The Lady from Tel Aviv

by Raba'i al-Madhoun

I give the young man a big warm hug—I am genuinely happy to see him. He introduces me to his two brothers, Salah and Nasser, and I hug them in turn. Then the four of us pile into his car.

  10

  The car we ride in is a colourless old Fiat. The ride is bumpy, the asphalt is pockmarked, pitted, and littered with stones, wood and metal debris.

  Salah, who sits directly behind me, tells me that the wasteland to the left used to be huge olive orchards until two years ago, when Israeli bulldozers ripped them out. There used to be tens of thousands of trees here. ‘And part of that land used to be an orchard with the best citrus in all of Gaza.’ We turn our heads and look when he says: ‘The land on the right is what’s left of the industrial park. That building, the one covered in soot whose name you can see—that’s the Abu Galyun Tile Factory. That pile of rubble where you see the truck that’s tipped over—that’s what’s left of the Falluji Soft Drink Company.’ Salah tells us about how the entire industrial park was destroyed over six weeks during May and June 2003.

  We veer to the right and climb a dirt berm covered with ruts and holes. As soon as we reach the level asphalt road on top, Beit Lahia looms at us like a hill rising from the centre of the earth.

  Most of the buildings and homes on the edge of the city were destroyed. Abdelfettah tells me that Israeli tanks had advanced as far as that line before they had had their fill of shelling the neighbourhood. The Israelis had stopped not less than fifty metres from their building, which sits right on the Beit Lahia–Jabalia line.

  As soon as we settle onto the main road, my eyes behold the strangest sight. I can finally recognize Beit Lahia and Jabalia now. Long ago, these twin townships were shapeless, colourless piles of stone and wood and metal—the flotsam of a hurricane that opened up one night long ago and showered the land with shacks and tents. Like falling stars, these structures came crashing into the soil. Hurled down and thrown together—that was how these homes were formed, without recognizable shape or hue, without clear lines, lanes or streets, without any describable features at all. Yet there, amidst this massive pile of homes, grew a beautiful line of houses with a classical Arab style—arched windows like the old mansions of Damascus, like small mouths smiling down from the centre of the town’s destruction. I could not understand how these homes had been spared the carnage. It looked like this housing development was somehow parachuted into Gaza from heaven itself.

  ‘What is that?’ I have to ask.

  They tell me that this beauty smiling at us from the rubble is Sheikh Zayed City, built with aid from the United Arab Emirates. Apartments in the development were given to people who had been injured by the Israelis, or to the families of victims, and to those who had lost their homes during any of Israel’s many incursions into the area. As our car drives by, I stare at these remarkable structures. I go on staring until my eyes fall upon an image of the nice sheikh himself.

  We continue along, veering left then right. We come upon a vast stretch of rubble. Abdelfettah says that the houses that used to be there were bulldozed during the Israeli assault of September 2004.

  We arrive at a side alley. Abdelfettah stops the car next to a huge poster affixed to the corner of the building directly in front of us. ‘Abu Fadi, this is a memorial for your cousin Falah, God rest his soul.’

  My eyes well up at the image of a young man who even in death, maintains a brave, warm smile. He looks like his father Nasreddine when he was that age—the same swarthy skin, the same dark hawk eyes, the same black hair. Falah was the exact image of his father, except for the fact that the occupation had torn it/him in half.

  Abdelfettah drives, turns right and slips into another side alley. He pulls over and parks the car in front of a four-storey apartment house with a large iron door. I recognize it immediately: the Nasrite Building.

  ‘Your mother’s waiting for you upstairs,’ Abdelfettah tells me. ‘Be tough, Abu Fadi. It’ll be fine.’

  When I get to the last bachelor pad on the fourth floor, I find the door wide open, inviting me to set foot inside. Abdelfettah tells me to go in by myself while he and his brothers wait behind. ‘Your mother insisted on being alone with you when you arrived. What she said was, “I want to get my fill of him before I have to share.”’

  Slightly afraid and hesitant, I step inside. I look around for the mother that the occupation took from me thirty-eight years earlier. I take a few steps into a foyer that seems to open onto a sitting room on the right. Then my eyes catch sight of the fringe of a thatch mat on the floor and the edges of rugs strewn about the hallway. I realize immediately where the sitting room is, and that my mother is somewhere inside.

  Abdelfettah whispers something from where he is standing, reminding me to take off my shoes. I take a couple of last steps inside, turn to the right and my mother shrieks: ‘Walid, my son! Welcome home, my beautiful son! I’m so glad you made it! I’m so glad to see you, my lovely, lovely son!’

  My mother is sitting hunched over herself on a cotton mattress on the ground. She tries as best she can to get up, even if only to her knees—but I do not give her much of a chance. I bend down and bury my face in her shoulder, hugging her like the child I used to be. I kiss her and she begins to kiss me in return—once for every year I’ve been away. Then we sit and weep. We go on crying, saying nothing. The others outside let us bawl and bawl until our sniffles and snorts come to an end. Silently, they file into the room with looks of astonishment on their faces.

  I sit right next to my mother. My hand clasps hers, just like it used to do when I was a child and she would drag me behind her on errands or visits to people’s homes. And I would go running along after her, sometimes clutching her hand, sometimes gripping her dress.

  ‘Abu Fadi’s here, Aunt!’ Nasser cries.

  ‘The brightness of your presence has lit up all Gaza, my son! This is the happiest day in my life—I’ve lived to see my boy after all these years! Welcome home, Walid! I’ll say it a hundred times—welcome, welcome, welcome!’ My mother begins to wipe her tears with the end of her headscarf, but the tears refuse to stop pouring. And I, the whole time, watch her face, looking for traces of the mother I knew.

  After a while my cousin Nasreddine shuffles into the room, hauling all the years of his life on a cane. All his life, this man has made fun of the dark brown complexion of his skin. And now this man, whose arms were once made of steel, whose body was once that of a titan, is little more than an old man leaning over a walking stick.

  Nasreddine—Abul-Abd—greets me warmly as he takes his shoes off at the end of the hallway. He begins to apologize for the way the years have treated him. ‘I’m all messed up, cousin. As you can see, everything is either worn out or broken down.’

  ‘As long as your odometer is still working, Abul-Abd, that’s all that matters, right?’

  Everyone laughs as he replies: ‘That’s the problem, cousin—the odometer is as busted as the motor!’ I pull my hand from my mother’s, and jump up to embrace Nasred-dine. As we hug, we begin to cry. We continue to weep and embrace one another. As a youth, this man never wept—but now he does. He lightens our mood by recalling something we did as children, ‘Remember Grandpa’s goat, Walid? Remember when we took him out to graze in Beit Lahia forest and he ran away from us?’

  He laughs and so do I, amidst all our tears. And suddenly I can see him again, the young man who used to carry his grandfather’s goat across his shoulders like it was a kitten.

  The sitting room begins to fill with well-wishers, with relatives I am meeting again after so many years, relatives who have grown up and whose faces I can no longer recognize. And relatives born long after I left—children of the occupation.

  ‘Why were you so late, Abu Fadi? We kept getting ready to come over, but they’d call to tell us you still hadn’t got here.’

  ‘I got there at 9, but the crossing was closed. They said they caught a girl who was about to blow herself up.’

  ‘Yeah. We saw it on TV,’ my cousin Khaled in
terjects, then adds: ‘As soon as the girl walked into the place where they do body cavity searches, they called out to her by name, “Take off your belt, Fida, and walk two steps forward.” Her name’s Fida al-Puss. The television said that she tried to detonate the explosive, but something malfunctioned. Then the soldiers grabbed her and now she’s being detained.’

  My cousin Abdel-Halim adds, ‘Did you know, cousin—Fida al-Puss was the very last cat left in the Gaza Strip.’

  Everyone around me bursts into laughter at the joke, but I sit there dumbfounded. Abdel-Halim tries to explain: ‘Not so long ago, the PA launched an anti-rat campaign in Gaza. They put out packets of rat poison everywhere. The pussycats devoured the stuff and died. The rats didn’t touch it—and now there are probably more rats than people here. And since the PA had its brilliant idea, there are no cats to catch them.’

  ‘Sometimes curiosity really does kill the cat,’ I reply, and everyone laughs.

  Another relative joins in the conversation. ‘Last week, a Palestinian from the West Bank came to visit his family in Gaza. The Israelis searched him at the crossing and found that he was carrying a kitten on his body. They took the animal away and warned the man: smuggling is strictly prohibited.’

  As we laugh again, my cousin Abu Hatem walks in. Back when he was nine years old, I would send him out to buy Rothmans’ cigarettes for me. I would bribe him with a penny or a falafel sandwich. Now the man is tall—much taller than I am. Here he stands before my eyes. For a while he says nothing, though on his lips plays a bright smile meant specially for me. Meanwhile, all eyes are on us—he and I were the closest of all to one another. In an instant, I am on my feet. I stand there staring in disbelief—that little boy is now a distinguished-looking man in his fifties. He is as handsome and neat as his father was. We rush to embrace each other, shouting.

  They make space for him and he sits down by my side. Before he has finished drying his tears, he bellows: ‘What did I miss? What were you talking about before I got here?’

  ‘We were talking about the al-Puss girl who held me up at the crossing.’

  ‘Hey—let’s just be grateful she didn’t blow herself up, otherwise we wouldn’t have seen you at all today. Welcome, cousin—glad to see you safe and sound.’

  As we talk, one of my relatives hands me a small piece of paper and whispers: ‘This is the public statement that the girl’s family issued.’

  I snatch the paper from his hand. What I read is astounding and infuriating. It also makes me want to cry all over again. In the statement, Fida’s family named the organizations that sent their daughter to do it, and they also explained that their daughter is mentally ill and prone to suicide attempts. They said that the Israelis had made arrangements for their daughter to be treated at a hospital in Israel. Because of this, Fida had papers that allowed her to go through the Erez crossing regularly. When they discovered this, Hamas and Fatah wanted to exploit it. The family said that the Israelis had been kinder to their daughter than the people who had tried to use her today.

  I fold up the paper and go to the room that Abdelfettah showed me. The room is all prepared for me—my cousins have even delivered my suitcase there. I slip the statement into my backpack as quickly as possible, then go back to sit with the others. One of them speaks up and surprises me by telling me something even worse than what I just read. ‘You know, it was one of your cousins who sent Fida to blow herself up at the crossing.’

  ‘One of my cousins?’

  ‘Yes—Hussein al-Hajj Khalil Dahman. Hussein is in the al-Aqsa Brigades. He’s the one in charge of coordinating operations with Hamas. And people are already saying that this was a joint action between them.’

  I had never before heard of a Dahman picking up a weapon. Never heard of one of us killing someone. None of us ever joined the military back during Egyptian rule. None of us ever joined the Palestinian liberation army either. Yet now I begin to hear that fourteen Dahmans gave their lives during the Second Intifada. And now the Dahmans have taken up arms. Some of us even staged an armed demonstration in front of the Legislative Council, demanding that a certain execution order be carried out. That has to do with the story of how my cousin Hussein’s brother, Hani, was murdered by a fellow officer in the Preventive Security Force where Hani worked. Dahmans staged another demonstration, demanding that the PA investigate the assassination of Yasser Dahman who taught at the Islamic University. He was killed by an explosive that had been placed in his office at the university, and the family wanted the killers to be brought to justice. I learn that Abu Ahmad, my mother’s cousin, lost his oldest son three years ago. The ten-year-old boy was playing with other kids when he was run over by an Israeli tank.

  I go to sleep at about 2 in the morning. I have not been asleep for more than an hour when I am woken by the sounds of dozens of muezzins. Their calls clash and jumble over one another, like a band of musicians warming up before a concert. I mutter to myself and try to go back to sleep. But not half an hour goes by when the calls begin again, now even louder and more cacophonous. It is as if these are not real muezzins, but trainees who have been told to practise all night long. What the hell? Are Gazans now required to perform dawn prayers twice?

  Later the next evening, I pose this question to my cousin, sheikh Sobhi, who is an imam steeped in all things Islamic. He answers in the classical Arabic that he believes raises his stature in the eyes of others: ‘What thou heardst at the outset was the invitation to rise. This was not the call to prayer that thou knowst well, but rather an invitation to rise and prepare for the call. And he who wouldst go forth to pray, let him to the mosque nearest his abode.’

  ‘What? At 3 in the morning? So when do people sleep?’

  ‘The call that follows is the call to prayer proper.’

  But in fact, with so many muezzins, the space between ‘the invitation’ and ‘the call’ gets filled with recitations and prayers. There is literally no audible space—no silence—between the two.

  Just before sunrise, I almost get back to sleep when I am roused again, this time by a rooster. The last time I heard a cock crow was years ago—and that was in an old Egyptian soap opera. My eyes open and I can do nothing but laugh. The crow of a live—not prerecorded—rooster is simply amazing to hear. The bird’s swagger is so beautiful and melodious, he is the perfect metaphor for the kind of leaders Palestinians have enjoyed over the years. I imagine the rooster stretching out his body as tall as he can, spreading out his legs, proudly filling himself up with breath, as if air was a spirit that filled his insides to their utmost. He extends his wings and feathers as widely as possible, till his body is bigger than its actual size. Then he unfurls his tail feathers like a peacock strutting over a field of competitors. He raises his head, and his bright red comb goes stiff like a royal crown. And he stays there like that until he decides that the time to rise is at hand and then, for the sake of every hen within earshot, he belts out his warning against those who would still sleep.

  I am happy to be here. To be hearing this. But within seconds, my sense of contentment comes to an end, scattered in the darkness of the bedroom by the symphony of dozens of other roosters in the camp who return the rooster’s good deed. They begin to challenge the first rooster, letting it be known that they too have kept vigil all night, watching over the alleys of the camp, and hinting that they would have been the first to crow had not their biological clocks been set to slightly different shades of time. Like the muezzins, these roosters have not agreed to set their clocks to the same hour.

  On the roof directly over my head, great celebrations begin—like the shouting festivals of one of the armed factions. As soon as the roosters’ festival starts, here and there on the roof a clucking or two begins as well. At first it is hushed, like a timid confession: ‘Ka-ka-kabak-bak-bak-baak.’ This is followed by a mass chirping, then the cluckings that grow louder and stormier like the singing of men at a wedding—right at that moment when they take the groom off their shoulders a
nd set him down at his door. They stomp on the ground with some envy, but mostly to encourage him to accomplish the heroic feat now facing him. And they sing loudly as they push in the door. Above my head, the hens continue their chorus: ‘Bak-bak-bak-bak, bak-bak-bak-bak !’

  The chickens across the camp now fill the night air with their screeching din. People tolerate this carnival only because of the thousands of eggs they lay every morning.

  I lie there awake for a long while, watching as the morning swaps its cloak of darkness for a glittering silver robe. When my eyes have had their fill of wakefulness, I do not resist. I go back to sleep, forgetting all the morning events soon to come. I drift off, barely mindful of the sound of car engines and the donkey-driven vegetable carts that create a particular kind of racket whose tone I had successfully repressed decades ago. I half listen to the hammering of carpenters and the pounding of metal workers which announce the start of another working day. And there, among the other sounds, I can still hear the buzzing of an Israeli drone whose whine never stopped once the whole night.

  My first morning home is epileptic—I can neither sleep, nor am I awake.

  11

  That morning, I greet my mother with a kiss on her forehead that I have been waiting to give her for decades. She responds by saying that now that I am here she can relax, knowing she will be happy for the rest of her days. When I sit down next to her, she asks whether I slept well.

  I tell her that I closed my eyes for about two hours. I go on telling her about the ridiculous events, explaining how I was hounded by the barking of dogs. Unlike English canines that abide by anti-barking laws, Palestinian dogs have no compunction about breaking the law. I tell her how the crowing of roosters had taught me that the dawn belongs to them alone, and not to the muezzins who cannot agree with one another on a singing work schedule. I talk about how lively and snappy the nocturnal gunfire is. ‘The hens, Mama—the hens! They must be the only workers in the world who meet all their production quotas before the sun comes up. And the braying of donkeys, Mama. I haven’t heard such a sweet, gentle sound in many, many years. I miss the braying of donkeys, Mama! Such patriotic donkeys Gaza has!’