‘Sorry. We will let you know as soon as we have more information.’
Then she stood up and walked away. The whole time she was away, my passport and boarding pass sat on the desk.
A young male attendant came and sat down in her place. He flipped through the pages of my passport, then put it back down and began to help others. Whatever the problem was, it was mine and mine alone.
The first attendant came back and whispered some words in the ear of her co-worker. The man giggled, then the two of them went back to doing their work.
What happened while I was checking in? Did someone in the back room arrange to have this particular woman sit in the seat next to me?
These doubts and suspicions begin to drive me crazy. There is nothing in this world as disturbing to me as my own thoughts. My seatmate is a honeytrap. I will be under surveillance every minute I am with her on this flight. I am sure she has been well trained in how to gather information from subjects like me. And after we land, other agents will step in and take her place.
What a load of crap — why do I listen to these thoughts? They are ridiculous. I am not important in the slightest. Why would Mossad want to keep tabs on me? I am neither a Naguib Mahfouz nor a Palestinian politico from one of the factions. I am not even an activist whose pacifism would be troubling to anybody. I am just a harmless journalist, like hundreds of others.
But what if someone made a mistake? Like what happened to that Moroccan busboy, Ahmed Bouchiki, killed in Norway by a Mossad team who thought he was a Palestinian operative. Bouchiki’s murder was a case of mistaken identity. With me, there will be no such mistake. I am a passenger on a plane. As soon as we land, I will walk straight to airport security on my own two feet. There, they will not be able to make a mistake — not even an honest one — even if they wanted to. There’s nothing false about my citizenship or my papers. The worst they can do is detain me.
The thought calms me. For a few seconds at least. Then I notice I am looking straight down at the chiselled legs of my seatmate as she squeezes into her seat. The bare skin seems to wink back at me. A reasonable dread comes over me when I imagine that my seatmate’s politics could well be Likud, maybe even to the right of Sharon himself.
Just thinking about all this gets me down. I wish I could be rid of all these thoughts passing through my mind. It is just a plane ride.
2
The plane takes off. My homecoming jerks into motion as the engines roar with thunder and the aircraft shakes terribly as it ploughs through the air. The whole cabin is silent until the captain announces that the plane has reached a cruising altitude of almost thirty thousand feet.
When the seatbelt sign goes off, I hear a wave of clicking sounds and sighs of relief. One of the stewards welcomes the passengers on board, and it occurs to me that it is not so different from the recorded announcements you hear on the London Underground: ‘Now leaving this station! Next stop, that station! This train terminates at …’ It is just as easy to ignore this announcement as it is in the tube. And then I am thinking about my mother. She is sleeping but not sleeping as morning creeps slowly toward her. I am sure she is in bed, but I also know that tonight she cannot sleep.
A year after my father died, my father’s sister, Sofia, told her, ‘Listen Umm Walid, my girl. Your husband, God have mercy on his soul, has been dead for a year now. You’re still young and pretty and—’
‘Don’t say another word, cousin! After Abu Walid, I can never marry again.’ My father’s sister swallowed the rest of her words. After that, she never brought up the subject of marriage again.
My mother was young when my father died, not even thirty. She was tall and slim. Her skin was light, and her cheeks were as red as apples. Her button nose was just as small as it was on the day she was born. And her lips were delicate. Even more striking than her beautiful face was her rebellious black hair — no headscarf could ever contain it.
My aunt was not the only one to bring up the subject. My father’s father, Nimr, could not stand the thought of my beautiful mother remaining a widow either. Together, the two of them would worry about what people might say if she never remarried. But my mother would not give up her attachment to my father. My grandfather told my mother one evening, ‘Listen, daughter: Ahmad was my son. He was the apple of my eye. He was as dear to me as he was to you — even more so. But what happened happened, and by God’s decree. And who am I to reject God’s wisdom? Besides, you’re still young and—’
My mother interrupted her father-in-law with a severity he’d never witnessed before. ‘Say no more, please. I’m neither young nor old. I’ve got a boy who’s becoming a man, and a girl. And I want to raise them. I said it when Ahmad died. And I said it again after a year had passed. And now I am repeating it to your face so you never ask me again: Abu Walid, you are gone, but there will be no other man for me.’ And with this, she closed the file on an idea whose very premise pained her sense of dignity. Sure enough, my mother never remarried. She lived only for my sister and me.
In March 1967, I returned to finish my studies at the university, hoping to return with a degree in hand. My mother always thought that a Cairene girl would snatch me away from her, that I would come back holding a marriage licence instead of a diploma. But the war broke out just days after we finished our final exams. Israel occupied Gaza and Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan. And I never got to go back.
Years later, my sister, Raja, married a relative of ours who was working for a company in Qatar, and she moved there to be with him. So our mother was left to live alone. She saw Raja and her husband once a year, when they came on their summer visit to Gaza. My mother found some consolation in that.
Raja died last year in Qatar. She’d been sick — uterine cancer. And now my mother was doomed to live in total isolation till the end of her days, or so she thought.
I look around. Some of the other passengers are busy reading books. Others are watching videos. Some have turned off their overhead lights and gone to sleep. Or they are pretending to sleep. Meanwhile, the jet engines roar and spit with a rhythm so soft and regular you barely notice it.
Suddenly, the silence is broken by loud snoring. I turn and look around, to see a large man sitting in the aisle seat of the middle section in the row behind us — head on chest, his mouth a heaving hole. His lower lip trembles as he snores, in and out.
The sound rattles my seatmate. She turns to me and asks, ‘What the hell is that?’ As if she thought I was the one making all the racket.
‘Snorting, coming from someone behind us.’
‘It’s really disgusting, whatever it is.’
But I do not open my mouth to say another word. I just realized I said ‘snorting’ instead of ‘snoring.’ I am lost in translation. My words are embarrassed by me, and I by them. By the time I return to Khan Yunis in my mind, the snoring has stopped and my seatmate has gone back to sleep.
‘Abu Hatem — listen, cousin. My mother is insisting I stay with my other cousins up in Jabalia Camp. She told me they’ve fixed up a room in Shafiq’s apartment. She says the place is still completely empty apart from the room he furnished for when he gets married. Come and meet me at Beit Hanoun crossing. From there, we’ll go to Nasreddine’s building, which my mother says is not far from the crossing. That way I’ll get to see you right away and then, a few days later, I’ll come and stay with you for a couple of days in Khan Yunis before going back up to Jabalia. That way we’ll make everybody happy, including my mother.’
‘Don’t worry about it, cousin. I spoke with your mother and reassured her, we’ll do whatever she wants. We don’t want to make her unhappy. Whatever you and she decide on is OK by me. You’ll be staying with your cousins and family. I’ll come by in the late afternoon and say hello and visit for a while and then go back home. Then I’ll come on Thursday at 5 and take you back to Khan Yunis with us. Friday morning, we’re going to slaughter a sheep in your honour and right after prayers, we’ll put on a feast you’ll never forget.’