Selma Dabbagh - Out of It

‘Khalil Helou and Rashid work together at the Human Rights Documentation Centre in Gaza,’ Lisa interjected, also cutting off Ali, who had started an account of his years in prison.

‘Now tell me about that.’ Charles folded his napkin across his lap and leant back slightly in his chair. Rashid obeyed. He gave the full rundown of the Centre’s activities, the summary pages of every project proposal he and Khalil had ever drafted. Talking about Khalil made Rashid miss him a lot, made him even miss the Centre, although he never thought he would. They had put so much work into it, particularly Khalil.

‘Well, that’s what it was, but you know, we are not able to do much at the moment.’

‘Why?’

‘It was trashed. Destroyed. During the August incursion, the one where they bombed the hospital. Do you remember that one?’

‘Yes, yes I do, just after the municipal elections?’

‘That’s the one. Well, their soldiers blew open the door, broke in. They took all of our disks and smashed the computers, burnt the books and, to top it all, they shat on the floor. Well, they put some children’s paintings on the floor then shat on them.’

A circle of blank faces gasped at Rashid as he kicked the muddy ball of social interchange into Charles’ stomach, into all his finery.

‘Right,’ said Charles, refusing to be winded.

‘ Euch,’ said Anna.

Lisa was looking more than a little disconcerted. Ali’s monologue was on hold. The waiter started clearing up. Rashid squashed what was left of his bread into the small mush of hummus debris. He placed his hands wide apart, open on either side of his place mat, What else? What more do you want? Beer did not agree with him. He took against the room with its burnt pots and old brooms hanging on the wall, against the tinniness of its echo, against the blank white faces fed on stodge. Anger had built up in Rashid, talking about the situation, trying to give these people Gaza like it was chilli on a saucer. Goddamn it. He wanted to forget it. His anger was at the top of his skin running down his arms. By the time it got to his fingers he could barely control it.

Charles adjusted himself in his seat. Anna took one of Rashid’s cigarettes without asking and pushed her chair back to go out. Rashid held the pack and was about to get up as well although the mood around the table stopped him from moving. Lisa’s chest rose and fell stroppily, but it was Steffi who broke the silence.

‘Tell me,’ she said, her hands crossed at the fingers, her thumbs stroking each other with approval, ‘do you then have female genital mutilation in Palestine?’

‘What the hell do you mean, you’re taking my sister?’ Lisa was more furious than Rashid had ever seen her. It lifted his mood completely.

‘Well, why not? You can’t make it. Who else am I going to go with? Ian? Steffi? Who do I know here? She really wanted to see him. She bought the ticket from me, insisted that she paid for it. I don’t see what the big deal is.’

Lisa had left Ali at the corner of the road, his stooped form bent against a wall. His physique had not changed, he seemed acclimatised to rejection, bad treatment and hanging around on street corners.

‘Well, you just wouldn’t understand, would you,’ Lisa started.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Oh, nothing. It’s just – what the hell have you got in common with my sister?’

‘Eric Clapton?’ He was moved by her fury, her apparent jealousy. ‘You?’ He slid his hand behind her hair and moved it along her shoulder.

‘She knows nothing about me, and I am not sure that you do either.’ Lisa looked like she was about to slap him. It was great. She cared. The straps of Rashid’s bag were cutting into his shoulders. He placed it on the pavement.

‘Look, Lisa…’ he started, about to say that he would not go.

‘And what the hell do you think you were doing in there? Going on about druggy parties in Gaza? I take you out to meet someone very important and you act like some drunken clown, bitching about his… his future partner in some valued initiative…’

‘Partner for Peace?’

‘Yes, Partner for Peace and you make it sound like you are all just a bunch of jokers, sell-outs, hypocrites, potheads,’ she spat out at him.

‘“You ” being who?’

‘The Palestinians. That was the best you could do, was it? Forget the suffering, the bombing, the arrests, the targeted assassinations, the whole damn Occupation and its economic devastation. Not to mention the destitution or the enforced malnutrition. No, no. You just sit there drunk in front of a senior government official telling him about some party where they served joints in cocktail glasses.’

‘That was not the point I was making, I was just saying it was bad timing for that party.’ Ali had not moved and Rashid could feel his attention on them. Someone else was watching too, a man in the Internet café, smirking through the window.

‘Yeah, well, maybe you would have been better off keeping your mouth shut and just letting him carry on thinking that there were people out there he can believe in.’ Lisa’s finger was pointed, as though she wanted to squash Rashid into the ground with it.

‘Of course there are people there that he can believe in.’

‘Well, you should have said so. Listed them. Like who, anyway? I thought you were way too cynical to believe in anyone?’

‘Well, like Khalil.’

‘Oh great. Yeah, your best friend. And that gets us where exactly? That’s just typical, isn’t it? So tribal, just stick up for your own little group. You just don’t get it , do you? You can’t just go around showing your dirty laundry in public – dope, corruption, hypocrisy, all that crap that you’re so good at. Keep it to yourself. You can’t afford the luxury of showing that off.’

‘We can’t just present ourselves as graciously suffering all the time either. The stress of that place: people feel suicidal. When they get just a whiff of what freedom feels like they do strange things. That’s understandable, isn’t it? It’s not like anywhere else.’ He tried to hold her arm but she moved away from him. ‘Come on, Lisa, I was out for the evening having a meal, I thought, with you and your friends. I didn’t know that I was expected to sound like some zealot standing outside a mosque shouting propaganda.’

‘OK, Rashid. Listen, enough, all right. Look, I need to help Ali out with something and so I am going to go. I am just going to leave it here.’

‘Lisa, come on, don’t just go off in a mood. It’s all right. No harm is done. I think the guy liked me in the end. He gave me his card, see?’ Rashid pulled it out of his pocket, but it slipped out of his fingers on to the pavement. When he stood up again, Lisa was standing with her arms folded in front of her. ‘Look, I really appreciate you introducing us, OK? We’re going to meet again. Don’t start trying to make some excuse about Ali. What can you help him out with now? It’s nearly eleven o’clock. Come on, come back to my place.’

‘No, Rashid. I agreed this with Ali earlier. It’s got nothing to do with you asking Anna or what you said to Charles. I just need to go with him right now, OK?’ Her hand touched his jacket. ‘Let’s try to get together later in the week,’ she said.

He tried to kiss her but only caught her forehead before she found Ali, who was scuffing around the postbox. He watched her purposeful bottom move off. Attractive as it was, it was quite a bit heavier than her sister’s.

‘We’re closing in five minutes,’ the man in the Internet café blocked Rashid at the door, ‘and you’ve got to pay for fifteen. It’s the minimum charge.’