The Dream. Mohammad Malas

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СКАЧАТЬ house had been blown up—that the house in the village was blown up. And as a matter of fact, in 1936 the British,⁶ not the Jews, blew up this house. At that time, its owner built a house next to it,⁷ not in its place. I thought, ‘How long has it been like this?’ We went to Lebanon, and when I returned to Palestine the man still hadn’t rebuilt his house. I continued on, there was a mosque and a holy man’s shrine further up. I read the Fatiha and said to him, ‘Master, you are one of God’s holy men. Deliver us from this plight.’ I turned around and saw myself surrounded by emptiness. I walked back toward the house but woke up before I arrived.

      “I’ve never dreamed about the factory owner, but I did dream about his son once.

      “Before he died, the factory owner’s son used to speak to me very rudely. In the dream I said to him, ‘Listen, Nizar. I worked with your brother for sixteen years and never heard him say such things. You’ve been here for three years, and you’ve been out of line three times. Look, two mountains may never meet, but human beings do.’ This is what I told him in the dream, after he died.”

      What am I doing? Am I buying people’s dreams? What will I do with them? Serve up a handful of their souls and leave? I forgot to write down that he told me he didn’t participate in the Ghandour factory workers’ strike because he is Palestinian.⁸

      Abu Khalid—the vendor

      He asks us to produce an informative cinema. “The Revolution subsided, and so did we. For us to sustain our enthusiasm, we must have films that excite us.

      “The film should be the pain of the Palestinian people. I want to feel pain and fury at the same time. I, as a storekeeper, can be of great use to you. For example, I can show you what people buy here in the camp.”

      The bastard wants an informative cinema and suggests a magnificent documentary idea. Let me elaborate: as we buy people’s dreams, let’s see what people buy for themselves . . .

      “We have a miserable situation here. Prices have soared. Some people don’t have money to buy food. There are no jobs. Some people turn to the Revolutionary Council for food. Two hundred grams of meat costs eight liras. Nobody lends money any more; there are no loans. There are only ten pages in my account book.

      “Sometimes I have dreams. I feel I’m in Deir al-Qasi cultivating the land. Sometimes I’m sitting under the olive tree, sometimes I see myself sitting in a cage. My father lives with me. He is seventy. I have nine kids. Now my sister has brought her kids here too. She fled Rashidiyeh to escape the bombing. By the way, Rashidiyeh is empty. There is nobody there but fighters.”

      Abu Ibrahim

      “We’re ruined.”

      We’re sitting in his store, silent. Abu Ibrahim is in no state for talking. He sits at the front of the store, not looking at us. He stares ahead, head lifted as he watches the street. He says a few words followed by a long silence; then he says something else, as if continuing his own private conversation. He looks my way cautiously. He watches my hand. He looks at the notebook and the pen. Then he looks at the road again. When our armed escort—it seems Abu Ibrahim likes him a lot and knows him very well—tries to cheer him up and urges him to talk, he shakes his head, looks at me, contemplates the notebook for a while, then goes back to looking at the street, tossing a word or two to the air.

      “We’re responsible for what happened.”

      It seems he has a son who was martyred recently.

      “I just want one thing: to die in my country.”

      In the front section of the store hang two photographs in golden frames. One is a photograph of King Faisal, and the other is a photograph of Abu Ibrahim in pilgrimage clothes in Mecca. He fidgets in place, groaning as if suffering from an illness. “We fellaheen like eating spicy food. Now I have testicular inflammation. Before that, I had hemorrhoids and a dermoid cyst.” Fighter planes passed overhead. The noise caused anxiety and tension. This was followed by the sound of rapid anti-aircraft artillery. After quiet resumed, I noticed for the first time the absence of the radios that usually fill the camp with a medley of songs. Now it is silent.

      “Take him,” he says, waving toward our armed escort, “to Hussein. Let him fill this notebook of his.” Of course he means my notebook. “We don’t talk about anything except the land.”

      When some fighters passed by the store he commented, “They no longer want to be educated or to work. They want to come and go. Whoever is martyred is just dead. No matter how bored you get, Palestinians won’t say anything to you except ‘I want my country.’ Others will tell you the same thing I told you: ‘Open Palestine to Israel? That’s absurd!’” Suddenly he’s shouting, then his eyes fill with tears and he cries. He calms down, and continues speaking about his physical pain in a broken voice.

      “I buried my son and father here. I swear to God I won’t leave them here no matter what happens. But we turn toward the Qibla.” For him, the Qibla is Palestine. In Lebanon both Palestine and the Qibla are in the same direction.

      I’m thinking about how to shoot this—what if I came to the store, placed the camera here in front of him, and let it record him without anyone asking questions or waiting for answers? I looked carefully at the place, considered the lighting options and chose a spot for the camera, but—damn—these spontaneous moments usually fall apart when shooting.

      “I swear I won’t wake up. I lost a son. I swear to God I’ll follow him. No one was dearer to me than my son, except God. He visits me every day in my dreams, he and my father. I always find them there, in Tarshiha. He came to me two or three days ago. He hit me and said, ‘Do you want to die?’ I replied, ‘No.’ He said, ‘You want to die because you want to cry for me.’”

      It is hard to determine whether the son said this to him in a dream before he was martyred, hence as a portent of death, or if he meant his son came to him after he was martyred. Dreams mix with reality like a combination of illusion, intuition, and hallucination.

      “I’m going to die. If you want to come back here to film, you won’t find me. Palestine is the mother of the poor. Some 140,000 Lebanese used to come, and we would issue identification cards for them, when we were in Palestine. We don’t want identification cards; we just want them to bear with us a little bit. There were thirty-six mortar rockets at my son’s funeral. They took my grandson to Mecca. He’s there now. He is two years and one month old, at Princess Qaoud’s.⁹ Before he died, I knew. I used to say that Mahmud would die when he was twenty-five years and ten days old. A day before he died, I told them that Mahmud would die.” Another attempt to convince himself. “That day I was sitting here, and whenever someone passed by and looked at me, I suspected something had happened to Mahmud. I no longer want our land. I will take my father and son and erect a tombstone and die with them. I will take them, erect a tombstone, lie down, and sleep. We used to have 3,663 olive trees. Now I am sick and dying because I no longer drink olive oil.”

      Tuesday, April 1

      In the Armed Struggle Headquarters, we asked for the young man who had accompanied us the day before. We were surprised to learn that he had applied for a leave and had traveled to see his family in Yarmouk camp in Damascus.

      We entered the Burj’s alleys accompanied by another young man. The day was clear and warm. The Burj’s inhabitants spilled into the alleys. Bits of conversation were being exchanged by those who passed by. Women were coming and going through the alleys and courtyards, carrying vegetables, laundry, bread. Some middle-aged men were getting shaves down narrow side alleys or in small СКАЧАТЬ