Father had never been so discouraged. He hardly left the house anymore. Soon as he got back from work, he got into bed and turn on the radio on the dresser. Sometimes he’d come into the living room to watch the news, and other times he’d just stay in bed till the following morning. He didn’t have much to do at work. Sometimes, weeks would go by and nobody from Tira would need Father’s intervention with the Ministry of Interior. Sometimes he got so bored that he’d renew all our IDs and passports, saying they’d expired. Why walk around with old IDs when he could get us new ones within two days, with the signature of the new Minister of Interior?
My father renewed his own ID card every week. Sometimes he considered changing his name. The fact that this was possible appealed to him. He updated the information: Israeli citizen, Arab, married, father of four. Date of birth: 0/0/47, because Grandma couldn’t remember exactly when Father had been born. When the Jews came and she went to register him with them, she couldn’t give them an exact date. All she knew was that it had been in the prickly pear season. Grandma says there was a war on then, and nobody paid much attention to dates of birth.
Everything changed when my Aunt Camilla from the Nur-Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm was dying, and father visited her in the hospital in Nablus. Her oldest son, Ibrahim, had gotten out of jail when the Palestinians entered the West Bank, and as a token of appreciation for what he had done on behalf of the State, they gave him a position in the Ministry of Interior in Tulkarm. Granted, his salary wasn’t as high as my father’s, but at least he had some status. In the hospital, he walked around with a pistol, and the doctors treated him with respect. Thanks to him, they let my aunt die in the fanciest room in the hospital, with partitions between the beds.
I’d stayed at her place when I was little. At night, there were big fireworks that lit up all the houses, and Aunt Camilla explained that they were army fireworks. I thought then that the camp looked so beautiful, with water running through little grooves in the middle of the street, and no sand at all. The children used the English term ice cream instead of the Hebrew glida, and when they played soccer, they said hands, not yad. Even then I knew her son Ibrahim was a hero, though I’d never actually seen him.
After my aunt died, Ibrahim took my father to visit the Palestinian Ministry of Interior in Tulkarm. They were going through some old papers, dating back to the days of the British mandate, when suddenly my father spotted his own name with a precise date of birth: May 14, 1948. My father was delighted to be one year younger. He held a big celebration with all our aunts, and even Bassem was taken out of his bed.
Then my father started tracking down the birth dates of my aunts and all our relatives who’d been born before the war, and all of them started celebrating their birthdays. Aunt Fahten, who was seventy by then, even had some performers at her party. She said it was her way of making up for all the years she couldn’t celebrate.
The rumor spread through the village, and people started saying Father wasn’t a collaborator after all, because otherwise how could the Palestinians be allowing him go through secret documents? The first one to ask my father to find out his date of birth was the mayor, and my father not only dug up his date of birth but provided him with a birth certificate. The mayor had his first birthday celebration in the soccer field, and in his speech he thanked my father for his help.
After that, Father barely found time to sleep. People who couldn’t get to him at work would come to our house asking for help. Knowing that he was doing it as a favor, and that it had nothing to do with his job with the Israeli Ministry of Interior, they started bringing gifts in return. Sheep, watches, ground meat, six-packs of Coke, packets of rice and sugar. Some of them offered money, but Father wouldn’t take it. He said the only money he’d accept was to cover the cost of the stamps he had to buy in Tulkarm, and he always gave them a receipt signed by the Palestinian Authority. Ibrahim had no problem producing the stamps and official receipts at the same printing press where he used to print protest posters. Father handed all the money over to Ibrahim and never touched it. He said Ibrahim deserved it; he needed to build a house now, and to find himself a good wife. Poor guy, twenty years he spent in jail, and now he didn’t even have a mother.
The news of Father’s magic spread from Tira to the nearby villages and later to the Galilee. People came in fancy cars, bringing money and gifts, and asked for birth certificates. My father became famous. He didn’t consider it a bother. On the contrary, this new pursuit made him very happy. People started swearing they’d seen my father having dinner with Arafat. Everyone in Tira knew it was Arafat who had asked my father to support the collaborator mayor. And the whole business with the Israeli Ministry of Interior was nothing more than a clever Palestinian ploy. The newspapers began singing his praises, thanking him and saluting him as “the well-known Palestinian hero,” “son of the brave shahid,” and “the man who has liberated land and administered justice.” My father didn’t react to their show of appreciation. He didn’t say a word. Mornings he’d work in the municipality building, afternoons he’d go to Tulkarm, and almost every evening he was guest of honor at someone’s first birthday party.
Parents’ Day
Your parents are here,” my wife says, waking me from my Friday afternoon nap. I’d forgotten they were coming. My mother had phoned the day before and told my wife they were coming to see us. She feels she’s missing out on something, and she’s got to see her granddaughter. They’re in the living room now. My mother’s holding her, making noises and expecting a response from the baby, who is dividing her attention between Mother, the bunch of keys in Father’s hand, and my brother, who’s whistling in her face. Her suspicious stares turn to grunts, and before long she’s crying. My mother says it’s our fault, that we don’t come to visit often enough and the baby doesn’t know her own grandparents.
My wife sits the baby on her shoulders and tries to calm her down in preparation for her next round with her grandmother. My wife says my mother doesn’t know the first thing about babies, she doesn’t show the baby any warmth, and it must be her fault that I’m as screwed up as I am.
I shake hands with my parents. Sometimes we kiss. I don’t like it. It feels very strange, very awkward, artificial. Especially when I kiss my father. I never let my lips touch his cheek, I just turn my head toward his lips, which barely graze my cheek.
“How come you’re still sleeping?” my father asks.
“I was working last night.”
“At the restaurant?” he asks. He knows it’s a bar, but my father is always intent on image building.
“At the chamara, the dive,” I correct him.
There are big bags of garbage in the living room and an enormous pile of dishes rising out of the sink. Generally my wife cleans up before guests arrive, but yesterday she was home alone with the baby and didn’t get to it. She tried to straighten up the living room somehow: to clear away the papers, handkerchiefs, banana peels, and peanuts that have been gathering on the table through the week. My wife hates dirt, but she doesn’t stand a chance with me. It’s all because of me. I never help out with the housework or with the baby. My wife says I’m primitive, and I agree.
My parents ask how we’re doing, how things are at work, how the baby is, whether she sleeps through the night or still wakes up every hour. My mother says the baby’s thinner, and my father says she’s still very fat. He lights up, and I take one of his cigarettes too. Again he says he can’t believe I’ve started smoking. I’ve been smoking for eight years now, and he still can’t believe it. He talks about how bad it is, how much he suffers because of the cigarettes, and how he hates himself for not being able to quit, but when it comes to me, I’ve only begun and I could still kick the habit, in his opinion. “How much do you smoke?” he asks and answers his own question, “Two or three cigarettes a day?”