A Tale Of Halva

A lonely sea breeze granted welcome relief from the fiery July heat. From their hilltop home, she could just about catch a glimpse of the azure expanse. She knew Nasser would be out there, somewhere. He sent her letters of his happenings. The latest a fresh arrival on the morning post.

He wrote in his usual hurried fashion. He would be home soon. There would be nothing in the way of him marrying his beloved Miriam now. A perfect marriage. Her Father would never object. His family were rich and lived in a palatial villa just north of Haifa.

Miriam felt her heart skip. It was what she had wanted since she was fourteen. She deserved happiness after last year. Her Mother had died in an attack by the Zionist Irgun at the Souk in Haifa.

She had been reading under an orange tree, a Russian novel if she remembered correctly, when her younger sister had come running up to her. Tears running down her cheeks. The words that had tumbled from her sister’s mouth making little sense to her. The meaning that reached her made her limp and she soon fainted. A good minute past, until she returned to conciousness, her head aching, the dappled sunlight leaking through the blossom. A different and painful new reality coming into sharp focus.

She missed her Mother everyday. The simple things. Her laughter. The smell of the fresh Havla whirling through the house.

Taken by the Zionist scourge. Hatred soon filled Miriam’s heart.

The air held a certain freshness to Zahra, as she looked back on the sweaty metropolis of London, that spread out in every direction. She had come to the Heath once before. She had been eight or nine. It had been with her cousin Amina and Gran for a Picnic, on a blustery spring afternoon. The paper plates flying about. This time was different though, all but a soft summer breeze was gracing the hillside. Ari would be waiting for her, with his Guitar.

She had met him at a pub near Hackney Wick, where gentrified officer workers united over cheap beer with naive yet orginal art students in disunity. He was playing in a band then. “Lying Mandolin”. They played electronic folk rock, or that was what he told her.

Zahra was impressed when they sat down at that fateful beer-stained table .It was not long till they went on a cigarette trip to the off-licence, and she found herself snogging him outside a closed down Poundland. It was not even that she was attracted to him at first. She liked his utter self-confidence. In the days and weeks that followed, it was more.

Now here she was seeing her “boyfriend”. The word both excited and frighted her. She spotted him in a clearing ahead. He was wearing his long jet black jacket, and was carefully pouring Prosecco into flutes.

It was his effortless sense of style and the people he associated with, that excited her. Ana, the DJ from Moscow who who recall wild tales of the parties at the legendary club, NII. Fala, the Brazilian transgender activist who wore the most eye-catching outfits.

There was only one problem. Mum and Gran would hate him. Not for how he was. For who he was. She could see Gran’s rouged lips, spit out the words in her husky register, “Israeli”.

She had committed the ultimate crime to her family. It would probably all work out.

He rose from the picnic blanket, her heart yearning for his touch. Zahra was falling for him and she was not going to stop herself. She smiled to herself. She was lucky she believed in fate and all its ugly consequences. An easy life was not for her.

She would go home tonight to tell Mum and Gran. Her maoschistic streak was taking advantage of her. She was sure in her heart Ari would leave her one day, and then it would have all been a pointless and painful exercise.

Miriam married Nasser Khoury on a sweaty September afternoon. War had broken out in Europe, but that was far away. She had got what she had wanted, or so she presumed at sixteen.

The first years of their marriage went along in the typical way, they grew closer, and a physical attraction pulled them together. But, as time passed, Miriam did not become pregnant. All that could be done, was done, but nothing came of it.

A foulness entered her man’s tongue, and soon he would use his strength against her. Their love turned sour, and soon to hate. His face disgusted her, his presence disgusted her.

It was in the summer before the Nabka that she found herself at yet another clinic, just south of Jerusalem. The doctor was a Zionist. She was scared. He spoke Arabic with a European accent. He spoke with a calming manner, no stress entering his diction.

He carried out many tests on that first day of her arrival at the clinic, and it was not until her third day, that he arrived carrying a number of sheets.

“ Mrs. Khoury there is from my understanding nothing wrong with you or perhaps it is beyond our capability”, he noted, before continuing, “In my honest opinion, from what I have heard the fault lies with your husband, who will never accept it”

Miriam was taken aback by his words. No one had said that before. She had obviously thought it in the early hours as a teenage bride. But she had been told on good authority by a wise-woman that men could never be sterile.

In the end, to keep the family happy, he recommended a regime of acupuncture. The needles hurt at first, but a numbness soon crept over her. In the afternoon, she would settle under a mastic tree, where the Zionist doctor would join her.

He would sit next to her, as she read her book of French poetry. In silence at first, but over time she opened up to him. He had a certain charm, she thought.

He listened to her every word. She found herself attracted to him. She could not recognise herself, her heart which had such a burning hatred for Zionists, had fallen for one.

They would talk about life. His escape from Nazism. Her pained marriage. She would lose herself in his maroon eyes. He had a depth she had not experienced. A childhood spent in Paris. Music and wealth surrounding him, and then swept away by occupation and confiscation.

It was on her last evening in the clinic, looking out on Jerusalem in the distance that he joined her. She could just about make out Temple Mount. He spoke in his measured tone, “ What do you want to do?”

“ Something that we are not allowed to do”, she replied, not believing the words were falling out of her mouth.

He did not say anything at first. He looked directly at her.

“That doesn’t mean that we can’t”, he smiled, before adding, “ What is life without a proper sin?”

It was midnight, that Miriam found herself in her bed wide awake. He had told her, he would come for her then. Her body tingled with excitement. Every cell awaiting his touch.

He came to her room ten past the hour. The clothes being cast off with primal haste. It felt good. It was a world apart from how Nasser treated her. The act was not just for him to receive pleasure. He was receptive to her body. She would experience anything like it again. Over time, her memory of that night would become warped in nostalgic reminiscence.

It was three weeks later, that she became quite sure that she was pregnant. She had to hide in her room after that, quite sure that the glare of God was upon her. A daughter would be born on the last day of winter. Unknown to infant and to all but Miriam, the Nabka, would soon make her a paradox. A coexistence as a victor and a victim.

Zahra stood at the door, a soft summer rain had began to fall. Inside, Mum and Gran would be preparing dinner.

She opened the door quietly to avoid their attention, closing it with great care. Her heart was already beating fast. She would tell them this evening. She knew she would. Once she had set her heart on something, she would not go back on it. Just, as she was about to make the dash upstairs, Gran appeared, far more agile than her ninety-six years would suggest.

Zahra realised she would have to say it, as Gran called for Mum. She would have to blurt it out. She could tell that Gran knew that she was finding something. She gave that squinted up and down look, that she had given her when she came home drunk from house parties as a teenager.

She knew it had to come out, she sighed, “Mum and Jadda I need tell you something. I know you going to get mad but please just listen…”

Her Mother interrupted, “Oh Zahra, what is all this, you are not pregnant… and if you lesbian it is fine with me, but there is no need to spoil Jadda’s last years….”

“Please Mum, it is none of those… just listen to me for once, that is all I ask for”, she paused, before continuing, “ Well, like, I have fallen in love with a guy, and like he is really amazing. Handsome. Kind. Funny, and he is kind of really talented and well he is like… I mean to say.. he is just Israeli. A Zionist”

The two women stood there in silence, in front of her. A paleness glazing over them.

It was her Mother, who first spoke, shaking her head repeatedely, “Just no, Zahra, you can fall in love with any other creed or nationality of person in the world, expect… Just no Israeli. You know what they did to us”, she bit her lip, before continuing, “You know what you will do, split up with him. I don’t care how nice he is, you are going to do it. This is how it must be”

“ I will not, Mum. I love him”

Her Grandmother who had been silent, stepped forward, a fire filling her eyes that she had never seen before, “If you do not, you are going to leave my house and you will not return. You will be nothing to me. We will have nothing more to do with each other, if you do not break up with him before this day ends. Allah wills it”

She repeated what she had told her Mother. It would not sink in for many months the gravity of her Grandmother’s words and what her course of action would mean for her life.

Yet, Zahra would never know that her Grandmother would spend her last years haunted by her choice that evening. Her Grandmother had chosen a course of action based upon vengeance and hypocrisy. She who had never got to be with her true love, and had paid a heavy price, had decided she would not let her Granddaughter get away without an equal penalty to her happiness.

In her aged heart too, there remained her lifelong fear that her beautiful sin would be uncovered. She had taken the easy route. The coward’s route.