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

elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who had been rooted in the land for centuries.”

    There was a pause filled with the persistent hope of return before someone spoke again.
“It’s about time someone spoke up against this foulness.”

“I just hope the Jews didn’t mess up my house too bad.”

“I don’t care. I’ll fix my house. I just want to go home.”

    “Let me go tell the family. Um Khaleel will be so happy. She’s been so worried about her lemon and almond trees.”
    But just as the men began to disperse, a small, five-year-old voice stopped them. “Jiddo”—little Yousef looked at Yehya— “can we go home now?”
    It was the assumption they all had made, but being confronted with the question, now they were unsure of the answer. So they turned to Yehya and Haj Salem sitting next to him. Yehya looked at Hasan, then turned to his grandson and said, “The truth is, Yousef, we just don’t know yet. We have to wait, ya habibi.” My beloved .
    * * *

    Gathering for the news became a morning ritual in the refugee camp. Women had their own groups, as did children. But to the men, it was the most important event of the day. It was a time and place where the hope of returning home could be renewed. Even when those hopes were perpetually dashed. Even when the old began to die off. And even when hopes grew fainter, they continued to gather in this routine of the Right of Return.
    A few days after they heard of the Swedish mediator, they listened to another news item.
    Hasan read:

The Swedish UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, was assassinated by Jewish terrorists.

    Israel would not allow the return, and the family waited captive in that interminable year, with its surreal twist of fate and tentative conclusion, stretching on and on, renewed each morning with the news.

    Yehya aged tremendously in those confused months that stretched into years, until one day in 1953, when he realized that his miserable tent in Jenin had turned into clay. The symbolic permanence of the shelter was too much to bear. He would rather have stayed in the cloth dwelling, its leaky top and muddy floor confirming only a temporary exile.
    In the years of waiting in the tent city, Yehya would awake at the adan and idle through the day, playing the music of his nye between rationed meals and five daily prayers. He found some comfort in the love of his family and daily games of backgammon with Haj Salem and Jack O’Malley, the UN director of operations in Jenin. The three men were inseparable from midafternoon until eight or later in the evening, depending on how well the game was going, or how well-prepared the hookas were that day.
    But in more than sixty years of life, Yehya had become accustomed to the daily activities of agrarian self-sufficiency. The aimlessness of captive dispossession warped his mood and bent his posture. The string of broken promises and UN resolutions, not worth the paper on which they set down demands of return, wore at his spirit and made him taciturn, and he shuffled about with the qualities of a man defeated by the wait. Defeated by the quiet nag of his hands wanting things to do.
    Something in the clay of his new shelter, the way it solidified him, stirred him from his resignation. One early November morning in 1953, he handed some clothes to Dalia.
    “Ya binti,” Yehya said, “will you make these as white as they can be?”
    Dalia took the clothes and pushed them in the soapy water. Leaning into the wash bucket to scrub, she lifted her head, a few strands of hair escaping from her scarf, and watched her father-in-law walk away. He’s in better spirits, thanks be to Allah .
    On a rock outside his clay shelter, Yehya sat in his long white underpants and a white undershirt, and leaned into the wind.