We will not go back to Lebanon, we will go to Alexandria. A new beginning, at sixty. Who begins all over again at sixty? I would rather go back to Lebanon and flock together with birds of my feather. I heard that proverb from my uncle Abu Jamil’s wife; it’s strange, how she comes to me after a long absence. Not a day goes by but that I remember a proverb she quoted or a scene she was part of. I can no longer recall her face, though I remember that her complexion was the color of wheat, that her hair had a real curl, and that she was very articulate. I remember one day when she invited us to have musakhan at her house. As we approached we were greeted by the aroma of the oven-baked bread and the mixture of onions, sumac, and olive oil, and suddenly I said, “I’m hungry!” My brothers laughed and said that it was the aroma that made me salivate. “That’s right,” I said. “When I left the house I didn’t feel hungry, and when I inhaled the odor I imagined the roasted chicken on the fresh bread and became hungry.” They laughed more. There was no better musakhan than Umm Jamil’s, nor any better maqlouba than hers. “Nor any better mulukhiya,” adds Ezz.
Did Umm Jamil invite us often or was her food so good that that it stayed in the memory, as if we had eaten it with her dozens of times? The day we had the musakhan, or perhaps another day, Umm Jamil said that her father’s grandfather had told her that many of the people of Tantoura came from Egypt in the days of Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Muhammad Ali, and settled there. My uncle Abu Amin laughed and said, “Maybe your grandfather loved Egypt, so he said that we come from there. Did he study in al-Azhar, Umm Jamil?”
“He studied in al-Azhar. He used to visit Egypt every year; he would mount his horse, say ‘By your leave,’ and come back loaded down with gifts of every shape and color. I was little, no higher than five hand spans.”
My uncle Abu Jamil intervened, waving his hand, “In the Turkish era in the time of the Ottomans, the world was completely open. People would go and live wherever they wanted, since it was all Arab Muslim land.”
Uncle Abu Amin laughed again and said, “Or everyone would choose to trace his origins to the place he loved best. One would say, ‘We’re descendants of the Prophet, we came from Mecca,’ and another would say ‘We’re of Turkish origin,’ as long as the Turks ruled the country. Someone would say he came from Aleppo, the administrative center in the old days. We can’t tell the strand of truth apart from imagination.”
Uncle Abu Jamil suddenly tensed, “Be careful, everyone, that’s enough of this talk. If the Jews heard us they would say, ‘Go to Egypt, that’s where you come from.’ That would be all we need!”
I no longer remember what Uncle Abu Jamil looked like. I only remember that he was old, that he carried a large rosary in his hand, that he prayed a lot, and that he was with us in the truck that took us to al-Furaydis. I don’t remember him in al-Furaydis or al-Maskubiya in Hebron, but my mother said that he and his wife went to their daughter, who was married and living in Syria.
Maryam said that she would not study in Lebanon; was that her wish, or did she imagine that I did not want to go back to live in Beirut? When I returned from my visit to Beirut, the one visit after we left Lebanon, I was sick and stayed in bed for two months. Sadiq said that the visit was the reason; perhaps Maryam was influenced by what her brother said.
Yes, I visited Beirut. I went back after five years away, and stayed in a hotel. I lost my way in the camp; I couldn’t find the houses I used to go to or the school where I taught, and I became disoriented in the lanes. I couldn’t find anyone I knew, not Haniya nor anyone else. Where had they gone? I was so upset that I didn’t leave my hotel room for two days. Then I tried again to bring back the city, to connect the memories I carried in my body with what was new in it. I walked, and looked closely; I thought, “It was here.” I delved, as if I were looking for a city submerged in another city, sunk under a weighty pile. No, that’s foolish writing, it wasn’t like that, or at least not completely. The sea was in its place, Beirut’s familiar sea. The mountains were its eastern border, as usual, and Bliss Street was also the same, and the American University. I pick my way carefully through the streets, looking closely, and I find — what do I find? Damage that convulses me, as if I had not been aware of it or had not seen it before. In the Tariq al-Jadida, the Fakahani, Hamra Street, the market area, the Demarcation Line. Is it because I’m seeing it now for the first time as a whole, from the outside? Acre Hospital is standing, people go to it and there are doctors and workers inside. The Gaza Hospital building is also standing, with immigrants living in it. But the camp has changed; all of Beirut has changed.
I’m letting my mind drift, Amin, and confusing things. I haven’t told you why I left Beirut. I had decided that I would not leave, though Sadiq insisted and pressured me, saying that I was imposing a burden on him that he could not bear. He quarreled with me and said, “I have nightmares because I’m so worried about you and Maryam. I don’t understand what’s tying you to Beirut.” I said I would not leave; then I did leave, because of Maryam. She was afraid whenever she heard any loud noise, thinking it was an explosion, and her face would be pale for days afterward. I told myself that she would bear up, like the others; not every child in the country has a brother working in the Gulf, where he can flee from the explosions. I decided to leave one day when Maryam came to me with her face wan and obviously upset. She asked me, “Mama, have you heard of Abu Arz, the Father of the Cedars?”
“Abu Arz, no. Who is he?”
“My friend in school told me about him. She said he’s like the Phalange, but worse. He and his men kidnap Palestinians and slaughter them, then they tie them to their cars and drive them fast, dragging the dead body in the street and tearing it apart. She told me that he and his men cut off the ears of the people they kill and hang them on key chains.”
I scolded her, “Don’t associate with that girl. These are fantasies, sick fantasies. No one does that.”
Maryam looked at me and said, “They’re not fantasies, Mama, because she’s a nice girl, and smart, and she’s been my friend for three years and never lied to me once. I didn’t believe what she said either, and I told her that whoever told her that was a liar. She said, ‘No one told me. I heard my father telling my mother. My uncle disappeared two months ago and we were looking for him, then my father found out what happened to him. He told my mother, and cried. He didn’t know I heard him, he thought I was asleep.’ When she told me that, I believed her. Mama, what will we do?”
I decided to leave.
In Beirut they talk about the foreigners, Amin, and about the devastation we caused in Lebanon. It’s the same old song from 1983, when the Phalange ruled. But the strange thing is that when I visited Beirut I heard it from others, who aren’t in the Phalange party or among its supporters.
In Beirut I also met Abed, Wisal’s brother. He had returned from Amman and was working in another think tank. He had five children. He talked to me a long time about general conditions in Lebanon, and about the situation of the Palestinians in it. He knows all the details because he lives with the situation, and also because his work obliges him to keep up and to research it. I asked him about Ain al-Helwa, and he spent a whole day telling me what neither Ezz nor Karima had told me. I understood then why Ezz decided to move to Tunis and stay in the PLO, despite his anger with the leaders and their performance during the invasion. You wouldn’t know Ezz, Amin. Forget the white hair, white as a tuft of cotton, without a single black strand; he’s been like that for more than ten years now. When I saw him in Beirut after the invasion and then two years later, he was roaring, hurling insults and curses as if he were Abed the younger, not our laughing Ezz. I understood many things because Wisal’s brother Abed knows, and I would ask him and he would always answer. I’ve seen Ezz only twice since then, the day of Hasan’s marriage in Greece, and one other time here in Abu Dhabi; he came for some purpose, and we met. I did not gasp or shout when I saw him the last time; God helped me remain calm. I embraced him and spoke with him normally, as if how he looked had not shaken the very ground under my feet. That night I cried, by God, I cried. Not because he had gotten old; he had already aged when you left us, when the events of Ain al-Helwa occurred, during the invasion and afterward. Before that Ezz had always looked younger than his years, because he’s thin or maybe because he’s merry, because of his liveliness or because our Lord gave him a sweet disposition, like what you find in children. When he sneaked out of Sidon after the Shatila massacre to check on us, it seemed as if he had aged ten years in a few months; he already seemed like an old man then. But when he visited us in Abu Dhabi, Amin, he looked like an eighty-year-old, older than Uncle Abu Amin at the end of his days. It was as if old age had settled on his spirit and spread throughout his body, like a malignant tumor. He was silent, distant, and frail, and he even walked like an old man, slowly and with caution.