Where the Streets Had a Name Read Online Free

the
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and stuffs it with fresh apple tobacco that smells like lollies. He squashes the tobacco in and then covers it with a small piece of foil. Tariq or I are assigned the task of finding him a toothpick. He then pricks the foil with several openings. Next, he refills the glass container with fresh water. ‘Can’t you do that somewhere else?’ Mama scolds. ‘I’m trying to wash the dishes.’ But every night he repeats the procedure in the kitchen and every night she scolds.
    When the coal is grey and alive with heat, he picks it up with his tongs and places it on the foil, pressing down. Our apartment block has a front porch on the ground floor that looks over a small communal garden. Baba carries the
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to the porch and sits on the green bench, legs extended before him, one foot curled over the other.
    He’s a man imploded and there’s nothing we can do to clear the debris inside him.
    Mama sent me to follow him one morning. ‘Go alone,’ she said. ‘For it will bring shame to this family if anyone knew I sent you.’
    I told Samy anyway.
    We followed Baba to Fréres Street, the highest point in Bethlehem. Baba walked slowly but purposefully, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his grey trousers. He led us to Bethlehem University, to an elevated point fenced by railings. I took a sharp breath as I saw the landscape before me: a panoramic view of Jebal Abo Ghnaim, except that it was now covered with settlements.
    Baba leaned his elbow on the railings and looked at the horizon in silence, like a man standing at a headstone in a cemetery.
    He stood there for half an hour, unnaturally still and barely moving.
    Samy knew enough to remain silent.
    On his way home, Baba stopped at a coffee shop. He took his mobile phone out of his shirt pocket and called a friend. Abo Hussein arrived shortly afterwards. Samy and I watched them order mint tea and an
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each.
    When Mama asked me where Baba went, I told her about the coffee shop only.

    The curfew lasts for several more days. My parents fight over everything. Mohammed’s nappy rash. Jihan’s wedding plans. Failing to stock up on enough fetta cheese and bread. Putting too much sugar in the tea. Putting too little.
    Jihan does her exercises in the cramped family room. Sit-ups, star jumps and jogging on the spot. She lifts cans of chickpeas and washing powder for muscle toning. When she can get away with it, she replaces meals with cigarettes (sucked up secretly behind the water tank on the rooftop of our apartment block). She has to stay hidden from the soldiers and from my parents, who strongly disapprove of smoking unless they are the ones doing it. Jihan is determined to lose weight before her wedding and is prepared to take on the Israel Defense Forces to do so. She should be more frightened of Mama and Baba.
    Sitti Zeynab sits in her armchair for days. She thinks Jihan has gone mad. ‘A little meat on a woman is nice. Do you want people to look at you on your wedding day and think you had a holiday in Gaza?’
    Jihan grits her teeth and presses on with her star jumps.
    â€˜But I am just an old woman,’ Sitti Zeynab says, grinning at Baba, who’s too absorbed in smoking his
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to interfere. ‘Why would the freshly hatched Jihan bother to listen to the wrinkled?’
    â€˜First intelligent thing she’s said in months,’ Jihan mutters to me.
    During the curfew Sitti Zeynab leaves her chair only to pray, go to the toilet and go to bed. She has an opinion about everything. Each day Mama finishes a packet of cigarettes before the sun sets and tries her best not to kill Sitti Zeynab or Baba.
    I spend the curfew nights in front of the television, doing my homework. We’re studying world music in English. My teacher is a Michael Jackson fan and loves the song ‘Remember the Time’. Our homework is to write our own song based on times we remember. I remember the