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

towels, stood by with the scissors, and held my nerves (and the food in my stomach) because she warned me, “Don’t be weak and don’t get sick.” Stern as steel. “Whatever you feel, keep it inside.”
    I remember that day well. The slow strokes of the comb traveling in Mama’s hand from the top of my head to the tips of my long black hair. Approval in her face when I anticipated a need for more towels before her cue. Imparting skills and forestalling weakness were the ways Dalia loved. Everything else, the hugs and kisses I so craved, she held with the clench of her jaw and the grip that rubbed itself in her right palm. Whatever you feel, keep it inside .
    That evening she let me and Huda, my best friend, sleep on the flat rooftop.
    “Thank you, Mama.” “Thank you, Um Yousef,” we said excitedly.
    She didn’t answer us, just pulled the shades over her heart and went on with her evening cleaning. From the roof that night, Huda and I watched Mama wait for Baba to return from the garage. She walked around with a broom in her hand, Um Kalthoom singing from the radio, and she swept the dust at the threshold until there was nothing but moonlight to sweep.
    Mama never danced at weddings and rarely visited friends. Once, I awoke far into the night and found her tenderly stroking my hair. She kissed me then, one of a few precious kisses perched in my mind, and said, “Go back to sleep, ya binti.”

    My early years in Jenin’s refugee camp are metered by such discoveries. Like the time when I was four and I saw Yousef ’s penis. He was getting dressed and didn’t notice me watching. For days, I thought about it, inspecting myself, looking at Mama in the bath, and worrying that something terrible was wrong with my brother. Naturally, I caused a stir when I grabbed Yousef ’s crotch, unmindful of the neighbors, and my brother hit me hard. Everyone who witnessed the cause of my hysterical screaming agreed that Yousef had done the right thing. Except Mama.
    A neighbor woman said to her, “Dalia, a girl just can’t do that, even if she is four. Best break her of the devil’s habits early.” Break her. Beat her. Teach her a lesson . Another said, “You can bet she won’t do that again.” Still another: “He’s her older brother and he has every right to hit his sister if she misbehaves.”
    But Mama took my side, reprimanding Yousef. “Don’t ever hit your sister. Ever,” Mama said, and I waxed triumphant, ready to be received into my mother’s arms. But she would have none of that either.
    “Stop crying, Amal,” she ordered, not angry, mean, or even firm. Matter-of-fact, efficient, tough.

    On a morning in April, the month of flowers, I discovered a side of my father I had never seen before. So ceaselessly did he work and so infrequently did I see him that I had only adored him from afar until that day. I was five years old. I awoke before dawn in a panic to wet clothes, and I rushed to sort out my predicament in the only room that offered privacy. To my horror and shame, Baba was waiting for me as I emerged from the toilet. More than punishment, I feared his disappointment.
    That day is one of my clearest childhood memories. Without words, Baba helped me into clean pajamas and I levitated off the ground in his enormous arms. He carried me a few steps, my small head buried in his neck, and sat me in his lap on the terrace, a four-by-three-meter patch of stone and tile covered with a canopy of grape vines—Mama’s stubborn attempt to duplicate the glory of her gardens in Ein Hod. It was still dark, but I recall the shadowy landscape of the countryside’s blossoming fruit trees. Peach, pomegranate, and olive were in bloom when, by the light of a wax candle, my father read to me for the first time.
    For a long time after, my senses could conjure from memory the sweet scents of spring that had bewitched the air. My father’s olive-wood pipe had protruded from the side of his mouth and the smoke of honey