Gate of the Sun (45 page)

But let's look in the mirror.

I don't want to rewrite our history, but tell me. You say you didn't understand, and that in '48 all of you slipped helter-skelter from your villages into the darkness. And Umm Hassan says she carried her basin on her head and went from village to village, from olive grove to olive grove, without ever knowing where she was going.

During that time – no, before that – when you were a young man in the Revolution of '36 and afterward, tell me, did you know anything about them?

You were peasants and didn't know anything, you'll reply.

Where was Palestine? You'll agree that Galilee wasn't the issue. Galilee has its magic because it's “Galilee of the Nations,” as they call it in books. Today we've become “the Nations of Galilee” – nations, the
others
, or the
goyim
, as the Jews call us.

But tell me, what did the nationalist movement posted in the cities do apart from demonstrate against Jewish immigration?

I'm not saying you weren't right. But in those days, when the Nazi beast was exterminating the Jews of Europe, what did you know about the world?

I'm not saying – no, don't worry. I believe, like you, that this country
must belong to its people, and there is no moral, political, humanitarian, or religious justification that would permit the expulsion of an entire people from its country and the transformation of what remained of them into second-class citizens. So, no, don't worry. This Palestine, no matter how many names they give it, will always be Palestinian. But tell me, in the faces of people being driven to slaughter, don't you see something resembling your own?

Don't tell me you didn't know, and above all, don't say that it wasn't our fault.

You and I and every human being on the face of the planet should have known and not stood by in silence, should have prevented that beast from destroying its victims in that barbaric, unprecedented manner. Not because the victims were Jews but because their death meant the death of humanity within us.

I'm not saying we should have done something. Maybe what we should have done was understand, but we – you – were outside history, so you became its second victim.

I don't mean to give sermons, even though I have been giving a few. The settlers who set up the early
koubbaniyye
, or “companies,” and who are still setting up settlements today in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, don't resemble those who died. The settlers were soldiers who possessed the means to kill us – as indeed they did, and as they'll kill themselves as well.

But the ones who died, they're like Nahilah and Umm Hassan.

I see Umm Hassan wandering in the fields among the thousands of others without homes. I see her, and I hear the whistle of the train. I know there weren't any trains in Galilee; they came later, in Lebanon and Syria, when the refugees were rounded up and distributed around the various suburbs, which then turned into camps.

The whistle rings in my ears. I see the people being led toward the final trains. I see the trains, and I shudder. Then I see myself loaded into a basin and carried on a woman's head.

I confess I'm scared.

I'm scared of a history that has only one version. History has dozens of versions, and for it to ossify into one leads only to death.

We mustn't see ourselves only in their mirror, for they're prisoners of one story, as though the story had abbreviated and ossified them.

Please, Father – we mustn't become just one story. Even you, even Nahilah – please let me liberate you from your love story, for I see you as a man who betrays and repents and loves and fears and dies. Believe me, this is the only way if we're not to ossify and die.

You haven't ossified into one story. You will die, but you'll be free. Free of everything, even free of your own story.

S
ALIM
A
S
'
AD
taught me the meaning of freedom.

I was preoccupied with the French visitors when he pointed to his head, described the child he'd been and led me to the story of the shampoo. Salim would stand in front of the mosque that had been turned into a cemetery, expose his white hair and wash it in front of everyone, claiming to perform a miracle.

“The old man made young again!” he'd shout.

People would press in around him. There was nothing magical or exotic – everyone knew that the white hair would turn black, that the old man before them would become young again. His back was hunched, his legs shook, and his voice cracked as he invited everyone to the show, which took place at five o'clock on the first Thursday of every month. He'd stand there and ask one of the onlookers to help him pour the water over his head. The old man would groan, he'd apply the shampoo, rub it in well, pour on more water, and all of a sudden there he was, prancing around, a young man again. The tremor in his legs was gone, his voice was loud and clear, and his head was covered in black hair. “The old man's return to his youth! A shampoo for every part of the body! I'm the old man who returned to his youth – wash your limbs with it and they'll be young again, every part of you will be young again. Try it once, you'll never regret it.” And he'd start handing the little bottles out to the onlookers and taking their money.
Women, old men, and children would gather in the courtyard of the mosque to watch the miracle of the old man returned to his youth.

As you can see, there's nothing to it as a story except that it's a trite representation of the massacre.

Then I saw him for myself.

I went to the mosque out of curiosity, no more. I overcame my fear and isolation, and I went. The youth bewitched me. He played his part amazingly well.

He comes forward, his back hunched, walking in circles and moaning. Then he draws an imaginary circle around himself and walks around and around inside it. He goes around in circles without getting tired until the number of onlookers is sufficient. Then the show begins.

A voice like a death rattle. A back hunched and broken. A face – the face is the real genius. He turns and swallows his face, sucking in his lips and swallowing them so that it becomes a mask, as though he's put on the mask of old age. His eyes sink into the skull, his mouth widens, his gums become toothless. He goes around in circles, groaning, his legs shaking, staggering, almost falling but not falling. Then says in a low voice, “My children, my children. Your old father is about to die. Come, my children.” He puts out his hand like a beggar and asks for help. One of the younger spectators comes forward, and the old man shows him the bucket of water. The young man picks up the bucket, the old man bends over until his head is almost touching the ground, and the young man pours the water over the old man's head as he totters under its force. Then he puts his hand into his pocket, pulls out a little bottle, puts a small amount of the green liquid on his hand, and shows it to the people before rubbing it onto his head. He groans and trembles. He asks for more water. His voice disappears. He opens and closes his mouth as if he wants to speak but can't, as if he's pleading for help. A woman goes up to him and offers him water from a bottle she's carrying. He drinks a little, then breaks into a fit of coughing resembling sobs. He raises both hands, and the young man comes forward and pours water over his head again. The water gushes, and the old man drowns. The pool of water around him widens. He gets down on all fours and splashes around
in the water, his head dripping. Then suddenly he leaps up – he's young again, and he shouts, “The old man's returned to his youth! A shampoo for every part of the body! Especially . . . especially . . .” and he gestures toward his crotch. “Welcome, welcome to eternal youth!” he cries. Then he starts passing around his little bottles, while everybody laughs and claps and shoves and pays.

The French actors should have come to see this play,
The Old Man's Return to his Youth
. “This is the play of the massacre,” I'd have told Catherine if she'd been standing at my side watching Salim's transformation from youth to old age and from old age to youth, as though he were purchasing his life by performing it.

I went up to him, bought a bottle and laughed. When the crowd had dispersed and he'd paid the young man with the bucket and the woman with the bottle their share, he saw that I was still standing there.

“See, Doctor. You liked us.”

I took his hand and asked him to come to the hospital the following day to start work.

“You can work,” I said, “but without these antics.”

“Whatever you say, Doctor,” he said, selling me another bottle.

“I have to sell all the bottles before moving to my new job,” he said.

He took five thousand lira and said he would come the next day. And he came. He worked here for about a month and turned the place upside down: He stole medicines and sold them, he flirted with Zainab, he told anecdotes, and he went into the patients' rooms and sold them medicines he'd made himself from herbs that he claimed were more effective than the ones we used.

I knew all about it but was incapable of reining him in. He had amazing powers of persuasion and claimed that what he was doing was in the patients' interest.

“There's no such thing as illness, Doctor,” he'd say. “Half of all illness is psychological, and the other half is poverty. I'm treating them psychologically. Leave me alone, and you'll see the results.”

I left him alone because I didn't know what else to do about him.

“What does a patient need? I make them laugh; they die laughing. What's the problem?”

He even tried to joke around with you, so I explained to him that such things stopped here, at the door to your room, and to Dunya's. But he didn't want to understand, or rather, he understood as far as you were concerned, and he stayed away from your room, but it was different with Dunya. He'd go into her room and do his act and sell her mother weird and wonderful things. She was happy and said that her daughter had finally smiled.

“It's the first time she's smiled, Doctor. Please don't stop him from coming to her room.” She said Dunya responded to the medicine Dr. Salim prescribed for her.

“Dr. Who?” I asked.

“Dr. Salim. Really, he's better than all the other doctors!” said the mother.

When I asked him about the amazing medicine he'd made for Dunya, he looked at me from behind the mask of the old man I'd seen in front of the mosque.

“Leave me in peace. You don't understand.”

And I didn't.

If I'd understood, I wouldn't have been taken by surprise when he disappeared. He stayed about a month before disappearing, and I never saw him again. I don't think he went back to doing his play in front of the mosque.

Zainab said he'd said he wanted to go to the Ain al-Hilweh camp, where he planned to marry his cousin.

“What will he do for a living there?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “He'll act the old man there. He'll find a new audience.”

“No,” she said. “He'll live in his father-in-law's house. He told me her father works in Saudi Arabia and sends them dollars, and he was going to live like a king there.”

^*
Rayyis: president, or boss.

^*
Uprising of the Palestinian people, launched in early December 1987.

^*
Battle for control of the hotel strip in West Beirut in October 1975.

H
AVE YOU
accepted my apology?

Salim As'ad bewitched me with his stories and his play and his white hair. He bewitched me and made me forget you. You will, no doubt, appreciate what a battle I got into with Dr. Amjad over creating a job for him. Amjad refused, saying that the budget wouldn't cover it and that Salim As'ad would turn the hospital into a circus, but I insisted and won.

I won, meaning I lost, because he didn't want to work. He worked for a month and then left without saying goodbye. What did I do to him? Nothing at all. I let him do as he pleased, just forbade him to go near your room. That was all. But he's a louse – really a louse – who doesn't want to work. He's gotten used to being unemployed and putting on a show and bullying people into giving him money. What more could I have done for him than I did?

“This isn't a hospital.” Every time I made any comment about his behavior, he'd look at me in astonishment, shrug his shoulders and say, “This isn't a hospital.”

Once he came into my office.

“What, Salim?” I asked.

“I have some bottles, Doctor. Haven't you made up your mind yet about changing the color of your hair?”

“Get away from me. Leave me alone so I can work.”

“Work!”

“Yes. Please leave me alone.”

“Work, Doctor? You think you're working, but you're a fool (sorry, Doctor, I say whatever pops into my head). You're a fool, and you're cheating everybody by making them believe they're in a real hospital. You sell them things you don't have. I'm better than you, I sell them the real thing, the white-haired man who gets rid of his white hair and feels like he's become young again. But you give them nothing, just a continuation of the lie. Stop lying, please; stop lying and let people get on with their lives.”