West Bank Journal: Death and Birth in the Occupied Territories

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We return back to Neta's house. Her friend Ream comes to watch Nawal, and Nizar goes to fetch the midwife. She is an older woman, dressed in a long coat and headscarf, and she has a beautiful, strong face. Ream and I find her a bit intimidating: clearly the housekeeping and the appointments of this house are not quite up to her expectations. I've put Neta in a warm bath to relax and Um Ali, the midwife, takes the one chair in the house into the main room and prays. Neta and I have had a running competition for the chair all week: between her nine-months pregnant bulk and my bad knees neither one of us is all that happy on the floor. But we're very good, we don't fight, in fact we keep politely offering it to each other. 'You take the chair.' 'No, no you take it.' Neta and Nizar have actual furniture but it's in Nablus, where they used to live, along with boxes of baby clothes. It's simply not possible to transport furniture between cities in the West Bank, because of the checkpoints and the roadblocks.

But now, clearly, the midwife needs the chair. She tells me to tie my hair back. Something about my hair is deeply disturbing in this culture where women keep it covered -- probably the fact that there's so much of it and it's so fluffy and wild. I somehow don't think she likes me much, but after I find a rubber band and pull it back into a rough French braid, she nods approval.

She sets up a birth bed for Neta on the coffee table, spreads some plastic, requisitions some old clothes and towels, and Neta comes out of the bath and into full labor. Nizar and I both support her, rubbing her back, sitting behind her so she has something to lean on. Um Ali, from time to time, rubs her belly in clockwise circles while whispering verses from the Koran. I am murmuring my own prayers to birth Goddesses but do so quietly as I'm not sure how much English Um Ali understands and she's already a bit scandalized. Nizar goes off to put Nawal to sleep. He's a wonderful father, patient, affectionate, nurturing and kind, and it's a very beautiful sight to see him holding the baby on his knees, patting her and singing in a low croon as she drops into sleep. I don't know if he's typical, but in the patriarchal culture, he nurtures the baby, cooks us food, does dishes, cleans the house, and grows window boxes full of plants wherever they have room, dreaming of compost bins and gardens.

Labor always seems endless but hers is not long, as births go. Um Ali tells her to push, and I hold her from behind, Nizar from in front, as the hard, painful work begins. Somehow I sense I've now slipped into Um Ali's favor. We are all working together, calm and strong, and Neta is a lion, roaring and pushing and moaning and bearing down, until that great moment of transformation occurs, and the shape in her stomach becomes a wrinkled prune of a skull that squeezes through the gates of life and blossoms into a new human being. A beautiful baby girl, named Shaden, who fills her lungs with air, cries, looks up alertly and smiles at me. I know newborns don't smile, but I swear she does.

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