My uncle would take Sadiq with him and enroll him in the ‘Lion Cubs’ team, carrying thick white paper for Hasan. He would spread it out in front of him and say, “Draw the map, boy, make it large and use colors.” Hasan would spread out the white paper on the ground and bend down as if he were praying on it, drawing the outline with pencil and using the eraser to adjust the line and make the curves precise. Then he would open the box of crayons and begin with the sea, coloring it blue, moving on to the Negev Desert which he would color yellow, and absorb himself in identifying the cities and the villages. After half a day of concentration he would call his grandfather and say, “What do you think, Grandpa?” Abu Amin would bend down over the map, trying to bend his knees and kneel to study the details; but his knees would not cooperate so he would sit cross-legged in front of the map, staring at it. He would laugh and show his gold tooth that a young doctor had made for him. (He still remembered him gratefully, and would say, “God help him and protect him wherever he is. He studied at the University of Cairo and opened a dental clinic in Haifa.”) Hasan would have distinguished Tantoura by writing its name in larger letters than he used for the names of Haifa or Jaffa or Jerusalem, marking its place with a large circle that he colored in red, as if Tantoura were the district capital and not Haifa. Abu Amin would scrutinize the details more closely, then scoot over and sit on the map, reaching out and taking the pencil from Hasan and adding towns and villages neither I nor Amin had ever heard of. He would say, “Here, you forgot these villages of Jabal Amil; they are Lebanese villages that the Jews captured after the truce in ’48: Metulla, Ibil al-Qamh, al-Zuq al-Fawqa and al-Zuq al-Tahta, and al-Mansura.” He would specify the site of each village with a little red circle, and then his hand would slide a little lower, “Here are Hunin, al-Khalisa, al-‘Abasiya, al-Naima, al-Salihiya, and Zawiya, near each other, no farther from each other than half an hour’s walk on foot.” Then his hand would slip farther, “Below them and a little to the east are Qadas and al-Malkiya. Your uncle Maarouf Saad defended them when he was fighting in Pales-tine. The young men would come from Tripoli, Baalbek, Bint Jbeil, and elsewhere and train here in Sidon, in Bab al-Sarail Square; afterward they would head for northern Palestine. Al-Malkiya is important, boy.” He would put a big red circle around it. Then his hand would move to the left part of the page and stop before it reached the blue sea: “And here are Kafr Bir‘im, al-Nabi Rubin, and Tarbikha.” He stares at the map again and says, “Where’s al-Shajara? I don’t see it.” He marks the site with red. “Here, a little east of Saffurya, do you see Hittin? Go down a little and a little to the west. You know your uncle Naji, boy? Naji al-Ali, the cartoonist from Ain al-Helwa? He’s from al-Shajara, and the poet Abd al-Rahim Mahmoud was martyred there. Do you remember what he said, boy?” Hasan falters; it’s hard for him to understand poetry or memorize it. Sadiq intervenes, reciting:
“Perfect, perfect! Memorize it, Hasan. And don’t forget al-Shajara again, Uncle Naji might get mad at you if you forget it.”
Then he suddenly noticed that little Abed was sitting next to him on the map, asking for attention, so he said to him, “What have you memorized, Abed? Go on, tell us.”
Abed sang the anthem “My Homeland,” Mawtani:
Sadiq broke in, “‘Reaching the stars,’ not ‘the sky.’ ‘The sky’ is a mistake!”
“Hold on, Sadiq, go a little easy on Abed. Good for you, Abed, excellent!”
Abu Amin reached into his pocket and gave Abed three sugarcoated almonds. He had begun to make sure to buy them and keep them in his pocket when he had become a grandfather with young grandchildren.
14
Abed of Qisarya
He didn’t give me a chance to look at him. He didn’t allow me to stop and connect the little boy to whom I had bid farewell twenty-five years before in Deir al-Maskubiya in Hebron with the man who stood before me. He opened his arms wide and embraced me, to the surprise of the children and confusion of their father. He held me away a little to look at me. He said, laughing aloud, warmly, “Your eyes haven’t changed, and of course not the tattoo. I looked everywhere for you, I went to Sidon and to Ain al-Helwa, and when they said, ‘They went to Beirut,’ I asked in Sabra and Shatila and Burj al-Barajneh. If I had known your husband’s name it would have been easier for me. I went back to Sidon again and they said, ‘Are you sure that they are from Tantoura? The people from Tantoura live in Syria.’ I was there a whole week until I found an elderly man who said that he knew Abu Amin and who took me to him. He gave me your address in Beirut.”
Then came telegraphic sentences about Wisal, about his mother, about himself. He asked me about my mother. I said, “She’s passed, God keep you safe.” A moment of silence, then the talk flowed again, naturally. It seemed natural. Then I left him with Amin and the children and went to make dinner. Abed had become taller than I am, how? I carried him to the sea when he was shivering and saying, “I don’t want to go,” and I kept saying, “We’ll swim together, you’ll love the sea, believe me.” The wave came and he held tighter to my neck, and then he began to cry. How could I connect the fearful little boy with this lean, handsome young man who came up unaffectedly and hugged me as if he were one of my brothers, come back from the dead? Had I forgotten him? I had not forgotten him but I had resigned myself to his absence. Or had I? He said, “I knew we would meet. The day I graduated from school, the day I graduated from the university I said to Wisal, ‘How will I send news to Ruqayya that I’ve graduated? I wonder if Ruqayya has married, and how many children she has?’ Wisal has married and she has five boys and one girl, what do you think, Sadiq, shall we ask for her for you?” Sadiq laughed, “If she’s pretty, I agree!” He said, “I’m working in Beirut. God help you, Abu Sadiq, I’m going to keep bothering you with my visits. Consider me Ruqayya’s brother or her firstborn son or an unwelcome guest, stickier than the best bandage. There’s no help for it.”
Abed descended on the food ravenously. He said, “It’s the most delicious food I’ve eaten in my life.” After he left, little Abed said, “He ate like he was famished, he didn’t leave us anything for tomorrow.” His father scolded him, and I laughed. I was in a good mood, as if I were happy, but I couldn’t sleep that night. Abed had brought the whole village with him as if he were bringing it to me, then he left it, secretly, and went away. What kind of present was that? Why hadn’t my mother thought about taking a little iron box with her, like Wisal’s mother, with our papers in it? There had been a picture of my father and brothers that had been taken of them in Haifa. I remember my father had on a kufiyeh and was wearing a qumbaz, with a jacket that showed the leather belt around his waist. On his right Sadiq was wearing what was appropriate for a young employee in the Arab Bank: a suit and a fez, and on his left Hasan was in shirtsleeves and pants. Why had Abed brought them to me, as if they were his family and not mine? I didn’t look at them a lot; I knew they were there, carefully locked away in some corner of my heart, but Abed had let them loose on me like mad dogs. What kind of image was that? How could I compare my father and brothers to mad dogs? The memory perhaps, the memory of the loss was like mad dogs that gnashed mercilessly if they were let off the leash. How could I pluck the serene picture and the clear smile before the photographer’s lens from the three bodies there on the pile?