Free Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa Page A

on her nails.
    Someone had given the polish to Mama as a gift a week earlier, but she was beyond such indulgences and had given it to me. At least ten of us girls had gathered to share it, painting one another’s nails, imagining that we looked like the Egyptian actresses in magazines.
    “There’s a little left,” I said.
    She perked up. “Let’s paint our fingers and toes again, but without all the other girls.”
    “Okay. But first let’s have a spit contest.”
    “Haven’t we had enough contests today?” Huda complained, but quickly relented.
    A spit-dangle contest. That’s what we were doing when we were summoned .
    “Your spit will go farther if you suck snot from your head.” I demonstrated, making hacking sounds. “Just regular spit breaks off. That’s how come you always lose this game.”
    “That’s gross,” Huda complained.
    “Amaaaal! . . . Huuuuuudaaaaaaa!”
    Baba was calling us home to the camp, where we all lived in the shade of international charity.
    “Your father’s calling.” Huda stated the obvious, as was her annoying habit. “Why isn’t he at work today?”
    “I don’t know. Let’s go.”
    We ran. I turned it into a race, but I stopped before we reached the camp’s first row of concrete shacks.
    Something was happening. Too many people were on the streets.
    Instinctively, Huda and I reached for each other’s hand and we walked slowly toward the commotion. Anxious throngs were chanting in the streets and alleyways. In their embroidered Palestinian thobes, women hurried about, balancing baskets of provisions on their heads. Uncertainty shivered in the air. Some people were crying. Some displayed their joy with the trilling of zaghareet. Israel had just attacked Egypt. A loud radio announced, “The Arab armies are mobilizing to defend against Zionist aggression.”
    Baba came toward us and gathered Huda and me in his outstretched arms. “Habibti, something has happened. The two of you must go directly to the house.” He was calm and serious. “Now go, girls,” and we went.
    At our house, men were waiting for my father, who had gone off to telephone my brother in Bethlehem, where Yousef worked.
    Mama hurried toward us when she saw Huda and me approaching. She surprised me with a tight embrace and mumbled into the air, “Praise and thanks to You, Allah, for my child.” Mama kissed me as she rarely did. If I could, I’d not have let her go. Her sudden display of affection made me grateful for Israel’s attack.
    “Allaho akbar!” someone shouted. “Soon we’re going home to Palestine!”
    With Mama’s new warmth lingering, I was hopeful. I conjured all the places of the home that had been built up in my young mind, one tree, one rosebush, one story at a time. I thought of the water and sandy beaches of the Mediterranean—“The Bride of Palestine,” Baba called it—which I had visited only in my dreams. A delicious anticipation bore visions of the old life, the one I had never known. My rightful life, disinherited but finally to be regained, in the back terrace of Jiddo Yehya’s and Teta Basima’s mansion, with its succulent grapes dangling from their vines, Mama’s rose garden, the Arabian horses Ammo Darweesh raised, Baba’s library, and our family’s farm, which had sustained half the village.
    I comforted Huda, who seemed frightened, with a reminder that we would have our own room once we returned, and money enough for dolls. In my naïve confidence, I pointed to the disorganized and untrained men. “Just look at them,” I told her, impressed with the would-be fighters who walked among us. “Just look . . .”
    Baba had long been hiding rifles in a hole dug in the kitchen floor, under the sink. He was back now, talking to the men. I knew the time had come to use those weapons.
    For years, I had heard Baba complain that King Hussein ibn Talal of Jordan was disarming the Palestinians, leaving us defenseless against Zionists who were amassing more and more