Gate of the Sun (15 page)

^*
Legendary figure of the national Palestinian movement, died in combat in 1935.

H
OW DID
we get here?

Honestly I don't understand how things took this course, why they happened – or didn't happen – like they did. I don't understand why I stayed here, why I didn't leave with them. I don't understand how, you . . .

Who says I had to stay?

I'm not talking about the hospital. The hospital, that's you, and I couldn't abandon you even if I weren't a frightened fugitive or hadn't fallen into Shams' trap.

I'm talking about Beirut. I didn't have to stay in Beirut as I claimed to Shams. I told her I felt I had to stay and that it just wasn't possible for us to leave the people here, to turn our backs on them and go.

But I was lying.

Well no, I wasn't lying. At that moment, with Shams, I believed what I said. But I don't know anymore. I was with her in my house here in the camp; I closed the windows tightly so no one would see us. The cold was intense, but I didn't feel it. My body was shivering with heat. I wanted to prostrate myself in front of her. She was beautiful and naked, wrapped in a white sheet, her long hair beaded with drops of water. I wanted to kneel down and place my head on her belly. Everything inside me was quivering. And there was the thirst that can never be quenched.

I wanted to kneel, rub my head all over her feet and pour myself out in front of her. But instead of kneeling, those stupid words came from my lips.

She asked me why I didn't go with the others, and I answered and waited. I heard her laugh. She turned around in the white sheet, sat down on the bed, and started laughing. She didn't say my words had bewitched her, the way words are supposed to in moments of passion.

She laughed and said she was hungry.

I suggested we make something at home and asked if she wanted me to make her some pasta as usual.

She yawned and said, “Whatever you want.”

She stretched her hand behind her back and the sheet fell away from her brown breasts, still wet from the bath. I leapt toward her, but she raised her hand and said, “No. I'm hungry.” I ran to the kitchen and started frying cauliflower and making
taratur
sauce.

“You're the champion at
taratur
,” she used to say, licking the last of the white sauce, made from sesame paste, limes, and garlic, from her fingers.

She said she didn't like fried cauliflower, but the
taratur
was fantastic.

I didn't say . . . well yes, in fact, I did repeat that sentence of mine for her ears. I said I felt that I had to stay because we couldn't leave the people here. She laughed again and said she'd eaten enough and wanted to sleep. She pushed the tray to one side, put her head on the cushion, and slept.

At that moment I told her I wanted to stay because I wanted to impress her. But now, no. I feel there's no reason for me to stay. I stayed here without rhyme or reason, just to stay. I don't know where you were those days. The truth is I didn't ask about you. I was like someone who'd been hypnotized. I picked up my bag, took my Kalashnikov, barrel pointed to the ground, and made my way to the municipal stadium in Beirut to leave with the rest. And there, in the middle of the crowd and the long, wan faces, I made up my mind to go back to the camp.

You'll remember how the fedayeen left Beirut during the siege.

You said you were against leaving. “Better death!” you told me. “Leave under the guard of the Americans and Israelis? Never!” But you were the first to set off. You went to that Christian village and hid yourself there and made up that story about the priest who thought you were a Christian who hid you in his house. I believed you at the time. At the time I, too, claimed to have refused to leave – “Shame on you, my friend! Like the Turkish army? Never! We can never leave Beirut!” But, at the same time, I was convinced that we had to leave. We were defeated, and we had to withdraw as defeated armies do. On my way to the stadium, I imagined myself part of a
Greek epic setting out on a new, Palestinian Odyssey. I'm not sure if I imagined that Odyssey then or I'm just saying that now because Mahmoud Darwish wrote a long poem about such an odyssey, even though he didn't get on the Greek boats that would carry the Palestinians to their new wilderness either.

I put on my military uniform, picked up my small pack, took my rifle, and went. It felt like I was ripping the place from my skin. I turned around and saw the camp looking like a block of stone. Suddenly the camp became a mound of ruins, a place unfit for habitation, and I decided to leave it forever. What would I do in the camp after the fedayeen had pulled out? Would I end my life there, meaninglessly, the same way I'd lived all those years doctoring the sick when I wasn't really a doctor, loving a woman I didn't really love? At that time I was on the verge of marrying plump, light-skinned Nuha, who worked with us at the Red Crescent. The only thing Nuha wanted was to get married. She'd take me to her parents' house at the camp entrance near the open space that later became the common grave, and there we'd eat and I'd see in her mother's eyes a phantom called marriage. I don't know how I came to find myself half-married without realizing it. Then came the Israeli invasion and the decision to move us out of Beirut.

I looked back and I saw the heap of stones called the Shatila camp, and I started running in the direction of the stadium. I was afraid that Nuha would come, persuade me to stay, and take me to her parents' house. I reached the stadium convinced she'd be there. I ducked down, blending in with the crowd so she wouldn't see me. I didn't want her, and I had no desire to stay or to get married. I would raise my head from time to time and steal a look, so I could spot her before she saw me and could run away. But I didn't see her. Instead of relaxing, setting my concerns aside, and looking for my friends, however, I was seized with anxiety, as though her absence had struck terror in me. I didn't want her to come, and she didn't, yet I found myself searching for her.

You remember those days – women and tears and rice and shots fired into the air. I never saw anything like it in my life – a defeated army withdrawing like victors! That burning Beirut summer was cooled with tears; August
scorched the earth, the people, and the tears with its savage sun. And I searched for Nuha. I thought, it's impossible – Nuha's given up her life's best bet after all that? She was bound to come and ask me to promise to marry her, and I'd agree, and then forget her. But where was she? I walked through the crowds like a stranger, because if your mother doesn't come to say goodbye, it's not a real goodbye. Mothers filled the place, and the young men were eating and weeping. Food and tears, that was the farewell. Mothers opening bundles of food wrapped in cloths and young men eating,
youyous
and bullets.

At that moment, Abu Salem, I thought of my mother. At that moment I loved her and forgave her and said I wished she were there. But where was she? At that point I didn't know she was in Ramallah. At the municipal stadium, I was sure my mother would come, that she'd suddenly appear at Nuha's side and unwrap a bundle of food in front of me, and I'd eat and weep like everyone else.

I stood there alone, and nobody came.

Then I don't know what happened to me – I looked at the people, and they seemed like ghosts.

I already told you about the siege, about the hospital, and about death – how we lived with death without taking it in. I stayed in the hospital for a month treating the dead, eating eggplant, and watching the Israeli planes launch bombing raids like they were competing in fireworks displays. I lived with death, but I couldn't absorb it. They all died. They came, and as soon as we'd put them in beds, they died. Strange days. Do you remember how we used to talk about the walking dead? Did I tell you about Ahmad Jasim? The man was hit in the throat near the museum, but he kept going. He fell to the ground, then got up like a chicken with its throat slit and, to the astonishment of his comrades, set off in the direction of the Israeli army positions. After about ten meters, he fell down dead, motionless. They picked him up and brought him to the hospital. I examined him and ordered them to take his body to the morgue. “The morgue?” shrieked one of his comrades. “Why the morgue?”

“Because he's dead,” I said.

“Dead? That's impossible!” the man cried.

I ordered Abu Ahmad to take him to the morgue.

Then the yelling started. They seized the body, picked it up and left. I tried to explain that he was dead and that walking after being hit didn't mean anything because it was just an involuntary reflex, but they called me names, wrapped him in a woolen blanket, and went off with him.

We lived three months with death without believing it. But in the middle of the stadium, I finally believed it. They all seemed dead, eating and firing into the air and weeping.

Just as I came to the stadium running, so I left it running.

I won't tell you how I looked for Nuha like a madman. God, why didn't she come? It was just that my tears wouldn't flow. I hated this farewell of theirs – why were they eating and weeping and shooting? There shouldn't have been a farewell. At that instant I was ready to buy a farewell for myself at any cost. I wanted to weep as they wept and shoot as they were shooting.

But she didn't come.

What had happened to Nuha? Had she understood that I didn't want her anymore? Had love ended along with the siege?

Why the tears? I ask you. Your closed eyes are soaking in bluish white. I opened your eyes and put a few drops in. Do you know what the drops are called? Artificial Tears. They call drops for washing out the eyes “tears.” People go to the pharmacy and actually buy tears, while we can barely hold ours back.

“Tears are our remedy,” my mother used to say.

My mother used to cry beneath the beating rain that crackled on the zinc sheets we'd made into a roof for our crumbling house in the camp. She'd cry and say that tears were a remedy for the eyes. She'd cry and get scared. Then she fled to Jordan and left me with my grandmother and the flower pillow. I told you about my grandmother's pillow, so why should I repeat the story now? I just wanted to say that I bought this eyedropper made in England so I could put tears in your eyes, which are dry as kindling. Brother, cry at least once. Cry for your fate and mine, I beg you – you don't
know the importance of tears. The best thing for the eyes are tears, tears are indispensable. They are the water that washes the eye, the protein that nourishes it, and the lubrication that allows the eyelids to slide over it.

You've made me cry, but you refuse to cry yourself.

I administer the drops, wait for your tears and feel the tears rise up in my own eyes. I'm not weeping for you; I'm weeping for Umm Hassan, not because she died but because she left me the videocassette.

S
ANA', THE WIFE
of the
kunafa
-seller, came. She came and stood by the open door of your room and knocked. I was sitting here reading Jabra Ibrahim Jabra's novel
In Search of Walid Mas'oud
. I was fascinated by Walid Mas'oud, the Palestinian who disappeared leaving a mysterious tape in his car, to unravel the riddle of which Jabra had to write a long and beautiful novel. I love Jabra because he writes like an aristocrat – his sentences are elitist and beautiful. It's true he was poor when he was a child, but he wrote like real writers, with expressive, literary sentences. You have to read them the way you read literature, not the way I'm talking to you now.

Sana' knocked and didn't enter. I put my book aside, stood up, and asked her in, but she stood by the door and gave me the cassette.

“This is what Umm Hassan left you,” she said. “Umm Hassan entrusted me with this tape to give to you.”

I took the videotape and offered her a cigarette, which she smoked greedily. I used to think that veiled women didn't smoke, but Sana' talked and stammered, gulping down the smoke between syllables.

I didn't understand about the cassette, because Umm Hassan had visited Galilee three years before, and when she returned she brought me a branch of oranges and told me of her visit to al-Ghabsiyyeh, where she'd lit a candle under the lotus tree and prayed two prostrations in the mosque.

Sana' said Umm Hassan had visited al-Kweikat again, six months before, and had seen her house and made up her mind to die. Every day she'd watch this cassette and tell stories while others joined her in her lamentation, her sorrow, and her memories.

“She stopped sleeping,” said Sana'. “She came to me and said she'd heard
the call of death, because she couldn't sleep. Sobs clung to her voice, and she told me to give you this tape. I don't know what you'll see on it. It's falling apart it's been used so often, but she left it for you.”

I thanked Sana', nodding goodbye to her, but she didn't move, as if she were stuck to the door. Then she spoke. She blew smoke in my face and her eyes filled with tears.

Sana' told me about that journey. At first I couldn't understand a thing. Then the words started transforming themselves into pictures. She spoke about Fawzi, Umm Hassan's brother, and about the village of Abu Sinan, stammering and repeating herself as though she had no control over her lips. Then she got to the point.