‘That one is my Leila, Walid! The al-Hajj girl! That’s right—people called her father al-Hajj, not al-Sheikh. Can you tell me what she looks like?’
Adel seems more anxious now than he was when we first sat down. Maybe now that he can feel her so close, he also senses he might lose her for ever. As I begin to describe the attractive woman I met, his face begins to tremble, and his fingers tap nervously on the table. I tell him that even though the years have begun to erase some of her youth, she has held onto her beauty. She is tall, and full-figured. His fingers tap so hard that he nearly spills his coffee cup. I tell him that I did not get to speak to Leila, owing to her apparent shyness. I tell him that what I noticed most of all was how she talked. She liked to use the words, and then, as if they were a punctuation mark. ‘Hmm, and then …’ ‘She was, and then …’ ‘Because, and then …’ If Leila could, she would stick the words between every two words she said.
Adel jumps up from his seat and throws his arms in the air, clenching his fists as if by doing so he could hold on to the moment for ever. He shouts, ‘That’s her! And then … Adel, we’re going to get married! Let the whole world be damned, and then …! My Leila is alive, Walid!’
By now, Adel is jumping up and down, shouting: ‘Leila’s alive, Walid! Where have you been all my life?’ Fortunately, there is no one else in the café besides us and the waiter, who is standing at the door, stifling the kind of laugh that would cost him a tip. Adel lifts me up and hugs me. In the commotion, he knocks over our cups and coffee and tea spill all over the tablecloth. The waiter rushes over, a black cloud hangs over him as he wipes up our mess.
Embarrassed, Adel says: ‘I’m really sorry! I just heard the best news in the world. Give us a new tablecloth—if you want, I’ll pay for this one. And the table too. I’ll buy the whole restaurant if you want—anything to take that frown off your face.’
‘Don’t worry about it, sir,’ the waiter says, by way of apology. ‘We’re here to serve our customers.’
Adel sticks his arm into his pocket and pulls out a hand whose fingers dance gingerly around a green fifty-dollar bill. He gives it to the waiter whose mouth hangs open so wide it looks like the nearby port of Gaza. ‘This is for you. Keep the change.’
The waiter thanks Adel and walks off with much more than a week’s pay in his pocket. At the waiter’s suggestion, we move to another table that is clean, and he goes off to bring us fresh cups of coffee and tea, free of charge.
Adel cools down and savours the excitement. I begin to tell him that I will arrange a meeting for him with Leila’s father, al-Hajj Darwish, if the man’s still alive. If not, I can arrange for him to meet with another man from the family whose opinion matters as far as Leila is concerned, especially with regard to the question of marriage. It is a sensitive issue, especially given Leila’s age. But Adel is adamant about marrying her—that is why he came to Gaza, after all. The only thing that remains in this long melodrama is the last episode—and Adel will have to finish his story himself. I tell him that I hope it ends like any old Egyptian movie, with Leila standing barefoot on a windswept sand dune. Closeup on her face for a moment, then she flies down the sand calling out Adel’s name. And there is Adel, dashing down the opposite dune, calling out her name. Close-up on the two lovers as they embrace. Fade out. The end.
Adel laughs. It seems as if a great burden has been lifted from him. He begins to run his fingers through his trim beard, and his eyes gleam like those of a groom on his wedding day. He turns to me and begins to recite the lines of poetry:
I love Leila passionately, the way the soul loves, and Love is a seducer!
O Exile of the heart, among the sons of the Dahman you will find her!
And together, like old friends, we laugh our heads off.
15
In the afternoon, my cousin Abul-Abd proposes that we pray together. He leans hard into his right hand and then, clutching his cane in his left, rises to his feet. As he goes over to the mats spread out on the floor, he asks, ‘Who’s going to lead the prayers? Everybody? Come on, Abu Meshaal, would you? Abu Meshaal, could you come forward?’
Abu Meshaal stands up and the others in turn rise to pray behind him.
The man leading the other cousins in prayer right now is my father’s cousin, whose full name is Samih Ismail Dahman. He is a midlevel Hamas organizer. Earlier, when he first walked into the room, people mentioned that he was preparing to nominate himself as one of the Hamas candidates for the Legislative Council elections. He earned his PhD. in economics from a university in the UK. Years ago, when he was in the final stages of writing his thesis, he sent me an email introducing himself. I was so happy to meet a cousin of mine, even though he had been born some time after I had gone away. It cheered me to know that there was another Dahman somewhere in Britain. His presence there somehow filled me with a feeling of real family. It was like having a glimpse of our country delivered to me. When he asked, I sent him a copy of my third novel. And despite being engrossed in his doctoral studies, he read it and let me know how much he admired it. When he asked me to send him a photo of my family, I did. When I asked him for a photo of his family, he did not hesitate. The person I saw in that picture was a young man in his early thirties. He had a long black beard and was going bald. There he stood, right between his young son and daughter. But that was all—the children’s mother, or as we like to refer to mothers, al-eila, was absent, or absented. I did not need someone to explain it to me.
Abu Meshaal had sacrificed his better half to the new culture that was just beginning to conquer our society back then. Later, that culture would impose itself even more fiercely on the men in our family. In time, it even caught up with me. Samih’s aunts, his father’s sisters—Souad, Samira and Ibtisam—were beautiful young women, as delicate and lovely as tamarind flowers. Those girls used to hug me to death whenever I went to visit them in Shati Camp. Those girls—Samih’s aunts—were my age, or thereabouts, and they went around with their hair uncovered, their arms and legs bare, sometimes wearing skirts that went above their knees. We were all of the same flesh, the same blood. I never felt anything in their hearts but their love and affection, and a fierce sense of pride about family. Back when I was a teenager, Abu Meshaal’s aunts were my sisters and I was their brother.
And here I am at fifty-seven years of age, a British citizen now, with lots of experience of the world, and Abu Meshaal is hiding his wife from me and making sure I do not get a peek at her. And now this cousin of mine is leading everyone in prayer.
I was surprised by what I saw when he first walked in today. He was completely clean-shaven—no beard, no moustache. When I teased him about it, I told the whole room that in the UK, he had lived as a whiskered man among the beardless. He had been the Other. The Arab. The Muslim. He was Difference itself. But back in Gaza, he had no facial hair at all. Here he was—the image of the modern Muslim.
He laughs now and half turns to ask, ‘Where are you, cousin? You back there behind me?’
‘Behind you in every way, cousin!’ I laugh back.
After receiving his first email, I decided not to coddle Abu Meshaal or delude him about myself. He and I began corresponding with one another. He would evangelize to me about the history of Islam, recounting its glorious past, and claiming, as so many others have, that when our society began to stray from religion, we fell into decay. He talked to me as if I knew nothing about Islam or history, as if he and his buddies were the first people to think up this revival stuff. As if it had never before been attempted. As if the Islamic state he talked about had not risen and fallen many times already, just like many other ancient and modern empires. I fought and pushed back until he was forced to travel further and further back into a history he drew with a pen from times gone by, and with tired ideas that had been attempted so many times before. I pushed back until at last he stopped writing altogether. And when he disappeared, I did not hesitate for a moment to delete his photo from my computer.
&n
bsp; I am the only man who remained seated when the others went to pray. An untouchable, like a seed planted in the wrong ground, I felt a strange kind of discomfort. Despite this, I did not want to be untrue to myself. I rejected the idea of presenting a false image, and did not want them to invent some persona for me, the way Abu Meshaal had once done with his outlandish beard. A character created to conform to the demands of time and place.
I begin to study everyone, and my mind forms a panorama of the Gaza I am visiting. Fresh sea breezes wrapped in the stench of open sewers. The wide sea hidden from view behind settlements. Women veiled in black, proclaiming to the world that they are forever in mourning, both for those who have passed away and also for those who have not yet done so. Currencies wrapped in shekels. A religion wrapped up in the notions of countless sheikhs. And a sun that struggles to rise from behind all these wrappings and veils, searching for a face to shine its light on—a sun which, ashamed by what it sees, then decides to hide itself again, tired and worn out by the effort of looking.
They finish praying, and I tell them that I hope their prayers have been heard. Some of them say goodbye and leave, others go back to where they were sitting and resume conversations, talk and arguments that might have been started a millennium ago and stories where the old and the new fold seamlessly into one another. Mahmoud Abbas becomes the caliph Harun al-Rashid, Yasser Arafat becomes Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, Abu Jaafar al-Mansour becomes Muhammad Dahlan, Mahmoud al-Zahar becomes Umar ibn al-Khattab, Ismail Haniya becomes Yasser Abed Rabbo.
It went on so long I began to imagine I was in an instant of time that was at war with another time, where different historical moments refused to admit this or that set of past events, and each rushed toward a final moment that would stop time for ever, or make it flow backwards.
16
On the drive to Khan Yunis, Abu Hatem points out Qarara and parks the old red Opel on the side of the road. I look out across the terrain, studying it, but not seeing where it is at all. There used to be a level crossing where cars had to pass over the railway line at the halfway point between Khan Yunis and Deir El-Balah—but now I cannot see it.
‘Where are the tracks, Abu Hatem? A railway crossing is supposed to have train tracks, isn’t it?’
‘You still remember everything. The tracks are now about a hundred metres over there.’ He points to the east. ‘Behind the buildings on the other side.’
‘Where did all the fig trees go?’
‘They’re still there—behind the buildings over there,’ says Majdi who is sitting in the backseat. Majdi points to a set of tall buildings toward the west. The seven fig trees have always marked the Khan Yunis road. They were the first things that greeted you when you came from Deir El-Balah, and the last things you saw when you left Khan Yunis. These seven enormous trees had been planted decades ago, some said even centuries ago. And their small, bright-coloured fruit provided decent nourishment to those passing by.
Said the barber comes suddenly to mind. When we were twelve, we came out here one day by ourselves. We ate so many figs we were sick to our stomachs. After three intense, happy and all-consuming days with my mother, I have not had much time to think of old friends. But seeing these trees rekindles my memory.
‘You know who these trees remind me of?’
‘Who’s that, Abu Fadi?’
My eyes continue to study the landscape, searching out those trees. ‘My old childhood friend, Said Dahman.’
Neither says a word. After a while, the silence gets too heavy for me to bear, so I ask, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘God rest his soul, cousin.’
‘Said’s dead?’
‘He died three years ago, cousin. We thought you knew.’
I can barely breathe. The tears begin to well in my eyes, and I turn to look out of the window, wiping at my face with my sleeve. Thirty-eight years have gone by since I last saw this city, my second birthplace, and my childhood friends. And when I arrive at Khan Yunis, my best friend will not be there to welcome me.
‘It’ll be all right, Abu Fadi,’ they tell me. From where he sits, Majdi pats my shoulder. Abu Hatem begins to tell me what happened, and I listen, quietly sobbing.
‘You know how it is, no one expects something like that to happen. He was walking with his daughter-in-law and six-year-old grandson. The three of them were walking together, the boy in the middle, holding their hands and jumping around having fun. On that day, nothing was going on—everything was quiet. When they got to Ezzeddine al-Qassam School—remember it, Abu Fadi? It used to be a secondary school back in the day. When they got to the school, Said was struck in the chest by a bullet. It came from the observation post that overlooks our neighbourhood. The poor guy went down, and the woman started screaming and the boy—well, he just went berserk. Can you blame him? A little kid watching his grandfather as he died on the street. God help him and God help his mother for having to witness the event. People came running from all around. Someone called an ambulance—but to cut a long story short, by the time the paramedics got there, his time was up. God rest his soul, the poor man. Every Dahman and half the town came out for his funeral. Everybody loved that man. We loved how he laughed. We loved that man and we loved his stories.’
It was a real shock to hear Said was dead. It was the kind of loss that can never be recovered. He was a dear part of the past I had come here to collect. A major piece of my Khan Yunis childhood is taken away from me, just as I set foot here again.
It is almost 5 pm when we reach Jalal Street, the first avenue you get to if you are coming from the north. The first evening breezes waft through the windows. Abu Hatem recites the name of every street we pass. The only memories I have of these places are their names—I have forgotten what the places themselves looked like. Around us, buildings clamber over one another on both sides of the street. And people. Crowds of people of all ages, walking every which way down each and every street.
We arrive in El-Amal, my cousin’s neighbourhood. It is no more than a pile of debris fallen from the sky and called ‘buildings’—just as the piles of Jabalia and Beit Lahia once fell and grew. El-Amal sits on a strip of fine yellow sand dunes that stretch parallel to the agricultural strip from Rafah City to the outskirts of Deir El-Belah. El-Amal separates the agricultural land from the sea, except for the small spur of irrigated farmland known as al-Muwasi, that juts out to the west of Khan Yunis. The entire area behind the camp had been forested with shady acacia trees so as to prevent the sand from stealing into Khan Yunis.
Nowadays, the thing that steals over the city is the strip of settlements known as the Qatif Bloc. These colonies have effectively confiscated not only Khan Yunis’ lands, but its sea as well. When we were young, we used to play on these little hills—and it seemed as if the azure horizon was what made our eyes sparkle with joy.
The next day, late in the morning, Abu Hatem asks me whether I slept well. He had already asked me that question earlier in the morning, just before he went off to the garment factory he owned. We were sitting on the ground floor of the apartment building he built with the sweat of years of hard work. Then, in the afternoon, he asks me again what I did with myself all day. I tell him I spent my morning wandering around town, trying to get a feel for what it has become. I tell him that the Khan Yunis I knew no longer exists. I had searched out the khanyunisian essence of the place everywhere, but never found it, for the remnants of the old place were buried beneath the surfaces of the contemporary city. As I walked around the main streets, I often felt like I knew it, even though there was nothing tangible that would lead me to believe this. There was no trace of the streetlamp in whose glow I used to bask all night. The shop where I bought cigarettes is now gone, along with the café where I used to play cards with friends. Even the dirt courtyard where I used to walk barefoot is gone. Beneath the surface of the place, other buried impressions take form here and there. It is like looking at a black and white photograph whose details are blurred by the passing of ye
ars.
On trembling legs, I stop and stare at the strange patch of exile where my home once stood. There are no traces left, of it or of my childhood. Not even of the shadow I used to chase and chase and sometimes even catch. My shadow and I were careful never to let each other stray too far, and so our game never ended, and our friendship was never broken. I have left no footprint here to find. The cement beneath my feet chokes whatever memory lies below, just as it does the air I once exhaled here so long ago—breath whose traces still seek to find me once more.
I wander through streets that swallow people who crowd into cars and donkey-drawn carts. The streets swallow the jeeps of the militias and the armoured cars stuffed with men who watch the pedestrians through small holes in black hoods. I feel truly alone here—of no significance to anyone, nor is there anyone here who means anything to me. I come upon the spot where Café Mansour once stood. The biggest of all the city’s coffee shops, and the nicest one on the city’s main square. I find only small commercial shops teeming with shoppers. I can see my father, sitting right there on a bamboo chair next to his table. There is his cup of hot tea, sprigs of mint sticking out. There is the steam rising into the air with its sweet minty smell. I can hear the men nearby as they slap down dominoes on the marble tabletops around me. I love the way that tapping and clacking rings in my ears. Somewhere here, forty-five years ago, my father sat and was suddenly struck down.
Just as the years have changed me, so too am I transformed by the sudden recollection of my father and his death. I decide to visit his grave. I have always hated visiting cemeteries, but now I am struck by the urge to do it. When I lived here, I visited my father’s grave only twice, once to inspect the gravestone, and once again—just before my departure—because my mother told me to.
The Lady from Tel Aviv Page 15
