for?” he said. “I need to walk.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“They are fighting out there—they are sniping. It’s not safe.”
“But, Fatima, I have to see Eli. He has been without me for months and months. Imagine.”
“You need to rest. No.”
He rasped his palate and raised his hands. “Oh, fine,” he said. “Out of the rule of the doctors, under the rule of the wife. This is my fate.”
“BABA! BABA!”
Fatima groaned. Ghada skidded into the room.
“Habibti!” said Midhat. “Habibet alby—why is your hair so long?”
“Baba Baba Baba.”
“Baba misses you.”
“You weren’t here for my birthday.” She held out her arms to be lifted. “You weren’t there.”
Taher and Massarra hovered in the doorway. “Baba,” said Khaled, barging between them.
“Mama is sleeping,” said Midhat. “Oof, you’ve grown!” he said, putting Ghada down. “Yalla, ruhu.”
He led them into the kitchen. Through the window the trees shone grey-green. A flock of birds charged across the sky.
Khaled put his elbows on the table. “Where have you been?”
“That’s none of your business,” said Massarra.
“Is there any fruit?” said Midhat.
One old and dry orange, was the answer. They watched him force a knife through the skin and pull the strips of rind one by one from the rounds.
“Salt,” he said, extending a hand across the table with mock ceremony. Khaled passed the little pot, and Midhat crushed some over the slices, flourishing his arm up and down. Ghada laughed.
“Don’t be sad, Taher,” said Midhat, rising to rinse his fingers.
“He’s not sad,” said Massarra.
“What have you all been eating?”
“Bananas,” said Khaled.
“Bananas?”
They watched him dry his hands on a dishcloth. As he turned to the window, an alien sound entered his ears: a hoarse, voiceless tinkle, like a high key on an out-of-tune piano. There was no piano in the house. His posture slumped. The whistle tickled his eardrums.
On the red screen of his closed eyelids the priest appeared. The Brother of the Virgins, on the balcony, asking questions. His desire to speak with the priest was immediate and profound. He recalled meeting him in the Nablus hospital, though not what they spoke about. A rare creature, this man of France, of faith: the foreigner who knew Nablus. He did not know yet exactly what he would tell him, only that they must speak.
“Sahtayn my darlings. Eat.”
“And there’s cheese,” said Massarra. “And there’s figs in the garden.”
“Oo-ooh,” said Midhat, with singsong enthusiasm. “My favourite.”
“I’ll get them. The birds ate a lot when we weren’t here, but there are still a few.”
“Later, my love. Why is no one eating?”
Khaled lifted a slice. “I need a napkin.”
That first night home in Nablus, Midhat was woken every few hours by gunfire crackling from the mountains. When at one point the din became particularly acute Fatima reached beneath the duvet and put her warm hand on his arm. She did not apply any pressure; she was simply reassuring herself that he was there. Or, perhaps, reminding him that she was.
In the morning, Widad Hammad bustled into the hall.
“Where is your husband? I am here to wish him good health.”
“He’s coming,” Midhat heard Fatima say, before her voice was swallowed by the corridor.
He held down his irritation. He took his time to bathe and shave, and whisk his neck with his French badger brush, and smack his chest with his old cologne, and trim and file his fingernails, and pluck the longest hairs from his nostrils, and do up the buttons on his linen suit, and oil and comb his hair, and wash his hands before joining his wife and mother-in-law in the salon. Widad was in the chair beside the window. At the sight of him, she pronounced, “Hamdillah asalama!” and stuck out her neck for three kisses. Without waiting for his response she reverted to a story she was in the middle of telling.
“They arrested three and shot four.”
Midhat took a cup from the tray. “Where?”
“Beit Dajan.”
“Did they leave the bodies?” said Fatima.
“Selma heard it from Muhammad Saka, who says that the police report says they were running away. What an accusation! Of course they were running away. They weren’t hiding in the lentil jar. They always do this,” she explained, turning to Midhat. “They come into the village, they arrest people, then they smash everything. They mix all the food together, the flour with the rice and the sugar wa kaza into a pile wa ba‘dayn they usually add olive oil or petrol. Disgusting.”
Teta, Um Jamil, and Abu Jamil arrived within the hour. They stared intently at Midhat from the doorstep, and Teta