My son was lucky and I was too, because many of the young men who were kidnapped disappeared or were killed; their families didn’t know that they had been killed, and when they were sure they didn’t know where they were buried. The Phalange were no longer the only ones who detained Palestinians, nor were the Christian militias. Amal had suddenly appeared on the scene — my God, how? Why? A friend in the camp, a very old man, said to me, “Sitt Ruqayya, have you forgotten Tall al-Zaatar? Alliances change between the leaders and our young men pay the price. The camp pays the price. Now Syria and Abu Ammar are enemies and Amal is allied with Syria, so it aims its canons at Shatila, and we call the men of Amal enemies. In the very recent past we faced the Israelis together, in Khalda, in the Shouf and in the south. God help us!”
How can I free Abed? I don’t know.
We followed many trails. Sadiq asked for the help of a businessman among his associates in the Gulf who had a business relationship with an influential figure in Amal. Umm Ali spared no relative, near or distant, nor anyone among her acquaintances or the acquaintances of her acquaintances, visiting them all and asking for help. “We want to know the boy’s fate,” she said. “I raised him with my own hands, can you take my son and beat him? If he’s with you, free him, I’ll vouch for him.” In the evening Umm Ali put before me the day’s yield: whom she had visited, whom she had spoken with, who had taken her and put her in touch with whom. I looked at her in amazement at her ability, at this age, to go to five places in one day. I followed her heavy steps as she carried the coffee or the thyme snacks she had baked, and I realized that the legs and feet struggled to carry her heavy body.
In my daily search I met a person who assured me that he knew the way to Abed. He said that the kidnappers had asked for a sum of money, which he named. I sold all my jewelry and gave it to him.
Did Umm Ali’s visits bear fruit, or the money I paid, or did the men who had detained Abed just decide to free him, without any reason, just as they had decided to take him without any reason? Were they young men from Amal or were they from the Phalange or from an independent group, brigands profiting from the chaos all around to make some quick money by getting information and selling it to this side or the other? To this day I don’t know.
After he was freed, Abed told me his story: “I was leaving Shatila, and here came three guys calling me. They were young men in civilian clothes. I thought they wanted to ask me the time, or that they were not from the area and wanted me to guide them to a street or a place. When I got near, one of them asked me if I were Lebanese or Palestinian. I had a bad feeling, but I answered, ‘Palestinian, why do you ask?’ And here was one of them pointing his weapon at my head. I don’t know where he had been hiding the weapon. He raised it at me and the other two grabbed me and dragged me roughly into a building. We went into an apartment on the first floor, and they began to interrogate me, asking about the organization I belonged to, about the head of the organization, about the camp, the names of the leaders in it and the quantity of the weapons and the tunnels that connected the buildings. I said I didn’t know, and they began to beat me. I repeated that I didn’t belong to any organization and that I’m a law student in the Lebanese University, and that I don’t live in the camp, and I don’t have any information or the answers to their questions. The beating got worse. Then they blindfolded me and took me to another place and took off my clothes, and beat me again, until the blood flowed from my face and chest and back. They said, ‘We’ll kill you if you don’t talk.’ They shoved a revolver at my head. I said, ‘I don’t have anything to say.’ They tied my hands and feet with a rope and threw me in with three other guys. Every day they came to us and said, ‘We’re going to kill you,’ and then they left. After three days they took me in the trunk of a car, tied up and blindfolded. We came to a place at Bir Hasan. They took off the blindfold and untied me, and put me in a cell by myself.”
“After ten days, they opened the door of the cell and blindfolded me again. Then they sat me in a car. After less than ten minutes the car stopped and they pushed me out. I lifted the blindfold and found myself in the vacant land between Ard Jalloul and Gaza Hospital. I walked to the hospital, and they cleaned my wounds and bandaged them and gave me medicine. Then I came home.”
Yes, Abed was lucky, and I was even luckier. I said, “You should leave.” He said, “I’m going to stay.”
Sadiq called his brother, every day sometimes, insisting, “Please, Brother, give up, get out of Lebanon now!” but he dug in his heels. Then they took him again; it lasted only three days. After that he decided to leave and he procured a travel document, but to his surprise it was stamped, “No return permitted.” He became like a hyena in a cage, turning around himself in the house and pouncing on anyone who came near him. Then he left.
Sadiq insists that we move in with him and his family in Abu Dhabi. I say, “We have to stay here to carry on with your father’s case and find out what happened to him.” I’m lying to him; I had accepted that Amin had gone with the thousands who were killed during the three most terrifying days out of the three months of war that paved the way for the fourth month, the month of the massacre. He insists again: “Why stay alone, you and Maryam, in Beirut? The city’s not safe, it’s a war of the militias — a car bomb here and a mine there and fights in a third place and kidnapping in a fourth and fifth. Have mercy on me, Mother, I can barely sleep for worry over you two!”
34
To the Gulf
Suddenly, I accepted. As if I had not spent four years in evasions, alleging real or fabricated reasons for staying.
The airline tickets and passports are in my purse, and the suitcases are in the back of the taxi taking Maryam and me to the airport. I know the airport, the arrival and departure halls, and the walls, but I don’t know what’s behind them; I have never taken a plane before in my life. I have never extended my hand holding a passport to the officer, as the actors do in films, so that he will stamp it and they can get on the plane. Was I waiting for the Israelis to withdraw from Sidon, so the way would be open for me to visit the graves of my mother and my uncle, Abu Amin? I went to Sidon and said goodbye to them; then I returned to Beirut and visited my aunt’s grave.
And Amin? He is the one who came to say goodbye to me, on the eve of our departure, in a dream. Perhaps it was not a dream, as I was not sleeping. He kissed my head and asked me to take care of Maryam. I cried, and kissed his hands.
Maryam is excited by the thought of traveling, the airplane, meeting her brother and his family, and the new school. She chatters ceaselessly. The seatbelt is fastened securely; the plane circles above the clouds. I follow the progress of the trip as if I were in another place, following from afar, hearing Maryam’s chatter and not listening to what she’s saying. The plane lands. When I emerge from its door I’m surprised to find that there is no air, where did the air go? It seems that Beirut on its most humid days is more merciful. But there’s no time to gasp for breath, we must stand in line, present our travel documents, pick up our suitcases. Then comes the meeting, a tumultuous meeting with Sadiq, Randa, and the little ones. Noha is now seven; her knees have raised her up and she looks as if she’s Maryam’s age. Huda, who was stumbling with her words and her steps the last time we saw her, has become a schoolgirl with a backpack who goes to nursery school every morning. Little Amin, whom I have not seen before, has begun to walk and to say a few words.