16
Beirut (I)
My aunt says that two-thirds of a boy comes from his maternal uncle, repeating the popular saying when she suddenly notices a gesture or a look or a tone of voice in one of the boys that reminds her of her sister’s two sons. She was right, Sadiq resembled Hasan, tall and broad like him. And Hasan resembled his uncle Sadiq, in the shape of his small body, the color of his eyes, his sweetness and calm. He seemed quiet and shy, compared to his big brother — traits he took from his uncle and from his father, since Amin was also like that. As for little Abed, he differed not because of his devilment, for which scolding and punishments were useless, but rather because of his shrewdness, his charm, and the ready answers always on his tongue. His answers would pull him out of any scrape as clean as a whistle, stir up laughter and let him preside over any discussion, even though he was the youngest. He was rambunctious and talkative and always on the move, tirelessly demanding attention. His grandmother would say, “He’s a bastard, that one, he’s a black sheep.” Her attachment to the two oldest boys was obvious, Sadiq because he was the first grandchild to rejoice her, and Hasan because he was “steady and kind and affectionate.” And Abed? She waved him away, scowling: “Devil take him, you’re no better off with him than without him.” He was also her declared foe: he would not answer her when she called him, then he would say, “I answered, by God I answered, what can I do, she’s hard of hearing!” She would ask him to buy something from the market, and he would go and return. “Where, Abed …?” “Ah … I forgot!” What had begun as little tricks and a childish retaliation for her preference for his two older brothers went on to set the tone of the relationship between them until she passed away.
When we moved from Sidon to Beirut in the fall of 1970, Sadiq had enrolled in the first year of his university studies, and Hasan was a student at the end of middle school. Two young men, one didn’t need to fear for them. They read the papers and followed the news. We moved in September, when the battles between the fedayeen and King Hussein were in progress. The two boys would follow what was happening day by day, joining us in discussing and analyzing it and in our apprehensions and concern. As for little Abed, he was in elementary school and the news didn’t hold much interest for him since he was busy with soccer, or with the slightly higher grade his rival in class had received. Did I say that Sadiq and Hasan were alert and that one didn’t need to fear for them? I reconsider the second part of the expression. In the next year and the year that followed I became more worried about them. Sadiq would return to the house and I would know from his appearance that he had been in a demonstration. He did not say it but I knew, and sometimes from his pale face I thought it was likely that one young man or maybe more had been hit by army bullets. Or Hasan would return looking wan and quieter than usual, his stomach hurting. I would boil him some sage or mint but the pain would still be there. When his father returned he examined him and found nothing worrisome, but days later Sadiq told me what happened: “It was a physical reaction to something that happened. One of his classmates at school insulted the Palestinians and Abu Ammar, and said that his armed gangs deserve to be burned up. I told him that his stomach hurt him because he didn’t hit the kid, ‘If you had hit him he wouldn’t have dared to repeat talk like that. Your answer stayed stuffed in your stomach, so it started hurting.’ I told him, ‘If anyone hits you, hit him, and if anyone humiliates you, wipe up the floor with him.’” I don’t agree with Sadiq, for in the end school is not the place for hitting and fighting. I’m afraid of the army’s bullets, of the militias and the Phalange and their evil intentions toward us. I’m afraid of a clash at school that would result in the boy coming home with his blood flowing. I’m afraid of Beirut. When I confide my fears to Amin he says, “We live far from their neighborhoods. And Abu Ammar is an ally of the national forces, and they are getting stronger every day. Not even the army will be able to keep up all this violence, the national forces have militias and we have the fedayeen. Don’t be afraid.”
Maybe because of this fear Amin suggested that I continue my education, or maybe he noticed that I was becoming more withdrawn and introverted. I didn’t go out or meet any of the neighbors, and even Abed the elder no longer came to the house often; he came only rarely, and on special occasions.
At first I made light of the suggestion, perhaps because I was embarrassed at the thought of going back to school when I had had three children, the oldest of whom was in the university. What if I failed, what would the children say? Amin urged me, and then Sadiq and Hasan took his side. “Why not?” they said, “Try, you have nothing to lose, and besides, you can quit if you find it’s hard.”
I returned to books and notebooks. Instead of one teacher I had two, with Sadiq and Hasan helping me. Little Abed didn’t like being excluded from the game, so he observed, “It would be better if Mama studied by herself, you aren’t teachers, and a poor prof makes for a poor student!” Or the gleam in his eyes would say that he was enjoying the role reversal, and the transfer of the power of right and wrong from here to there. He laughed, and Sadiq asked him, in a tone tinged with rebuke, “Why are you laughing?”
Abed answered, “A funny thought occurred to me. Is it forbidden to laugh?”
I would wake at five in the morning, as usual, and plunge into housework until Amin and the boys woke up. We would have breakfast, and everyone would go on his way. I would spend the day studying until they came back. In the evening I would ask the “two teachers” about what was hard for me to understand.
Amin said that I was making astonishing progress, and that I would be able to take the baccalaureate examination in 1973. But I did not take it.
I had not known the writer Ghassan Kanafani personally, and I didn’t follow what he wrote in the newspapers and magazines. I had never met Dr. Anis Sayegh, the historian and activist, no one had spoken to me about the three Fatah leaders in Verdun Street, nor had I heard any of their names — and if I had heard them I had forgotten them, because I didn’t know the role of any of them or what his position was.
I had read one short story by Ghassan Kanafani that had fallen into my hands by chance, when we were in Sidon. I remember its title: “The Land of Sad Oranges.” I didn’t remember anything of the story other than one line, which read, “When we arrived in Sidon, in the evening, we became refugees.” Who said that, and in what context? I don’t remember. The expression kept ringing in my ears for days and nights, as if it were a line of poetry. I spoke to Ezzedin about the story and a week later he brought me a novel and said that it was the best of Ghassan’s books. I read it in one night: a novel about three Palestinians, a boy, a young man, and an older man, trying to get to Kuwait smuggled in an empty water tanker. The border guard delays the truck and the three die of suffocation inside the tank. The driver delivered them to their death, even though he wanted to help them. The borders killed them. I didn’t read anything else of Ghassan’s, neither books nor articles, and I didn’t follow the magazine where he was the editor in chief; but Ezz knew him personally and talked about him with great admiration. He said, “Do you believe it, Ruqayya, we were born in the same year, and he’s a journalist who publishes his articles in any number of papers and magazines, he writes stories and novels, he draws, and he’s active in political work, among the leaders of the organization!”