Shahineh met Ahmad Hammoud in the Rashidiyyeh camp. He was one of a group of young men who came from Beirut to distribute relief supplies to the refugees, and when he found out that she was the daughter of the ’36 fighter Rabbah al-Awad, he bent down and kissed her hand. Two days later, he returned with his father and asked Shahineh to come to Beirut.
“So we went to Beirut, and lived about two months in their beautiful house, but, it must be said, people get on each other’s nerves.”
My grandmother never told me about her stay in that house or why people get on each other’s nerves. She simply said she’d taken her children and gone to Shatila, set up her tent there, and lived. From the tent, to the concrete room roofed with canvas, to the corrugated iron roof, to the “roof of the revolution” — she had to wait twenty years, until ’68, to get a concrete roof. The concrete roof came with the revolution and the fedayeen. Only then was the woman able to get any sleep. She said that until then, she hadn’t been able to sleep at night because she felt she was sleeping in the open.
My mother told me nothing.
She moved within her silence, which she wore like a cocoon. When I remember her now, I see her as an evanescent phantom.
She was there and not there, as though she weren’t my mother, as though she were a stranger living with us. She disappeared and left the story to my grandmother.
I wasn’t very interested in the story. You might think that to gather the stories of al-Ghabsiyyeh, I had to search and ask around, but it’s not true. The stories came to me without my having to chase them. My grandmother used to drown me in stories, as though she had nothing to do but talk. When I was with her, I’d yawn and fall asleep, and the stories would cover me. Now I feel that I have to push the stories aside in order to see clearly, for all I see is spots, as though that woman’s stories were like colored spots drifting around me. I don’t know a whole story; even the story of Abu Aref’s buffalo I don’t know entirely — why did the Israelis open fire on the buffalo and leave the man alone; why did they leave him standing in the midst of the carnage?
My grandmother said his wife didn’t believe him. “He disappeared for a month and then returned saying they’d killed his buffalo! Abu Aref lied to us because he didn’t dare to tell the truth of his disgrace. He said he wanted his buffalo to conceive in al-Khalsah, and his cousin would meet him at the border and take them from him, then return them after a week. Fine. But he didn’t come back after a week, or after the massacre. He was away for a month. Then he came back carrying his kufiyyeh and saying the Israelis had killed them.”
“I’m certain the Jews didn’t kill them,” said his wife. “Why would they kill them? They’d take them. And how could they have killed the buffalo and not him with them? I would have been rid of him! No, the Jews didn’t kill the buffalo. I’m certain his cousin stole them. Took them and disappeared. The man must have waited a month at the border, then despaired and had no choice but to make up the story of the buffalo massacre. Everything foolish we do, we blame on the Jews. No, the Jews didn’t kill them. And all of this for what? We could have sold them and lived off the money.”
My grandmother said Umm Aref grieved for her buffalo as much as if her husband had died. She’d insult him and grieve at the same time, weep and get furious, while the man behaved like an imbecile, carrying his kufiyyeh around and showing it to people in Qana. Everyone believed him and cursed the times. Everyone believed him except his wife, who knew him better than anyone else.
“So what do think, my boy?” asked my grandmother.
I said I didn’t know because I’d only seen buffalo in Egyptian films and didn’t know we’d raised them in Palestine.
“Did we raise buffalo?” I asked her.
“Us, no. We raised sheep, cows, and chickens. The people of al-Khalsah are Bedouin, they raise buffalo, not us.”
And she started telling me the story of Abu Aref again.
“You told me that story, Grandma.”
“So what? I told it to you, and I’ll tell it again. Talk is just flapping the lips. If we don’t talk, what are we to do?”
“The man was a pain in the ass and a fool. Wouldn’t it have been better to slaughter them and eat them? In those days we were dying for a bit of meat. All we had to eat was midardara — lentils, rice, and fried onions.”
“But I like midardara, Grandma.”
What did they eat, there in their village in Palestine? I’m convinced midardara was the only thing they ate. But my grandmother always had an answer “under her arm,” as they say. Over there everything had a different taste. “Our olive oil was the real thing. You could live on it and nothing else, and there were so many things you could use it for.”
Have I told you what Shahineh did to my father on their wedding night? She made him drink a coffee cup full of olive oil before going in to my mother. “I made him drink oil. Oil’s good for sex. One day soon, Son, God willing, one day soon, at your wedding, I’ll give you oil to drink the way I did your father, and later you’ll say, ‘Shahineh knew, God rest her soul!’”
Father, I don’t know Shahineh’s story well enough to be able to tell it to you. The stories are like drops of oil floating on the surface of memory. I try to link them up, but they don’t want to be linked. I don’t know much about my aunts. All I can tell you about is the husband of one of them, the one with the bald patch that looked like it was polished with olive oil. I’ve already told you about him, so there’s no point in repeating it. I hate things that repeat, but things do repeat, infinitely.
Would you like to hear the story of my father and the Jew?
I’ll tell it to you, but don’t ask about the details. You can ask my grandmother tomorrow — I mean, a long time from now when you meet over in the other world. You should ask her because she knows it better than I do, she’ll tell you the story of the rabbi with all the details. All I know are the broad outlines, which I’ll try to tell you.
* One dollar is equivalent to approximately 1500 Lebanese lira.
* Head scarf, usually black and white.
* On the night of April 9, 1948, Begin’s Irgun Zvei Leumi and the Stern Gang surrounded Deir Yasin. The residents were given 15 minutes to evacuate before the village was attacked. Approximately 250 people were killed.
* Aziz literally means beloved, or dear.
I APOLOGIZE.
Again, I return to you with apologies. I’ll give you your bath now and feed you, and then I’ll tell you the story of the rabbi. Tell me you’re comfortable — your temperature’s gone down, and everything’s back to normal; all that’s left is this small sore on the sole of your left foot.
Tell me, what do you think of the waterbed?
If Salim As’ad, God send him good fortune, did nothing else in his life but come up with this mattress for us, his heavenly reward will still be great.
I was apologizing because I had to attend to other matters. I just witnessed a sad scene, but instead of crying I burst into laughter. Something like tears were flowing inside me while I was laughing, and I could only settle the matter the way Abd al-Wahid al-Khatib wanted it settled.
Do you know him?
I doubt it. I didn’t meet him until his son put him in the hospital a month ago. He arrived in a bad state; he was suffering terribly. I examined him along with Dr. Amjad and suggested having him transferred to al-Hamshari Hospital in Ain al-Hilweh so he could have X-rays taken. We don’t have any equipment here — even the lab has closed. We’re more of a hotel. The patients come, they sleep, and we provide them with the minimum of care. Nevertheless, we continue to call this building suspended in a vacuum a hospital.