Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

“For my help?”

“Mr. Abu Akram suggested we begin our tour with the hospital. He said that talking to Dr. . ” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and read the name: “Dr. Amjad. You’re Dr. Amjad?”

“No, I’m Dr. Khalil.”

“And you’re in charge?”

“More or less.”

“And Dr. Amjad, will we meet him? Mr. Akram said he was a knowledgeable man.”

“Tomorrow, if you come by at the same time, he’ll be here.”

I said tomorrow even though I knew he wouldn’t come either today or tomorrow because he’d managed to get himself a job at Dr. Arbid’s hospital in Beirut, where he would be paid a real salary, not like here — but what was I to say? We don’t hang out our dirty laundry in front of foreigners!

The tall bald man said he wanted to ask a few questions, but the actress got up and said something to him in French with a commanding air.

The man apologized and asked me, if it were possible, to accompany them on their tour. “Catherine would rather we see things for ourselves before asking questions.”

“But I can’t leave the hospital.”

“Please,” he said.

He said please knowing that I’d agree. These foreigners think that just visiting us is such a big sacrifice that we’ll agree to anything they ask. I don’t adhere to that school of thought, but it occurred to me that it would be an opportunity to get out of this godforsaken hospital. I’d been a prisoner here for three months, and it was about time I got out to try my chances. It would be a kind of protection to be with three French tourists: No one would dare kill me in front of them. So, I bolstered my courage and agreed. I asked them to wait so I could take care of a few things. I rang the bell, Zainab came, I asked her to bring them some coffee, and I left them. I felt like a little boy going on an outing. I took a shower, put on clean clothes, and went back to them. The girl smiled at me; it seemed she’d noticed the change in my appearance and could smell the scent of soap my white hair gave off.

“Let’s go,” I said. “But what do you want to see?”

“Everything,” said the girl.

The bald man said he’d like to speak to families of the victims if possible. I understood him to mean the victims of the massacre of ’82, not the ones that came later.

“The cemetery,” said the second man, whose name I learned, when we lost him in the alleys of the camp, was Daniel. He was the set designer and spoke a little Arabic.

“The cemetery,” said Daniel.

I explained that the victims’ mass grave no longer existed because it fell outside the boundaries when the camp was made smaller during the War of the Camps. I also explained that the grave of the martyrs who were killed after the massacre was now inside the mosque. I asked them which one we should start with.

“You decide, and we’ll follow you,” said their leader.

We left the hospital. I’d made up my mind to walk in the middle of them; Daniel was in front while the short, curvaceous girl kept moving around, walking around us and raising the pen she was holding to her lips as though she wanted to say something. When we got to the main street, I said, “In this street, the bodies were piled up, in the surrounding alleys, too.” The girl came up close to me, raised her pen to her lips and repeated, “In this street.” Then she leaned against me, put her head on my shoulder, and held the pose. I tried to move away a little, for that sort of thing is frowned upon in the camp, but she didn’t move. I thought she must be weeping because I could feel her shaking against my shoulder. I turned toward her, and her head fell onto my chest. Then I took her by the shoulders, pushed her back, and said: “Let’s go.”

Daniel asked me about the “vertical” bodies: He said that Jean Genet had described the bodies as being “vertical.”

“Of course, of course,” I answered. “That happened here.” I didn’t tell them about the flies; I couldn’t bring myself to. I didn’t say anything, even though I’d been determined to tell them the story. While I was taking my shower, I’d told myself that the story of the flies would be the high point of the visit. I’d tell them how I left the hospital and how the flares fired by the Israeli army had lit up the night, turning it into a day of blood and fear.

I TOLD THE armed men who broke into the hospital that I was Turkish. I spoke English to them and told them I was a Turkish doctor and couldn’t permit them to violate the sanctity of the hospital. And they believed me! You know what they did to the Palestinian nurses, but me they believed, or forgot about. So I ran away from the hospital. I know I should have stayed, but I left crazed into that night illuminated with fire. Dear God, all I remember of that night are the shadows. I ran, and the houses would emerge from the darkness into the light and then fall back again into darkness. I ran to Umm Hassan’s house, trembling with fear. I’m telling you now, and I’m ashamed of myself. A man can become, in an instant, what he truly is and then forget. I’ve forgotten those tears that turned me into drops of water at Umm Hassan’s. Umm Hassan cried, too, but she never reminded me of my weeping and my fear, not even on the day when we finally succeeded in building a wall around the mass grave. You remember how the women congregated and wailed, and how Umm Hassan upbraided them, saying: “No tears! Let’s thank God we were able to bring them together in death as fate had brought them together in life!”

She said it was forbidden to weep, and everyone fell silent.

Then Umm Ahmad al-Sa’di let out a long youyou and cried, “We won, everybody. We won, and we have a grave.” Umm Ahmad al-Sa’di, who was trilling and leaping about, had lost her seven children, her husband, and her mother in the massacre; all she had left was her daughter, Dunya. She trilled and leapt, and the tears started. Everybody left the grave and gathered around the woman.

Umm Ahmad al-Sa’di held more sorrow than the grave. She said that her belly was a grave. She said she could smell death in her guts, could smell blood.

The people gathered around Umm Ahmad, whose daughter was standing there, leaning on her crutches. I saw Dunya again today. She was just a pair of eyes suspended in an oval, wan face, eyes that looked as though they’d fallen from some distant place and got stuck in that sand-colored face. A yellowish ochre shade of sand. Leaning on her crutches, she stood wide-eyed, looking around, hoping someone might speak to her. I went over and asked how things were. She said she was looking for work, and I suggested the hospital, but she said she’d spent two years in hospitals and couldn’t stand them. She said she wanted to go to Tunis and asked if I could do anything.

At that point I didn’t yet know her story. For me she wasn’t much more than a lump of bloody flesh thrown down in the emergency room. I tried to treat her, before proposing that she be moved to the American University Hospital because we didn’t have the means to treat her. She was a wreck. Fractures in the chest and pelvis. Blood and holes everywhere. They moved her to the American University Hospital, where she stayed for about two years, and it never occurred to me to visit her; like all the others, I was flabbergasted by her mother’s loss. Umm Ahmad was the story, and the strange thing is that the woman never mentioned her daughter, as though Dunya had died along with the others.

Dunya was standing next to the wall. I asked how things were, and she asked about the possibility of going to Tunis to work in one of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s offices.

When I left, she joined me.

She said, “I’ll walk with you to the hospital.”