The House of Jasmine Read Online Free PDF Page A

the early afternoon and I had eaten two Bolti fish, which I had grilled myself for lunch. My mother said that she was not going to eat until late afternoon, and remained sitting on the balcony, looking at the sea. I watched the children playing in the water and on the beach, the little girls walking together with their arms wrapped around each other’s waists. I watched a few families who had gathered to eat under the umbrellas. The sun was shining brightly, flooding everything around me in waves of light, while my mother still wore her black mourning clothes. She inspires silence at home and sometimes even scares me. The silver paint on the walls makes her clothes look even darker, especially now that the electric light is brighter. Yesterday she said that she heard a noise in the apartment next door, so she went over and knocked on the door. A young man opened the door and she offered him her congratulations on the new apartment, but he laughed, and said that he was only a painter, and that most of the apartments in the building were empty because the renters worked in the Gulf countries. Then he asked her when we had returned from Saudi Arabia. He also asked if she liked the paint job in our apartment, and she said that she did.
    â€œDoes the situation bother you?” I asked her, and added, “I won’t go to the café as often from now on.” But she said that she was happy, and that she liked to spend the day watching the children on the beach nearby, the people who fish on the rocks in front of the building, and the ships moving in the sea. Then she smiled and said that she had never seen a ship before, and asked me why ships were so big and white.
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    Has any man in this world ever wished that he were born a girl? I have. Maybe if I were a girl, my mother would have been less lonely. She will never forget my father, Muhammad ‘Ali Shagara, that kind, down-to-earth man. He married her when she was fourteen and patiently lived with her for twenty years until she became pregnant with me.
    â€œYou should name him,” she said.
    â€œShagara,” he said. She laughed, but he went on saying: “Shagara Muhammad ‘Ali. I planted him ages ago. He will live as long as an olive tree, and will be as tall as a palm.” He also said that his grandfather had been given that name, because he was born under a sweet-smelling camphor tree. Then he laughed and cried. He had become a father after waiting for twenty years.
    I grew up with amazing speed at our old house in the Baladiyya housing project at Kum al-Shuqafa. My mother stopped telling me the story of my name and I stopped asking her about it, but continued to defend it in front of the other children, who teased me. I never complained. I was growing taller than all the others, and I used to think that when I grew up, I would be a real tree, that I would grow branches and leaves, that birds would land on me, and kids would throw pebbles at them. That thought both scared me and made me laugh. Suddenly, I became taller than my father, and became embarrassed of walking with him or with my mother, but he would always look at me and say, “Just as I had hoped.”
    I used to play in the alleys between the huge brick buildings, which stood in the middle of a large vacant lot surrounded by fields of bright green grass, with asphalt roads running between them all. No strangers came to our neighborhood, and no cars passed there. Mothers felt safe letting their children go out to play. What charm God had sent to this spot. He must have created it for Himself, and so filled it with peace and quiet. And He must have liked us, and so left it for us. It was always flooded with sunlight, in both summer and winter. Even though there was a hospital for pulmonary diseases nearby, we only saw the trees surrounding it and were not afraid. The days passed, as peaceful as a mother’s pats on the head of her child. My father’s small salary from his