I’ve completely lost my bearings.
10
The Leap … Does It Make a Tale?
Am I really telling the story of my life or am I leaping away? Can a person tell the story of his life, can he summon up all its details? It might be more like descending into a mine in the belly of the earth, a mine that must be dug first before anyone can go down into it. Is any individual, however strong or energetic, capable of digging a mine with their own two hands? It’s an arduous task requiring many hands and minds, many hoists, bulldozers, and pickaxes, lumber, and iron and elevators descending to the depths beneath and bringing those they took down back to the surface of the earth. A wonderfully strange mine into which you have to descend alone, because it does not belong to anyone else, even if you find things belonging to someone else in it. Then it might suddenly collapse on your head, cracking it open and burying you completely under the debris.
Perhaps it’s more like a bundle than a mine; but can a person tie up his story in a kerchief and then hold it out to others in his hand, saying, “This is my story, my lot in life”? And then, how can you transport a bundle the size of a hand, or a large bundle like those women carry on their heads as they flee east over the bridge, the story of a whole life, a life that’s naturally intertwined with the lives of others?
I haven’t spoken about my uncle Abu Amin. I haven’t told the story of my mother in Sidon, nor the story of Ezzedin. I haven’t talked about my own state. When Hasan spoke to me about his new book project I said to him, “If your grandfather Abu Amin were still among the living he would have told you enough to fill volumes. He was with the rebels from ’36 on and moved around throughout the towns and villages. He was with the resistance in ’47 and ’48, and after they took us out of the town he sneaked back. I don’t remember all the details but I remember a lot of what he said, and I can repeat it to you.” He said, “I’m interested in hearing what my grandfather told you, but now I want your testimony about leaving the village.”
Hasan was collecting the statements of the residents of the villages along the Palestinian coast about their forced emigration in 1948.
Hasan didn’t record my testimony on that visit, maybe because he noticed the next day and the following one that my face was pale. I didn’t tell him that I was suffering from severe pain in my stomach; I took a sedative and forced myself to bear up until he left. I said goodbye and wished him Godspeed and then I went to bed for a week. Had the mine collapsed on my head during that night, as I was recalling some of the details in preparation for giving my testimony?
My uncle was different. He did not become ill when he recalled what happened; he would talk a lot, and in great detail. He would talk about Haifa’s garrison, its national committee, the good and the bad in their leadership, the quarrels that arose among them throughout five months, and then what happened in two days and two nights when the city fell and its residents left it. He would not omit any of the actors: the residents, the jihad volunteers, the British army, the Zionist gangs, Hajj Amin, the Arab Liberation Army and its field commander al-Qawuqji, and the Arab kings and presidents. He would talk about the day and the hour and the neighborhood and the street and the blind alley and the corner, as if he were spreading out all of Haifa in front of his listeners so they could see with their own eyes its sea, its Carmel, its oil refinery, and its rail lines: the narrow gauge and the standard, the Hijaz line that connected Haifa to Damascus via Daraa, the Jaffa and Lid line that took travelers to al-Qantara and from there to Cairo, and the Beirut and Tripoli line that went to Ras al-Naqura through a long tunnel. The Acre line also, which Amin would take every morning to go from Haifa to his school in Acre. He would identify the stations and stop at the Hijaz line station, Haifa East, the largest and oldest. He would describe the station building, its iron gate, and the color of the trains. He would say that they had been brown in the thirties, then they were painted light red in the forties, bearing the English letters PR for Palestine Railway. He would specify the names of the neighborhoods and streets, drawing their borders with his words; even the names of the bus companies would find a place in his narrative.
Sidon came into the story not because he was living there now and used to come to it often, but because it was the essential station in the arms smuggling in which he was engaged. The arms would come from Libya; Hajj Amin would buy them from what the British and German armies had left behind and send them by boat to Sidon. The boat would anchor at the Maqasid Islamiya School, and Maarouf Saad would receive them. My uncle would say, “God keep Maarouf and protect him. He worked in the school as the resident head for the boarding students. He would receive the arms at night and bring someone to clean them and grease them and then deliver them to us, and we would take them in boats back to Palestine. Sometimes the arms and ammunition would come from Egypt, from Hilmiyat al-Zaytoun, the headquarters of Hajj Ibrahim, or from Egyptian army storehouses or from Marsa Matruh or Salloum. They would be carried to Port Said and then boats would take them to the shore at Sidon, and they would be unloaded at al-Maqasid.”
The Arab armies, kings, presidents, and leaders also had a share in the story. He would recount, categorize, accuse, and corroborate with facts, insulting and cursing and always ending with the same expression: “God have mercy on the martyrs, soldiers, officers, and volunteers.” He would amaze us every time with some new detail. He would talk about the Yugoslav volunteers who were martyred in Jaffa three days after the fall of Haifa. “They were twenty, led by a man named Ibrahim Bek, who was from Turkestan. The Jews besieged them in the train station in al-Manshiya. They exterminated them.” He would talk about the son of the mufti of Anatolia, who volunteered “with us in Haifa” and was martyred six weeks before the city fell. “We buried him when the almonds were just starting, the blossoms just opening on the branches.” He would talk about the volunteer for jihad who had come from India, “Yes, by God, from India. His name was Muhammad Abd al-Rasul. He came from India and was martyred with us in Palestine.”
My uncle Abu Amin was not there when they occupied the village, but he was the first of the family to go back to it. He would say, “I went back to Tantoura.” Here the story would start and here it would also end. My uncle didn’t tell us anything about what he saw in our village when he sneaked back two months later. Did he go back to it once without having the strength to go back again, or was that the beginning of later visits, more like a regular pilgrimage, even if it was an odd pilgrimage that was made by stealth and remained sealed in secrecy?
Only once did my uncle Abu Amin talk about his visit. He said, “There is a three-sided monument of white marble that was erected near Rachel’s Tomb, at the fork of the road to Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Hebron. On the monument were carved the names of the martyrs who participated in the battles that occurred south of Jerusalem. Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians, Libyans, Sudanese, and Yemenis, who are buried there. I visited them, and recited the Fatiha for their souls.” Ezz was surprised, and said, “But the two cemeteries are in the West Bank, how did you go to Jordan from occupied Palestine?” My uncle Abu Amin smiled broadly, and answered, “God forgive you, Ezz, they divided the country into three pieces. They divided it but I did not, nor did I accept the division!”