Qissat (12 page)

This is a fictional non-fiction story. Or, if you like, a non-fiction fictional story. The outline and some details of it are true, others are invented to fill in the blank spaces created by forgetfulness or oblivion, or both. If you were to ask me which is which, which detail true and which invented, I would not know. It is so easy to make a fictional person true, or turn a real person into a fiction. What is truth anyway, in a story, and what is fiction? Is not fiction the ordering of an episode in life, giving it a beginning, a middle and an end, when in fact it begins at a beginning far before itself, and never ends? This story, in any case, is real. It is part of a truth that is undeniable and demonstrable.

I thought a lot about Samia during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982. Well, to be more truthful, I thought about her when I had time to think about something other than our own survival and the latest difficulties: no water, no electricity, constant bombardment by air, sea, and land, and a large family to deal with. I thought about her especially when they bombed the refugee camps, or when, for one reason or another, the camps were in the news. In fact, now that I think back on it, they were in the news a great deal of the time, the war being, of course, precisely about the camps and those in them.

Anyway, the first time I saw her after that dreadful summer was a few months later, after the ceasefire, after the PLO had withdrawn from Lebanon, after the Israelis had entered West Beirut and then left it, following the great massacre at Sabra and Chatila and after the first wave of resistance began to take its toll on them.

I did not recognise her at first, and only glanced in her direction as I walked by the front entrance of the bank near my home in Beirut. She was wearing a long black raincoat, under which I could see a black, high-necked rolled collar. Her head was covered, in the new ‘Islamic’ style, with a black scarf pulled low over her forehead and tied under her chin. She was wearing thick dark stockings and low chunky heels. I had become quite used to seeing women dressed like that in the last few years and had, like everyone else in my circle, given the subject some thought. It was, among other things, the sign of the growing poverty in the city, because, after all, if you wore this costume you did not have to bother with fashion or variety any more. Of course there were other reasons for donning this costume, including religious piety, rebellious rejection of the old order, sympathy with the growing resistance. Who knows why each one wore it?

In any case, whatever the reason, so many women had taken to this form of attire that on this particular occasion I did no more than note her standing there. As I passed her, however, I felt her gaze on me and turned slightly. You know what it is like, when someone is staring at you as you walk by and wills you to look at them. Now, as though in obedience to her will, my eyes met hers, and I recognised her at last.

Her costume was so severe and gloomy, and gave her an air of detachment and distance so different from her usual appearance, that my first thought was to note how strange she looked. Because she often wore the cast-off clothing given to her by my elegant and worldly cousin Nadia, through whom I had first met Samia, I had always seen her almost fashionably dressed. She had been blessed with fine features, large eyes under thick, gracefully arched eyebrows, an aquiline nose, wide round forehead, high cheekbones, and a clear, transparent complexion that would have been the envy of any fashion model. All of this refinement was now rather disguised by the scarf she wore so close over her face that it created a different set of proportions. Her nose seemed larger, her eyes smaller, and I could barely see her forehead.

When at last I recognised her, and recovered from the shock of her strange appearance, I rushed to embrace her, greeting her with the usual
‘Hamdillah ala salamtik’,
‘Thank God for your safety’. Then I took a little step backwards and, contemplating her clothes, asked, tentatively, almost afraid of my own question: ‘But Samia, why are you wearing black?’

As long as I live, I shall not forget her answer. Nor shall I ever forget the manner of it: ‘
lil awlad,
’ she answered. ‘For the children.’

She said the phrase softly, but there was a musicality to it, a gentle cadence, that put me immediately in mind of a mother singing a lullaby to her babies. ‘For the children.’ It was as though in a search for consolation she was embracing the words instead of the persons, as though in uttering the word ‘
al awlad
’, ‘the children’, as though she was singing it, sweet memories would overcome bitter ones, and she could undo the dreadful fact. I stared dumbly at her, and, as the shock waves rolled over me, I noted that she was certainly younger than I had remembered her to be, that her face was still beautiful, and that today it seemed as reposed as any I had ever seen. A gentle, mild, barely discernible smile seemed to … what? Light through it. Yes, light: that is the word I have been searching for. There was a light in her face, or a light emanating from her face, from behind that grim black scarf, and altogether I had the impression of composure, almost an other-worldliness I found totally bewildering. Perhaps she had repeated her statement so often that she had grown numb to its meaning, or perhaps, in the endless sorrow of her life, now deepened by the death of her children, she had found a kind of solace in the telling.

I struggled for words, and of course could find none except the banal question I fumbled toward. ‘What happened?’ I asked her, trying not to show my emotions, trying desperately not to upstage hers with mine.

Someone pushed me a bit to the side, and I realised that we were partially blocking the entrance to the bank. I took her hand and led her a few steps away so we could talk without interruption. She told me her story in very few words with no elaboration, no sign of emotion, merely a brief recitation of the facts, which took her only a few seconds to communicate.

‘Mohammed died when the Israelis attacked the airport. He was one of the young men,’ she used the customary appellation for the resistance fighters, ‘
al shabab,
’ ‘who held up the Israeli advance there.’ A moment’s pause. ‘Khalid died in the sports stadium.’ Another brief pause.

It was perhaps those short pauses between each doleful sentence, together with that gentle, musical cadence of her soft voice that I have already mentioned, that brought to my mind the image of a mother tucking her children into bed, one by one, as she said their names.

‘Fawwaz died at home. He was only fifteen and was not fighting, but there was an air-raid and …’

Her voice, though not faltering, seemed to fade away, and I could not tell whether it was because my mind could absorb no more, or because she was unable to complete her sentence. But she took a breath and continued.

‘Husni was wounded. He lost a leg and a lot of blood. They took him to Romania for treatment. I have had no news of him. I do not know if he is alive.’

I could not bring myself to utter the usual words of condolence. In the face of this they would sound banal, hollow, and they did not enter my mind until now, when I am writing about that meeting, rethinking it, remembering what she said and what I said. And what I did not say.

‘What about your daughters?’ I asked, dazed, my voice sounding to me as though it were coming from far away. ‘How are they?’

‘
Hamdillah.
Thank God. I think they are well. I have had no news of them since they left.’ Noting my puzzlement she added quickly: ‘They are in Tunis. They followed their husbands.’ I knew that she had two married daughters, and that their husbands were in the resistance. When the PLO fighters were evacuated from Lebanon and sent to Tunis, some of their women were allowed to follow later.

‘But what about Lamia?’ I asked, remembering that this girl could not have been more than thirteen or so.

‘When the boys died and the men were preparing to leave, we thought it best to send her along, but they only allowed married women to join their husbands. So I married her to our neighbour’s son, and she went with her sisters.’

‘So who do you have with you?’ I asked, knowing the answer already, but fighting for time to avoid having to say anything, not having anything to say. I could barely speak and could scarcely hear my own voice.

‘No one,’ she replied. ‘No one is left.’

There was something extraordinarily accepting in her words. I could detect in them no anger, no hatred, no horror, no refusal, no rebellion, just a vast all-embracing acceptance, and a cosmic patience in which all the sorrows of the world were enfolded. She put me in mind of Gilgamesh, the ancient epic hero, who, at first utterly refusing, on behalf of himself and all mankind, the fact of death, had ended up at last accepting his own and our mortality. When his beloved friend and brother died he had refused to bury him, refused to accept the finality of his death. Then he sought the secret with which to defeat death, and undertook a long, harrowing journey through dark mountains and over wide valleys, fighting along his way preternatural monsters dug out from the imaginative depths of a terrified humanity, and fighting also the temptation to forget about death, merely to live on, mindlessly enjoying what there was to enjoy in this life. At last he found the secret of immortal life, but in a moment’s carelessness lost it again. That is when he surrendered to mortality at last, embracing it on our behalf. This is our fate, and we must accept it. Standing there that winter morning, I found my mind wandering, and I recited silently some lines from the ancient poem.

I did not notice at first that it had begun to rain. So stunned was I by her story, that I was standing still, frozen to the ground, unable to move a muscle, still staring obtusely at Samia. Gradually I became aware of the gentle drizzle that was wetting my hair, and knew that it would soon turn inevitably into the usual Beirut downpour. A few moments later the deluge began, and she nudged me towards the protective awning of the shop next to the bank. It was only then that, forced out of my stupor, I realised that she was talking to me, asking for my help, inquiring of me what she should do to find a way out of her dilemma.

She had no money, not a penny, and she did not know what to do.

For years, ever since her husband had been killed in a resistance operation against the Israelis, she had been granted a small allowance by the PLO as the widow of a
shaheed,
or martyr to the cause. She had supplemented this income with the little dressmaking business that Nadia had patronised. I too had become used to going to her, though, unlike Nadia, I had never entrusted her with making a dress or skirt from scratch, and used to go to her shop only for minor alterations, to have a hem taken up, or a waistband taken in. Actually the place was not really hers, nor was it a proper shop, merely a little corner of a dry-goods store just outside the perimeter of the refugee camp where she lived. There she parked herself with an ancient sewing machine and did what she could to earn a living with which to raise her numerous children. She sent them, of course, to the UNRWA schools in the refugee camp, and when they were sick, she took them to the UNRWA doctors. As they grew older, she had placed the boys, one by one, as apprentices with one or another of her neighbours in the camp to learn useful trades. One had become a plumber, another an electrician, the third a carpenter.

As the girls also grew older she tried to find employment for them in domestic work, but they rebelled against this lowly profession and made life impossible for their mother and any potential employers: I know this because I was one of those employers. I had reluctantly acceded to her wish that I should take one of her girls home with me: when I first refused, she almost begged me, telling me that at least she would know that the girl would have a roof over her head, make a reasonably decent wage, and be treated honourably by me and my family. Also, of course, she would have one less mouth to feed. The girl, Majida, had proved difficult, sullen and contrary, and soon I returned her to her mother, who promptly married her off, rather against her will, I think. Her younger sister, who had with the same results been assigned to an equally reluctant Nadia, became her mother’s assistant in the business, helping her with the hems, sewing on buttons, and ironing, until she too was married off, also against her will. It was not that the girls did not like their husbands: it was that they had other ambitions. But the refugee camp was, after all, not the place for young women to be granted their wishes, nor a place for anyone to fulfil even the most modest personal ambitions.

Between the fact that the girls were gradually being married off, and therefore there were fewer mouths to feed, and the fact that the boys were working and providing a small income to add on to hers, the family was able to live tolerably, making ends meet, if only just.

Until now. Now her sons were dead, and her daughters had gone away. Her home had been destroyed during the bombardments. So had the shop in which she had set up her little business, and with it her sewing machine and all her supplies. Now she had not the means to buy a new one, or even a pair of scissors, needles and thread, and was living off the hospitality of one of the few families in the camp whose home had not been destroyed. It was they who had insisted that she don the clothes she was now wearing: they were not particularly religious, but were being assisted by one of the Islamic organisations that had come into our lives since the war began, filling up the void left by the violence and the absence of other political authority. This family was growing impatient with her presence, and making it clear that, though they felt with her, the time was drawing near when she had to get on with her life and make her own way, earning her own living and finding another home for herself.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said with a small, gentle smile.