The Locust and the Bird Read Online Free PDF Page B

the old people use.
    I gave her everything dah , a word we used to describe pretty things: a red comb missing most of its teeth; a rattle and a baby’s dummy; and bits of broken dishes that I’d collected from the village for playing house.
    ‘Remember,’ I warned Apple, ‘the holy martyrs Imam Ali and Imam al-Hussein 4 will be your enemies if you play with anyone else besides me!’
    ‘By God, I shall miss you so much, Kamila,’ she sobbed. ‘Make sure you never forget me!’
    ‘I’ll miss you too, Apple,’ I cried back. ‘Make sure nobody eats you before I’m back!’
    I wondered if there’d be eucalyptus trees in Beirut like the ones I liked to cling to with one hand, while clutching my hair with the other, praying to God to make my hair as long as the tree and as soft and smooth as its leaves. I wondered too if I could pick damask roses in Beirut, just as the older girls did here. Like them I’d put the petals in a dish with some water and leave it outside the door overnight so the petals would catch the morning dew. Then I’d use the rosewater to wipe my face, and stand before the mirror. ‘God,’ I would tell myself. ‘I’m so pretty!’
    On our last night I slunk out to our garden plot to see if the cows had returned. Earlier in the day, when I was hunting for the cows’ new home so I could say goodbye to them, Apple told me her mother had said that cows are like doves: they always return to where they came from. But they weren’t there.
4 Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin, married the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima. After Ali, the fourth Caliph, had been assassinated in 40 AH (661 CE), his two sons, al-Hasan and al-Hussein, became the figureheads of the ‘Shiat Ali’ (Ali’s party), which was to become the Shia community within Islam. Al-Hussein was killed at the Battle of Karbala in 61 AH (680 CE).

1934 : Beirut
    W E HEADED FOR Beirut in a Ford, not on foot, the way Mother would go when she felt a yearning to see her other four children who lived in the city. For these journeys, she left us with her only sister in Nabatiyeh and then walked for four days to get there. When she came back, her feet would be covered in blisters; they’d burst like balloons, but without making a sound.
    I knew I had other siblings, two half-brothers and two half-sisters by Mother’s first husband, who had been killed. If someone mentioned the word ‘Beirut’, Mother would put her hands to her cheeks and sing, ‘Beirut, Beirut, you stole my children away from me!’
    This confused me and Kamil.
    ‘But nobody stole them. They all married there, didn’t they?’ Kamil would ask.
    I hadn’t met my half-brothers and half-sisters more than a few times, but I had a clear image of all four of them in my mind, with their olive-brown skin that was so different from mine and Kamil’s. Even my mother was a shade or two lighter. The few times I heard one of them call her ‘Mother’, my heart missed a beat. I couldn’t imagine Mother hugging anyone but Kamil and me. How could I accept that she had given birth to these others before us?
    Mother’s story came to me in bits and pieces. She had been married to a man from an illustrious family in Nabatiyeh that could trace its origins all the way back to the Crusaders,who once upon a time occupied southern Lebanon. The men in the family were renowned for their valour and for wearing golden gloves. By trade, Mother’s husband was a muleteer who travelled between southern villages and the city of Beirut transporting goods. Together they built a house and had four children. They all lived happily together till the First World War began. Then the Ottoman authorities cut off supplies, confiscated the harvest, and people began to starve. Locusts gobbled up anything green in the fields and on the trees. When Turkey introduced general conscription, every single man within its starving domains had to join the army. Mother and her husband decided to make their escape. Mother