Over the next six weeks, we will be publishing installments of Emile Habiby’s The Six-Day Sextet, which is available in an open-access, non-commercial translation by Invisible Dragoman. You can find Part One here and part two here.
By Emile Habiby
Translation by Invisible Dragoman.
3.
Umm Rubabikya
Through faith, coming home
To the lands, coming home
Coming home, coming home, coming home
—a song sung by Fairuz
Why were you surprised? Didn’t I tell you that a separation of twenty years can make a person forget themselves? And the separation—did you even notice it?
Nowadays, everyone’s talking about our poets. Everybody’s warming themselves on the steadfastness of poets from “The Inside,” claiming them as their own. But what did they used to say about our poets before the great winnowing of June 5? Back when our poet sang the Ode of Return: “O country, will I ever return to see the refuge of my abandoned home and the cradle of my youth?”
They used to yell in our faces, “What’s your problem? Why are you sitting on your butts? Why don’t you emigrate like we did?”
Why are you so hard on Umm Rubabikya down on Wadi Street? Why do you refuse to believe her when she tells you that she’s buying every mattress that was looted from the Golan Heights—every antique wardrobe, every chest—in the hopes of finding what she’s been looking for?
It makes no sense, you say. But is this the only thing in our country that makes no sense?
You look down on Umm Rubabikya harshly for buying up all the sofas of Quneitra, but say nothing about the fact that the authorities allowed a wealthy or connected entrepreneur to clean up at the Quneitra public auction—all the left-behind furniture, coffee cups, kibbeh mortars, mothballs, toothbrushes, al-Farabi books, toilet paper—then set him up with a storefront next to the police station to display his wares to customers. Would it have made more sense to give him a stall at the Tel Aviv Convention Center?
I know that no one has decided to boycott this shop of plundered goods. At the same time, no one, Arab or Jew, goes near it, some for reasons of propriety, others out of fear, and still others—women—because the stuff is so out of fashion. Meanwhile, the contractor swears in all the languages of the Mediterranean basin, from the Levant to the Poniente, that the boycott has destroyed him and his home and that he has nothing to do with the destruction of homes in the Golan.
No one goes near it, “…except for The Junk Lady.”
Umm Rubabikya.
That’s what people are calling her now. You prattle on about her amongst yourselves, saying that she’s an old hand at ransacking empty homes. That back in 1948 she pillaged rugs from houses along Abbas Street. That she set up residence in the mansion that belonged to Abu Marouf who used to own the dime store in Haifa’s Syrian Market way back when.
Have you seen any mansions in Wadi Nisnas? The ruins there have the good fortune of sitting in a small valley that is protected from the watery sea air. Have you ever visited the old mansions of Acre, whose walls ring with music? Even Ahmad al-Jazzar’s great wall could not protect those walls.
Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?
In the past, you invented all sorts of reasons—any reason—to knock on her door, and she’d serve you coffee with her gentle smile. Among yourselves, you called her the uncrowned queen of the valley. Ever since then, she has been hunting for treasure in sofas. You didn’t think there was anything wrong with her doing that back then, so why would it be wrong now that the earth has cracked open again to reveal its hidden treasures?
I know her better than you do. Really, I do.
During the first exodus, she insisted on staying behind with her invalid mother. Her husband went off and took their children with him. When her mother passed away five years later, we heard that her husband disowned her and didn’t want her back. You never believed her when she used to tell you that she stayed, also, because she didn’t want to leave her home. As she talked, you’d wink and nod at each other. Then, amongst yourselves, you jabbered on hinting that the real reason had something to do with a love story of some kind, the only plausible reason for her to stay put. So answer this then: if that’s the case, what sense was there in your decision to stay?
Really: I know her better than you do. She used to sell all the carpets, chairs, and mirrors she could get her hands on. She would take apart the sofas and search inside for treasure. Then she’d put them together again and sell them. And sometimes, she might find things.
One day, I paid her a visit. She was sitting cross-legged on the ground, sofa stuffing scattered all around. She was holding a letter in her hand and sobbing.
I asked her about it and she said, “I’m thinking about my children.”
“What’s this letter?” I asked.
“It’s from a bundle of letters a young man sent to his girlfriend. She kept them in a hiding spot ripped in the sofa.”
She wiped her tears and wailed, “My treasures! My treasures!”
She managed to live from what she made selling furniture, all the while serving you coffee and rejecting the gifts you tried to give her.
Whenever you started talking about poetry, she’d dive in with you. If she only remembered half a line, you’d rush in to finish it for her. If she broke the meter while reciting a line, you’d patronize her and put her down.
When you started talking politics, she lit up more than you. More than you, she wanted to do something. Whenever one of you was arrested, she would be faster than your own mother to visit, deliver food and wash your shirts.
Twenty years of fire consumed the wood of her ship as it sailed to King Solomon’s Mines. It was all gone, sold. Except for those treasures. Those fires scorched her head, turning her hair completely white. But those fires could not burn her smile—it remained as young as ever. If only instead of gossiping about her you’d paid attention to her smile.
I know you saw me visiting her recently. Will you be gossiping about that, too?
When I heard about your trash talk, I went straight to see her. I went to see her when you were whispering amongst yourselves that she was the only one knocking at the quiet door of the plundered goods store. And I rushed over to see her when I heard that the uncrowned queen of our neighborhood had become Umm Rubabikya—The Junk Lady.
She greeted me as if nothing were wrong at all. Sofa stuffing lay strewn out all over the courtyard of her house.
“Have you gone back to upholstery work?” I asked.
She smiled that young smile.
“Have you been crying by yourself?”
“I’m not by myself,” she howled.
“You’re with your treasures?”
“No! Not with them—with their owners. They’re coming back. They’re returning.”
She raised her head, suddenly proud, “You know, after twenty years of forgetting, they need me.”
She raised her head again, now contrite, “They need me.”
And you—I’m talking to you: do you think I’d write about her without permission? If you thought so, you’re mistaken.
You probably didn’t know that she discovered that one of her sons, a very passionate doctor, was being held at Ramleh Prison on charges of distributing pamphlets in the Old City of Jerusalem. Or that her husband came all the way from Lebanon, via the Allenby Bridge, to get her to help in releasing him. She spoke about their son’s zeal with an even greater zeal, as if she was trying to say: these are my children—where have you been all this time?
When she speaks about her husband, it is with love and admiration—because, after all, he raised her son to be a firebrand doctor.
She speaks about herself in glowing terms, and about how she made a deal with that bankrupt entrepreneur, the owner of the plundered goods shop, to take whatever items she liked, sharing the profits. She sells them and manages to live off the earnings, while also visiting her son and engaging a well-connected lawyer to represent him. She always brings her son cigarettes when she visits him and washes his shirts, “Just as I used to wash your shirts too!”
She lowered her gaze and asked in an embarrassed tone, “Have you met the lost ghosts?”
“Lost ghosts?”
“Men and women. From Gaza. From the West Bank. From Amman and even from Kuwait. Coming over the Allenby Bridge, wandering silently through our neighborhoods. Staring up at the balconies and windows in silence. Some of them knock on doors and ask politely to come inside for a quick look or a sip of water. It’s their homes they’re looking at—and they go off without saying anything.
“Some of the current inhabitants greet them with a sympathetic smile. Others with a nasty smirk. Some let them into the house. Some never open the door.
“Some of the ghosts don’t knock on doors. Instead, they look around for swarthy passersby to stop and ask, ‘Didn’t there used to be a dark-stoned house here?’ And either that swarthy pedestrian stands there, trying to recollect and remember, or he says, ‘Sorry, Uncle, I wasn’t born until afterwards.’
“None of these ghosts ever come to my house. They’ve never heard of my treasure collection. Why haven’t you ever published anything in your newspaper about the gems I find hidden away in sofas? Write something about it! I have bundles of bouquets from youth. First love letters. I have poems that school boys tucked into the pages of textbooks. I have bracelets and earrings and glass bangles. I have necklaces with heart-shaped gold pendants. Open them, and you find two pictures, one of him and one of her. I have diaries, some written in a delicate, shy hand, and others in a broad, confident hand. They contain so many things. Questions—What does he want from me? And solemn oaths—For home and country!
“Promise me that you’ll write something about my treasures so that these ghosts can find their way to me.”
I promised her I would. Then she got up and went over to an antique chest. She pulled out a bundle of faded papers and handed them to me, “These are a gift.”
“What are they?”
“Letters. I wrote them for someone but never sent them. They’ll explain why I decided to stay here.”
“Why are you giving them to me now?”
“Because only now am I able to be with all of you. You are my children. Don’t ever leave me again.”
When we were kids, we wouldn’t go to sleep until grandmother told us one of her stories. She was more than ninety years old and would always mix things up. Like starting the story of Clever Hassan in the middle, “So Clever Hassan took his magic stick and hit the demon…”
“What magic stick, Grandmother?”
Ignoring our shouts, she’d go on telling her story. None of us—not even she—ever managed to stay awake till the end of the story. We never knew how the story of Clever Hassan began. And we never found out how it ended.
Later, when we’d grown up, we’d laugh and remember our grandmother and her ‘amputated stories,’ as we called them. And we’d laugh some more.
As if the logical thing was for stories to have beginnings and endings! But is that really the case? And even if that were logical for stories in general, would it be so in a country like ours?
Why should I tell you what was in the letters Umm Rubabikya gave me recently? Don’t she and I have the right to hold onto a secret?
Let this story remain amputated, then. Until the time when we can write its ending together.
Part one: Masoud’s Cousin Makes Him Happy
Part two: At Last, the Almond Trees Blossom
An uncopyrighted translation of Emile Habiby’s Sudasiyyat al-ayyam al-sitta, originally published in Al-Jadid (Issues 4-9), 1968. This is an open-access, non-commercial translation by Invisible Dragoman.
Translators’ note:
This translation of Emile Habiby’s The Six-Day Sextet came about in the following way. In a 2017 seminar on Arabic novels, I had the pleasure of teaching a small group of talented students: Kevin Chao, Fouad Saleh, Molly Simio, Andrew Slater, and Uma Mencia Uranga. As a collective final project, each student chose one chapter from this work to translate. I took one for myself. We edited each other’s work for accuracy and style and I edited them again for continuity.
After securing translation rights from Habiby’s estate, we submitted this manuscript to various publishers. Initially, there was some interest but after months of conversation, nothing came of it.
Covid arrived and years passed. As our translation of this remarkable text gathered digital dust on a hard-drive, we learned that there were disputes concerning Habiby’s estate and that the permission we’d been granted was itself likely disputed.
As we faced the likelihood that our work would never be published, we decided to share it in a non-commercial form. Given the author’s political commitments, we imagine that he might approve of our decision, but God knows best.
The striking images, composed by Habiby’s artist friend, Abed Abdi, first appeared in the first Haifa edition: Sudasiyyat al-ayyam al-sitta wa-qisas ukhra Haifa: Matba‘at al-Ittihad al-Ta‘awuniyya, 1970). They are copyrighted and used with the artist’s permission.
This translation is open access. Please feel free to read, store, and distribute for your personal, non-commercial use.