Waiting for the Waters to Rise by Maryse Condé

Author:Maryse Condé
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Editions
Published: 2020-10-22T16:26:38+00:00

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FOUAD’S STORY

The story of my life begins with two lies. First of all, my name is not Fouad. It’s Arvo. My mother gave me the name of the Scandinavian midwife who delivered me. We almost died together since I arrived prematurely. The doctor decided to keep us alive and, being a man of science, he managed to do so. I never considered Arvo to be my name and neither did my mother. Can you imagine a Muslim called Arvo?

Secondly, I’m not Lebanese. I’m Palestinian. But that’s an identity that scares people. The term implies too much suffering, dispossession, and humiliation. You need to be a Jean Genet to like us. Otherwise the world turns a blind eye. So I decided never to tell the truth on the subject. In September 1982, at the end of the siege of Beirut, my father and other fighters were sent to Yemen. My mother remained behind in the camp. My parents were never to see each other again, for my father was killed in dubious circumstances. A few months after my father left, my mother contracted pulmonary complications and was admitted with me to the Akka hospital in the camp of Chatila. It actually worked out for the best because I often wonder how we would have survived the horrors of the massacre that followed. Except for her younger brother, Zohran, who miraculously escaped, all her parents and relatives were killed.

She was a brave woman, a fighter in her own way. In order to earn a living, she got together a group of women without husbands or resources, much like herself, and created an association of embroiderers. From early morning until the light failed her eyes, she stuck her needle into the dresses and cross-stitched them with silk thread embroidery. This exhausting work assured all three of us as best it could our two daily meals.

I was around eight and Zohran ten when my mother remarried a Lebanese baker whom she had seduced; I don’t know how, since the Lebanese, be they Muslim or Christian, hate us. They believe we are responsible for most of the ills that beset their country. The man my mother married was not an ordinary baker. He was king of his trade and rolling in dough. He sold all kinds of breads, biscuits, and cakes; he had invented a tart called “The Boat” because it had the shape of a small craft stuffed with dates and marzipan. Dodging the bombs and the murderous shots by snipers, off he would go at the wheel of his van to make his deliveries to all four corners of the town. My mother was sharply criticized for betraying the community with this marriage and she lost her few remaining friends. Due to this marriage we not only left the loving warmth of our community, but also the overcrowding and promiscuity of the Chatila camp, such as common washrooms and toilets and shared canteens, for the comfort of a vast, sunny apartment in a building facing the sea.

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