She sighed, and a hock of phlegm caught in her windpipe, and coughing again she felt wisps of electricity conferring in her chest.
The morning was bleak. The storm last night had left nothing but cold behind. She wrapped herself slowly in many layers, resolved at last to visit the hospital.
The wind hurt her throat and tore the breath from her lungs. Taking the northern road that curved west she cleared the town and approached the foot of Mount Ebal. The first thing she noticed in the hospital foyer was the odour, sharp and chemical-sweet, penetrating to the back of her head. A large coffer with a slit for coins stood in the centre, and beyond it a row of tall windows showed a tree-filled garden and arable land. From the bottom of one window poked the ends of two posts, perhaps the ears of a chair—a veranda. She slipped a hand into her purse for the coffer, and a nurse materialised on her right. She gestured for Um Taher to follow.
The