bitten by a rabid rat that was hiding in the pile of wood we used to heat the boiler.
Mother blamed herself for my sister’s death. Coming to Beirut and staying at her house had brought bad luck, she said. She gnawed on her fingers, wishing it had been she who’d gone to collect wood that evening, not Manifa. She blamed the doctor too, for not connecting the bite with her fever; and for not realising till too late that Manifa had rabies.
My brother-in-law hugged his children and cried. It was the first time I’d seen a man crying, simply dissolving into tears, except for the men playing Imam al-Hussein in Nabatiyeh Square during the Ashura 8 commemoration. They would wail when Imam al-Hussein held his baby son and bade him farewell, knowing the end was near, as the enemies’ arrow had struck the baby in the chest.
After Manifa’s death I became a stone-bearing donkey. I was just like those beasts of burden that carried stones between the villages, with bleeding sores on their sides. Backin Nabatiyeh, Apple’s mother had given barley to them. ‘You donkeys have to heave stones all day,’ she would say to them, ‘so here’s something to soothe your weary legs and backs.’ The donkeys would stop their braying and devour the barley. So what was my reward to be, I wondered?
The other adults in the family urged me to help Mother take care of my three nephews, lest they begin to feel the loss of their mother – particularly the youngest, who was not yet one and a half. Khadija, Ibrahim’s wife, had been nursing and looking after him as though he were her own child.
Mother was overcome with grief, and she found it difficult to take care of the boys, although now that I was older I could see that she simply wasn’t much good at household chores. I often overheard adults remark that she wasn’t pulling her weight, or that she was lazy, like a closed book. They even told a joke about her: that one day when she’d bid farewell to her first husband as he got on his mule to go to work, she’d yelled out, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, I was just going to bake you some bread.’ But I was still only ten. My narrow shoulders could not bear the burden of the responsibility for the three boys and Mother.
Manifa’s tragic death was not the only cruel twist of fate Mother suffered. Just a year later, Raoufa, my other sister, caught a fever and died within days. This time the cause wasn’t a rat bite but a burst appendix. On her neighbours’ advice she hadn’t consulted a doctor, but instead had applied strips of boiled onion-peel and cumin to her abdomen. She left behind five children: two daughters and three sons, one of whom had survived polio and had a wooden leg.
A year after this second tragedy, Abu-Hussein and Ibrahim decided we should all live together, as Mother and I couldn’t cope with looking after my three nephews on our own. So we all moved to a house, or rather a large apartment, in Ra’s al-Nab, one of the more refined districts of Beirut – its namemeant ‘the source of a spring’. But there was no spring, only a tap gushing water outside a grocery shop.
Now we had my sister-in-law Khadija to help us and she was capable, intelligent and astute. She was also an energetic housekeeper. I loved her and she loved me. She combed out my curly hair – an act demanding patience and time – and came to my defence when Ibrahim yelled at me.
By this time Abu-Hussein’s business had improved considerably. He’d withdrawn from partnership with Ibrahim, who now worked full-time as a tram driver, and joined with a fellow merchant to become co-owner of a shop selling imported men’s clothing. This new business partner was very clever and my brother-in-law believed everything he said. They began to pay off Ibrahim’s share in instalments, which made Ibrahim even more gloomy and angry. He could only watch as yet another opportunity slipped from his grasp – a pattern that had begun when Mother took him out
Mother blamed herself for my sister’s death. Coming to Beirut and staying at her house had brought bad luck, she said. She gnawed on her fingers, wishing it had been she who’d gone to collect wood that evening, not Manifa. She blamed the doctor too, for not connecting the bite with her fever; and for not realising till too late that Manifa had rabies.
My brother-in-law hugged his children and cried. It was the first time I’d seen a man crying, simply dissolving into tears, except for the men playing Imam al-Hussein in Nabatiyeh Square during the Ashura 8 commemoration. They would wail when Imam al-Hussein held his baby son and bade him farewell, knowing the end was near, as the enemies’ arrow had struck the baby in the chest.
After Manifa’s death I became a stone-bearing donkey. I was just like those beasts of burden that carried stones between the villages, with bleeding sores on their sides. Backin Nabatiyeh, Apple’s mother had given barley to them. ‘You donkeys have to heave stones all day,’ she would say to them, ‘so here’s something to soothe your weary legs and backs.’ The donkeys would stop their braying and devour the barley. So what was my reward to be, I wondered?
The other adults in the family urged me to help Mother take care of my three nephews, lest they begin to feel the loss of their mother – particularly the youngest, who was not yet one and a half. Khadija, Ibrahim’s wife, had been nursing and looking after him as though he were her own child.
Mother was overcome with grief, and she found it difficult to take care of the boys, although now that I was older I could see that she simply wasn’t much good at household chores. I often overheard adults remark that she wasn’t pulling her weight, or that she was lazy, like a closed book. They even told a joke about her: that one day when she’d bid farewell to her first husband as he got on his mule to go to work, she’d yelled out, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, I was just going to bake you some bread.’ But I was still only ten. My narrow shoulders could not bear the burden of the responsibility for the three boys and Mother.
Manifa’s tragic death was not the only cruel twist of fate Mother suffered. Just a year later, Raoufa, my other sister, caught a fever and died within days. This time the cause wasn’t a rat bite but a burst appendix. On her neighbours’ advice she hadn’t consulted a doctor, but instead had applied strips of boiled onion-peel and cumin to her abdomen. She left behind five children: two daughters and three sons, one of whom had survived polio and had a wooden leg.
A year after this second tragedy, Abu-Hussein and Ibrahim decided we should all live together, as Mother and I couldn’t cope with looking after my three nephews on our own. So we all moved to a house, or rather a large apartment, in Ra’s al-Nab, one of the more refined districts of Beirut – its namemeant ‘the source of a spring’. But there was no spring, only a tap gushing water outside a grocery shop.
Now we had my sister-in-law Khadija to help us and she was capable, intelligent and astute. She was also an energetic housekeeper. I loved her and she loved me. She combed out my curly hair – an act demanding patience and time – and came to my defence when Ibrahim yelled at me.
By this time Abu-Hussein’s business had improved considerably. He’d withdrawn from partnership with Ibrahim, who now worked full-time as a tram driver, and joined with a fellow merchant to become co-owner of a shop selling imported men’s clothing. This new business partner was very clever and my brother-in-law believed everything he said. They began to pay off Ibrahim’s share in instalments, which made Ibrahim even more gloomy and angry. He could only watch as yet another opportunity slipped from his grasp – a pattern that had begun when Mother took him out
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