It was a real shock to hear Said was dead. It was the kind of loss that can never be recovered. He was a dear part of the past I had come here to collect. A major piece of my Khan Yunis childhood is taken away from me, just as I set foot here again.
It is almost 5 pm when we reach Jalal Street, the first avenue you get to if you are coming from the north. The first evening breezes waft through the windows. Abu Hatem recites the name of every street we pass. The only memories I have of these places are their names — I have forgotten what the places themselves looked like. Around us, buildings clamber over one another on both sides of the street. And people. Crowds of people of all ages, walking every which way down each and every street.
We arrive in El-Amal, my cousin’s neighbourhood. It is no more than a pile of debris fallen from the sky and called ‘buildings’—just as the piles of Jabalia and Beit Lahia once fell and grew. El-Amal sits on a strip of fine yellow sand dunes that stretch parallel to the agricultural strip from Rafah City to the outskirts of Deir El-Belah. El-Amal separates the agricultural land from the sea, except for the small spur of irrigated farmland known as al-Muwasi, that juts out to the west of Khan Yunis. The entire area behind the camp had been forested with shady acacia trees so as to prevent the sand from stealing into Khan Yunis.
Nowadays, the thing that steals over the city is the strip of settlements known as the Qatif Bloc. These colonies have effectively confiscated not only Khan Yunis’ lands, but its sea as well. When we were young, we used to play on these little hills — and it seemed as if the azure horizon was what made our eyes sparkle with joy.
The next day, late in the morning, Abu Hatem asks me whether I slept well. He had already asked me that question earlier in the morning, just before he went off to the garment factory he owned. We were sitting on the ground floor of the apartment building he built with the sweat of years of hard work. Then, in the afternoon, he asks me again what I did with myself all day. I tell him I spent my morning wandering around town, trying to get a feel for what it has become. I tell him that the Khan Yunis I knew no longer exists. I had searched out the khanyunisian essence of the place everywhere, but never found it, for the remnants of the old place were buried beneath the surfaces of the contemporary city. As I walked around the main streets, I often felt like I knew it, even though there was nothing tangible that would lead me to believe this. There was no trace of the streetlamp in whose glow I used to bask all night. The shop where I bought cigarettes is now gone, along with the café where I used to play cards with friends. Even the dirt courtyard where I used to walk barefoot is gone. Beneath the surface of the place, other buried impressions take form here and there. It is like looking at a black and white photograph whose details are blurred by the passing of years.
On trembling legs, I stop and stare at the strange patch of exile where my home once stood. There are no traces left, of it or of my childhood. Not even of the shadow I used to chase and chase and sometimes even catch. My shadow and I were careful never to let each other stray too far, and so our game never ended, and our friendship was never broken. I have left no footprint here to find. The cement beneath my feet chokes whatever memory lies below, just as it does the air I once exhaled here so long ago — breath whose traces still seek to find me once more.
I wander through streets that swallow people who crowd into cars and donkey-drawn carts. The streets swallow the jeeps of the militias and the armoured cars stuffed with men who watch the pedestrians through small holes in black hoods. I feel truly alone here — of no significance to anyone, nor is there anyone here who means anything to me. I come upon the spot where Café Mansour once stood. The biggest of all the city’s coffee shops, and the nicest one on the city’s main square. I find only small commercial shops teeming with shoppers. I can see my father, sitting right there on a bamboo chair next to his table. There is his cup of hot tea, sprigs of mint sticking out. There is the steam rising into the air with its sweet minty smell. I can hear the men nearby as they slap down dominoes on the marble tabletops around me. I love the way that tapping and clacking rings in my ears. Somewhere here, forty-five years ago, my father sat and was suddenly struck down.
Just as the years have changed me, so too am I transformed by the sudden recollection of my father and his death. I decide to visit his grave. I have always hated visiting cemeteries, but now I am struck by the urge to do it. When I lived here, I visited my father’s grave only twice, once to inspect the gravestone, and once again — just before my departure — because my mother told me to.
When I get to the graveyard, I find that there is no longer any gate to speak of. I continue along toward my father’s grave. The only things I find are piles of rocks and the fragments of headstones. I turn them upside down searching for my father’s name, but find nothing. Not even a letter that might belong in his name.
A bitter despair washes over me as I stand there. I think about how my father’s spirit haunts this place — and it feels like I am the one responsible for losing my father’s remains. I turn and spy the desiccated stump of a tree — maybe that was the acacia that stood over my father’s grave for all those years. The tree in whose branches fluttered those rose-embroidered silk handkerchiefs that proclaimed the undying love of someone for someone else. Those have all disappeared into nothing, never divulging who was speaking to whom.
The stump rekindles an old question in my mind. Who was it that hung the handkerchiefs in the branches?
Abu Hatem asks me: ‘Where did you go after that?’ I tell him that I continued walking to the old seed market and found the place exactly how it used to be. The joy I feel at this discovery more than makes up for the grief I experienced at the graveyard. When I wander over to the Ironsmiths’ Market nearby, I am even happier. The Ottoman-era shops still have the same age-old appearance, even if they are all shuttered and covered with rust-eaten locks. Only now do I begin to believe I am truly back in Khan Yunis.
Guided by the old map of my memory, I continue along. Within a few minutes, I find myself in front of the old Hurriyya Summer Movie House. Said Dahman is standing to my right, and Fawzi Ashour to my left. The three of us are staring up, gawking at a huge poster hanging on the façade of the cinema. It is a larger-than-life image of the Egyptian belly dancer, La Petite Nawal. We study the more obvious contours of her body, in hopes we might discover subtleties hidden within. Each of us hoping that a breeze would lift up and play with the patch of chiffon flitting between her thighs.
One of the bouncers yells and pushes us away. ‘If you don’t have a ticket, you’re not coming in. Step back if you don’t have a ticket already.’