I don’t know how to describe things even though I know a lot of pre-Islamic poems. Nothing is more beautiful than the poetry of Imru’ al-Qais — king, poet, lover, drunk, debauché, quasi-prophet, but I have a problem with his descriptions. “Her breast smooth as a looking glass”. . How, I mean, can a woman’s breast possibly be like a mirror? It won’t do. Isn’t he saying in effect that he’s not seeing her, he’s just seeing himself? And that he’s not making love to her but to himself? Which would lead us to a terrible conclusion about our ancient poets. Of course Imru’ al-Qais wasn’t a sodomite, nor was al-Mutanabbi; it’s the description that’s at fault.
All the same, I love ancient poetry, and I love al-Mutanabbi. I love the melody that makes the words turn inside their rhythms and rhymes. I love the rhythm and the way things resonate with one another and the reverberation of the words. When I recite that poetry, I feel an intoxication equaled only by the intoxication I feel when I listen to Umm Kalsoum. It’s what we call tarab. We’re a people of an exalted state, and tarab is beyond description, so how can I describe things to you when I don’t know how?
I don’t sleep, and I don’t describe, and I don’t feel tarab, and I don’t recite poetry. Because I’m afraid, and fear doesn’t sleep.
Tell me about fear.
I know you don’t use that word. You’ll say that you withdrew, because you use words to play tricks with the truth. That’s the game that you play with your memories — you play tricks and say what you want without naming it.
I know you want me to leave after this night of weariness, insomnia, and darkness. I’ll go; just tell me how Ibrahim died.
Nahilah told the story two ways, and you believed both.
The first time around, she lied to you because she was afraid you’d do something stupid. Then she told you the truth because she could tell from your eyes that you were going to do something stupid anyway, so she preferred you to do something meaningfully stupid.
Yunes went into the cave, the sun burning his sweat and fatigue-rimmed eyes, and he saw her. She was a motionless shadow in the back of the cave, her back turned to the entrance, and she was motionless. She heard his footsteps and smelled the smell of travel, but she didn’t turn around. Yunes went toward her and saw that she was staggering, as though she had waited for him to come before falling to the ground.
He saw her shoulders, outlined by shadows, shaking as though she were weeping. He went up to her, gasping for breath as if all the distances he had traversed and that had been imprisoned in his lungs were about to explode. When he tried to grasp her by her shoulders, she started moaning and let out a single name.
Yunes tried to make her explain, but she wouldn’t stop repeating “Ibrahim,” which had become a part of her moaning. He tried to ask about his father, but she didn’t answer and burst into a long fit of weeping that grew louder before being choked off.
She said the boy died because she had been unable to take him to the hospital at Acre.
“His head fell forward while he was eating. He said his head was ringing with pain.”
She tied cloth around his head and rubbed oil on his neck, but the pain didn’t stop. He held his temples as though hugging himself and writhed in pain. So she decided to take him to the hospital in Acre.
Nahilah went to the headquarters of the military governor to ask for a pass and was subjected to a long interrogation. When she returned to her house without a permit, she found her son in the throes of death with the blind sheikh whispering the last rites.
“They didn’t put the sack over my head, but they threw me into a darkened room,” she said, “and left me there for more than three hours. They then took me into the office of a short man who spoke with an Iraqi accent. I told him my son was sick, but he wouldn’t stop asking about you. I wept and he threatened me. I said the boy was dying and he asked me to cooperate with them and questioned me about the border crossers. Then he said he couldn’t give me a permit if I didn’t bring him a medical certificate to prove my son was sick.”
“There’s no doctor in the village,” I told him.
“Those are my orders,” he said. “If you don’t cooperate with us, we won’t cooperate with you.”
WHEN NAHILAH finished her story, she saw how calm your face was. Your panting had stopped, and you looked at her suspiciously, as though you were accusing her. She saw how calmly you took the news as you sat down, lit a cigarette, asked about Salem and told her you’d be away for a long time.
She understood you’d never come back.
You asked about the new Israeli settlement that was being built near Deir al-Asad. Then you stood up, said you’d have your revenge and walked out. She grabbed you by the hand, brought you back into the cave and told the story over again.
She said Ibrahim had been playing with the other children.
She said the new settlement had sprung up like a weed, and they’d fenced off the land they’d confiscated with barbed wire while everyone looked on, seeing their land shrinking and slipping out of their hands, unable to do anything.
She said, “They took the land and we watched like someone watching his own death in a mirror.”
She said, “You know how children are. They were playing close to the wire and talking to the Yemeni immigrants in Hebrew — our children speak Hebrew — and the immigrants were answering them in an odd Arabic; our children know their language and they don’t know ours. Ibrahim had been playing with them, and they brought him to me. God, he was trembling. They said a huge stone had fallen on him. I don’t know how to describe it; his head was crushed, and blood was dripping from it. I left him in the house and ran to ask for a permit to take him to the hospital in Acre, and at the military governor’s headquarters they made me wait for more than three hours in a darkened room, the Iraqi threatening to beat me during the interrogation. He said they knew you came, that their men were better lovers than you, and that they’d kill you and leave you in the square at Deir al-Asad to make an example of you. And he asked for information about you while I pleaded for the permit.
“And when I got back to the house, Ibrahim was dead, and your father was whispering the last rites.”
You sat down, lit a cigarette, and put a thousand and one questions to her. You wanted to know whether they’d killed him or he’d died accidentally; had they thrown the stone at him, or had he just gotten in the way of it.
Nahilah didn’t know.
You got up and said that you’d kill their children as they’d killed your son. “Tomorrow you’ll trill with joy, because we’ll have our revenge.”
For three nights you circled the barbed wire. You had your rifle and ten hand grenades, and you decided to tie the grenades together, throw them into the Jewish settlement’s workshop, and, when they exploded, fire at the settlers.
It was night.
The spotlight revolved, tracking the wire fence, and Yunes hid in the olive grove close by. He started moving closer, crawling on his stomach. He got the chain of grenades ready and tied them to a detonator, deciding to throw them into the big hall where Yemeni Jewish families slept practically on top of one another. He wanted to kill, just to kill. When you described the event to Dr. Mu‘een, you said that during your third pass you imagined the dead bodies piled on top of one another and felt your heart drink deep.
“I was thirsty; revenge is like thirst. I would drink, and my thirst would increase, so that when the time came and I began to crawl, a refreshing coolness filled my heart. When everything was about to happen, the thirst disappeared, and I set out not with revenge in my mind but out of a sense of duty, because I’d promised Nahilah.”