out the words. I have always found that about writing.” He took a bite of the sandwich.
“I have already written it.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Can I read it to you? And you can tell me if I should send it?”
“Please, itfadal.”
3 September 1919
Dear Jeannette,
I write to you from Paris, though I am soon to leave it. After these four years I am returning to Palestine. I am sorry that I did not write to you before. I wish I had. Regrets pile on regrets. You see I had hoped I would forget you. In my mind you were bound up for so long with pain that to think of you was always to feel again the sting of everything else. I hoped that somehow my memories of life before I came to France might be the ones to stick, and that you would slide off them, and I would remain the same beneath. But I fear that on the contrary my experience with you has in fact become one of those primeval shapes of the mind, to an imprint that burdens everything that comes afterwards. The sting has weakened with time, a little. My memories of you have not.
I have many things to apologise for. I am sorry I did not tell you where I was going. I am sorry that I left suddenly. Three years ago I met M. Samuel Cogolati from the Medical Faculty and he told me that you had become a nurse. I imagine you have returned to Montpellier now. It is funny that I should have studied medicine, but you should have been the one to practise it. I hope that you have not seen too many terrible things. I feel shame at the thought that you probably have.
Jeannette, you have stayed in my mind for four years. You are always, always here in this mind. Not only because pain has lasted: you have lasted. I hear your voice every day. I see you beside me on the terrace. I see your hair—all those different shapes on different days! I recall your smell. And your yellow dress. I remember your breath when you kissed me. I remember your anger when you turned from me.
I hope you understand how painful it was to discover your father’s writings. I had hoped to marry you, but I was shy and could not say so. For this, again, I am sorry. I do stand by what I said, however. I became myself here, in this country, and for that reason I cannot represent anything. I belong here as much as I belong in Palestine.
I wish you to know that I always meant well. It was all out of love for you.
I wish you a good life. I shall never forget you.
Yours,
Midhat
“Well,” said Hani. “You’re not a bad writer, Midhat. I’m impressed. Here’s an envelope. There are stamps in the drawer.”
3
In October 1919, the unrest in Egypt was still simmering. Britain had denied her request for independence at the Peace Conference, and when the leaders of the resistance were exiled to Malta the women of Cairo marched in protest. But the general strike had at last been called off and trade was returning to healthy levels between Egypt and the Levant. As a result, Midhat’s father, Haj Taher Kamal, had set out from Cairo for Damascus to purchase more silks, and on the way he decided to stop in Nablus.
The autumn heat oiled the faces that passed under the midday sun. Haj Taher went by the khan, saluted his agent Hisham through the hanging yards of canvas outside the Kamal store, accepted a coffee heavy with sugar and cardamom, and chatted with some old customers passing through. They praised God for the end of the war; they grumbled over the liberties of the British soldiers; they acknowledged the provisions of seed grain and livestock, and the happy revival of normal commerce.
Haj Taher Kamal was a merchant because his father had been a merchant, and his father before him. Merchants were the glue that bound Nablus to the surrounding villages: for the village people they functioned as credit lines, patrons, employers, even friends; for the city dwellers they were both harbingers of novelty and pillars of tradition, and when the festivals came around the Nabulsis danced through the markets sprinkling the ground with coloured ribbons and pistachio shells. As far back as living memory could reach the foundation stones of Nabulsi society had been the mosque, the city gates, and the central marketplace,