“Today, this very day?” Had Hasan told Amin? I doubt it; if he had, Amin would have told me. He didn’t say anything to his father out of shyness; Hasan was reticent and very shy. Strange; you think you know your son better than any other creature, you don’t miss a single thing that concerns him. You put your trust in the thought that you are holding him under your wing and keeping him safe from all harm, even when he flies away and lands far from you. Strange!
Is Abed living in a fantasy? These suits that he’s immersed himself in preparing for years, will they reclaim any rights for someone who was killed? Will they bring him back to life, so that he moves in his grave and rises up, shaking the dust from his body, wiping his face and stretching out his hand to his little sister, smiling? Abed is living in a fantasy; but I don’t give him my opinion. He says there are many ways to reclaim rights, and this is one of them. Is he trying to convince me, or is he answering an internal voice that makes him doubt what he’s doing? He works tirelessly; he says, “Today I met the director of the school, I mean the one who was the director in ’82. He said, ‘I was the one who permitted the women and children to spend the night in the school, when they arrived that night from Tyre, on the first day of the invasion, thinking it would be a small incursion that wouldn’t get as far as Sidon. They walked from Tyre, on foot; there were 120, almost all of them women and children. There were a small number of old men and three young men. I brought the keys and opened the school for them, and told them to please go in. I sheltered them — would that I hadn’t! We carried some of them to the mass grave. Have you visited Martyrs’ Square, at the end of Riyad al-Solh Street? Yes, they’re there. No, not all of them; some stayed in the school. To be exact, half of them stayed in the school, buried under the basketball court. Come, I’ll show you. Yes, here, under the basket. We rebuilt the school, we repaired it and repainted it, and we paved the court. I didn’t tell the children; I lied and told them we took them all over there. They’re kids, how would they come to the school or care about it if they knew that kids like them, and mothers like their mothers, are buried under the court they’re playing on? Yes, I lied to them.’”
Abed says, “I met the official in charge of civil defense. He has files in which he recorded everything, immediately after the shelling. He asserts that the number who disappeared in the Jad Building across from the school was 125. He said that he gathered their bones. ‘I couldn’t specify the number exactly because the corpses were burned and dismembered; but seven residents of the building happened to be outside it when it was shelled, and they helped me ascertain the number. Yes, 125. I suggest you meet them, I mean the seven who were far from the building when the planes shelled it. They all lost their families. You must meet Ahmad Shams al-Din; he lost his wife and four children and his sister and her five children. I’m not sure if he can participate in the suit; maybe he can be a witness. I haven’t seen him for a while, maybe he’s regained some of his balance. He couldn’t believe he had lost them all; for weeks or maybe months he would look for them in the hospitals, asking and repeating their names and descriptions. He would go up to the Israeli soldiers barricaded here and there and ask them, while they were sitting on their tanks eating oranges or standing at the barriers brandishing their arms. He would go to their headquarters and ask them to look for his children. Then he got a permit from them and went to Nahariya, over there; they had taken some Lebanese there for treatment. He went around the Nahariya hospitals. Maybe he’s regained some of his balance now, God help him. You must meet him.
“‘There’s another man, who isn’t in a position to share in bringing suit or to be a witness. He completely lost his mind. But it would be useful to see him and record his name, and for his condition to be included. He was outside the building when it was shelled, and when he returned and saw what he saw, he began to walk the streets completely naked. He didn’t go either here or there, he didn’t approach the Israelis. Whenever some good person would help him and give him something to cover his body with, we would find him walking naked in the streets.’”
Abed meets with the residents daily, with the officials and the others, listening to them. He says, “We have plenty of witnesses, we have documents, we have reports that were published at the time in the Arab and foreign newspapers, and we have books documenting what happened. We’re going to sue.
58
Across Barbed Wire
I called Maryam and the boys. “The day after tomorrow,” I said, “I’m going with Karima’s sisters,” I said. Abed and Maryam said, “You’re lucky. I wish we had known about that possibility when we were in Sidon.” Sadiq said, “If you had told me two days ago, I would have made arrangements and gone with you.” Hasan asked, “Where exactly? At what location, at what time?”
At six in the morning on the appointed day, I was in Ain al-Helwa. I knocked on Karima’s family’s door, I drank coffee with them, and then we went to the collection point. Seven large buses will take us there. The women of the camp have dressed up as if it were the morning of Eid, and the boys and girls as well. Everyone has bathed and put on the best clothes he owns; the women are carrying things, as if they were going on a picnic. I thought, they will put down mats and their woolen wraps and sit with their children, having lunch and drinking coffee and tea. It’s a strange trip. I imagined young men standing near the wire, smoking and maybe thinking about tomorrow and what will happen. I imagined elders in their white head cloths, looking out at the land spread below them and contemplating what was, and what might be. I was anticipating the day in my imagination, but my imagination fell short.
The buses took us over the hills of the south. If only my uncle Abu Amin were with me, he knows the land in the south as if it were Palestine. He knows the roads and the names and the hill here and the one there, the river and the stream, the villages and the little towns, and for each one he has a story or a memory. God have mercy on you, Uncle Abu Amin. If my father had seen the future, would he have said, “You’ve left my back exposed,” and been so angry with him and shouted at him? He did not leave him exposed, he covered him: he left him two and took care of the other five.
I become aware of the sound of ahazij singing; young men were standing in the bus leading the singing, and everyone joined in, the elders, men, and women, and the girls, and the boys. The bus driver honked, not because of something on the road; the songs seem to have delighted him, so he joined the passengers in the celebration. He sounds the horn in a regular rhythm, speeding up and slowing down according to the mood. He passes the bus in front of us or lets another bus pass us, and everyone waves to everyone, everyone laughs together. An elderly woman suddenly sprang from her seat and cried, “God protect al-Sayyid Hasan, if it wasn’t for him and for the resistance we wouldn’t be able to set foot on any of this land. Twenty-three years of occupation, and they’re gone for good.” Voices rose praying for al-Sayyid: “God protect him, God keep him for us, he’s brought us good luck, God grant the same for Palestine.” One of the young men standing at the front of the bus cut in: “Our leader is Abu Ammar, pray for Abu Ammar, people.” A moment of tension, that seemed as if it would go on; then it was suddenly broken by the voice of an old woman wearing a long peasant dress. She stood up and let loose a long aweeeha, as if she were in a wedding, followed by trills of joy. Trills rose in the bus and harmony was restored with more songs, dal‘una, ataba, aliyadi, and zarif al-tul.