were.
Pivoting round, he saw the place where the women had been was no longer occupied by women. He looked at the torrent ahead, chevronning to fit through the narrowing courtyard. People pushed from behind. Jamil must be somewhere there. He waved back at the place from which Basil had called, but Basil was no longer there either. There was nothing for it but to submit. He pressed forward with the multitude.
Before daybreak, Fatima and Nuzha had met Burhan in the hall to wave at the departing pilgrims. Their mother was in Lydda and would never know. Out on the dark street, they heard the trumpets and drums, and Fatima thought immediately of the Nebi Rubin festival. A shiver of memory: that sleepy excitement, waking early in the tent and hearing the musicians tuning their instruments.
The darkness magnified their footsteps. Along the Northern Road the music became louder until finally the dancing crowd came into view. In advance of dawn, lamps rocked from sticks and raised arms, their flames swaying like a blurred rash of stars.
The largest group of well-wishers was made up of townswomen. The sisters joined the group’s flank, and, tentatively, Nuzha started to ululate. She laughed and looked back to check on Fatima, and for a moment Burhan dithered at the edge. Then he spurned the impulse and stepped off into the scattered strip of men. Feet apart, his hands rose to clap.
“Fatima? Is that you?”
“Meen?”
“Muna al-Jayyusi. Do you know me?”
A pair of eyes. Pale eyelashes.
“Muna? Of course I know you! How are you, I have not seen you since school!”
“Ikshif alayya, ya tabib …” sang the pilgrims, stamping their feet.
“Come with us,” said Muna. “We’re taking the train from Tulkarem. The roads will be packed.”
“To Jerusalem?”
“It’s safe, we’re just going to watch. Come.”
“It leaves in twenty minutes,” said a thin voice.
“If you want … Fatima,” said Muna.
The group began to move off. Fatima grabbed her sister’s arm. Nuzha stiffened.
“If he asks,” said Nuzha, “I’ll say you’re helping at the school.”
Fatima looked for Burhan. He was facing away, waving a handkerchief he had stolen from their mother’s dresser.
On the platform their group made twelve in total. In the train carriage, they settled on three rows of wooden benches as dawn erupted across the windows.
Fatima’s mind was sticky with anxiety. Although Nuzha would certainly keep her word, Burhan might tell their father, who would, of course, tell their mother. It was her mother Fatima feared. Her father was not the real lawmaker of the house; he was more like the law itself, a name Widad invoked as a spectre of wrath to make the children fearful.
Until recently Fatima had been persuaded by the myth of her father’s great anger, and went quiet when he entered the room. But on the morning after the Atwan istiqbal, she had heard her mother’s voice, voluptuous with emotion, coming from her father’s office.
“I know,” her father was saying. “Hassan told me. I advised him on the sale.”
“You advised him on the sale?”
“Yes.”
“Fazee‘a! Men are proposing night and day, and you want to refuse them all.”
“Night and day?”
“I know about Midhat Kamal. I was in the house. Don’t look surprised.”
“Enough.”
“Enough, even though you decided not to tell me that also? His grandmother invited us round for coffee—ya Allah. Ya Allah. No one has such a husband.” A clapping sound.
“I said enough.”
“She is very wanted. She will not be wanted forever. You want her to marry the emir? Who exactly is your ideal husband? She is not that beautiful, Nimr, there are thousands of beautiful girls, beauty is not rare. I know you, I know you will wait until the family name is fallen and forgotten. You want me to die? Is that it, you want me to die, you want to kill me? No one in hell has such a husband.”
Later on, Fatima realised she had witnessed a chink in her parents’ alliance. It signified that her mother was not an exact conduit to her father, and that the threat, “Your father will be angry,” might not always be true. Since then, it became not her father’s but her mother’s wrath that Fatima feared. Not the law, but the law’s steward. And, watching her father, she started to wonder that she had been so easily duped. He seemed far too concerned with his life outside the house to pay them much attention, and though she may have attracted more of it over recent years, his concern for her marrying well was like an extension