Umm Saad by Ghassan Kanafani

AN EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL

UMM SAAD LIVED FOR COUNTLESS YEARS WITH MY family in al-Ghabasiya, and since then she has lived for a crushing load of years in the torment of the camps. She still comes to our house every Tuesday. She looks at things, conscious of her part in them to the marrow of her bones, and she looks on me as a son, pouring into my ear the tales of her misery, her joy, and her troubles. But never once does she complain.

She is a woman of about forty, I think, with a strength greater than rock and a patience more than endurance itself. She spends every day of her week coming and going, living her life ten times over in toil to snatch for herself and her children an honest bit to eat.

I have known her for years. She represents something in my life that I cannot do without. When she knocks on the door and puts her poor belongings down in the hall, I am enveloped in the smell of the camps, in their misery and deep-rooted steadfastness, their poverty and hopes. Again my mouth is filled with the bitterness that I have tasted year after year until it has sickened me.

Last Tuesday she came as usual, put down her poor bundle, and turned to face me.

"Cousin, I want to tell you something. Saad has gone."

"Where?"

"To them."

"Who?"

"The fedayeen."

A cautious silence fell between us, and suddenly I saw her sitting there, ageing, strong, her life worn away by wretched toil. Her hands were folded in her lap, and I could see the palms, dry as blocks of wood, cracked like an old tree trunk. Through the furrows that years of hard work had traced in them, I could see her sorry journey with Saad, from the time when he was a child until he grew to maturity. Those firm hands had nourished him as the earth nourishes the stem of a tender plant, and now they had opened suddenly, and the bird that had nestled there for twenty years had flown away.

"He's joined the fedayeen."

I was still gazing at her hands, folded palms upwards like two disappointed creatures, crying out from the heart, chasing the man who was leaving everything for danger and the unknown. Why, O God, must mothers lose their sons? For the first time I was seeing that heartbreaking situation, at a word's distance from me, as though we were in a Greek theatre living out a scene of inconsolable grief. Trying to distract her and myself, I asked her:

"What did he tell you?"

"He didn't say anything. He simply went. In the morning his friend told me he had gone to join them."

"Didn't he tell you before that he would go?"

"Oh, yes. And I believed him. I know Saad, and I knew that he would go."

"Then why were you surprised?"

"Me? I wasn't surprised. I'm just telling you about it. I said to myself: ‘You may be interested to know what's become of Saad."

The hands, folded in her lap, moved, and I could see them, beautiful, strong, always capable of making something. I doubted whether they were really lamenting. She added: