It was pleasurable and interesting to summon on paper my mother and my father, the village sea, and a wedding from long ago.
It was pleasurable and problematic to describe the almond tree in the spring. (I wrote it once, twice, three times. I said to myself, it’s no use. It was a queen in its land, I can’t transfer it to paper.)
It was delightful to set down a song, the colorings of the voice and its rhythms ringing in my ears — and then I would stop, wondering how a song can be imprisoned on paper, bare of its melody, except for someone who knows it and has heard it or sung it before.
Then I advanced farther along the rough trails of memory and of words. I said, Hasan has snared me. Here I am after writing two notebooks and dozens of pages, incapable of continuing. How can I tell the next four months? How have I told the first four months? I’ve told the little part I lived, a part entwined with thousands of others, lived by other people during the same months; how can the story be completed without all of these parts?
Four months there at home, and another four in Lebanon, our second home, where we are now classed as aliens. Four and four — pure coincidence, or the workings of destiny? An arbitrary destiny, a butcher, not satisfied with a few slaughtered carcasses to hang in its shop window and to cut according to the buyer’s wishes, but slaughtering out of greed. The perfect setting for the most horrendous nightmares. But in sleep nightmares are usually restricted to a few silent images, the fear when you’re chased or a feeling of strangulation — nightmares are meek and gentle, and they have their limits. Here, insanity overflows: shelling from airplanes, battleships, heavy artillery, bombs, charges that explode cars which just minutes before had seemed tame as sleeping cats, fires. The water is cut off, and the electricity. There’s no bread. You go to look for it and the earth explodes beneath your feet. God’s heaven is your enemy all day long, a siege from all six directions. Senseless bombs bring down buildings, which collapse on their residents and leave a deep ditch, before which all we can imagine of hell and its deepest pit seems small. Cluster bombs continue exploding, as if forever. Maryam is crying from the pressure of the noise in her ears; I block her ears for her with earplugs, and surround her completely with my arms. Can they hear the noise in Jenin? If only it were Jenin. Maryam says, “Tell me a story.” I remove the plug from one of her ears, bring my lips close and begin to speak; she listens for a bit and then cries again, from the intensity of the noise.
In this hell on earth my relationship with Beirut became solid. Strange; how did it happen? Its tame, everyday sea was no longer its sea, its land was no longer its land, its sky was no longer sky. Your house, and the one next to it and the one next to that and the rest of the buildings in the street where you live and in the next street, and at a distance of ten minutes’ walk in the direction of the Sabra market, or a little father in the lanes of Shatila or in the other direction toward the Cola Bridge and the Fakahani, all of them surprise you with something you’re not used to. Shells have hit them here and here and here and there. Glass has turned in an instant from stable panes in the windows, reflecting the sunlight playfully, to scattered fragments on the ground; cars and the feet of pedestrians pass over them, grinding them, and they emit a sound like a moan. Balconies, wooden shutters, ceilings have flown without wings, and fallen as debris on the street. Even the walls have lost their expected civility, under the shelling, and revealed what had been concealed inside the homes. I lift my head and look, and I see a bed, clothes, a chair, half a table, food dishes, suspended in the open. Or a lucky family, not killed by the shelling, may be reunited in a room from which the fourth wall has fallen, leaving someone passing to lift his head and say “Good evening,” or to avert his gaze and pass as if he saw nothing. I walk toward the Fakahani neighborhood, the Arab University of Beirut, Afif al-Taybi Street — what has happened to the street? The Abu Iyad Building, the PLO Planning Center and Unified Information, the Writers’ and Journalists’ Union, all were destroyed. Just one street in Beirut — where did the street go?
Amin would return to the house whenever he could, when the firing stopped. He no longer kept regular hours in Acre Hospital because he was occupied with preparing medical centers and emergency units in this or that neighborhood in West Beirut. Abed the younger was with the resistance and I hadn’t seen him for weeks; I didn’t know in what position he was or behind what barricade, in the heart of Beirut or on its heights? Near the airport confronting the Israeli soldiers, or near the museum confronting the Phalange, or on the beach confronting the battleships? Where was Abed now? Hasan was with the civil defense, distributing bread or water or newspapers, on duty whenever he could be in the Safir newspaper. Where was Hasan, at this moment? Where was Amin, where were Ezz and his wife? My imagination wandered after them, hovering over the streets, looking for them. I let it wander as I hurried to accompany Maryam and my aunt to the shelter in the building. At the end of the raid I would go out to the street to inspect it, to inspect Beirut, or Ruqayya; I would return and take Maryam in my arms and try to sleep.
At the entrance to the apartment I kept a small overnight case and two shopping bags which could be picked up quickly when the shelling intensified. Maryam would run for the stairs to the shelter carrying the smaller bag, as I had taught her, the bag with the candles and the Lux battery and lighter. In her other hand was a small transistor radio. I would follow her with slower steps, in my hand the overnight case with a towel, some clothes, a first-aid kit, and another bag with a bottle of water, some loaves of bread and a plastic container of cheese or labneh or olives. With my other hand I held my aunt’s hand, guiding her slowly down the stairs toward the shelter.
I had not told my aunt about what had happened in Sidon and Ain al-Helwa; I had not spoken with her about the destruction of the camp or the arrests or the mass killing. I had not told her that we had had no news of Ezz or his wife for four weeks. But she had learned of the invasion. She said, “So, are we going back to Tantoura?”
I did not answer. She said, “What’s the matter, Ruqayya? Have you become hard of hearing? I asked you, are we going back home?”
I said, “I heard you, Aunt, I heard the question. How would we go back? I told you that the Israelis have entered Lebanon; they’ve occupied the whole south and gotten close to Beirut.”
“I understand. But it’s possible the fedayeen will defeat them — is it possible, or not?”
“It’s possible.”
“And when they defeat them they’ll follow them to Palestine and we’ll go back to the village. What does Ezz say?”
“The lines to Sidon are down. He hasn’t told us the news from where he is.”
“Is he all right?”
“He’s all right, Aunt.”
“And the resistance?”
“What about it?”
“Is it all right?”
For a moment it seemed to me that I would slap my face in despair and yell at her, “How should I know whether it’s all right or not?” It was certain that the Israelis had occupied the whole south and the Shouf and had arrived at the heights above Beirut, and they had destroyed Ain al-Helwa and taken half its men to prison or to their death.
I patted her shoulder, and said, “God be thanked, Aunt, the resistance is fine.”
She sat up on her bed and said, “Give me one of Amin’s cigarettes.”
I did not comment, but handed her a cigarette. She said, “Why are you just standing there? Where’s the lighter?”
I brought the lighter and lit the cigarette for her, and she began to smoke it calmly. She didn’t cough nor did any twitch appear in her face to indicate that this was something new for her. I stood watching my aunt’s hand as she brought the cigarette to her mouth, inhaled the smoke and then lowered her hand as she exhaled from her nostrils, as if she had been smoking for countless years. After my surprise, which was closer to astonishment, I found myself laughing and saying to my aunt, “What do you think, should I buy you a pack of cigarettes?”