The lithe young African boy stretches his neck, laughing. Those are old memories. But he died. Death is far off, she said. That’s why rituals were created. Crying and wailing and dancing and standing for a long time in front of the grave. Death approaches, hand and bald head. The city we call white fills up with pictures and corpses and posters. Serhan Beshara Serhan’s face* leaps out in front of the American revolutionary tourist.
— What’s that?
— A poster. We consider Serhan a hero. “I killed for my country.”
— But he’s a terrorist and an enemy of democracy.
— And I’m a terrorist, I said to the American tourist. But I can hold you and kiss you and laugh. She laughed a white laugh.
The young boy bent over the sand, plunged his hand into a damp spot, and sat. You talk a lot, he’d say. My mother says I don’t talk. And wonders to herself why she has lived to know such dark days. Then she tells me the story for the hundredth time, and I listen to it for the hundredth time. She always forgets the madman’s story. Be quiet, you’re mad. There’s no madman’s story, you’re just an intelligent boy. All those who saw you said, Imm Ahmed you must perfume him with incense and take him to Hajjeh Fatmeh.** I used to perfume you with incense, feed you sugar and almonds, and give you money. But you were a clever child.Instead of buying balloons and sweets, you used to go to the shop and buy a little bit of everything, then stand in front of the house and open up a store. And the children of the neighborhood would come and buy from your shop, God be blessed. A half pound would become three pounds. Of course, I contributed to your brisk trade because Id give my sisters children money to go and buy things from your shop. But you made the profit. I told myself, Imm Ahmed, this boy will become a merchant, he will open shops and build buildings. But look at what you’re doing with yourself now. Joining political parties and the fedayeen, you’re not going to become a merchant.
But my mother wont tell me the madman’s story. And I have forgotten it.
I didn’t understand and I think Salem, the tall one, doesn’t understand it either. Shots and cries and explosions everywhere. The ground catching fire. We run, sit aside panting. He’s holding the B-7 rocket-launcher firm on his shoulder. You’ve got to cover me, he says. I move up and open fire. He shoots his rocket. The blasts, the smell, the flame. Shop doors are smashed, so let everything burn. Tomorrow, the women will come along in their long abayahs*to sort the smell of gunpowder from things and go. The shops must burn down.
The brown African boy bending over. Amman was a succession of white circles. I grab her and throw her to the ceiling. Look. She looks at her body stretching upward.
— Why are you doing this to me?
— Cinema is cinema, I tell her. Life is a deception. Her laugh rings out between her bare ankles. Look at the color of the sea, she says. The sea isn’t blue, the sky isn’t blue. That is the real deception, you see.
— I see that the sky’s blue and the sea’s blue. That’s what I see, I told her.
— Can you see green? Can you see light blue? Of course, you can’t see white. You’re sand. We all walk on the sand, then we become sand. I want to plunge in there between the green and the purple. In the dividing instant. There I want to build a house or a tent or a clump of stones, or drown. That’s what drowning is. Total surrender. It is objects which bend. Have you seen objects when they bend? But I can’t. Nobody can. No one can separate colors, we can only mix them. And when colors start to intermingle, they never stop. Even blending is impossible. Colors have their own temperaments and histories. One color goes into another, then becomes a hint of something and enters into objects; colors dissolve in colors. White doesn’t exist, she said. The young African boy took an apple, bit into it, put it on his head and began to run. The apple fell. Where’s the apple, she said. The apple mixes with the sand and the sand blends into the water. Mud. That’s straw, she said. The color of the apple changes. But it’s still on my head. It’s on the ground, I told her, and bent down to pick it up. Leave it, she screamed. The apple’s on my head. You don’t see anything, she said. No one sees. But its on my head. And I have to travel tomorrow. I can’t leave my mother on her own. Could you leave your mother?
— I don’t know, but I always leave her.
— I never leave my mother. She wants to go to Amman, I’ll go with her.
— And me?
— You! What do you want from me?
— Well get married, like everybody else.
The lithe young African boy laughed. I’m not going to get married. And if I do get married, it won’t be to you. I’m not going to marry a man who’s going to die.
— All men die.
— But you’re a feda’i. I like the fedayeen but I would never marry one because they die quickly.
— All fedayeen get married.
Colors nearing. Talal sat alone on the sand. He took off his glasses, wiped them carefully, and put them back on. The shore welcomed the gentle waves and sent them off again. In the damp place on the edge of the sea the circles multiplied. That’s the difference. He went up to the shore. These are colors. Colors only take on their color the moment they sink. The sea unraveled into endless circles. He took some sand and threw it to the sea. Everything sinks in water. Talal bent down. Where are you, lithe young African boy?
“What is it you were doing in the ancient gardens three hundred years ago.”
My voice drowned in the first circle, to my left. I took off my shoes, held them in my hand, and walked off. I got into the car. Turned on the engine. It crackled, then moaned and spluttered before the car would move forward. Where are you, lithe young African boy? I stopped the car in front of the bakery. Bought a hot loaf and began chewing slowly, the trees planted on either side of the street curling around the electricity poles. And I breathed in the smell of the bread.
Everything’s ready, says Nabeel. But were late and the boys are waiting. Talal looks at his watch, we must go immediately. Nabeel is jumping up and down. What are you doing? I ask him.
— I’m getting ready.
— But were not going to a football match. — That’s how I get ready, says Nabeel.
— What’s the news from Maslakh and Qarantina? asks Salem.
— No news yet, but the position’s extremely difficult.
— I don’t like this food. Bread and zaatarl*It’s not food for fighters, says Talal.
The commander speaking: it’s breakfast. And we’ve got to eat it quickly. Nabeel laughs like a real teacher.
— Don’t laugh teach, I don’t like bread and zaatar.
— Look at what you do to yourself Talal. Why do you complicate things, boy? It’s all dough. Here we put the zaatar inside the bread, there they put it inside the kaaka.**
— I want to buy a kaaka.
It isn’t a question of price, really Abu Ahmed. A kaaka costs 10 piastres, may God ruin no one. But the kid must learn to obey. My mother talks on and on. I look at my father. The slight, wizened man in ragtag clothes winks at me.
— Walk to school ahead of me.
I walk alongside him, he buys me a kaaka, I put it on my head and run. He runs after me: don’t tell your mother, he pants then falls to the ground.