Nuha’s mother said she’d caught up with her mother-in-law. “I took your brother by the hand and we started running after her. The Stone stood like a stone. And we found ourselves in the camp.”
What do you make of Nuha’s story?
Naturally, Nuha didn’t describe her grandmother as looking like a tree with its branches broken. I added that detail to describe the old woman, both her psychological state and her bleeding wounds. Nuha wasn’t that troubled by the story; she just told it to me in passing when she was explaining her own situation. She doesn’t believe in the possibility of our returning to Palestine. “If we go back, we won’t find Palestine, we’ll find another country. Why are we fighting and dying? Should we be fighting for something only to find ourselves somewhere else? It would be better to marry and emigrate elsewhere.”
She cried a lot when her grandmother died. She told me how her father started to speak after his son was martyred in the battle of al-Karameh. She said that even though he didn’t talk, he didn’t stop fathering children.
“Wouldn’t you agree that the man was a bit strange — not talking to his wife but sleeping with her every night?” I tried to ask Nuha about her grandmother’s story, but she said she didn’t know and didn’t care. Nuha loved Egyptian soap operas and said she had to get out of this cesspit — that’s what she called the camp. Her father, whom I met numerous times at their house, was very nice to me. He was a strange man, eyes hanging vacantly in his face, always clicking his prayer beads and talking about everything. He knew a lot about agriculture, medicine, politics, and Palestinian history. He talked to me a lot about my father, about how his death had been his first calamity in the camp.
In fact I wanted to marry Nuha, but then I don’t know what happened. I started to feel stifled when I was with her. We couldn’t find anything to talk about. She’d tell me about her soap operas and their heroes and I’d get bored. Even my desire for those little stolen pecks started to fade.
I never told you the story of Nuha and her grandmother before because I thought it wouldn’t interest you. You didn’t talk much about the past except incidentally; the past would come up in the form of illustrative examples, not as lived reality. Then you were transformed into the unique symbol in the stories of the camp people, the symbol of those who kept slipping back there. You know you weren’t the only man who’d go over there and come back. Thousands went, and maybe some of them are still going over now. I know of at least three cases of married men whose stories are like yours. They go over, leave their women pregnant and come back to the camp. The story of Hamad intrigued me. I’ll tell it to you later; I’m tired now, and the woman of al-Birwa has wrung out my heart.
The first time I heard the story from Nuha, it made no impression on me. I was absorbed by the story of the Stone and paid no attention to the grandmother. Now it occurs to me that this woman (who was called Khadijeh) was remarkable. I wish I’d known her better. I only saw her once, when she was sick. A woman I saw only once but whom I found more beautiful than her granddaughter who tried to seduce me into marriage.
I forgot to mention that Nuha was white, whiter than any woman I’ve ever seen. Her skin was so white, the whiteness almost seemed to be bursting out from inside her. She thought she was beautiful just because she was so white. She was a bit short and plump, but her whiteness made up for everything.
I was taken by her whiteness, I won’t deny it, but I never discovered beauty until I met Shams. I discovered then the secret of the color of wheat. Brown tinged with yellow is the highest color because its nuances are infinite. Nuha’s whiteness, on the other hand, blocked my spirit — no, I’m talking through my hat, saying anything that comes into my head. Please don’t believe all that. . I have nothing against white, but I did suddenly stop loving her. All my feelings evaporated, and when I looked at her I could no longer see her. I only felt something for her at the stadium, when I stood there with hundreds of fedayeen waiting for the Greek ships that were to take them from Beirut into their new exile. I searched for her but couldn’t find her. Do you know what that feels like — to leave when there’s no one to bid you farewell? I searched for her and didn’t leave. I went back home, not because she didn’t come and not because I wanted her; I went back because I felt the utter nonsense of it all. Everything had become absurd, so I couldn’t bring myself to go away with everyone else; a journey has to be more than just a journey, and I noticed, after the siege and the defeat, that I wasn’t capable of such things, so I went home and never saw Nuha again. I forgot her. I forgot what that girl I’d loved looked like. Now, when I try to recall her, I see her as a blurred image, a shapeless woman. I see her white face, and I see her lips quivering on the verge of tears, and I see her grandmother Khadijeh.
I think that I fell in love with Nuha in the image of her grandmother.
Try to imagine with me the woman of al-Birwa.
A woman walking alone through the rubble of her village looking for the stones that were once her house. A woman alone, her head covered with a black scarf, hunched up in that emptiness that stretches all the way to God, among the hills and valleys of Galilee, within the circle of a red sun that crawls over the ground, passing slowly and carrying with it the shadows of all things.
All the woman saw was shadows. She was alone. They came and she spoke to them. It may be that she didn’t say the exact words her granddaughter related. Maybe they didn’t understand her language.
Nuha said they were Yemenis, and Yemenis understand the Palestinian dialect, or a lot of its words anyway. But probably they didn’t understand a thing. When she spoke they were terrified, because they thought she was a spirit who’d come out of the tree, and they started to throw stones at her. They were just adolescents, so they didn’t call the Border Guard from the kibbutz that had been built on top of al-Birwa.
Maybe. I don’t know.
Anything’s possible.
But why wouldn’t she agree to go to Kafar Yasif?
Was it because. .?
She probably regretted it afterwards, that must be why she didn’t tell her story to anyone, unlike Umm Hassan, who never stopped telling people the story of the woman of Wadi Abu Jmil.
The woman of al-Birwa said nothing.
And I’m telling you now to prove that you weren’t the only hero, or the only living martyr.
Don’t worry, you’ll die in peace. But I want you to know before you die that this protracted death of yours has turned our life upside down. Did you have to sink into this death for your memory, and mine, and everyone else’s, to explode? You’ve been stricken with a brainstorm, and I’m stricken with a storm of memories.
You’re dying, and I’m dying.
God, it’s not about Shams, or Dr. Amjad, or this Beirut that no longer looks like Beirut. It’s to do with me staying here and starting work in the hospital tomorrow. Don’t be scared. I won’t leave you. I’ll continue to work with you as usual and tell you stories and give you the latest.
Think about me a bit, and you’ll see I can’t take it anymore.
True, nobody cares anymore, and nobody believes anyone. Those who got used to me as a doctor will get used to me as a nurse. But me — how can I adjust to this new me that I’m being forced to accept?
We’ll find out tomorrow.
But before tomorrow comes, I want you to tell me who the woman of Sha’ab was.
I want the story from you. I’ve heard it dozens of times from different people, but I’m not convinced. In the Ain al-Hilweh camp I got to know Mohammed al-Khatib, who claimed that the woman of Sha’ab was his mother, Fatimah. Then I met a man from the Fa’our clan who said his mother, Salma, was the woman of Sha’ab. And then, of course, there’s that legend about the woman called Reem, to whom the story became attached.