Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

“Do you understand? Of course you understand, because you’re like me, Doctor. You were born in the camp, or in the grave, and the grave will pursue you to the end of time.”

Zainab said she was going to leave us.

“When are you going?”

She said she was waiting for her visa, but that she’d come to advise me to abandon the hospital and stop watching him.

“Who?” I asked her.

“Yunes, Abu Salem.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s dying, can’t you see? Leave him alone. Let him die. Have pity on him! You’re forcing him to stay alive.”

“But I’m not doing anything,” I said.

“You’re the one responsible for his condition. Have pity on him!”

“No, Zainab. Please!”

“Let him die. Stop this useless treatment. Can you change the will of God? Leave him in the merciful hands of God and get out of this hospital!”

Then she went back to Shams.

“Your fear of Shams is senseless: No one’s going to take revenge on you. What does it have to do with you? She killed her lover and she was killed. Warn the killer that he will be killed. These are the words of God written in His Book. Sameh killed her when he lied to her, she killed him because she wanted revenge, and they killed her to get justice. That’s all there is to it. And you aren’t so guilty that you should have to bury yourself with this man who’s no longer a man. Look at him, it’s like he’s gone back to being a baby. In the name of God the Merciful, let him die and release us all.”

Zainab repeated what Umm Hassan had said: “Where are his family to take him back to his country?”

It’s true, Yunes. Why didn’t you go back like Hamad?

Don’t you know the story of Hamad?

I was told the story by his brother, Mansour, who sells fish in the camp. You love fish. “Ah, how I miss the fish of Acre!” you used to say. What is this blind fanaticism? Mansour told you these were fish from Acre that had been smuggled over and had become refugees like us, but you’d refuse to buy any.

“The fish from Acre’s much better. We used to fry it and eat it with thyme fatayir and taratur sauce. It’s Christ’s fish. That’s where he used to fish, peace be with him.”

You said that Christ, peace be with him, never forbade alcohol because he worked with fishermen and sailors: “How can you convince a sailor not to drink? The sea and fishing are impossible without arak and wine. Fish too — you can’t eat them without arak, taratur , and thyme. The fish of Tiberias are inexhaustible. Fish, Christ, and fishermen — that’s Galilee. They don’t know Galilee. They’re trying to create a fishing industry — can you industrialize the water Christ walked on?

“That’s where we’ll go back to. Imagine, a whole people walking on water!”

You said that, took a swig, and ask me to pour you more.

“Take it easy, Abu Salem.”

“Like hell. Pour the arak and follow me back to Lake Tiberias!”

It was Mansour the fish seller who told me his brother’s story. I’d gone to see him on the morning of the feast of Ramadan because I wanted to mark the occasion by eating fish. I found his stall empty. He said he hadn’t gone to Tyre to make purchases because of the feast, and he’d gone to the cemetery at dawn to visit his son and had come straight to the shop because he didn’t dare go home and sit there with the pictures of his son.

“Over here we die, and over there they have children,” he said.

Mansour said he was a fool and that his brother, Hamad, had got away with his life and his children’s, too.

You know Hamad, he was your companion in the Sha’ab militia, which was the last to leave Galilee; you were imprisoned together. Then he lived in the Burj al-Barajneh camp. You knew him well — from Tarshiha, the one who always swore by the kibbeh nayyeh his wife, Salmeh, made: “ Kibbeh nayyeh with hoseh on top. Meat on meat, my brother. Kibbeh underneath and fried meat with onions and pine nuts on top, heaven!”

He said that Salmeh, Umm Jamil, stayed in Tarshiha. He said that kibbeh had no taste after he was separated from Salmeh.

Why didn’t you do what he did?

Were you afraid of the Jews?

Of Nahilah?

Of yourself?

Truly, Yunes my son, the only thing people fear is themselves. You told me the only thing you were afraid of when you crossed the border was your own shadow, which would stretch out on the ground and follow you.

Do you want to listen to Mansour?

Come on, Mansour. Come tell your story to Uncle Yunes.

He isn’t here, of course, but I’ll tell you the story as I heard it from Mansour Ahmad Qabalawi, the fish seller, who opened his shop here in Shatila after they closed down the one in Burj al-Barajneh at the entrance to the low-lying neighborhood where people from Tarshiha lived because of differences among the various political groups at the time of the revolution.

Mansour said, “After the fall of Tarshiha, we fled into Lebanon and forgot all about Salmeh and her daughter. It was my fault: The thought of Salmeh never crossed my mind as we were fleeing. It was all shelling and planes and hell let loose, and I wasn’t a fighter even though I was in the militia. Between you and me, I was just there to make up the numbers, and when the flight started and the Jews came, I fled with my wife and kids and not once thought of Salmeh and her daughter, Sawsan. Then my brother turned up. He’d spent a year in prison in Syria. He found my tent. Before he could ask, I confessed to him. I didn’t tell him she’d died, God forbid. I told him we’d forgotten her and didn’t know anything about her whereabouts and that she’d probably stayed in Tarshiha. He called me names, broke the tent pole, and left. Later I learned he’d gone there: He went to Tarshiha and stayed with his wife for a few days. When he returned, we became like brothers again. I don’t have anyone but him, and he doesn’t have anyone but me. Every time he took off, it would be an adventure. They’d arrest him and expel him. He didn’t stay in Tarshiha in secret: He’d knock on his wife’s door and would enter in full view of everyone. Each time, they’d arrest him and drag him to the border.

“The last time they arrested him, the Israeli officer who notified him of the expulsion order told him he was absent when the census was made after the establishment of the State, so he was considered an absentee.

“‘Well, here I am, Sir. I was absent and now I’m present.’

“‘No,’ said the officer. ‘The absentee is not entitled to be present.’

“‘But my wife and children are here.’

“‘Take them with you if you like.’

“‘But it’s my village.’

“They tied him up and threw him out at the Lebanese border. He returned to the camp. He stayed about a year, then disappeared again, and we discovered they’d thrown him across the border into Gaza, and we tied ourselves into knots getting a plane ticket from Cairo to Beirut. Five times he went in and stayed, and five times he was thrown out. The sixth time was the clincher.

“It was in 1957, the morning of the Feast of the Sacrifice. My wife was busy cooking, and the smell of kibbeh nayyeh filled the house. He looked at my children and his face ran the gamut of emotions. ‘Let’s go to Tyre,’ he said. I left my wife and my children that day and went with him because I knew him, and I knew nothing could stop him. We went to Tyre, from there to the al-Rashidiyyeh camp, and from there to the house of Ali Shahada from al-Ba’neh. Ali Shahada, who worked as a smuggler, asked for a thousand Lebanese lira to get him to Tarshiha. And a thousand lira in those days was no joke; it was five times the monthly income of a fish-shop owner like me. My brother agreed and said he’d pay over there. Ali, however, asked to see the money before he did anything, and my brother pulled a huge amount of money out of his back pocket, showed it to him, and gave him a hundred lira, saying, ‘Here’s a feast present for your kids.’