The morning after the vote, Mariam woke before sunrise, as always, and she dressed, and she tied her headscarf, and she put her hand to the inside pocket of her dress, and the packet was there, and she smiled, and she went to the kitchen, where Rami was already boiling water, and Nour was still asleep, and the house was quiet, and the day felt like any other day, which was exactly how she wanted it to feel.
They walked to the corner together, Rami carrying the heaviest crate, Mariam carrying the bag of greens, and the street was still half asleep, and the chalk line was still there, a little faded at the edges, but plain. Mariam set out her crates as always: potatoes, onions, leeks, leafy greens, and tomatoes, each in its place, each turned so its best side faced the street. The morning filled up, customer by customer, and the tin cup rang, coin by coin, and the sun came over the rooftops, and it was a good morning, an ordinary good morning, and Mariam was glad of its ordinariness.
At mid morning, Nadia Hamdan came down the street, carrying a folder, and she stopped at the chalk line, and she smiled, and Mariam smiled back, and Nadia held out the folder, and said, "I have brought the new paper. The council voted last night, and the new fee is set. Would you like to hear it?"
Mariam nodded, and Nadia read the number aloud, in plain words.
Mariam stared at her. "Say it again," she said.
Nadia said it again, slowly. The fee was less than a day of tomatoes. Less than the money in Mariam's tin cup on a good morning. Less than the price of the medicine she bought each month. It was a sum she could pay, and still have money for rent, and for Nour's schoolbooks, and for the evening meal. It was a sum that made sense. It was a sum that had been set by people who had listened.
Mariam did not speak for a moment. She looked at Nadia, and she looked at Rami, who had come to stand beside her, and she looked at her crates, and she looked at the chalk line, and she felt tears come to her eyes, and she did not hide them, because there was nothing to hide. She had waited thirty years for a paper she could afford, and now the paper had come to her, on her own corner, in the morning light, carried by a clerk with a kind voice.
"May I pay it now?" Mariam asked. "May I pay it here, from my cup?"
Nadia laughed, a kind laugh. "You may pay it at the office, Mariam, where the stamp is. But if you wish, I will walk with you, and we will do it together, and Rami will read every word aloud first, as before."
Mariam nodded, and she took the tin cup from its place beside the crates, and she counted out the coins, one by one, into neat piles on a clean cloth, the way she had counted them for thirty years, and Rami counted with her, and Nadia watched, and Sami Barakat watched from his bread basket, and Elias Khoury watched from his doorway, and the counting took a little while, because Mariam counted carefully, and because her hands shook a little, with joy this time, and not with fear.
When the counting was done, the sum was there, and a little over, and Mariam wrapped the coins in the cloth, and put it in her bag, and she walked with Nadia and Rami to the permits office, her steps steady, her head high.
At the office, Nadia laid the new form on the desk, and Rami read it aloud, every word, slowly, and Mariam listened, and nodded, and when he finished, she signed it, her hand shaking only a little, the letters coming straighter than they had the first time. Nadia stamped it with the round stamp, and the sound was firm and final, and she folded the paper, and she gave Mariam the receipt, and Mariam took it with both hands, and folded it again, small and neat, and slipped it into her dress pocket, beside the old packet, where it would stay dry and safe.
"This is your permit," Nadia said. "It costs less than a day of tomatoes. Keep the receipt folded in your pocket. If anyone asks, you show them this."
Mariam pressed her hand to her pocket, feeling the shape of the receipt through her dress, and she thanked Nadia, and she walked back to her corner with Rami beside her.
Back at the corner, Sami had sold two bags of potatoes in her absence, and he gave her the money, coin by coin, and she put it in the tin cup, and the cup rang, and Elias came out with a glass of water, and she drank it, and thanked him. At the end of the day she swept her square clean, and walked home with Rami, and Nour ran to meet them at the gate, and Mariam showed her the receipt, folded small, and they laughed together, and the evening meal was tomatoes and bread, and it tasted, to Mariam, like the best meal she had ever eaten, because it was eaten in her own house, with a permit in her pocket that had cost less than a day of tomatoes, and a future that belonged, at last, on paper, to her.
Chapter Thirty One