Gate of the Sun (20 page)

Now you're in a first-class room. It's clean and attractive and organized. Forget about the colors – it's impossible to preserve the original color of walls and doors in a place that's been eaten away by moisture. There's no solution to the humidity in Beirut, which is between eighty-five and ninety percent most of the time. However, it's less a matter of humidity and more of the water pipes and sewage mains. The hospital was bombarded dozens of times, and each time they repaired it from the outside, that's to say, patched the holes in the walls and sealed off the water that was spurting from the pipes at the joints. The place needs a complete overhaul, which is
impossible at the moment. The pipes leak, the damp stains the walls, and the smell, a mixture of Nurse Zainab's ammonia and standing water, seeps everywhere.

All's well.

I say “all's well” because I know you're in a place that's relatively safe from all those smells, because soap, insecticides, cologne, and powder fill your room with the aroma of paradise.

Of course, everything's relative. It's a relative aroma in a relative paradise in a relative hospital in a relative camp in a relative city. That'll do.

Everything is relative. Even the Arabic calligraphy that I've hung on the wall above you is relative, since it isn't a work of art in the precise meaning of the term, though it is beautiful. I brought it from my house because Shams refused to take it. A beautiful work with the name of the Almighty written in Kufic script. I like that script. I see its angular forms as redrawing the boundaries of the world, and I see it curving and rounding everything off. It's true it's not a curved script, but everything's round in the end.
Allah
in Kufic lettering is above your head because Shams didn't grasp the picture's artistic value when I offered it to her. She looked at it with something approaching revulsion, said, “You want to make me into one of those women who cover their hair?” and laughed treacherously.

When Shams laughed, she laughed treacherously. I would smell the scent of another man on her breath and “avert my gaze” as they say. I would feel that I was with her and not with her. I would see them all hovering around the two of us and I would try to push them away so I could see her. Then I would forget them, and the betrayal, when I slid into her undulating body.

Shams laughed treacherously.

We were at my place, I told her I had a gift for her. I went to the bedroom to get the canvas rolled up in white paper. She tore off the paper, full of curiosity. Then the picture with the Kufic lettering shone out.

“Beautiful. A beautiful work,” I said. “Don't you love Arabic calligraphy?”

She looked closely at it, read it carefully, then pulled back.

“You want to turn me into one of those women who cover their hair?”

Shams thought I was prodding her to believe in God and gave me a lecture on her personal view of the divine and of existence. I'll spare you her theories about the united nature of existence and how God is present in everything and so on.

She didn't take the picture because she imagined I wanted her to adopt the head scarf in preparation for marriage. She spoke of her conviction concerning the liberation of women.

I can assure you that such thoughts never had crossed my mind! I bought the thing because I love Arabic calligraphy, that's all, and I wanted to give her a nice present.

This drawing, my dear Abu Salem, cost more than fifty dollars, and it's the most beautiful thing in my house. Shams didn't take it and I didn't hang it up because it wasn't for me. I said to myself, I'll hang it in the living room when Shams comes and lives with me. But she died. I therefore decided I deserved the present and ought to hang it on the wall above my bed. Then things heated up: There was talk of a list of people to be killed and of Shams' relatives seeking revenge. Apparently my name was at the top of the list. So I forgot about the drawing, and everything else.

But then, after having put you to bed and cleaned everything up, I went home to get a few things and remembered it. Something told me that it belonged here.
Allah
in Kufic letters wraps you in its aura and protects you.

I didn't bring the map of Palestine or the posters of martyrs. Nothing. Those don't mean a thing here. Do you remember how we used to tremble in front of those posters, how we were convinced that the martyrs were about to burst through the colored paper and jump out at us? Those posters were an integral part of our life, and we filled the walls of the camp and the city with them, dreaming that one day our own pictures would appear on similar ones. All of us dreamed of seeing our faces outlined in bright red and with the martyr's halo. There was a contradiction here to which we paid no attention: We wanted to have our faces on the posters but also wanted to see them – we wanted to become martyrs without dying!

Tell me, how were we able to separate the image of death from death? How did we attain this absolute faith in life?

All that I know is that after the massacre I grew to hate the posters of martyrs. I won't tell you what happened, about the swarms of flies that almost devoured me – it's not the right moment for those sorts of memories. They need the right moment. We can't just toss off memories like that, we don't have the right to remember any which way.

I brought you the picture, saying to myself that the name of
Allah
in Kufic lettering would remain however circumstances and conditions changed. The photographs and posters were ephemeral, but the name of the Almighty will be eternally present before our eyes.

You don't like the word
eternally
. You used to say, “What small minds the Jews have! What is this silly slogan of theirs – ‘Jerusalem, Eternal Capital of the Jewish State'! Anyone who talks of eternity exits history, for eternity is history's opposite; something that's eternal doesn't exist. We even ate our gods. During our Age of Ignorance, we – we Arabs – would model gods out of dates and then eat them, because hunger is more important than eternity. And now they come and tell us that Jerusalem is an eternal capital? What kind of shit is that? It's foolish – which means that they are becoming like us, defeatable.”

You said we'd never defeat them: On the contrary, we needed to help them defeat themselves. No one is defeated from the outside; every defeat is internal. Ever since they raised the banner of eternity, they've fallen into the whirlpool of defeat, and it's up to us to keep them going in this direction.

You didn't tell me how we were supposed to keep them going. So far, the only people we've helped to defeat have been ourselves – carpeting our land with our blood for the Israelis, so that they could walk over it like victors.

Things have changed, Father.

If you'd become sick, God forbid, ten years ago, I wouldn't have brought you this drawing. I would have hung a map of Galilee above your head, to show how proud I was of you. You are the pride of us all. You made our
country that we'd never seen come to life within us; you traced our dream with your footsteps.

Now it's not the dream I put up but the reality.

Allah
in Kufic lettering is the one absolute reality we can depend on.

No, I won't let you speak.

You're in a mysterious place now and approaching the moment when nothing but faith can help you. Please, don't blaspheme. You're a believer, your father was a Sufi sheikh.

You'd like to say – though I won't let you – you'd like to say that someone who's lived your life can depend on nothing and that even gods change; our forefathers used to worship other gods.

Be quiet, please – I don't want to listen to your theory of temporariness. It's time for the temporary to become permanent. It's time for you to relax. I've had enough of your theories, but you don't care. I believe you're lying. You, too, are sick of the temporary and can't take it anymore. The proof? May I remind you of Adnan Abu Odeh?

I know you don't like to recall this affair because it scares you. Have you forgotten the day you came back from visiting him, trembling, and came to ask me for sleeping pills?

You came to me, doubled over, as though you were looking for death. Why don't you want to face the truth? Why don't you admit you feared for your life and not Adnan's? And why, after I gave you those pills, did you go back to mocking everything?

Heroes aren't supposed to behave that way.

A hero has to remain a hero. It's a crying shame – you all abandoned Adnan, forgot him, and all you remember now is his legend. As for the man himself, he went to his fate without anyone batting an eye.

You're acting all macho now because you've forgotten. Have you really forgotten Adnan?

Adnan Abu Odeh came back to the Burj al-Barajneh camp after twenty years in Israeli prisons. He came back a hero. You went to welcome him because he was a comrade, a friend, a lifelong acquaintance. You always used to speak of him as The Hero.

What happened to The Hero?

It was 1960. You were five fighters on one of your first operations inside Galilee. Adnan was taken prisoner, three others died, and you survived. What were the names of the three martyrs? Even you've forgotten – you were telling me about that fedayeen operation and you hesitated and said, “Khaled al-Shatti. No, Khaldoun. No, Jamal . . .” Even you couldn't remember anymore. You survived and they died. Death isn't a good enough reason to forget, but you did.

You survived, you told me, because you “withdrew” forward after you'd fallen into the Israeli ambush, while your comrades “withdrew” backward, as soldiers normally do. They came under fire from two sides and died, while you continued your journey to Bab al-Shams. Adnan didn't die even though he received appalling wounds in his stomach. The Israelis took him prisoner and treated him in the hospital before putting him on trial.

You'd tell the story tirelessly, as though it were your own. Then you suddenly stopped going to see him after he came back, and no longer talked about him.

Adnan stood up in court and said what he had to say.

He said he didn't recognize the court's authority: He was a fedayeen fighter, not a saboteur.

“This is my land and the land of my fathers and my grandfathers,” he said, refusing to answer any questions. They asked him about you, but he said nothing.

During the interrogation, he spoke of the three others because he'd seen them die in front of him, but he didn't say one word about you. Although the Israeli interrogator informed him of your death, he didn't believe it. The interrogator showed him the Lebanese newspaper; the Fatah leadership had issued a statement announcing the death of four martyrs. But Adnan didn't believe it because he'd seen you move forward and disappear (which doesn't change the fact that that statement in the papers was a terrible error, because it exposed you and led Nahilah to prison).

You realized Nahilah had been arrested when she stopped visiting you in your cave. You stayed in your hideout for more than a month, only going
out at night to nourish yourself with wild herbs and to fill your flask with dirty water from the irrigation ditch.

You lived for five months at Bab al-Shams, which became a prison for you, and you almost went insane. You sat all day long without moving, not daring to sleep or go out. You became like a vegetable. Have you forgotten how a man can become a vegetable? How his thoughts can be wiped out, his words disappear, and his head become an empty pot full of ringing noises and incomprehensible sounds?

When Dr. Amjad informed me you'd entered a vegetative state and there was no hope, I couldn't understand his pessimism: You'd already been through a vegetative state once and emerged on the other side.

Nahilah woke to their violent knocking, and, when they failed to find you, they took her for a weeklong interrogation. Leaving the prison, she found the village surrounded and realized they'd let her out as bait to lure you with. She acted out her celebrated play and buried you, praying for your absent corpse and receiving condolences while she wept and wailed and smeared ashes on her face. Nahilah's excessive carrying on drove your mother crazy – the old woman couldn't see why she was behaving that way. She understood the play had to be staged to save you, but Nahilah turned the play into something serious. She wept as women weep. She lamented and wailed and fainted. She let down her hair and tore her clothes in front of everybody.

“This isn't how we mourn martyrs,” everyone told her. “Shame on you, Umm Salem! Shame on you! Yunes is a martyr.”

But Nahilah paid no attention to the sanctity of martyrs. She wept for you until she could weep no more, and her sorrow was mighty unto death. And death came. Your mother believed Nahilah caused your father's death. After the death of his only son – meaning yours – he went into a coma that lasted three years, then he slept in his bed for a good month, and when he finally got up, started using dirt again to perform his ablutions. Then he died.

“Nahilah killed him,” your mother told everyone.

Your mother tried to explain to him that what Nahilah was doing was just an act, but he couldn't understand. She would speak to him, but he wouldn't reply; she would look at his face, but all she saw were his closed eyes; she would tell him you were alive, but he would shake his head and moan.