The Dream. Mohammad Malas

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СКАЧАТЬ of today; they’ve been around a long time, maybe since the time of Adam. We, the Bedouins of Raml, are from Swayt, but there are many Palestinian tribes, such as Sobieh, Hamdun, Hayb, and Fayez.”¹⁴

      A man suddenly entered the room—he was tall, slender, nervous, and carried a black Samsonite briefcase. He seemed to have a specific and urgent mission. Somehow he gave the impression that he was delivering salaries. He sat on the bed, opened the briefcase, took out what looked like a receipt book, then stopped suddenly and said to me, “Welcome, friend. How are you? Tell us how you’re doing. I hope you are happy.” But Abu Khalid got up and said to us, “Let’s go visit the people so you can take a look around.” We rose and left the room for the sea. At that moment, the sun was a yellow waxen disk approaching the sea’s surface in the far horizon as clouds started to darken the sky.

      After some moments, Abu Khalid joined us. We walked together. We crossed through the hole in the wall that separates Saint Simon from Saint Michel. In the yard, a family had taken their food out into the open and started eating. It seemed to be the family of a laborer who had just returned from work. Abu Khalid stopped at the first house and said to me, “This is my daughter’s house. She lives in the first house of Saint Michel, and I live in the last house of Saint Simon. That’s why I made this hole in the wall. She lives with her five kids. We say that her husband is missing, but he died in Maslakh.” Then he called out to her. The kids rushed in through small darkened doorways. He asked them about their mother. They said she went to buy something, so we left intending to come back.

      Abu Adnan—the keys

      He’s an old man—seventy, pale, and slender. It’s impossible to tell whether he’s dressed in pajamas or street clothes. He seems to be a collection of separate pieces, soul out of body. He babbles, walks, fidgets; he emerges from a dark doorframe and strolls into another. At all times he carries a round keychain with a bunch of small keys in his hands. He talks to us while walking. Sometimes he sits, so we have to sit. He stands up and leads us to another place. This is how we discovered his interest in certain places, such as what was previously the beach bathroom. He has devised a door and fixed it, then placed a small lock on it that reminded me of the kind used for luggage. He opens the door and lets us in. Once inside, we discover that this is no longer a bathroom but now a coffee room. Inside, the coal is still lit and the coffee pitcher sitting in the ashes is still hot. He talks a bit, then gets up, and we follow him. Maybe the place we’re going to is underneath the cement passageway of the beach. We sit on empty broken wooden boxes that used to contain whisky and beer. He talks to us. The only thing he’s confused about is the two exoduses: the first from Acre and the second from Maslakh.

      What I recall now is the overall impression, the unlimited cursing of current and former Arab leaders: “Here is the sea, so let them toss us in it.” This sentence resonates in my ears. “They put me somewhere. I looked around and I saw something strange. I thought to myself, ‘Maybe it’s a morgue.’ I said, ‘That’s it.’ Three people came, looked at me, and said, ‘How old are you?’ I said, ‘Seventy.’ One of them said, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ I did. They had hatchets. I came from Palestine to Maslakh. When people started building in Tel al-Zaatar, we built in al-Tel al-Zaatar. In Haifa, a lawyer came and said to us, ‘Go to Acre.’ We left for Acre. We found that the people in Acre were leaving. We left Acre. They bring back married women after they take them, but girls never come back. They use the same hatchets on Palestinians that were used by the Haganah.¹⁵ I can’t protect anybody, and nobody can protect me. Can you say, ‘That’s my brother?’ Can you say, ‘That’s my father?’ Everyone is on their own. That’s how we left. I left on my own. I didn’t know where my wife was. Later, she followed me. My son is in Germany.”

      The vendor with the paralyzed hand

      The evening came. Saint Simon himself vomited.

      People dispersed into dark pockets of air. Beirut in the distance was bustling with light, while here the black sea emitted its mysterious monotony. When the vendor emerged from his glass stall—maybe it used to be the stall where ice-cream was sold—the paraffin color of the Lux receded into the background,¹⁶ and the vendor with the paralyzed hand looked like an old butterfly emerging, trembling, from a halo of light. His movements were carefree, his features pure. He wore gray pajamas that were as clean as crystal. He said, “I was the first person to land in this place. The beach owner told me to live here, and I did. I was fleeing from the hell of Shayah. Then others came, then more. When torpedo boats came here and struck, all the people fled. I didn’t. Where would I go? I can’t walk, so I stayed. Maybe I’ll die and maybe not. The owner of the beach comes here frequently, but he never gives me anything. Whenever he comes, he drops by and starts counting dishes, spoons, forks, and knives. I used to say to him, ‘Count on God, man! Nobody takes anything with them when they die.’ My daughters come from Shayah to visit every Sunday, on the weekend, that is. They bathe me, clean everything, cook, and then return.”

      An old woman, over a hundred years old

      “I’m over a hundred years old. I came from Haifa to Maslakh. I know them by their voices even if they’re masked. They take girls and kill young men. They followed us here to bomb us. Everybody is against us. Even God is against us. Our young men are gone. Our dignity is gone. What can I say? Let sleeping dogs lie. There is no Islam or anything. Only humiliation. Nobody throughout history has been humiliated as much as we’ve been. My son’s son, my brother’s son, and my daughter’s two sons are all dead. Ahmad died when he was delivering ammunition to al-Zaatar.¹⁷ Marwan died in Kahale. Omar died in Antelias, the sea. Muhammad died in Damour. When the morning comes, I go buy vegetables. I put them here, and the old man sells them. We earn enough to buy bread.”

      The mother of the man with lung disease

      An old woman stretched out her fingers and wiped the surface of the ground. Then she kissed her fingertips, raised her hand to the sky and said, “Thank God! God above saved them.” She meant her son and husband. “Maybe because I have no one else but them. That day I ran, I knocked on every single door, even the door of Gemayel’s son.¹⁸ Whenever I told anyone about them, they’d say, ‘Oh! They were butchered.’

      “We’ve been in Burj Hammud since the day we left Palestine. Four years. Before we never mixed with refugees, we only got to know such people here.”

      The violation of honor. Honor—honor is the obsession. The kidnapping of their girls torments them tremendously. Honor replaces the obsession with olive oil in the camps. Many of the women try to give the impression that they fear and are apprehensive of the moral environment shaped here. Behind their words are innuendos of alcohol and debauchery, sometimes drugs. Here, dreams of usurped land disappear from the conversations of the camp’s inhabitants and are turned into feelings of defeat, humiliation, and contempt, sometimes with a tinge of immorality.

      The woman resumed, “It seems we’ll be staying here for a long time. Maybe we will.” As the night grew darker, she became more worried about her son with lung disease, who had been summoned by the Armed Struggle and taken at sunset. For her, there was no difference between him being summoned and him being taken. What mattered to her was that armed men and the authorities came and took him. “We’ve been here for four years and they’ve never summoned him. What do they want from him? I’m scared.” Worried, she twisted in her seat. Her mind strayed; her words were scattered. Everyone here feels surrounded by spies. The chalets don’t provide them with a feeling of security. A belief that people are eavesdropping, prying, prevails. The adjacent sea becomes a sky and horizon of the unknown and its impending invasion. Everything is possible. Assassination is likely. It’s the spirit of apprehension that pervades the world of smugglers, especially now that the Amal movement—which they don’t trust at all—is expanding around them. Before we left this woman, her son with lung disease returned, safe and sound.

      Umm СКАЧАТЬ