Hajjeh Um Mhammad rushed all the women into the kitchen to heat the food and begin assembling the layers onto the dishes. Heaps of saffron rice were molded into small hills on four large trays. Hajjeh Um Mhammad picked out the chunks of lamb and arranged them on top of each rice hill. As she sprinkled the parsley and roasted almonds on top, Ghassan’s mother arrived at the house, and Hajjeh Um Mhammad moved as hurriedly as her arthritic body would allow to embrace her friend. The two hajjehs held each other for a long and poignant moment. When they let go, Bilal kissed the hand of Ghassan’s mother.

“Let me kiss your face, my son. You are as dear to me as Ghassan and Jandal, God rest his soul. Praise God for your safe return, my son. Praise God,” she said.

“Ghassan is in good spirits, Auntie. They moved us to the same detention center last week, and I got to see him a lot. He sends his love,” Bilal told her. His words gave her some comfort, and she filled the room with more and more prayers for both men and for all Palestinian prisoners.

“Come, come, Sister.” Hajjeh Um Mhammad pulled her friend away. “Let’s eat. By God’s will, we will eat our next meal together soon in celebration of Ghassan’s return.” She began ladling sauce on the rice and instructed us to bring the rest in bowls to place around the central trays. We set out the hot trays of mansaf, tender lamb in spicy white yogurt broth on a bed of saffron rice, topped with roasted almonds, parsley, and pine nuts.

There were too many people to fit indoors. A group took one of the trays to the terrace and ate in the crisp, cool breeze of October in Palestine.

Mansaf was always a dish for large gatherings or holidays in my youth. Eating it by hand makes it all the more cherished. The continuity of these traditions helped bridge the spaces between dislocation and the home I had forged in my birthright homeland, but I knew I could never again be complete in one place. This was what it meant to be exiled and disinherited—to straddle closed borders, never whole anywhere. To remain in one place meant tearing one’s limbs from another. I missed my mother. My brother and grandmother. I balled a bite of mansaf in my hand and looked around the room. Bilal, Jumana, Samer, Wadee and Faisal, other friends, Hajjeh Um Mhammad and her sisters, neighbors, and more family. This was where I belonged, but so much of me was still scattered elsewhere.

Harvest

HARVEST

NOT WANTING TO give people more fodder for gossip, especially with Hajjeh Um Mhammad’s fragile health, I moved in with Jumana after Bilal returned. But I was there daily for the hajjeh, even though she had plenty of people caring for her.