White Masks (32 page)

If it weren't for fear of being told that I have been blowing things out of proportion, and that I am full of doom and gloom, indeed that I invite misery - and that such a negative stance merely “serves the interests of the imperialists”-I might have told you the barber's tale, or written the
story “white masks
.”
But if I, who have witnessed all these events and lived through them, cannot believe my own eyes, how could anyone believe this story who hasn't shared our experience of this beautiful city called Beirut? And I will no doubt be accused of exaggerating, of only seeing the tragic side of life, of being unable to behold the sweep of history, the importance of geography, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera . . .

The truth is I now have to admit my mistake: I should have used a more serious incident as my point of departure. After all, how significant is the discovery of a corpse, especially that of an unremarkable man, just an ordinary citizen? And what does the phrase - an ordinary citizen - mean anyway, in light of the government's “extraordinary powers” and the conduct of summary justice? It makes no sense whatsoever, and the critic is right. So, it's a meaningless story, I admit it. Had I been looking for meaning, I should have taken a different tack and told the story of... Genghis Khan, for example.

However, if after all that's happened to us, you expect me to tell that kind of story, you're mistaken - as was I.

Had I been looking for meaning, I should have started differently. I should have told the story of the Palestinian man who was found dead in an airport restroom after committing suicide; or maybe the story of my friend, the doctor, Ajjaj Abu Suleiman, and his countless love affairs; or perhaps the story of our neighbor, Imm Mohammad, and how her husband died. Maybe if I tried again, I could lend some meaning to our story here, and bring it closer to the happy ending that we all secretly yearn for: the resolution that would shield us from the debilitating pessimism we all feel - isn't that the whole point of a story?

As for the Palestinian who was found hanging in the airport restroom, well, that's a very ordinary story really, with a straightforward narrative, and no stylistic flourishes whatsoever - no magic realism, flashbacks, or literary cadences . . . It's the simple story of a young man who realizes that he has lost everything and commits suicide. Just like the tailor.

But the tailor was rather more fortunate than the young man, because when he hurled himself into the sea, he at least was able to breathe in the fresh air and plunge into clean, salty seawater. Whereas the young man, let's call him Moeen Abbas, committed suicide in the worst possible circumstances : in the stench of an airport toilet, amidst throngs of travelers and well-wishers milling around the halls, not to mention policemen, soldiers, immigration officials, and the
mukhabarat.
¹²

The tailor committed suicide in far, far better circumstances, and one can feel fairly confident that he did not suffer the horrific pain Moeen Abbas went through. According to doctors, when the tailor flung himself over the edge of the road into the sea, he died instantaneously: his death occurred on impact, as his body was propelled onto the rocks in the shallows. Whereas Moeen Abbas must have suffered terrible pain - pain of a rather different sort than that of Ghassan Kanafani's heroes who were left to die in the inferno of a bolted tanker truck under the sun. At least the characters of
Men in the Sun
were part of a group, while Moeen Abbas was all alone - and death shared with others must be easier to face than solitary death. However, the most significant difference is that the characters of
Men in the Sun
are heroes, or archetypes. Moeen Abbas was neither: he was just an “ordinary” young man who committed suicide in an airport toilet. And the terrible pain he suffered
was due to the fact that he hanged himself by his leather belt, which he hadn't lubricated with soap or any other type of grease, the way executioners do with the noose to ease the hanging victim's pain.

Moeen Abbas was a medical student at Cairo University. His parents and relatives all live in Gaza City, which has been occupied by the Israeli army since the June 1967 war. As they were extremely poor, Moeen Abbas had to make do with a small scholarship he was awarded by the Egyptian government as an honors student.

Moeen Abbas led a very ordinary - not to say substandard - life in Cairo. He studied hard but yearned to finish up and return to Gaza to work and settle down.

He was not particularly politicized, beyond simply being a Palestinian: you can't be Palestinian and not be involved in some form of politics or other. That is to say, he took part in whatever student events were held at the university, put up posters when necessary, and distributed books and pamphlets about the Palestinian cause.

In Cairo, Moeen Abbas began feeling increasingly conflicted: after years of dreaming about her, he found he wished to forget his young cousin, Sana', to whom he had promised marriage, and whom everyone in the refugee camp knew was destined to be his wife. He was very proud of Sana' and of her stunning looks. But now in Cairo there was Mona, a fellow student.

Moeen Abbas had never felt like this before. He was in love and it felt like a huge dam had burst inside him. Mona would talk to him about her studies, about the movies she went to see, about her sadness at the death of Abdel Halim Hafez - she said singing was “finished” now that he had died.
But as this subterranean river swept Moeen up, Sana' was nowhere to be found in it. What would he say to her, how could he tell her about all this?

Moeen went out with Mona, the black-haired Egyptian beauty. He waited for her and wrote to her ... One day he found himself scribbling on a piece of paper something that resembled poetry. He tore it up. I'm a doctor, he thought, not a poet. Poetry isn't for me.

Yet, here he was living with this ever-expanding wellspring inside him. Mona by his side everywhere: in the lecture room, in the dissecting lab, with her laughter and the dimples dancing in her elongated face. She was the daring one too. It was Mona who urged him on; he didn't want to do it. He always told himself that he wouldn't have sex with the woman he loved until after marriage - because sex is sacred. He'd always felt sickened by the sight of those naked, or half-clad Israeli girls who roamed the beaches in Gaza and fully agreed when his grandfather fulminated about that kind of conduct being contrary to “our customs.”

But look what was happening to him now! Not quite knowing how, Moeen Abbas found himself in his tiny room, lying beside Mona, sprawled out on his bed. And then it all happened, and afterwards as he watched her get up to get a pack of cigarettes, completely naked with her brown back glistening, he felt he must be the luckiest man alive, and he resolved to stay by this woman's side for ever and ever.

She came back with two lit cigarettes, nestled her head against his chest, and started smoking. She talked about everything under the sun, about the loathsome bald professor who chewed gum while dissecting corpses, about the smell of formaldehyde, which made her feel nauseous, about politics
and Camp David, and the war. He wanted to talk to her about love, he wanted to tell her that he had set his mind on marrying her, he wanted to tell her about Sana', about Gaza and the hospital he would work in when they went back together to the occupied Strip.

“I have to go home now,” she said. He wanted her to stay and sleep by his side the whole night long.

When Mona left, Moeen decided he would write Sana' a letter and tell her the truth - although it would be a blow, he felt he owed her the truth. When he saw Mona the next day, she seemed upset, she told him to be careful because a decision had been made to deport all Palestinian students from Egypt. As he listened to her saying she felt afraid for him, he felt afraid only of losing her, and he wanted to tell her that he loved her and had decided to marry her. On an impulse, he made up his mind to tell her about Sana' and how he was going to end it with her. But Mona didn't let him get a word in edgeways.

“Watch out, brother Moeen, they are after you.”

He couldn't have cared less, he wasn't afraid of anything. He asked her to come back to the room with him, but she said not today, she couldn't.

That evening, as he sat alone trying to write something about love, there was a violent banging on the door. When he opened it, he was immediately seized and dragged down the stairs. “But I need to . . .” Not allowed to finish his sentence, he was thrown into a military jeep and told by the soldier accompanying him that he was being put on the first plane out of Cairo.

“But what about my belongings ... my clothes, my books?” The soldier said he knew nothing about that, these were his orders.

And, sure enough, they took him to the airport, where he waited for three hours in a tiny room the size of a prison cell and then was made to board a plane. As the plane took off from Cairo Airport, Moeen Abbas felt around in his pockets: he found he had almost five Egyptian Pounds on him and a box of Cleopatras with nine cigarettes left. In a complete daze, he wasn't even able to ask the stewardess where the plane was bound, and did not hear the captain announce over the PA system that they had landed at Damascus Airport. He had nothing to eat, just drank a bottle of Pepsi and felt his stomach burning from its acrid flavor.

Moeen Abbas got off the plane with nothing to his name; he had neither a passport nor identity papers, only his student card. Even so, the airport official was polite to him.

“You're one of the deported?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Welcome, welcome.”

And he handed Moeen a piece of paper and told him to report to the immigration authorities within the week. Moeen Abbas left the airport building without a clue as to his next destination. The only possible place to go, he thought, was the Yarmouk refugee camp, where he knew his father had some first cousins. He got a taxi to drive him there, but when he handed over the five Egyptian Pounds he had on him, the driver began to curse and told him that he wasn't about to accept such a paltry sum.

“But I have nothing else,” Moeen pleaded.

The driver continued to shout, curse, and threaten, undeterred by the crowd gathering around the car. An old man stepped forward and asked what the trouble was. Raising his voice above the driver's vituperations,
Moeen explained how he came to be where he was and was candid about the fact that he had absolutely nothing to his name. The old man settled the fare, some fifty Syrian lira, and Moeen couldn't thank him enough. When the old man asked him if he had any relatives in the camp, Moeen told him about his father's cousins. The old man thought for a while and said that he personally didn't know anyone by the name of Abbas, but he invited Moeen into his own home. When Moeen politely declined the offer, the old man suggested he could stay in the camp mosque.

So Moeen went to the camp mosque. One of the onlookers at the taxi scene had given him twenty-five lira in exchange for his five Egyptian Pounds, with which he was able to buy himself a can of sardines and two loaves of flatbread. He ate in the courtyard, and then, feeling exhausted, went inside the mosque, found himself a dark corner in which to lie down, and fell asleep.

Moeen lived in the mosque like this for five days, five whole days and nights during which he did not budge, other than to go and buy himself a little food. He had no idea what to do with himself. It seemed to him that he was going to end up being one of those shaggy-bearded beggars, sitting outside mosque doors with a begging bowl at his side.

Then, one day, a man in his forties who had been watching him all this time and sometimes seemed to be on the verge of speaking to him came up to him and put his hand on Moeen's shoulder. “Listen,” he said, “everybody here knows what happened to you, and the camp's welfare association has decided to collect some money on your behalf. They've done it without telling you, but expect a man to come tomorrow and hand you 8,000 lira.”

“Thank you very much, but . . .”

“But, naturally, you wouldn't know what to do with that much money. I'll tell you, son, I can get you a passport and a visa to Sweden, as well as a plane ticket. And it'll only cost 5,000 lira.”

“But I don't know anybody in Sweden.”

“You'll meet people. Sweden is a beautiful country, it's a wonderful place, it's big and it's got lots of universities and factories and things like that.”

Moeen thought about it: there was no other way out. I'll learn the language, he thought, I'll manage to finish my medical studies somehow, I'll send money to my folks, and to Mona, and will come back a doctor!

“OK,” he told the man. “I'll do it.”

The money was handed over to Moeen in a short ceremony with fiery speeches denouncing the “treaty of treason” with Israel and the policies of Arab governments that harmed the interests of the Palestinian people.

Moeen Abbas was overcome with joy: he was leaving, his problems were over.

He thanked his hosts profusely. Choking up, Moeen said he would forever owe the residents of the camp a debt of gratitude, and that he believed the road to victory against the Zionist enemy was now within reach. Then, he left the building and went back to his little corner in the mosque.

On the way there, he met the man and handed him the 5,000 lira.

And then he waited.

Two days later, the man returned with a plane ticket, a passport, the visa and everything. Moeen went to the market, bought himself some trousers, a shirt, and a belt, a jacket, some shoes, and a suitcase in which to put his belongings, as well as a small leather pouch for his passport and ticket. He converted what money he had left into U.S. dollars, with the help of the
same man who had got him his things - that very same man handed him the dollars.