Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

“I’m sorry. I never knew.”

“‘Cripples don’t marry,’” she quoted and smiled.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“But I’m not a cripple, at least I wasn’t a cripple when I got married. This is from Tal al-Za’atar.”

“You’re from Tal al-Za’atar?”

“I was there. I left with the women, my husband disappeared in the Monte Verde. We walked toward the armed men with our hands in the air, and they fired on us. I was with my children. They were between my legs, and I was trying to cover them with my long skirt. Then a man came, and the firing stopped. We kept going until we reached the armed men, and the Red Cross convoy that had been sent to take us to West Beirut were there. That man came. I don’t know why he picked me out of the crowd. ‘Over there!’ he screamed, but I pretended I hadn’t heard and kept going. Then the hot red fluid covered my thigh and bathed the head of my daughter, Samiyyeh, who was still between my legs. I kept going until I made it to the truck. I don’t know why he only fired one shot, just one, or why he didn’t kill me. These are things I don’t understand now, but at the time everything was logical and possible. Our death seemed so logical that we weren’t capable of protesting against it. They took me to Makased Hospital, and you can imagine what that did to my children. We reached the museum crossing when they decided to transfer me to the hospital. They put me in an ambulance, and the children started crying. I’d lost half my blood or more but somehow I managed to jump out of the ambulance to stand with my children. Then the nurse understood and let them come with me. At Makased Hospital, they put me in a room with more than ten beds and the children stayed with me. The eldest, Samiyyeh, was twelve and couldn’t understand anything, and the youngest of them was three. Five boys and three girls, God protect them. I stayed in the hospital instead of going with the others to al-Damour. It’s out of the question! I thought, when I heard they’d decided to house the Tal al-Za’atar people in al-Damour, which had been cleared of its Christian inhabitants. I thought, that’s what the Jews did to us, and we’re going to do the same to the people of al-Damour? It’s not possible; it’s a crime. And I stayed in the hospital. There was a doctor there from the Lutfi family in Tyre — do you know him? Dr. Hasib Lutfi? God bless him, he told me I could work in the hospital and found me a small apartment nearby. We lived there, me and the children, until 1982. After the invasion and the massacres, we came to Shatila, and I started working in this hospital. I’m not a nurse, but I learned on the job at Makased Hospital. I came here, and as you know very well, there was no one, so I did everything. But I’m tired, Dr. Khalil. And what are we doing here anyway? You’re guarding a corpse and I’m guarding a storeroom of medicine. Also, Shadi, God bless him, is going to send me a visa and a ticket for Germany.”

“You’re going to Germany? What will you do there?”

“Nothing,” she answered. “There nothing, here nothing. But I’m tired. And Shadi’s wife — I didn’t tell you, Shadi married an Iraqi girl who lives in Germany, a Kurd and political refugee. She arranged asylum and residence for him — a refugee like us, so, like they say, ‘Refugees marry refugees,’ and she’s expecting, so I’ll go for the child.”

I said I’d feel alone without her.

She said she knew Shams and her husband, Fawwaz, and knew that she was mistreated: “Everyone in Tal al-Za’atar knows how he treated her. He was mad and heartless. It was like a demon possessed him. Could anyone be that crazy about his wife? He was as crazy about his wife as if she were the wife of another man. He told my late husband, Mounir, that he’d fire over her head and around her feet to drive the demons out of her. He was insane, and he drove her insane. He wouldn’t let her leave the house or receive anyone either. She didn’t dare open the door. We’d knock and she’d yell from inside that no one was there. And Fawwaz didn’t sleep at home. He’d sleep with the fighters and would go to her by day, and we’d hear the sound of the bullets and imagine her tears. God knows how she stood it. It was said she’d fled with the fighters. Why did she go back to him? I haven’t seen her since the Tal al-Za’atar days, and I haven’t heard anything; after all that happened there, people have stopped asking about everyone else. Instead of searching for those who have disappeared, we look for photos of them. I swear we are an insane people, Doctor. The only lesson we’ve learned from our families is that we shouldn’t leave home without our photos. Can you believe it! We were in that Red Cross truck, and I was on the point of death I was bleeding so much. People were piled on top of each other like sardines, and you’d see a woman pull a photo out of the front of her dress and compare it with those extracted from the front of some other woman’s dress. It’s almost as if we think that by carrying around the pictures of our dead with us, it will save them from death. The photo of Abu Shadi, God rest his soul, has completely faded. I framed it, but photos fade even behind glass. The man disappeared. We know nothing about what happened to him, and I wasn’t able to look for him at first — I was in the hospital hovering between life and death, and I had my children with me. Without God’s mercy and the generosity of Dr. Lutfi, my children would’ve been lost, as thousands were. A husband may die or disappear and we get upset, of course. But a child — God forbid!

“Once I got better, I went to al-Damour and met Riyad Ismat, who later was martyred in Tripoli in 1984. Riyad didn’t know. I went from office to office in al-Damour but no one could help me in any way. Everyone did, however, assure me he was dead.

“‘If he hasn’t come back, it means he’s dead. They didn’t take prisoners in the Monte Verde,’ said Riyad.

“Last year I went to the Monte Verde. The war was over, and it was possible to go back there. Samir took me in his car — Samir’s my second son, who works as a taxi driver, though God help him if a policeman stops him and finds out he’s Palestinian. All Samir dreams about these days is joining his brother in Germany.

“I wanted to see Tal al-Za’atar again. What desolation! It’s as though it never existed. I asked people but no one could direct me — nothingness as far as the eye could see. People have forgotten the war and forgotten the camp, and no one dares to say its name. I tried to go in — I wanted to look for my house — but they wouldn’t let me. There was a guard of sorts there who said it was prohibited. Anyway, even if I had got in, all I’d have found would have been asphalt: The ground had been completely covered up with asphalt, and everything was black as pitch.

“In the Monte Verde the car traveled the narrow bends. I knew we wouldn’t find anything, but I had to do it to honor Abu Shadi’s memory. All we found were Syrian soldiers and tanks. Samir asked me where to look for his father’s grave; I didn’t answer because I wasn’t sure that the search was worthwhile, I just wanted to put my conscience at rest. I asked Riyad about the graves — if they’d buried the young soldiers. He said he didn’t know, there was no way to know — the bullets had been streaming over their heads and all they’d wanted was to reach Hammana.

“I didn’t ask Samir to stop the car, and I didn’t feel anything. It was as though those who’d died had been wiped off the face of the earth. War in itself doesn’t need graves, because war is a grave. Abu Shadi doesn’t have a grave — his grave is war itself. War doesn’t call for tombs and headstones, for war is itself a tomb, a tomb in which we live. Even the camp isn’t a camp, it’s the tomb of Palestine.