LITMIR.BIZ

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head resting on his shoulder and his neck so bent and taut it seemed about to snap. Every time his wife tried to wake him, he would sit up, rub his face, and again doze off.

      “I just couldn’t do it,” Uncle Boulus explained, referring to the trip to Jericho to pledge allegiance to royalty. “I said to myself: this is one circus I refuse to join. I’m not the head of a clan, or a mukhtar or a city councilman as they tried to flatter me. Nor am I a doctor or an attorney or an exporter of Jaffa oranges to the whole world. Who am I to be dragged into that show?”

      “Stop that kind of talk,” his wife said, trying to pull him out of his doldrums. “Our house was always full of government officials and town dignitaries who came to wish you happy holidays. They all held you with deep respect, and you know it. I can’t stand hearing you talk like this.”

      “Like it or not, it’s the truth and you know it,” he answered. “Look at us now: if they come now we can’t even offer them a chair to sit on. And not a glass of arak or cognac. Not even a decent cup of coffee or a piece of baklawa. Who’s kidding whom? Now I’m a simple shopkeeper who sells candy and gum and a pocketful of sunflower seeds to children. And every now and then half a pound of coffee or sugar to a poor housewife. Dignitary my foot. Pathetic, if you ask me.”

      It hurt Yousif deeply to hear the pain in his uncle’s voice. He should stop this proud, dignified, and respected man from belittling his own stature or mocking his old self with liquor or in any other fashion. Yousif understood that Uncle Boulus was bemoaning more than the loss of stature. He was wrestling with the guilt of his generation. Not having done his share to prevent the catastrophe was now gnawing at him. One way to save face or retain a modicum of dignity, he must have realized, was his refusal to be stampeded into total submission. That was his way of upholding his izzit nafs—his self-respect. Yet shadowboxing guilt was no way to live. And for that realization alone Yousif was glad to see this basically honorable human being striving to rid himself of those phantoms.

      Appraising the king in retrospect, Yousif said: “Not bad for a desert emir who first ascends a throne and then becomes the king of Jerusalem—one of the oldest cities on earth and certainly the world’s holiest.”

      Uncle Boulus put the masbaha down and lit a cigarette. “Nor is it bad for a young teacher like you, barely out of high school, to be so insightful. Hey, sister, you should be very proud of your son. I know I am.”

      “If only his father could hear him,” she said.

      “And you, Maha. Tell your husband Yousif is following in his footsteps.”

      “He’d like that,” Maha said.

      Yousif would have none of it. “Truly, Uncle,” he said, “ruling over the sophisticated Palestinians is quite a feat.”

      “Even for someone as ambitious as His Majesty,” Uncle Boulus said, draining the last drop in his glass.

      Despite the lightheartedness, the conversation did not placate Yousif’s mother.

      “What’s the use,” she said, sighing. “This is our fate.”

      Yousif looked shocked. “Mother!!!”

      “And if I were you, Boulus, I would’ve gone to Jericho and joined that chorus.”

      Uncle Boulus smiled for the first time. “I said circus, not chorus.”

      “Circus . . . chorus . . . what’s the difference.”

      “Mother!!!”

      “Listen, son,” she said, glaring at him. “Now that they know where your uncle stands they’ll be watching his every move. Listening to his every word. In their eyes he’s now a suspect—not a subject. Understand? Suspect not subject. Keep it in mind.”

      During the silence that followed, Yousif heard an alarm bell ring in his ears. He could envisage himself surrounded by spies and informers lurking in an environment full of rumors, suspicions, deceptions and unrest. The prospect of living in such a shadowy and dangerous world put him on edge.

      “Your mother is right,” Uncle Boulus said. “I’m not against the royal family, I just don’t want to be anybody’s subject. My only dream is to go home. Between now and then . . .”

      “. . . You don’t care,” Yousif again humored him.

      “Not really. I don’t care who’s watching . . . who’s listening . . . who’s . . .”

      Again Aunt Hilaneh was upset with him. “Boulus, what’s happening to you? Since when you don’t care how the wind blows? Get hold of yourself.”

      The change in this prudent and guarded family patriarch was so pronounced—a concoction of guilt, angst and alcohol—that Maha made the sign of the cross as if to exorcise the evil spirit in the room.

      After a long, anguished pause, Uncle Boulus seemed to emerge from his cocoon. Calm was in his eyes; serenity covered his face. No longer disillusionment; no more quiet desperation.

      “Egypt controls the Gaza strip,” he said, draining the last drop of his coffee. “Jordan annexes the West Bank, Israel occupies four-fifths of Palestine. What’s left for us to do? Nothing but fight.”

      Curious looks were exchanged at his sudden change of heart. Like everyone else. Yousif waited for the rest of his uncle’s assessment.

      “Armed struggle is the one and only solution,” Uncle finally said, as resolved as any militant Yousif had ever known.

      Picking up the coffee cups off the table, Maha looked more amused than stunned. “I can hardly believe my ears.”

      “For a minute you thought Basim was in the room,” Yousif said, winking.

      “I most certainly did,” she admitted.

      Twittering lasted only a moment, to be replaced again by Uncle’s unmitigated depression.

      “Our real pain has just begun,” he predicted, like a prophet of doom.

      The lingering silence was so deep it woke up Salman.

      With January came an armistice, a return to school, and a worsening of already horrendous weather. New tents had to be put up and the refugees who had settled in the classrooms had to be moved back to their camps. Some had to be hauled in Army trucks to the distant camps of Irbid and Jerash, even back to the winter resort of Jericho in the West Bank.

      One morning Yousif was unnerved when he woke to find a thin layer of snow covering Amman.

      “Snow in the desert!” he mused. “Mother, come and see!”

      She walked next to him and could not believe her eyes. “Lord have mercy,” she prayed, making the sign of the cross. “Lord, You know what you’re doing, but we mortals are having a hard time trying to figure you out. Why this now? Why Lord?”

      She wrung her hands and stared out the window. The children got excited and wanted to go out and play. But the adults, now gathering at the window to gawk at the scene below them, were too flabbergasted to move.

      “What next?” Yousif’s mother asked, still questioning her indifferent God. “Exile and misery aren’t enough. You had to top it with snow? What will the refugees in the camps do now? What can they do?”

      Two days later, the sky cleared, snow began to melt, and Yousif was able to slosh his way back to school. There he came upon another tragedy. Several people were gathered under a tree in the schoolyard. The body of a man from a nearby refugee camp was hanging. Yousif recognized him as one of the demonstrators who had protested the opening of the school. The wretched scene was as frightening as anything Yousif had seen in the war. It was not a horror film he was watching, he kept reminding himself; not a dream or even a nightmare. A man had actually taken his own life. Yousif could see the rope cutting into the middle-aged man’s neck; snow outlined his head and shoulders. Some in the crowd moved close, but not Yousif. He could not stomach seeing a human being’s tongue hanging out.

      “The

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