thinks I’m mad. But anyway—tell me about the political life. How is it?”
“Ya‘ni … the Zionists are in less of a fever, so the Arabs are just fighting each other. Nashashibi, Husseini, you know how it is.”
“Same in Nablus.”
“But I am optimistic about the next delegation to London. I am optimistic.”
There was nothing to be optimistic about. Hani didn’t know why he was performing in this way for Midhat. Perhaps it was something that occurred between friends parted for a long time: first impressions after the hiatus were more important than true firsts because they were weighed down by expectations born of memories. A true first meeting required modesty; a first meeting after time had passed required boasting. The fact was that the new delegation to London had been advised by their British supporters to soften their demands. Don’t ask for independence, they were told: you won’t get it. Curry favour, show you are peaceful. Ask to have a say in immigration. Then you’ll appear reasonable, and the powers that be might take pity.
A few days later, the Arabs boycotted the elections for a legislative council. To accept any British institution was to accept British rule. Hani was sitting at his desk looking over the crowd at Damascus Gate when his telephone rang.
“Operator speaking,” said the receiver. “Hani Murad?”
“With you.”
“Madame Murad on the line.”
A click, a rustling sound, and a different voice said:
“Amto will you come back?”
“Aunty, hello. What’s wrong?”
“Will you come? I don’t … I don’t want to … to speak on the …”
“Understood,” said Hani, to whom secrecy was now second nature. “I’m on my way.”
In the hallway, his aunt looked even more frail than she had the last time.
“You said if I need anything. Did you mean it?”
“Absolutely,” said Hani.
“My daughter is fourteen years old. She is Fuad’s only heir. Three of her uncles …”
Before she had progressed very far into the story, Hani realised what was being asked of him and reached for the back of a chair.
“Ah of course!” His aunt gestured that he should sit down. “I am so much a mother I forget to be a host. I will boil water for coffee.”
“There is a big difference in age,” said Hani, as his aunt rummaged in a cupboard. “You know how old I am? Thirty-four. When she is twenty she’ll realise …” He rested one hand on top of the other. “I can see you are in a predicament, but I don’t know that this would be the right—”
“I know how I raised her,” said Um Sahar, facing him with the coffeepot. “She’ll never feel that way. I beg you amto. I have no alternative.”
Every nicety was gone; she put the ghallaye on the stove and sitting beside him pressed her fingers on top of his. His eyes roamed her face. He had killed her husband. He had left these women unprotected. He bent his eyes to her hands, so thin the knuckles were like coins.
“May I see her?”
When her mother called for her, Sahar was already listening at the door. She hung back before entering. This was a nightmare. Was it possible? Another uncle.
“He is a good man,” said her mother.
The good man was already grey. He was tall and thin, and his heavy eyelids gave him an ironic expression. He smiled at Sahar. She wanted to be sick.
They put the veil on her that night. Her mother prayed loudly and wept. After dark they took a car all the way to Jerusalem, and Sahar slept on the backseat, waking every now and then to the noise of the engine and reaching for her mother’s hand.
They must have carried her upstairs for she woke in the morning beside her sleeping mother. A man’s voice came through the wall in isolated bursts. Sahar crept out of bed and opening the door a crack saw the good man standing at the table by a window, speaking into a shiny object she knew at once must be a telephone.
The sheikh was even shorter than Sahar, and his head looked like a shiny nut. When he arrived at eleven o’clock, he set a lump of papers on the table and opened his Quran. The mother would act as the agent, he explained, with barely a glance at Sahar. Like a heroine submitting to fate, Sahar sat soundless at the other end of the sofa while her mother and Hani repeated the Fatiha and responded to the sheikh’s legal recitations. Within a few minutes, they had signed