My First and Only Love, page 29
Widad called me. She was standing near the wall wearing her white outfit while her hat fluttered in the air, shining in the sun. She had changed a lot, and had grown. Her daughter was a teenager; she was getting older, but still looked like a child. She had succeeded in her profession and learned a lot at the hospital and the association, but my sister Widad was not Lisa. Lisa was like a candle, a rare wildflower in an unusual environment. She might have preferred Beirut for this exact reason; here we lived the life of people under siege.
Widad called me again, insistently. I went to her and leaned against the wall beside her, taking advantage of the warm sun. I looked at the building and saw that the office was still swarming with the newcomers, the volunteers, and the mujahideen. There were people standing on the stairs, around the buildings, and in the courtyard; the air was filled with people’s voices and the buzzing of the planes in the sky above. There was a gloomy air of celebration, filled with doubt: the leader was back, but without weapons, rescuers, or salvation. The Rescue Army was far away, around the village of Jabaa, and Jabaa was very far from Jerusalem. The Rescue Army would rescue itself, if it could. What would happen if the lamb left and bid us goodbye?
Widad asked me, “Are you pessimistic?”
I did not reply; I was drowning in my own questions. I was filled with doubts, I was pessimistic, and I did not want to impede her resolve. She was struggling as well, in her own way, collecting donations and escorting the associations and the ambulances. She went from one place to another and grew paler and paler. She was afraid and on edge and she grumbled. She still believed in magic and dreams. She believed in spirits like my mother, and she still believed in the mirror.
Gloomily, she said, “Mother called, and she said that she had a black dream. She said that she saw a bird like a roc, black like the night and as big as an elephant, with wings similar to those of a bat. It covered the sky like a cloud, a cloud as black as tar. She was afraid and panicked, and said, ‘Hasna and Wahid and the leader and al-Aqsa.’ I did not understand what she meant. She was hallucinating and then the line got cut. Please, Amin, get in touch with her, tell her words that would comfort her. Tell her that you are fine, and Wahid is fine, and the leader is fine, and we are all fine. We are okay, aren’t we?”
I did not say we were fine because we were not. I smelled death, but I promised to call her and go to the quarries to find out about Wahid’s news. Our men dynamited the Jewish quarries of Jishar and they dynamited a bridge near Qulounya that connected the Jewish colonies Jabaat Shaoul, Montefiori, and Beit Hakerem. They did it to prevent the Jews from using it to break the siege, but they rebuilt it the same day and sent supplies and reinforcements with the British and the American planes. Why would I say that the situation was good, when it was not?
Widad said, “Hasna left. She felt too heavy with her pregnancy. Her belly is very big, as if she is expecting quadruplets, but I think it is twins. I thought my mother would be happy, but she is panicking. She repeats the words Hasna and Wahid and the leader and al-Aqsa. I told her that Hasna was doing well and she would deliver soon, possibly twins, but she was not happy. She was repeating that she had a black dream.”
I tried to distract her and help her forget the issue. I asked her about Lisa, but she stared at me and said with regret and anger, “Do you still love her? She is not for you.” I did not reply, but she persisted: “I told you a hundred times that she was not for you. She is older and wiser than you.”
“Do you mean to say that I am young and foolish and do not deserve her?”
“You are a dreamer. She is too old for you and she is not one of us.”
“You mean her religion?”
“Isn’t it important?”
“As far as I am concerned? Is this the difference you refer to? When we are done with this here, I will join her.”
“What is the point? You are torturing yourself. Have some sense, Amin. Open your eyes. Think. You are not for her and she does not suit you. Use your brain.”
“Do you think I still have a brain?”
She turned toward me, stared at my face, and touched my shoulder. “What do you mean? You haven’t answered me. Are we okay? Did you get anything? Did you bring support? Weapons, medication, ammunition? Did you bring back anything at all?”
I shook my head and she exclaimed, surprised and panicked, “You did not bring back anything? How? Why? Were they upset with you? Why? What did you do? Did you not convince them? Didn’t you explain the situation to them and beg for their help? Didn’t you tell them that you were family, that you were brothers and belonged to the same clan? Who else do we have? Look at the Jews—they get support from outsiders, from the English, the French, the Russians, and the Americans. They get it from everywhere, from every religious group and every nationality. As for us, the Arabs, what did you do?”
“We haven’t done a thing. They let us down. They said that the Rescue Army would rescue us, and rescue Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa.”
She opened her eyes and shouted, as if I were the Rescue Army: “The Rescue Army! The Rescue Army, to rescue us? Where is the Rescue Army? What has it done? You did not tell them?”
“We did, we did.”
“What did they say?”
“They said the Rescue Army.”
“Then you failed!”
“What could we do? This is the situation.”
“That means the leader . . .”
She placed her fists on her chest; she was hyperventilating. She tried to continue her sentence, but she was not able to get past those words: “That means the leader, that means the leader . . .”
She fell silent as she placed her fists on her chest, breathing heavily. I turned to find out what had happened to her; she was holding her head in her hands, while her back shook. Moved by her emotional reaction, I said, “Are you crying? Why are you crying? We are fine.”
She shook her head while keeping it lowered, her white hat trembling. She said in a hoarse, rattled voice, “We are still okay? And he is okay? How can he be okay after having been disappointed? What will he fight with?”
A plane flew over our heads, causing the trees and the fence behind our backs to shake. People looked up, concerned. Widad raised her head and I saw her usually pale face turn red, the tears frozen in her eyes. She whispered in shock, “My mother’s dream will come true. She talked about the roc, a bird as big as the roc with the wings of a bat, and a black cloud over our heads, covering the leader, covering Wahid and Jerusalem. What will happen to us, Amin, if Wahid dies and the leader dies? If Wahid dies, my mother will die; if the leader dies, we will all perish. If he dies who would be left to look after us?”
“He is only one man. If he disappears there will be others.”
She turned to me, a look of regret on her face. “You say this? You!”
I felt that she was accusing me of betrayal and treason. I saw the look of doubt in her eyes, as if she were telling me, “You, Amin, the holder of his secrets, you, his adviser, you, the closest to his heart. He trusted you. You, the cultured man and the poet, you the sensitive, educated man, the member of an honorable family. You, Amin! You? You!”
“This is reality and we have to be realistic and decide what to do if he is no longer with us!”
She stared at me wide-eyed and said, fearful, “How can you talk like this, Amin? You are making a prediction! How can you even think of him being gone?”
“We will all go one day. Is he eternal?”
Her lips twitched and her face turned red as she shouted, “Of course he is eternal! He is everything, he is the world!”
I looked at her, trying to fathom her strange reaction, and repeated her words: “He is the world?”
It occurred to me then that her feelings toward the leader were not those of a sincere citizen who had faith in him. They were more than the feelings of a nurse who looked after him, and more than those of an activist who had evolved in his orbit and believed in his message.
I said gently, in order to find out the truth, “He is only a man and not a prophet, and he is not immortal. He is only a man.”
She turned her face and whispered, “He is the man.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is the greatest man, the strongest, the most handsome. He is the world to me.”
“Not the whole world!”
“The whole world and all that is in it. If he dies, I would die as well.”
I fell silent. I was dumbfounded. I discovered a secret unfolding before my eyes, clear as the sun. I hadn’t understood it and I did not comprehend it until now. Why had I not seen it? Was it because Widad was my young sister? Younger than I and weaker, less aware of things and less educated? Was it because she was the abandoned Widad? Was it because she did not shine like Lisa? Was it because she was ordinary, and nothing distinguished her from others? But she had struggled diligently until she won her battle to ameliorate her situation. She found a path where she succeeded and in which she believed. Hadn’t she nursed him? Hadn’t she taken a risk in nursing him, the wanted man on the run? She took care of him in his hiding place and covered up for him. She served him for weeks and came to know him inside out. Hadn’t she healed his wounds? Hadn’t she discovered his greatness and his manhood? She said with warmth and emotion, “He is the man! He is the strongest, the greatest, the most beautiful.” That was how she saw him and felt toward him: why did I find it too much for her to feel this way about him? If I had been a woman like her and had known him closely, I wouldn’t have felt the same way. All those women did not know him up close, but their eyes would shine when they looked at him, as if they saw light in his eyes and the sun rising from his face. Weren’t they in love with him? Didn’t they desire him and dream about him? He was probably their ideal man. If this idol was lost or disappeared, and his light was extinguished, what would happen to them? What would happen to us? Were we different from Widad and the women of the association? Wasn’t he the world to us because he was the leader, the shepherd, and the replacement for the father? Wasn’t that what the Nakhshun plan said? Wasn’t that reality? As for my sister Widad, she loved an older man, much older than her, from a different social class, like I loved Lisa. She was suffering and enduring the torture of love, like me. I felt twice as sorry for her and for me. I asked her gently, “Do you love him?”
She lowered her head as if she were covering up for guilt or a sin, and whispered, “I adore him.”
Reminding her of her reality, the way she had reminded me of my reality a few minutes ago, I said, “He is not suitable for you and you are not suitable for him.”
She shook her head and looked at me in order to make me understand, then said in a broken voice, “He is my first love.”
52
Yasmine returned to inquire about the condition of the patient and tell him she had found a doctor in the alley. He would visit the following morning. I began crying in the dark, listening to the old man’s labored breathing. I panicked and did not know what to do. “What is wrong with him?” I whispered. “Is he going to die?”
He raised his head and said unexpectedly, “I am not dead yet, rest assured. I am like a devil.”
Yasmine raised her head, switched on the light, got close to me, and said affectionately, “What is wrong with you, Nidal? He won’t die.”
I took a deep breath and said, “Mother, mother.”
“What is wrong with your mother?”
I did not answer, but he laughed under the covers and said in a different tone, “I told her that her mother was madly in love with him.”
Yasmine was excited and curious. She got close to me, knelt at my feet, and said eagerly, “Your mother was passionately in love with him? With whom?”
He raised his finger from under the covers and, pointing at me, said, “She was madly in love with me.”
Yasmine laughed and he laughed, but I did not laugh. I cried.
53
I was able to reach the quarries of al-Jisar with great difficulty. The driver let me off on the main road and pointed to the hill, saying, “Be careful. The Jews are on the eastern side and the mujahideen are everywhere. There are also the Arab villages and the settlements. You are now in the most dangerous spot in relation to the siege.”
I walked under the tree branches and along the paths between the rocks as protection against the sun. Then I started climbing the side of the hill in order to reach the quarries located much higher up. From this distance, the quarries resembled the open mouths of legendary beasts: toothless, black, and dusty. The lines of the hills were broken in various places and looked burned and blackened. There were also huge uprooted rocks that had rolled down from their locations and were leaning against stones or trees. They were unstable, forcing me to walk around them carefully and quietly, lest my breath or the sound of my voice caused them to move. The stones and the twigs under my feet emitted creaking noises, making me stop to listen to the ringing sound of the echo. I looked around and found myself in the wilderness, between the rocks, and before me I saw silvery green grass and the blackened green of cypresses. I saw also soft valleys with streams running through them, shining under the morning dew like mirrors under the sun. The far west was dark blue. The hills of pine trees and olive trees formed a celestial spectacle. I gazed at the scene with deep appreciation, trying to grasp the details and assimilate them, trying to store them in my memory and interweave them into my imagination. One day I will write about them, compose poetry for them, and say, here we were and from here we came and there we will return.
I saw him from a distance: a black dot on top of the mountain, higher than the quarry, in the shade of an isolated oak tree in a sky blue frame, in the midst of that starkness. It overlooked the villages and the Jewish colonies. Behind it, two fighters had lit a fire with straw and pine branches to make tea. They had placed their rifles against a rock and sat on two stones facing each other, enjoying the warmth of the sun. He saw me approaching and stood up lazily to welcome me. He was not surprised by my visit; he might have been expecting me, or someone might have hinted that I was coming, or the watchman hiding in the bushes might have seen me and informed him of my arrival.
He opened his arms to welcome me and I realized how weak he was. He was like a ghost. As I got nearer, I was struck by his thick beard and the darkness around the inner corners of his eyes. I did not remember him being that dark. Now, however, he looked like a black Bedouin, grilled by the sun, his once-thick hair beginning to thin and turn gray. His body looked even taller, probably because of his thinness. When he smiled, his cheeks were full of deep lines. His teeth had grown too big for his jaws. What had happened to him? Although he still appeared handsome and healthy, and the traces of love and a happy marriage were visible on his face, the latest battle, the fall of al-Qastal and the rebuilding of the Qulounya bridge, had taken a toll. The siege was still holding, despite the partial breaks and the supplies brought in by plane, the suspicious activities of the villages adjacent to the colonies, and the aerial sorties to check the situation.
We sat leaning against a rock and one of the mujahideen brought us tea with sage, then returned to his post a few steps away from us.
He was in a dark mood because of the fall of al-Qastal and the death of a number of fighters. Every time there were victims, martyrs, and he was deeply affected and felt like an orphan who had lost his family. I remembered what he had said that evening in Sanour, in the stable by the gray mare, describing losing some of his men and bidding them farewell, like losing parts of his heart. I wondered how he had been able to fight with such a tender heart. He told me that it was the concept of jihad, and the passage from this world into Paradise.
I asked him about himself and he said that things were not too bad. He asked me about the trip and I described it to him: what we endured, the position of the leader and that of the other commanders in the Jerusalem headquarter. He did not seem as affected or suspicious as I had expected; he kept saying that God would not forget us and that He would send Ababil birds to pelt them with stones from Sajil. He also said that the battle around al-Qastal was not the end but the beginning and that the Prophet, even the Prophet, lost the battle of Uhud before he repulsed his enemies and entered Mecca.
I did not want to discourage him with a detailed description of what we endured and the low morale of the leader. I did not tell him about the confusion in the Jerusalem office and the heated discussions taking place there and people’s concerns. I tried to lighten the mood by giving him Mother’s and Widad’s greetings. I asked him about Hasna and her aunt; I asked him about her reasons for remaining with him instead of going to Nablus where the situation was calmer, to deliver her baby close to my mother. He told me that Hasna preferred to remain close to him and was staying with relatives in Deir Yassin. After delivery, she would return to the battlefield as usual, because she was unable to stay still. He reminded me that if it hadn’t been for her pregnancy, she would been sitting with us here, drinking tea and carrying this. He pointed proudly to the Bren in his lap.
I told him that Deir Yassin and the Jerusalem villages surrounding the Jewish settlements were not safe for a pregnant woman close to her delivery date. The confrontations were going on, and the expansion of the fight seemed unavoidable as we got closer to May 15 and the end of the British Mandate. The Jews were making extensive arrangements and the British camps in Wadi al-Sarar, Sarafand, and Ras al-Ain were now open and serving the needs of the Jews. They were allowed to take anything they wanted from there, and they took everything, including barracks. They even brought soldiers from Eastern Europe, trained in city and street fighting. They were doing all this for the sake of the Jerusalem settlements and the end of the siege. The battle would be here, around Jerusalem, and the Arab villages would be affected. Therefore, it was not safe for Hasna to stay in Deir Yassin; it was the wrong decision and he had to send her a messenger to tell her to go north to Dhanaba or the family home in Nablus. I told him that the north was less dangerous, and it was at least protected by the forces of Qawouqji and the Rescue Army.
