The Book of Disappearance: A Novel

2

Alaa

I lived my life, lonely, she used to say. Even though her house was always full of guests, as I remember. But memory is dense fog that spreads or clears as one gets older. I never understood why she spoke of herself in the past tense so often. Even when she laughed, and she loved to laugh, she would still speak of herself in the past tense and would say, I used to love laughing. Oh, how I loved laughing!

Tata died.

I still get goose bumps whenever I say it. Tata died. I was relieved that she died without needing anyone. But she died.

She died.

She took a bath before leaving the house.

As if going to her own funeral!

She was sitting in the middle of the wooden bench, facing the sea. She was wearing her purple plissé skirt, and a matching shirt under her black chiffon coat. Without her tiny black purse this time. Or maybe someone stole it from her? How did she get here? A see-through black scarf hid her hair. She never let it go white and would always dye it black. Even after reaching her seventies, she would still paint her nails, making sure the colors matched her attire. No one loves life the way we, the people al-Manshiyye, and of the sea, do. She would always mock those who didn’t groom themselves, as if only city folk and Jaffans knew how to do so.

She liked to sit by the sea, often on the Arab beach, near Ajami. But she loved that other spot atop the hill where I found her, too, especially the wooden bench. I never knew why. And she died here, by the sea. She preferred to die in Jaffa rather than leave. Whenever she mentioned Jaffa’s name, she would take a deep breath, as if the city had, all of a sudden, betrayed her and scorched her heart. At that moment, when I saw that her body was a corpse gazing at the sea, I realized that there were so many questions I had yet to ask her. But death and time beat me to them. How many times can one say the same thing? I swear sometimes I get sick of myself, she used to say with a smile, when I asked her to retell one of her stories.

Longing for her is like holding a rose of thorns!

I noticed that she was clutching something in her right fist. When I tried to loosen her hand, I saw her pearl necklace. It had come loose in the past, but she didn’t want to have it restrung. Sometimes she used to take it out of its old wooden box, where it was wrapped in cotton, just to look at it. I asked my mother about it, but she didn’t know anything, or if the pearls were real or fake. I had a feeling she wasn’t telling the truth.

Tata had a black beauty mark on her right cheek, like the bezel of a precious ring. When I was a child I used to reach up to touch and kiss it. Mother has one, too, on her left cheek. When I looked at Tata’s face there was a light smile still alive, showing some of her teeth. I don’t wear dentures, she used to say, No one believes that I am over eighty and don’t need them. My feet ache because of the sewing machine, but my teeth are like pearls.

Why did Tata choose to die alone, facing the sea? Was she always lonely, even when she was with us? Something about survivors leaves them always lonely.

I walk in the city, but it doesn’t recognize me, she once said in a sad voice.

Why would the city recognize you, Tata? It’s not like you’re Alexander the Great. You know the city is inanimate! It’s not a person.

What are you saying? Who told you a city cannot recognize its people? You kids don’t understand anything. A city dies if it doesn’t recognize its people. The sea is the only thing that hasn’t changed. But frankly, it’s meaningless. Lots of water for nothing.

I laughed when she said that. She would take back her insult to the sea, as if it were the only thing that remained loyal. It neither changed, nor left. She would always complain that the streets were empty. They had many people, but were still empty. All those people left their own countries and came here. What for? They crowd everything, but have no gravitas. I don’t like to walk down the street in the morning and not come across someone I know. There are only a handful of us left who can greet each other. Come, let’s stop by the pharmacy to say hello to Abu Yusif.

I used to accompany her to al-Kamal Pharmacy. As soon as we enter, she would start complaining to Abu Yusif about the pain in her knees. I would remind her that he’s not a physician, but he would tell me to let her ask her question. Whenever she met one of those who stayed in Jaffa, she used to regress to a little girl. They would speak of that year and what happened before and after that year. When I was a teenager I used to mock the pharmacy’s name and its greenish wood. But now I’ve learned to love it. I get all my prescriptions there. I see Tata standing or sitting there, taking her time, and talking to the pharmacist. Always about Jaffans, their names, and news. I used to get tired of all those names when I was young.

He told me that we must leave. I’ve arranged everything and we must go to Beirut before they kill us all. We’ll come back when things calm down. I told him that am not leaving. I’m six months pregnant. What would we do if something happened on the way there? How could one leave Jaffa anyway? What would I do in Beirut? There is nothing there. I don’t like Beirut. You live in Jaffa, and think of going to Beirut? I never liked Beirut. I don’t know why people like it so much. Nothing worth seeing.

Whenever sidu’s name came up, she used to repeat her answer to him, but would revise details here and there. Sometimes Beirut becomes beautiful, but it wasn’t her city and she didn’t want to go there. At other times Beirut was just a trivial hell.

Weren’t you afraid?

"Who said I wasn’t? A week before your sidu and my folks left, I thought I was going to have a miscarriage. The bullets were everywhere. They used to shoot at us whenever we went outside our houses. We were like mice. Our lives had no value. Why do you think everyone left the city? Do you know why my brother Rubin, my sister Sumayya, and all my uncles left? No one leaves just like that. That’s enough, grandson. Don’t hurt me even more."

I waited two days and then asked her again about the house. She said it’s in al-Manshiyye. The building where her family lived was bombed and collapsed on top of those living in it. She was lucky that she felt severe pain that night, and her family was visiting her, so they slept over. When they went back the next morning, they didn’t find their neighbors. They all perished in the rubble of the building. The building died, and they died with it. It was a coincidence that her family survived. My grandfather and her family decided to go to Beirut until things calm down. But she refused to go with them. He was convinced that she would join him later. Her mother and siblings went with him. Her father, my great grandfather, stayed with her after she refused to go. He had hoped that he would join the others, or that they would eventually return. But they weren’t able to do so, and she didn’t want to leave. She inherited stubbornness from her father. My grandfather waited ten years for her, but she never joined him. She would always say, I never left. He’s the one who left. I stayed in my home.

So, my mother lived without her father and never knew him. My grandfather married another woman after divorcing my grandmother. After tens of letters he had written and sent via the International Red Cross, he penned one final letter. He said in it that he would wait until the end of that year. If she didn’t come, he would divorce her and set her free. And so it was, on paper at least. I asked her once if the pearl necklace was a gift from him. She laughed and didn’t answer. When I asked her when did it come loose, she answered, but without answering. People went away, a country stayed, our souls came loose, and you keep asking about the pearl necklace? I’m done this evening. Enough questions.

I wish I’d asked her more questions.

I wish I’d talked to her much more.

Alaa put his pen down on the wooden table, whose short legs were anchored in the sandy beach. He felt some back pain, so he reclined in the orange chair. He gazed at the sea’s blueness. He turned left and saw the lights of Mar Butrus Church and the Bahr Mosque. He went back to read what he’d just written. She used to mock his chaotic script whenever she saw him writing. Why are your scribbles like chicken marks, sweetheart? You should have seen my father’s script. It was so beautiful, like a calligrapher’s.

It was the first time Alaa had started writing his memoirs in the red notebook. Its color caught his eye when he was passing by a stationery store on Allenby Street. He bought it and was walking to Tsfoni Café on the beach when he decided to start writing his memoirs.

He felt exhausted and shut his big blue eyes to listen to the waves of the sea, and nothing else. But the loud reggae music billowing from the big speakers and the chatter of other customers were jamming to silence the sea. He tried, in vain, to listen to the waves.

3

Alaa

I return to you, now, two weeks after first writing in this notebook. I don’t know why I begin by addressing you directly. As if you are still here, or you will actually read these words. I’m not even sure if there is life after death. Nor do I know where souls go after they depart our bodies. You might be angry with me for saying that! But I think you will laugh. Yes, that’s more like you. You would ask God to forgive me. But then you would laugh and say, All will be well. That expression used to anger me quite a bit, especially when you said it. How could someone who went through what you did, still say All will be well. If all wasn’t well to start with, how would it be well afterward? I used to ask you. But you would laugh and say, Don’t give me a headache. Find something else to argue about. Is this what they teach you at university? Just finish already and find yourself a wife.

I am sitting at Tsfoni Café. I always come back to this spot. Why do I like to come here? Maybe because it’s right on the beach. I take off my shoes and put my feet down in the sand. There is nothing but the sea. Here, Jaffa is on my left, and the sea is spread out before me. I leave Tel Aviv behind. I don’t see it, and it doesn’t see me. I leave its buildings and noise. The sound of the sea overpowers the sounds of the city. I know Tel Aviv is behind me, but I couldn’t care less about its existence.

We didn’t spend much time together, but I feel your presence everywhere in this country. What is much anyway? I had wanted to bring you here to this spot. Hoping you would try to remember if you, too, loved it in the past, before my grandfather left. Perhaps you two walked together here once? It’s not far from your house in al-Manshiyye.

I’m mad at you. Your memory, which is engraved in my mind, has all these holes in it. Am I not remembering all that you told me, or was it incomprehensible? I was very young when I started listening to your stories. Later, when I turned to them for help, I discovered these holes. I started to ask you about them. But the more I asked, the more you got mixed up, or maybe I did. How would things not get mixed up? I was certain there was another city on top of the one we live in, donning it. I was certain that your city, the one you kept talking about, which has the same name, has nothing to do with my city. It resembles it a great deal. The names, orange groves, scents, al-Hamra Cinema, Apollo, weddings, Prophet Rubin’s feast, Iskandar Awad Street, al-Nuzha Street, al-Sa‘a Square . . . etc. Where do all these names come from? We would be walking and you start mentioning other names too. Names not written on signs. I had to learn to see what you were seeing. Akh! And all those people. I got to know all their problems, and how they were forced to leave Jaffa. I knew all the boring (and at times interesting) details about their lives. I knew all the jokes they used to tell. All this without having even met a single one of them. And I probably never will.

Your Jaffa resembles mine. But it is not the same. Two cities impersonating each other. You carved your names in my city, so I feel like I am a returnee from history. Always tired, roaming my own life like a ghost. Yes, I am a ghost who lives in your city. You, too, are a ghost, living in my city. And we call both cities Jaffa.

You were the exact opposite of the others. They couldn’t talk about their catastrophes when they take place. Even if they dare open the gate of memory, they would do it just a bit, and years later. You were the opposite. The last time I asked you about how they kicked you out of al-Manshiyye, forced you to go to Ajami, and how you lived with the Hungarian family they brought to share your house with you, you said, My tongue is worn away from words. Don’t ask me anymore! They didn’t stay long in the house we were forced to go to. We were lucky. That’s enough, grandson. What good will it do to talk about it? Even words are tired.

You used to say that you would walk in the morning, but could not recognize the city, or the streets. As if they, too, were expelled along with those who were forced to leave. Back then, my child eyes tried to imagine the scene the way you described it. As if the darkness had swallowed them, and the sea took them hostage. That is how you described your days, and those people who were forced to leave and go beyond the sea. But you didn’t say that the population of the city went from 100,000 down to 4,000. No, you didn’t say that. You did say that you couldn’t recognize your city after they’d left. What bereavement! My mind cannot process these figures. Nor can I comprehend what it means for a city to lose most of its people. I, who was born and raised in Jaffa after Jaffa had left itself.

You used to eat oranges voraciously. I thought you loved them, so I was surprised when you said that you didn’t. You only started eating oranges after they forced you out of al-Manshiyye to Ajami. They fenced Ajami with barbed wire and declared it a closed military zone. Why, then, did you eat oranges if you didn’t like them? Were you exacting revenge against those who were on the other side of the sea, yearning for Jaffa’s oranges? You always complained that the cypresses on street sides lost their meaning after