Fractured Destinies

by Rabai al-Madhoun

  “But you haven’t tried speaking Arabic with me,” I pointed out.

  “Because I only speak it a little. I’m from a previous generation, from the generation of the struggle, as we’re called by those from the generation of the historic peace agreement—or the ‘peacemakers,’ as the intellectuals among them like to style themselves. But if you spoke Arabic to any schoolboy, he would answer in proper Arabic.”

  The tele-bus approached the terminus, then slid smoothly and gracefully onto the ground-level platform inside a clean room that had been built of white Palestinian stone.

  We left the platform together and made for a large building containing several wings and offices. As I walked, I carried with me the question that I had put to the four taxi drivers without receiving any clear answer: Where is Deir Yassin? I put the question to Tala, who pursed her lips, lips worn out by chatter. This woman, who had just been speaking to me about a state for all and equal rights, didn’t want to talk about the village of Deir Yassin, and gave the impression she had never even heard of it. Was it because she belonged to a generation for whom the history of the country began with the proclamation of the establishment of the state of Israel on 15 May 1948, the start of the Palestinian nakba, and considered anything before that date to be a void, a black hole that gobbled up everything in existence?

  I pressed her: “Tala, if you don’t understand what happened at Deir Yassin and remember its lesson well, the ‘others’ won’t understand what happened to those victims at Yad Vashem.”

  At that moment, a woman came up to me from behind and asked me with a peasant’s stutter, “Do you want Deir Yassin, Hajj?”

  “Yes, madam. Do you know where it is?”

  “I come from Deir Yassin myself, sir, from the Darwish family. My name is Widad. But my mother is from the Zahran family. Her entire family perished in the massacre. The Jews killed them and piled them up on top of one another, children on top of grown-ups, women on top of men. There’s no trace of Deir Yassin now, not because the Jews destroyed it all that time ago, but because the site has become the memorial museum that we’re going to now. You’ll see it in a minute. I work there.”

  I looked around for Tala. I hadn’t heard her voice since the woman from Deir Yassin had appeared, and I couldn’t find her. She had disappeared as if she’d passed by in a dream, from which I was woken by Widad saying, “Here’s the memorial, sir. The museum’s behind it. That’s the side of it, you can see it from here.”

  I lifted my head, to be met with a sight that linked earth and sky as this world is linked to the next. I found myself facing a large memorial, whose base covered almost sixteen square meters, and which was about a meter and a half high. It had been designed in the shape of a four-sided rocket, which grew narrower the higher it went, until it turned into a thin line that disappeared into the sky. Starting from the body of the rocket, a moving beam of light rose up, showing, inside a rectangle of light, the name of a Palestinian martyr, which shone for a few seconds, then moved up, for its place to be taken by another name. And underneath each name appeared the date of birth and date of martyrdom.

  I continued to follow the names as they shone and rose upward. They had been arranged at random, reflecting the wish of the designers that everyone should be equal, with no distinction between those who had been martyred sixty years ago and those who had fallen victim to the latest Israeli raids on Gaza.

  The names followed one another, lighting up in my eyes and awakening my memory before ascending: Fatima Jumaa Zahran, Safiya Jumaa, . . . .

  Suddenly, Widad cried out, “These are all my relatives!” And she proceeded to repeat the names and to weep: “Fathi Jumaa Zahran, Fathiya Jumaa, Yusri, Fatima, Samiha, Nazmi, . . . .”

  A few moments later, Widad collected herself and said: “Don’t blame me, sir. Although I work here every day . . . I don’t know why today in particular all my grief has exploded.”

  I helped Widad with a couple of tears, and spoke to her kindly with words that matched her feelings. Then we walked away from the memorial together. In front of us, a short distance away, an enormous building could be seen, exuding power and splendor. It occupied the greater part of the hill opposite, the remainder of which was covered in thick forest. This was the museum, built to a sloping design on the edge of Mount Scopus, which rises to 780 meters above sea level. Its roof followed the shape of the slope itself, allowing anyone passing by the memorial to see its octagonal design and the eight Palestinian flags that fluttered over each of the corners.

  I asked Widad, “Since you’re from Deir Yassin, and work in the museum, can you tell me what your family said about the massacre? I know everything that’s in the books and on television, but I’d like to hear more.”

  We walked together along a long path, paved with red bricks, flanked by two stone walls about a meter high, on which had been placed equally spaced flowerpots with various sorts of roses growing in them. Parallel with the walls on both sides were rows of olive trees, spread out at intervals, which led up to the edge of the nearby hills to the east and west. The walls continued to rise up with the hill toward the enormous building, with twists apparently dictated by the natural environment—or perhaps whoever planned it had wanted to say that it had taken a lot of effort and required the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to get to the stage of allowing the establishment of a memorial museum for the Palestinians. I noticed that there were names and dates carved on the flowerpots. It was clear that these belonged to Palestinians who had fallen on the way to the contemporary Palestinian revolution at various times in a variety of places, either resisting the Occupation inside Palestine or during the various stages when the Resistance was dispersed.

  Before I could continue formulating my own explanations and commentaries on everything I saw, Widad said she would tell me everything she had heard, and that everything she would tell me was third-hand via her mother.

  “Honestly,” she said. “I don’t remember what happened. I wasn’t yet born. Anyway, this is what my mother told me, and she got it from her own mother, for she was only little herself. She said that after numerous clashes and quarrels, the people of Deir Yassin and the residents of the Giv’at Shaul settlement signed a non-aggression pact. The residents of Deir Yassin were gullible and acquiesced in the agreement, but it didn’t last long. The settlement that they had the pact with was the one from which the attack on them was launched on the morning of 9 April in the year of the nakba. A band of Irgun fighters led by Menachem Begin (may God send him to hell in his grave, wherever he’s buried) came down from the settlement and attacked the village . . . .”

  I interrupted her: “But God didn’t spare Begin, Widad. Aliza, his wife, died, and he was overcome with grief, which consumed him for ten years of his life before he died in 1993. They buried him near here, opposite the village which he and his group were responsible for destroying.”

  Widad went on. “My mother said that when my grandmother Zaynab left Deir Yassin, she was twenty years old, and my mother was only just four. They were all collected together in a family house. ‘Either we live together or we die together,’ they said. My mother heard from her mother that the massacre happened between 3:30 and 4 a.m. As the people fled in the direction of Ein Kerem, the attackers came down from above, from the hill, and a gang of Palmach fighters slaughtered twenty-seven people from the Zahran family—my husband’s family—immediately. They piled them up in front of the door to the house. My husband’s grandfather died with them. My husband’s father was a young boy, who was brought up in an orphanage in Jerusalem. My mother had two maternal aunts who also died, the sisters of my own grandmother, may God have mercy on them.”

  I told Widad that what she had said reminded me of The Remainer, and the novel to be published shortly, entitled Filastini Tays, by my relative Jinin Dahman. I recounted how The Remainer used to go to Old Jerusalem every Friday, reaching it an hour or two before the noon prayer. He would then walk in the streets an
d stroll in the bazaars until the time for the Friday prayer arrived, when he would head for the Haram al-Sharif (the Temple Mount). He would then catch a taxi to take him to the Giv’at Shaul B settlement. From there, he would walk in the direction of the ruins of Deir Yassin, passing the carob and almond trees, and stopping for a while at the cypress tree that remained there. He liked that particular tree. Whenever he reached it, he would embrace its trunk and kiss it, before going to pick up a large white piece of limestone, which he would take back beneath the tree. Then he would write on the stone in black paint the name of one of the victims of the massacre of Deir Yassin, and tell himself one of the terrible stories about it that he said had opened the way to the nakba, because everyone who heard what happened in Deir Yassin at that time left his home and fled. The Remainer did that regularly every Friday until he had written the names of more than a hundred and sixty victims, each name on a piece of stone, which still exist in the form of a small pyramid near the cypress tree.”

  “That’s a fabulous man, sir. There should be more like him. But didn’t they take the tree away some time ago while The Remainer was still alive?” she asked.

  “You mean, in the novel? I don’t know. I haven’t finished reading it all yet. But I have the impression that Jinin, if she leaves him alive, will plan a really fabulous ending for him, because he really is fabulous, as you said.”

  I woke, to find myself contemplating the opposite area, where the driver said that Deir Yassin was situated, but I could see only forests and a distant settlement — perhaps the Giv’at Shaul B they were talking about, or some other nearby settlement in the area. Immigration was creeping forward and swallowing things up everywhere, and the Palestinians were no longer able to keep up with or remember the names of the settlements. The settlers’ advance had no end.

  I turned right again, and finished my route by winding around, until I came back from the other direction to where the four drivers had been sitting. I remembered their eagerness for a passenger like me—a “Hajj,” as they had called me. I could only find one of them, so I asked him to take me to the Ramada Renaissance hotel, and he welcomed me as his four colleagues had done.

  8

  Jaffa

  As she embraced and kissed her on both cheeks, Julie told Jinin that she was more beautiful than in the novel I had introduced her to, with all its characters and events.

  “Of course. I’m the one who created Jinin,” replied Jinin, who was clearly pleased. “I can’t allow her to please the readers more than I do.”

  As the digger resumed its work, I interrupted to suggest a change of scenery, telling Julie and Jinin that I didn’t think a cup of coffee in Dina’s was worth this noise. They both agreed with me. Jinin suggested that she should take us in her car—which she had left near the street corner—on a tour to acquaint us with the principal sights in Jaffa, then take us to the fishing port. After that, we would go to the Citadel, where we would visit her house, before going to sample a Jaffa fish lunch—“which won’t yet have come out of the sea when we arrive,” as she put it—at the Old Man and the Sea restaurant.

  Our tour around the streets of the city didn’t last long, for there was not much to stop at, apart from Clock Square, the crowded flea market, the Abulafia restaurant (which had become one of the city’s main attractions, its fame overshadowing nearby Tel Aviv), and the al-Bahr mosque. We also stopped for a little while at the fishing port, before wandering through the lanes of the Citadel, many of whose houses and inside alleys appeared to have undergone restoration.

  At the end of a stone staircase, we came to a blue iron gate, which shut off an area no more than a meter wide, while forcing a man of medium height to stoop. “We’ve arrived!” exclaimed Jinin when we reached it. Julie and I looked at where we’d come to.

  A tall man with a pale complexion, apparently in his forties, who had retained much of his youthful handsomeness and agility—like the smile that he at once put on his lips—welcomed us from behind the blue gate. Jinin addressed him by name: “This is Mark Rosenblum, a Jewish millionaire. He bought this small complex, and wrote on the gate ‘Private Property.’”

  He opened the iron gate and welcomed us. “Welcome, guys,” he said in English.

  We shook hands with Mark, who introduced himself as being an artist and a sculptor, as well as a novelist. He led us to a small courtyard, the details of which seemed slightly familiar to me. A stone floor, of no particular geometrical shape and crooked edges, surrounded by a number of old two-story houses. Mark pointed to one of them and said, “Come, I’ll show you my little house inside. Come on, come on, it’s wonderful, you’ll like it a lot.”

  I went up to Jinin. “And where’s your own house?” I asked her.

  “Not so fast, cousin,” she replied. “I’ll take you there in a while.”

  Mark pointed to some apartments on the upper floor and others downstairs. He said that painters, sculptors, and other artists lived there, that the place was his, and that he had turned it into a residential area for creative artists.

  It looks as if these people have carved up the Jaffa Citadel among themselves, I said to myself, anticipating some imminent disaster.

  “This is a residential area, in fact,” Mark continued, “with families living in it, one here,” he pointed to an upstairs apartment, “and another family there. This unit is used as a gallery, a small exhibition space. Anyone who wants to live here has to be an artist. It’s an artists’ colony,” he explained, using the English expression.

  “You mean it’s a settlement?” I interrupted.

  “I’m sorry,” he corrected himself. “I meant to say ‘artists’ community.’”

  “And, of course, they’re all Jewish? Could someone like me live in a small apartment in this community? Or would I have to be a millionaire to get one?”

  “You don’t need to be a millionaire to live here,” he replied.

  The three of us wandered around with Mark. The place seemed quite extraordinary, and twice made Julie gasp in admiration. We then went over to his own apartment, on which he’d fixed a beautiful old door. He said he’d spent several years searching for one with its artistic specifications, until he’d come across one on a trip to India and brought it back from there.

  Inside the apartment, Mark had distributed a number of his extraordinary artistic works: a metal chandelier, sculptures, and other curiosities. Some large, rusty old keys had been thrown with an artistic touch on the edge of a stone seat beside the bed. As our eyes wandered over the things exhibited in the room, Mark gave us several pieces of information about the place and its contents.

  I examined the whole place, accompanied by the same strange feeling that I’d had ever since we’d crossed the small courtyard below. I felt sure that I’d already visited this house and wandered around it. My God, was I going mad? Had I really visited this place? Was I dreaming?

  The courtyard was just like the courtyard that Jinin described in Filastini Tays, where the elderly neighbor, Bat Tzion, painted. And here, in the house that Mark said was his house, was a bed in the same position as the couple’s bed. And that was the corridor leading to the kitchen. And there was the window that looked out to sea . . . .

  I turned excitedly toward Jinin and looked hard at her. I was by now convinced that there had been a deception on her part, which she had covered up. “Jinin, I’ve seen this house before!” I said confidently, straight out.

  “Isn’t it a surprise?” she replied. “This really is Mark’s house, Walid. I live in a different city, which we’ll visit if we still have time. Honestly, I borrowed the house to let Jinin and Basim live in it.”

  I followed where she was looking, and recalled Basim throwing his clothes onto the bed. I could see her enjoying his legs, hoping for a ‘take away,’ a light love feast, and not getting it. I smiled to myself, as she continued, “And this is my desk. How many times my head’s fallen on it from tiredness when I’ve been up late writing the novel!”

&
nbsp; “I got to know Jinin about two years ago,” Mark explained. “I met her by chance as she was wandering around the Citadel, and invited her to my house. She liked it a lot. She visited it three times after that, and remembered all its details.”

  “It helped me to find a suitable place to locate my characters,” Jinin added. “It suits everything I imagined about Basim and Jinin’s life together.”

  I felt at that moment that I was in the novel, and I liked what I felt. I walked toward the little window, sat on the chair next to it, and started looking at the little boats bobbing in the port, the gentle Jaffa waves behind them. I heard Mark say, “Would you like to move here? If you want to, I’ll help you with that.”

  Is this an actual offer or a provocation? I asked myself.

  He repeated the question. “Would you like to livehere?”

  “Mark, first and foremost, the matter depends on the Israeli authorities. My being of Palestinian origin makes my getting the right to residence complicated. And my having British citizenship doesn’t make things much easier.”

  “I’m not going to solve the Israel–Palestine problem; I’m Mark and I’m asking you: do you want to move here to live in Jaffa? To sit here, watch the sea, and write—to do in reality what Jinin did in her novel?”

  When I didn’t give him an answer, he continued, “You won’t buy or own the house, but you’ll be able to secure the right to live there as long as you’re an artist. The house belongs to the church, and the church can’t expel you from it, either. You can buy the right to live in it for ninety-nine years. In fact, none of us owns any of these houses.”

  I thanked Mark for hosting us, and for his offer, and then we left.

  On the way to the famous fish restaurant The Old Man and the Sea, I asked Jinin for news of the two Basims: the Basim of the novel, and the real Basim. She told me that the Basim of the novel would leave Jinin, and return to the USA. His wife would accompany him to the airport to spend his last moments in the country with him. They would embrace for a long time, and would part slowly, allowing time for Basim’s last words to her before he disappeared from her life forever: “Listen, my Junayna, I’ll tell you, this society isn’t ready for coexistence. It doesn’t want us to go to it, and it certainly doesn’t want to come to us. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”