Gate of the Sun (68 page)

Sarah treated herself at the beginning, and when the pain got bad she went to the doctor. She was admitted to hospital, had three operations, and was sent home after the cancer spread to her bones. She returned home to enter a long period of appalling pain.

One night, when Sarah couldn't sleep because the pain was so bad even though she'd had a morphine injection, she went to her husband's bed, woke him and told him she wanted to talk to him.

The man sat up in bed and listened to the strangest request.

Sarah asked her husband to take her to Berlin and bury her in the Jewish cemetery there.

Her husband told her he was prepared to go any place in the world with her for treatment and that he'd call the doctor in the morning to get the addresses of hospitals in Berlin.

“I don't want treatment,” she said. “There is no treatment. I want to be buried there.”

Khalil told Catherine that Jamal, as he told the story, was more astonished than he was, as though he were listening, not recounting. He said his father told him later, when they met in Amman a few months before his death, that he'd leave this world in peace because he'd succeeded in making Sarah happy.

“She was like a little girl there,” the father said. “Every day we'd go out. I don't know where she found the strength. She took me to the places of her childhood, of which not many remained – but she was happy. It was as though the pain had gone, or a miracle had occurred. After a week she was no longer able to get out of bed. I tried to take her to the hospital, but she refused. Three days later she died, and I buried her there.”

Khalil saw the sorrow engraved on Catherine's face. The French actress who wouldn't act in Jean Genet's play was slumped in her chair almost as if she were unconscious.

“Why aren't you drinking?” Khalil asked her.

She looked at her glass and said nothing. Khalil took Catherine's glass and finished it off in one gulp.

Catherine said she was exhausted.

Khalil looked at his watch. “It's three in the morning,” he said.

Catherine said she wanted to sleep.

“Now you want to sleep! The night's just beginning. I would like some more wine.”

“No. You've had a lot to drink, Jamal,” she said.

“Not at all, and my name's Khalil, my mother's name is Najwah, and Jamal died during the Israeli invasion of Beirut.”

Catherine got up. Khalil got up.

“How are you going to get back to the camp?” she asked.

“I don't know, but I'll manage.”

“You can spend what's left of the night here, in my room.”

“In your room . . . No . . .”

“I'm tired and want to sleep. Come up with me.”

They went up to her room. Catherine undressed quickly and climbed into bed almost nude. After a little hesitation, Khalil lay down next to her, fully clothed.

“Take your clothes off,” she said. “Don't tell me you're going to sleep in your clothes.”

He undressed, Catherine turned off the light, and there, in the darkness of the room, which would continue to cling to Khalil's skin, they made love.

Khalil doesn't remember things clearly, but he felt as though he were drowning and caught hold of the woman, who fell on top of him, and they drowned together.

The next morning, as he was opening his eyes, he saw Catherine emerging from the bathroom dressed and wearing a lot of lipstick. He dressed quickly, and they went down to the restaurant, where they ate breakfast like strangers.

She told him she was leaving that afternoon; she was going to the crafts shop near the hotel to buy some presents. He told her he was already late for work at the hospital and would have to get going. Neither one brought up any of the topics of the previous day – they didn't even mention the play again. They finished breakfast and got up from the table. She planted a cold kiss on his cheek, and he left.

A
ND THAT
was all that happened with the French actress.

I told her the story of Jamal, and we slept together. She thought she was sleeping with Jamal the Libyan, who could have been Palestinian or Jewish or German, and I glimpsed in her something of Sarah, who became Palestinian.

Now let's suppose that Catherine had immigrated to Israel, married Jamal, and – after a long life – death had come for her. Where would she
have asked to be buried? With her Jewish grandmother, her Catholic mother, or her Muslim children?

Our story has no end.

When Jamal told me his story, I couldn't believe it. He told me because he knew he was going to die; now he's resting in his grave in Beirut while his father's in Gaza and his mother in Germany.

Will the dead be reunited?

Why did Sarah return to the country of her executioners?

“It's the classic relationship between executioner and victim,” you'll say.

I'm not so sure. I don't have any strong convictions that would provide me with an answer about a world like the one that drew Sarah toward her German grave.

Jamal told me his father was able to see the joy that reconnecting with the German language gave Sarah. She adored speaking German and would gurgle in it the way a child does.

Are we slaves of our own language?

Is language our land, our mother, and our universe?

Catherine went back to her country. She didn't take the part she was supposed to in the play about the massacre. She left the play to us so we could go on playing the role of the victim. The role has no end, starting from the fall of the man-bird from the heights of the minaret of al-Ghabsiyyeh and the men of Sha'ab who climbed the ropes of rain to their deaths.

The French actress left us to play our role and went back to her country with the story of Sarah and Jamal the Libyan. And, instead of uncovering the names, she lost them. I asked nothing of her; I found myself in bed with her and she spoke to me in French, which I don't understand, and called me Jamal. And when she got up the next day, she put her mask back on and went back to her country.

She was right, but I didn't understand right away.

In the morning, beneath her mask of lipstick, she became another woman. She put on her French mask and planted a glacial kiss on my cheek. She was right: If I'd had a French mask, I wouldn't have taken it off and let
myself enter this labyrinth called Palestine. I have no choice because I was born in this labyrinth, nor do you. Jamal the Libyan, his cousin, Sarah, the same goes for an incalculable number of others from here, from over there, or even from outside. We have no alternatives and no masks, and even war no longer provides enough of a mask to conceal the whirlpool in which we're drowning. Them and us. As you see, they've become like us and we've become like them. We no longer possess any other memory.

All the war stories have evaporated, all that's left are the massacres. Are we imitating our enemies, or are they imitating their executioners and pushing us to put on that same mask that camouflaged Dunya's features? You remember Dunya? Dunya's dead now. “It doesn't matter,” you'll say. I'll agree – we're all going to die. But Dunya died because she was no longer able to play the role of the victim. That phase is over. The international humanitarian agencies have lost interest in us. Now what they're interested in is the West Bank and Gaza, and Dunya has lost her following. That's why she died.

And you.

I know why you're dying, Father.

You're dying because the story has come to an end with Nahilah's death.

Tell me, why don't you open your eyes and speak as Sarah spoke? Why don't you declare your wish to die over there?

Are you afraid of dying?

Or is it that you don't want your story to end, that you want to leave it open-ended so you can force us to keep on playing the role of the victim for as long as God sees fit?

What do you say?

No, my story's different, and I'll tell it to you from beginning to end. Shams' death is no reason for me to die. No, I won't go out onto the street and ask them to kill me. No, what happened last week was an absolute fiasco. I heard shooting in the street near the hospital, which started shaking with the rattle of the Kalashnikovs. I came running to hide in your
room. I was shaking with fear. Now I laugh at myself when I remember how scared I was – I was ready to hide under your bed.

In the morning, Zainab entered your room with a gloating smile.

“What are you doing here?” she asked me.

I said I'd been afraid for you because your breathing was irregular, so I spent the night here.

“Didn't you hear the shooting?”

“No. What happened?”

That was my mistake. When you lie, you discover that you can't correct anything: You're naked. I was naked before Zainab's smile.

“Everyone heard, and Dr. Amjad came from his house to make sure everything was alright and we looked for you. We didn't find you in your room, and Dr. Amjad said you'd run away and told me to get everything ready to move Yunes to the home this morning.”

“We won't be moving him,” I said.

“As you wish. Go and discuss it with Dr. Amjad. But why didn't you come out of Yunes' room last night?”

“I didn't hear anything. I must have been fast asleep.”

“Whatever, Doctor. I can't understand how you couldn't have heard. Maybe you were in a coma. Fear can cause comas,” she said as she left.

I ran after her. “Zainab, come here.”

“What do you want?”

I asked her about the day before, fear creeping into my voice.

“It was nothing,” she said. “A robbery. A bunch of thieves tried to rob the hospital, and when Kamelya noticed them they fired in the air and ran away.”

“That's all?”

“That's all. What did you think it was, an assassination attempt? Get a grip! No one's after you. The woman's dead and gone, and if they'd wanted to kill you they'd have killed you. Go back home and get some sleep. What kind of person sleeps next to a corpse when he can sleep at home?”

She called you a corpse! Stupid woman.

It's as though she can't see. No one sees you but me. I said to Amjad – this was the last time we talked about you – I said to him that I refused to move you to the home and asked him to come to your room to see for himself.

“It's your responsibility,” he said. “You want him here, let him stay here. I suggested moving him for your sake.” Then he said he refused to examine you himself: “I'm not a forensic physician who examines corpses.”

I attempted in vain to explain it to him. He said that what I see as positive signs are really signs of death. Good God, can't he see how like a little child you've become? You've grown younger, and the signs of aging have been erased from your brow and your neck, and your smell is that of a baby. Even your reflexes are like those of a newborn. The problem is your closed eyes, which I still put “tears” into. Your eyes are clear, the whites slightly blue, and your heart's as strong and regular as a young man's.

I told Amjad I could see your improvement in your eyes. I said I could hear your voice, as though you were waiting for something before coming out with the words.

“It's all in your imagination,” he said.

“No, Doctor, I'm not imagining it. I speak to him and he understands. I put on Fairouz cassettes for him and see him swimming in his dreams, I play him Umm Kalsoum and see the desire gushing out around him, I play him Abd al-Wahhab and Abd al-Halim and see the mist of life curling above his head.”

He said he was sure you'd entered the final phase and he expected your heart to collapse – it could happen at any instant and carry you off – and that all my concern for you wouldn't make the slightest difference. You hadn't died already because your constitution was strong and your heart excellent – he'd never seen such a pure heart. He used the word
pure
to mean “regular” but the only true purity is the purity of love, and I'm jealous of you and of your love. I'm jealous of that meeting you had beneath the Roman olive tree when Nahilah took you to Bab al-Shams and poured
her rain upon you. When I imagine that scene, I see her envelop you like a cloud and then pour her rain upon you. That is the water of heaven, and of life.

How can I convince them you're not going to die? How can I convince myself ?

Your childhood drives me crazy and crushes me; I never fathered a child and never knew the beauty that Yunes saw when his son Ibrahim's hair covered the pillow.

Now I've started to understand how a man becomes a father.

Would you agree?

You don't have to agree, Father, because you're my son now. Let me call you “son,” please. Think of it as a game. Don't parents play that way with their children, the father calling his son “daddy” and the son calling his father “son”? I'm the same. I carry the same name as your father: He was Ibrahim and I'm Khalil – the Companion. Ibrahim was the Companion of God, which is why we've named Ibrahim's city Khalil, the City of the Companion. That's why, too, the fiercest battles between the Palestinians and the Jews will take place in that city, and for it.