The Haj - Leon Uris [266]
‘Wait!’ Nada commanded them. They froze in astonishment. ‘I will not marry until I am ready,’ she repeated, ‘and I will marry whom I wish.’
Ibrahim arose authoritatively. He slapped her face.
‘Have you veiled yourself in public as I ordered?’
‘No.’
He slapped her again and jerked the scarf from her head. ‘You have grown back too much hair. I find it offensive. Hagar, get the scissors.’
‘No, Father, you will not cut my hair.’
‘Hagar! Bring the scissors at once. Let me tell you, Nada, that the honor and virtue of this family are going to be kept!’
‘You need not worry about your honor and my virtue any longer,’ she said.
‘Be quiet, Nada!’ her mother cried.
Ibrahim glowered in disbelief. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I am no longer a virgin.’
Wails rose from the women. Ramiza swooned and fainted. Ibrahim’s eyes widened crazily.
‘You are lying!’ he screamed grotesquely. He waved his hands about in a quandary. ‘Is it true what you say!’
‘Yes.’
‘You were raped, forced against your will. Is that not what happened!’
‘No, Father, I was willing.’
‘You ... you are with child!’
‘Perhaps, perhaps not. What does it matter?’
‘Who is he!’
‘They, Father.’
‘You have done this to deliberately humiliate me!’
‘Yes, I did, Father.’
‘Deliberately ... to humiliate me ... to destroy my honor. ... You did it ...’
‘I have heard you ask many times, Who will tell the lion his breath smells bad? You are a savage, Father. If you feel pain now, feel it deep and hard because it is the pain you have made me bear every day of my life. I do not fear for my life because it never really began. It never really happened. I never lived for me, only for you. So do your noble duty.’
‘Nada, come back here!’
‘Go to hell, Father.’
‘Nada!’
‘Ishmael once read to me about the whore of Jericho who hid the spies of Joshua. So avenge the shame your daughter, the whore, has brought upon you. I will be walking in the alleys of Jericho. You will find me.’
As she left, Ibrahim stormed into his bedroom and returned strapping his belt and dagger on. He tore for the entrance. Hagar blocked the way, fell on her knees, and threw her arms about him.
‘No, Ibrahim! Send her away. We will never speak her name!’
Ramiza flung herself at him and clutched him. He threw them off violently, then kicked them back. They writhed on the floor rending their hair as he staggered out.
Nada’s body was found the next morning in a gutter of Jericho. Her neck had been broken and her throat slashed. Her hair had been crudely hacked off.
13
THE MOMENT I SAW Dr. Mudhil at the Allenby Bridge and the agony on his face, I knew what had happened without being told.
‘Nada,’ he said and nothing more.
How strange. I did not cry. Dr. Mudhil begged me not to go to my father’s house. He begged me to come with him to London.
‘No, I am going home now.’
Strange ... I could not cry ... and I was not frightened. ...
I could feel the terrified eyes of my mother riveted to me as I pushed past a fearful knot of neighbors. I entered the gathering room.
Haj Ibrahim sat in his great chair awaiting me. His eyes bulged twice the size of normal and red veins flooded through them. His face echoed weird shadows from the flickering light before the photographs of Omar and Jamil. I stared at him, probably for an hour. Nothing could be heard but our grunting breathing.
‘Speak! Speak! I command you to speak!’ he said in a voice foreign to me.
Another hour passed. His eyes rolled back in his head. He fought his way out of his seat and walked unevenly to the table. He opened his robes, took out his dagger, still with Nada’s blood on it, and sank it into the tabletop.
‘You ... you were once my hope ...’ he rasped. ‘But you do not have the courage of a woman.’ He came to me and bared his throat. ‘Go on, Ishmael, do it!’
‘Oh yes, yes. I am going to kill you, Father, but I’ll do it my own way. I don’t need your dagger. I’m just going to talk.