A bunch of kids crowds round the door, shouting and yelling — and so we join them, pushing and trying to rush through. But the door is blocked by two bouncers with bodies like bulldozers.
Gradually, we give way and retreat — until we end up back down the stairs and out on the public pavement. After about thirty minutes, everyone who has bought a ticket is already inside.
At this point, Said — who is the bravest of us — goes up to one bouncer stationed outside the door. ‘You happy about all this?’ he asks as a joke. ‘These kids are the future of our nation, and they don’t get to watch simply because they have no money?’
The bouncer smiles. ‘You kids are too young. And you’re twerps to boot. But I’m going to let you in anyway. One by one, so nobody notices. Don’t let the manager see you, he’s standing inside.’ He points to a man whose watermelon body sits near the entrance. ‘Get ready. After the trailers finish, I’ll let you in.’
The man opens the door, and we sneak in one by one just as he told us to. We are lucky — for some reason the manager has left. Maybe the ticket receipts of the paying customers were more than enough to make him happy.
We go over to the side, sticking close to one another, against the wall. Nawal is shaking her arse and twisting this way and bending over that way, like she was teasing all of us — this room full of men who were not only powerless to resist the allure of her body, but had even purchased tickets to feel that sense of powerlessness. And then, as Nawal shimmies around, there is Farid El-Atrache, crooning away.
He said nothing to me
And I said nothing to him
He didn’t come looking for me,
And I didn’t go looking for him.
And as the long-simmering desire of the men in the audience begins to fizzle out, they begin to chirp and call, moan and clap, and finally they are whistling their appreciation. These are men who have never before seen live flesh on stage, and may never see it in their dreams either, even if their wives sleep right next to them in bed each night.
Nawal dances on and on, the chiffon patch between her legs flitting up and away now and then to reveal what it conceals beneath. And the three of us try our best to take it all in with six bulging eyes. Fawzi is swooning over Farid El-Atrache, and keeps yelling: ‘Farid, you’re the best! Abdel Halim can go to hell!’ He goes on and on like this so long that Said finally belts him in the back of the neck, yelling, ‘What’s with you, you idiot? What’s the deal with Abdel Halim anyway? Can’t you just shut up and watch the movie?’ So Fawzi starts up again, only this time without insulting Abdel Halim. Then an older kid, standing right next to Fawzi, starts up, kicking Fawzi hard until finally he shuts up.
A tall boy climbs up on stage at one point and begins to dance and shake his body around. When he throws his arms over Nawal’s body, the whole place erupts in loud protest — that is how badly they want to do the very thing he is doing. The three of us go crazy too, it is the first time in our lives we have ever seen bare legs.
That night, I cannot sleep. I am walking through a forest of bare legs. I am pretty sure that Said and Fawzi also spent their night walking through the same fleshy landscape. I suspect that, like me, neither of them slept until their underwear was drenched.
I stand at the corner of the cinema, looking at the building. On the wall, I read a notice put up by the Organization of Women of Virtue. One era has come to take the place of another in this country. Each moment in time attempts to erase the one that came before — and when it does, it brings a curse down on all.
‘That’s pretty much what I saw in Khan Yunis, Abu Hatem.’
But my answer does not fully satisfy Abu Hatem. He asks, ‘Was anything in Khan Yunis like how you remembered it?’
‘Cousin, I never found the Khan Yunis I came looking for.’
I wake up at dawn on Friday. The silver sky quickly surrenders to a warm sun making ready for a beautiful day. In our last telephone conversation, two days before I left London, Abu Hatem had insisted he would host a feast on my behalf when I came. When I saw him in the last bachelor pad on my first night in Jabalia, he had renewed that pledge — and now Abu Hatem is doing everything he needs to do to get ready for the day.
Immediately after noon prayers, men — young and old — from all sides of the family begin to pour in. Platters of meat and rice are laid out and another scene begins to unfold, borne in on a warm sense of family. More than one hundred men of all ages are gathered together, devouring the food before them and exchanging greetings and questions with me. Some I am meeting for the first time. Others are old friendships rekindled as we sit in the tent they have erected for the occasion on the rooftop.
Suddenly, I cannot get the thought of Muhammad Samoura out of my head. Will he be happy to see me? Will Muhammad recognize himself in the image of the tailor he is in my memory? Muhammad has been a police officer for a very long time now. In his life as a tailor, he never managed to put enough order into a pair of trousers to make their seat fit their wearer’s arse. And now, as a police colonel, he is in charge of law and order. Most cops are Fatah supporters. Even if he was not one before, he had to become one. Will you dare ask him about all the corruption, knowing that he is one of those whose job it is to protect the corrupt? He will just shake his head and tell you it is a matter of state security. If you ask him about all the thieves, he will probably tell you that the PA is on the job — even though you both know that it was the PA who brought the real thieves with them when they arrived.
Still, I love Muhammad and badly want to see him. He will not believe it when he sees me — he will probably joke: ‘Walid! I’m going to have to detain you all summer so we can really visit with you!’
I take Abu Hatem aside. When Majdi sees us, he hurries over to join us.
‘Where’s Col. Muhammad, Abu Hatem?’
He does not answer. Then he asks, ‘You mean Muhammad Samoura?’
‘I want to see at least one of my old friends while I’m here!’
Abu Hatem does not say anything. The same look of consternation that I saw yesterday when I asked about Said now appears on his face. When he begins to shake his head, the same fear begins to jab at my heart.
‘What is it? Why aren’t you speaking, Abu Hatem? I want to see Muhammad. You invited him, didn’t you?’
‘How could I, cousin? Look, no offence, but you don’t live here and you don’t understand what’s going on. There’s bad blood between us and the Samouras. One of them killed one of us.’
Majdi jumps in to explain. ‘Your friend has a cousin who’s in the National Security Forces. He got into some ugly words with another officer he worked with, Fuad Dahman. Even though they were good friends and worked together, they quarrelled and fought until it got really bad. One day the Samoura kid pulled out his pistol and shot Fuad. No one in the family was willing to take the blood money or make up with them. No one wants to let go of what happened — and no one has forgotten it. You know how it is — blood is thicker than water, cousin.’
Our family now kills and is killed. What kind of family is this that I’ve come back to?
‘Abu Fadi, would you have wanted me to invite your friend and throw him to the Dahmans? He wouldn’t have come had I invited him.’
At this moment, I finally grasp that I live in a world separate from theirs, and that Gaza has gone backwards fifty years in time. It is senseless to continue opening up old files.