The Woman From Tantoura (27 page)

After the dawn prayer I knocked on Umm Ali’s door. She did not open, so I knew that she was still praying. I waited at the door and knocked again after a few minutes, and heard her heavy steps coming to the door. She asked who it was, and I said “Ruqayya.” She opened the door and said, “Good morning.” I said, “Abed hasn’t come home for five days, maybe they’ve kidnapped him.” She asked me to sit down and then made me a cup of coffee. She suggested that I visit the houses of his friends first, saying, “I’ll take Maryam to school and you go to them right away, before they leave for work. If you don’t find him with any of them, we’ll begin looking for him.”

My son was lucky and I was too, because many of the young men who were kidnapped disappeared or were killed; their families didn’t know that they had been killed, and when they were sure they didn’t know where they were buried. The Phalange were no longer the only ones who detained Palestinians, nor were the Christian militias. Amal had suddenly appeared on the scene—my God, how? Why? A friend in the camp, a very old man, said to me,
“Sitt Ruqayya, have you forgotten Tall al-Zaatar? Alliances change between the leaders and our young men pay the price. The camp pays the price. Now Syria and Abu Ammar are enemies and Amal is allied with Syria, so it aims its canons at Shatila, and we call the men of Amal enemies. In the very recent past we faced the Israelis together, in Khalda, in the Shouf and in the south. God help us!”

How can I free Abed? I don’t know.

We followed many trails. Sadiq asked for the help of a businessman among his associates in the Gulf who had a business relationship with an influential figure in Amal. Umm Ali spared no relative, near or distant, nor anyone among her acquaintances or the acquaintances of her acquaintances, visiting them all and asking for help. “We want to know the boy’s fate,” she said. “I raised him with my own hands, can you take my son and beat him? If he’s with you, free him, I’ll vouch for him.” In the evening Umm Ali put before me the day’s yield: whom she had visited, whom she had spoken with, who had taken her and put her in touch with whom. I looked at her in amazement at her ability, at this age, to go to five places in one day. I followed her heavy steps as she carried the coffee or the thyme snacks she had baked, and I realized that the legs and feet struggled to carry her heavy body.

In my daily search I met a person who assured me that he knew the way to Abed. He said that the kidnappers had asked for a sum of money, which he named. I sold all my jewelry and gave it to him.

Did Umm Ali’s visits bear fruit, or the money I paid, or did the men who had detained Abed just decide to free him, without any reason, just as they had decided to take him without any reason? Were they young men from Amal or were they from the Phalange or from an independent group, brigands profiting from the chaos all around to make some quick money by getting information and selling it to this side or the other? To this day I don’t know.

After he was freed, Abed told me his story: “I was leaving Shatila, and here came three guys calling me. They were young men in civilian clothes. I thought they wanted to ask me the time, or that they
were not from the area and wanted me to guide them to a street or a place. When I got near, one of them asked me if I were Lebanese or Palestinian. I had a bad feeling, but I answered, ‘Palestinian, why do you ask?’ And here was one of them pointing his weapon at my head. I don’t know where he had been hiding the weapon. He raised it at me and the other two grabbed me and dragged me roughly into a building. We went into an apartment on the first floor, and they began to interrogate me, asking about the organization I belonged to, about the head of the organization, about the camp, the names of the leaders in it and the quantity of the weapons and the tunnels that connected the buildings. I said I didn’t know, and they began to beat me. I repeated that I didn’t belong to any organization and that I’m a law student in the Lebanese University, and that I don’t live in the camp, and I don’t have any information or the answers to their questions. The beating got worse. Then they blindfolded me and took me to another place and took off my clothes, and beat me again, until the blood flowed from my face and chest and back. They said, ‘We’ll kill you if you don’t talk.’ They shoved a revolver at my head. I said, ‘I don’t have anything to say.’ They tied my hands and feet with a rope and threw me in with three other guys. Every day they came to us and said, ‘We’re going to kill you,’ and then they left. After three days they took me in the trunk of a car, tied up and blindfolded. We came to a place at Bir Hasan. They took off the blindfold and untied me, and put me in a cell by myself.”

“After ten days, they opened the door of the cell and blindfolded me again. Then they sat me in a car. After less than ten minutes the car stopped and they pushed me out. I lifted the blindfold and found myself in the vacant land between Ard Jalloul and Gaza Hospital. I walked to the hospital, and they cleaned my wounds and bandaged them and gave me medicine. Then I came home.”

Yes, Abed was lucky, and I was even luckier. I said, “You should leave.” He said, “I’m going to stay.”

Sadiq called his brother, every day sometimes, insisting, “Please, Brother, give up, get out of Lebanon now!” but he dug in his heels.
Then they took him again; it lasted only three days. After that he decided to leave and he procured a travel document, but to his surprise it was stamped, “No return permitted.” He became like a hyena in a cage, turning around himself in the house and pouncing on anyone who came near him. Then he left.

Sadiq insists that we move in with him and his family in Abu Dhabi. I say, “We have to stay here to carry on with your father’s case and find out what happened to him.” I’m lying to him; I had accepted that Amin had gone with the thousands who were killed during the three most terrifying days out of the three months of war that paved the way for the fourth month, the month of the massacre. He insists again: “Why stay alone, you and Maryam, in Beirut? The city’s not safe, it’s a war of the militias—a car bomb here and a mine there and fights in a third place and kidnapping in a fourth and fifth. Have mercy on me, Mother, I can barely sleep for worry over you two!”

34

To the Gulf

Suddenly, I accepted. As if I had not spent four years in evasions, alleging real or fabricated reasons for staying.

The airline tickets and passports are in my purse, and the suitcases are in the back of the taxi taking Maryam and me to the airport. I know the airport, the arrival and departure halls, and the walls, but I don’t know what’s behind them; I have never taken a plane before in my life. I have never extended my hand holding a passport to the officer, as the actors do in films, so that he will stamp it and they can get on the plane. Was I waiting for the Israelis to withdraw from Sidon, so the way would be open for me to visit the graves of my mother and my uncle, Abu Amin? I went to Sidon and said goodbye to them; then I returned to Beirut and visited my aunt’s grave.

And Amin? He is the one who came to say goodbye to me, on the eve of our departure, in a dream. Perhaps it was not a dream, as I was not sleeping. He kissed my head and asked me to take care of Maryam. I cried, and kissed his hands.

Maryam is excited by the thought of traveling, the airplane, meeting her brother and his family, and the new school. She
chatters ceaselessly. The seatbelt is fastened securely; the plane circles above the clouds. I follow the progress of the trip as if I were in another place, following from afar, hearing Maryam’s chatter and not listening to what she’s saying. The plane lands. When I emerge from its door I’m surprised to find that there is no air, where did the air go? It seems that Beirut on its most humid days is more merciful. But there’s no time to gasp for breath, we must stand in line, present our travel documents, pick up our suitcases. Then comes the meeting, a tumultuous meeting with Sadiq, Randa, and the little ones. Noha is now seven; her knees have raised her up and she looks as if she’s Maryam’s age. Huda, who was stumbling with her words and her steps the last time we saw her, has become a schoolgirl with a backpack who goes to nursery school every morning. Little Amin, whom I have not seen before, has begun to walk and to say a few words.

We arrive at Sadiq’s house. Coffee, a full table, and more coffee. Conversation. Good night, good night. Maryam and I are in the area set aside for us, which Sadiq calls a suite. Maryam goes to sleep; I open the balcony to smoke a cigarette. There is no air; I put it out and close the balcony. The noise of the air conditioner is like a hidden train. There are no tears, where have the tears gone? I go back to open the balcony and smoke a cigarette, then I get in bed. I wonder what Sadiq would say if I asked him tomorrow to return to Beirut.

I think the banquet during the week following our arrival settled the matter. It settled it early on, even though it took me years to make the decision and follow through with it.

Sadiq’s wife wanted to honor me; she meant well. She announced two days after my arrival that she was having a dinner in my honor. She invited her relatives and friends and acquaintances, to introduce them to me and me to them. For three days she was issuing orders and directions and giving instructions, as well as taking part in the preparations. There were two servants in the house. Sadiq explained, “One is an educated Filipina, whom we entrust with the childcare. Her salary is double that of the Sri Lankan; her
English is excellent. The Sri Lankan comes from the country, but we have trained and taught her. Her job is to clean the house and cook. When she came she didn’t know anything, just barely how to cook the food of her country; then Randa taught her, and she has become excellent.”

I wanted to help but there was no place for me in the kitchen. I remembered my aunt and Ezz’s wife, and smiled, nearly laughing, although the situation was different. During the two days preceding the banquet Sumana and Evelyn prepared what was asked of them, under Randa’s supervision. On the day of the banquet two other girls arrived, whom I later learned were the servants of Randa’s sister and cousin, a Sri Lankan and a dark-skinned African. Randa later told me that she was from Somalia: “My cousin is very religious and will accept only Muslim servants.”

I nearly asked what being religious had to do with the matter, but I didn’t. I asked about her name.

“Muslima.”

“Her name is just ‘Muslim’?”

“She has another name but my cousin decided to call her Muslima. In fact she always names her servants Muslima; she used the same name with the previous one and the one before that also. It’s simpler!” Randa laughed.

I don’t remember many details of that banquet. Perhaps the details of other banquets floating in my mind have become mixed with them, so that I don’t know if they were part of that day or of other days in which the house was packed with guests. Sadiq is generous and his wife is too; they have banquets once every two or three weeks, to which they invite their relatives and friends and the friends of their relatives and friends. The four servants stood in the corners, at our disposal. It seemed they wore special clothes for the occasion, dresses of the same color and cut, with a starched white apron tied at the waist. They passed around cups of juice, placed the plates and cleared them, took away ashtrays filled with cigarette butts and replaced them with shining clean ashtrays. The
dining table was spread with varieties of food, and on a side table were rows of plates, small and large. Each guest took his plate and helped himself to what he liked, then moved to small square or round tables, each of which was covered by an embroidered white tablecloth, carefully starched and ironed, on which were forks, knives, spoons, and cups. Each one took his plate and sat at a designated place at this table or that. They repeated the process when the servants took the plates and they moved to serve themselves sweets and fruit. At that first banquet the whole scene was new to me, in all its details. Before, during, and after the dinner, as the girls passed coffee, tea, and “white coffee” made from orange blossoms, I did not open my mouth to say a single word, as if I had been struck with the old muteness. After the guests left, Sadiq said to me, reproachfully, “They came to meet you—you should have favored them by speaking to them. They wanted to hear about what’s happening in Lebanon.”

It seemed as if I was not going to answer; then I was surprised to find myself saying, “The news of Lebanon is in the daily papers, and if they are illiterate they can follow it on the radio and television. Are there any illiterates among them?”

His face paled, and he did not comment. After a while I broke silence, “Thank you, Sadiq, thank you, Randa. Good night.”

I withdrew to the “suite.” I was angry. Was it because I had wounded Sadiq when he had wanted to honor me? Angry over the scene itself? Angry with Sadiq because he didn’t understand? He didn’t understand. Why, when he’s smart and perceptive, why did he want me to make polite conversation with his guests, why? Didn’t he want his guests to enjoy the delicacies his wife had spent three days preparing? He was angry when I told his wife’s family, the day we went to them to propose in Amman, that we were children of the camps. There were three wars and a massacre between the two banquets.

There was a sea there, a closed gulf to which we went in an air-conditioned car, which carried us from here to there. The car is
always air conditioned, twenty-four hours a day. Between sleeping and waking, I thought to myself that my legs were going to lose the ability to walk. And my hands?

I’ll put them to work. I look from afar: Ruqayya works non-stop, there in Sadiq’s house, knitting. Next to her is a nylon bag with balls of wool, one or two or three, and in her hands are two metal needles she moves mechanically, the index finger and thumb of her right hand joining in when she loops the thread over the needle, rapidly and repeatedly. Sadiq comments, laughing, “It’s beautiful, Mother. But knitting wool in a country where no one wears wool, that’s comical!”

I say, “I’m making sweaters for my friends’ children in Lebanon.”

I finished seven wool jackets which I sent to Lebanon. Then I made a sweater for Hasan in Canada, and another for Abed in Paris. In the future when I looked at the pictures of one of the children in Shatila or one of my children or grandchildren wearing the sweaters I had made them, I would stop and let my thoughts wander. Not just because I was happy that they were wearing what I had made for them, but also because I knew that knitting, during those years, was more like a refuge in which I sought shelter from shelling. I correct myself, how can I say that? Under shelling one is terrified and knows that death is watching. The simile doesn’t suit the purpose, it’s mistaken. But perhaps the image of shelling isn’t far from the truth, for shelling is frightening and earth-shaking, and so was my memory of Beirut during the last year I lived there. The siege and the Israeli planes, even the massacre seemed understandable, reasonable even in their unreason. The enemies were known and specific. You realize they want to get rid of you, to wipe you out if possible, so you rally, because the people who are confronted defend themselves. But the war of the camps crushed me. At first it seemed as if it was a stupid, passing conflict, ridiculous, like the ones that spring up suddenly between the young men of two different Palestinian factions. It starts with a difference or a quarrel, then each draws his weapon on the other, and instead of fighting
with words one shoots the other, and the foolish lawlessness turns into a conflict. Oh my God, a conflict! I thought, it’s the first of Ramadan, nerves are out of control, with the accumulated tension and pressure of the last three years. They will calm down and things will go back to normal. But they didn’t calm down; the siege continued, and the army and Amal were shelling Shatila, shelling the camp mosque. The young men in the camp shelled Amal positions. Oh my God, as if the sons of Amal had become Israelis, as if the sons of the camp had become the enemies of the Shia, as if the young men here and there had not fought together, as if their blood had not mingled behind the same barricade. Who was responsible? The leaders of Amal, the policies of Abu Ammar, Syria? I would go to Umm Ali and she would come to me, trying to understand. I left Beirut and I still didn’t understand; I left defeated, with a lump in my throat that would not go away. It was stuck near the uvula, neither strangling me so that I could be done with the whole story nor dissolving, so that I could breathe like other people, and live.