A Spinning Dish
By Omar Hammash
Translated by Hadeel Karkar
He was deaf and mute, and so was she. Life between the two of them was complete silence. That night, the wick of a candle danced with a faint light, and they did not know what was going on outside. They gazed out the window, drawn to the serenity, and were dazzled by the vast, ashen sky. They thought the world’s silent stillness meant that calm had settled in.
He made a fine thread, one no one else could see, stretching out from the candle’s wick to the hanging moon, and he nimbly walked across it with his eyes.
She stood beside him, watching, and was also enchanted. Her eyes glowed…
He glanced at her, and the glow that had gone out of him rekindled, and he smiled.
She noticed. She stood, shook out her hair and twirled it so that it made a black dish that flowed around her face. She moved her hips in time to the music in her heart, gave her arm a twist and scattered laughter down on him. He heard her with his heart, and with her heart she felt the echo of his clapping palms, and the intoxicating sway of his shoulder.
He, too, was intoxicated; the two of them flew, and went on flying, until the first wave of smoke knocked them down, extinguished their candle, and filled the space.
She saw him get up to run, and she stumbled after him. They stood at the window, gasping and coughing, staring at the neighbors’ house, which had become a pile of rubble. Under the moonlight, it released its smoke, and flames.
Then their little house shook.
She saw him scream, but did not hear him; she saw his grasping hand when it stretched out, his eyes staring at her from afar, from behind a pile of concrete.
And he had seen her scream, but had not heard her. Half a foot jutted out toward him, and her hair spread out, flowing with a sticky liquid, her tresses dyed red.
My Grandmother’s Back
By Omar Hammash
Translated by Hadeel Karkar
When I was a child, I was baffled by my grandmother’s bent back. My confusion only deepened when I would hear my mother say:
-It’s because of the Zionists.
And images of soldiers bending my grandmother’s back would rush into my head…
My mother said: -Your grandfather moved to Hebron after he was driven out of al-Majdal.
She said: -Just a year after he had settled in at Beit Ummar, cancer struck him, and he and his family crept in to be with us.
-He told me, Let me die in Gaza, next to my daughter’s family.
And I stood there, imagining my grandfather, who I had never seen, sick, leading his bent-over wife through mountain passages, along with my three uncles…
My mother would say, the Zionists. But she wouldn’t say much after that, and I would watch my grandmother’s saintlike face, bright and clear, and listen to the way she pronounced words when she spoke to me. I would answer her, but my mind would always be wandering off to the reason for her broken back.
I often imagined the soldiers pounding her with army batons or hammering her with rifle butts, and I imagined an officer hearing her spine crack and ordering: Enough.
Until a day came, when I was hanging out with my friends, and my grandmother came to our alley, her back curved under the open sky, while her face was pointed toward the ground, staring at the dirt. I rushed over to take her hand and listen to her prayers: that God might bless me.
As I walked beside her, I hurried to ask:
-Grandmother, how did they break your back?
She turned to look at me, and I could see two tears welling up in her blue eyes. I was silent in the presence of her silence, until she reached the small courtyard outside our hut, and threw her frail body down on a mattress. She lifted her gaze and asked me about my mother.
-Mama’s at the camp market, I said. And so she told me to sit down next to her, and I quickly discovered she was eager to speak. As she spoke, her back straightened for just a moment, and then it fell back down again:
-We were under curfew, and they gathered everyone who was left in al-Majdal into a single neighborhood.
Then she sighed and went on:
-There were six of us. Me, your grandfather, and your four uncles. The curfew went on for a long time, a whole week. On the seventh day, your baby uncle started crying, screaming and screaming without end, as if he were calling out to Fate.
My grandmother was silent, and she stayed silent for a long time, until I was seized by the thought of what was coming, and I knew the horror of what she was about to tell me.
She said: -Suddenly and unexpectedly, we found your oldest uncle picking up his little brother and heading for the door. Your uncle thought a little sun and fresh air would quiet his brother…
As she spoke, her body shuddered as if she were hearing and seeing all this for the first time:
-Your uncle opened the door, and we heard the sound of the bullet.
-Both of them collapsed on the threshold.
I saw my grandmother start to choke before she retreated into a silence that sounded like wailing.
-In a minute, they arrived, dragged your uncle’s body toward us, and then closed the door.
-I crouched down, and my back never straightened after that. I was on top of my son when they came back with four men and four shovels. They pulled him out and buried him there, in silence.”
She said: -They buried him, and then they drove us all out of our village, to Gaza. My back has been stiff ever since, and my eyes have been glued to the ground.
A Way Through
By Omar Hammash
Translated by Hadeel Karkar
He asked me: What’s as brief as a sip of honey but also never ends?
I hurried to answer: My life.
Correct, he said. You win. Make a wish.
Fly with me, I said. I want to soar.
And so he bent down and spread his wings. Then he lifted me up and up, until he was a shining arrow of light.
I asked: Where to?
With each flap of his wing, we landed on the belltower of a new city. I thought they were the capitals in Europe; it was as thought I could recognize them, despite the fact that, before this, I had been completely ignorant of them.
He circled, and so did I, like a small partridge tossed between his wings. He let out a soft whistle with every movement, and between one glance and the next we would descend and rise, until he straightened his body and landed on minarets I knew with absolute certainty, yes, I was certain I could recognize them, and I shouted:
-Jerusalem!
The djinn laughed, and he said:
-I left it for the very end of our journey, since I know how much you yearned to see it.
I said: They’ve forbidden me from setting foot on its ground, and for decades I have not visited.
And then I said: Put me down.
He put me down, and I raced across Jerusalem until I entered through the Damascus Gate. I breathed in the mingled scents of its markets, and before I reached my destination, I saw eyes glaring at my face in frank disapproval. I ignored them, and I bent over the basin of woman selling radishes. For a moment, I thought she was my own departed mother, and I called out:
-Ummi!
Then her gaze touched mine, and I staggered back, storing up in my heart all that I had seen. But the glaring eyes followed my boldness, and the legs pursued me, breaking into a run, until the gun stretched out; I found myself once again a small partridge, returning on the same wing, and the djinn beneath me asked:
-Did you forget yourself?
And the arrow of light that had blinked out returned, racing through the black night until suddenly I caught sight of him, and he had become a useless beast, crashing down on the same spot in the refugee camp in Gaza where he had first fallen, saying:
-Get down, that’s enough.
Omar Hammash is a short story writer and novelist in Gaza. He has published 12 books, both novels and collections of short stories, and has won both the State of Palestine Appreciation Award for Literature and the Jerusalem Medal for Culture and Arts.