Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

When Yunes got back, he found everyone eating. He was hungry, but he didn’t eat. He put his hand out, and before the food reached his mouth, he threw it down and said, “We’ll attack on our own.” There followed a long, noisy, involved discussion about military plans, but there was no plan. Only Yunes’ blind father said, “There’s no hope. Everything’s lost.” People saw the tears falling from his closed eyes while the gathering broke up without a decision. That night everyone slept like the dead, even those who’d taken it upon themselves to act as guards; in the face of the despair, the fear, and the hunger, only the door of sleep remained open.

In the morning, the two women were struck by something resembling madness.

They were discussing ways of getting water from the spring, when suddenly a hubbub arose and everyone saw Nahilah and Reem leaving.

Nahilah said she couldn’t take it any longer.

Reem said death would be more honorable.

The women set off behind them. Abu Is’af and Khalil Suleiman Abd al-Mu’ti tried to stop them, but they were like a torrent sweeping everything in its path.

“At the outskirts of the village, we started to fire. We attacked without a plan. We were running and firing at random. It wasn’t a battle, it was like a Bedouin brawl, and we found ourselves in the village with the Jews gone. A few of our people were dead, first among them, Reem’s Hassan. I can’t describe the battle because it wasn’t a battle, it was a charge. We were back into the village in less than an hour. Afterward we found out that Dandan’s group of Yemeni and Iraqi volunteers in the ALA had mutinied against their commander when we started our attack and opened fire from their positions at Tal al-Layyat, deluding the Jews into thinking there was a coordinated attack. Then Dandan and his men came to join us, after they’d been thrown out of the army.”

Yunes said that when he met Abu Is’af more than twenty years later, he was astonished to hear the Sha’ab garrison leader’s version of the story.

“Abu Is’af is more than a brother to me. Being comrades in arms is something time can’t erase, as you know well. Your comrade in arms can turn up, after twenty years, and you discover he still has his place in your heart. Abu Is’af came and we sat and drank tea, and the conversation took us back to ’48.

“He said the Israelis threw white powder into the square at Sha’ab as they withdrew, that they set fire to it to frighten us. When he saw the fire, feeling that he couldn’t bear one more retreat, he threw himself into it and discovered that it was just flames.

“I remember things differently – the fire started when they occupied the village, not when they withdrew. But that’s not important.

“Abu Is’af knew very well that I was the military official in charge of the whole South Lebanon sector, but he still treated me as though I were a junior officer, raising his hand and expecting me to be silent, like in ’48.

“I was silent so as not to upset him. After all, Abu Is’af is truly dedicated to the struggle, and I respect him immensely. When we disagreed over the flame powder, and he started to get upset, I lied and claimed he was right. I recounted how I had followed him, how I, too, had thrown myself into the flames. I let him tell whatever stories he liked in front of his sister and grandchildren – how he caught on fire himself and how all the other fighters did the same, and this terrified the Jews.”

“We were like demons,” said Abu Is’af, “like demons that spring from the heart of a fire, and they fled, leaving their arms on the battlefield.”

I ASKED YOU about the woman of Sha’ab, and you told me about the flames. Fine, but now I want a clear explanation of why you said that Sha’ab didn’t fall.

What did happen?

What were you doing there?

“The truth,” said Yunes, “is that after we’d liberated the village, we buried the four martyrs and met on the threshing floor. We decided that the women, children, and old men should leave and that only the militiamen should stay. Everyone agreed. In the morning, all the women, old men, and children left, except for my father and mother, and Nahilah.

“My father said he’d never go, that he was going to stay so he could conduct prayers. And my mother said she’d never leave him. And Nahilah stayed with the two of them. Then we learned that many of the older men had stayed behind secretly, or had come back secretly.

“That’s how Sha’ab became a den for fighters and a retreat for old people – about two hundred fighters and more than a hundred old men and women.

“We waited for three months, the women coming into the village at night to get provisions. We stood guard, awaiting a major offensive, but they launched only limited attacks. The first was on July 27, the day after the liberation of the village. The attacks continued through August and September, but I can’t say there was even an all-out invasion. They’d open fire without any real attempt at advancing. We provoked them into fighting on several occasions, even though our ammunition was low. Then we withdrew.”

You withdrew, just like that, for no reason?

“No, we withdrew because it became impossible to stay any longer. On November 29, 1948, the Jews bombed Tarshiha from the air. Then the bombardment expanded to include al-Jish and al-Bqei’a, and the ALA began its withdrawal to Lebanon. Jasem came to Sha’ab and said, ‘Friends, they’ve betrayed us all. The Sha’ab garrison must withdraw before they close the Lebanese border.’ We realized that everything had collapsed.

“That day, Abu Is’af made the decision and said, ‘We’ll withdraw. If everyone else withdraws and we’re left on our own, it won’t work.’ He said, ‘We’ll go now, then come back.’

“I told him, ‘If we go, we’ll never come back.’

“‘What do you suggest?’ he asked.

“‘Nothing,’ I said.

“He said, ‘We’ll withdraw, then come back.’

“So we withdrew. All the fighters withdrew with their arms.

“But the old people refused to withdraw.

“Hussein al-Fa’our, who was to die later in the mud of Zabbouba, said, ‘Take your arms and go. We’re going to stay in our village. They can’t do anything to us. We’re old people; they have nothing to gain by killing us.’

“But they killed them.

“Nahilah told me about the massacre of the old people in the village and how the Israeli officer called Avraham came in and ordered them all to gather near the pond. He stood among them like an officer inspecting his troops, as though they were a military lineup. He even ordered al-Hajj Mousa Darwish, who was disabled, to be brought from his house. It was his wife’s fault. She told the Israeli officer she’d left her husband in the house because he was disabled. She told him about her husband because she was afraid they were going to blow up the houses, as they’d done in al-Birwa. The officer ordered her to get him. She said she couldn’t carry him on her own and a man volunteered to help her, but the officer waved his rifle in his face and said no. She went on her own and came back dragging her husband along the ground. She wept as she dragged him. The woman was dragging her husband and the officer was smiling, pleased with himself. We could see his white teeth. There was something strange about the whiteness of his teeth. When the woman had brought her husband to the officer, al-Hajj Mousa Darwish gave a loud snort, black liquid gushed from his mouth, and he died.

“The officer saw nothing; it was as if he hadn’t seen the man die. Instead he started pointing at various men. Anyone the finger pointed to had to move to the other side. He chose about twenty old men. Then he pointed at Yunes’ blind father. The man didn’t see the finger, so the officer pulled out his revolver. Yunes’ mother screamed ‘No!’, went over to her husband, and led him to where the others stood before returning to her place. A truck came and the officer ordered them to get in. My mother ran up and took hold of my father’s hand and explained that he was blind.

“‘Get back, woman,’ the officer yelled.

“Nahilah ran over, her son in her arms, and took told of the blind sheikh’s hand.

“‘Get back, all of you,’ shouted the officer.

“They didn’t get back. They took my father and went back to the pond where most of the people were, and the truck set off. The Israelis started firing over the heads of the people, who scattered into the fields looking for new villages or the Lebanese border.

“The story of Zabbouba, my son, is the real embodiment of our tragedy,” said Yunes.

No more was heard of the twenty men that the officer’s finger had put onto the truck until Marwan al-Fa’our appeared in Lebanon. Marwan al-Fa’our was the only one to survive what we would later come to call the Massacre of the Mud.

Marwan al-Fa’our told of the rain.

“It was a diluvial downpour and the truck forged through it. We reached Zabbouba, close to Jenin on the Jordanian border. They made us get down from the truck, ordered to us to cross to the Arab side, and started firing over our heads.”

It was a march of rain, death, and mud.

The mud covered the ground, and the rain was like ropes. Cold, darkness, and fear. Twenty men walking, sliding, grabbing at the ropes of rain hung down from the sky and falling down. They’d try to rise, and they’d get stuck in the mud.

Twenty men hanging onto ropes of rain, sobbing and coughing, trying to walk but sliding and sticking in the mud.

The mud was like glue.

They stuck to the ground. They fell and the mud swallowed them.

The ropes of water falling from the sky began to turn to mud.

And the dying started.

That’s how the men of Sha’ab died in the Massacre of the Mud, which took place on a certain day in December of ’48.

The Sha’ab garrison congregated and withdrew in orderly fashion in the direction of the Lebanese border.

The detachment commanded by Dandan, however, left them and joined the Yemenis concentrated in the hills of al-Kabri, where the last battle took place and all the Yemenis and Iraqis died. That was where Dandan, and Abdallah, and al-Mosulli died.

The Sha’ab garrison congregated at Beit Yahoun and Ain Ibil and started making forays from Jesr al-Mansourah.

An army unit surrounded them, disarmed them, and ordered them to join the Ajnadayn Brigade near Damascus. There they were put in prison.

Yunes came to the Ain al-Hilweh camp from the prison, stood up, and screamed among the tents, “We’re not refugees!”

The rest you know, Father.

Shall I tell you the rest? Why should I tell you when you already know everything?

On the other hand, you don’t know what happened to Abd al-Mu’ti.

Abd al-Mu’ti died yesterday, here in the hospital. He breathed his last after suffering an angina attack. We tried to treat him, but he died.

What can you do for a man of seventy who’s decided to die? Let him go – it’s better for him and for us. We tried to save him, but in vain. “It was the will of God Almighty.”

When they brought him in, he was having a hard time breathing, opening his mouth as though there weren’t enough air, or as though his spirit were seeking a way out of his body.

A new booby trap for me, I thought, because Sha’ab men refuse to die. Then I remembered you are not from Sha’ab, which meant that he wasn’t like you and so wouldn’t repeat this drama. On top of that, I realized he wasn’t a relative of yours, as I’d first thought based on your resemblance. Actually, you don’t look alike at all; but you old men all become infants again – you all resemble each another at first glance, but the resemblance is only in our heads.

Abd al-Mu’ti died and took his story with him.

He was like a broken record when it came to his towering courage during the long siege of the Shatila camp. And you were the reason, because you – I don’t know why you took such pleasure in that story of the nuclear bomb that you made up with the Lebanese woman journalist to break the siege of the camp.

I wasn’t in the camp for the entire siege because I’d been given the mission of going out for antibiotics, which we needed desperately, and when I came back I found that the routes into the camp had been closed off once and for all. That was the day I met Shams, in our office in the Mar Elias camp, and she took over the mission. She said she could get things in through her private network, and she took the antibiotics and disappeared. Then I learned that she’d entered the camp and had stayed there for about two months, leaving again after a dispute with its military commander, Ali Abu Toq. It was after she left the camp that our love began. She’d come to Mar Elias, sit with us in her uniform, draw maps and talk about her impossible plans for breaking the siege of Shatila. That was when my passion was ignited. I didn’t make a declaration or a move. I just waited. When she would come, that burning passion that erupts from deep inside the rib cage would hit me and cut off my breathing. It seems she noticed, because she behaved like she’d noticed. At the time I thought she was trying to convey her lack of interest, but I found out later that this sort of sideways way of showing interest was her way. She’d glance at me obliquely, as though desire had made its abode in the corners of her eyes.

My love for Shams started with the antibiotics, in Mar Elias. I didn’t run away during the siege, as was said; I was on a mission. And anyway, when I came back, no one looked on me as a traitor. The camp had been wiped out, and none of the siege fighters were left. Even Shams refused to stay in Shatila and joined the fighters of Ain al-Hilweh, using a village east of Sidon as her base.

I didn’t return to the camp because I was afraid to take part in the fighting in Maghdousheh but because I’d lost any desire for war. War is an urge, as you used to say. You said that war burned inside you and you couldn’t wait for the Arabs to complete their military arrangements so you joined Fatah, and fought the way you wanted to.

In those days I didn’t like fighting anymore. What was I supposed to do east of Sidon? Plus why continue with the war of Lebanon when it wasn’t a war anymore? I will never say, as you do, that it wasn’t ever a war, that it was a trap we set with our own hands and fell into. I disagree. We got into the civil war in Lebanon because all roads were closed to us and because it was our duty to bring the world down on the heads of its masters. That’s what I believed in ’75. But after the fall of Shatila in ’87 and our conversion into bands fighting around Sidon, I was no longer convinced.

Abd al-Mu’ti was different.

His war urge never died.

During the siege, when the camp was surrounded by men from the Amal movement, when everyone was on the verge of collapse, Abd al-Mu’ti picked up his Czech rifle and hunkered down in one of the forward positions. The young fighters felt sorry for him being so old, but he was as alert as an ape. The years had left no trace on his well-defined body, white moustache, and bald head. His rifle fire used to reassure us because it signified that we were still capable of resistance.

Abd al-Mu’ti said he fought so they wouldn’t give him another “sun-bath.”

Before we get into “sunbathing,” do you remember what Abd al-Mu’ti did during the siege?

You were all cut off and half-starved and your morale was pitiful. So Abd al-Mu’ti decided to use his secret weapon. He telephoned the Agence France Presse office in Beirut and talked to a woman, asking her to repeat her name several times before he gave her the news. He said he wanted to be sure of her identity. She said her name was Jamila Ibrahim and that she was Lebanese, from Zahleh.

You listened to him stupefied. He made up a story about a meeting to be held by the fighters in the camp to discuss the situation. He said that the fighters had decided to ask a religious authority for a fatwa permitting the consumption of human flesh. “We’re dying of starvation. We’ve eaten the cats and the dogs, and there’s nothing left to eat, and the militias surrounding us have no mercy, so what are we to do? We’ve decided to eat the flesh of our fallen comrades, and we’re asking for a fatwa to allow it.”

He said they couldn’t call from the camp and asked the journalist to contact a religious authority, promising to call her back in an hour.

An hour later, the news that shook the world was out. Abd al-Mu’ti called Jamila, and she told him of the good news that Sheikh Kamel al-Sammour had ruled that it was permissible to eat human flesh in situations of urgent necessity. Agence France Presse sent the news out over its international network of television and radio stations, and the world press went into an uproar.

The people of Shatila didn’t eat human flesh, and the Syrian army that was surrounding the area ordered the Amal militias to make a partial lifting of the siege.

I entered the camp after Abd al-Mu’ti’s bombshell. I went in with medicine and rations, and there I met Jamila Ibrahim.

The journalist came to the camp looking for Abd al-Mu’ti. She came carrying a cooking pot full of delicious food – God, how good her food was! A pot of cracked wheat, cooked cracked wheat with mutton and onions and chickpeas piled on top, plus a big container of milk.

Jamila said she’d cooked it for Abd al-Mu’ti, and everyone ate. When she saw the number of people hovering around the pot, she said she was ashamed; if she’d known Abd al-Mu’ti was going to invite the whole camp she’d have made more. Abd al-Mu’ti told her, his mouth full of cracked wheat, that he was going to repeat the miracle of the fishes. “Didn’t your prophet make five fishes feed a thousand people?”

We ate and laughed, and Jamila’s round face was flooded with happiness. I never saw a woman so happy. She didn’t touch the food herself, and Abd al-Mu’ti sat next to her and tried to make her eat from his hand, as though they were two old friends, and she called him “my partner” because he’d written the news dispatch with her that led to the raising of the siege, and he called her “my partner” because she’d cooked for him.

Where is Jamila now?

I ought to contact her to tell her of Abd al-Mu’ti’s death, but what if she doesn’t remember him? What if she talks to me as though the pot of cracked wheat never existed?

I won’t get in touch with her, but how I wish she’d bring another pot of cracked wheat. The man is dead, and death calls for food; nothing stimulates hunger like death.

Abd al-Mu’ti is dead and, with him, died the story of al-Ba’neh and its square and his stubborn refusal to stay inside his house in the camp.

“I’ll fight and I’ll die, but I’ll never let that happen again.”

Abd al-Mu’ti said, “After Sha’ab, we fled to the forests of al-Ba’neh and lived there. We turned our blankets into tents. We’d throw the blanket over the branch of a tree, tie it to the ground, and that would be half a tent. We lived in those half-tents for more than a month. Then al-Ba’neh and Deir al-Asad fell. We knew they’d fallen when the Jews surrounded us and brought us to the square at al-Ba’neh. Al-Ba’neh doesn’t really have a square; I don’t know another village in the world like it – the square of al-Ba’neh is shared with Deir al-Asad, as though they were one village. They gathered us up in the square and left us crucified under the sun. That was the first time I’d heard the term sunbath. A man next to me said, ‘They’re going to give us a sunbath before they kill us.’ I found out the full horror of what it meant later in the Ansar detention camp. In that vast camp, which the Israelis built after the occupation of ’82, sunbathing was a basic means of torture. They tie your arms and legs and throw you down in the sun, so you twist and turn and roll, trying to get a moment’s relief from the burning. That would be from sunrise to sunset. Then the officer comes and gives the order for your arms and legs to be untied and asks you to stand up, and you discover you can’t do anything. The sun has set under your skin, and fire has made its home inside you. Sunset is tribulation and death. When the sun disappears on the horizon, the burning inside begins, as though the sun had gone to its rest in your bones instead of in the sea.

“We were in the square of al-Ba’neh and there was the sun, and the man said, ‘They’ll give us a sunbath before they kill us.’ I didn’t understand what he meant until they killed us.

“We were a vast mass of humanity writhing under the sun and waiting for death. Later we discovered that we were to spend the rest of our lives in such a sunbath. What do you call the refugee camp? Now you see houses, but early on the camp consisted of a group of tents. Then later, after we’d built huts, they allowed us to put roofs over them. It was said that if we put actual roofs on our houses, we’d forget Palestine, so we put up zinc sheets. Do you know what zinc sheets do to you under the Beirut sun? Do you know what it means to be under zinc at night, after it’s absorbed the sun all day?

“In the square of al-Ba’neh – Deir al-Asad they left us to bathe in the sun all day long after they’d separated out the women. They ordered the women to go to Lebanon and left us out to burn.

“Two men I didn’t know asked permission to fetch water, and the officer told them to follow him. They walked toward the spring. We heard the sound of two bullets. The officer returned, and the men didn’t. After that no one dared to say he was thirsty.

“After more than an hour an old man stood up and asked for water. The officer looked at him with contempt, pulled out his revolver, brought the barrel close to the man’s forehead, placed it between his eyes but didn’t fire. The old man started to tremble. I was sure he was going to kill him, but he didn’t. The officer put his revolver in his belt, and the man went on trembling for a long, long time.

“Then they searched us and stole everything – money, watches, and rings. Then the soldiers pulled back, and we saw the officer’s hand rise and fall. The soldiers were dragging away the men tapped by the officer’s hand. The hand fell on more than two hundred men, who were loaded onto trucks that took them in the direction of al-Ramah. To this day we don’t know what happened to them. Soon after, they ordered us to go to Lebanon. The shooting started. We found ourselves in the fields with our wives and our children, and we walked for endless hours. We walked until we got to the village of Sajour, where we slept in the fields; we continued our journey in the morning to Beit Jann. There the Druze gave us food. We walked for more than two days before we got to Lebanon.

“My son, Hamed, was ten and had been hit in his right knee. I wrapped his knee and carried him on my shoulders, but eventually I became exhausted and put him down – he had to walk. By the time we reached Lebanon, he was crippled.

“Sahirah, the daughter of Ibrahim al-Hajj Hassan, gave birth to a girl in the fields of Sajour. God knows what had happened to her; she pulled out a little girl from under her skirt and began dancing – saying that she would name her Sahirah.

“Ibrahim al-Hajj Hassan tried to calm his daughter, but the woman didn’t care. She danced like she was at a wedding party and said she could hear drums beating in her ears. She said she wouldn’t stop dancing until her husband came back. Alas! How was he going to come back after they’d taken him to al-Ramah?

“Sahirah kept dancing until we reached Lebanon, where they said she’d gone crazy, though only God knows the truth.

“Do you understand, my son, why I don’t want to stay home? I’m an old man who fights because I prefer death to a sunbath. They gave me a sun-bath in al-Ba’neh in ’48, and they gave me another in Ansar in ’82, and now I’ve had enough – I’d rather die than face another.”

You are dying, Abd al-Mu’ti.

Your rigid body slackens. Your features return to you; your face clears, the wrinkles are wiped from your broad brow, and the cloud over your eyes parts.

I STAND.

What am I to say to this man I call my father but is not my father?

I open his eyes, put “tears” in them, but he doesn’t weep.

Abd al-Mu’ti dies, and you don’t weep. You’re dying, and you don’t weep.

I bring you news and tell you stories and you don’t hear. Tell me, Abd al-Mu’ti, what to do. Take me with you on your journey, for I yearn to see all of you. I live among you and I yearn for you, and you are somewhere else.

Weep a little, Father. Just one sob and everything will be over. One sob and you’ll live. But you don’t want to, or you no longer want to, or you’ve lost your will. And I’m with you and not with you. I’m busy, I have to check on the other patients; that’s what Dr. Amjad has decided. Don’t be scared, I won’t leave you for long. I’ll just slip over, check on them and come back to your side.

And afterward what?

Indeed, will there be an afterward?

For three months I’ve been telling you stories, some of which I know and some of which I don’t. And you’re incapable of correcting my errors, so I make mistakes once in a while. Freedom, Father, is being able to make mistakes. Now I feel free because with you I can make as many mistakes as I like and retract my mistakes whenever I like, and tell story after story.

My throat’s dry from so much talking. I’m dried up, I’ve become desiccated.

I feel water coming out with my words and spotting the ground around me. I feel I’m drowning in my own water. Do you want me to drown? Reach out your hand, I beg you, reach out your hand and rescue me from the pool of storytelling in whose waters I’m drowning. I’m a prisoner who possesses nothing but the stories he makes up about his freedom. I’m a prisoner of the hospital and a prisoner of the story. I’m drowning. Water surrounds me. I swallow water and swallow words and tell the story.

What do you want from me?

I’ve told you all your stories, of the past and of the present, yet you remain unreachable.

Now you know the whole story, but I don’t. Can you believe that? I’ve told you a story I don’t know. I understand nothing; things are collapsing inside my head. I’ve almost forgotten all of your names, I mix them all together.

You know everything, but I don’t.

I don’t know, but I have to know so I can tell. But I don’t know the story; I’ll have to go back to the beginning to look for it. What do you think?

You want the beginning? This time, though, I’ll tell it the way I like; I won’t subject it to your distorted memory or to the phantoms that hover above your closed eyes. I’ll tell you everything, but not now. I have to go now. I’ll turn on the radio so you can listen to Fairouz. Her voice calms the nerves and spreads its lilac shade over the eyes. I’ll leave you in the shade of lilacs and go.

^*Striking force of the Haganah, consisting of nine assault companies throughout Galilee and Jerusalem. Palmach leaders included Yigal Allon, Moshe Dayan, and Yitchak Rabin.

^*Koran, Surah XXXI, verse 34.

^*Schools managed by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

^*Literally: Home for the Elderly.

^*Literally: Catastrophe. Massive expulsion and exodus in 1948 of approximately 750,000 Palestinians.

^*Toward Mecca.

^*Jewish terrorist organization formed in ’39.

^*Literally: Mother of Stone.

^*Great reception hall.