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

apple tobacco also had marked that special morning.
    “Listen to the words I read. They’re magical,” he said. And I tried very hard to understand the classical Arabic prose, but to my young mind it seemed another language. Still, the cadence was mesmerizing, and Baba’s voice was a lullaby. I dozed in his arms.
    I told no one of the incident and I lived through the day in anticipation of night, the darkness just before dawn, hoping to once again have a special place in Baba’s morning.
    I fit perfectly into Baba’s lap. His arms circled and held me there, my head resting in the hollow of his shoulder. He read to me again.
Stop, oh my friends, let us pause to weep

over the remembrance of my beloved.

Here was her abode on the edge of the sandy desert

between Dakhool and Howmal.

The traces of her encampment

are not wholly obliterated even now.

For when the south wind blows the sand over them

the north wind sweeps it away.

The courtyards and enclosures

of the old home have become desolate;

The dung of the wild deer lies there

thick as the seeds of pepper.

On the morning of our separation

it was as if I stood in the gardens of our tribe,

Amid the acacia-shrubs where my eyes

were blinded with tears by the smart

from the bursting pods of colocynth.

    I could hear the turbulence inside Baba’s chest, the protests of his lungs against each inhalation of honey apple tobacco.
    “Baba, who do you love more, me or Yousef?”
    “Habibti,” he began. I couldn’t help but smile when he called me that. “I love you both the same,” he said.
    “How big do you love me?”
    “I love you as big as the ocean and all its fishes. As big as the sky and all its birds. As big as the earth and all her trees.”
    “What about the universe and all its planets? You forgot that part.”
    “I was getting to it. Be patient,” he said, puffing on his pipe. He exhaled, “And I love you bigger than the universe and all its planets.”
    “Do you love Yousef that much?”
    “Yes. As big as the ocean . . . but without all the fishes.”
    My heart grew with all the fishes, the idea that Baba loved me just a little more. “What about the sky and earth? Do you love him that big but without all the birds and trees?”
    “Yes. But don’t tell anyone.”
    “I won’t, Baba, I swear.” My heart swelled with birds now. “What about the universe part?”
    “Don’t be greedy.” He winked at me. “I have to get to work, habibti. Tomorrow.”
    Habibti. Tomorrow .

    It was difficult to wake up so early and I would nod back to sleep in Baba’s arms. Eventually I became accustomed to rising before the sun, a habit that has long endured. Every dawn, while Baba read on the terrace of our small adobe home, he and I witnessed the sun pour itself over the land, drenching everything it touched with life.
Many a night has let down its curtains

around me amid deep grief,

It has whelmed me as a wave

of the sea to try me with sorrow.

Then I said to the night,

as slowly his huge bulk passed over me,

As his breast, his loins, his buttocks weighed on me

and then passed afar,

“Oh long night, dawn will come,

but will be no brighter without my love.

You are a wonder, with stars held up

as by ropes of hemp to a solid rock.”

At other times, I have filled a leather water-bag

of my people and entered the desert,

And trod its empty wastes while the wolf howled

like a gambler whose family starves.

    Baba said, “The land and everything on it can be taken away, but no one can take away your knowledge or the degrees you earn.” I was six then and high marks in school became the currency I gave for Baba’s approval, which I craved now more than ever. I became the best student in all of Jenin and memorized the poems my father so loved. Even when my body grew too big for his lap, the sun always found us cuddled together with a book.

    My life before the war returns to me now in memories bracketed by Baba’s arms and scented with the