Qissat Read Online Free Page A

fart but everyone’s a bum in her underworld, everyone’s sad and impoverished, and when she finally finds her fart he starts cursing her and saying he felt so warm inside her why did she push him out? But she doesn’t get it and she asks him for gold and he tells her to get lost, the villagers expel her and she goes back to her world where the mayor is gone and the husband yells where were you no good wife? And she opens her mouth to explain but scorpions drop out of it and bite her all over until she dies. By the end of the tale all the cabbage rolls are stacked in the pot and Sitto puts the pot on the flame and says,
‘w-hay ihkayti haket-ha, w’aleki ramet-ha
And that’s my tale, girl, I’ve told it, and to you, girl, I’ve thrown it.’
    I wonder if I love Sitto because of her
hikayyat khuraifiyeh,
her tales. She tells me to remember the tales, and even though there are a lot of them – one about half a pomegranate, one about a girl who loses her slipper, one about a man with two wives – I do. She tells me that like her grandmother told her the tales and she tells them to me, I must one day tell my kids the tales when they visit me from afar. I want to tell the tales to everyone, and I wish I won’t ever have to have kids, but I don’t dare tell her that.
    Back home, in Kuwait, when Baba got letters from his now-dead father, they would include a message from Sitto. My grandpa Sido would write the message for her, and her signature would be a little circle with her name inside it, because she can’t write. Baba explained to me that she used a ring. I never understood this, and thought the ring was the same as her wedding ring. But now, while we wait for the cabbage to cook, she asks me to write her daughter’s husband a letter about the white cheese crop. She dictates it to me. When I give her the paper so she can ‘sign’ it, she takes out her signing ring; it is not her wedding band at all. She dips it in ink and then smashes it onto the paper dramatically, winking at me. It occurs to me that Sitto doesn’t care that she can’t write, because she tells tales and winks and makes cheese.
    In the afternoons of the forty-day funeral, for which we will only stay for three days, the women sit in a circle and tell stories about Sido, once in a while slapping their cheeks and rending their dresses. I slap my cheeks and try to rip my dress but Mama shoots me laser-looks and I stop. I just want to be like everyone else.
    When I’m alone with Sitto again, I ask her how she met Sido. She laughs and laughs, even though I don’t think my question is funny.
    ‘He came to our house as a messenger for his father,’ she says. ‘You see, his father had come to visit us about the olive trees. I took his horse at the gate because the stable keeper was praying. Your great-grandfather was very taken with me, because even though I don’t have a lot of teeth now and I’m very fat, I was pretty in those days.’
    ‘You’re pretty, Sitto!’
    ‘God send away the devil! You liar!’ she pinches my cheek, hard. ‘Your great-grandfather sent your grandfather to come ask after me. He wanted to know if I was available for marriage. But when I saw grandfather, I wanted to be his wife. Like that, I don’t know why. He was very handsome in those days too, and not bald! Your grandfather asked if I was available for marriage, and I answered, yes, I am available to marry him. And I winked! Your grandfather understood, and forgot all about his father. He took me for himself. And after I gave birth to six girls, your father, God keep him, arrived!’
    I like sneaking over to Sitto so she can tell me more stories. The day before we leave she tells me about the half-a-half boy who was half a human because his father ate half the pomegranate he was supposed to give his infertile wife to help her carry his child. I wonder if she tells me this because she thinks I’m half a girl since I’m only half-Palestinian. But Sitto must have