Bilal’s rearrest, the torched fields, and Hajjeh Um Mhammad’s hospital stay made the hours stretch and fold in on themselves, holding time hostage to different iterations of the same day that would not end. We got word that Bilal had begun a hunger strike. At the same time, doctors informed us Hajjeh Um Mhammad had suffered a stroke. The right side of her body was paralyzed. Doctors said there was also a problem with her heart, that it had grown too large to pump sufficient blood through her body. There was nothing more they could do. “It’s in God’s hands,” they said. Her sisters took turns at her bedside and a steady stream of visitors came and went. Hajjeh Um Mhammad was awake and talking, but only her sisters could understand what she was saying.

Israeli settlers setting fire to trees during the harvest had become so commonplace in the past ten years that international aid organizations had been established for the sole purpose of defending Palestinian farmers. The group that came to pick with us also pledged to replenish the soil and replant trees. I showed up as much as I could to help with replanting and turning over the soil, but I was not accustomed to such successive trauma without respite. I needed time to mourn, time to recover.

I went back to working at the salon and helped at the bakery sometimes, though Ghassan didn’t really need me. I visited Hajjeh Um Mhammad every day, but I’m ashamed to say it became more of a chore than something I truly wanted to do. It was hard to watch her deterioration. My heart was perpetually stuck in my throat.

Realizing I couldn’t understand her words, Hajjeh Um Mhammad mostly squeezed my hand as I relayed news from the village. There were some good days, when she was more alert. On one such occasion, she pulled me closer, insisting I comprehend. Two of her sisters helped make out her words. She wanted Bilal and me to marry. It wasn’t the first time she had suggested this, but now it had the gravity of a dying woman’s request. I knew our living arrangement was not sustainable in our conservative culture, and I wanted to stay close to Bilal. But marriage unsettled me. The physical intimacy of it. Its permanence. The ownership of belonging to a man. People would surely gossip that I had married both brothers.

“You’re good for each other. Take it from an old lady who knows more about the world than you,” she whispered hoarsely. Her sisters concurred. They had all spoken of it. Of her four sisters, Hajjeh Um Mhammad was the only one who had given birth to fewer than five children, the only one without daughters and grandchildren. The only widow among them now would be the first to die, though she was not the oldest.