“Damn these Americans,” she said, “and all their humbug about Jesus and the miracles — it just gives the Jews one more excuse to invade and occupy our villages!”
“No, mother, no. It just means that… that Cana is the best place in the world to make wine! Can’t you just imagine him standing there, in fear and trembling, with his mother saying, ‘Don’t be afraid, son.’ And despite his fear, Jesus goes towards the jars full of water, and the water turns into wine. He picks one up, tilts it slowly, and the wine begins to flow. All the wedding guests can drink now: they come up to Jesus one after the other and every time he picks up a jar and tips the liquid into their cups, the water turns to wine. Now, the bridegroom is drunk, and he struts up and down the alleys of the village, inviting everyone to join the wedding celebration, while Jesus stands by the jars, sleeves rolled up, a mass of curly hair framing his forehead, picking up one vessel after another, to fill every glass or even the naked hands of those surging toward him.”
That’s how Cana was. Now it’s razed to the ground.
And in my mind’s eye, I can see Jesus walking the streets of Cana, turning to each and every person he meets. I see him striding in his long, grey robe, gazing into the distance, a jar of wine on his shoulder. Dust is swirling in the air, around his head, around his long robe, and around the jars he holds aloft. And I see him as he bends down and drinks, and the water turns to wine.
Jesus is all alone. He could be in the hospital. . In this hospital, all by himself. Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve seen my mother! A year, maybe, or more. . She might be dead for all I know. Why don’t I go and visit her? She doesn’t know. . no, of course not, and I don’t want her to. How would I get there? Anyhow, she might be dead… no, she can’t be! She promised she wouldn’t die before she saw me married. . but I don’t want to get married. My brothers are — all three of them. They’re all civil servants, “public servants,” as we say. My mother is still waiting for me to tie the knot. But I’ve dropped out of university, I just quit. I told her I was still attending classes, but I’m not. I’m a combatant, that’s what I do. I want to reach for the sky and hold it between my fingers, like I’ve read about in books. . I want to ravish the sky. .
Then, I heard the nurse’s gentle voice. I couldn’t see a thing. I asked her why they didn’t take the bandage off my left eye since it wasn’t injured. “Doctor’s orders,” she said. “The doctor said that’s what we should do.”
“So I am blind,” I cried out. “Blind, that’s what I am!”
Then I heard the Yemeni who was in the bed next to mine.
“You know what they did to me? They removed my eye completely! I told them not to. They’d admitted me to the hospital with a bleeding eye and they took me straight into the operating theater. I was fully conscious and I told the doctor before he gave me the anesthetic, please don’t remove my eye, just leave it; I don’t want to become one-eyed! But he still took it out. . he put me to sleep and removed it,” the Yemeni said, gnashing his teeth and cursing.
Then the nurse came in and led me away by the wrist. The doctor fussed about, and then they took the bandage off my eye. And I could see! No, not see exactly. . everything was blue; their faces were elongated and bluish, and all the hands flitting around me looked blue. Then the blue gradually receded and the nurse had to steady me as I began to keel over. As the blueness continued to recede, she led me to the mirror and there I saw the crater that had been my right eye… But I could see! I was overjoyed and I ran to embrace both the nurse and the doctor! Then the doctor started to work in earnest: first he bathed the crater with antiseptics and then he sealed it off with white gauze.
“We will fit you with a glass eye.”
“There’s no need for that,” I replied.
I went back to bed, thinking I would wear a black patch over my eye, like Moshe Dayan did. Then I could go back to being a fighter. I had thought I was finished, but no: if Moshe Dayan could defeat the Arabs with one eye, then I too could be a fighter. That’s what I told the doctor.
He said they were sending me to Spain for an operation to get fitted with an artificial eye. “They’ll also do some tests on your left eye, which is slightly at risk. It has been affected by the shock, and the doctors in Spain will have a look at it.”
Once I got to Madrid I called Kamal from the hospital. Then he called me every day; Lily called me too, she had a beautiful voice; they’d comfort me and tell me I had to join them in America. But what would I do in America? As far as I was concerned, America was our enemy. I wouldn’t go, no way.
There were four of us, in one room, in a hotel called “La Pallas.” We’d set off for the hospital with our minder every morning and usually returned at midday. The Yemeni cursed constantly and told us about qat and how foreign women liked it because sex was always better after chewing some.
“And qat tastes so good, too!” he’d say. “Mmmm… qat and tea, then beer, and you’re up for it the rest of the night!”
He would feel around the gauze-covered depression that used to be his eye and curse the doctor. There was also Nabeel Amer, a short little guy who went on and on about Germany, with its steel mills and turneries. And there was Sameeh al-Ashiab, who hid his eyes behind dark glasses and never once addressed us. He spoke only to our minder. And there was me.
One day, Nabeel Amer came back to the hotel, jumping for joy. He hollered all the way down the hotel corridors that he was loaded with pesetas! I don’t know where he got hold of the money, but that night we all went out to a restaurant to celebrate.
At the restaurant, the Yemeni said he’d have a beer because wine made you drunk. Nabeel made such fun of him. “You don’t know what being drunk is,” he told him. “This wine won’t make you drunk, this Spanish wine, pfff. .! Do you know what ’annaybeh is? I’ll tell you! In al-Khalil, the town of Hebron, where I come from, wine is prohibited — it is haram. So we drink ’annaybeh instead: you take grapes and sprinkle them with water and sugar and then put them out on large trays in the sun. After a few days in the sun, when the mixture has turned into ’annaybeh, you go out there and scoop up the grapes swimming in their juice with great big spoons and, oh boy, do you feel giddy! Now that’s getting drunk. Our religion prohibits drinking, but it doesn’t prohibit ’annaybeh. And believe you me, just one spoonful of ’annaybeh is enough to knock out even the most hardened drinker!”
Nabeel drank steadily as we sat in the restaurant, in the din of Spanish voices and the clatter of cutlery on china. All of a sudden, he bellowed, “My eyes! If only it weren’t for my eyes!”
“We’re all in the same boat!” the Yemeni told him.
“Yes, but if it weren’t for my eyes, I could go back to Germany! Now, I can’t go back to the factory in Berlin. A turner has to have perfect eyesight, and I have none at all. When the doctor said I was completely recovered, I told him I couldn’t even see as well as when I was blind drunk on ’annaybeh! Things looked blurred, all the colors seemed wrong, everything was enveloped in a veil of fog. The doctor said I should go to Spain and gave me a referral. And so here I am in Spain. But you tell me, what can Spain achieve when Tall al-Zaatar 6 achieved nothing? Nothing is as precious as our eyesight!. . Oh, brother, how come you can all see?”
Later, when we left the restaurant, the Yemeni went back to the hotel, and Nabeel and I walked together through the Madrid evening. We came across a couple of girls, Nabeel suggested we try and pick them up. “European girls are different from ours, they’re always game.” But as we approached, three guys emerged from the darkness. They were loud and brash and made menacing gestures, spoiling for a fight. Nabeel braced himself but I pulled him away.