A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

This frightened Ayisha greatly. She had intended to get hold of an abandoned child, a poor, dirty little waif whom she could save from hunger, and now she had been brought a big, fat, blond, well-dressed, conspicuous baby. And the police were already searching for its kidnapper!

Nor was that all. Ayisha had planned to wait for her disciples to fall asleep at night and then rip off her beard, change her hermit’s cloak for a dress, veil her face, and slip away to her husband’s village. How, surrounded by boisterous disciples, with the French police and army on her heels, was she going to do that with a fat, blond French baby?

And what would she tell her angry followers when they discovered that they had kidnapped a baby for a wonder she couldn’t work? And so, sitting down beneath a distant tree, she prayed to Allah to have pity on the French child, whose miracle was planned for the next day.

Samaher was leaning cross-legged against the plumped pillows, her long hair grazing the embroidered flowers on her nightgown. There was new color in her cheeks, and her voice had grown stronger, as if this bizarre and tedious tale were now carrying her along with Ayisha’s disciples and the trains.

The next day, Ayisha boarded a train with several of her disciples. As soon as it picked up speed, she took the French baby and tossed it out the window. Yet Allah had heard her prayer and had pity. He did not let the child fly away but kept it floating outside the window, laughing and playing with the wind until Ayisha took it back into the train. At the next station it was given to a ticket clerk and brought to the police, who had posted a large reward.

“There’s that ticket clerk again,” laughed the visitor.

Ayisha, now a famous — though still childless — wonder-worker, was very sad. Everyone who heard about the floating French baby became more devoted to her than ever. A house was built for her on a mountaintop, and pilgrims came to kiss the hem of her cloak and the dainty soles of her feet. Even her husband’s second wife, who also was childless, came to kneel before her without knowing who she was.

“That’s the end. Nice, isn’t it?”

“Let’s not exaggerate,” he said, his headache back again. It was a story for One Thousand and One Nights. “What strikes you as political about it?”

“Well, you see, Professor, I thought that if it was written in 1942, during the Second World War, when the French were as helpless as babies, it was a story about how sorry the Arabs felt for them.”

“Sorry? Didn’t they throw the French baby out the window?”

“Yes, but only because Allah would save it. The God of the Muslims,” Samaher said gently, “who has mercy on the whole world. I think that’s the point of the parable, don’t you?”

He recalled how, in her first years as an undergraduate, she had kept getting into political arguments until, tired of them, she had stopped.

There was a profound silence.

“Tell me, Samaher,” he asked. “Do you believe in God?”

She blushed, her eyes flashing. “Why ask me? Ask the man who wrote this story, Ibrahim Ibn-Bakhir. Ask his readers. They were believers.”

“That may be. But are you one, Samaher?”

“In God?” She smiled her Mona Lisa smile. “Not exactly….” Realizing where she was, she checked herself. “But during Ramadan, when we’re fasting, I do try to believe… And when I’m not feeling well, too….”

10.

RIVLIN ROSE FROM his chair and began to pace up and down as though he were in a seminar room at the university. His sleepless night pounded in his temples. What had made him come to this place?

He stumbled across the narghile on the floor. Lifting it, he gave it a sniff, put it carefully down in a corner, went to the tray of medicines by Samaher’s bed, picked up a small bottle that rattled with blue pills, and stood there assessing their purpose. “Are these for your depression?” he bluntly asked his student, who was following his every movement with concern.

“I’m not depressed… just moody….” She smiled anxiously at the Jew standing so close to her bed. “My mother and grandmother take them sometimes, too. They’re good for when you feel blue.”

Did he feel blue? He took a pill from the bottle, licked it with the tip of his tongue, and popped it into his mouth without asking permission. It had a bitter and sour but clean taste.

The pleasant gloom was pierced by the coal black eyes of the trusty messenger, sent to inform Rivlin that his bed was ready. An afternoon nap was a welcome prospect. Before retiring for it, however, the Orientalist wished to hear the second, realistic story, the one about the feuding clans. Perhaps realism was better suited to uncovering the spark that had kindled the Algerian conflagration.

“Your cousin,” he told Rashid, possibly hoping that his praise would spur the young Arab to continue his efforts on Samaher’s behalf, “has quite an original interpretation of the story of the French baby.”

Not that Rashid’s loyalty or admiration needed spurring. “Leave it to Samaher,” he said. “She has a B.A. in Arabic language and literature.”

“Then this will be an interdisciplinary project,” Rivlin said. And to prevent them from thinking that he was being ironic at their expense, he suggested that he stay until the end of the day’s fast. “After all,” he added, “if you’ve lured me all the way to your village, I may as well enjoy some good food.”

“A baby lamb, slaughtered just for you!”

Rashid was ecstatic. Going to the table, he carefully collected the large binders to bring to Ma’alot, the nearest town with a photocopier. He did not want a single day to be lost in the career of his cousin, by whose bed he hovered like a dark bird, gently helping her to ease the pressure of the pillow crumpled behind her back. The visitor watched the coals of his eyes burn hypnotically into themselves as he bent over her, as though examining the pimples on her throat. Recklessly turning her on her side, he scooped her up in one arm before she could stop him, while airing and straightening the sheets with his other hand. Rivlin, enthralled and aghast at the passion between the two young Arabs, could not bring himself to turn away.

But it was time for the second, realistic story, which he hoped would be more plausible than the first. If it lacked the rumble of trains and the din of stations, which the author of the first tale knew well, at least it would have no miraculous babies or beautiful women disguised as saints. Set in a remote village in the mountains, it had been written by an author named Yassin bin Abbas and published in the spring 1948 issue of a short-lived Oran literary magazine called Al-Huriya al-Thalitha, or “The Third Freedom.” (What the first and second freedom were remained unclear.) Its language, according to Samaher, was highly colloquial, with so many odd local expressions that Rashid had gone with it to a relative in the Gaza Strip who had spent years working for the PLO in North Africa.

The Story of the Poisoned Horse

There was once, Samaher began enthusiastically, a small village on a mountain called Jebl Musa. She had abandoned her prone position and was now sitting up in bed with her notebook on her knees and her bare feet dangling. Its poor, simple farming families barely eked out a living from the arid soil. Yet one of them, the Sidik family, had sheep, goats, and two horses. The other farmers hated the Sidiks, whose flocks and horses, they were convinced, ate the villagers’ crops at night. No matter how often the Sidiks promised to keep their animals out of the neighbors’ fields and graze them only in natural pasture, the farmers did not believe them. It got so bad that hardly anyone even spoke to them.