Gate of the Sun (54 page)

“They were the banana days,” said Shahineh.

When Shahineh spoke about those days, you had the feeling that she wasn't telling of the past – it was as though time had stopped. She told of the crowded buses, of the wooden pattens they wore as protection from the hot sand, of the tents in which the wind was a permanent occupant, of the rain that penetrated the bone.

She told of moving from Qana and of how the Lebanese officer came, surrounded by his men, and ordered the Palestinians to congregate in the square, of how he whipped Abu Aref until he was soaked in blood.

“We only had banana leaves,” she said.

“We spread the leaves over the ground and covered the roofs and the sides of the tents with them, and lived with the rottenness. The leaves rotted, and we rotted beneath them and on top of them.”

It was then that Shahineh decided Yasin's schooling was over, and it was time for him to work.

“No, that's not true,” she said. “I begged him not to leave school. I said we'd live off the rations we were allotted with the relief card.” But he
refused. He found work in the sheet-metal factory at Mina al-Hesn, which landed him in prison, though that's another story.

Shahineh told of three months in the camp before their departure to Beirut. She and her children lived for about two months in an old Beirut house that had belonged to the Hammouds – a family of fighters from '36 – before moving to the camp at Shatila.

Shahineh met Ahmad Hammoud in the Rashidiyyeh camp. He was one of a group of young men who came from Beirut to distribute relief supplies to the refugees, and when he found out that she was the daughter of the '36 fighter Rabbah al-Awad, he bent down and kissed her hand. Two days later, he returned with his father and asked Shahineh to come to Beirut.

“So we went to Beirut, and lived about two months in their beautiful house, but, it must be said, people get on each other's nerves.”

My grandmother never told me about her stay in that house or why people get on each other's nerves. She simply said she'd taken her children and gone to Shatila, set up her tent there, and lived. From the tent, to the concrete room roofed with canvas, to the corrugated iron roof, to the “roof of the revolution” – she had to wait twenty years, until '68, to get a concrete roof. The concrete roof came with the revolution and the fedayeen. Only then was the woman able to get any sleep. She said that until then, she hadn't been able to sleep at night because she felt she was sleeping in the open.

My mother told me nothing.

She moved within her silence, which she wore like a cocoon. When I remember her now, I see her as an evanescent phantom.

She was there and not there, as though she weren't my mother, as though she were a stranger living with us. She disappeared and left the story to my grandmother.

I wasn't very interested in the story. You might think that to gather the stories of al-Ghabsiyyeh, I had to search and ask around, but it's not true. The stories came to me without my having to chase them. My grandmother used to drown me in stories, as though she had nothing to do but talk. When I was with her, I'd yawn and fall asleep, and the stories would cover
me. Now I feel that I have to push the stories aside in order to see clearly, for all I see is spots, as though that woman's stories were like colored spots drifting around me. I don't know a whole story; even the story of Abu Aref's buffalo I don't know entirely – why did the Israelis open fire on the buffalo and leave the man alone; why did they leave him standing in the midst of the carnage?

My grandmother said his wife didn't believe him. “He disappeared for a month and then returned saying they'd killed his buffalo! Abu Aref lied to us because he didn't dare to tell the truth of his disgrace. He said he wanted his buffalo to conceive in al-Khalsah, and his cousin would meet him at the border and take them from him, then return them after a week. Fine. But he didn't come back after a week, or after the massacre. He was away for a month. Then he came back carrying his
kufiyyeh
and saying the Israelis had killed them.”

“I'm certain the Jews didn't kill them,” said his wife. “Why would they kill them? They'd take them. And how could they have killed the buffalo and not him with them? I would have been rid of him! No, the Jews didn't kill the buffalo. I'm certain his cousin stole them. Took them and disappeared. The man must have waited a month at the border, then despaired and had no choice but to make up the story of the buffalo massacre. Everything foolish we do, we blame on the Jews. No, the Jews didn't kill them. And all of this for what? We could have sold them and lived off the money.”

My grandmother said Umm Aref grieved for her buffalo as much as if her husband had died. She'd insult him and grieve at the same time, weep and get furious, while the man behaved like an imbecile, carrying his
kufiyyeh
around and showing it to people in Qana. Everyone believed him and cursed the times. Everyone believed him except his wife, who knew him better than anyone else.

“So what do think, my boy?” asked my grandmother.

I said I didn't know because I'd only seen buffalo in Egyptian films and didn't know we'd raised them in Palestine.

“Did we raise buffalo?” I asked her.

“Us, no. We raised sheep, cows, and chickens. The people of al-Khalsah are Bedouin, they raise buffalo, not us.”

And she started telling me the story of Abu Aref again.

“You told me that story, Grandma.”

“So what? I told it to you, and I'll tell it again. Talk is just flapping the lips. If we don't talk, what are we to do?”

“The man was a pain in the ass and a fool. Wouldn't it have been better to slaughter them and eat them? In those days we were dying for a bit of meat. All we had to eat was
midardara
– lentils, rice, and fried onions.”

“But I like
midardara
, Grandma.”

What did they eat, there in their village in Palestine? I'm convinced
midardara
was the only thing they ate. But my grandmother always had an answer “under her arm,” as they say. Over there everything had a different taste. “Our olive oil was the real thing. You could live on it and nothing else, and there were so many things you could use it for.”

Have I told you what Shahineh did to my father on their wedding night? She made him drink a coffee cup full of olive oil before going in to my mother. “I made him drink oil. Oil's good for sex. One day soon, Son, God willing, one day soon, at your wedding, I'll give you oil to drink the way I did your father, and later you'll say, ‘Shahineh knew, God rest her soul!'”

Father, I don't know Shahineh's story well enough to be able to tell it to you. The stories are like drops of oil floating on the surface of memory. I try to link them up, but they don't want to be linked. I don't know much about my aunts. All I can tell you about is the husband of one of them, the one with the bald patch that looked like it was polished with olive oil. I've already told you about him, so there's no point in repeating it. I hate things that repeat, but things do repeat, infinitely.

Would you like to hear the story of my father and the Jew?

I'll tell it to you, but don't ask about the details. You can ask my grandmother tomorrow – I mean, a long time from now when you meet over in the other world. You should ask her because she knows it better than I do, she'll tell you the story of the rabbi with all the details. All I know are the broad outlines, which I'll try to tell you.

^*
One dollar is equivalent to approximately 1500 Lebanese lira.

^*
Head scarf, usually black and white.

^*
On the night of April 9, 1948, Begin's Irgun Zvei Leumi and the Stern Gang surrounded Deir Yasin. The residents were given 15 minutes to evacuate before the village was attacked. Approximately 250 people were killed.

^*
Aziz literally means beloved, or dear.

I
APOLOGIZE.

Again, I return to you with apologies. I'll give you your bath now and feed you, and then I'll tell you the story of the rabbi. Tell me you're comfortable – your temperature's gone down, and everything's back to normal; all that's left is this small sore on the sole of your left foot.

Tell me, what do you think of the waterbed?

If Salim As'ad, God send him good fortune, did nothing else in his life but come up with this mattress for us, his heavenly reward will still be great.

I was apologizing because I had to attend to other matters. I just witnessed a sad scene, but instead of crying I burst into laughter. Something like tears were flowing inside me while I was laughing, and I could only settle the matter the way Abd al-Wahid al-Khatib wanted it settled.

Do you know him?

I doubt it. I didn't meet him until his son put him in the hospital a month ago. He arrived in a bad state; he was suffering terribly. I examined him along with Dr. Amjad and suggested having him transferred to al-Hamshari Hospital in Ain al-Hilweh so he could have X-rays taken. We don't have any equipment here – even the lab has closed. We're more of a hotel. The patients come, they sleep, and we provide them with the minimum of care. Nevertheless, we continue to call this building suspended in a vacuum a hospital.

So Abd al-Wahid came, and I examined him. My diagnosis was liver cancer. But Dr. Amjad disagreed, as usual. He said the man was suffering from the onset of cirrhosis of the liver and prescribed some medication. I suggested to his son to take him to al-Hamshari to be sure. Father and son left with Amjad's prescription and my advice, and it seems that after a few days of Amjad's medication, they decided to go to al-Hamshari Hospital. There the man underwent exams that showed he was suffering from liver cancer. They came back to me carrying the report. They'd undoubtedly read the report and discovered the case was hopeless, since it ends with the recommendation that the patient be taken home to rest with strong painkillers.

I read the report while the two men sat in my office, their eyes trained
on my lips. People are strange! They think doctors are magicians. What was I supposed to do for them?

“You must take the medication regularly,” I told the sick man.

I told the son he could phone me if there were any developments.

The son made a move to go, but Abd al-Wahid didn't budge and asked me, with trembling lips, “Aren't you going to put me in the hospital, Doctor?”

“No,” I said. “Your condition doesn't warrant it.”

As he spoke, he bit his lower lip; he was wrung with pain, and his eyes were tearing. I don't know what the eyes have to do with the liver, but I could see death like a bleariness covering his eyes. And the man with his red face, his little potbelly and his sixty years didn't want to leave the hospital.

“I don't want to. No. I'll die,” he said.

“How long we live is up to God,” I said. I didn't hide it from him that his case was serious because I believe the patient has a right to know.

“How much time do I have?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Probably not much.”

“Why won't you treat me here?”

I explained that we didn't have the means to treat him and that, anyway, his case didn't require a hospital.

He said he didn't want to go home: “You're a hospital, and it's your duty to treat me.” He looked at his son for support, but the son stood in silence and looked at me with complicit eyes, as though . . . I won't say he was glad his father's end was near, but he was indifferent.

I stood up to mark the end of the consultation, and then, without any preamble, the son began abusing me. He said he wouldn't take his father because it was the hospital's duty to care for difficult cases, and he threatened me, saying he'd hold me responsible for any harm that might come to his father.

I had to explain our situation again and tell him how, since the Israeli invasion of '82 and the massacres, blockades, and destruction that had come with it, we no longer had the necessary equipment.

“Why do you call it a hospital?” screamed the son.

“You're right,” I told him. “But do you want to change the name of the place now? Go and take care of your father.”

The son took his father and left, and I forgot about the incident. I didn't even tell you about it.

Yesterday there was a surprise. I was in your room when I heard Zainab scream. I went out and found myself face-to-face with Abd al-Wahid. He had come to the hospital barefoot and in his pajamas. I saw the man standing there and Zainab on the ground, pulling her skirt over her thighs while he mumbled incomprehensibly.

Zainab said he'd shoved her and tried to go up to the rooms.

From where he drew the strength when he was already in the jaws of the angel of death I don't know. I only know he ran into the hospital and started climbing the stairs to the rooms. Zainab, running after him, tried to ask him what he wanted, and he responded with an incomprehensible babble, almost a howling, and when she tried to stop him he shoved her to the ground.