The Lady from Tel Aviv

by Raba'i al-Madhoun

  ‘God have mercy on that dog’s soul. What do you think, Abu Fadi, do you think Israel’s ever going to pull out of Gaza?’

  ‘Yes, Abu Faruq. It wants to leave. Sharon’s as sick and tired of Gaza as everyone else who came before. He wants to get rid of Gaza—not because he gives a damn about the people who live here, but so that he can hold all the keys himself and slam the door shut whenever he wants to.’

  ‘Damned if they occupy us and damned if they pull out!’

  Suddenly, I start thinking about Salim Abu Shanab, a journalist I met in Tunis years ago. And I remember a story he told me when I visited him three days ago at the press office he works at. We had been talking about the current situation, analysing it from so many angles that it began to dissolve on our tongues. I asked him whether he agreed that a kind of tribalism—or clannishness—had returned to Gaza after so many years. I asked whether he agreed that this mindset had crept into everyone’s heads now, including intellectuals’ who should know better. He leaned back in his chair, took a long drag of his cigarette, then answered, ‘Listen, my friend. It’s easy to explain. If no one’s got your back, you’re dead. Look at me, I write all the time in a lot of papers. I appear on television. I have personally gone after the PA. I have been critical of Hamas as well—but no one can touch me. And that’s because before anyone is going to come after you, they’re going to size you up. Who are you? Who are you related to? Who’s got your back? How strong is your family? Are you with the PA? And so on. Listen, let me tell you a story that will explain how it works. There was a Hamas preacher called Abul-Sibhat, because of all the prayer beads he played with. The guy attacked me all the time. Every Friday, this guy had nothing better to do than abuse me. During his sermon, he’d go on and on about this heretical apostate journalist Abu Muhannad, meaning yours truly. One Friday, my cousin Bassam—he’s a really good guy, you’d like him—was praying in Abul-Subuhat’s mosque. Bassam listened to the man attack me like he did every week. The microphone was turned up so loud you could hear it all the way to the outskirts of Rafah Camp. Bassam waited after prayers and then went up to the guy. He says: “God bless you, sheikh.” The guy must have thought Bassam had come to thank him for the great sermon, so he replies: “God bless you too. Welcome, dear brother.” So my cousin says, “Do you know who that heretic Salim Abu Shanab is?” Abul-Subuhat strokes his beard from top to bottom and gently answers: “Let’s not talk about that apostate. May the curses of God be upon him!” “Listen up, you old coot,” my cousin shouts. Then Bassam starts yelling at the sheikh while sparks shoot out of his eyes, “That man—the one you say is an apostate—he’s my cousin. He’s part of my family. We’re the Abu Shanabs—don’t forget the name. If you ever utter anything negative about him, I’m going to rip your beard out. Even if you surround yourself with twenty other old sheikhs and a hundred militiamen, I’ll come in here and break your knees.”

  ‘“Salim Abu Shanab’s your cousin?” the sheikh asks, squirming like a cockroach in a drain. Of course, he never expected that someone would speak to him like that. Our pious brother had built his entire reputation on abusing me. He put on a caliph’s cloak and built a small kingdom for himself in a mosque while gathering followers around him. And every Friday, they’d entertain themselves cursing the Satan of the Press as they used to call me. The devil of the secular apostates. And now along comes someone who doesn’t only hold him accountable for what he says, but chastises him for it too. Our sheikh friend starts to tremble. As he tries to justify himself, his beard sweeps back and forth on the ground like a soft broom, “Did I say something wrong?” My cousin Bassam reminds him of all the punishments he is going to suffer if he doesn’t quit. The old man is shaking and stuttering as he utters the most earnest of oaths: “I swear to God, I swear to God, if I’d known Salim was your cousin, I would have kept my thoughts about him to myself.” “I don’t want you to speak about him. I don’t want you to have any thoughts about him either. Do you hear me, old man? Or do you want me to bury you upside down in the sand?”

  ‘You know what happened after that? Every time that sheikh saw my cousin, he’d ask: “How’s Salim, I mean, Abu Muhannad? Please send him my best wishes and kindest regards.”’

  The memory of this conversation makes me suddenly laugh out loud. Abu Hatem turns to me and asks, ‘What’s so funny, Abu Fadi? You don’t like the conversation?’

  ‘Not at all. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, cousin.’

  When the party shuts down, I turn the recorder off. There is enough dialogue here to fill ten pages.

  18

  Abu Hatem takes me on a tour of Gaza City so I can see my friend Muhammad Khadija. On the way there, I cannot stop thinking about Adel El-Bashity. I thought I was done with it. I thought I had handed the keys back to their owner. But as soon as I thought about it again, I began to realize I was mistaken. There were so many unanswered questions. Had the keys to Leila’s heart rusted after all these years? Or might they still open that door? Or would she keep away from the whole thing, given how scandalous a reunion might be? Or would it be he who backed off when he finally began to face the absurdity of those feelings he’d carried around for so many years?

  All of a sudden Adel seemed cheap to me. He had used me at our meeting. I had handed him the keys that would unlock an old, neglected room in his heart. I had paved the way for him to enjoy the remainder of his days. And up till now, Adel had not even called to thank me. By now, he has met his Leila. He must have. If he had not, my mobile would be ringing the whole time, with him asking me to resume the search for Leila. It is just like the Palestinian–Israeli negotiations—they are always resumed one way or another. Sometimes they go forward, sometimes they falter, but even then, they’re resumed, and we all breathe a sigh of relief to know they have not yet died. And then they stumble again.

  Why get upset about Adel El-Bashity? Don’t we say, Saw his girl, forgot the world? And besides, we were not even friends to begin with. We had only met because he was searching for Leila. That is the extent of it.

  The fact is I liked Adel El-Bashity more in my novel than I did in real life. The fictional character was more authentic. And besides, what do you hope for from authenticity when the character departs from the text and begins to get mixed up with the real Adel? Isn’t that what happened when the three of us sat there in the Andalus Hotel Café, talking about Leila? Didn’t Adel find his two beings at that moment? Didn’t the two versions join together at that moment to rebel against me, the author?

  I do not like the idea that this is how my protagonist will end up. I miss the Adel El-Bashity whose footsteps I was following, through light and shadow, fact and fiction, until I got to where I am.

  Abu Hatem parks the car next to the curb, gets out and starts walking. I run to catch up to him. In my hand, I am holding the small statue of Nefertiti I have been carrying with me for so long.

  Abu Hatem points to a man squatting on the ground. He is hunched over himself, leaning against the walls of the Tel al-Zuhur Hospital. Next to him is a long cane.

  Reluctantly, I begin to approach. My heart is trembling. When, at last, I am standing directly over him, I begin to look hard at what is left of the man who, long ago, was my best friend. Now he is this beggar whose right hand hangs in the air for hours at a time, snatching whatever drops from the hands of people walking by. I brought you Nefertiti, Muhammad. Remember how you knew how to sculpt her in the air? That image has remained on display in my mind ever since. Who turned your artist’s hand into a purse for shekels? Who made you sit there, asking for handouts, an object of scorn and pity?

  I think I am going to leave. I shut my eyes, unable to keep looking at the shape Muhammad is in. This is an unrecognizably distorted copy of the boy whose friendship had lit up my childhood. Abu Hatem waits for me a short way off. I turn away so no one can see the tears in my eyes.

  Instead of walking off, I suddenly say hello. Muhammad answers me warmly. I reach into my pocket
and take out two hundred dollar bills. As I put them into Muhammad’s palm, his fingers curl around the bills until they are swallowed in a tight fist. I press his hand to his chest and say: ‘That’s two hundred dollars, my deserving friend. I hope to give you fifty more each month …’

  But he interrupts me before I can finish. ‘Look here, brother. I’m an old man, so please don’t tease me. May God ease your days.’

  ‘I’m not joking, brother. It really is two hundred dollars. Hold them in your hand.’

  He lifts his head, bends first to the right, then again to the left. Exactly like he used to do when he wanted to figure out who it was who was talking to him. Then he laughs out loud. ‘God bless—and hear your prayers, brother! Is there anyone who gives anyone two hundred dollars these days? Even sons and brothers don’t do that for each other! Look, let’s leave it at one hundred. That’s more than enough. Or would you rather give me one hundred in shekels? Take your money and go your way, my good man.’

  His fingers are now carefully inspecting the bills, even as he tries to hand them back to me. ‘It’s a good deed you’re trying to do for this poor old man. May God reward you for it!’

  ‘Muhammad, I’m not playing a trick on you. That is two hundred dollars you have in your hands.’

  ‘So you also know my name?’

  ‘Of course I do, you’re Muhammad Rayan.’

  His left hand gropes across the ground searching for his cane, while the money still hangs in the fingers of his other hand. He leans over to stand up, and by now it is clear that I have rattled him. I reach out and touch his shoulder, urging him not to get up. He sits back down, and says aloud: ‘No one in Gaza City knows Muhammad Rayan. Muhammad Rayan disappeared long ago. You’re looking at Abu Saber, the most famous beggar in the entire Gaza Strip. Ask anyone from Beit Hanoun all the way to Rafah—they’ll know where to find me. Ask anyone at any of the Israeli checkpoints—they’ll all tell you that you can always find me sitting at City Hall. Is Israel shelling Gaza today? Is Fatah clashing with Hamas, or just with itself? Is there a family feud raging somewhere? It doesn’t matter—Abu Saber is sitting in his usual spot at City Hall. And he’ll go on sitting there until someone decides it’s time for him to close up his begging shop.’

  ‘But City Hall used to be Tel al-Zuhur Hospital, didn’t it, Muhammad Khadija?’

  ‘Who are you? You’re not from here. Everyone who used to know me by that name is long gone.’

  I wish I could put Nefertiti in his hands and let his fingers feel it. Let his fingers feel it all over and remind him of the image he once drew for us. But I worry how it might affect him.

  I step away and decide to leave Muhammad to his hazy misgivings. Sometimes doubts are better than the truth—they allow us to turn them over in our minds for a while until, bored, we are happy to return to our old selves.

  I grab both of his hands and shake them, saying goodbye as I turn. ‘Farewell, Muhammad, my friend. You’ll get your fifty dollars on the first of each month. Please, please stop begging and go back to who you were before, Muhammad Khadija. As soon as you do that, someone will come to tell you who I am.’

  Nefertiti rests in my hands as I walk away. Abu Hatem has already got into the car and is sitting behind the steering wheel. Before opening the door and getting in, I turn around and see Muhammad standing there, leaning on his cane.

  Abu Hatem turns the key in the ignition and Muhammad realizes I am about to go. He waves his cane around in the air and screams so loudly it splits my heart. As we drive away, he calls out: ‘Who are you—you stranger who is not a stranger?’

  I stick my arm out of the window and let the breeze catch and tug it up and down. When we get to the top of Tel al-Zuhur hill, I fling the statuette as far as I can. I imagine Nefertiti sliding and tumbling down the hill, all the way to Firas market at the very bottom.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Abu Saber who you were?’ asks Abu Hatem. ‘You broke his heart—and mine too.’

  ‘I couldn’t do it. It would have been worse had he known it was me. If he knew I saw him like that.’

  Abu Hatem turns to look at me. ‘There’s only one other friend left, Walid.’ He speaks the words as if saying them were a relief. ‘Muhammad al-Misriyya. Before you ask, I’m going to tell you everything up front. I haven’t seen him or heard anything about him for twenty years. The world has gone to hell and nobody is who they used to be. Everybody I know lost their head a long time ago—and everybody’s still looking for where they put it.’

  The car drives us out of Gaza and down the road back to Jabalia.

  19

  Abu Hatem, his wife Amina and their two sons Nasser and Salim are the last people to say goodbye. When they walk out of the apartment, they gather up their sadness and tears and carry it away with them. I remain there for long minutes, my eyes following them as they descend the stairs, watching their hands creep down the banister floor by floor. I listen to the sound of their footsteps growing more and more distant, then those too fade away. At last, the closing of the front door announces that the moment of goodbyes has come to an end. And, as the latch clicks shut, a moment of my life also closes. When that door opens again in the morning, it will be to announce my departure, and the beginning of what is to come.

  Now, there are only a few of us left in the apartment—besides my mother and me, there is Amal, Emad, Nasreen, their daughter, and Nasr, their younger son. Shafiq is also there, the last bachelor, who tonight announces that he has decided to get divorced from bachelorhood as soon as he can. My mother almost lets out a piercing ululation, but covers her mouth before anything comes out. The death of his brother Falah is still recent, and the rules of mourning still cast their shadow over any wedding celebration.

  I wish Shafiq a happy marriage and tell him that his apartment will not relish the prospect of being renamed. He proposes a new nickname—the new groom’s pad—and adds: ‘It might help spawn a birth and then I might become an Abu So-and-So!’

  Throughout the days I have spent in Jabalia, Amal has been tireless in preparing our meals and taking care of everything. She is like our second, younger mother. She sits opposite me now, watching me intensely, as if she sees right through me. The whole time, she is collecting moving, living images of me to keep in her mind’s album. Emad sits there without speaking, looking back and forth at my mother and me. My mother’s tongue has finally stopped moving, and not because of any device. Now it is she who needs someone who will comfort her on the eve of her son’s departure.

  I look at Nasreen—she usually gabs as much as a talk-show guest and if anyone ever needed a remote device under her tongue, it is she. But tonight, I am astonished that she too has nothing to say.

  It is almost 10 pm. Each of us has settled into silence. Each of us thinks about what to say, then decides there is nothing more to be said. I am worried, thinking about Abu Hatem. By now, they have covered most of the distance on their way home to Khan Yunis. I am bothered by the fact that on their way they have to pass through the Israeli checkpoint at Mahfouza, which cuts the Strip right in half. As if I was not already worried enough about what I will encounter tomorrow.

  This is my last night in the Gaza Strip. My trip has lasted twenty-one days. I have gathered impressions and stories like shadows for an album of ghost images. I have let Adel El-Bashity go wherever he wants with Leila Dahman, after supplying him with enough family to keep him safe and enough detail to make it all plausible.

  I will let the other characters in my novel fend for themselves. I will let each of them rebel against me as they like. I will let each of them create their own plot for the coming days, and I will not interfere at all as narrator. From now on, the characters will be in charge of their own plausibility.

  Somewhere, nearby, there is a huge explosion that shakes the floor we are sitting on. Then we hear helicopters, chopping by at a distance, and short blasts of gunfire. I jump up and stand at the window to see what is happening.

  ‘Get down!�
�� My mother screams until I am sitting by her side again. ‘I don’t want you to get hit. Tomorrow you’re going back to your family, and we want you to get there safely.’

  I sit squatting on the floor, feeling upset and despondent. I have grown used to sitting this way, but my buttocks are looking forward to touching a real chair again. Any chair—even a cushionless plastic one like those we sat on at Abu Hatem’s on the day of the feast. My mother is worried about stray bullets. No wonder. After twenty days here, I have learned to cultivate a healthy fear of stray bullets, and the cheap, unannounced death they bring. Said Dahman was killed by a stray bullet. Leila Dahman’s first husband died the same way, as did the husband of the other Leila Dahman. It is as if Gazans live in a permanent condition of randomness. Death wanders about as a stray, and each time it chooses its victim, it does so at random. There is the kind of death that is predictable and planned, and those who want that kind of end know how to find it. There is the unpredictable kind of death that happens according to the shifting balance of power between the various militias. There is also natural death, its victims necessarily in the dark about when it will arrive. And then there is the gratuitous, absurd kind of death whose hand falls according to no plan or pattern. One and a half million Palestinians crowded together, living in the most unpredictable way this unpredictable form of life, living for a death that comes and goes. I now understand why, when you are here, it’s impossible to catch a glimpse of the world outside. Now I understand why no one talks about ‘happiness’ or ‘the future’. Only the last bachelor does, as he plans a wedding in this mass graveyard, in the hopes that he might father many children who will join him in waiting for a future that is always only murky.