Текст книги "Gate of the Sun"

Автор книги: Elias Khoury

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

I wanted to kneel, rub my head all over her feet and pour myself out in front of her. But instead of kneeling, those stupid words came from my lips.

She asked me why I didn’t go with the others, and I answered and waited. I heard her laugh. She turned around in the white sheet, sat down on the bed, and started laughing. She didn’t say my words had bewitched her, the way words are supposed to in moments of passion.

She laughed and said she was hungry.

I suggested we make something at home and asked if she wanted me to make her some pasta as usual.

She yawned and said, “Whatever you want.”

She stretched her hand behind her back and the sheet fell away from her brown breasts, still wet from the bath. I leapt toward her, but she raised her hand and said, “No. I’m hungry.” I ran to the kitchen and started frying cauliflower and making taratursauce.

“You’re the champion at taratur,” she used to say, licking the last of the white sauce, made from sesame paste, limes, and garlic, from her fingers.

She said she didn’t like fried cauliflower, but the taraturwas fantastic.

I didn’t say. . well yes, in fact, I did repeat that sentence of mine for her ears. I said I felt that I had to stay because we couldn’t leave the people here. She laughed again and said she’d eaten enough and wanted to sleep. She pushed the tray to one side, put her head on the cushion, and slept.

At that moment I told her I wanted to stay because I wanted to impress her. But now, no. I feel there’s no reason for me to stay. I stayed here without rhyme or reason, just to stay. I don’t know where you were those days. The truth is I didn’t ask about you. I was like someone who’d been hypnotized. I picked up my bag, took my Kalashnikov, barrel pointed to the ground, and made my way to the municipal stadium in Beirut to leave with the rest. And there, in the middle of the crowd and the long, wan faces, I made up my mind to go back to the camp.

You’ll remember how the fedayeen left Beirut during the siege.

You said you were against leaving. “Better death!” you told me. “Leave under the guard of the Americans and Israelis? Never!” But you were the first to set off. You went to that Christian village and hid yourself there and made up that story about the priest who thought you were a Christian who hid you in his house. I believed you at the time. At the time I, too, claimed to have refused to leave – “Shame on you, my friend! Like the Turkish army? Never! We can never leave Beirut!” But, at the same time, I was convinced that we had to leave. We were defeated, and we had to withdraw as defeated armies do. On my way to the stadium, I imagined myself part of a Greek epic setting out on a new, Palestinian Odyssey. I’m not sure if I imagined that Odyssey then or I’m just saying that now because Mahmoud Darwish wrote a long poem about such an odyssey, even though he didn’t get on the Greek boats that would carry the Palestinians to their new wilderness either.

I put on my military uniform, picked up my small pack, took my rifle, and went. It felt like I was ripping the place from my skin. I turned around and saw the camp looking like a block of stone. Suddenly the camp became a mound of ruins, a place unfit for habitation, and I decided to leave it forever. What would I do in the camp after the fedayeen had pulled out? Would I end my life there, meaninglessly, the same way I’d lived all those years doctoring the sick when I wasn’t really a doctor, loving a woman I didn’t really love? At that time I was on the verge of marrying plump, light-skinned Nuha, who worked with us at the Red Crescent. The only thing Nuha wanted was to get married. She’d take me to her parents’ house at the camp entrance near the open space that later became the common grave, and there we’d eat and I’d see in her mother’s eyes a phantom called marriage. I don’t know how I came to find myself half-married without realizing it. Then came the Israeli invasion and the decision to move us out of Beirut.

I looked back and I saw the heap of stones called the Shatila camp, and I started running in the direction of the stadium. I was afraid that Nuha would come, persuade me to stay, and take me to her parents’ house. I reached the stadium convinced she’d be there. I ducked down, blending in with the crowd so she wouldn’t see me. I didn’t want her, and I had no desire to stay or to get married. I would raise my head from time to time and steal a look, so I could spot her before she saw me and could run away. But I didn’t see her. Instead of relaxing, setting my concerns aside, and looking for my friends, however, I was seized with anxiety, as though her absence had struck terror in me. I didn’t want her to come, and she didn’t, yet I found myself searching for her.

You remember those days – women and tears and rice and shots fired into the air. I never saw anything like it in my life – a defeated army withdrawing like victors! That burning Beirut summer was cooled with tears; August scorched the earth, the people, and the tears with its savage sun. And I searched for Nuha. I thought, it’s impossible – Nuha’s given up her life’s best bet after all that? She was bound to come and ask me to promise to marry her, and I’d agree, and then forget her. But where was she? I walked through the crowds like a stranger, because if your mother doesn’t come to say goodbye, it’s not a real goodbye. Mothers filled the place, and the young men were eating and weeping. Food and tears, that was the farewell. Mothers opening bundles of food wrapped in cloths and young men eating, youyousand bullets.

At that moment, Abu Salem, I thought of my mother. At that moment I loved her and forgave her and said I wished she were there. But where was she? At that point I didn’t know she was in Ramallah. At the municipal stadium, I was sure my mother would come, that she’d suddenly appear at Nuha’s side and unwrap a bundle of food in front of me, and I’d eat and weep like everyone else.

I stood there alone, and nobody came.

Then I don’t know what happened to me – I looked at the people, and they seemed like ghosts.

I already told you about the siege, about the hospital, and about death – how we lived with death without taking it in. I stayed in the hospital for a month treating the dead, eating eggplant, and watching the Israeli planes launch bombing raids like they were competing in fireworks displays. I lived with death, but I couldn’t absorb it. They all died. They came, and as soon as we’d put them in beds, they died. Strange days. Do you remember how we used to talk about the walking dead? Did I tell you about Ahmad Jasim? The man was hit in the throat near the museum, but he kept going. He fell to the ground, then got up like a chicken with its throat slit and, to the astonishment of his comrades, set off in the direction of the Israeli army positions. After about ten meters, he fell down dead, motionless. They picked him up and brought him to the hospital. I examined him and ordered them to take his body to the morgue. “The morgue?” shrieked one of his comrades. “Why the morgue?”

“Because he’s dead,” I said.

“Dead? That’s impossible!” the man cried.

I ordered Abu Ahmad to take him to the morgue.

Then the yelling started. They seized the body, picked it up and left. I tried to explain that he was dead and that walking after being hit didn’t mean anything because it was just an involuntary reflex, but they called me names, wrapped him in a woolen blanket, and went off with him.

We lived three months with death without believing it. But in the middle of the stadium, I finally believed it. They all seemed dead, eating and firing into the air and weeping.

Just as I came to the stadium running, so I left it running.

I won’t tell you how I looked for Nuha like a madman. God, why didn’t she come? It was just that my tears wouldn’t flow. I hated this farewell of theirs – why were they eating and weeping and shooting? There shouldn’t have been a farewell. At that instant I was ready to buy a farewell for myself at any cost. I wanted to weep as they wept and shoot as they were shooting.

But she didn’t come.

What had happened to Nuha? Had she understood that I didn’t want her anymore? Had love ended along with the siege?

Why the tears? I ask you. Your closed eyes are soaking in bluish white. I opened your eyes and put a few drops in. Do you know what the drops are called? Artificial Tears. They call drops for washing out the eyes “tears.” People go to the pharmacy and actually buy tears, while we can barely hold ours back.

“Tears are our remedy,” my mother used to say.

My mother used to cry beneath the beating rain that crackled on the zinc sheets we’d made into a roof for our crumbling house in the camp. She’d cry and say that tears were a remedy for the eyes. She’d cry and get scared. Then she fled to Jordan and left me with my grandmother and the flower pillow. I told you about my grandmother’s pillow, so why should I repeat the story now? I just wanted to say that I bought this eyedropper made in England so I could put tears in your eyes, which are dry as kindling. Brother, cry at least once. Cry for your fate and mine, I beg you – you don’t know the importance of tears. The best thing for the eyes are tears, tears are indispensable. They are the water that washes the eye, the protein that nourishes it, and the lubrication that allows the eyelids to slide over it.

You’ve made me cry, but you refuse to cry yourself.

I administer the drops, wait for your tears and feel the tears rise up in my own eyes. I’m not weeping for you; I’m weeping for Umm Hassan, not because she died but because she left me the videocassette.

SANA’, THE WIFE of the kunafa-seller, came. She came and stood by the open door of your room and knocked. I was sitting here reading Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s novel In Search of Walid Mas’oud. I was fascinated by Walid Mas’oud, the Palestinian who disappeared leaving a mysterious tape in his car, to unravel the riddle of which Jabra had to write a long and beautiful novel. I love Jabra because he writes like an aristocrat – his sentences are elitist and beautiful. It’s true he was poor when he was a child, but he wrote like real writers, with expressive, literary sentences. You have to read them the way you read literature, not the way I’m talking to you now.

Sana’ knocked and didn’t enter. I put my book aside, stood up, and asked her in, but she stood by the door and gave me the cassette.

“This is what Umm Hassan left you,” she said. “Umm Hassan entrusted me with this tape to give to you.”

I took the videotape and offered her a cigarette, which she smoked greedily. I used to think that veiled women didn’t smoke, but Sana’ talked and stammered, gulping down the smoke between syllables.

I didn’t understand about the cassette, because Umm Hassan had visited Galilee three years before, and when she returned she brought me a branch of oranges and told me of her visit to al-Ghabsiyyeh, where she’d lit a candle under the lotus tree and prayed two prostrations in the mosque.

Sana’ said Umm Hassan had visited al-Kweikat again, six months before, and had seen her house and made up her mind to die. Every day she’d watch this cassette and tell stories while others joined her in her lamentation, her sorrow, and her memories.

“She stopped sleeping,” said Sana’. “She came to me and said she’d heard the call of death, because she couldn’t sleep. Sobs clung to her voice, and she told me to give you this tape. I don’t know what you’ll see on it. It’s falling apart it’s been used so often, but she left it for you.”

I thanked Sana’, nodding goodbye to her, but she didn’t move, as if she were stuck to the door. Then she spoke. She blew smoke in my face and her eyes filled with tears.

Sana’ told me about that journey. At first I couldn’t understand a thing. Then the words started transforming themselves into pictures. She spoke about Fawzi, Umm Hassan’s brother, and about the village of Abu Sinan, stammering and repeating herself as though she had no control over her lips. Then she got to the point.

“I won’t tell you to take good care of it,” said Sana’. “That cassette – I mean, you know. .”

“God rest her soul,” I said.

“God rest all our souls,” said the pious woman and started to go. After taking two hesitant steps, she came back and said, “Please, Doctor, take good care of the cassette.”

Is it true?

Can it be that a woman died because she met another woman?

Umm Hassan’s story shook me to the core, not just because she died, but because she thought of me and left me this tape.

What could have happened in al-Kweikat for the woman to die?

You know Umm Hassan better than I do and you know her courage. She left al-Kweikat when she was twenty-five carrying her son, Hassan, on her back and holding her daughters, Salema and Hanan, by the hand. They walked from al-Kweikat to Yarka. In the olive orchards of Yarka, when the wife of Qasem Ahmad Sa’id discovered that what she was carrying in her arms was a pillow rather than her baby son, she started wailing. Her husband was sitting on the ground like an imbecile while she implored him, “Go and get the boy!” But the man was incapable of getting to his feet. The mother moaned like a wounded animal, and the husband sat motionless, but Umm Hassan – do you know what she did? Umm Hassan went back on her own. She left her children with Samirah, the wife of Qasem Ahmad Sa’id, went back to the village, and took the child from the hands of the Jews. She didn’t tell anyone what she’d seen or what the Palmach ^*men were doing to al-Kweikat. She returned exhausted, gasping, as though all the air in the world couldn’t fill her lungs. She set the child down in front of its mother, took her own children, and went to the olive tree that her husband and brothers were beneath. Samirah ran to her to kiss her hand, but Umm Hassan looked at her with contempt and pushed her away.

Umm Hassan didn’t think she’d done anything extraordinary. She’d gone and got the child, and that was all there was to it. No one considered her a heroine. In those days, surprise had disappeared from people’s faces; sorrow alone wrapped itself around them, like an overcoat full of holes.

Al-Kweikat fell to the Jews without our knowing it. On the night of June 9, 1948, everyone came out of their houses in their nightclothes. The shelling was heavy, and the artillery thundered into the night of the unsleeping village. People took their children and fled through the fields to the neighboring villages of Yarka and Deir al-Qasi, and from Deir al-Qasi to Abu Sinan and Ya’thur, and on from there. Abu Hassan drove four head of sheep and three of goats along the road, but the flock died at Ya’thur, and Umm Hassan wept for the animals as a mother weeps for her children.

“God, I wept, Son! How I mourned those animals! How could they be gone as though they’d never been? Wiped off the face of the earth, dead. How were we supposed to live?”

But Umm Hassan lived long enough to bury her sons one after the other.

Sana’ said Umm Hassan never stopped weeping. She’d put on the cassette and would weep and tell everyone the story of the two visits she’d made over there. “Dear God, people. What we’ve lived through and seen. Would that we’d neither seen nor lived through such things!”

Sana’ said that she died of grief over her house.

“She knew?” I asked.

“I’ve no idea,” she answered. “Maybe it was because she saw it for herself. Hearing’s not like seeing.”

And you, Father – did you know these things? Why didn’t you tell Umm Hassan what had happened to al-Kweikat? Didn’t you spend your days and nights in those demolished villages? Why didn’t you tell the woman that the Jews had occupied her house?

“Why the fuss?” you’ll say. “Umm Hassan didn’t die because she saw the house. She died because her hour had come.”

THAT’S WHAT YOU would have said if I’d told you about Umm Hassan’s house.

Umm Hassan said she’d gone there. It was her second visit to her brother Fawzi’s house in Abu Sinan.

“My family fled from al-Kweikat to Abu Sinan and stayed there. What a shame that my husband didn’t want to listen to my father. He preferred to stay with his own family; his brothers had decided to go to Lebanon, so he went with them. My father disagreed. He hid with his wife and children and grandchildren in the olive groves for more than a year. Then he appeared in Abu Sinan and stayed there. I don’t know how they managed. My father used to grow watermelons. After the Israelis moved in, the watermelons belonged to them. They were signed on as construction workers and got by. Then my father bought a plot of land and built a house. It was to my father’s house in Abu Sinan that I went, and there I found my brother, sick. He had pneumonia, and we feared for his life. That’s why we didn’t go to al-Kweikat. Was I supposed to go on my own? I went to Deir al-Asad and Sha’ab and visited our relatives there, but al-Kweikat had been demolished, and my brother was sick. All the same, once when we were coming back from Sha’ab and my nephew was driving me in his little car, I begged him to go by al-Kweikat. “No, Auntie,” he said. “There are only Jews,” and kept going. I begged him, but he wouldn’t agree. We went on the road parallel to the village, but I couldn’t see a thing.”

“The second time was different,” said Umm Hassan.

“My brother was in excellent health, and he took me to al-Kweikat. I asked him to do it, and at first he said the same thing as his son, but later he agreed. We went and he took his son, Rami, who had a video camera. He’s the one who filmed the tape, God love him. We went into al-Kweikat, and I didn’t recognize it until we got to the house.”

What should I say about Umm Hassan?

Should I mention the tears, or the memories, or say nothing?

Seated in the backseat of the little blue Volkswagen, she was looking out the window and seeing nothing.

“We’re here,” said Fawzi.

Her brother got out of the car and held out his hand to help her out. Umm Hassan moved her stout body forward but couldn’t raise her head. She seemed unable to do so, as though her breasts were pulling her down toward the ground. She was bent over and rooted to the spot.

“Come on, Sister.”

Fawzi helped her out of the car. She remained doubled over, then put her hand to her waist and stood upright.

He pointed to the house, but she couldn’t see a thing.

Her tears flowed silently. She wiped them away with her sleeve and listened to her brother’s explanations while his son played around with the camera.

“They demolished every single house, and built the Beyt ha-Emek settlement – except for the new houses, the ones that were built on the hill.”

Umm Hassan’s house had been one of the new ones up on the hill.

“All the houses were demolished,” said the brother.

“And mine?” murmured Umm Hassan.

“There it is,” he said.

They were about twenty meters from the house. The branches of the eucalyptus tree were swaying. But Umm Hassan could see nothing. He took her by the arm and they walked. Then suddenly she saw it all.

“It’s as if no time has passed.”

Of what time was she talking about, Father? Can we find it in the videocassette tapes that have become our only entertainment? The Shatila camp has turned into Camp Video. The videocassettes circulate among the houses, and people sit around their television sets, they remember and tell stories. They tell stories about what they see, and out of the glimpses of the villages they build villages. Don’t they ever get sick of repeating the same stories? Umm Hassan never slept, and, until her death, she would tell stories, until all the tears had drained from her eyes.

She said that suddenly everything came back to her. She went up to the front door but didn’t press the buzzer. She stood back a little and walked around the house. She sat on the ground with her back against the eucalyptus tree as she used to do. She’d been afraid of the tree, so she’d turn her back on it. Her husband would make fun of her for turning her back on the horizon and looking only at the stones and the walls. Her brother took her by the hand and helped her up. Again, it was difficult for her to stand, as though she were rooted to the ground. Her brother dragged her to the door and pressed the buzzer. No one opened, so he pressed it a second time. The ringing reverberated louder and louder in Umm Hassan’s ears; everything seemed to be pounding, her body was trembling, her pulse racing. The brother stood waiting.

The door finally opened.

A woman appeared: about fifty years old, dark complexion, large eyes, black hair streaked with gray.

Fawzi said something in Hebrew.

“Why are you speaking to me in Hebrew? Speak to me in Arabic,” said the woman with a strong Lebanese accent.

“Excuse me, Madam. Is your husband here?” asked Fawzi.

“No, he’s not here. Is everything all right? Please come in.”

She opened the door wider.

“You know Arabic,” Umm Hassan whispered as she entered. “You’re an Arab, Sister – aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not an Arab,” said the woman.

“You’ve studied Arabic?” asked Umm Hassan.

“No, I studied Hebrew, but I haven’t forgotten my Arabic. Come in, come in.”

They entered the house. Umm Hassan said – like everyone else who’s gone back to see their former homes – “Everything was in its place. Everything was just how it used to be, even the earthenware water jug.”

“God of all the worlds,” sighed Umm Hassan, “what would Umm Isa have said if she’d visited her house in Jerusalem? Poor Umm Isa. In her last days she spoke about just one thing – the saucepan of zucchini. Umm Isa left her house in Katamon in Jerusalem without turning off the flame under the saucepan of zucchini.”

“I can smell burning. The saucepan. I must go and turn off the flame,” she would say to Umm Hassan, who nursed her during her last illness. And Umm Hassan, who had felt pity for the dying woman, stood in her own house in front of the earthenware water jug that was still where it had been, smelled the zucchini in Umm Isa’s saucepan, and said that everything was in its place except for those people who had come in and sat down right where we’d been sitting.

The Israeli woman left her in front of the water jug and returned with a pot of Turkish coffee. She poured three cups and sat calmly watching these strangers whose hands trembled as they held their coffee. Before Umm Hassan could open her mouth to ask a thing, the Israeli woman said, “It’s your house, isn’t it?”

“How did you know?” asked Umm Hassan.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. Welcome.”

Umm Hassan took a sip from her cup. The aroma of the coffee overwhelmed her, and she burst into sobs.

The Israeli woman lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the air, gazing into space.

Fawzi went out into the garden where Rami was playing with the video camera, filming everything.

The two women remained alone in the living room, one weeping, the other smoking in silence.

The Israeli turned and wanted to say something, but didn’t. Umm Hassan wiped away her tears and went over to the water jug, which stood on a side table in the living room.

“The jug,” said Umm Hassan.

“I found it here, and I don’t use it. Take it if you want.”

“Thank you, no.”

Umm Hassan went over to the jug, picked it up, and tucked it under her arm; then she went back to the Israeli woman and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” said the Palestinian, “I don’t want it. I’m giving it to you. Take it.”

“Thank you,” said the Israeli, who took the jug and returned it to its place.

The silence was broken – the two women burst out laughing. Umm Hassan started looking around the house. She stood in front of the bedroom but didn’t go in. Next she went to the kitchen. In the sink were piles of dirty dishes. Umm Hassan turned on the tap and watched the water flow out, and the Israeli woman ran in saying, “I’m so sorry, it’s a mess.” Umm Hassan turned off the tap and said, laughing, “I didn’t leave the dirty dishes. That was you.”

The two women went out into the garden.

The Israeli woman gave Umm Hassan her arm and told her about the place. She told her about the orange grove where Iraqi Jews worked, the new irrigation projects the government had started, their fear of the Katyusha rockets, and about how difficult life was. Umm Hassan listened and looked and said one word: “Paradise. Paradise. Palestine’s a paradise.” When the Israeli woman asked her what she was saying, she answered, “Nothing. I was just saying that we call it an orchard, not a grove. This is an orange orchard. How wonderful, how wonderful.”

“Yes, an orchard,” said the Israeli.

Then Umm Hassan began telling the Israeli woman about the place.

“Where’s the spring?” asked Umm Hassan.

“What spring?”

Umm Hassan told her the story of her spring and how she’d discovered water in the field next to the house. When her husband had built the house, close to the eucalyptus tree, there had been no water. It was Umm Hassan who had discovered it. And one day she saw water welling up from the ground. She told the men, “We must dig here,” and they dug, and water came gushing out. So they built a little stone wall around the spring, and it became known as Umm Hassan’s spring.

“Where’s the spring?” she asked.

The Israeli woman couldn’t answer. “There was a spring here,” she said, “but they dug an artesian well around it and laid some pipes. Could that be it?”

“No, it’s a natural spring,” said Umm Hassan, and told how they’d decided to plant apple trees after they discovered the water. But the war.

Umm Hassan guided the woman to where her spring had been.

She didn’t find it. Where it had been, she found a well walled with pipes and iron with a small tap on each side. Umm Hassan bent over to open the tap, and when the water gushed out, splashed her face and neck, sprinkled the water on her hair and clothes, and drank.

“Drink,” she said. “Water sweeter than honey.”

The Israeli woman bent over and washed her hands, and then turned off the tap without drinking.

“This is the most delicious water in the world.”

The Israeli woman turned on the tap again, drank a little and smiled.

Later Umm Hassan would say the Israelis don’t drink water, just fizzy drinks. “They only drink out of bottles, even though Palestine’s water is the best in the world.”

In vain we tried to explain to her that they drink mineral water not fizzy drinks and that the people of Beirut have started to drink water out of plastic bottles, too, but she stuck to her guns and said, “They don’t drink water. I saw them with my own eyes. You want me to question what I saw with my own eyes?”

After they’d had a drink, the two women walked around the house. Umm Hassan told the woman about the eucalyptus tree and the olive grove and pointed out the stone that looks like the head of an ox. She took her around behind the house and showed her the cave on the other side of the hill.

Umm Hassan talked and the other woman discovered, astonished that she’d never noticed the ox’s head, or had even gone into the cave. Then Umm Hassan told her how she’d learned her profession as a midwife from her grandmother on her father’s side, Maryam, and that she had an official license from the British government. She recounted how she’d gotten married at fifteen “to chase away the chickens from the front of the house,” as her mother-in-law had said when she’d asked for her hand.

Umm Hassan told her stories, strolling from place to place, and the Jewish woman followed along behind, listening and nodding her head but not uttering a word.

Umm Hassan would tell her guests that she had seen her life dissolving in front of her: “What’s life? Like a pinch of salt in water, it just melts away.” She slipped back as though no time had passed. She saw again the young woman who’d gone to live in her new home. At twenty, she told her husband that she wanted a house of their own – “I’m no good for chasing chickens anymore and I am no longer a little girl.” They got the land and built the house with their own hands, and she discovered the spring and the cave and the ox’s head, and became the midwife for the whole district of Acre.

The women went back inside the house and sat in silence.

Umm Hassan got up and went into the bedroom. She looked at the bed that occupied the center of the room. It was the first bed she’d slept on in her life. At home with her family, and then in her husband’s house, she’d slept on bedding on the floor, folding it up each morning and tucking it away at the far end of the room. But in this house the bed couldn’t be folded up.

“A room just for sleeping in,” her husband had said.

The other woman sleeps here every night, thought Umm Hassan, with her husband, in the same bed, in the same room, in the same house, in the same – No, not in the same village: The village didn’t exist anymore. Umm Hassan could no longer see the close-packed houses of the village – the houses were gone. Nothing was left of al-Kweikat.

When she finished her tour of the house, Umm Hassan wept. She sat in the living room and wept. Her brother came in to hurry her up so they could return to Abu Sinan and found her weeping. He wept, too, and the son with the camera wept.

“Do you know what she said to me?”

Umm Hassan would relate the same conversation every day, adding a word here, deleting one there, choking back her tears.

“She asked me, ‘Where are you from?’

“From al-Kweikat, I told her. This is my house and this is my jug and this is my sofa, and the olive trees and the cactus and the land and the spring – everything.”

“‘No, no. Where are you living now?’

“‘In Shatila.’

“‘Where’s Shatila.’

“‘It’s a camp.’

“‘Where’s the camp?’

“‘In Lebanon.’

“‘Where in Lebanon?’

“‘In Beirut, near Sports City.’”

When the Jewish woman heard the word Beirut, she gave a start and her manner changed completely.

“You’re from Beirut?” she cried, the words tumbling out of her mouth and her eyes filling with tears.

“Listen, Sister,” the Jewish woman said. “I’m from Beirut too, from Wadi Abu Jmil. You know Wadi Abu Jmil, the Jewish district in the center? They brought me from there when I was twelve. I left Beirut and came to this dreary, bleak land. Do you know the Ecole de l’Alliance Israélite? To the right of the school there’s a three-story building that used to be owned by a Polish Jew named Elie Bron. I’m from there.”