Sulha Read online

  “Sulha is one of the most poignant and inspired novels to have emerged from modern Israel’s harrowing yet exultant experience.”

  —ELIE WIESEL

  “This is not just a book for Jews and women, it is a multi-cultural adventure. Strong and provocative and illuminating, it is told in a unique new voice.”

  —JONI MITCHELL

  “. . . Crucial human questions, passionately addressed, and answered in a spirit of humility . . . I rejoice in [Malka Marom’s] achievement.

  —LEONARD COHEN

  “Sulha attempts to reconcile ancient conflicts, the living and the dead, forgetting and forgiving, within the compassion and frailties of its characters. It is a large-hearted book, full of questions.”

  —ANNE MICHAELS

  “. . . I read it above all as a Poem or THE Poem of the desert . . . If history and politics are present, it is through an individual woman’s obsessive consciousness to come to grips with them, primarily to give meaning to her own life . . . This is where I see the beauty of [Sulha].”

  —ROBERT ELBAZ

  SULHA

  A NOVEL

  MALKA MAROM

  ECW PRESS

  Rarely, in the regions inhabited by Arabic- and

  Hebrew-speaking people, will the two agree on any one thing.

  The word sulha is the exception. In both

  languages it has the same meaning: a forgiveness;

  a reconciliation; a joining, repairing, making whole that

  which has been torn asunder—peace.

  In memory of my sister Yehudit

  For Alexandra Hillah, Marva and Ellai

  “The desert is a place where good and bad are wedded like sun and shade, where a stranger is always received and always shut out, a place where the common language is often silence or guns, where the horizon is wide and the boundaries narrow . . .”

  (Sulha)

  PROLOGUE

  Today the great riverbeds of the Sinai are paved. Troops can move in the desert faster than ever—it was for them, the peacekeeping forces, that the great wadis were blacktopped. Yet, fast or slow, sooner or later, the flash floods will surely tear up the asphalt and sweep it downstream, just as they did the mines from the minefields.

  Fast or slow, huge signs spin by every few kilometres on these highways, signs that say: “It is forbidden for stranger-foreigners to get off the main roads.” Thus, paved or not, the great riverbeds, the great, ancient passageways of the Sinai desert, are now borders within borders.

  But ever since time remembered, the Sinai has held restrictions within restrictions. The ones written on bejewelled veils have been as binding as the ones carved in granite.

  To this day, no place in the Sinai is more restricted to stranger-foreigners than the home ground of the mountain Badu. Even stranger-nomads are reluctant to venture there, not only because the wadis and the tributaries are difficult to traverse for even the best of camels or four-wheel drive, but also out of fear of the mountain clansmen and the strict nomadic law that dictates: Honour and blood will be avenged, if it takes five generations to track down the offender’s descendants. Even in words, very few people dare enter.

  Only in whispers of whispers do people rumour that the most beautiful women in the peninsula have lived in solitude, for the past fifteen hundred years, in those mountains where no one except a person directly related to them by blood or marriage is ever allowed to see them, veiled though they may be. That is why their tents are called “the forbidden tents.”

  To this day, only one stranger-foreigner has entered the forbidden tents. Her name is Leora—Nura, the Badu named her.

  j

  It was in spring 1978 that Leora first entered the forbidden tents.

  For once, since she was war-widowed in the Sinai War, Leora elected to forgo the memorial ceremonies held on Mount Herzl. She chose instead to touch the ground that had claimed her husband, the scorched wilderness over which his fighter plane had last been sighted. She embarked on her journey in time—ample time, she thought—to reach that site on Memorial Day.

  But the desert laughs at what we mortals predetermine. You head to one place but end up at another. That’s the desert—the unexpected, the detours that change your life.

  Leora didn’t know it. She didn’t know the desert. It was the first time she had ventured to the Sinai.

  There was only one paved highway in the whole peninsula on that spring day in ’78. Every few kilometres, this highway climbed a hill or a mountain, rising so close to the Gulf of Aqaba–Eilat, Leora didn’t have to step out of the Land-Rover to see the desert mountains and the Red Sea forming an almost perfect circle of blue in the Valley of the Sun; and grains of sand glittered like gold dust on the beach, where stranger-girls wearing topless bikinis attracted Badu youths and nearly bewitched them—or so the Badu elders said—with their unveiled faces, uncovered bodies, and upbraided hair that swayed in tandem with the motion of their hips.

  And when the sun disappeared behind the mountain range west of the highway, the sister range swelled east across the gulf, in Jordan, and farther south, in Saudi Arabia. The faint image of the gulf looked like the creation of an artist who had no desire or time to finish his picture, choosing instead to paint half the gulf on half of the canvas and to fold it precisely while the paint was still wet, in order to press an exact copy.

  Now, soon after the Land-Rover turned from the gulf to the interior, Sinai became a chain of circles, no two links alike, and every highway—every road, every path, every track—was a wadi, a river caked dry. At forty or fifty kilometres an hour, and sometimes over sixty, the Land-Rover rolled on a river of dust banked by mountains—a towering massif locked tight, with no opening, no way out, in sight, and just when it seemed you were going to smack into it head-on, the mountains would part, the river would bend, a new circle would open up. You would exhale in relief—only to gasp when you notice that this circle, too, is locked tight. Solid stone ahead. Looking back, you see no sign of the spot where the mountains had parted, as if by miracle, only a minute ago. An opening must be there—you know in your head, but not in your blood.

  A drought had been ravaging the Sinai for the past seven years, like in Egypt during Joseph’s days. And still the Sinai won’t let you forget that, in this desert, more people die in water—floodwater—than in thirst.

  Upon the stone-hard banks of the dry riverbed, floodwaters had painted a white line. Whenever you see it, you cock your ears for the clap of a thundering flood and you itch to climb above the white line, no matter how innocent the sky. Rainfall, even a drizzle kilometres away, could flood here in a flash, tearing boulders off the cliffs and sweeping them downriver.

  Deep in the interior, Sinai dwarfs the living—and the dead.

  Here Leora felt she was in the right place at the right time. And though she wished she knew the desert well enough to traverse it by herself, in her own vehicle, her respect grew all the more for Russell, a distant relative who had offered her a ride in his Land-Rover.

  Professor Russell—El Bofessa, the Badu called him in recognition of his knowledge of the desert and its inhabitants—was consulted by Badu elders on the event that had shaken the whole region as none other in the past thirty years. For, never before in thirty years—thirty years of war—had any Arab nation agreed to negotiate a peace treaty with Israel. Yet the previous autumn, the president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, had flown to Jerusalem, and there, for the whole world to hear, he had declared: No more war! . . . No sooner did he say that than the prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, offered to return the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for peace.

  At that very moment the Israeli occupation of Sina
i changed from permanent to temporary—just as, in 1967, it had started to change from temporary to permanent when the Arab leader decided in Khartoum to reject the Israeli peace offering. But now, almost as soon as the peace talks started, they began to collapse. From day to day, no one knew if they would lead to no more war or to no more peace talks, let alone peace. And so, a period of waiting began—not unlike the one in 1967.

  “The mirror image of time is staring you in the face at this very moment. For once you can see the full measure of the moment we are living in,” Russell told Leora. “Nothing stays the same here for very long, yet everything stays the same here forever,” he added, by force of habit, forgetting she was not his student. “Words change meaning from day to day now. ‘Peace,’ for instance, is invested with Messianic dimensions today, but if Egypt signs a peace treaty with Israel, the word ‘peace’ would shrink to mean ‘no war.’ This, in turn, is bound to shrink the soul . . .” Russell applied the brakes, skipped out of the Land-Rover, and picked up a couple of rocks, “work tools from the Stone Age . . .” He rested them on a ledge above the white flash-flood line so as to better conserve them.

  It was not until they reached the Gates of the Wadi that the detour—the unexpected—materialized in the form of a nomad who hailed their Land Rover to a stop. The nomad and Russell exchanged salutations. Still short of breath, the nomad said, “A child-boy possessed of demons must be rushed quick-fast to the darwisha—the healing woman—of the mountain Badu . . .”

  Russell told Leora he’d take the detour; drive the Badu child-boy to the maq’ad—the men’s guest-receiving-place—of the mountain Badu, and then drive her to her destination.

  But when they arrived, the mountain maq’ad was deserted.

  “Stay here and don’t wander off,” Russell said to Leora and to the Badu child-boy. And then he went to look for Abu Salim, the elder of the mountain Badu, or one of his clansmen.

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  As fate would have it, Abu Salim was far away from the mountains that day. He and all the men of his mountain clan had gone to track down his first-born son, Salim. In the folly of youth, Salim was covering his tracks for a far distance.

  Abu Salim was married to two wives at that time. One, Salim’s mother, Azzizah, was the darwisha—the healer—of the mountain Badu. The second, Tammam, was a new girl-wife who had given birth to her first child, a girl, five-six months before that day. Their forbidden tents were pitched on a plateau, invisible from their husband’s maq’ad and from the road—the wadi—as well.

  The plateau held a lookout point from which the two wives could see only a small stretch of the wadi that led to the maq’ad. The granite mountains, though, carried the sound even of the soft stride of a camel. A Land-Rover or a Jeep the wives could hear ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes before it reached the small stretch visible from the women’s lookout. And because few vehicles dared risk the climb to Abu Salim’s maq’ad, the wives could tell, by the sound alone, that it was none other than El Bofessa’s Land Rover approaching.

  No child old enough to walk down to the maq’ad was in the tents that day. Therefore the women had no one to dispatch to Abu Salim’s guest-receiving-place, no one to inform El Bofessa that he would be waiting for nothing. And no one to brew honour—ya’ani, coffee—for their favoured stranger-guest. Or even to brew for him tea.

  Adhering to the age-old Badu edict that forbids contact between outsiders and the women of their mountain clans, the two wives returned from the lookout point to their women’s work. And when they heard the tooting of the horn, they knew a child was in the maq’ad, playing with El Bofessa’s Land Rover. But then, suddenly, the women heard screaming and yelling—a shrill chorus of the first wife’s name.

  It was the Badu child-boy possessed by demons, the first wife knew right away. For that child-boy had been sent to her for healing once before. She did not know what to do now, and neither did the second wife. The two wives waited and waited, and still the screaming and yelling continued. Only when it sounded as if the child-boy would expire from his screaming did the two spouses decide to edge down toward the maq’ad—just close enough for the child-boy to hear them calling him to run over to their hiding-place.

  There were many granite boulders to hide behind along the winding footpath. And so, from boulder to boulder, the two wives, carrying the infant-girl with them, were dodging and clinging when, abruptly, the yelling stopped. All they could hear were happy sounds coming from the child-boy; happy sounds growing closer and closer—too close. For they could see him now, tugging with both hands the arm of a demon taller than the tallest tent pole. But what scared them most were the eyes.

  Not once in their lives had the two women seen a human being, or even a demon or a monster, with eyes so big, so dark, and almost like a mirror reflecting the sun. It was a monster-demon new even to the senior wife, who was a darwisha, daughter of a darwish, a healing man. The monster-demon had possessed the child, the first wife thought. Small wonder she had no power to exorcise it. She had no power to even move her legs, she was so afraid; she did not remember how she returned to the plateau, and neither did the second wife.

  There would be no hiding-place from such a monster-demon, the two wives thought. And so they huddled next to the cooking fire, for they were cold. Though the fire was hot and the sun was high when the demon appeared on the plateau, the Badawias’ hands and feet, and even their tongues, froze, refusing to obey them and move. Neither one knew how it happened that the monster-demon found them hiding inside the tent of Abu Salim’s girl-wife.

  Happy, the child-boy leaped over to them. But right behind him the monster-demon entered the tent, crouching low, and it took off the monster eyes. Underneath was another pair of eyes—Aywa—yes—another pair of eyes the colour of which not once in their lives had the wives seen. Not brown like human-being eyes. And not blue like the stranger-eyes the men had described. But like the colour of the mountains in springtime—in years of bounty, not drought, when the sun has not yet dried the dew. Eyes the colour of bounty had to be a good omen; surely no harm would come to them now, the two wives thought. And just then the monster-demon greeted them.

  “Salamat . . . marhaba,” it said in greeting, its voice sounding like a woman’s. But how could it be a woman when it wore no veil to cover its face, no thowb—long tribal dress—to cover its body? And so uncared-for it looked; so unloved, unloving, and uncaring—not even one bracelet adorned its wrists, not a necklace on its neck, not an anklet, an earring, and no kohl dust on its eyes. It did, however, wear gold on one of its fingers and gold around its neck, as a Badawia does when unclean and envious of every woman with a child planted in her womb. And its hair was braided like a Badawia maiden’s. But its hair was not dark like human hair.

  “Because it is the hair of a woman-stranger,” said the Badu child-boy possessed by demons. “El Bofessa said that many woman-strangers have hair this colour.”

  “Cannot be,” said Abu Salim’s wives, even though they did remember the men describing how strange the hair colour of strangers was. And how immodest woman-strangers were, how unloved and uncared for. And how they dressed in clothes called “shirts” and “trousers,” which is also what man-strangers wore. And how some were even taller than Badu men. But a Badu who does not pepper his story—does not stretch it taller and wider than life—is not a Badu, the two Badawia wives knew. And from the lookout point, all strangers looked no bigger than tiny ants. Not once in their lives had these mountain Badawias seen a stranger-man or -woman so close—and in their tents, yet. It cannot be a stranger-man or -woman, the two wives decided at once. And at once they told it to the child-boy. “For no stranger-man or stranger-woman has ever entered our tents,” they said, “and no stranger-man or stranger-woman ever will.”

  “But it is a stranger-woman,” insisted the child-boy. “Wallah, how happy my mother will be when I tell her that you are no longer better than her. Strangers corrupt y
our tents also . . .”

  His mother pitched her tent only a short distance from the Gates of the Wadi, where a huge water tank was drawing every passing stranger. And sometimes a woman-stranger driven by curiosity, or thirst for knowledge, as well as for water, would enter his mother’s tent. His mother was of Abu Salim’s tribe but not of his clan, which she considered to be her good fortune. For she believed the horizon of the women in Abu Salim’s clan was all too narrow. Or so the same child-boy had said the last time he had been healed here.

  The child-boy lacked discretion. Nothing else was wrong with him. But a Badu, even a Badu child, who lacks discretion, is not a Badu. That is why there was no doubt in the Badu’s mind that he was possessed by demons. Still, he was a loving and a loveable child.

  “He must have dragged the woman-stranger to the tents to make his mother happy,” the girl-wife whispered. The first wife laughed. She could not be angry with the child.

  But she was angry with El Bofessa. Even though she had never met him, the senior wife held El Bofessa responsible for the transgression of the woman-stranger. For the first wife had been told that El Bofessa knew what was allowed and what was forbidden, not only in the mountains, but in Badu compounds the world over. And she was sure he knew that the Badu child-boy, lacking in discretion, was bound to tell of this transgression to one and all he happened to meet, thus exposing the blood, not only of El Bofessa and of the intruding stranger-woman, but of the girl-wife, and hers as well.

  It was clear to her then that she and the second wife had no choice but to convert the intruder from a woman-stranger to a woman-member-of-the-clan, a member close enough to be allowed to enter their tents. For this conversion, however, Abu Salim’s wives had to hand the infant-girl to the intruder. And though the intruder’s eyes were the colour of bounty, the wives were apprehensive, even afraid.