Elias Khoury - Gate of the Sun

I WAS TELLING you about my mother, and what has Shams to do with that?

I told you I lost my mother, then found her in Samya’s letter, then lost her again. All I know is that my father married Najwah after the incident with the Jew, then took a new job in the factory belonging to the Palestinian Badi’ Boulis, and then died.

My father married Najwah by chance. If he hadn’t worked in the factory belonging to the Jew in Mina al-Hesn, and if the rabbi hadn’t been murdered, and if my father hadn’t been arrested, and if Najwah’s father hadn’t been on a visit to Ain al-Hilweh, my father wouldn’t have married at such an early age. You know, I feel as though he were my older brother. He was eighteen years older than me. Now do you understand why I hated him, and hated my white hair and my face with its bulging cheekbones and long jaw? I don’t want people to look at me as if I were him. The truth is that that sort of look stopped existing after the Shatila massacre — as if everyone had died, as if that massacre, with its more than fifteen hundred victims, had wiped out the memory of faces, as if death had wiped out our eyes and our faces, and we’ve become featureless.

It was chance, as I told you. Chance was his story.

Explain to me how that young man could work for a Jew after all that had happened? Please don’t talk to me about tolerance; say something else.

Listen! I’ll tell you this story, and it’s up to you to believe it or not. Do you remember Alia Hammoud, the director of the camp kindergarten? Alia asked me to give a lecture to the teachers at the kindergarten on preventive health. So I went. When we were having tea after the lecture, one of the teachers started talking about her problems with a child named Khaled Shana’a. She said he was obnoxious and she couldn’t put up with his being in her class any longer. He was full of turbulence and anxiety, and she asked Alia’s permission to expel him from the class. Alia told her to be silent. The teacher continued complaining, at which point Alia said to her in a controlled voice that she couldn’t expel him and suggested that the teacher try being gentle and caring with him. When the teacher indicated her dissatisfaction with the director’s suggestion, Alia’s voice rose.

“Do you know who Khaled is? He’s the grandson of a great man.”

She was speaking of the ’48 occupation of her village, which was located in the district of Safad, and of how a group of young men had been taken and then crushed by a bulldozer; Khaled Shana’a, the child’s grandfather, was the only one to survive. She also mentioned how, after the villagers crossed the Lebanese border and took up residence in the village of Yaroun, Khaled was the only one to return to Teitaba. He stole into the village on his own, went to his house, opened the door, and everything exploded. The man opened his door and found himself thrown to the ground, blood gushing from him. He pulled himself together, returned to Yaroun, and spent the rest of his life blind.

“He’s a hero,” said Alia. “His grandfather is a hero, and I won’t expel his grandson.”

The teacher couldn’t understand where the heroism lay in the story, since she was one of the ones who’d escaped from the Tal al-Za’atar camp, where, during the siege of the camp, which had ended with the massacre of its inhabitants, she’d seen for herself how heroes die and their acts of heroism disappear.

“I don’t want to hear such stories,” said the teacher, leaving.

But Alia went on. She said her mother still remembered Salim Nisan, the Jewish cloth seller who came to Teitaba before it fell and said, “Muslims, don’t go anywhere! We’re all in the same boat!” The cloth seller had originally been from Aleppo. He carried his goods over his shoulder and went through the Arab villages selling without getting paid. He carried a big ledger in which he recorded debts, and people paid what they could — a jerry can of oil, a dozen eggs, and everyone loved him. He’d go into people’s houses, eat their food, and flirt with the women; his sixty years made him seem like an innocuous old man. He’d laugh and tell jokes, and the women would surround him laughing and choose their cloth.

Alia was astonished when her mother told her that a number of the women of Teitaba crossed the border to pay him what they owed.

I didn’t ask Alia how the women of Teitaba knew where to find Salim Nisan once the border between Lebanon and Palestine had become a reality.

I listened to the story as one would to a love story, and I didn’t ask Alia for the details of the meeting between the women of Teitaba and Salim Nisan.

“We helped Salim Nisan out and that teacher won’t help Khaled Shana’a out. Is that any way to do things?”

COME, LET’S get back to our story and ask what that young man, my father, who was one of the first members of the fedayeen groups to initiate the struggle against Israel, wanted by working in Mina al-Hesn. Was he drawn to his enemies? Were they his enemies?

Today the Durziyyeh family lives in Israel. I found that out from my aunt’s husband, who told me, as he was telling me about al-Ghabsiyyeh, that he’d gone to see them in Haifa and had visited Simon at his falafel and humus restaurant. Simon had been gracious to him and had asked him about the circumstances of my father’s death.

What did my aunt’s husband have to do with Simon Durziyyeh? Did he also work in the sheet-metal factory with my father, or did he visit him there to see how he was doing, or what? I don’t understand a thing anymore! My aunt’s husband said Simon took him on a tour through the whole of Palestine and that he visited Tel Aviv and Nahariyyeh and Safad and was amazed at everything he saw, to the point of almost believing he was in a European country.

Is it true, Father, that they’ve created a European country?

I’ve tired you out, and I’m tired too.

I’ve told you story after story, but my mother’s secret remains a secret. The only thing I got out of Samya’s mysterious letter was that she’d gotten remarried and had gone to live with her husband in Ramallah, where she discovered that he was already married. And that she became a nurse.

That’s all.

Catherine came half an hour ago. Do you remember her? The French actress I told you about? She said she’d got in a taxi and asked the driver to take her to Galilee Hospital. When he told her there was no such hospital, she explained that she wanted to go to Shatila. The driver was reluctant, but she paid him ten dollars so he brought her to the door of the hospital, muttering under his breath.

I ordered a cup of Turkish coffee for her, and she drank it down in one gulp, wrinkling her face because the coffee burned her tongue. She sat in silence and then asked me why people hated the Palestinians. I didn’t know what to say. Should I have told her about the fragmentation caused by the Civil War? Or say what Nahilah said to the Israeli officer: “We’re the Jews’ Jews. Now we’ll see what the Jews do to their Jews.” I don’t agree with these phrases we use so easily every day. I can understand Nahilah because she was over there, where a Palestinian finds himself face to face with a racism like that toward the Jews in Europe. But not here. We’re in an Arab country and speak the same language.

Catherine said she’d decided not to act in the play, that she’d feel ridiculous if she did. She asked my opinion.

She said she was afraid, and that they had no right. Then she burst into tears.

I wanted to invite her to dinner and talk with her, but she said she couldn’t play this role because that much horror couldn’t be put into a play.

Why did Catherine come to my office and then leave?

These questions are unimportant, Father, but our whole life is composed of unimportant questions that pile up on top of one another and stifle us.