When I find myself feeling heavy, I know I’m on the brink of a new bout of depression. I told the doctor who was treating me, ‘I have guilt feelings I can’t get rid of. I feel guilty toward my father and toward my mother — guilty feelings there’s no cure for, because they’ve died. And I feel guilty every time one of my comrades dies, as if I had left him or her to bear a burden I didn’t share. I’m aware of the contradiction in what I’m saying, but this is how I feel. Or maybe my words are an illusion I spin because the truth is that I feel guilty every time I look around and realise we’re leaving a mess for the younger generation and expecting them to live in it.’
‘I’m afraid,’ I tell the doctor, ‘awake or asleep. Maybe I rush around because I’m afraid, and rushing around alleviates my fear — I’m no longer aware of it. When fear takes over I find myself unable to get up or to walk. I huddle in bed. Going to work or leaving the house seems an impossible task. I am as afraid as I can be of going out. I’m afraid of people, and at the same time I feel desolate because I’m removed from them. The moment when I wake up is the hardest. It takes me two hours to get ready to leave for work, not because I’m preening and grooming myself, but because I’m incapable of going out to the street, going to my job, and meeting whoever it is I may meet. When I do go to work, and absorb myself in it, the fear recedes as if it had been a dream, or as if the state I was in in the morning had been nothing but phantasms and illusions. I’ve called my feelings “fear”, but I’m not sure whether that’s an accurate description. Maybe it’s something else — weariness, or anxiety, or a mixture of feelings of which fear is only one component. I don’t know.’
He listens without interrupting, except with brief interjections. When I stop talking, he asks me whether I am able to get my work done. ‘Sometimes I have trouble concentrating,’ I say ‘but on the whole I have no difficulty at work. Translation isn’t a problem for me. I can do simple translation quickly and automatically; it is the more difficult type of translation, of literary and theoretical texts — the kind I usually enjoy and in which I find a kind of challenge or stimulating entertainment — that I don’t go near. If I’m tired, I don’t sign on for that kind of translating — or if I’ve already made a commitment, I set it aside and don’t honour my commitment.’
The doctor asserts that I am stronger than I think. He says my defences are strong. I don’t believe him, and am sceptical about the usefulness of these long, costly sessions. I leave his clinic and walk in the street, weeping. I dry my tears and go into the chemist’s to pick up my prescription. I take the medication conscientiously for two or three days, then toss it in the bin. I don’t need medication!
It is essential that I unravel the threads — surely I will find a way out. What is the problem? I must identify the problem before trying to solve it. What is the problem?
Chapter twenty-one
The big feast
Sometimes I am visited by my good angel, and at such times I think there is much to life that makes it worth living. I remember the moments that shone brightly, and conclude that the world, in spite of everything, has been kind to me.
When Nadir and Nadeem turned sixteen, I suggested we have a party to celebrate. We weren’t in the habit of giving birthday parties; it was enough to wish ‘many happy returns’ to the person whose birthday it was, or perhaps mark the event with a bouquet of flowers, a card, or a shirt whose purchase was urged by the occasion.
We didn’t hold the party on the day itself, but rather some days afterward, when the boys came home, each with his identity card confirming that he had officially become a full and independent citizen. ‘Friday evening?’ I suggested, and they agreed. I spent Thursday night and Friday morning preparing the sweets. Then I announced, ‘The kitchen is closed — no spongers admitted!’ This was in reference to Nadir and Nadeem, for Hamdiya had worked with me on the preparations. I took a bath and let down my hair, which I normally kept tied back in a ponytail. I put on my prettiest outfit. The guests arrived and the party became a feast. We sang, danced, played, laughed, and made fun, words flying all around like ping-pong balls in games of repartee, with jokes and sarcastic jibes targeting everything, not least of all ourselves.
When the boys graduated with their high school baccalaureate, we held a second celebration, and we had a third when they graduated from the university. At the end of every celebration I would go to bed — or to put it more accurately, I would drop into bed like a sack of onions or potatoes tossed from a transport lorry. I would sink into a deep and peaceful sleep, while the party continued until the next morning. As soon as I awoke, I would hurry to the bathroom, run the hot water and take a long, leisurely bath, the steam thick around me, while I sang my heart out, songs I loved by Fayrouz or Abdel Wahhab.
My feelings were similar to this on that sweltering day in July when I said goodbye to the boys at the Cairo airport, and if I hadn’t been too shy I would have raised up my voice and belted out the song I was singing in an undertone and the airport would have come to a stop in consternation at this woman past the age of forty (it might not have seemed to the casual observer that I was over forty, because of my clothes and the arrangement of my hair tied back in a ponytail, but I had reached the age of forty-six — or, in classical Arabic, I was ‘a woman in the fifth decade of her life’, having covered more than half the distance between the fifth and the sixth) — I say, had I vociferated in song (this word ‘vociferate’ is one of the more unfortunate specimens of our beautiful language), the airport would have come to a stop in consternation at such bizarre behaviour, perhaps also at my exceptional ability to reduce any melody to a discordant cacophony. At any rate, I carried on singing in a low voice as I handed over my passport to the Middle East Airlines employee, and then I stopped, perforce, to answer her question. ‘I only have this one small bag with me,’ I said, ‘and I’ll carry it on.’ I took my passport, went back to singing, and continued singing as I stood in the queue for passport security, held out the passport for the officer to administer the exit stamp, and finally as I settled into a seat at the airport café, to wait for departure.
I had followed the drama minutely, every day, every hour. The first day, I sat watching the television from the time I got home from work until evening. On the second day, I dashed to work, did what was required of me, and dashed back home. For the next two days I didn’t leave the house or my spot in front of the television. To begin with, there was the liberation of Qantara, Deir Seriane, Al-Qsair, and Taibe. Then more villages and towns followed: Markaba, Beit Yahoun, Al-Adaisse, Al-Houla, Beni Haiyane, Tallouse, Meiss al-Jabal, Kfar Kila, Al-Khiam, Al-Naqoura, Bent Jbail, Marj‘oyun. I corroborated the events by going back to the map, to ascertain the location of each. In a matter of days, these villages and towns, previously unknown to me, became places that were intimately familiar. When Nadir and Nadeem got home from work, I would recount to them the details of what I had seen; after naming each village and town, I would point out its specific location. Suddenly I laughed, remembering my aunt, when she talked about the villages neighbouring ours — how she took great care to say just where they were: on the land to the east or the land to the west, bordering our village or some other place; and the distance between the two: as if she feared that her listener would mistake the location of our village and lose his way.
The Israeli army had fled.
A desperate attempt on the part of Lahad’s men. Bombardment of the people of Bent Jbail returning to their hometown. Another attempt: The Israelis opened fire and struck their own agents in Lahad’s army. A third attempt: They poured petrol from the tanks onto the roads. No use. At Al-Shaqif, the last fortified position in which they had a presence, a group was besieged, waiting to be airlifted by helicopter to Israel. Then the collapse — complete and final collapse. They left behind their tanks, transport vehicles, heavy artillery, rifles, pistols, ammunition, and an army of their agents.