Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

At the time the Israelis hadn’t yet developed the art of torture with chairs; they invented that after invading Lebanon. This consists of tying the detainee to a chair and letting him sit there for a week with a black bag over his head. The detainee remains tied to the chair inside the darkness of the bag. Soldiers lift the bag once a day to give the prisoner a crust of bread and a mouthful of water, and they take him, with his head still covered, to the bathroom once a day. Eventually the prisoner forgets who he is, his joints stiffen up, and he’s crushed by the darkness. By the time he’s taken to the interrogation, he’s lost all sensation in his body, and his back feels like a sack of stones he’s carrying on his spine. He stands before the interrogator staggering, on the verge of collapse.

In those days the Israelis didn’t have a particular way of dealing with women. The first charge against Nahilah was that she’d had two children, and the second charge was that she was pregnant. After three days in a solitary-confinement cell, they summoned her for interrogation.

There were three interrogators in the room. The first sat at a small metal desk and the other two on either side of him. Nahilah, handcuffed, stood.

The first one asked her her name.

“My name is Nahilah, wife of Yunes Ibrahim.” Then, she exclaimed, “Oh! It’s so nice!”

“What’s so nice?”

“The light,” she said. “The light, Sir. Glory be to God, three days in the darkness and then the light came. Praise God, praise God!”

The interrogator began questioning her in Classical Arabic and Nahilah stared out the window and didn’t respond.

“Can’t you hear?” yelled the interrogator.

“Yes, I can hear. I just can’t understand.”

“You’ve been charged, and the charges are serious.”

“What are the charges?”

“You’re pregnant, right?”

Nahilah burst out laughing, and the two assistant interrogators looked at her with fury in their eyes. One of them got up, slapped her, and started questioning her in Moroccan dialect. Nahilah couldn’t understand a word; the Moroccan words spewed from the interrogator’s mouth, fell on her ears, and wouldn’t go in.

The man sat down again, and Nahilah was left standing, the slap ringing in her left ear. After a short silence, the interrogator with the Classical tongue, sitting at his desk, said he’d been patient long enough.

“I’m at your service, Sir,” said Nahilah.

“You’re pregnant, right?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So?” asked the interrogator.

“So, I’m pregnant, you’re right. Is there a law against pregnancy in your state? Do we need a permit from the military governor to have children? If so we’ll ask next time. I didn’t know there was such a law.”

“No! No!” bellowed the interrogator.

“Okay, what do you want? I confess that I’m pregnant. Satisfied? Can I go home?”

“We’re asking about him,” said the interrogator.

“Who?”

“Your husband, Yunes. Is Yunes your husband?”

“What’s Yunes got to do with it?”

“We’re asking you, where is Yunes?”

“I don’t know anything about him.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How did you get pregnant?”

“The same way as every other woman on earth.”

“So it’s him, then.”

“Who?”

“Your husband.”

“. .”

“He’s your husband, isn’t he?”

“. .”

“Why don’t you answer?”

“. .”

“Answer and get it over with.”

“I’m embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed? Forget modesty and answer me.”

“Okay.”

“So Yunes is the father of your child.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ll only confess under duress. We have methods you can’t imagine, and we’ll force you to tell us everything.”

He looked to his assistants and said, “Take her.”

“No, no!” she screamed. “I’ll confess.”

“Excellent,” said the interrogator. “I’m listening. Please go ahead.”

“I’ve been pregnant for four months.”

“Fine. Continue.”

“That’s all, Sir. You ask, and I’ll answer.”

“Where’s your husband?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he the father of the child in your belly?”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“It’s not him? Then who is it?”

“No, it’s not Yunes.”

“Who then?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Right. I don’t know. Or at least I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure! What does that mean? You mean you’re a. .?”

“Yes, I am. I can do as I like. What’s it to you, Brother? I’m a prostitute. What, there aren’t any prostitutes in your respectable state? Count me in their ranks and let me go.”

The interrogator spoke with his companions in Hebrew; they seemed suspicious.

“I confess I’m a prostitute; I don’t know who the father is.”

“Do you know the child’s father?”

“No.”

“Who do you think it might be?”

“Everybody. Nobody. What kind of a question is that, Sir? Can a woman like me be asked who she thinks it might be? It’s shameful!”

“So it’s not Yunes?”

“No.”

“And how can your uncle, the respected sheikh, accept a fallen woman under his roof?”

“Go ask him.”

Nahilah sat down on the ground, cuffs on her hands, laughter fluttering across her face, in the midst of that bizarre interrogation, which took place in three languages. She sat and told them calmly: “After having destroyed everything, how dare you now attempt to defend honor and morals?

“You destroyed the sheikh’s house twice, Sir: once in Ain al-Zaitoun and again in Sha’ab. Here, it isn’t his house, it’s mine. This is my house, and I support him and his wife. I can do what I like.”

“Stand up, whore!” screamed the interrogator.

Nahilah rose sluggishly in the silence.

“Are there any more questions? I’m tired, and the children are alone in the house with the old people.”

“You won’t say where Yunes is?”

“I don’t know anything about him.”

“And you acknowledge that you work as a whore?”

“I’m free to do as I like. You can think what you like, but I don’t work and I don’t take money for prostituting myself.”

“Disgraceful!”

“Disgraceful! You stole our country and drove out its people, and now you come and give us lessons in morals? We’re free to do as we like, Sir. No one has the right to ask me about my sex life.”

The interrogator wasn’t convinced but he didn’t want to pursue the matter. What could he do with a peasant woman who stood in front of him and told him she was a prostitute? He spat on the floor and ordered her released.

When Nahilah got back to the house, she let out youyousof joy, and everyone gathered around her. That day, she told them, she’d become Yunes’ bride: “Before I was arrested, I didn’t deserve to be his wife. Now, though, I’m his wife and the mother of his children.” She told them what she’d said to the interrogator, and the villagers laughed until they cried. They laughed and wept while Yunes’ mother offered everyone glasses of sugared rosewater, and from time to time would trill with joy.

You told the story, but you didn’t finish it.

The story, Father, doesn’t end with a woman standing alone before the interrogator and protecting you in such an inventive way – a woman wrapping herself in disgrace to protect your life while wrapping you in her love.

You used to tell portions of the story and look at me to see my astonishment and admiration, and I was astonished and admiring – all our stories are like that: They make you laugh and cry and squeeze joy from sorrow.

But let’s look in the mirror.

I don’t want to rewrite our history, but tell me. You say you didn’t understand, and that in ’48 all of you slipped helter-skelter from your villages into the darkness. And Umm Hassan says she carried her basin on her head and went from village to village, from olive grove to olive grove, without ever knowing where she was going.

During that time – no, before that – when you were a young man in the Revolution of ’36 and afterward, tell me, did you know anything about them?

You were peasants and didn’t know anything, you’ll reply.

Where was Palestine? You’ll agree that Galilee wasn’t the issue. Galilee has its magic because it’s “Galilee of the Nations,” as they call it in books. Today we’ve become “the Nations of Galilee” – nations, the others, or the goyim, as the Jews call us.

But tell me, what did the nationalist movement posted in the cities do apart from demonstrate against Jewish immigration?

I’m not saying you weren’t right. But in those days, when the Nazi beast was exterminating the Jews of Europe, what did you know about the world?

I’m not saying – no, don’t worry. I believe, like you, that this country must belong to its people, and there is no moral, political, humanitarian, or religious justification that would permit the expulsion of an entire people from its country and the transformation of what remained of them into second-class citizens. So, no, don’t worry. This Palestine, no matter how many names they give it, will always be Palestinian. But tell me, in the faces of people being driven to slaughter, don’t you see something resembling your own?

Don’t tell me you didn’t know, and above all, don’t say that it wasn’t our fault.

You and I and every human being on the face of the planet should have known and not stood by in silence, should have prevented that beast from destroying its victims in that barbaric, unprecedented manner. Not because the victims were Jews but because their death meant the death of humanity within us.

I’m not saying we should have done something. Maybe what we should have done was understand, but we – you – were outside history, so you became its second victim.

I don’t mean to give sermons, even though I have been giving a few. The settlers who set up the early koubbaniyye, or “companies,” and who are still setting up settlements today in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, don’t resemble those who died. The settlers were soldiers who possessed the means to kill us – as indeed they did, and as they’ll kill themselves as well.

But the ones who died, they’re like Nahilah and Umm Hassan.

I see Umm Hassan wandering in the fields among the thousands of others without homes. I see her, and I hear the whistle of the train. I know there weren’t any trains in Galilee; they came later, in Lebanon and Syria, when the refugees were rounded up and distributed around the various suburbs, which then turned into camps.

The whistle rings in my ears. I see the people being led toward the final trains. I see the trains, and I shudder. Then I see myself loaded into a basin and carried on a woman’s head.

I confess I’m scared.

I’m scared of a history that has only one version. History has dozens of versions, and for it to ossify into one leads only to death.

We mustn’t see ourselves only in their mirror, for they’re prisoners of one story, as though the story had abbreviated and ossified them.

Please, Father – we mustn’t become just one story. Even you, even Nahilah – please let me liberate you from your love story, for I see you as a man who betrays and repents and loves and fears and dies. Believe me, this is the only way if we’re not to ossify and die.

You haven’t ossified into one story. You will die, but you’ll be free. Free of everything, even free of your own story.

SALIM AS’AD taught me the meaning of freedom.

I was preoccupied with the French visitors when he pointed to his head, described the child he’d been and led me to the story of the shampoo. Salim would stand in front of the mosque that had been turned into a cemetery, expose his white hair and wash it in front of everyone, claiming to perform a miracle.

“The old man made young again!” he’d shout.

People would press in around him. There was nothing magical or exotic – everyone knew that the white hair would turn black, that the old man before them would become young again. His back was hunched, his legs shook, and his voice cracked as he invited everyone to the show, which took place at five o’clock on the first Thursday of every month. He’d stand there and ask one of the onlookers to help him pour the water over his head. The old man would groan, he’d apply the shampoo, rub it in well, pour on more water, and all of a sudden there he was, prancing around, a young man again. The tremor in his legs was gone, his voice was loud and clear, and his head was covered in black hair. “The old man’s return to his youth! A shampoo for every part of the body! I’m the old man who returned to his youth – wash your limbs with it and they’ll be young again, every part of you will be young again. Try it once, you’ll never regret it.” And he’d start handing the little bottles out to the onlookers and taking their money. Women, old men, and children would gather in the courtyard of the mosque to watch the miracle of the old man returned to his youth.

As you can see, there’s nothing to it as a story except that it’s a trite representation of the massacre.

Then I saw him for myself.

I went to the mosque out of curiosity, no more. I overcame my fear and isolation, and I went. The youth bewitched me. He played his part amazingly well.

He comes forward, his back hunched, walking in circles and moaning. Then he draws an imaginary circle around himself and walks around and around inside it. He goes around in circles without getting tired until the number of onlookers is sufficient. Then the show begins.

A voice like a death rattle. A back hunched and broken. A face – the face is the real genius. He turns and swallows his face, sucking in his lips and swallowing them so that it becomes a mask, as though he’s put on the mask of old age. His eyes sink into the skull, his mouth widens, his gums become toothless. He goes around in circles, groaning, his legs shaking, staggering, almost falling but not falling. Then says in a low voice, “My children, my children. Your old father is about to die. Come, my children.” He puts out his hand like a beggar and asks for help. One of the younger spectators comes forward, and the old man shows him the bucket of water. The young man picks up the bucket, the old man bends over until his head is almost touching the ground, and the young man pours the water over the old man’s head as he totters under its force. Then he puts his hand into his pocket, pulls out a little bottle, puts a small amount of the green liquid on his hand, and shows it to the people before rubbing it onto his head. He groans and trembles. He asks for more water. His voice disappears. He opens and closes his mouth as if he wants to speak but can’t, as if he’s pleading for help. A woman goes up to him and offers him water from a bottle she’s carrying. He drinks a little, then breaks into a fit of coughing resembling sobs. He raises both hands, and the young man comes forward and pours water over his head again. The water gushes, and the old man drowns. The pool of water around him widens. He gets down on all fours and splashes around in the water, his head dripping. Then suddenly he leaps up – he’s young again, and he shouts, “The old man’s returned to his youth! A shampoo for every part of the body! Especially. . especially. .” and he gestures toward his crotch. “Welcome, welcome to eternal youth!” he cries. Then he starts passing around his little bottles, while everybody laughs and claps and shoves and pays.

The French actors should have come to see this play, The Old Man’s Return to his Youth. “This is the play of the massacre,” I’d have told Catherine if she’d been standing at my side watching Salim’s transformation from youth to old age and from old age to youth, as though he were purchasing his life by performing it.

I went up to him, bought a bottle and laughed. When the crowd had dispersed and he’d paid the young man with the bucket and the woman with the bottle their share, he saw that I was still standing there.

“See, Doctor. You liked us.”

I took his hand and asked him to come to the hospital the following day to start work.

“You can work,” I said, “but without these antics.”

“Whatever you say, Doctor,” he said, selling me another bottle.

“I have to sell all the bottles before moving to my new job,” he said.

He took five thousand lira and said he would come the next day. And he came. He worked here for about a month and turned the place upside down: He stole medicines and sold them, he flirted with Zainab, he told anecdotes, and he went into the patients’ rooms and sold them medicines he’d made himself from herbs that he claimed were more effective than the ones we used.

I knew all about it but was incapable of reining him in. He had amazing powers of persuasion and claimed that what he was doing was in the patients’ interest.

“There’s no such thing as illness, Doctor,” he’d say. “Half of all illness is psychological, and the other half is poverty. I’m treating them psychologically. Leave me alone, and you’ll see the results.”

I left him alone because I didn’t know what else to do about him.

“What does a patient need? I make them laugh; they die laughing. What’s the problem?”

He even tried to joke around with you, so I explained to him that such things stopped here, at the door to your room, and to Dunya’s. But he didn’t want to understand, or rather, he understood as far as you were concerned, and he stayed away from your room, but it was different with Dunya. He’d go into her room and do his act and sell her mother weird and wonderful things. She was happy and said that her daughter had finally smiled.

“It’s the first time she’s smiled, Doctor. Please don’t stop him from coming to her room.” She said Dunya responded to the medicine Dr. Salim prescribed for her.

“Dr. Who?” I asked.

“Dr. Salim. Really, he’s better than all the other doctors!” said the mother.

When I asked him about the amazing medicine he’d made for Dunya, he looked at me from behind the mask of the old man I’d seen in front of the mosque.

“Leave me in peace. You don’t understand.”

And I didn’t.

If I’d understood, I wouldn’t have been taken by surprise when he disappeared. He stayed about a month before disappearing, and I never saw him again. I don’t think he went back to doing his play in front of the mosque.

Zainab said he’d said he wanted to go to the Ain al-Hilweh camp, where he planned to marry his cousin.

“What will he do for a living there?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “He’ll act the old man there. He’ll find a new audience.”

“No,” she said. “He’ll live in his father-in-law’s house. He told me her father works in Saudi Arabia and sends them dollars, and he was going to live like a king there.”

^*Rayyis: president, or boss.

^*Uprising of the Palestinian people, launched in early December 1987.

^*Battle for control of the hotel strip in West Beirut in October 1975.

HAVE YOU accepted my apology?

Salim As’ad bewitched me with his stories and his play and his white hair. He bewitched me and made me forget you. You will, no doubt, appreciate what a battle I got into with Dr. Amjad over creating a job for him. Amjad refused, saying that the budget wouldn’t cover it and that Salim As’ad would turn the hospital into a circus, but I insisted and won.

I won, meaning I lost, because he didn’t want to work. He worked for a month and then left without saying goodbye. What did I do to him? Nothing at all. I let him do as he pleased, just forbade him to go near your room. That was all. But he’s a louse – really a louse – who doesn’t want to work. He’s gotten used to being unemployed and putting on a show and bullying people into giving him money. What more could I have done for him than I did?

“This isn’t a hospital.” Every time I made any comment about his behavior, he’d look at me in astonishment, shrug his shoulders and say, “This isn’t a hospital.”

Once he came into my office.

“What, Salim?” I asked.

“I have some bottles, Doctor. Haven’t you made up your mind yet about changing the color of your hair?”

“Get away from me. Leave me alone so I can work.”

“Work!”

“Yes. Please leave me alone.”

“Work, Doctor? You think you’re working, but you’re a fool (sorry, Doctor, I say whatever pops into my head). You’re a fool, and you’re cheating everybody by making them believe they’re in a real hospital. You sell them things you don’t have. I’m better than you, I sell them the real thing, the white-haired man who gets rid of his white hair and feels like he’s become young again. But you give them nothing, just a continuation of the lie. Stop lying, please; stop lying and let people get on with their lives.”

Is it true, Father, that I deceive people?

Have I been deceiving you?

You, too, would prefer things to be solved by Salim As’ad’s methods, with a little bottle containing a liquid made of soap and herbs. But where am I going to find a liquid that will restore consciousness to your paralyzed brain?

No, no, don’t believe Salim.

Salim is just a game, just a play, just a show. The real thing is hiding here, in these two rooms. You’re here, and Dunya’s there. Dunya’s dying, and you’re dying. She can no longer tell her story, and you can no longer stand yours since Nahilah’s death.

And I’m a play actor.

I’m the real actor, not Salim. I’m acting out your story, and Dunya’s story, and Salim’s story. I’m acting out all your stories.

If Salim had understood what goes on in this room, he wouldn’t have gone away. I’m convinced that the story about him marrying his cousin isn’t true; I bet he’ll come back the first Thursday of every month to perform his play in front of the mosque so he can purchase an imaginary old age with his youth to help him face these times.

Salim left, and I didn’t look for him.

I’m here, and I have a lot of work to see to. I’ve returned to you, as you see. I’ll come three times a day and spend most of my time in your room. I’ll supervise the distribution of morning tasks before coming back here, just like before. I’ll tell your story, you’ll tell mine – and we’ll wait.

I’LL TELL YOU everything, from the beginning.

We’re back at the beginning.

At the beginning, I see my father. I see him and I don’t see him, for Yasin Ayyoub died before I could set eyes on him. I see him as a photograph hung on the wall, a big photograph with a brown frame. He stands in the frame, against the wall, looking into the distance. His tie with its vague intertwined patterns hangs down like a long tongue. Above it are his stern face, his sculpted chin, and his tired eyes. I’d like to ask him about his death. My mother went away and never told me, and my grandmother died before I could find out.

Why did they kill him in ’59? Why did they throw him down in a heap in front of the house, after his white hair had become stained with blood?

That was when everything came to an end: The civil war that had set Lebanon on fire in ’58 had subsided, the reconciliation was concluded between the Christians and the Muslims, the U.S. Marines withdrew, and the commander of the Lebanese army, Fouad Shehab, was elected president of the republic. Everything went back to the way it had been before, except for us. Everyone was celebrating peace and life, while my grandmother celebrated the death of her son!

You’re the only one who knows his story, so why don’t you tell it to me?

Before you – that is, before this endless illness and coma of yours – I wasn’t interested in him, I didn’t love him. I’d look at his picture without seeing it, and if my grandmother hadn’t been so obstinate, the picture would be dead.

Shahineh, Yasin’s mother, had a theory about photos. She thought they died if we didn’t water them. She’d wipe the dust from the glass over my father’s photo with a damp rag and place a container full of flowers and sweet-smelling herbs beneath it, saying that the picture lived off the water and the nice scent. She’d pick basil and damask roses and put them in vases underneath the picture. Bending over it with a damp rag, she’d talk with her son. My grandmother would talk to the man hanging on the wall and hear his voice, and I’d laugh at her and fear her.

“You’ll understand when you grow up,” she’d say.

I grew up and didn’t understand.

Maybe the picture died because I didn’t water it. Maybe it died the day my grandmother died. Maybe it ought to have been buried with her. I was young and didn’t care; even her death happened without my feeling it. I didn’t shed a single tear for her. I arrived after they’d buried her, so I returned to my base in southern Lebanon, and it was there that the pain struck me. Can you imagine, I waited a month to feel the sorrow? On the day itself, I didn’t feel any sorrow – it was as though I’d been hypnotized. I remember sitting. I remember that I took the pillow and the watch. I remember that I put the watch on my wrist and discovered it was broken. I tried to wind it but the spring wouldn’t move. So I took the watch off and threw it in a drawer and forgot about it.

Can it be that my grandmother wore a broken watch all those years – as though she’d killed the time on her wrist? Did she occasionally look at her watch?

I don’t know because I didn’t see her during her last days. I came and stayed for a stretch of her suffering, then came again after she was dead; I threw her watch into a drawer before returning to my base.

It was there, at the base, that fierce sorrow hit me, and I didn’t dare tell anyone why I was sad. How could I? You’re living in the midst of young men who fall in battle every day and you mourn for an old woman who waters her son’s picture, tells delirious tales, and sleeps on a pillow of flowers?

The sorrow struck me fiercely. Her voice came and went among dreams filled with horror and empty picture frames. At the time, I didn’t admit to myself that my sorrow was for her.

Today, faced with your perpetual sleep, I understand my sorrow.

There at the base we built in the olive grove at al-Khreibeh, death came and spoke to me. My sorrow was indescribable, as though I’d lost the meaning of life, as though my life had been dependent on this woman who’d departed, on her tall tales and memories.

On that day I was possessed by an intimation of death, and I became convinced I was going to die because she had died. However, it was my duty to come back to life – that’s what I told myself then, and that’s what I told myself after the massacre of the camp in ’82. I didn’t go to Tunis with the others because I was afraid of the death I saw on the faces of those who were saying goodbye. I stayed here and lived death. Then along came your illness to bring me back to the beginning. When I’m with you, master, I feel as though everything is still at its beginning, my life hasn’t started yet, your story is still before me to try to unravel, and my father has come back to me, as though he’d stepped down from the picture on the wall and is speaking to me.

Do you know what I did yesterday?

I let you sleep and went home. I lit a candle, took a wet rag, and wiped the picture, telling it I’d come back tomorrow with flowers and basil. I didn’t go back, however. It was an absurd thing to do, don’t you think? There, beneath the picture, I understood why my grandmother said I was like him, because in fact I really do look like him. I don’t know why I used to hate myself when my grandmother told me I was like him. Perhaps because I was afraid of dying like he had.

Where is my mother now?

Even her photos have disappeared from the house. My grandmother said she’d run away and taken her pictures with her. Maybe my mother was afraid of what my grandmother might do to them. Maybe she was afraid the old woman would find a way of talking to the pictures and somehow compel her – Najwah, wife of Yasin – to come home. Or no, maybe my grandmother tore the pictures up so all that would be left to me would be his picture, which spoke to her. My grandmother would say she heard him order this or that to be done, and I believed her. She’d attribute all her orders to him. Which is why I detested the picture and detested her and detested my father.

I told you I looked like him, and I hated myself because of that. No longer. But in those days, when the white was starting to invade my hair, I felt a terrible hatred for that man, and for myself, but I didn’t dye my hair. I don’t possess Salim’s degree of irony. Maybe if my life had started like his, with the Shatila massacre, I’d have become an actor like him. But let’s slow down – I also started my life with a massacre; what else would you call my father’s murder? True, I was young and can hardly remember anything, but I can still imagine the scene. What my grandmother told me about his death turned into images that haunt me.

I sit and talk to you and hear that man’s voice coming from my heart. What does one call that? The first sign of old age? Maybe. I stand at the crossroads of my forties, and at this crossroads the image of that man who left me so he could die still imposes itself on me, and always will.

Shouldn’t he have given some thought to his son’s fate, which was to be decided by two women – one who’d run away and another who’d collapse under the weight of her memories? Shouldn’t you all have given this some thought?

Before going on about my father, and before getting to the beginning, I want to tell you that the temperature you’ve had isn’t a cause for concern. Don’t be afraid and don’t fidget about on the feather pillow I put under your head. The miracle finally has occurred: I’ve managed to buy you a waterbed. I bought it with my own money, with Salim As’ad acting as the intermediary. It was the last job he did at the hospital before he took off for who-knows-where. He went and bought the waterbed, brought it to the hospital and gave me back twenty thousand lira.

“From you, Doctor, I’d never take a commission,” he said.

He took a hundred dollars from me and gave me back only twenty thousand lira, and everything was settled. ^*

This bed will help. Your bed sores will heal because waterbeds don’t stick to people’s bodies like ordinary beds do. In the beginning, I substituted a cotton mattress for the hospital mattress, which is made out of foam. Cotton is more comfortable, but it’s soft. As soon as you start sleeping on cotton, the mattress fills with lumps. I thought of cotton because I was afraid of the heat of the wool we normally stuff our mattresses with.

And look at the result.

I left you for three weeks only to come back and find you covered in sores. Then I thought of the waterbed, and Salim As’ad solved the problem. He said he could rustle one up, and he did. Nothing to worry about from now on. The cause of your fever this time is the ulcers, not the catheter. All the same, I’ve decided to give you a rest from the catheter for a while – I can’t do more than that. I left you for four hours without one so you’d feel your freedom again. But more than that means blood poisoning so I put it back, in spite of your objections. I expect your temperature to decrease gradually with the ointments and the antibiotics I’ve mixed into your food. Don’t be afraid, we’ll start over, like before. I’ll bathe you twice a day, apply the ointments, put powder on your ulcers and perfume you. Rest easy, Father, and don’t be afraid. I say fatherand think of how you used to call me nephew. When you came to visit us at home or dropped in on the cadets’ camp, you used to hug me and say, “This one’s a champ, a champ like his father.” Now you’ve figured out that I’m not a champion like my father. I’m just a semi-unemployed nurse in a hospital suspended in a void. Also, I don’t resemble him in any way except for my prematurely white hair, my stooped shoulders, and my height. My mother used to say: “Poor boy, he’ll grow up short. He’ll be no taller than a water pipe.” And my grandmother would rebuke her and shout, “No. He’s like Yasin. Yasin was that way, then suddenly he shot up and became as tall as a spear.” She’d talk of the Nakba: “The Nakbashortened our lives and stunted our growth, too, all except Yasin. Suddenly the short boy became like a spear. We got to Lebanon after all that torment, and there I suddenly noticed, God knows how I’d failed to see it – I opened my eyes and there he was, tall and beautiful. Amazing how he grew up like that. This boy’s like his father, you know nothing about our family!”