Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  “She loved Nikos, the father of her children. Life has brought her together with Ezekiel and she will do all she can to make him happy. Maybe in time she will be able to love him as she loved Nikos. I know that Ezekiel is your friend and that you are suffering on his behalf, but let me ask you, do you think he loves Sara?”

  “Of course! He took her out of a hospital, he brought her to Palestine and he married her, how can you ask if he loves her?”

  “I don’t think he’s in love with her. The two of them have come together for reasons that have nothing to do with love. I think that Sara is Ezekiel’s last link to his sister Dalida and to his father, because both of them died in Auschwitz. By saving her he has in some way saved his father and his sister.”

  “What you are saying is terrible.” Wädi was frightened by what Anisa was saying.

  “They have both suffered a lot and can do each other a lot of good. They are a comfort for each other. This is enough.”

  Omar Salem had called his friends together in his house once again. Wädi did not feel comfortable at these meetings, but Mohammed insisted that he attend.

  “We cannot offend him. Think about your Uncle Yusuf and your cousin Rami, both of them work for Omar Salem.”

  It was because of Yusuf and Rami that Wädi gave in to his father’s insistence. He did not feel any sympathy with Omar Salem, try as he might to cultivate it. It was not that he didn’t believe him to be a good man, he was, or a great patriot, which he was as well, but he thought that Salem had no interest in other people’s opinions. Omar Salem called his friends together to reaffirm what he already thought and the decisions he had already made.

  Rami hugged his cousin as soon as he saw him, he seemed worried.

  “This is a disaster. The two communities are now separating. There are lots of Arabs who have abandoned their villages and the towns where they lived with Jews. I think it would be better for them to stay behind and resist,” Rami explained.

  “We are at war,” Omar Salem said.

  “The gangsters of the Irgun nearly killed a member of the Nusseibeh family,” one of the guests said.

  “Do you mean the attack on the bus station by the Damascus Gate?” Mohammed asked.

  “Yes. Hundreds of Arabs have already died in Jerusalem alone. Are we going to forget that the Zionists fired on Temple Mount?” the same man insisted.

  “The Jews are very well organized, all of their men have been mobilized,” Yusuf said.

  “We can rely on our Arab brothers. They will help us to reestablish justice in these lands.” Omar Salem’s words were filled with self-satisfaction.

  “We stopped fighting the day that the UN voted to partition Palestine. The Jews know how to deal with us,” Yusuf insisted.

  “It is a blessing to have the support of Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini,” a tall, thin, well-dressed man said.

  “Ah, I was waiting for Qâsim to remind us of the blessings the mufti showers upon us, may Allah keep him in his Egyptian exile.” Wädi’s reply scandalized the men.

  “The Ziad family has always been slow to support the mufti . . . What are you going to blame him for this time, Wädi Ziad?” The man called Qâsim looked defiantly at Wädi.

  “He puts divisions between us even when he is not here. Speaking for myself, I do not agree with the mufti’s strategy. Also . . . I have no respect for what he has done in the past.”

  “Yes, we know you prefer your Jewish friends,” Qâsim replied.

  Mohammed stood up angrily, but Wädi took his arm.

  “Please, Father, let me reply. I choose my friends based on the type of person they are. And yes, I have Jewish friends whom I appreciate and love as much as I appreciate and love you. I am not only not ashamed of this, but I am proud. Until recently, lots of you had Jews as your friends, you invited them to your homes and they invited you to theirs. You did business together, you went to their doctors and they came to our doctors. I think, as all of you think, that the United Nations betrayed us when they decided to divide Palestine. But I insist, and will keep on saying this until you decide to listen to me, that we will not solve our problems by killing one another. But I will fight and do what is necessary to stop them from taking our land.”

  As he had on previous occasions, Omar Salem regretted in silence the presence of Wädi. He could not cease inviting the Ziads to his meetings, it would be offensive for him not to do so, but he thought that Mohammed’s son was not trustworthy.

  “Our men in the Arab Liberation Army will help us defeat the Jews,” Qâsim said, looking at Wädi again.

  “Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis . . . All of them apparently fighting for our cause. The Syrians have sent Fawzi al-Qawuqji, a hero you all know well. He was in Hama during the uprising, fighting against the French, and in 1936 he took part in the Arab rebellion here in Palestine, and in Iraq he fought against the British on Hitler’s side. No, I don’t doubt his bravery or the sacrifices he has made for the Arab cause. I mistrust people who found themselves able to collaborate with Hitler, whether it be the mufti or a general whom people consider a hero, as they do Fawzi. I tried for a time to understand why some of our men would collaborate with Hitler; their explanation was that the Jews were their enemies and so our enemies’ enemies were therefore our friends. But this is an explanation that made me sick with myself.”

  “So you dare question one of the best generals we could have . . .” There was bitterness and irritation in Omar Salem’s voice.

  Silence fell once again. The situation became more and more uncomfortable. Even Mohammed asked why his son was provoking these men. He would never again insist that he come with him to Omar Salem’s house.

  “I respect men not for the battles they have won, but for the causes they have defended. As for questioning Fawzi al-Qawuqji . . . I do not question him, but I think that the problem lies between us and the Jews, and that we need to resolve it ourselves. You trust that we will win because your hero has left his gilded exile in Egypt to return to Syria and has prepared men to wage war in Palestine. Don’t you wonder why our Arab ‘brothers’ do not implicate themselves directly? The Arab League is offended at the Palestinian vote in the UN; and they have all said that they will not support the partition, but they have not committed their armies, they have limited themselves to supporting a volunteer force, the Arab Liberation Army. And what about King Abdullah? We all know that he does not think the partition to be a bad idea, he may even think that it’s the only solution.”

  The men shifted uncomfortably in their seats. No one wanted to criticize Abdullah in public, not in front of those who were, in theory, his friends. But some of them attacked him in private, even called him a traitor. They thought that Abdullah was interested only in what was good for him.

  Yusuf seemed more uneasy than any of the other guests. He served Omar Salem, but everyone knew his connection to the Hashemite family. Yusuf’s parents lived in Amman, and they had always loyally served the deposed Husayn, the guardian of Mecca, and his sons after him. He thought that he was too old now to be prudent, so he decided to speak out.

  “King Abdullah looks after his own needs, like all the rest of the Arab leaders. My nephew Wädi speaks the truth. The Arab states think that it is enough to form an irregular army. Abdullah is prudent and knows the British well, he never gives in to wishful thinking and he knows the battles he might be capable of winning. I’m sure that if there is a war we will be able to count on the support of the Jordanians.”

  “We will have the support of great generals, or is Ismail Safwat not a great general? The Arab League has named him commander-in-chief of the Arab Liberation Army. And then there is Abd el-Qadir al-Husseini, who is from the mufti’s own family; even young Wädi has to recognize his bravery,” Omar Salem added.

  “Yes, I recognize it: I have nothing to object to about Abd el-Qadir al-Husseini, he is a worthy man, like the men of the
Jalidi and Dajani families alongside him,” Wädi replied.

  “We have a great base now, in that we control the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. With it in our hands victory is well-nigh assured,” Rami said, looking at his cousin Wädi.

  Omar Salem cleared his throat and looked at Yusuf. The two men shared a glance before Omar Salem spoke.

  “I want to celebrate with you this evening the fact that Rami will fight in the forces of al-Husseini. He asked me a month ago for permission to abandon the agricultural business that he has run so successfully for me over the last few years. I gave it to him, of course. Nothing could give me greater pleasure than to know that the best of our young men are fighting for Palestine. With them on our side our victory is assured.” Omar Salem’s words were greeted with murmurs of agreement.

  Wädi looked sadly at his cousin. He had found out the news at the same time as everyone else, and that hurt him.

  Mohammed had also known nothing, and looked at Yusuf reproachfully. How was it possible that his sister Aya’s husband had not told him of Rami’s decision?

  When they left Omar Salem’s house, Wädi confronted his cousin to ask him about this lack of confidence.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I know what you think, and I didn’t want you to try to talk me out of it. I think that it’s my duty to fight, as my father and your father did in the past. If we don’t, then we will lose our homeland. There’s no choice. You have to fight as well.”

  “I am not scared of fighting, and I will fight again. I have already been through one war,” Wädi reminded him.

  “A war that was not ours.” Rami’s words irritated his cousin.

  “Yes, it was ours, it was our war. Fighting against Germany was the only decent option. I will always be very proud of having contributed to Hitler’s defeat.”

  “You should join up with al-Husseini’s men, he will be pleased to have you. He knows how brave your father is and he knows that your grandfather was a hero. I have told him a lot about you.”

  “Rami, I don’t want Palestine to be partitioned, and I will fight even though I know it will be difficult to avoid the partition taking place. You know that. You know it as well as I do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We grew up with Jews, we know what they’re like. They’re not going to allow us to throw them out of anywhere. Ben said to me one day: ‘The age of the Wandering Jew is over, we will never be expelled from any country again, because now we are back in our homeland and if we are to be expelled then we will all need to be exterminated, and not even Hitler was able to do that.’ I keep thinking about what Ben said.”

  “Well, it’s a natural thing for him to say. He has his sense of what is right and we have ours,” Rami replied.

  “We may be in the right, but what does it matter?”

  Rami was upset by what Wädi said. If any other man had said the same, Rami would have slapped him and called him a coward. Wädi was not a coward, however, and this was why Rami was disconcerted to hear him speak in this way. He thought that maybe Wädi was too much in love with Anisa and only wanted to enjoy a future without any wars.

  “We cannot allow them to steal from us, to throw us out of our houses and off our lands. Don’t you realize what the partition means?”

  The two cousins parted without saying anything, each of them mulling over the other’s words.

  Rami did not need to insist too much, and soon Wädi presented himself to al-Husseini.

  The days went by, and whenever Wädi argued with his family or friends he tried to make them see things from the Jewish point of view, because your enemy can only be beaten if he can be understood. He felt that he was swimming against the tide, and that he could not carry on doing so for very long. Ezekiel had been honest enough to inform him that the Jewish Agency’s objective was now to gain control over all the land that now corresponded to their part after the partition, as well as tell Wädi that he now had a more active role in the Haganah.

  “We have lots of reverses,” he had confessed. “Your al-Husseini is a good general.”

  He was. Wädi had to admit that it was difficult to find any faults in Abd el-Qadir’s intelligence or bravery, and that his personality won over everyone he met. Although he had lived his whole life among soldiers, his excellent education was also evident. He had studied at the American University in Cairo and wrote poetry. He was an aristocrat and the story of his family was the story of Jerusalem.

  It was a surprise for Wädi to find out, from the mouth of al-Husseini himself, that his cousin Rami was one of the men in charge of Kastel, the village from which his forces controlled the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.

  “You’re right, he is a great man,” Wädi said to his cousin Rami as he left his meeting with al-Husseini.

  “I’m so glad that you’re going to join us.” Rami seemed satisfied.

  “I will talk to my father and to Anisa.”

  “I understand your worries, your fear that you will be betraying Ben and Ezekiel if you join up, that you will be betraying all our friends at Hope Orchard,” Rami, who knew his cousin well, said.

  “It’s not that . . . Well, that’s not all of it.”

  “They have made up their minds without any problem, you know that Ben and Ezekiel are a part of the Haganah and that they will fight as much as they need to. They have their cause, we have our cause. It’s a shame for all of us that we should have to face off against each other, to think that at any point a bullet from one of us could be the one that takes the life of someone who was once our friend. But we did not choose for things to be this way. The Jews were not happy to live among us, they had to go and ask for their own country. It’s them or us.”

  “It shouldn’t be this way. We should be capable of living together.”

  “You are a poet, Wädi, and that is what spoils you.”

  “Al-Husseini is also a poet.”

  “Yes, but he’s a revolutionary as well.”

  Marinna would have liked to help Salma with the preparations for Wädi’s wedding, but she didn’t even offer. Salma and she had always kept their distance from one another, just as Mohammed and Igor did. Miriam went to the Ziads’ house from time to time, always ready to give Salma a hand. The two women got on well, and Mohammed felt a particular affection for Miriam—she had been Samuel’s wife, and Samuel had been more than a friend to the Ziads.

  It was cold in February in Jerusalem. In spite of the war that was bubbling over, many important figures in Jerusalem attended Wädi’s wedding. Some of them felt offended by the presence of Mohammed’s Jewish “friends.” Along with Miriam, and Ezekiel and Sara, Marinna and Igor also came, as did Ben, to congratulate the newly married couple. Louis had come from Tel Aviv with Mikhail and Yasmin (they had moved to the Jewish city a few months back).

  “We nearly didn’t make it,” Louis joked when he saw Mohammed. “We were shot at as we drove past Kastel.”

  “Whoever holds Kastel will hold Jerusalem,” Mohammed replied.

  “And for the time being it’s in our hands.” Rami had approached to say hello to Louis. He would have liked to tell him that it was he and his men who were making the passage between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem impossible. But he didn’t do so, because that would have been passing information to the enemy, for all that he found it hard to think of Louis that way.

  “Well, we need to solve that problem,” Louis said, hugging Rami.

  “What’s going to happen?” Louis asked Mohammed as soon as he found a moment to speak with him alone.

  “You have to accept the partition. The British will leave on May 14 and then the confrontations will become open warfare.”

  “Partition is a humiliation for the Arabs.” Mohammed spoke heavily.

  “We don’t want to humiliate you; we just want a patch of land to live on. We ca
n still avoid the war.”

  “I’m afraid not. There is not a single man who is not prepared to die for the land he was born on. Also, the partition has not taken reality into account: Whoever thought that Haifa was a Jewish city?” Mohammed looked into Louis’s eyes, looking for comprehension from his friend.

  “The partition could have been better conceived, but it has been done and we have accepted it. It’s a small patch of land and we have renounced sites that we consider sacred to our history; it hurts us, but we need to accept what we were given.”

  “Do you realize what the partition will cause?”

  “I am old, Mohammed, and I have no desire to fight. I would give my life if that could avoid there being any confrontation, but I would also give it to prevent the partition from being halted.”

  “So this might be the last time we see one another.”

  “I knew you as a child, and your father was like my older brother. I don’t know what he would have said about all of this . . . For a lot of us it breaks our hearts that this partition should separate us from our friends.” Louis’s voice was charged with emotion.

  “You wanted to have a border,” Mohammed said reproachfully.

  “We only want a little piece of land, it doesn’t matter how small it is. We are tired of wandering, tired of being treated as inferior beings, tired of being expelled from our houses, tired of allowing ourselves to be killed. We are tired, Mohammed.”

  They said nothing further. They shared the spiced lamb that Salma had made and remembered the pistachio cakes that Dina used to bake, and smoked the Egyptian cigarettes that they both liked so much.

  They said goodbye with an affectionate hug. They both seemed to know that this was the last time they would see each other.

  Mohammed didn’t know until a day later and grieved in silence as one grieves for a person one has loved. It was Marinna who came to his house, along with Ezekiel.

  The day after the wedding was February 15, and Louis, Mikhail, and Yasmin were preparing to return to Tel Aviv. Yasmin tried to convince her Aunt Miriam to come with her.