Sailing with Seedo

I know. I’ve been away for some time and even I’m annoyed with myself. I received all of the emails, including those threatening me with boycott and virtual demonstrations.

Look. I do this thing that can only be called “spinning”. When something goes amiss or askew in my life I spin like a crazy Dervish. Only, I don’t get to a hire state of being, rather, I get to – usually – a relatively deep state of nausea.

When I do that, I cocoon. I don’t see very many people and I don’t do a lot of writing except to work out the voices and the ideas in my head. I also read a lot of children’s novels because they’re nice and for the most part, they have very happy endings even when the reality is that the main character dies, I ignore it and stick to the metaphor. Because apparently, anything can be turned into a metaphor.

I’ve been contemplating what I will do with the next year and a half of my life and I think I may have a general idea that involves farming in the south of France and something in the Middle East. How these ideas may come to fruition is another matter and it’ll take me some time to sort through them. For now, all I know is that I will be taking sailing lessons as of next month, Inshallah.

I’ve always wanted to sail and I’m likely the sort to place a down payment on a sailboat before a home. Most definitely before a condo – so I figure before I do that, I should at least learn how to sail. Since a little girl and maybe because I spent four months of the year next to the Mediterranean, I’ve always been more comfortable near water than land. My ideal life would be to load hundreds of books on to a sailboat and hang out in the middle of the Mediterranean, occasionally coming to shore to do whatever needs to be done.

I have vivid memories of my childhood in Gaza. After supper (at around 3 pm), my seedo (grandfather) would go to his bed to take a little nap while listening to the radio station ”Voice of Peace” anchored somewhere in the Mediterranean. I never knew – and still don’t know - much about the radio station, but it was seedo’s favourite and so I would lay next to him smelling him and holding his fingers while we listened and he slept. I would stare at his hands for hours because each one of his fingers and palms was very soft and puffy. I would listen to the music and push down on different parts of his hands with my little ones and watch as his skin filled out again and became just as puffy. I’m sure he pretended to be asleep, just to provide me with the comfort of poking his hands without being nervous or scared. That’s the kind of seedo he was.

When seedo and tata visited us in Canada, he would take the oc transpo and go downtown to walk around Ottawa. I went with him once, only I was sixteen and so didn’t spend as much time with him as I should have; I noticed he would get off the oc transpo as he said “Cheerio” to the driver. The drivers liked that, I could see it all over their smiles. I only thought about the British occupation of Palestine and wanted to yell out “Cheerio is not who you are, seedo!” but always kept my mouth shut. I’m happy I did and only now understand that Cheerio was every bit a part of him as his puffy hands.

Seedo was a principal until the PLO started and he was asked to run their Khartoum office being their representative abroad. He left the PLO shortly thereafter on account of disagreeing with their politics and went home to Palestine. He returned to schooling and was elected the representative of all teachers and principals across Palestine, and finally ended his career as the head of the Red Crescent in Palestine. When he retired, he opened and ran a bookstore – something of a rarity in Gaza. He used to bring me a different book each day and a pretty pen to match, explaining that knowledge and the pen were the essence and the beginnings of Islam and that I should be proud. I always was. Of all the places I could be, I most preferred being in that bookstore. I would sit near seedo at his desk with a book and a smelly eraser that I kept in hand and used to erase just so I could smell.

Seedo would close the store at high noon when the sun could burn holes in his customers. He and I would walk to the souq to buy vegetables and fruit before going home for supper. After praying asr, he and I would head back to the bookstore taking usually an hour to walk the simple ten minutes. He would walk me past the coffee shops and introduce me to all of his friends every single day, sometimes sitting down for a sweet mint tea and a game of tawlah in Turkish.

The rest of the evenings in the bookstore consisted of me sitting by and listening to the conversations of politics and religion that inevitably ensued when the bookstore’s four extra chairs were filled with my seedo’s four best friends. When something really big was said, seedo would turn to me and ask me if I understood – if I didn’t, he would take the time to explain the concept to me until I could explain it back to him and his friends. Infinite patience, this man had.

I wish you could have met him, but he's been away now for nearly five years and on days like today, when the weather is humid enough to make the pages of my book moist and the air salty, I really miss him and his soft puffy hands.

Cheerio.