Gate of the Sun (37 page)

“Ibrahim al-Hajj Hassan tried to calm his daughter, but the woman didn't care. She danced like she was at a wedding party and said she could hear drums beating in her ears. She said she wouldn't stop dancing until her husband came back. Alas! How was he going to come back after they'd taken him to al-Ramah?

“Sahirah kept dancing until we reached Lebanon, where they said she'd gone crazy, though only God knows the truth.

“Do you understand, my son, why I don't want to stay home? I'm an old man who fights because I prefer death to a sunbath. They gave me a sun-bath
in al-Ba'neh in '48, and they gave me another in Ansar in '82, and now I've had enough – I'd rather die than face another.”

You are dying, Abd al-Mu'ti.

Your rigid body slackens. Your features return to you; your face clears, the wrinkles are wiped from your broad brow, and the cloud over your eyes parts.

I
STAND
.

What am I to say to this man I call my father but is not my father?

I open his eyes, put “tears” in them, but he doesn't weep.

Abd al-Mu'ti dies, and you don't weep. You're dying, and you don't weep.

I bring you news and tell you stories and you don't hear. Tell me, Abd al-Mu'ti, what to do. Take me with you on your journey, for I yearn to see all of you. I live among you and I yearn for you, and you are somewhere else.

Weep a little, Father. Just one sob and everything will be over. One sob and you'll live. But you don't want to, or you no longer want to, or you've lost your will. And I'm with you and not with you. I'm busy, I have to check on the other patients; that's what Dr. Amjad has decided. Don't be scared, I won't leave you for long. I'll just slip over, check on them and come back to your side.

And afterward what?

Indeed, will there be an afterward?

For three months I've been telling you stories, some of which I know and some of which I don't. And you're incapable of correcting my errors, so I make mistakes once in a while. Freedom, Father, is being able to make mistakes. Now I feel free because with you I can make as many mistakes as I like and retract my mistakes whenever I like, and tell story after story.

My throat's dry from so much talking. I'm dried up, I've become desiccated.

I feel water coming out with my words and spotting the ground around me. I feel I'm drowning in my own water. Do you want me to drown? Reach out your hand, I beg you, reach out your hand and rescue me from the pool
of storytelling in whose waters I'm drowning. I'm a prisoner who possesses nothing but the stories he makes up about his freedom. I'm a prisoner of the hospital and a prisoner of the story. I'm drowning. Water surrounds me. I swallow water and swallow words and tell the story.

What do you want from me?

I've told you all your stories, of the past and of the present, yet you remain unreachable.

Now you know the whole story, but I don't. Can you believe that? I've told you a story I don't know. I understand nothing; things are collapsing inside my head. I've almost forgotten all of your names, I mix them all together.

You know everything, but I don't.

I don't know, but I have to know so I can tell. But I don't know the story; I'll have to go back to the beginning to look for it. What do you think?

You want the beginning? This time, though, I'll tell it the way I like; I won't subject it to your distorted memory or to the phantoms that hover above your closed eyes. I'll tell you everything, but not now. I have to go now. I'll turn on the radio so you can listen to Fairouz. Her voice calms the nerves and spreads its lilac shade over the eyes. I'll leave you in the shade of lilacs and go.

^*
Striking force of the Haganah, consisting of nine assault companies throughout Galilee and Jerusalem. Palmach leaders included Yigal Allon, Moshe Dayan, and Yitchak Rabin.

^*
Koran, Surah XXXI, verse 34.

^*
Schools managed by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

^*
Literally: Home for the Elderly.

^*
Literally: Catastrophe. Massive expulsion and exodus in 1948 of approximately 750,000 Palestinians.

^*
Toward Mecca.

^*
Jewish terrorist organization formed in '39.

^*
Literally: Mother of Stone.

^*
Great reception hall.

> <

Nahilah's Death

I
WANT
to apologize.

I know that nothing can excuse my leaving you on your own these past two weeks. Forgive me, please, and try to understand. I don't want you to think for a moment that I'm like them – certainly not, Father. I despise positions of responsibility, and my new one is of no importance. I don't know what came over me the other night. After leaving you, I went to my room to sleep. And when I was in bed, I began to suffocate – all of a sudden I couldn't breathe. I lay down on my bed, and, without realizing what I was doing, started searching for the oxygen bottle I'd put in your room in case of an emergency. While I was sleeping, everything became constricted. I woke up, my heart was racing, I was bathed in sweat, and the air . . . the air wasn't sufficient anymore. I started breathing heavily, gasping for air, but there was no air. I felt a tingling sensation in my head, in my left hand, my belly, and my back. I tried to get up. I raised my head, managed to sit up, and tried to turn on the light, but there was no electricity. I supported my head with my hand. There was the dark. A thick darkness was drawing closer. I raised my hand to push it away, but my right hand was completely paralyzed. Everything was murky, and there was no oxygen. I thought, “I'm going to die.” But instead of lying on my back and waiting for the angel of death, I leapt out of bed like a madman, ran toward the window, threw my head out and started gulping down the air. I ate all the air in the world, but the world's air wasn't enough. I dressed quickly and left my room. I walked down the corridor and down the stairs to the ground floor and then climbed back up. It was what one might call the Night of the Stairs. I jogged up them and down them, panting and running, as though I wanted to prove to
myself that I was still alive. Imagine the scene: a man on his own in the darkness running and panting and gasping, running up and down the stairs dozens of times so he wouldn't die. And it was just at that moment when my decision came to me. I went back to my room and lay down on the bed.

So, at last, Khalil Ayyoub – the same one who stands before you – has become head nurse at the Galilee Hospital. I accepted Dr. Amjad's proposition and went to tell him the next morning.

Forgive me.

These two weeks flew by. I swear I couldn't find the time to scratch my head. I asked Zainab to look after you, but I don't know why I couldn't do it myself. I'd get to the door of your room and instead of going in I'd hesitate, as if a wall had gone up in front of me.

It has nothing to do with my new position; I'm not like that, as you know. But I somehow felt I was floating, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, my fear would come to an end and I could go home. I miss my house and my grandmother's cushion and the smell of decayed flowers. I told myself I would go back, but I didn't. I swear it was only when the French delegation came that I dared go out into the streets of the camp. I found Salim then – and I'll tell you more about him – but my uselessness and my fear drove me back to the hospital.

Will you forgive me?

I came back to you, organized everything, and convinced myself that leaving the hospital wasn't worth it. We're back to our old routine: I bathe you and perfume you and take care of you. I'll tell you the entire story from the beginning, just as I promised I would two weeks ago. That was when I left you, sure that I'd see you in the morning, but the oxygen night happened. In the morning, I went to see Dr. Amjad in his office. I knocked on the door, went in, and stood there. As usual he had his feet up on the desk and was reading a newspaper, and, as usual, he pretended he hadn't noticed me.

I stood there like an idiot and coughed, the smoke from his pipe rising from behind the newspaper, obscuring his face.

“I accept, Doctor,” I said. “Dr. Amjad . . . Dr. Amjad . . . I . . .”

He moved the paper aside.

“Hello, hello! Please do sit down. I didn't see you.”

“I accept the job,” I said.

He removed his feet from the desk, folded his paper, lifted his finger and raised his voice: “You'll assume your duties immediately.” Then he rang the bell on his desk and Zainab came in.

“He's responsible for everything from now on,” he said.

Dr. Amjad hid behind the newspaper again and Zainab stood there nailed to the spot, with no idea what to do.

“But, Doctor . . .” she said.

“You're still here?” he asked from behind the newspaper.

I asked him to brief me a bit on my new job.

“Later, later,” he said. “Go with Zainab and take over.”

So I took over.

You might think that I took over the administration of a hospital! It's true that I am, practically speaking, the hospital's director, now that Dr. Amjad has found that by appointing me he has an excuse to absent himself from work on a permanent basis. So, just like that, I'm back to being a doctor, the way I used to be, but . . . This
but
says it all. I'm a doctor, but Dr. Amjad's the real doctor! I examine, diagnose, and prescribe medicine – everything, but the patients say they're waiting for the doctor's opinion. And when the doctor comes, he doesn't have an opinion. He agrees with my diagnosis and my prescription, but the patients wait for him just the same. One would think the only thing they have faith in is a diploma. I swear he knows nothing, but never mind, it's better this way: I make the decisions without assuming the responsibility.

I took over the administration of the hospital and am in charge of three nurses. Zainab – you know her; Kamil, who stole the radio but who's a nice kid (he has a beautiful voice and knows all the songs of Abd al-Halim Hafiz by heart) and who's waiting for a visa so he can leave the country; and the Egyptian, Hamdi, who's not a nurse, but we say that he is so the hospital
won't seem empty. Can you imagine an enormous hospital with more than forty beds and only two nurses! Hamdi's also started helping us move patients and take care of them, even though basically he's a guard. And there's Kamelya the cook, who's told me she's decided to leave the hospital at the end of the month. We added Kamelya to the nurses' list, too, and I've begun teaching her the basics.

So things were moving along.

I'd managed to get things under control to a certain extent, and that was my mistake, because when things are under control we discover what's wrong – and here everything is wrong. There's no medicine, no serums, nothing. It's as though we aren't in a hospital, and, in fact, we aren't. We're in a white building suspended in the air, and I'm its head nurse and its director. As I attempt to organize things, I am becoming more and more aware of the impossibility and precariousness of the task. When I accepted my new duties, I thought I'd find a solution to my problem, but now my problem has become part of the hospital's.

Hamdi, the Egyptian, was shown the door. Dr. Amjad threw Hamdi out without warning and replaced him with a Syrian youth called Omar. Poor Hamdi was crying as he got his things together.

“What are you crying for?” I asked him. “Go and look for work. You barely earn enough to eat here.” He said he'd gone back to Egypt and that they'd thrown him out because he didn't have a work permit.

“I don't have a work permit either,” I told him.

He explained that he'd been here three years and that he'd come to Beirut through a smuggler in Damascus since Egyptians don't need a visa to get into Syria. He'd coughed up seven hundred dollars for the Syrian smuggler who got him to Beirut. He'd thought that Beirut would be a stop on his way to Germany. He said he didn't want to leave because he needed two thousand dollars to procure a visa for a European country from which he'd then slip into Germany. Now he'd be deported back to Egypt and return to his village penniless, so how would he get married?

The Syrian, Omar, talks to no one. He's supposed to work as a guard and
custodian but he doesn't guard anything and he doesn't clean. He has a little car that he traipses around in all day, and he returns to the hospital only to sleep.

Dr. Amjad told me to leave him alone.

“Don't bother him. He's free to do what he wants. You must understand, there's no need to explain these things. We have to accept them and that's all. They made me get rid of the Egyptian and dug up this fellow to keep an eye on the hospital. So you'll just have to keep your mouth shut and swallow the rest.”

“The rest” means that we live in a place filled with security services, each of which is keeping an eye on the other, and we're supposed to deal with them as though we don't know. I don't have any dealings with Omar, and practically speaking it's Kamelya who guards the hospital at night. She stands at the entrance, lets people in, writes down their names, and that's all.