Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  “Do you think that the Arabs and the Jews will be able to live together again one day?” Aya asked her as she dried her tears.

  “Only when too many people have died for one more death to be unbearable. Then the men will sit down to talk.”

  When hostilities broke out again on October 15, Mohammed and Wädi said goodbye to the women once again. They were returning to the battlefield.

  “Your wound is still not cured,” Salma murmured into Mohammed’s ear.

  He didn’t even reply. The night before, Salma had woken up screaming. She had had a dream in which she saw Mohammed dying in a pool of blood. For all that he tried to calm her down, Salma had not been able to go to sleep and had held onto her husband tightly, as if she wanted to protect him.

  “When will you come back?” Anisa asked Wädi.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I am worried about your father, he has grown old and your mother is worried about what might happen to him.”

  “No one can make him stay at home. He will fight until the last second of his life. He doesn’t want to die in any other way.”

  “But . . .”

  “Shush, Anisa, don’t encourage my mother’s fears. You know what my father says . . .”

  “Yes, I’ve heard him say it so often . . . ‘There are times in life when the only way to save yourself is by dying, or killing,’ but . . .”

  “Shush, Anisa, be quiet and look after yourself because our son will be born very soon. And . . . Well, if there is any trouble don’t hesitate to go over to Hope Orchard. Ezekiel and Marinna and Igor will protect you.”

  “How can you tell me to hide in the mouth of the wolf! You are going to fight the Jews and you ask me to go to them for refuge . . . I don’t understand you Wädi, just as I don’t understand your Aunt Aya . . .”

  “It’s difficult for you to understand, but all you need to know is that Ezekiel will never let anything happen to you.”

  “Because he owes you his life.”

  “There’s that as well.”

  Abder Ziad was born before he was expected, while Wädi, his father, was fighting against the Israeli forces. Anisa gave birth with only her mother-in-law Salma to help her.

  It was a long and difficult birth but Anisa was a nurse and with her knowledge and her mother-in-law’s experience they were able to bring Abder into the world.

  The two women cried with joy when the child started to wail.

  Ever since Aya had left, Marinna had not gone over to their house, and the next time she did, Abder was two weeks old.

  “You should have told me,” she complained to Salma.

  Salma was upset at this complaint. She had kept quiet for years, knowing that Mohammed was in love with Marinna, but at this moment she felt safe and strong and so she snapped back at Marinna:

  “I don’t need you to bring my grandson into the world.”

  Marinna realized that she was not welcome, that for all she and Aya had tried to resist, the world they had known was gone forever.

  “You’re right. I will go, I don’t want to be a nuisance or upset you, but if we can be of any use, ever, you know where to find us.”

  The joy at Abder’s birth was tempered with sadness at Mohammed’s death. At the beginning of November fate had turned once again in favor of the Israelis, who had taken control of all of Galilee, forcing the Syrian and Lebanese forces back to their borders. Wädi had fought in the north and his father had fought in the south. They heard nothing of each other, until one day one of Omar Salem’s men came to the front where Wädi was fighting to bring bad news: Mohammed had been killed, fighting in the Negev. They had not been able to recover his corpse, which had been lying in the middle of a pool of blood; but one of the men who was with him had managed to get some of his personal belongings, including the photograph of a woman. The photograph was covered in blood, which came from the wound near Mohammed’s heart. Wädi recognized the woman in the photograph instantly.

  Wädi went home with his face twisted by grief. His mother and his wife both realized that he was devastated.

  Salma went up to Wädi and Anisa did not dare hand Abder over to him.

  “Father is dead.”

  A scream that filled the room came from Salma’s lips. Little Abder started to cry in fright. Wädi embraced his mother, trying to console her.

  “He died fighting, as he wanted.”

  “Where . . . Where . . . ,” Salma managed to say.

  “In the south, in the Negev Desert.”

  Anisa joined in the tears of Wädi and Salma, sharing with them their pain at the death of Mohammed. Later Wädi took his son in his arms. Little Abder did not stop crying, caught up in the tears of the others.

  Wädi embraced his son and made a silent promise that no one would ever hurt him.

  “I want you to promise me that you will recover your father’s body,” Salma begged her son.

  Wädi could not make that promise. He would try, but he could not promise. Bodies had lain on that battlefield since the beginning of time, and the people who fought could barely manage to dig them a hasty grave.

  He said nothing to his mother or Anisa, but when night had fallen and the two women were asleep, he slipped out of the house. He had resolved to do what he had to do, so he walked quickly to Hope Orchard, ignoring the rain that was soaking everything.

  The light in the communal room showed that at least one person was awake.

  He knocked on the door a couple of times and when it opened he saw Igor.

  “I need to talk to Marinna,” he said without preamble.

  “I don’t know if she’s asleep, what do you want?”

  “I need to talk to her.”

  Igor seemed to be wondering whether to let him in, or to allow him to carry on getting wet under the heavy rain.

  “Come in,” he said eventually, his voice uncertain.

  Marinna came to him in a dressing-gown, her hair hanging down to her shoulders. She understood from Wädi’s look that they would need to be left alone.

  “Igor, could you let me speak to Wädi by myself?”

  Igor’s eyes sparkled with fury. He felt humiliated by Marinna’s request. He seemed to be about to refuse, but then he left the room without looking either of them in the eyes.

  “My father is dead,” Wädi murmured in a low voice.

  He saw her fall to her knees, covering her face with her hands to try to stifle the scream that fought to escape her throat. The same scream that Salma had let out earlier.

  He went over to her and made her get to her feet. He even hugged her as if she were his own mother.

  “He always loved you,” he said, and held out the blood-soaked photograph.

  Marinna took it and had to hold onto Wädi so as not to collapse again. It was a photograph of her when she was eighteen. She had given it to him as a present and she had not imagined that he would have kept it for so long, hiding it from Salma’s eyes and the eyes of all the people who surrounded him.

  Wädi turned and walked toward the door with a decided pace. There was nothing left for him to do or say. He promised himself that he would never again go to Hope Orchard.

  However, the worst was yet to come. In April 1949 Israel signed an armistice with the five Arab states with which it had fought. Jerusalem was included in the terms of the armistice. The Old City would remain under the jurisdiction of King Abdullah, while the State of Israel would keep the western part and the Mount Scopus enclave.

  The day the armistice was signed, Salma cried as she had never cried before. Her house was no longer in Palestine, but, being in the western part of the new Jerusalem, it was part of the State of Israel.

  Wädi no longer had any doubts about what they should do.

  “We will go, we will all go. I can’t accept the idea of being a strange
r in my own home. If we stay we will have to become Israeli citizens.”

  Anisa agreed. She, too, did not want to be a part of a country that was not her own. Suddenly the house where her son had been born was a part of a different country. They were taking not only her present away from her, but also her past.

  This time as they packed they made sure to keep all the memories they did not want to part with.

  They were loading Mohammed’s old truck when they saw Ezekiel coming. Wädi blocked his path.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I see that you’re going and I want to stop you from leaving. This is your house, this is your orchard, your farm, you don’t need to abandon it all.”

  “Maybe you are used to being strangers in what have been your own homes in other countries, but we will not accept it. We will come back, and when we return this land will be ours once again and will not have any name other than Palestine.”

  “Wädi, I owe you my life and I can’t bear there to be any bad blood between us.”

  “You stand here, taking charge of my own property and asking that there be no bad blood . . .”

  “This will always be your house, whatever happens. I swear that I will never allow anyone to step on your land.”

  “Go, please go, Ezekiel, allow us to say goodbye to what is ours,” Wädi begged.

  Ezekiel didn’t insist, and turned around to go back to Hope Orchard. He knew now that the rupture with the Ziads was inevitable, that he and Wädi were actors in a series of events that they did not control but which would lead them inevitably to confrontation.

  15

  The Second Catastrophe

  “Marian looked at Ezekiel, whose eyes were half closed. She was wondering if he might have gone to sleep when she felt him looking straight at her.

  “End of the story. I don’t need to tell you what happened next. You live where Hope Orchard used to be and the Ziads are in exile in Amman. May 14 was the Catastrophe, a catastrophe that still hasn’t finished.”

  “Wädi Ziad didn’t tell you anything else?” Ezekiel said, looking straight at Marian.

  “Yes, of course he told me more, but I don’t think it makes sense to go over the last sixty years. Thousands of Palestinians all piled up together, living a wretched life in refugee camps inside what used to be their homeland, others in exile, some who decided to start a new life and who are now scattered all over Europe, the United States, the Gulf . . . None of them has lost their hope of returning.” Marian’s answer held a challenge.

  “I understand that they have not lost their hope. For two thousand years we Jews have said, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’”

  “So the Palestinians will have their justice in two thousand years . . .” Marian’s voice was ironic and bitter.

  “We are now where we were in 1948, where we were when the powers-that-be decided that the only solution was partition and the creation of two states. They have to accept it.” Ezekiel seemed to be talking to himself.

  “I think that the situation is worse now. There are too many dead on both sides.”

  “No, it is not the dead, it is the interests of the living on one side, and the actions of others who do all they can to stop there from being a fair peace.”

  “There cannot be justice while Israel still violates international resolutions and carries on building settlements in places the United Nations has designated as belonging to the Palestinians.”

  “That’s what your report is about, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope that, as well as including Wädi Ziad’s point of view, you will take into account all that I have said to you over the course of our conversations. I imagine that it must have been interesting for you to hear the two parallel stories.”

  Marian shrugged. She felt suddenly tired and asked herself if it had made any sense to dedicate so many days and hours to hearing what this old man had to say. Wädi Ziad had told her to do so and she asked herself why.

  “You will not lose anything by listening to him,” Wädi had said, when she had told him about her long conversations with the Israeli. Yes, Ezekiel Zucker knew what suffering was, but his suffering was no more than Wädi’s was, nor was it more than that of other Palestinians who had had everything snatched from them, down to hope itself.

  “I would like you to tell me about what happened to the Ziads later on,” Ezekiel asked her.

  “Well, it’s not hard to imagine, their life was not different from that of so many other refugees. Nineteen forty-eight is the year of the Nakba, the Catastrophe, and there is not much to tell from that point onwards.”

  “No, Marian, we cannot put an end to the story here, you know we cannot.”

  “There’s no sense carrying on these conversations . . .”

  “Please, carry on, there’s not much left . . .”

  Marian wanted to say no, that she wouldn’t carry on with the story, but she didn’t, and instead she unwillingly continued.

  Wädi and Anisa got to Jericho, where they stayed at Naima’s house for a while. His sister was glad that he was alive.

  Târeq, Naima’s husband, invited Wädi to work with him.

  “You have to earn your living somehow, and I need someone I can trust. Your sister would be glad if we worked together.”

  But Wädi rejected the generous offer his brother-in-law had made. He wanted nothing other than to be a teacher and was prepared to return to Jerusalem. The pause in Jericho was simply a halt on the journey, to help cure the wounds to his soul. He would return with Anisa and his son to Jerusalem. He did not know what had happened to Brother Agustín, but he had decided that he would give classes in the improvised school and work once again for Mr. Moore in his print shop if his employer had not fled the Old City.

  He would leave Anisa with his sister Naima and when he had a place to live he would go and find her. He did not want Anisa or little Abder to lack for anything. They didn’t have much, but it was enough to begin a new life.

  “Palestine no longer exists,” Anisa said sadly.

  She was right. Palestine no longer existed, some of it was a part of Transjordan, the rest of it was in Israel. The borders would move again, but they would not give birth to Palestine once more.

  Wädi found a modest house close to Brother Agustín’s school, about a hundred yards from the Damascus Gate leading into the Old City. The friar was alive and had not abandoned Jerusalem.

  His four sons were born and brought up in Jerusalem and they lived there until 1967 when the Israelis took control of the whole city and impelled them into a new period of exile, which this time led them to Amman.

  The relationship between the Ziads and the family of Abdullah went back to the time when Mohammed had fought cheek by jowl with Faisal and Abdullah had himself been chasing the dream of a greater Arab nation, so Wädi felt almost as close to Transjordan, soon to be renamed the Kingdom of Jordan, as he had to Palestine. Anisa did not share this feeling.

  “The victors in this war were the Jews and Abdullah,” she complained to Wädi.

  “King Abdullah is the most sensible of all the Arab leaders and the only one who will not betray us,” Wädi replied.

  Brother Agustín shared Anisa’s opinion.

  “Abdullah has increased his kingdom at the price of taking land from Palestine.”

  “Don’t be wicked, the troops of King Abdullah fought with greater bravery than those of the rest of the army who said they were going to help us. Also, they kept the Old City for the Arabs. Jerusalem is ours,” was Wädi’s normal response.

  “Jerusalem is his; also, the Jews are in charge of the western part, exactly where your house was, where your farm was, where your grandparents are buried,” the friar replied. He did not feel any warmth toward the Israelis.

  Omar Salem, who had also survived the war, was still one of t
he most prominent men in Jerusalem. Wädi did not share his ideas, but he couldn’t forget that Omar Salem had been a friend of his family, so every now and then he accepted his invitation to visit his house and discuss the future along with other men.

  The main point of contention between Omar Salem and Wädi was the man who had been the mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini. Wädi disapproved of al-Husseini because of his support for Hitler during the war, but in Omar Salem’s eyes the mufti had done nothing more than defend Palestine from its Jewish aggressors. This is why Omar Salem thought that it was an insult for Abdullah to name Sheikh Hussam ad-Din Jarallah the mufti of Jerusalem.

  Wädi never hid his sympathy for the Jordanian king, and did not see this as contradicting his desire that Arab Palestine should be a nation. And so, on the day that Abdullah was assassinated, Wädi felt it as deeply as if he had lost a member of his family.

  It was a Friday, that day in June 1951, and the king had decided to pray on Temple Mount. His grandson Hussein, who would later become king himself, would remember that on that very day his grandfather had said some premonitory words: “When I die, I should like to be shot in the head by a nobody.”

  Wädi was on his way to the al-Aqsa Mosque when he heard a dull noise followed by shouting. He started to walk more quickly, but some Jordanian soldiers blocked his path. A few meters beyond them lay the corpse of the king. A tailor, a simple tailor had taken Abdullah’s life. No one would remember his name, but he was called Mustafa Shukri Usho.

  Such was the surprise and shock at that moment that only one person tackled the assassin, and that was a child, Hussein, the king’s grandson.

  The murder shocked Wädi and all those who supported the Hashemite family.

  After this, life returned to its routine until the Six-Day War in 1967 provoked a second catastrophe. The Arab states that had tried to create an Arab Palestine once again failed in their attempt. They were summarily defeated by the Israel Defense Forces, in a war that took only six days and led to the capture by the Israelis of the whole of Jerusalem.