Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

Where is Jamila now?

I ought to contact her to tell her of Abd al-Mu’ti’s death, but what if she doesn’t remember him? What if she talks to me as though the pot of cracked wheat never existed?

I won’t get in touch with her, but how I wish she’d bring another pot of cracked wheat. The man is dead, and death calls for food; nothing stimulates hunger like death.

Abd al-Mu’ti is dead and, with him, died the story of al-Ba’neh and its square and his stubborn refusal to stay inside his house in the camp.

“I’ll fight and I’ll die, but I’ll never let that happen again.”

Abd al-Mu’ti said, “After Sha’ab, we fled to the forests of al-Ba’neh and lived there. We turned our blankets into tents. We’d throw the blanket over the branch of a tree, tie it to the ground, and that would be half a tent. We lived in those half-tents for more than a month. Then al-Ba’neh and Deir al-Asad fell. We knew they’d fallen when the Jews surrounded us and brought us to the square at al-Ba’neh. Al-Ba’neh doesn’t really have a square; I don’t know another village in the world like it — the square of al-Ba’neh is shared with Deir al-Asad, as though they were one village. They gathered us up in the square and left us crucified under the sun. That was the first time I’d heard the term sunbath . A man next to me said, ‘They’re going to give us a sunbath before they kill us.’ I found out the full horror of what it meant later in the Ansar detention camp. In that vast camp, which the Israelis built after the occupation of ’82, sunbathing was a basic means of torture. They tie your arms and legs and throw you down in the sun, so you twist and turn and roll, trying to get a moment’s relief from the burning. That would be from sunrise to sunset. Then the officer comes and gives the order for your arms and legs to be untied and asks you to stand up, and you discover you can’t do anything. The sun has set under your skin, and fire has made its home inside you. Sunset is tribulation and death. When the sun disappears on the horizon, the burning inside begins, as though the sun had gone to its rest in your bones instead of in the sea.

“We were in the square of al-Ba’neh and there was the sun, and the man said, ‘They’ll give us a sunbath before they kill us.’ I didn’t understand what he meant until they killed us.

“We were a vast mass of humanity writhing under the sun and waiting for death. Later we discovered that we were to spend the rest of our lives in such a sunbath. What do you call the refugee camp? Now you see houses, but early on the camp consisted of a group of tents. Then later, after we’d built huts, they allowed us to put roofs over them. It was said that if we put actual roofs on our houses, we’d forget Palestine, so we put up zinc sheets. Do you know what zinc sheets do to you under the Beirut sun? Do you know what it means to be under zinc at night, after it’s absorbed the sun all day?

“In the square of al-Ba’neh — Deir al-Asad they left us to bathe in the sun all day long after they’d separated out the women. They ordered the women to go to Lebanon and left us out to burn.

“Two men I didn’t know asked permission to fetch water, and the officer told them to follow him. They walked toward the spring. We heard the sound of two bullets. The officer returned, and the men didn’t. After that no one dared to say he was thirsty.

“After more than an hour an old man stood up and asked for water. The officer looked at him with contempt, pulled out his revolver, brought the barrel close to the man’s forehead, placed it between his eyes but didn’t fire. The old man started to tremble. I was sure he was going to kill him, but he didn’t. The officer put his revolver in his belt, and the man went on trembling for a long, long time.

“Then they searched us and stole everything — money, watches, and rings. Then the soldiers pulled back, and we saw the officer’s hand rise and fall. The soldiers were dragging away the men tapped by the officer’s hand. The hand fell on more than two hundred men, who were loaded onto trucks that took them in the direction of al-Ramah. To this day we don’t know what happened to them. Soon after, they ordered us to go to Lebanon. The shooting started. We found ourselves in the fields with our wives and our children, and we walked for endless hours. We walked until we got to the village of Sajour, where we slept in the fields; we continued our journey in the morning to Beit Jann. There the Druze gave us food. We walked for more than two days before we got to Lebanon.

“My son, Hamed, was ten and had been hit in his right knee. I wrapped his knee and carried him on my shoulders, but eventually I became exhausted and put him down — he had to walk. By the time we reached Lebanon, he was crippled.

“Sahirah, the daughter of Ibrahim al-Hajj Hassan, gave birth to a girl in the fields of Sajour. God knows what had happened to her; she pulled out a little girl from under her skirt and began dancing — saying that she would name her Sahirah.

“Ibrahim al-Hajj Hassan tried to calm his daughter, but the woman didn’t care. She danced like she was at a wedding party and said she could hear drums beating in her ears. She said she wouldn’t stop dancing until her husband came back. Alas! How was he going to come back after they’d taken him to al-Ramah?

“Sahirah kept dancing until we reached Lebanon, where they said she’d gone crazy, though only God knows the truth.

“Do you understand, my son, why I don’t want to stay home? I’m an old man who fights because I prefer death to a sunbath. They gave me a sun-bath in al-Ba’neh in ’48, and they gave me another in Ansar in ’82, and now I’ve had enough — I’d rather die than face another.”

You are dying, Abd al-Mu’ti.

Your rigid body slackens. Your features return to you; your face clears, the wrinkles are wiped from your broad brow, and the cloud over your eyes parts.

I STAND.

What am I to say to this man I call my father but is not my father?

I open his eyes, put “tears” in them, but he doesn’t weep.

Abd al-Mu’ti dies, and you don’t weep. You’re dying, and you don’t weep.

I bring you news and tell you stories and you don’t hear. Tell me, Abd al-Mu’ti, what to do. Take me with you on your journey, for I yearn to see all of you. I live among you and I yearn for you, and you are somewhere else.

Weep a little, Father. Just one sob and everything will be over. One sob and you’ll live. But you don’t want to, or you no longer want to, or you’ve lost your will. And I’m with you and not with you. I’m busy, I have to check on the other patients; that’s what Dr. Amjad has decided. Don’t be scared, I won’t leave you for long. I’ll just slip over, check on them and come back to your side.

And afterward what?

Indeed, will there be an afterward?

For three months I’ve been telling you stories, some of which I know and some of which I don’t. And you’re incapable of correcting my errors, so I make mistakes once in a while. Freedom, Father, is being able to make mistakes. Now I feel free because with you I can make as many mistakes as I like and retract my mistakes whenever I like, and tell story after story.

My throat’s dry from so much talking. I’m dried up, I’ve become desiccated.

I feel water coming out with my words and spotting the ground around me. I feel I’m drowning in my own water. Do you want me to drown? Reach out your hand, I beg you, reach out your hand and rescue me from the pool of storytelling in whose waters I’m drowning. I’m a prisoner who possesses nothing but the stories he makes up about his freedom. I’m a prisoner of the hospital and a prisoner of the story. I’m drowning. Water surrounds me. I swallow water and swallow words and tell the story.