Miral by Rula Jebreal

fruit?”
    Nadia grabbed a gas lamp and threw it at him, but he dodged it. Then she went to her room, and while Nimer laughed scornfully on the other side of the door, she took a few articles of clothing from a drawer, caressed her still-sleeping sisters with her eyes, tucked a little bag under her arm, and headed for the door. Her mother ran after her. She caught Nadia’s arm and pulled it, trying to embrace her, with tears in her eyes. “Please,” she said, “don’t tell anyone what happened. If you do, you’ll ruin our reputation. Think of your sisters—their reputations will be ruined, too.”
    â€œYou disgust me,” Nadia said. Her eyes were also full of tears, but they were tears of anger. “You should have protected me, and you did nothing.”
    â€œI am doing something. I’m staying at my husband’s side, because that’s my proper place, and your sisters are too young to go away with you. Here, take this.”
    She handed her daughter some money, which Nadia snatched from her hand, judging the offering the least her mother could do for her. She considered her mother as guilty as her stepfather, and she hated her at the same time that she pitied her. The year was 1959, and Nadia knew that it wasn’t at all easy for an Arab woman in Israel to rebel against her husband. But Nadia had no choice; she had to leave, because the alternative to leaving would have been death. Nothing on earth could have made her bear the rape, the violence, the tyranny one minute longer.
    She raced down the hill and away from that house like a madwoman chased by ghosts. She didn’t turn around.

2
    W hen Nadia arrived in Jaffa, a sense of freedom rose up in her. She felt the bitterness of a difficult choice but was proud of herself for having had the strength to rebel against such cruelty. “From now on, I make the rules,” she told herself as she walked along aimlessly. “Nobody’s going to make me suffer anymore.”
    Jaffa was smaller and tidier than Haifa, which was, above all, a port, where everything revolved around the loading and unloading of goods and the activities of the underworld that flourished there. Jaffa, on the other hand, seemed to have developed harmoniously, filled with public amenities, restaurants, and hotels and surrounded by green parks. The streets were lined with lemon, mandarin, and grapefruit trees, and the rose-colored houses of Jaffa had a colonial style that, though outdated, was decidedly more charming than Haifa’s modern buildings.
    After wandering through the city all afternoon, she saw a sign: HOTEL SHALOM . She thought, “Maybe I’ll find a little peace there,” then crossed the street and entered the lobby. The middle-aged Russian matron at the reception desk was surprised when Nadia asked for a single room. The hotel’s guests were usually tourists or businessmen away from their wives and looking for fun.
    Nadia took a room with a terrace overlooking the sea and immediately fell asleep, finally able to release some of the tension that had accumulated in her during the past several hours and to feel relief at having escaped from a bad dream that had lasted for years. After her nap, she took a long bath and went down to the desk to ask if anyone on the staff knew of a restaurant that was hiring waitresses. The Russian lady replied that she knew a restaurant owner, one of her regular clients, who was indeed looking for help, and she gave Nadia the address.
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    The owner, a Moroccan Jew named Yossi, was immediately struck by the beauty of the girl, who displayed the self-confidence of a grown-up.
    Nadia showed herself to be a hard worker, but she was melancholic, and at times her eyes were so sad that Yossi wondered what could have wounded her so deeply. Apart from that, she was perfect. Customers left her lavish tips, and she was always willing to help out her colleagues. One day she asked Yossi if he