The City of Ramallah, population about 70,000, is located in the West Bank area of Palestine, has become a focal point of world wide media This Anthology was published prior to the initiation of the current conflict. In the very informative elegant introduction Maya Abu Al-Hayat tells us the literary history of the city going back to the 16th century up to 2021. She has selected a quite diverse range of stories but each one is informed by the impact of violence brought upon the city from Isreal. The time eras of the stories range from the 1960s to 2021 so political arrangements may vary in stories.
One thing that has happened for 1000s of years is young men armed against much weaker opposition often turn into petty tyrants and sadists. This is magnified when those in authority dehumanise the enemy.
Today's story, "Badia’s Magic Water" by Maya Abu Al-Hayat, editor of the collection, is a very powerful unflincing look at the life of a woman, Badia, dedicated to her job of washing the bodies of women who have either died in the Ramallah hospital in which she works or died as a patient. (As I read the story I thought of hospitals bombed in the current conflict. People wishing only to live killed in a war they did not start.)
As Badia washes the bodies, a very important ritual but not a job many want, she wonders about the lives of the women. Badia has developed a magic water that can, many believe, cure illness. When a young woman whose body is unclaimed, Badia sees she has had a child. She wonders if the father poisoned her to get rid of the baby. She is drawn to memories of her own experiences long ago.
"This was in the days of the First Intifada. They got engaged, entered university together, stole moments in rented cars on the roads between the city centre and the university in Birzeit. Those rendezvous were even sweeter than those at the house of her friend, who had not yet become Umm Salama. But Osama was killed in a flash, leaving her with a gift in her stomach. Had her mother not noticed what was happening, she herself would have been killed long ago. Badia does not like to remember how she got out of that disaster. Her mother was clever enough to save her from death, but the foetus died after birth – boy or girl, her mother wouldn’t say and she did not ask. She had felt delivered of a heavy burden when her mother told her it was dead and disappeared into the corridor of the private hospital in Jerusalem which she had snuck her into, with the help of a women’s association specialised in protecting girls of this type.
A terrible void took the place of the disaster. A void from chest to womb that has stayed with her ever since. She has filled it with laughter, with solving the problems of her colleagues, washing the dead, this occupation she walked into after her mother died and she could not find a woman in the hospital to wash and shroud her. She took on the task herself, unafraid. It gave her a serenity she had not had before, a tremendous sense of calm. All of which made her leap to accept a job offer washing the dead. Since that day she has contented herself with a simple life spent observing the sorrows and joys of others"
This a great short story.
Maya Abu Al-Hayat is a Beirut-born Palestinian novelist and poet living in Jerusalem, but working in Ramallah. She has published two poetry books, numerous children’s stories and three novels, including her latest No One Knows His Blood Type (Dar Al-Adab, 2013). She is the director of the Palestine Writing Workshop, an institution that seeks to encourage reading in Palestinian communities through creative writing projects and storytelling with children and teachers. She contributed to, and wrote a forward for A Bird is Not a Stone: An Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Poetry, and is the editor of Comma's Book of Ramallah. - from Comma Press
I feel compelled to share this poem with my readers
"After" A poem by Maya Abu Al-Hayat- Translated by Fady Joudah
What do we do with secrets that remained secret,
with heaping corpses inside us
waiting to completely rot,
with a brimming happiness in smiles
no mirror reflected,
your love
that comes only after love has ended,
with reconciliation
after spatting lovers have died,
and devotion after the means
have become plenty . . .
what do we do with the roads
after the disappearance of paths
behind our hands, and after the discovery of lips
and all that’s left
Mel Ulm
Today's story, "Badia’s Magic Water" by Maya Abu Al-Hayat, editor of the collection, is a very powerful unflincing look at the life of a woman, Badia, dedicated to her job of washing the bodies of women who have either died in the Ramallah hospital in which she works or died as a patient. (As I read the story I thought of hospitals bombed in the current conflict. People wishing only to live killed in a war they did not start.)
As Badia washes the bodies, a very important ritual but not a job many want, she wonders about the lives of the women. Badia has developed a magic water that can, many believe, cure illness. When a young woman whose body is unclaimed, Badia sees she has had a child. She wonders if the father poisoned her to get rid of the baby. She is drawn to memories of her own experiences long ago.
"This was in the days of the First Intifada. They got engaged, entered university together, stole moments in rented cars on the roads between the city centre and the university in Birzeit. Those rendezvous were even sweeter than those at the house of her friend, who had not yet become Umm Salama. But Osama was killed in a flash, leaving her with a gift in her stomach. Had her mother not noticed what was happening, she herself would have been killed long ago. Badia does not like to remember how she got out of that disaster. Her mother was clever enough to save her from death, but the foetus died after birth – boy or girl, her mother wouldn’t say and she did not ask. She had felt delivered of a heavy burden when her mother told her it was dead and disappeared into the corridor of the private hospital in Jerusalem which she had snuck her into, with the help of a women’s association specialised in protecting girls of this type.
A terrible void took the place of the disaster. A void from chest to womb that has stayed with her ever since. She has filled it with laughter, with solving the problems of her colleagues, washing the dead, this occupation she walked into after her mother died and she could not find a woman in the hospital to wash and shroud her. She took on the task herself, unafraid. It gave her a serenity she had not had before, a tremendous sense of calm. All of which made her leap to accept a job offer washing the dead. Since that day she has contented herself with a simple life spent observing the sorrows and joys of others"
This a great short story.
Maya Abu Al-Hayat is a Beirut-born Palestinian novelist and poet living in Jerusalem, but working in Ramallah. She has published two poetry books, numerous children’s stories and three novels, including her latest No One Knows His Blood Type (Dar Al-Adab, 2013). She is the director of the Palestine Writing Workshop, an institution that seeks to encourage reading in Palestinian communities through creative writing projects and storytelling with children and teachers. She contributed to, and wrote a forward for A Bird is Not a Stone: An Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Poetry, and is the editor of Comma's Book of Ramallah. - from Comma Press
I feel compelled to share this poem with my readers
"After" A poem by Maya Abu Al-Hayat- Translated by Fady Joudah
What do we do with secrets that remained secret,
with heaping corpses inside us
waiting to completely rot,
with a brimming happiness in smiles
no mirror reflected,
your love
that comes only after love has ended,
with reconciliation
after spatting lovers have died,
and devotion after the means
have become plenty . . .
what do we do with the roads
after the disappearance of paths
behind our hands, and after the discovery of lips
and all that’s left
Mel Ulm
1 comment:
It sounds like a beautiful and haunting story. Also, that's a beautiful poem below. The story reminds me a little of Rawi Hage's Beirut Hellfire Society which is about a man who kind of stumbles into burying the dead in the conflict, the dead on both "sides".
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