Did you love her?
No, you didn’t. You yourself said you only learned to love her a long while after you married her, when your visits to her came to be your whole life.
So what was it?
You’ll tell me it was the war, and you paid no attention. You’re confusing me — I don’t understand a thing, I swear to you. Your story seems muddled and mysterious. And my presence in this hospital seems like a dream, but I know I’m not dreaming because I can’t sleep anymore.
Say something, Father — I’ve had enough of all this. Say something, just one word, then die if you want, or do whatever you please, or you could tell me if you need something.
Okay, okay, fine. It wasn’t thanks to a piece of cotton that your marriage was consummated, and it never crossed your mind to divorce your wife for not having children right away, you didn’t experience terror facing the Jewish settlement, you didn’t kill Ahmad Ibn Mahmoud, and you didn’t cry when you had toothaches. .
Happy now?
Satisfied and sound asleep? I swear you’re a lucky man. What have you got to worry about? You sleep like a baby beside death — death doesn’t dare touch you.
Death is afraid of you, you’ll say, or you used to say.
But me, right now I’m not in the mood to listen to heroics. Do as you like — die or don’t die, dream or don’t dream, it’s up to you.
* Koran, Surah XXIV, 35.
* Legendary figure of the national Palestinian movement, died in combat in 1935.
HOW 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.