Midhat knocked on the girls’ bedroom door, and Ghada ran out to meet him.
“Baba Baba Baba I dreamt we were in an earthquake.”
“Oh dear,” said Midhat. “Massarra are you finished with the comb?”
Massarra, who was plaiting her hair, passed the comb behind her while keeping eye contact with her reflection in the mirror.
“We were in the earthquake,” Ghada continued, while Midhat sat on the mattress and drew her between his knees, “and then we went on holiday.”
“Why are you so messy.” He touched the big knot of hair on one side of her head. “Did the earthquake roll you around in bed?”
Ghada clucked and tipped her head back, gurgling as he turned her by the shoulders to see the rear. He teased the biggest knot by combing lightly several times until the threads began to separate. Ghada gripped her hands over her crown as he laboured, and when the knot fell apart he combed through the bent threads. Two clean socks lay across a chair. He crouched to Ghada’s feet, and she held his head for balance as she stood on one leg.
“Shoes.” He pointed to the line of shoes beneath the window. “Taher, good morning habibi.”
His eldest son often approached before anyone had noticed him. Taher was tall for an eleven-year-old, with a silent manner and a bald stare, his long rectangular head drenched in black curls. He ignored his father, walked through the door, and disappeared.
“Massarra, are you ready? Khaled? Where is he.”
“Give me four and a half minutes,” said Massarra.
“Where is Khaled?”
“He’s in my bed.”
“You didn’t wake him? Khaled, get up.”
“I did wake him!” Massarra twisted round indignantly, and the completed plait coiled around her neck as she held the other steady. “He went back to sleep, didn’t he!”
After a quick breakfast of bread and za‘atar, the boys set off for school. Midhat waited in the hall while the girls said goodbye to their mother and aunt. Then he reached for Ghada’s hand.
The mist was clearing, but it had rained in the night and a rind of dirt soon gripped his boots. A splatter appeared on the toe of Ghada’s shoe: he lifted her under the arms and balanced her legs over his stomach, arms around his neck.
Massarra tugged at Ghada’s skirt. “I can carry her.”
“She’s too heavy.”
“No she’s not. You’re making a mess of it.”
He didn’t respond. They had reached paved ground near the school and it was time to set her down anyway.
“Just take her hand.”
Massarra seemed satisfied. “Come on little one,” she said.
His daughters disappeared and reappeared between the bills posted on the gate. Seven or eight bore the same message: “Right Is Above Strength and People Are Above Government.” From a farther street a wind called, and as it reached him the bills flapped like bunting from the railing. “Fight the British, Fight the Jews, Fight the Arab Traitors—Signed, The Rebellious Youth.”
Across the concrete path, the schoolgirls crowded up the steps.
When they were first married in 1920, Midhat and Fatima had intended eventually to leave Nablus. But the dream each had entertained of Europe, or of Cairo, grew dim the longer they were entrenched here, in this town with its webs of subtle comfort, of knowing and being known, all of which made departure for new territory seem too severe a breach.
The truth was that without his father’s business everything Midhat had of worth was in Nablus. To begin from scratch in another country, even in another city, would mean starting with nothing at all. Nouveautés Ghada, the shop he had opened with the Samaritan Eli after the local Kamal store closed, was in the new town between Barclays Bank and a sports equipment store. For all the usual fluctuations Nouveautés had been doing well: a high-water mark in sales coincided five years earlier with a surging interest in women’s fashion, when at last Nablus seemed to be catching up with the other cities. Veils, though not gone entirely, had thinned into vapours of chiffon, as in more conservative parts of Jerusalem and along the coast; skirts concluded at the knee, and the black stockings on the shelves of Nouveautés disappeared almost as soon as they were laid there.
Not everyone in Nablus was glad about their good fortune. Over the course of the last decade, several of Midhat’s acquaintances had turned cold, and more than once a group of women paused in front of his shop and, believing themselves invisible, glowered at the dresses on display. Teta remarked