Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

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Текущая страница: 34 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

I said I’d feel alone without her.

She said she knew Shams and her husband, Fawwaz, and knew that she was mistreated: “Everyone in Tal al-Za’atar knows how he treated her. He was mad and heartless. It was like a demon possessed him. Could anyone be that crazy about his wife? He was as crazy about his wife as if she were the wife of another man. He told my late husband, Mounir, that he’d fire over her head and around her feet to drive the demons out of her. He was insane, and he drove her insane. He wouldn’t let her leave the house or receive anyone either. She didn’t dare open the door. We’d knock and she’d yell from inside that no one was there. And Fawwaz didn’t sleep at home. He’d sleep with the fighters and would go to her by day, and we’d hear the sound of the bullets and imagine her tears. God knows how she stood it. It was said she’d fled with the fighters. Why did she go back to him? I haven’t seen her since the Tal al-Za’atar days, and I haven’t heard anything; after all that happened there, people have stopped asking about everyone else. Instead of searching for those who have disappeared, we look for photos of them. I swear we are an insane people, Doctor. The only lesson we’ve learned from our families is that we shouldn’t leave home without our photos. Can you believe it! We were in that Red Cross truck, and I was on the point of death I was bleeding so much. People were piled on top of each other like sardines, and you’d see a woman pull a photo out of the front of her dress and compare it with those extracted from the front of some other woman’s dress. It’s almost as if we think that by carrying around the pictures of our dead with us, it will save them from death. The photo of Abu Shadi, God rest his soul, has completely faded. I framed it, but photos fade even behind glass. The man disappeared. We know nothing about what happened to him, and I wasn’t able to look for him at first – I was in the hospital hovering between life and death, and I had my children with me. Without God’s mercy and the generosity of Dr. Lutfi, my children would’ve been lost, as thousands were. A husband may die or disappear and we get upset, of course. But a child – God forbid!

“Once I got better, I went to al-Damour and met Riyad Ismat, who later was martyred in Tripoli in 1984. Riyad didn’t know. I went from office to office in al-Damour but no one could help me in any way. Everyone did, however, assure me he was dead.

“‘If he hasn’t come back, it means he’s dead. They didn’t take prisoners in the Monte Verde,’ said Riyad.

“Last year I went to the Monte Verde. The war was over, and it was possible to go back there. Samir took me in his car – Samir’s my second son, who works as a taxi driver, though God help him if a policeman stops him and finds out he’s Palestinian. All Samir dreams about these days is joining his brother in Germany.

“I wanted to see Tal al-Za’atar again. What desolation! It’s as though it never existed. I asked people but no one could direct me – nothingness as far as the eye could see. People have forgotten the war and forgotten the camp, and no one dares to say its name. I tried to go in – I wanted to look for my house – but they wouldn’t let me. There was a guard of sorts there who said it was prohibited. Anyway, even if I had got in, all I’d have found would have been asphalt: The ground had been completely covered up with asphalt, and everything was black as pitch.

“In the Monte Verde the car traveled the narrow bends. I knew we wouldn’t find anything, but I had to do it to honor Abu Shadi’s memory. All we found were Syrian soldiers and tanks. Samir asked me where to look for his father’s grave; I didn’t answer because I wasn’t sure that the search was worthwhile, I just wanted to put my conscience at rest. I asked Riyad about the graves – if they’d buried the young soldiers. He said he didn’t know, there was no way to know – the bullets had been streaming over their heads and all they’d wanted was to reach Hammana.

“I didn’t ask Samir to stop the car, and I didn’t feel anything. It was as though those who’d died had been wiped off the face of the earth. War in itself doesn’t need graves, because war is a grave. Abu Shadi doesn’t have a grave – his grave is war itself. War doesn’t call for tombs and headstones, for war is itself a tomb, a tomb in which we live. Even the camp isn’t a camp, it’s the tomb of Palestine.

“Do you understand? Of course you understand, because you’re like me, Doctor. You were born in the camp, or in the grave, and the grave will pursue you to the end of time.”

Zainab said she was going to leave us.

“When are you going?”

She said she was waiting for her visa, but that she’d come to advise me to abandon the hospital and stop watching him.

“Who?” I asked her.

“Yunes, Abu Salem.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s dying, can’t you see? Leave him alone. Let him die. Have pity on him! You’re forcing him to stay alive.”

“But I’m not doing anything,” I said.

“You’re the one responsible for his condition. Have pity on him!”

“No, Zainab. Please!”

“Let him die. Stop this useless treatment. Can you change the will of God? Leave him in the merciful hands of God and get out of this hospital!”

Then she went back to Shams.

“Your fear of Shams is senseless: No one’s going to take revenge on you. What does it have to do with you? She killed her lover and she was killed. Warn the killer that he will be killed. These are the words of God written in His Book. Sameh killed her when he lied to her, she killed him because she wanted revenge, and they killed her to get justice. That’s all there is to it. And you aren’t so guilty that you should have to bury yourself with this man who’s no longer a man. Look at him, it’s like he’s gone back to being a baby. In the name of God the Merciful, let him die and release us all.”

Zainab repeated what Umm Hassan had said: “Where are his family to take him back to his country?”

It’s true, Yunes. Why didn’t you go back like Hamad?

Don’t you know the story of Hamad?

I was told the story by his brother, Mansour, who sells fish in the camp. You love fish. “Ah, how I miss the fish of Acre!” you used to say. What is this blind fanaticism? Mansour told you these were fish from Acre that had been smuggled over and had become refugees like us, but you’d refuse to buy any.

“The fish from Acre’s much better. We used to fry it and eat it with thyme fatayirand taratursauce. It’s Christ’s fish. That’s where he used to fish, peace be with him.”

You said that Christ, peace be with him, never forbade alcohol because he worked with fishermen and sailors: “How can you convince a sailor not to drink? The sea and fishing are impossible without arak and wine. Fish too – you can’t eat them without arak, taratur, and thyme. The fish of Tiberias are inexhaustible. Fish, Christ, and fishermen – that’s Galilee. They don’t know Galilee. They’re trying to create a fishing industry – can you industrialize the water Christ walked on?

“That’s where we’ll go back to. Imagine, a whole people walking on water!”

You said that, took a swig, and ask me to pour you more.

“Take it easy, Abu Salem.”

“Like hell. Pour the arak and follow me back to Lake Tiberias!”

It was Mansour the fish seller who told me his brother’s story. I’d gone to see him on the morning of the feast of Ramadan because I wanted to mark the occasion by eating fish. I found his stall empty. He said he hadn’t gone to Tyre to make purchases because of the feast, and he’d gone to the cemetery at dawn to visit his son and had come straight to the shop because he didn’t dare go home and sit there with the pictures of his son.

“Over here we die, and over there they have children,” he said.

Mansour said he was a fool and that his brother, Hamad, had got away with his life and his children’s, too.

You know Hamad, he was your companion in the Sha’ab militia, which was the last to leave Galilee; you were imprisoned together. Then he lived in the Burj al-Barajneh camp. You knew him well – from Tarshiha, the one who always swore by the kibbeh nayyehhis wife, Salmeh, made: “ Kibbeh nayyehwith hosehon top. Meat on meat, my brother. Kibbehunderneath and fried meat with onions and pine nuts on top, heaven!”

He said that Salmeh, Umm Jamil, stayed in Tarshiha. He said that kibbehhad no taste after he was separated from Salmeh.

Why didn’t you do what he did?

Were you afraid of the Jews?

Of Nahilah?

Of yourself?

Truly, Yunes my son, the only thing people fear is themselves. You told me the only thing you were afraid of when you crossed the border was your own shadow, which would stretch out on the ground and follow you.

Do you want to listen to Mansour?

Come on, Mansour. Come tell your story to Uncle Yunes.

He isn’t here, of course, but I’ll tell you the story as I heard it from Mansour Ahmad Qabalawi, the fish seller, who opened his shop here in Shatila after they closed down the one in Burj al-Barajneh at the entrance to the low-lying neighborhood where people from Tarshiha lived because of differences among the various political groups at the time of the revolution.

Mansour said, “After the fall of Tarshiha, we fled into Lebanon and forgot all about Salmeh and her daughter. It was my fault: The thought of Salmeh never crossed my mind as we were fleeing. It was all shelling and planes and hell let loose, and I wasn’t a fighter even though I was in the militia. Between you and me, I was just there to make up the numbers, and when the flight started and the Jews came, I fled with my wife and kids and not once thought of Salmeh and her daughter, Sawsan. Then my brother turned up. He’d spent a year in prison in Syria. He found my tent. Before he could ask, I confessed to him. I didn’t tell him she’d died, God forbid. I told him we’d forgotten her and didn’t know anything about her whereabouts and that she’d probably stayed in Tarshiha. He called me names, broke the tent pole, and left. Later I learned he’d gone there: He went to Tarshiha and stayed with his wife for a few days. When he returned, we became like brothers again. I don’t have anyone but him, and he doesn’t have anyone but me. Every time he took off, it would be an adventure. They’d arrest him and expel him. He didn’t stay in Tarshiha in secret: He’d knock on his wife’s door and would enter in full view of everyone. Each time, they’d arrest him and drag him to the border.

“The last time they arrested him, the Israeli officer who notified him of the expulsion order told him he was absent when the census was made after the establishment of the State, so he was considered an absentee.

“‘Well, here I am, Sir. I was absent and now I’m present.’

“‘No,’ said the officer. ‘The absentee is not entitled to be present.’

“‘But my wife and children are here.’

“‘Take them with you if you like.’

“‘But it’s my village.’

“They tied him up and threw him out at the Lebanese border. He returned to the camp. He stayed about a year, then disappeared again, and we discovered they’d thrown him across the border into Gaza, and we tied ourselves into knots getting a plane ticket from Cairo to Beirut. Five times he went in and stayed, and five times he was thrown out. The sixth time was the clincher.

“It was in 1957, the morning of the Feast of the Sacrifice. My wife was busy cooking, and the smell of kibbeh nayyehfilled the house. He looked at my children and his face ran the gamut of emotions. ‘Let’s go to Tyre,’ he said. I left my wife and my children that day and went with him because I knew him, and I knew nothing could stop him. We went to Tyre, from there to the al-Rashidiyyeh camp, and from there to the house of Ali Shahada from al-Ba’neh. Ali Shahada, who worked as a smuggler, asked for a thousand Lebanese lira to get him to Tarshiha. And a thousand lira in those days was no joke; it was five times the monthly income of a fish-shop owner like me. My brother agreed and said he’d pay over there. Ali, however, asked to see the money before he did anything, and my brother pulled a huge amount of money out of his back pocket, showed it to him, and gave him a hundred lira, saying, ‘Here’s a feast present for your kids.’

“‘Let’s go,’ said my brother. ‘We’ll eat lunch first and rest a little.’

“‘Then we’ll leave right at sundown,’ said Ali.

“He slaughtered a rooster for us, and we ate it with rice, drank coffee and chatted. As soon as the sun began to set, my brother, Hamad, set off with the smuggler, Ali, and I went back to Beirut.

“My brother reached his house and stayed there. Thirty years after all this, he got me a permit to visit Tarshiha, and there I found Hamad, living among his children and his children’s children. I told him, ‘This isn’t Tarshiha: Our land doesn’t belong to us anymore, and our house isn’t ours any longer’ – Hamad was living in the house of Mahmoud Qabalawi, whose family live in Burj al-Barjneh today. He told me our house had been demolished along with all the houses in the lower square and that Salmeh had had no choice but to live there. ‘I moved in here, but you can tell Jaber, Mahmoud Qabalawi’s son, that I haven’t changed a thing in their house. When they come back, they can take it, and God bless them.’

“‘But it’s not Tarshiha, Hamad,’ I said to him. ‘The Jews are everywhere.’

“Hamad reached his house and stayed a week with his wife before he was seized and deported to the Lebanese border. Before he reached the border checkpoint, he took off his Swiss watch and offered it to the Israeli soldier. The soldier hesitated, then took the bribe, and left Hamad on his own.

“My brother returned and was arrested again. He was convicted as a saboteur, getting eighteen years. He spent nine of those in prison, then they let him out after a series of remissions for good behavior. They didn’t know what to do with him because he refused to go to Lebanon – he said he’d rather stay in prison. So they sent him back to his house in Tarshiha.”

Tell me, Yunes, why didn’t you go back for good?

Why didn’t you ever try?

Were you afraid of dying? If you say you were afraid they’d liquidate you, I’ll understand, but then don’t talk to me about the struggle or the revolution or any of that.

And now, tell me, what will you do when we’ve got everything fixed and you’re born again? Will you lead a new life, or will you return to your old migratory life?

I hear your voice emerging from low-pitched moans. Why the moaning? Your body temperature’s normal, everything’s tip-top, your heartbeats are more regular than those of a young man; knock on wood. But tell me, if we could run life backwards, who would you prefer to have been – Yunes or Hamad? Or would you prefer a third option, going to Canada, for instance? What do you think – emigrate and leave the whole thing behind?

I know you can’t answer. That’s why I can ask you so freely, I’m not obliged to defer to you in anything. I know what you’d like to say, but you don’t, and that’s much better.

Tell me, what should I tell Zainab?

Should I advise her to stay here or encourage her to travel to her son in Germany? Should I promise her that things will get better for the hospital or promise her that her village, Saffouri, will be reborn from its ashes?

I’ll tell her to do what she wants.

I see Zainab now for the first time, it’s as though for all those long months I’d looked right through her. And now, after she’s told me how she was wounded at Tal al-Za’atar, her name is no longer “the crippled nurse,” as I would call her to myself; her name is Zainab, Zainab the nurse. Good grief, how long do we need to wear our names for them to become ours! Zainab became Zainab because she told her story. True, she’s leaving soon, and true, she informed me when her work here came to an end, and true, if I’d known earlier things would have been different. But that’s the way it is. A human being only reveals his name at the moment of departure or, in other words, when the name becomes his shroud. We wrap him in his name and bury him. Now I understand the wisdom of the photos that fill our lives: The victims of the massacres have no names and no shrouds. Their bodies are covered with lime and insecticides before being thrown into a common grave. People disappear because they have no names, they are reduced to numbers. That’s the terrifying thing, my son, numbers are the terror. That’s why people carry pictures of their dead and their missing, and use them as a substitute for names.

Zainab is not convinced.

She says everything I’ve done for you was for nothing. If she only knew! But she doesn’t want to listen to the story from the beginning, plus I no longer have the energy to tell it. If Zainab had come and listened to your story, she’d have understood I wasn’t wasting your time and mine but was buying time and history, for you and for me.

Yes, my son and master, yes.

I’m here because I was under the influence of Shams. I thought I’d flee her ghost and her revenge. I wasn’t afraid of real revenge – that one of her family would come and shoot me. No, I was afraid of her.

Your death came and rescued me. You made me a doctor again, you brought me to live with you here in the hospital, and you allowed me to recover my desire for life. Yes, I was incapable of living. The air that entered my lungs felt like knives. I’d feel ants burying themselves in my face and would get dizzy. In clinical jargon, it’s called the onset of nervous collapse.

When Shams died, everything inside me died. I became a corpse, and things lost their meaning and taste. Life became unbearably heavy. It was as though I were carrying my own corpse on my back. Who can carry the sack of life when it’s filled with forty years of desolation? Who would have the courage?

Amna came, and she told me about you. By the way, where is she now? She vanished, like all your women. This means we’ve entered the dangerous period, for when the women vanish, it means the end is near. Women only run away when life is extinguished.

Amna left, followed by all your other women. No one remains but me in this collapsing place. There are cracks everywhere – cracks in the walls and cracks in the ceiling; it seems everything is on the verge of collapse.

But I’m not afraid. Everything’s collapsing, but I’m here and I’m not afraid.

Strange, isn’t it?

Maybe neither one of us has been afraid during these long months we’ve spent together. We’ve made a shelter out of words, a country out of words, and women out of words.

I’m not afraid for you, and I won’t comment on what Zainab said – don’t be angry with her, please: She doesn’t understand. She said in the beginning that you’d become young like a baby again, then she added that your shrunken form didn’t look human and that I’d created a little monster.

It’s as though she can’t see.

Never mind; I’m convinced that you’re the most beautiful baby, and that’s enough, right? And I feel your freedom, too. You can die if you want to. I say, “You can,” which doesn’t mean I’m suggesting you do so, but you’re free, choose to live or to die as you like. Do whatever you feel like doing, for now your truth is inside me.

Tell me a little about your daughter, Noor. What a lovely name! I don’t know her, but I feel as though I do, and I long to see her. When you described her to me the first time, I thought you were telling me about Shams. You described her dark beauty and her infinite charm, and you told me about her son, Yunes.

You said you’d received a letter from her announcing the birth of Yunes and that she said all of your children were naming their boys Yunes. That way you’d live among them and would return to them not as one but as a hundred.

You were carrying around the letter and laughing. You read me that passage laughing, then tears started to flow from your eyes. You wept and laughed as though your emotions were crossed and you no longer knew how to express yourself. I promised I’d give you the Fairouz song that’s taken from a poem by the Lebanese poet, Bishara al-Khouri, known as Little Akhtal, and I recited the line that opens the song, and you took out a pen and wrote it on the back of the letter:

He laughs and cries neither in sorrow nor in joy

Like a lover who inscribes a line of love only to erase it.

You wrote the line and a white mist arose and clouded your face and eyes, allowing you to escape my gaze; you repeated the ode, the verse swirling around you like water. It was then that I understood the meaning of poetry, and the words of Imru’ al-Qais – my grandfather and yours, and the grandfather of all Arabs. For Imru’ al-Qais didn’t see his own image in the mirror of his beloved’s breast; he saw the world, he saw the mist that covered it. And, realizing that he was living inside that mist, he invented words to assuage his shame and confusion. Poetry, my son, is words we use to heal our shame, our sorrow, our longing. It’s a cover. The poet wraps us up in words so our souls don’t fall to pieces. Poetry is against death – it’s both sickness and cure, the bare soul and its clothes. I’m cold now, so I take refuge in poetry, hiding my head in it and asking it to cover me.

Letter in hand, you came and painted a portrait of Noor before reading it. You became like a poet as you read about the hundred Yuneses being born over there, you didn’t boast or trumpet your triumph. You wore your triumph and started weeping and laughing, because triumph is not unlike defeat; it is a moment when the soul is exposed from within. You were exposed and wounded, and in ministering to you with Little Akhtal’s poem, I poured the voice of Fairouz on your wounds. The mist of poetry covered you and took you to a distant place.

You’re now in the distant realm of poetry, the realm of a hundred Yuneses who don’t know you’re dying, and who don’t see the footprints you left behind on the roads of Galilee. Only the forest of oblivion remembers you now.

I PROMISED I’d tell you about Shams, and I didn’t. We got to where she became an officer with the fedayeen. How that came about I don’t know. I know she went to Jordan after the 1982 invasion of Beirut and her husband, Fawwaz, caught up with her there and worked with his father, who owned a small fabric store in Jebel al-Weibdeh.

Fawwaz quieted down in Amman, the violence that had erupted in Lebanon in the form of bullets fired around his wife’s body also disappeared.

“Fawwaz didn’t scare me anymore,” said Shams. “For six years in Beirut, I can only remember myself as naked, crucified, with bullets exploding around me, and then the man would come to me, erect, boring into my body with a savage shout that emerged from between his thighs. Six years. I knew I’d never get pregnant because what he was doing doesn’t make pregnancies. He’d ask me before starting my torture session if I was pregnant, and I’d say no and see his snarl and hear and watch his fury erupt.”

She said everything changed in Amman.

“It seems the demon left him, and he became a different man, stammering in front of his father, addressing his mother respectfully and coming to me calmly. We lived in one house with his father, mother, and unmarried sister. Fawwaz became someone other than Fawwaz, and I became pregnant, and Dalal came.

“Three months after Dalal was born, the father died regretting that I hadn’t given birth to a boy who’d inherit his name. I paid no attention to his harsh looks or to his refusal to speak to me after Dalal was born; he took to telling his wife and his son anything he wanted to say to me, even when I was sitting next to him. ‘Tell her,’ he’d say, without uttering my name. But I didn’t care. What mattered was that Dalal looked like me, not them. The girl was my daughter, not theirs. God, how beautiful she was! Soon, when I go get her and bring her back here, you’ll see the most beautiful girl in the world. I wanted to call her Amal, ^*because, with her, hope began. But Fawwaz insisted on Dalal, and I later found out that Dalal was the name of the cousin who’d refused to marry him. His own father had advised his brother not to give Dalal to Fawwaz if she didn’t love him; then they stumbled upon me for the no-good son who wasn’t an engineer or anything at all. Fawwaz insisted on the name Dalal and his father didn’t interfere, so I gave in. I cried because I felt that Amal had died. I named her Amal when she was still in my belly. I’d talk to her and listen to her. I knew from the beginning that she’d be a girl, from the first instant that I felt dizziness, nausea, and thirst. I spent the first three months of the pregnancy sleeping. I’d drink and sleep and talk to Amal. Then they stole the name. Fawwaz said Dalal, I said Amal. But names are not important. Dalal fits her and I’ve gotten used to it.”

Shams told of the great transformation that came about after the death of Fawwaz’s father, how the world – and her husband – utterly changed. She said she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“The father died of a heart attack, and his son inherited everything. Fawwaz changed. He reverted to being the Fawwaz I’d left behind in Beirut. Instead of trembling before his father, it was now his mother who trembled before him. Instead of stumbling when he walked, it was now his sister who stumbled, and instead of stammering when he talked, we were the ones who stammered. During his father’s time, when he came to sleep with me, he’d come whispering, covering my body with his, groping in the dark. Only in Amman, and only in the Amman of the whispering times, did I feel something sexual with him; I felt something move in the depths of me. Then his father died, and the page was turned.”

Shams said the situation grew worse and worse. “At first, he stopped paying attention, then he went back to his Beirut ways. He started beating me up, saying he couldn’t feel aroused if he didn’t hit me. The beatings started light but things progressed, and he began hitting me with all his might while I stifled my screams and my pain out of shame in front of his mother and sister. Then I couldn’t control myself anymore; as soon as he beat me, I would start screaming. The scenes multiplied, and I felt I could hear the two women’s footsteps outside our door; I imagined them bent over the keyhole, listening and shaking their heads. The sister’s handkerchief would fall to the ground and she’d pick it up, looking into her mother’s face.

“In the morning he’d leave and I’d be left on my own with the women, not daring to look at them. They behaved as though they were unaware of what went on in our bedroom.

“Once I said something to his mother, and she looked at me with startled eyes. I didn’t really say anything, I just said that Fawwaz pursued me at night and I couldn’t stand it anymore. She looked at me as though she didn’t understand what I was saying and mumbled something about life being like that and I should thank the Lord that he was providing me with a home.

“Umm Fawwaz said I should thank the Lord! Imagine! Thank God for the humiliation and the beatings!

“I don’t know whether his mother said something to him or whether things just took their natural course, but after that mistake of mine he became even more brutal and went back to acting out the Beirut scenes. In Amman he couldn’t fire his gun: There was a State rather than a civil war – but he transformed the bedroom into a battlefield. He’d spread-eagle me, point his finger like a gun, and fire from his mouth. He’d come up close and start boring into my body with the muzzle of his imaginary gun. I tried to find a solution. I went to see my mother, but all I got from her was, ‘Anything but divorce! Divorce costs a woman her reputation.’ So I decided to act alone; I decided to run away, but I didn’t dare make it happen. Every night, after he’d gone to sleep, I’d draw up my escape plans, and in the morning the plans would evaporate, and I’d find myself one of three women.

“Where was I to run to?

“The West Bank crossed my mind. God, I even thought of going to the Jews! But I was afraid. I didn’t know anyone there, and they might throw me in prison. Then I thought of Beirut. I couldn’t even stand the sound of the word Beirut, but I decided that’s where I would go.

“I don’t know how I got the words out of my mouth.

“Fawwaz was eating breakfast, sitting alone at the table eating fried eggs and labaneh, while we stood – three women hovering around him, ready to obey his every gesture, while he smacked his lips and drank tea. Suddenly, I heard my voice saying: ‘Listen. I can’t stand it anymore. Divorce me.’

“But Fawwaz went on eating as though he hadn’t heard, so I screamed, ‘Fawwaz, listen to me. I can’t go on. Divorce me.’

“He swallowed what was in his mouth and said in a wooden voice, ‘You’re divorced.’

“I’m certain he didn’t take me seriously, but he said it. I ran to my room, put my clothes in a plastic bag, took Dalal in my arms, and left.

“‘Leave the little girl, you whore,’ said his mother.

“My body went slack. I’d thought of everything that might happen except for Dalal. His mother came up to me and snatched the little girl from my arms.

“‘Go to your family and tell them, Fawwaz divorced me because I’m a whore,’ said Fawwaz.

“I’m sure he thought I was going to collapse and weep and implore him to forgive me, but I turned my back on them and left the house. I didn’t go to my family. Instead, I walked in the direction of the taxi station to leave for Beirut. I got into a taxi, fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until we reached the checkpoint at the Jordanian-Syrian border. Then I fell asleep again and woke to find myself held up at the Syrian-Lebanese border because I didn’t have an entry visa for Lebanon. I stood alone after the taxi left me to continue its journey. A man with a Palestinian accent came up to me, and said he could get me to Tripoli, via Homs. At the time, Tripoli was a battle zone: The Palestinian fedayeen, or what was left of them in Lebanon, had congregated in the city, and it was under siege. I gave him everything I possessed. I was carrying forty Jordanian dinars that I’d stolen one by one from Fawwaz’s pocket in preparation for my escape.”