Gate of the Sun (78 page)

“Umm Fawwaz said I should thank the Lord! Imagine! Thank God for the humiliation and the beatings!

“I don't know whether his mother said something to him or whether things just took their natural course, but after that mistake of mine he became even more brutal and went back to acting out the Beirut scenes. In Amman he couldn't fire his gun: There was a State rather than a civil war – but he transformed the bedroom into a battlefield. He'd spread-eagle me, point his finger like a gun, and fire from his mouth. He'd come up close and start boring into my body with the muzzle of his imaginary gun. I tried to find a solution. I went to see my mother, but all I got from her was, ‘Anything but divorce! Divorce costs a woman her reputation.' So I decided to act alone; I decided to run away, but I didn't dare make it happen. Every night, after he'd gone to sleep, I'd draw up my escape plans, and in the morning the plans would evaporate, and I'd find myself one of three women.

“Where was I to run to?

“The West Bank crossed my mind. God, I even thought of going to the Jews! But I was afraid. I didn't know anyone there, and they might throw me in prison. Then I thought of Beirut. I couldn't even stand the sound of the word
Beirut
, but I decided that's where I would go.

“I don't know how I got the words out of my mouth.

“Fawwaz was eating breakfast, sitting alone at the table eating fried eggs and
labaneh
, while we stood – three women hovering around him, ready to obey his every gesture, while he smacked his lips and drank tea. Suddenly, I heard my voice saying: ‘Listen. I can't stand it anymore. Divorce me.'

“But Fawwaz went on eating as though he hadn't heard, so I screamed, ‘Fawwaz, listen to me. I can't go on. Divorce me.'

“He swallowed what was in his mouth and said in a wooden voice, ‘You're divorced.'

“I'm certain he didn't take me seriously, but he said it. I ran to my room, put my clothes in a plastic bag, took Dalal in my arms, and left.

“‘Leave the little girl, you whore,' said his mother.

“My body went slack. I'd thought of everything that might happen except for Dalal. His mother came up to me and snatched the little girl from my arms.

“‘Go to your family and tell them, Fawwaz divorced me because I'm a whore,' said Fawwaz.

“I'm sure he thought I was going to collapse and weep and implore him to forgive me, but I turned my back on them and left the house. I didn't go to my family. Instead, I walked in the direction of the taxi station to leave for Beirut. I got into a taxi, fell asleep, and didn't wake up until we reached the checkpoint at the Jordanian-Syrian border. Then I fell asleep again and woke to find myself held up at the Syrian-Lebanese border because I didn't have an entry visa for Lebanon. I stood alone after the taxi left me to continue its journey. A man with a Palestinian accent came up to me, and said he could get me to Tripoli, via Homs. At the time, Tripoli was a battle zone: The Palestinian fedayeen, or what was left of them in Lebanon, had congregated in the city, and it was under siege. I gave him everything I possessed. I was carrying forty Jordanian dinars that I'd stolen one by one from Fawwaz's pocket in preparation for my escape.”

Shams said she learned about war in Tripoli. She arrived at Fatah's al-Zaheriyyeh office and said she'd come from Jordan to join the revolution.
Mundhir, the official in charge, sent her to join the groups at Bab al-Tabbaneh, where she met Khalil Akkawi, the legendary commander who transformed the poor and the young of Tripoli into little revolutionaries and who was to die later in a savage assassination operation that greatly resembled Shams' murder in al-Miyyeh wi-Miyyeh.

In Tripoli she also met Abu Faris, an assistant to Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir), who, before the fedayeen left the city, appointed her communications officer for Western Sector Command in Tunis, which was responsible for work inside Occupied Palestine.

Shams didn't get on the boats with the fedayeen who left Tripoli in 1984. She said that Tunisia was too far away and she preferred to stay close to Dalal. Abu Faris gave her some money, and she came to Beirut where she joined the Palestinian command center in Mar Elias, and from there slipped into Shatila during the long siege.

Many stories are told about her during that time.

It's said that the Shatila commander, Ali Abu Toq, slapped her in the face in front of the other fighters and told her he was the only commander there.

It's said she succeeded in forming a network to smuggle weapons and supplies into the besieged camp.

She didn't tell me anything about that. I knew her – we'd run into each other in Mar Elias – and I was bewitched by her. Now I don't know, because everything I thought I knew about her evaporated when her murder of Sameh revealed her love for him.

I can say she was an extraordinary woman. She used to tour the Mar Elias camp surrounded by her young men, saying they were members of “Shams' Brigade.”

I returned to the camp after it collapsed following the assassination of its commander, Ali Abu Toq, while Shams was transferred to the Sidon area. I returned to find the camp totally disrupted. I participated in the rebuilding of the hospital, and I grew accustomed to the new situation – which you know better than I do so there's no need to get into that. When the fedayeen returned, they weren't like fedayeen. I'm not talking here about
the corruption and bribes and quarrels we lived through before the 1982 invasion. I know there was corruption, and we were ashamed of ourselves. But something made us capable of tolerating the situation; let's say there was an issue that was larger than the bribe takers and the crooks. After the fall of the camp, however, everything changed.

In the past, death had been everywhere, and it was beautiful. I know we're not supposed to call death beautiful, but there was a certain beauty there that enveloped us. In the days following the fall of the camp, however, death was naked.

I have no idea how Shams got into the camp after it fell. The Fatah dissidents
^*
had taken over Fatah's offices in Beirut, and only the camps in the south were left. Everyone knew that Shams was against the split, that she worked with Abu Jihad al-Wazir, and that she was loyal to the leadership and accused the dissidents of many things. All the same, she'd come into Shatila without anyone challenging her. She'd come to my house, and we'd spend nights together. I didn't see her often – she was busy all the time, and I had no means of contacting her. She'd come when she wanted and would find me waiting for her.

No, Abu Salem.

No, my beloved child, I wasn't afraid of her, I was afraid of myself. Something suddenly died inside me; when someone we love dies, something dies in us. Such is life – a long chain of death. Others die, and things die inside each of us; those we love die, and limbs from our bodies die, too. Man doesn't wait for death, he lives it; he lives the death of others inside himself, and when his own death comes, many of his parts have already been amputated; what remains is meager.

Before Shams, I was ignorant of this. When she died, I became aware of my amputated limbs and the parts of me that were already buried; I became conscious of my father and my grandmother, even my mother. I saw them as an organ that had been ripped out of me by force.

That's what I was afraid of, and that's why I sought refuge with you.

I wasn't afraid of revenge. Well, maybe I was, but it's not important. I was afraid of dying. Shams died, and I became aware of all the parts within me that had died. I saw death creeping up on what remained of me, and then you came. I didn't want you to die to safeguard that last piece of me separating me from my death. Now I laugh at myself: That last piece of me has become a child. You've become a child, Father, and your smell is like Dalal's, or like that of Ibrahim, your eldest child who died. The decision was Nahilah's. She's the one who decided you shouldn't continue calling yourself Abu Ibrahim. She said, “You're Abu Salem and I'm Umm Salem. We mustn't live with death – the living are better than the dead.”

Now I live with your new smell – a fresh smell that invites kisses. The smell of children invites kisses, and you invite me. I hug you and sniff you and kiss you and wrap you up in my voice.

You don't believe me?

For pity's sake, you must believe me! I know she loved me, and you have no right to cast doubt on it. I believed all your stories, the believable and the unbelievable ones. I even believed the story about the ice worms.

At the time, Yunes was on his way to Bab al-Shams. In the morning, he reached his first refuge, near Tarshiha, and lay down beneath the big olive tree he called Laila. He was carrying an English rifle and a bag and was wearing a long green coat.

Yunes was beneath the olive tree when the sun began to set and the reddish light started to spread across the hills of Galilee.

“I'm being unfaithful to you with Laila, my Roman lady,” he said to Nahilah.

“I want to see her,” said Nahilah.

He promised he'd take her, but he didn't.

“Laila's just for me. She's my second wife. We're Muslims, woman!”

Nahilah would laugh at the man's childishness and say she was going to cut the tree down.

With Laila, he was Yunes.

With the tree, inside whose huge hollow trunk he hid, and in whose shade he slept. A lone tree, set off a little from the olive grove in the countryside on the fringes of Tarshiha. There he could rest and sleep, standing or lying down inside the trunk. There he would organize his thoughts, his plans, his passion, and his body.

Then the tree died.

He spoke of the tree as he would speak of a woman.

He said it died; he didn't say they cut it down.

Why do they cut down the olive trees and plant pines and palms in their place? Why do the Israelis hate the tree of sacred light?

On that day in 1965, after crossing the Tarshiha olive grove, he felt something was missing. He felt lost and couldn't find the tree. The paved road that links Maalot to Carmel had run over Laila.

Yunes said he felt a wild desire for revenge and didn't complete his journey to Nahilah. He returned to Shatila, shut himself up inside, and didn't receive visitors for more than a week. His face was waxy, the tears stood like stones in his eyes. He was in mourning for the tree.

He decided to change his route to Deir al-Asad.

That was when he discovered the route going through al-Arqoub, which three years later – after the 1967 defeat, that is – was to become the main road into Palestine for the fedayeen. The fedayeen discovered al-Arqoub, situated at the foot of Jebel al-Sheikh mountain, and learned how to travel its icy roads. It soon became known as “Fatah Land.”

Yunes said Jebel al-Sheikh had enchanted him.

The mirrors of ice.

A mountain that crowned three countries – Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. “It's the crown of God,” he told me.

Yunes said he discovered the route via Jebel al-Sheikh, or Mount Hermon, because Laila was killed. Laila had been his landmark and his refuge. He'd spend the day inside her trunk and when night came he'd slip off toward Deir al-Asad.

“Did you know that the ice has worms in it?” he asked me.

“I discovered them myself,” he said. “I took Nahilah ten worms wrapped in a piece of cloth. They're little white worms that look like silk worms. When you pull them out of the ice, they get as hard as pebbles. I told Nahilah they were ice worms; I put one in the water jar and asked her to wait. In less than ten minutes, the water was as cold as ice. Nahilah refused to drink it at first. She said she didn't drink worms. Then she started asking for the worms and giving them away.”

Yunes said it was summer. “During the summer, the ice of Mount Hermon becomes like a mirror misted with breath. I slept in the old abandoned house. I don't know what came over me that night. There was no problem with the house: It was an old house that the peasants of al-Arqoub say a Lebanese émigré returned from Mexico and built. They say the man, who was from the village of al-Kfeir, at the foot of the mountain, made a lot of money in Latin America and decided to return to his country when his wife died. He was almost seventy-five years old, and it seems that in his dotage he focused on spiritual matters, saying that on the mountain he'd be closer to God. He chose Jebel al-Sheikh upon which to build his hermitage. He built the house in the Arab style – a courtyard surrounded by five rooms – and announced his intention to found a monastery there.

“How did he find the courage to live there?

“You can't imagine the winter on Jebel al-Sheikh. Winter there, I tell you, is absolute whiteness. Scattered ice dust swirls around and around and covers your eyes. Your bones even become blocks of ice. You become a piece of ice. I only crossed it in winter twice, and both times, when I got to Bab al-Shams, I lit a fire and Nahilah came to put my bones back in place. That's what a real woman is, my son – someone who can put each bone back in its place, warm you up, and let you become yourself again.

“The man, who everyone called al-Khouri,
^*
died before the house was finished, and the ice house became known as “the House of al-Khouri.” I don't know if the house was called that because the man belonged to the
Khouri family from al-Kfeir from which hailed many historic personages – such as Faris Bey al-Khouri, a leader of the Nationalist Bloc who became prime minister of Syria, or because he had decided to become a monk and it was given the name in honor of his unfinished monastery project.”