Read Online Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa - Free Book Online

riddance of the damp tent, her husband’s new job, and the bathroom and kitchen that were being built to replace the buckets and wash pans, the waiting for things to go back to normal became a tolerable interim fate for Dalia. She traded her tired black scarf for the vibrant new white one made of real silk. The birth of a new child was said even to have restored a glimpse, however brief, of the spirited gypsy she had once been. Though Dalia’s spirit had long since been smothered, she could see its reincarnation in little Amal, like a whirlwind of life taking form in her daughter.
    Soon Dalia recognized the quick curiosity in her growing child, whose remote black eyes seemed to have no bottom. The girl had an aspect of sorcery, as if she had materialized from the charms of alchemy and Bedouin poetry. She behaved as if the world belonged to her, and once Dalia observed her naughty daughter pushing other small children into a shadowed alley, yelling, “That’s my father’s sun, get away!”
    It was not long before the child was compelled to create imaginary friends who could tolerate her wild nature—until, that is, she found another friendless soul, named Huda.
    So passive and yielding was Huda’s nature that it awakened an instinct of compassion in little Amal. They were an odd pair. But they were friends, and few in the camp ever saw one without the other.
    Well into her elementary school days, Amal remained stubborn and capricious except with her father, whom she rarely saw because of the long hours he spent at work. He seemed to her like a god. When she approached him, she did so with worshipful eyes that reached to her father’s depths. And when Hasan held his little girl, he did so with profound tenderness. Often, before the child took possession of her father, she would turn devilish eyes toward her mother, for Dalia was competition for Hasan’s affection.
    Dalia could not find the will to discipline this child physically, as she had Yousef. She left Amal to her own untamed whims, watching her daughter as if surveying a burning sensibility that had left her years ago and returned tenfold in her child. Fate had been perverse to do such a thing, for Dalia had no defenses against raw vitality.
    Dalia learned to be a stoic mother, communicating the demands and tenders of motherhood with the various tempers of silence. Against this quiet detachment, the girl offered fits and petulance, mixed with bursts of kisses and feverish need meant to provoke her mother. Dalia’s love found its expression during the child’s sleep. Then she stroked her daughter’s hair, loved her endlessly with the kisses she withheld during the child’s waking hours.

EIGHT

    As Big as the Ocean and All Its Fishes

    1960–1963

    I SPENT MUCH TIME IN my youth trying to imagine Mama as Dalia, the Bedouin who once stole a horse, who bred roses and whose steps jingled. The mother I knew was a stout woman, imposing and severe, who soldiered all day at cleaning, cooking, baking, and embroidering thobes. Several times each week, she was called to deliver a baby. As with everything else she did, she performed midwifery with cool efficiency and detached nerve.
    I was eight years old when Mama first let me help her deliver a baby.
    “This is a very important job. You must be very serious, Amal,” she said, and proceeded with her cleansing ritual before leaving.
    “Wudu and salat. Do it with me,” she instructed.
    We passed the homemade soap between us. I watched her, imitating every detail, every motion. The splashing of the face with water, the rinsing of the hands, elbows, feet. Mumbled affirmations of faith in Allah. I moved as her mirror image. We washed and prayed, then she braided my hair. Before we left she held her special scissors over the babboor’s open flame and wrapped it in cloth “in the name of Allah, most Merciful and Forgiving.”
    At the expectant woman’s home, I was as Mama was, deliberate and grave. I handed her the