Текст книги "I Was Born There, I Was Born Here"

Автор книги: Mourid Barghouti

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

4. I Was Born There, I Was Born Here

The Occupation stretched the distance between Tamim and Deir Ghassanah to more than twenty-one years, his whole life till then. Tamim took a large step when we obtained his permit, and the distance started to shrink. Now only twenty-seven kilometers separate Tamim from Deir Ghassanah. He knows that I was born ‘there.’ In half an hour I’ll be saying to him, “I was born here.”

I’m not a politician, but the Occupation distorts and destroys things that affect me personally and affect others whom I know and love. Occupation, like dictatorship, doesn’t just corrupt political and party life but the lives of individuals too, even individuals who have nothing to do with politics. One of the Occupation’s cruelest crimes is the distortion of distance in the individual’s life. This is a fact: the Occupation changes distances. It destroys them, upsets them, and plays with them as it likes. Whenever the soldiers kill someone, the customary distance between the moments of birth and death is distorted. The Occupation closes the road between two cities and makes the distance between them many times the number recorded on the maps. The Occupation throws my friend into prison and makes the distance between him and his living room one to be measured in years and in the lives of his sons and daughters, who will give him grandchildren he will never see. The Occupation pursues a fugitive in the hills and makes the distance between sleep and his pillow one to be measured in the howling of wolves and the darkness of caves, while the leaves of trees become his only dining table. It teaches him how to turn his shoes and the stones into a pillow beneath his head, above which dreams and nightmares interweave. The soldier at the checkpoint confiscates my papers because he doesn’t like the look of me for some reason and the distance between me and my identity becomes the distance between his pleasure and his displeasure. The soldier of the Occupation stands on a piece of land he has confiscated and calls it ‘here’ and I, its owner, exiled to a distant country, have to call it ‘there.’

Many of my friends around the world express surprise at this Palestinian attachment to place of origin and concern for family ties. Some even scoff at it and contrast it with their own open-armed acceptance of adventure, discovery, a nomadic lifestyle and residence in places that they choose and change according to their fancy, without the slightest regret at leaving family or even homeland behind. They remind me that the world is wider and more beautiful than ‘our villages’ and ‘our families.’ I understand this beautiful sense of the vastness of the world. Like them, I love movement, journeys, and living in new places. What these friends forget is that it is they who choose to distance themselves. They are the ones who take the decisions and make the plans and then present their passports (recognized everywhere) and get on planes and trains and cars and motorcycles and go to places where three conditions that the Palestinian cannot meet are fulfilled: first, that it is their preference and choice to go to specifically these places; second, that these places always welcome them; and third and most important, that it is in their power to return to their home country whenever they desire and decide. The Palestinian forced to become a refugee, to migrate, and to go into exile from his homeland in the sixty years since the Nakba of 1948, or the forty since the June 1967 War, suffers miseries trying to obtain a document by which he will be recognized at borders. He suffers miseries trying to obtain a passport from another state because he is stateless and has to go through Kafkaesque interrogations before being granted an entry visa to any place in the world, even the Arab states. The Palestinian is forbidden to enter his own country by land, sea, or air, even in a coffin. It is not a matter of romantic attachment to a place but of eternal exclusion from it. The Palestinian stripped of an original identity is a palm tree broken in the middle. My foreign friends have control over the details of their lives but a single Israeli soldier can control the details of the life of any Palestinian. This is the difference. This is the story.

Anis comes to pick us up in his car.

He doesn’t keep us waiting long. He’s our cousin and is regarded with affection by the whole family. We suggest Tamim sit in the front next to Anis so that he can see as much as possible of the road, and I sit next to Husam and Ya‘qoub in the back. Ya‘qoub is the grandson of Abu Hazim – a talented boy who is studying the qanun, or Arab zither, and memorizes popular songs, some of which he sings to us.

We set off northward, in the direction of Deir Ghassanah.

Anis and Husam keep up a constant stream of anecdotes about the family and we laugh the whole way.

Anis keeps busy telling Tamim about the villages and places that we pass:

“This is Surda” (the Surda checkpoint hasn’t been set up yet).

“This is the leper colony.”

“This is Birzeit University.”

“The street on your right goes to Kobar.”

“Soon we’ll be at the ‘Atara checkpoint.”

“Get your IDs ready.”

ID cards in hand, we arrive at the checkpoint.

The first Israeli soldier doesn’t stop us. He is clearly an Ethiopian Jew belonging to the Falasha, whose exit from Ethiopia was arranged by Israel several years ago in connivance with Ja‘far al-Nimeiry, then president of Sudan. The second soldier, a European Jew who looks like a film star, waves us through without checking or asking any questions; in fact, he seems to me to smile at us as he waves his hand. We are delighted, because the ‘Atara checkpoint is the only one between Ramallah and Deir Ghassanah, meaning that from here on our way is clear. I think to myself that Tamim is lucky.

Husam says, “Your road is blessed, Tamim. Everything will be straightforward from now on, God willing. If ‘Atara’s ‘moving,’ everything’s fine.”

Anis says with confidence, “They know my car. That’s why they didn’t stop you.”

“It has red number plates too, meaning it’s a government car, a car belonging to the Authority,” says Ya‘qoub.

“Are they such good friends with the Authority?” asks Tamim.

Anis answers, “Not friends, but they look out for us. One of the benefits of Oslo, of which your dad doesn’t approve.”

“They look out for you because you look out for them.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“That’s not how the homeland is supposed to relate to the Occupation.”

“I suggest we continue this discussion, Mr. Mourid, the day we bring you an independent state. I don’t know what you’ll have to say then.”

“I’ll say to you then what the poet Ilya Abu Madi said.”

“What’s that?”

“He said ‘I know not.’”

Anis laughs. He understands from this sarcastic answer that I wish to put an end to political discussion.

Our cousin Anis is a good-hearted Fatah activist, with a clean conscience and clean hands. He has never sought to benefit from his friendship with Yassir Arafat or his heartfelt defense of him and of the Fatah leadership at all times, though it would be easy for him to do so. We used to tell him that his support for the Fatah leadership was ‘romantic.’ Then we raised it to ‘Sufi-like.’ Then we raised again it to ‘a matter of faith.’ Then we raised it to ‘blind.’ He never allows anyone to criticize Fatah in general or Arafat in particular in his presence. We continue on our way, exchanging funny family stories and laughing all the time, as though on a weekend picnic.

Anis resumes his commentary: “On your left is the settlement of Halamish. Every day they add a building, so now it stretches all the way to the hill next to it. After that is the village of Beit Rima. Then … the capital.”

He means, of course, the capital of the Barghoutis, Deir Ghassanah. No Barghouti misses an opportunity to talk, with pride naturally, of the family and of Deir Ghassanah. They are indifferent to the jokes about this boasting told by other families.

After the Bank was occupied in 1967, people started making predictions, some pessimistic, some optimistic, about when the Israelis would withdraw. Someone said, “I’m sure Israel will withdraw after a year.”

His friend, who was from the Husseini family, responded, “What rot! How can Israel withdraw from the Bank after a year? The Barghoutis have been here for five hundred years and they still haven’t withdrawn!”

Ironically, no sooner has Anis finished speaking than he stops the car and turns off the engine in obedience to an order from an Israeli woman soldier and her male companion, who clearly are guarding the main gateway to the settlement.

“Where are you going?” asks the female soldier in American English.

“To Deir Ghassanah,” answers Anis.

“Get out of the car, please.”

“Excuse me?”

“Get out of the car.”

Anis gets out.

“License.”

Tamim understands that Uncle Anis is in some kind of difficulty and wants to find out what, so he opens the car door and asks, with an innocence incomprehensible in Halamish, “What’s up, Uncle Anis?” Immediately he finds the female soldier’s machine gun aimed at him. “Stay where you are! Close the door!” she yells in his face.

I think it’s very odd for them to ask for his driver’s license and wonder if her English isn’t that good and she meant to say ‘ID card.’

Anis, even more taken aback than I, asks her, also in American English, “Which license?”

“Your license and the registration.”

Anis hands her the registration and starts searching for his driver’s license in his small wallet, where he doesn’t find it, and then in his pockets, where he doesn’t find it either.

The tension on the female soldier’s face is plain. She orders us all out of the car and the male soldier immediately joins her, his finger on the trigger of his rifle. He talks with his comrade in Hebrew, asking what the problem is. She tells him and backs away a little so he can get closer.

“You are in violation of the law and under arrest. We shall take you to Bet-El for interrogation and you will be punished. Understood?”

“I’m the undersecretary of the Ministry of Planning in the Palestinian Authority. This is my identity card.”

Anis takes out his ID and the male soldier takes and keeps it.

Anis goes on: “I left the license at home by mistake. I live here in Deir Ghassanah, so I can bring it to you in ten minutes.”

The male soldier exchanges some words in Hebrew with his female companion.

“You are in violation of the law.”

“What’s the driver’s license got to do with you? Are you a traffic policeman? Only the Palestinian traffic police can punish me, which it will have the right to do. This is what the agreement between us says.”

“I don’t know anything about agreements. Screw agreements. Here the only law is the law of the State of Israel, understand?”

It appears Anis has thought of another way out and tries it, on the off chance. He starts going through the papers in his wallet. Then he pulls something out.

“Also I have U.S. nationality. I’m a U.S. citizen and this is my U.S. social security number. Do you stop U.S. citizens?”

“You are in violation of Israeli law. I want the license. Don’t you understand?”

Then the soldier starts yelling at the top of his voice in a hectoring, didactic tone: “This is the State of Israel, understand? You are driving a car in the State of Israel.”

The female conscript raises her gun and the male soldier starts yelling even louder. “You are driving your car in the State of Israel.”

His voice rises even higher.

“You have to respect the law of the State of Israel! Understand?”

“We are not in the State of Israel here. Also, I’m an undersecretary and not a child driving without a license. I’ll bring you the license in ten minutes and.… ”

The soldier interrupts.

“It is forbidden to drive a car one meter without a license.”

I take a couple of steps forward and ask, “I’m Jordanian and I have a Jordanian license. I’ll go, get the license from his house, and come back. Is that possible?”

“You’re Jordanian?”

“Yes.”

“Give me your passport.”

“Here.”

“Do you have a driver’s license?”

“Yes.”

“Go. Go, all of you. He stays here.”

I take a step toward Anis and ask him, “Where will I find your license, Anis?”

“In the drawer. In the desk drawer. Or ask Zaghlula.”

We set off in the car, leaving our cousin, Assistant Undersecretary at the Ministry of Planning and International Assistance in the Palestinian National Authority, hostage to the soldiers of the settlement of Halamish.

I drive fast from Halamish to Beit Rima and then to Deir Ghassanah.

We stop in front of Anis’s house, the first in the village.

Husam and I get out. Quickly we go inside.

Zaghlula appears in the courtyard, a troubled expression furrowing her face when she notices that I’m driving her brother’s car and he’s not with us.

“Don’t worry. We need Anis’s driver’s license.”

“And where’s Anis?”

“At Halamish.”

She climbs with me the staircase leading to Anis’s room. We search in the drawers and every other possible place. We don’t find the license. We go back to the car.

“Who’s with you in the car?”

“Tamim and Ya‘qoub.”

Her emotions are torn between welcoming Tamim and anxiety over her brother.

“Welcome, welcome!”

“We have to go back to Anis. Excuse us.”

I drive back in the direction of Halamish, afraid that they may have taken him off to Bet-El and made things even more complicated. I intend to try to persuade them to let him go with me and get the license himself but I’m not optimistic. Husam, mixing seriousness and humor, says, “Your cousin Anis is an admirer of the Oslo Agreement and of all agreements signed, not signed, and to be signed. He admires the peace and Palestinian moderation and moderates, and this is the result. He’s been made to eat shit. Serves him right.”

Close to Beit Rima, we’re surprised to find Anis walking alone, returning to Deir Ghassanah. They’ve let him go without waiting for us to come back with the license.

Anis gets in and explodes. “The bastards just wanted to have a bit of fun with us. Two guards fed up with being on duty at the settlement gate, so they decide to use us for entertainment. The moment you left with the car, they gave me back my papers and told me bye-bye. I asked, ‘What about the license?’ They said they didn’t need it.”

Then he remembers that our whole trip is for Tamim.

“I’m sorry, Tamim. I wish you could have entered the village in a nicer way. What have they got to do with driver’s licenses? And I don’t know what made me forget my license on this of all days. Damn it!”

This is how Tamim entered Deir Ghassanah for the first time in his life: checkpoint – pointed machine guns – driver’s license – Bet-El– “This is the State of Israel!”—“Understand?”—“Respect the law of the state!” And the first Barghouti he saw in the village he didn’t have time to shake hands with or hug.

I say to myself, he’ll go through what I did the day I first returned two years ago. His fingers will gradually exchange the touch of velvet for that of cactus – the mountain top of the imagined for the valley of the actual.

In our dreams we draw them as rainbows, but homelands aren’t our poems of homelands, and when they are afflicted with occupation, poverty, and a costly endurance, the gray halo to their rainbow becomes thicker than anyone could imagine. Then I catch myself and think again: Tamim’s response may be different from mine in the end. I come burdened with my past. He starts from the white page of the future. I think, this page is his; it’s his to color as he chooses and to narrate as and when he wishes.

To make Anis feel better, Tamim says, “The important thing is that you’re okay, Uncle Anis. We’re the ones who should apologize for all this trouble we’ve put you to.”

For Tamim, Deir Ghassanah is, before any other house, the Ra‘d House, ‘Dar Ra‘d,’ and before any other face, the face of my uncle’s wife, the ample Umm Talal. On our arrival, Umm Talal rushes out beaming, hugs him, and lets out a trill of joy to celebrate his arrival.

The neighbors of Dar Ra‘d gather to greet us or rather, this time, to greet Tamim. I say ‘greet’ and not ‘get to know.’ I’m sure they ‘know’ him already – know what he looks like: athletic, on the tall side, his eyes black, his hair black and strong as a horse’s. What other topic of conversation is there in the houses of Deir Ghassanah than the news of their sons and grandsons, off in faraway countries?

The absent are the talk of their evening gatherings on winter nights around the stoves and pots of tea. They are the objects of their anxiety whenever the weather, or political, conditions in their countries of exile turn nasty. The village knows their names down to the youngest grandchild and knows their characters and what they look like. It knows who was born, who got married, who fell ill, who was given a ten-dinar pay raise, and who quarreled with his wife or his mother-in-law or his director at work. It knows who got rich and who went bankrupt, who was taken into detention, who obtained his family reunification papers, who did well at school, and who failed. And all this without meeting any of them.

Tamim asks, “Where’s the room? Where were you born, Baba?”

We enter the large room with the high dome and the four piers that meet in the middle, from which an electric bulb now dangles in place of the oil lamp of 1944.

“I was born here, Tamim.”

The word ‘here’ takes me to everything that is ‘there.’ It takes me to the houses of exile. It takes me to times that overlap in my mind. It flies with me from ‘my’ room here and Tamim’s silence to searching in 1963 for a place to rent in the Agouza district of Cairo, to asking for the timetable for the first days of studies at the university there, to driving over the Margaret bridge between Buda and Pest in Hungary, to sleeping on the floor in the Khalifa Prison in Cairo, to the soldier kicking me with his boot in my right kidney to wake me up so that I could be expelled from Cairo at dawn when Tamim was a five-month-old child, and to Radwa’s voice as she curses the officers and then cries after they leave, taking me with them for an absence that will last seventeen years. The word ‘here’ flies me to a apartment in the Mkahhal Building in the Fakihani district of Beirut, the studios of the Voice of Palestine in the building opposite, and to the rooms of hotels, too numerous to count, where I and other young men argue with delegations and organizations from around the world over a comma or half a sentence in order to assert our right to self-determination and in defense of the PLO. I see the PLO’s leadership bending its backbone lower, year after year, under every successive pressure until it has lost its posture altogether, while I raise objections and protest in prose, in poetry, and by keeping my distance. Paradoxically, the political mistakes of the PLO then brought me back to ‘here’ under a nonsensical selectivity that permitted my return but not that of my brothers or their children – Ghassan, Ghada, Ghadeer, Fadi, Shadi, Yara, Lara, Sara, Dima, Dara, and Muhammad. How did politics come to play this back-to-front game with us? Is it enough that by pure coincidence I met the conditions that determined the numbers of Palestinians Israel would allow to return? Is it enough that as an observer at the Palestinian National Council I should be allowed to return?

What kind of a paradox is this?

Does the blind dog of politics wag its tail in greeting to an enemy like me?

And I’m an opponent both calm and rude. I have got out and continue to get out my message of opposition and I shall go on doing so in the future too despite my ‘benefiting’ from the policy that I criticize even when I’m here.

Later, six years after this incident, on the stage of the Palace of Culture in Ramallah and at an occasion entirely conducive to praise and gratitude (my reception of the Palestine Award for Poetry), I will stand up to thank the prize committee for choosing me and criticize the leadership, the Authority, and the government, in the presence of the leadership, who are sitting in the front rows of the spacious hall, and in front of a thousand people who have come to attend the celebration. I will call for the correction of mistakes “even at the top of the page,” the “top of the page” being the prime minister seated in the front row alongside most of the Authority’s leading men.

I was born here, Tamim.

I move on with him into the next room, which now belongs to Umm Talal, my uncle’s wife, and from there to the one beyond it.

“Here in this room, three-quarters of a century or more ago, stood your great-grandfather, entirely alone, with his stick carved from an oak tree, his white kufiya, his goat’s-hair head rope, and his long brown mantle, dancing with the reflection of his shadow on this wall opposite the oil lamp because he was so delighted at having obtained the agreement of your grandmother, Umm ‘Ata, to the engagement of his son ‘Abd al-Razeq to her daughter Sakina – the very beautiful, very intelligent girl with the green eyes and smooth chestnut hair who was the cleverest girl in the school and the prettiest in the village. An old man alone in a large gothic room with a dome, piers, and walls so white the plaster shone, dancing with his own shadow, bending right and bending left and shaking his stick ecstatically in the air in each direction, no music accompanying his dance but the silence of the night and the hissing of the lamp, no companions about him to share his wondrous celebration but the beating of his heart and the surges of a joy that couldn’t wait for the morning’s sun.”

Tamim was clearly bemused.

“Who told you that story, Dad?”

“Your aunt, Umm al-Nahed. She said she went to see him at Dar Ra‘d and found him dancing with his shadow and waving his stick in the air without uttering a word. She joined in with him without knowing what the occasion was. She didn’t ask him and he didn’t open his mouth. He kept on dancing and she left him at it.”

We leave the room and go out into the courtyard garden once more.

Tamim wants to see where the huge fig tree had stood, the one that was cut down by my uncle’s wife because she couldn’t find anyone to eat its fruit any more, and the different rooms of the Ra‘d house – my uncle ‘Ata’s, my uncle Abu Muti‘’s, and Abu Hussein’s – along with the mosque, the square, the village guesthouse, the school, and ‘Ein al-Deir spring, and to make a tour of the whole village. Tamim says nothing but his eyes never stop talking and I hear his eyes well, this being the job of fathers and mothers. I wish that by a miracle he could see all four seasons at Deir Ghassanah at the same instant, see the huge almond trees – first sun-dappled, then bare, then wet, then covered in fruit – at the same time. I want the birds to come all together in all their kinds, with their names, their colors, their silences, and their beaks, so that he can see them as a single flock. I want al-Sa‘id Dhib’s mare to pass us now, neighing and striking the Ruweis road with her hooves before his ears and eyes. Tamim wants his imagination to be translated into stones. I want the stones to put strength back into my middle-aged imagination that has stuck with me all my life. This is not the time to think about the mystery behind the disappointment that comes with every return and how knowledge of the past spoils the present that is before one’s eyes. Tamim’s past in Deir Ghassanah has yet to be formed. He has no disappointments and nothing has spoiled his expectations yet. Disappointment afflicts those who would like to recover their past, not those who have no past. I say to myself, let me then be silent and let him see.

After the drinks in the courtyard that hospitality requires, we excuse ourselves to Umm Talal and leave, with a promise to return later for lunch.

Tamim says, “I’ll be able to tell the places on my own. I’m going to walk in front of you.”

No one gets lost in Deir Ghassanah. I tell him to try.

He steps over the high lintel of the gate to Dar Ra‘d. Before us are the hills, the Ruweis and Sahayil fields, the road to ‘Ein al-Deir, and a fence of cactus, its spiny paddles in a row overlooking the road that runs around the village. We turn left into the lane that leads to the village square.

He points to his right and says, “That’s Dar Salih.”

He crosses the square to its far end and stands on the built-in bench.

“This is the village guesthouse.”

We pass the village guesthouse and go to the guesthouse of Shaykh Matar, say hello to the people there, and resume the tour at a leisurely pace.

After a while, a very thin person whom I don’t know greets us. Husam speaks to him for a little and then tells him jokingly, “Tell Abu Tamim what happened to you at the Hebrew University. Tell him why they threw you out of your job. This is the son of …”—he mentions a name. “Do you remember him?”

Husam’s question embarrasses me as I don’t recognize the man and don’t hear clearly the name that Husam mentions. I ask him, “What happened?”

“Before the Intifada, a long time ago, they gave me a job at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.”

“As a teacher at the university?” I ask him.

“Heavens no! Me? A teacher? I can’t read or write.”

“What job did they give you at the university?”

“Monkey keeper.”

“Monkey keeper?”

“Monkey keeper in the labs, the university labs. Experimental monkeys. They call them ‘experimental monkeys,’ cousin.”

“How many monkeys?”

“Six or seven.”

“And what were your tasks?”

“I was supposed to feed the monkeys at set times. They gave me tins of milk so I said to myself, now you’re in clover. I drank the milk, of course. I’d drink three quarters of it or more and give a sip or two to each monkey and no one had any idea what was going on. There wasn’t a single tin of milk in our entire village.”

“And they found out, of course.”

“They saw that I was getting healthier and the monkeys were close to dying of hunger. They threw me out. Those were good times, I swear.”

“And then what?”

“Then there was the Intifada and you couldn’t find work for love or money, God help us.”

I look around me for Tamim and find him holding Abu Hasan by the hand.

Abu Hasan is ninety years old, or a little less, and can hardly see, though with his clean double-breasted robe, white head cloth, and rope retainer tipped a little to one side he looks younger.

Tamim says that the moment the man sensed he was close to him he seized his hand.

“Take me to the mosque, son.”

Tamim says to me, “I didn’t know what to tell him. How could I explain to him that I’d only set foot in the village two hours ago and I didn’t know where anything was? I was too embarrassed to explain so I took his hand and said to him, ‘This way, please.’”

“Hasan won’t be coming this week. He won’t be taking me to the mosque. You take me to the mosque.”

“After two or three steps, he almost tripped over a stone in a narrow alleyway between the houses. When I told him to take care, he started telling me the story of the alleyway and how he was the one who’d drawn a line there with his hoe to stop the late Abu Yusuf from encroaching on the property of the late Abu Zuheir. ‘I stuck my hoe in the ground and said, “This is where you stop.”’ He paused and suddenly looked at me suspiciously. I could see him squinting like someone who wants to be sure of who it is he’s seeing. Then he asked me, ‘Who are you?’”

‘I’m Tamim.’

‘Tamim son of who?’

‘Son of Mourid.’

‘Mourid son of who?’

‘Son of ‘Abd al-Razeq.’

“Abd al-Razeq son of who?’

‘Son of Muhammad al-Turrad.’

‘Ah. I know him. He was my friend. Your grandfather’s grandfather was my friend, son. And he was a poet. The whole village knew him. All the villages around knew him. He wasn’t your grandfather’s grandfather, he was your grandfather’s father. God rest his soul and those of all our dead.’

‘Amen.’

…

‘Do you know any of his poems by heart?’

“He gave a long sigh, closed his eyes, and recited:

‘This stick of mine’s from a tree.

It helps me see.

It’ll still be there,

When I’m no longer here.’

“He recited from memory, with mistakes in the meter of course, but he was proud he still remembered his old friend’s poetry.”

Husam has moved a little distance from us but now rejoins us and he tells us the never-to-be-forgotten tale of Abu Hasan and Abu Yusuf.

Abu Yusuf’s house was huge and had two stories and he was very proud of how much taller his house was than all the other houses of Deir Ghassanah. Abu Hasan was a young man. Like everyone else in the village, he had to sit and listen to the pride and boasting but could think of nothing to say back, until poverty drove him to make the journey to Beirut, where he worked as porter at the harbor and from which he returned with some money and some ‘knowledge of the world.’ He declared, “Abu Yusuf boasts he can look down on the whole village from his second story. I swear to God, people, in Beirut I saw a dog looking down from the tenth story!”

We go to the village school. Schools stay in their places; we’re the ones who leave. I left the childhood that I spent here half a century ago and turned my face toward Tamim’s. The years passed for both of us and at this instant our two childhoods meet at the door of the first school under this first sky.

In the long lane, lined on either side with cypress trees of amazing height, and then at the threshold to the school and among its arches, I think of Tamim’s childhood, spent in Cairo and Budapest, and of mine, spent here in Deir Ghassanah. The distance between them is the distance between two planets.

From the moment he was born, he found in front of him everything he needed, everything appropriate to his age, everything that would keep him happy. When he grew older, he found a computer in front of him. He took thirty lessons in piano with Prof. Kati Forrai in Budapest. He couldn’t take the discipline at five but later moved on to study in Cairo the oriental oud, which he learned to play expertly. This helped him to pick up quickly the music of ancient Arabic poetry with its sixteen meters and he learned to write the classical Arabic verse forms and to appreciate the Arabic classics, such as the Suspended Odes and the verses of al-Mutanabbi and Abu Tammam. In Budapest, he fell in love with Lego and all the different things you can make with it, and one day he kept asking for a Lego castle with flags flapping on its battlements. We couldn’t find one in Budapest, so we brought it for him from Vienna. It was the castle he had in mind but there weren’t any flags in the box, so we bought him a small game that included flags and used these for his historic castle. The blessing of exile (and exile has its blessings, which cannot be denied) gave him visits to museums, films and plays to watch, experience of live music. He acquired whatever musical instruments he wanted and at one time had a harmonica, a guitar, a violin, and an oud. It was lucky he didn’t fall in love with the piano or we would have had to go without supper.