The permits office smelled of paper and floor polish, and the fan above the door turned, moving the warm air without cooling it. Mariam sat on a wooden chair that was too straight for her back, holding her bag in her lap with both hands. Nadia Hamdan sat across the desk and laid the papers out one by one, in a row, as if she were laying out vegetables in crates, each in its place.
"These are the forms," Nadia said. "There are three. We will go through each one slowly."
"Grandmother, I will read every word aloud first," Rami said. "You will hear it all before you sign anything."
Nadia smiled. "That is the right way."
Rami read the first form aloud, slowly, in a clear voice. It asked for her name, and he read her name back to her, Mariam Haddad, and she nodded, because that was her name and she had carried it all her life. It asked for the place where she sold, and he read the description of the corner, the pavement, the shopfront of Elias Khoury, and the chalk line that marked her pitch. It asked for what she sold, and he read the list: potatoes, onions, leeks, leafy greens, and tomatoes. Mariam listened and felt her shoulders come down a little. The list was true. The list was her life, written down in plain words.
"Is that all correct?" Nadia asked.
"It is correct," Mariam said.
Nadia slid the first form toward her and put a pen beside it. Mariam picked up the pen. Her hand shook, the way it shook on cold mornings, when the crates were heavy with damp and her fingers were stiff. She looked at the line where her signature had to go. The line was short. Her name felt long.
"Take your time," Nadia said. "There is no clock on this desk."
Mariam put the pen to the paper. The first letter came out crooked. The second letter leaned against it. She stopped and breathed. Rami put his hand over hers, gently, the way he had held her arm on the pavement on the morning of the confrontation.
"Slowly," he said. "One letter at a time. Like counting coins."
Mariam laughed, and the laugh steadied her. She thought of the tin cup, and the coins, and the way she counted them one by one into neat piles, and she wrote her name the same way, one letter at a time, until it stood on the line, crooked and true.
"Good," Nadia said. "Now the second form."
Rami read the second form aloud. It said she would keep the walkway clear, and she nodded, because she had always kept the walkway clear. It said she would keep the pavement clean at the end of each day, and she nodded again, because she swept her corner every evening. It said she would sell only what was on the list, and she nodded a third time, because the list was her list.
"And the fee?" Mariam asked, her voice quiet. The fee had frightened her for years. The fee had been the wall between her and the paper.
Nadia showed her the number, written in clear figures. "This is the fee under the old rule," she said. "But Captain Salim has set it aside, pending the review. You will not pay it today. When the council decides, the fee will be lower. You will hear the number from me first, in plain words, before you pay anything."
Mariam let out a breath she had been holding since she sat down. She signed the second form, her hand shaking less this time, the letters coming a little straighter.
The third form was the shortest. It asked for her agreement that she had read the rules, or had them read to her, and that she understood them. Rami read it aloud twice, and Mariam repeated the words back in her own way, so that Nadia could hear that she understood.
"I understand," Mariam said. "I keep the walkway clear. I keep the pavement clean. I sell my vegetables on my square, and no further."
"Exactly," Nadia said.
Mariam signed the third form. Her hand still shook, but the shake was smaller now. Nadia took the three forms, checked each one, and stamped each one with a round stamp that left a purple circle on the corner of the page. The sound of the stamp was firm and final, and Mariam liked the sound of it. It sounded like a door closing on a long worry.
Nadia folded one copy of each form into a neat packet and tied it with string. "This copy is yours," she said. "Keep it in your pocket, where it will stay dry. If anyone asks, you show them this."
Mariam took the packet with both hands and slipped it into the inside pocket of her dress, where she kept the money for her medicine. Rami pulled her chair back. Nadia came around the desk and shook Mariam's hand with both of hers.
"You did well," Nadia said. "Come back to me if any word on those papers ever puzzles you, and I will read it to you again."
Outside, Rami stood beside her, smiling.
"Grandmother," he said, "you have signed your name to your own corner."
Mariam looked down the street toward the pavement where her crates waited, and she smiled back at him, and her hand, which had shaken so hard over the pen, was steady now, resting easy at her side.
Chapter Twenty Seven
The First Legal Morning on Her Own Square of Pavement