Selma Dabbagh - Out of It

Myres’ tongue touched base on his lip. ‘Take the Kurds,’ he said to his raised teaspoon.

‘The Kurds?’ asked Rashid, who had by now also lost where Myres had been going.

‘As an example. I do ask myself, why did I choose one group of destitute and abandoned people rather than another?’ Rashid did not feel like being thought of as either destitute or abandoned but did not say so. ‘It would have been quite different had I chosen the Kurds.’

‘Why did you choose us, then?’

‘Well, that’s just it, you see. I have gone through this with myself again and again and I feel that, well, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, I just did not have a choice . It’s a funny thing this idea of decisions being made for you, of how one becomes involved in an intractable dilemma you can’t find a way out of. It doesn’t happen often. I know people say they met this or that woman and they knew she was their destiny. Not that that happened to me, mind. Fine woman that I married, but it was not that feeling. No, no. Not at all, but with Palestine it was like that.’

Rashid wondered whether Lisa was his destiny. When he had first seen her come into the Centre in Gaza he had felt so desperate for her he could hardly stand up. Then there had been her response to him. All that bright-eyed enthusiasm that flooded back at him despite the errors in his speech, the gaps in his knowledge (both of which could sometimes feel overwhelming around her). It was as though she saw a place and a purpose in him that no one else did. But it was not quite the same thing as Destiny. (‘Don’t say ass ,’ she had said to him the night before – right in the middle of everything, ‘It’s so American .’)

Myres passed him a cup; it was not particularly hot and the milk had formed small oil bubbles on the top of the brown liquid.

‘My brother told me that you were in Palestine during the war,’ Rashid started.

‘Oh yes, I was there. As a terribly young man, posted there as a junior police officer. Not much choice about things like that then. Came from a big family. Too many boys. The first went to university; the second to the clergy; the third to teach; the fourth to the services, and then it was me and I was packed off to the colonies. Just missed the war, you see. Too young. Lost two of my brothers, though. I was still in my teens when I got to Palestine. Seventeen. Apish, foolish kind of a boy. I spent most of my time moping around wishing I had a girlfriend.’

Again, Rashid thought of Lisa. He could never call her his girlfriend in front of her, or to anyone who might know her, in case it got back to her. But what was she other than his girlfriend? They slept together, didn’t they? But when he had said that he loved her, she had looked two things neither of which were good: one had been indulgent and the other had been put off . She had looked put off. It was the only way that he could explain it.

‘But, you know, it got to the point where even I, clueless as I was, could not help noticing that things were getting really rather nasty. It just was not fair play.’ Myres appeared to be addressing an invisible commission of enquiry. ‘The sugar’s over here if that’s what you are looking for.’

‘What kind of things?’ Rashid asked. He tried to find in Myres’ face the features of the past, tried to make out whether Myres’ nose would have been distinguished or goofy, but it can be as hard with some old people, as it is with some babies, to tell what or where a face has come from, and where it will be going. Clearly, the man had always been stupendously tall, even now with his stooped stature he was a head taller than Rashid.

‘In my capacity as a member of the Mandate Police, we were required to go round the Arab villages on weapons searches. This was 1947 and tensions were high. Our orders were to go into the villages and search these fellahin peasants in their houses, often at dawn, waking the women, slashing through the mattresses, pouring the olive oil on to the floor, sifting through flour. For what? Occasionally we would find a bullet. Once in a blue moon we might turn out a pistol of some sort, even then it was often Ottoman and antiquated. And when we did find something – well then, it was out with the men, marched down to the police station, handcuffed and the rest of it. Women crying, usually.’

Professor Myres had not sat down since Rashid arrived. He did now, on a high three-legged stool.

‘We hung a man once. I was there. We found a rusty German revolver under a ledge in his well and a round of bullets. He told us that he’d sold half his livestock to purchase it. Hung him for that. All justified under the Emergency Laws of His Majesty’s Government in Palestine, the same laws that are now being used for closures, house-sealings, curfews, demolitions and the rest of it. All British, those laws.’

Myres raised his hands in a gesture of what? Rashid wondered, admission? Responsibility? Guilt?

‘Strung him up in the village like a sheep. Big, portly man. He was not the mukhtar , the leader, but he was not far off. Huge moustache and a cigarette filter. Could not get that out of my mind for some reason, that filter. Very dignified chap. The whole way through he was an absolute gentleman. Shameful. I think it was that cigarette filter that sealed my fate. But it would not have mattered so much,’ Myres continued, ‘I think it would not have changed everything for me – I am sure I would have found a way to justify it to myself, as the necessities of Empire etcetera – if it weren’t for this disparity of treatment, which annoyed me even then, wet boy that I was. You see, the Jewish immigrants were being trained by us, armed by us, when we were shooting Arabs for hiding a couple of rusty bullets. And then the Jews decided that we weren’t doing enough so they started attacking us, too. Well, of course, you know the rest of the story. By 1948 it was a total walkover for them. The Jewish settlers were – what did one observer say? – cock-a-hoop? No fight needed at all.’

Myres pushed the window open. A small pocket of autumn air challenged wet dog until it was absorbed by it too.

‘Disgraceful conduct on our part. A disgrace, really and truly.’

‘And the Kurds?’ Rashid asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know anything much about the Kurds. It just would have been a lot easier. Could have been the Armenians. Why not, indeed? Damn shoddy history all of them. I just know it would have all been different: the ability to get published, to get and keep university tenure, to get heard, not to have this hate mail, not to…’ Myres looked around his somewhat mouldy-looking purpose-built property, gestured vaguely. ‘Well, they would have given me my own office at the university, for example. Instead I am persona non grata, relegated to the backwaters of the Thames. All would have been different I can tell you, if I had not chosen the Palestinians or Palestine had not chosen me.’

Myres seemed glad it was out. It steadied his resolve. He wandered back into the sitting room, stately, expecting to be followed even in his humble premises, especially to be followed in his humble premises.

‘Now, young man, what do you have for me on this fine morning? What have we here?’ His pencil ran smoothly down the edge of the page of Rashid’s draft thesis, his tongue curled up at the ready. ‘Ah, yes, good. Good. I am glad you picked up on that point, I thought you would.’

Sabri, Sabri, Rashid was starting to think again, You so should be here instead of me, when he noticed some markings at the side of his essay. Next to the paragraph Rashid had taken straight from an email from Sabri on the topic were two question marks and a large cross and below, clearly marked, next to the paragraph he, Rashid, had typed out without looking at any other source, as an articulation of ideas that rippled away at the back of his mind, was a large tick and a word before an exclamation mark. Rashid leant closer to this man with his smell of old waxy things and cloth left in damp drawers for too long, he leant through the mist of wet dog to make out the word. A solitary, magnificent word scribbled out by an accomplished hand: