by Rula Jebreal
Fatima understood what he was proposing, and it was exactly what she wanted to do. She felt that she had a mission to fulfill, a purpose whose accomplishment would make her life worthy of being lived. She no longer wanted to treat bodies wounded in battle; she wanted to prevent them from being wounded. She wanted to strike at the enemy’s heart.
Fatima never asked herself, neither before nor after the attack, whether intentionally planning the deaths of the people, many of them Israeli soldiers crowded inside a movie theater, was an effective means of promoting the liberation of her people. The only thing that counted for her was avenging the profound injustice to which her people was subjected.
She spent a long time planning the attack with Maher and five other men, all between the ages of twenty and twenty-six. Safe inside the walls of the Old City, they had daily meetings over a period of several weeks, gathering on the roof of a different house each evening, with one of them acting as a lookout. At first their plan was to print and distribute flyers, but Fatima persuaded them that such a course of action was ineffectual and probably would just get them arrested. Without batting an eye, she told her comrades, “The only language they understand is violence. It’s the only message we can send that is capable of making them see that we exist and that this struggle will continue.”
“But, Fatima, what you’re saying goes way beyond our usual activity. We—all of us here—we are not soldiers. We distribute flyers.” The speaker was a young man whom Fatima, the only woman in the group, had intimidated with her confidence.
“Propaganda hasn’t worked,” she replied. “We’ve put out propaganda for years, and here we are, still licking our wounds. We need to create panic—there’s no other way. We have to hit them in their daily activity, just as they do to us.”
After a few weeks, Fatima became the leader of the group, and lengthy discussions of possible targets and technical matters began in earnest. She was certain that a military attack was the only appropriate response to the cycle of violence that was drenching their land with blood. She knew that the military supremacy of the Israeli army would doom any uprising or attack on it to failure, so in the end she chose a civilian target, the Zion movie theater in West Jerusalem, an establishment frequented almost exclusively by members of the Israeli armed forces, particularly in the evening. This decision set off another animated debate, and once again Fatima offered an unequivocal response.
“Look, boys, think of it this way: when the Israeli bombs fall on our heads, they strike civilians and soldiers indiscriminately, and the tanks in the refugee camps almost always run over our children.”
It took more than a month for the bomb to arrive from Lebanon.
On October 8, 1967, Fatima, carrying a purse full of explosives, entered the Zion theater, mingling with the prostitutes who frequented it, and left after a quarter of an hour, so as not to arouse suspicion. At their last meeting she had told her comrades, “I know we’re going to be asking ourselves for the rest of our lives whether or not this was a just thing to do. But the Israelis must understand that until the day we’re free in our own country, they won’t be free in theirs.” The bomb didn’t go off.
Fatima didn’t flee to Jordan. One week after the failed attack, she and the rest of her group were detained as a result of testimony given by the cashier at the movie theater. The five young men refused to name Fatima as their leader, and she, too, rejected every accusation until the police finally arrested her entire family. Then she was compelled to confess in order to obtain her family’s release. Her trial concluded with her being sentenced to imprisonment for two life terms plus eleven years for refusing to stand in court. She was the first Palestinian woman to be arrested for political reasons.
She was also the only Arab prisoner and the only political prisoner in a jail full of women. Prostitutes, murderers, thieves, and regular criminals—they assiduously avoided her at every turn. Fatima read a great deal, as she always had, realizing that even if a book couldn’t change the world, at least it had the power to make prison walls disappear. Some nights she would read Samih al-Qasim in the moonlight:
From the window of my small cell
I can see trees smiling at me,
Roofs filled with my people,
Windows weeping and praying for me.
From the window of my small cell
I can see your large cell.
In her nocturnal moments of anguish, she sought refuge in memories of her childhood, when wishful dreams and fond illusions could still lull her to sleep.
2
The bus proceeds slowly, immersed in the blinding light of noon. It’s filled with kids in various school uniforms and workers wearing stained overalls and worn-out shoes. Fatima is on her feet, holding on to one of the supports. Other people get on the bus at the next stop, and now it’s really crowded. There’s a noticeable odor, pungent and nauseating.
The girl sitting in front of her has fallen asleep; her mouth is half-open, and she’s clutching a handbag to her chest. The bus brakes suddenly, making the passengers lurch forward and then back. The girl’s bag opens and a book falls out. Fatima stoops to pick it up; it’s a volume of art history. She gazes at one of the illustrations. It shows a beautiful woman, completely nude, standing on a large seashell. Her skin is milky, her head tilts toward one shoulder, and a winged figure exhales a wind that gently tousles her long blonde hair. On the woman’s left, a nymph offers a cloak. Behind her, the ocean’s horizon is lost in the blue of the sky. The girl wakes up. Fatima hands her the book and smiles. For an instant, the world seems to be in harmony with the image in the book, even inside that crowded bus, on the bumpy streets of Jerusalem, with its white houses piled one on top of another and the Mount of Olives in the background.
Then the cell door opens with the grating metallic sound that awakens her each morning.
Fatima eased into consciousness, her head still full of the painting she had dreamed about. After a moment, she raised her upper body a little to see which guard was on duty. But the door had closed again, and Fatima found herself looking at a tall, slender young woman with full lips, light brown eyes that almost seemed yellow, and long, straight black hair. “But there’s no room for Venus in this tormented land,” Fatima thought. “This is where beauty dies.”
Without much enthusiasm, she said hello to her new cell mate, turning on her side and resting her head on her pillow.
Nadia gave a slight nod, her only response, and then quickly clambered up to the top bunk. After a few seconds, however, she came down again, walked over to the water basin, observed its contents with a certain disgust, and asked how often they changed the water.
“It depends,” Fatima replied.
“Depends on what?”
“On the guards. Look, everything in here’s like that, more or less. Your best course is to get used to it,” Fatima concluded, sitting on the edge of her bed.
Nadia shrugged, but a brief smile crossed her lips. She felt an immediate sympathy for this short, compact woman with frizzy hair, green military trousers, and a flat nose that added an element of character to her face.
Their differences provided the glue that held them together, a friendship born in a prison where they were the only Arab women and where, moreover, one of them had been arrested for political reasons. By a sort of alchemy whose deeper workings remained a secret to both of them, unaccustomed as they were to sharing confidences with strangers, it took them only a few days to understand that they could trust each other. They quickly began to unburden themselves, and when they could find no words to explain their meaning, a look or gesture would suffice. And so they discovered that during the very period when Nadia had begun to work as a waitress at the restaurant in Jaffa, Fatima was gradually drawing closer to political activism. Their worlds were far apart, but they had both ended up inside the confined space of a prison cell, and in their months of forced cohabitation the wariness that had enveloped their two existences subsided. Both of the women, b
ut particularly Nadia, found that it was possible to look at the past in a new light.
“Weren’t you afraid?” Nadia asked one day, when Fatima was telling her about the attempted attack.
“No, not for a minute. It was like this, Nadia: Fear wasn’t an emotion I could feel, because I basically didn’t care about anything, including my own life. The only thing that counted was the success of our plan—I couldn’t see past that.”
Nadia stared at her new friend, amazed. It was the first time she had ever met anyone so involved in the Palestinian cause. Nadia had never considered herself either an Arab or an Israeli, and the vagaries of politics had made little or no impression on her. And here she was now, in the company of a woman who had given everything she had for something whose necessity Nadia couldn’t even see. What most fascinated her about Fatima was her fearlessness, especially her indifference to her own fate. Nadia wasn’t all that attached to her own life either, but the difference was that if she were to risk it, it certainly wouldn’t be while fighting for a cause. Except, perhaps, for her own cause, which was her personal freedom.
“It was so hot, my hair was plastered to my forehead,” Fatima said, continuing with her story.
Attracted by the discovery of a world she knew nothing about, Nadia again concentrated on Fatima’s words.
“The air was heavy with the smell of sweat, tobacco, and stale perfume. Everything was shabby, and whiffs of filth and garlic kept cutting through the other smells. Before he handed me my ticket, the cashier gave me a quick glance, and then he said it would be a good evening for me, that the place was packed with guys eager to spend their money. I said I was glad to hear it, and that I didn’t doubt they had money to spend. I saw him turn and look at me out of the corner of his eye. When I entered the theater, nobody inside noticed me—everyone’s attention was fixed on the screen, where a young blonde was being molested in a bed in her dream. Those excited soldiers couldn’t have imagined that in a few minutes they would be protagonists in another film altogether.”
Fatima paused briefly and then began again: “After about fifteen minutes, I left my bag under my seat and walked out of the theater.” She took a sip of water before describing what was to be one of the proudest moments of her life. “As I was walking away, I waited for a big boom. And I waited another fifteen minutes. People began to run out of the theater. I stayed where I was. I saw the police arrive, and then the cashier talking to them.”
“The one who sold you the ticket,” said Nadia.
“Yes, it turned out that he noticed me leaving and found the bomb under my seat. He called the police. He gave them my description, and it didn’t take them long to identify me and arrest me.”
Nadia couldn’t believe that anyone could feel such blind hatred for someone they didn’t know. It was different for her; she had felt the same hatred, had nourished the same thoughts of revenge, but her rage had been directed at a precise individual, one she knew well and who had robbed her of childhood.
“I didn’t think of them as men anymore, Nadia,” Fatima explained. “I saw them as soldiers. They symbolized the injustice that was being inflicted on us. You see, Nadia, military occupation is a fierce monster. It slowly extinguishes your dreams, your hopes, and even your future. And gradually it changes who you are.”
Weak light filtered through the narrow window of the cell. The evening must have already turned to morning. Nadia had begun telling her story after lunch, sitting on the lower bunk next to Fatima, who listened with a frown on her face the whole time as Nadia told her about the abuse she had been subjected to, about her mother, about her later meeting with her sister, and then about her search for freedom and her refusal to have sustained relationships with men.
Fatima saw in Nadia a strong woman who was at the same time fragile and delicate. She was oppressed by her past, not only because of the physical violence she’d experienced, but also because of all the constraints that had been imposed on her. She had learned to react in the only kind of language that had been taught to her since her birth: instinct mixed with anger. Even in prison she took great risks, on many occasions, by demonstrating intolerance for authority, which didn’t go over well with the guards.
Nadia fell asleep leaning against the peeling wall of the cell, her head inclined to one side. Fatima watched her for a moment in the semidarkness: Nadia’s slimness and well-toned muscles made her look energetic. Her beauty made her radiant despite the brutal punishments life had dealt her.
The next day, she told Fatima the rest of her story, beginning with her journey to Tel Aviv.
3
A couple of months after she arrived in Tel Aviv, Nadia began to feel at ease. The city was very lively, filled with shops and new buildings. There were restaurants, bistros, and movie theaters everywhere, and the streets were alive with people, day and night, so much so that she felt as though she were in one of those Western cities she often heard about, places where carefree people enjoyed themselves in nightclubs and danced in discotheques. She had made many friends, and she was seeing several men. She felt free to do whatever she liked, and this, to her way of thinking, meant she had already scored a major victory. At the same time, however, she knew that this relatively serene phase of her life would not last long. Her moods were as unstable as the breezes on the city’s water front, which in the morning blew from the sea to the land and in the afternoon from the land to the sea. Nadia had many men, but no serious relationship. “As far as I’m concerned, any stable bond is a potential source of prohibitions, frustration, and contempt,” she explained to Fatima. She didn’t want any man to have control over her life.
To earn as much money as before, Nadia had started giving belly dancing lessons in her home. A friend of hers, an older Israeli woman named Yael, suggested that she perform in her husband’s nightclub, which was one of the most fashionable spots in the city, frequented by rich businessmen on their travels and by some of the most high-profile people in the country.
It was a very welcoming, tastefully furnished place, softly illuminated by light filtering from valuable, chased lanterns, with an inlaid ceiling and red velvet sofas covered with silk pillows. Before long Nadia’s beauty and rebellious nature; her deep, elusive eyes; and her sinuous, assured movements made her the chief fascination of the club. While she danced, moving among the tables, she liked to feel the customers’ eyes on her, with their heavy burden of desire. Many of them left her generous tips, but if anyone touched her or even grazed her, or if someone made a proposal she judged improper, she would make a sign and the offender would be swiftly ejected from the nightclub. The owner let her have her way, even though his customers were the most influential men in the city. He didn’t want to lose his main attraction.
While dancing one evening, Nadia noticed a young man whose eyes remained fixed on her the entire time. At the end of the show, he invited her to have a drink at his table, and contrary to her usual policy, Nadia accepted. Maybe the decisive factors had been his gentle manners and his eyes, which reminded her of a child’s. Beni—short for Benyamin—told her he was a Catholic businessman from Nazareth. When the nightclub closed, they made a date for the next day.
In the following months, she became more relaxed, abandoning her wary attitude, and attempted to leave behind her longstanding distrust of men. She seemed finally to have found a little peace. After her show, she no longer remained holed up in her dressing room with the lights dimmed, listening to tragic songs and emptying bottles of arrack until the nightclub closed. Instead, she would change quickly and join Beni at his table, the same one where she had seen him for the first time. Together they wandered around the city’s markets or traveled to cities and countries she had never seen. Beni showered her with jewelry, clothes, and gifts, while Nadia’s body responded generously to his attentions.
One evening the owner of the nightclub, who had grown fond of Nadia as if she were his own daughter, noticed that she seemed glum. She denied it, claiming that she felt
fine, that nothing was wrong. She danced even better than usual, and her looks were so darting and evasive that the customers sat in silence for a long time at the end of her performance, still intrigued by her movements, which seemed to belong to another world.
Without even changing into her normal clothes after the show, Nadia went over to Beni’s table, where he was smoking a cigar, and sat down. The other customers watched them with curiosity and envy.
“I’ve been waiting all day to tell you, Beni. I’m pregnant. We didn’t plan for this, but I’m so happy!”
Beni, who was inhaling a mouthful of smoke, started coughing. For a few moments he stared silently at Nadia, as though trying to decipher what she had just told him.
“And you? Are you happy, too?” she asked him, trying not to see the turmoil in his face.
“Of course, of course it’s good news,” he finally managed. “It’s just that you’ve taken me by surprise, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting it.”
Nadia’s face lit up. “Then tomorrow we’ll celebrate.”
That same evening, Beni spoke to his family about his love for Nadia. He told them everything: that she was a Muslim, that she was a dancer, and that she was pregnant. As far as Beni’s family was concerned, the most troubling aspect of the affair was the young woman’s profession. They could accept that she was a Muslim, and they could accept that she was expecting a baby, but a belly dancer would bring the family dishonor.
That night was an exceedingly long one for Beni. Torn between his love for Nadia and his love for his family, he made his decision and never went back on it.
