fully dressed, drinking coffee with a group of friends. He raised his hand in the doorway.
“Salam.”
“Join us, teta!” said his grandmother.
“Mabroo—ook,” sang Um Dawud.
“Ah, thank you, Khalto. My grandmother told you all?”
“Why so sad?” shouted Um Taher.
“Not sad. Just tired. So much excitement! I told Jamil,” he nodded at his aunt.
“Be happy, God doesn’t always give,” said Um Taher smugly to her companions.
“Fatima Hammad!” said someone.
“Beautiful,” said another.
Teta reached out an arm to welcome him. He sat beside her, sliding a nail under a chocolate wrapper. Um Jamil was in the middle of complaining about the carpet sales, which had been tapering off. Others hummed in agreement. It was not like a textile shop; the coming of Ramadan does nothing for carpets. Ba‘dayn, she said, Jamil is not concentrating properly at the store. He has wandered away “fi aalam liwahdu,” in a world of his own.
“What do you think?” she asked Midhat.
“To be honest, I have not seen him much myself. I have been so busy with …” He gestured in the air, as though already preparing for the wedding. “But I don’t know, you may be right. He has seemed not himself. He spends a lot of time with those Murad boys.”
“Since you two returned from that riot, nothing is the same.”
“An jad nothing,” said Um Dawud.
“Maybe Jamil needs to find a girl,” said Teta. “It’s not healthy, you know. You have to let it out.”
“Teta,” said Midhat.
“I think it’s a question of age,” said another woman. “Wallah al-azeem my son was grumpy till he was thirty. Wallah al-azeem.”
“Get him a girl, he’ll be fine,” said Teta.
“Maybe he doesn’t like the carpets very much,” said Midhat.
Um Jamil turned her lip out. “You could be right.”
The news of Midhat’s engagement travelled fast. Over subsequent days old women he didn’t know warbled at the sight of him, and old men chortled: “Dar Hammad! Dar Hammad!” Rumour had it that Abu Omar Jawhari himself would officiate at the signing of the betrothal contract. Haj Abdallah Atwan even gave him a nod one hot evening in the Manshiyah Garden.
“The Parisian,” he called. “I heard the news.”
“Thank you,” said Midhat, with practised grace.
Abdallah laughed, one loud report of air, and the seams on either side of his mouth deepened. Midhat realised he had pre-empted Abdallah with thanks before any word of congratulation.
Presently Abdallah said, “Yes, well done. There is rarely happy news in Nablus these days. People love a wedding.”
The other word on everyone’s lips was the official beginning of the British Mandate over Palestine. Midhat frequently returned after work to hear women’s voices asking questions such as: “Do you know what is the difference between the British and the French?” Leaflets from the Colonial Office fluttered through the streets declaring in both Arabic and Hebrew that the European mandates were confirmed by the League of Nations. France was to rule over Syria and Lebanon, and Britain over Palestine. No one was being given independence. The mandates were a temporary measure en route to self-government, a period of supervision “until such time as they are able to stand alone.”
A telegram arrived from Midhat’s father within days: a financial problem with the business, soon to be solved, required his continued presence in Cairo. As a result, he could not come for the official proposal to the Hammads. “I will be there for the ceremony in July,” said the telegram, “and I will wire the money in a few days for the mahr and the wedding preparations. I am proud.”
Midhat felt a cramp of longing. Only those words at the end conveyed any feeling: “I am proud.” He folded the telegram in half. He walked into his father’s darkened bedroom and with a deep breath continued into his father’s office. He sat down at the desk.
The room was much smaller than Taher’s office in Cairo. It contained merely this desk and chair, that cabinet by the door, and a small shelf of books beside a window facing the slope, where a bird was jumping between the branches of a hawthorn tree in the dusk. There was no lamp. Midhat opened a desk drawer and a pen rattled; he took it out and pulled a sheet from the stack of paper beside it, knocking the drawer closed with his foot. The ink had filled the cap; he looked at the blank page, rotating the pen by its barrel. Smudges bloomed on his fingers and thumb as he wrote the words: “My dear father.” It was hard to