Our Hajj

 

That is how people knew him. In fact, his nickname had long eclipsed his real name, which only a handful of villagers still remembered.

Hajj owned the village’s only little shop. He lived on whatever livelihood it provided for him and his wife, supported in one way or another by every family in the village, for they had no children of their own.

My father remembers him from his own childhood. Hardly a night passed without my mother telling us one of the many stories in which he and his wife were often the heroes.

Everyone remembers his snow-white hair, his rosy cheeks, his laughter, and his traditional baggy trousers. And just as they knew him, so did I. I grew attached to him from my earliest years.

My mother would often send me to his tiny store to fetch a few things. I would walk into what was both his home and his shop, losing myself among sacks of lentils and rice. I would plunge my hands into bags of spices and fill my palms with wheat grains, only to return them one by one.

He never complained.

Every time I visited, he would ask me my name—and of course, my parents’ names as well.

“Hajj,” I would say, “I’m the son of Michel and Hanan.”

“Glory be to God!” he would exclaim. “Michel and Hanan have a young man already?”—though I was only five years old.

Then his wife would kiss me on the cheek, while candies and salted pistachios mysteriously found their way into my pockets.

I would run home delighted and tell my mother what treasures I had received. She would smile and say:

“What he does for you, he did for me, and for your father before you, just as he did for every child in this village. They are an example, my son. Let us learn from their love.”

The scales of their livelihood never favored arithmetic. They had never truly learned accounting, nor kept any records. They bought their merchandise by recognizing the colors of the sacks. They never really knew what came into the shop or what left it.

If you asked for a kilogram, you received a kilogram and another hundred grams at the very least.

If you paid for ten of those colorful rope-shaped candies, you received a long strand whose pieces no one had ever bothered to count.

And even those who never visited the shop received their share of salted chickpeas and sweets if they faithfully attended church on Sundays.

Hajj was the church’s thurifer, responsible for lighting the charcoal and replenishing the incense whenever its smoke faded.

After Mass, he would make his way through our neighborhood, welcomed into every home as though it were his own.

One day, his wife was struck by severe pneumonia and could not escape death’s grasp.

The ever-laughing Hajj wept for many long days.

His shop was never the same afterward.

He lost much weight, and much of himself with it.

Yet after a few months, he slowly returned to life.

To life—but not to the life he once knew.

The absence of his lifelong companion was no simple matter. The old man found himself forced to care for himself, though he scarcely had the spirit left to do so.

Then shingles came upon him and confined him to bed. Fear of contagion kept much of the village away, though the illness was not nearly as dangerous as many believed.

Only one noble woman remained faithful in her visits. Every day or two she came, washing his clothes and preparing his meals. I will not describe her in detail, for what she did was for God, not for the praise of human tongues.

Eventually, Hajj was moved to a nursing home with the support of the church he had served since childhood.

There he regained some of his physical strength, but lost much of his memory.

One day we visited him and found him helping another elderly resident walk.

We approached and asked, “Do you remember us?”

He answered with his familiar laugh and his equally familiar question:

“Whose son are you?”

“I’m the son of Michel and Hanan.”

“And who are they?”

“Two people from Edbel.”

A broad smile spread across his face.

Then he kissed me.

Later I asked the home’s director about him.

“I have never seen a man like him in my entire life,” he said. “A smile never leaves his face, and somehow he has spread it to every elderly person here. Can you imagine? We even held an election, and they chose him as the nursing home’s Mr. Beauty.”

Today, while speaking with my sister, she said:

“I have news that will sadden you.”

“Tell me.”

“The Hajj…”

“Don’t tell me he died.”

She replied:

“I still remember the stories Mother used to tell us about him. I cried when I heard. You should see the tears in the eyes of the village men and women. Perhaps he had no children to inherit from him, but God did not deprive him of descendants. He was given a thousand sons and daughters instead—every one of them raised by his love.”