The Woman From Tantoura (42 page)

In the house we sit together, or we stand in the kitchen, sharing in preparing a meal or a cup of coffee to have on the balcony. We talk, endlessly. We laugh. She tells me things and I tell her. We barely see Abed, who leaves the house early and rarely comes back for lunch, though we usually have supper together. He’s preparing to file suit in the Belgian courts. Why Belgium, Abed? He gives a lengthy, involved answer about binding international laws and regulations, the Treaty of Rome and the decisions that followed it, and the European countries that had adopted it. At the end of the detailed talk comes the specific answer: “Because Belgium is the one country in the world that allows individuals to file suits of this kind. They present their complaint to the investigating magistrate, and if the basis of the claim is present then he is required to look into it. This is the first reason; second, because immunity is not considered an impediment in the criminal courts in Belgium. Third, because the Belgian courts accept the principle of trying the accused in absentia, meaning that someone accused of torture or war crimes or crimes against humanity can be tried even if he is not present, or not a Belgian citizen, or not living in the country. Two weeks ago a group of my colleagues filed a suit in the name
of twenty-three plaintiffs against Ariel Sharon, Amos Yaron, and other Israelis and Lebanese, for the massacre in Sabra and Shatila. They presented the documents to the investigating magistrate in the Belgian criminal court; now we’re preparing other suits, about the Sidon elementary school and the Jad Building.”

“Abed, where is the Jad Building?”

“It was destroyed. I’ll take you to the site; why do you ask?”

“Every time Hasan called, he asked, ‘Where is the building you live in from the Jad Building? How do you get there from the Jad Building?’”

“Don’t you know the story of the Jad Building?”

“I know, it was shelled at the beginning of the invasion and everyone who was in the shelter was killed.”

“And Hasan?”

“What about Hasan?”

“I mean Hasan’s story, didn’t he tell you?”

“About … ?”

Abed changed the subject; I found it strange.

Maryam is the one who told me, when Abed went out. She said, “Hasan was in love with a girl who lived in that building. He had loved her since he was in middle school, and he kept going back to Sidon to see her when you moved to Beirut. Abed told me that when Hasan came to Beirut in ’82 he sneaked into Sidon to check on her. He went to Sidon two days before he left Lebanon.”

“And so … ?”

“So, nothing. He knew what had happed to the Jad Building, but he was still hoping. The girl died, with her mother and father and grandfather and sisters and brothers and neighbors and everyone who came from elsewhere to take shelter in the basement of the building.”

I found nothing to say. That night I asked Abed, “Did you see the girl Hasan was in love with?”

“Yes, I saw her.”

“What was her name?”

“Mira.”

“Describe her for me.”

“She was small. Her hair was very black, and her eyes too. She was short and a little plump and had two braids, and dimples in her cheeks. Her face was usually bright and smiling.”

“Was she much younger than he was?”

“No, I’m describing her to you the way I remember her from our time in Sidon. She was the same age as Hasan, or a year younger. Maybe she was thirteen or fourteen. I didn’t see her after we moved to Beirut. By the time of the invasion she had finished school and was working.”

“Why didn’t Hasan ask to marry her after he graduated?”

“I think she was trying to convince her family to let her marry him.”

Hasan had named his daughter after her, years after she died. He never told me about her. His brothers and sister knew, why didn’t he tell me? I recall the details: Hasan’s constant visits to Sidon, his sudden appearance in Lebanon during the invasion, his sudden departure. One morning he said, “I’m going back to Cairo today, Mother.”

“Today, this very day?” Had Hasan told Amin? I doubt it; if he had, Amin would have told me. He didn’t say anything to his father out of shyness; Hasan was reticent and very shy. Strange; you think you know your son better than any other creature, you don’t miss a single thing that concerns him. You put your trust in the thought that you are holding him under your wing and keeping him safe from all harm, even when he flies away and lands far from you. Strange!

Is Abed living in a fantasy? These suits that he’s immersed himself in preparing for years, will they reclaim any rights for someone who was killed? Will they bring him back to life, so that he moves in his grave and rises up, shaking the dust from his body, wiping his face and stretching out his hand to his little sister, smiling? Abed is living in a fantasy; but I don’t give him my opinion. He says there are many ways to reclaim rights, and this is one of them. Is he trying to convince me, or is he answering an internal voice that makes him doubt what he’s doing? He works tirelessly; he says, “Today I met the director of the school, I mean the one who was the director
in ’82. He said, ‘I was the one who permitted the women and children to spend the night in the school, when they arrived that night from Tyre, on the first day of the invasion, thinking it would be a small incursion that wouldn’t get as far as Sidon. They walked from Tyre, on foot; there were 120, almost all of them women and children. There were a small number of old men and three young men. I brought the keys and opened the school for them, and told them to please go in. I sheltered them—would that I hadn’t! We carried some of them to the mass grave. Have you visited Martyrs’ Square, at the end of Riyad al-Solh Street? Yes, they’re there. No, not all of them; some stayed in the school. To be exact, half of them stayed in the school, buried under the basketball court. Come, I’ll show you. Yes, here, under the basket. We rebuilt the school, we repaired it and repainted it, and we paved the court. I didn’t tell the children; I lied and told them we took them all over there. They’re kids, how would they come to the school or care about it if they knew that kids like them, and mothers like their mothers, are buried under the court they’re playing on? Yes, I lied to them.’”

Abed says, “I met the official in charge of civil defense. He has files in which he recorded everything, immediately after the shelling. He asserts that the number who disappeared in the Jad Building across from the school was 125. He said that he gathered their bones. ‘I couldn’t specify the number exactly because the corpses were burned and dismembered; but seven residents of the building happened to be outside it when it was shelled, and they helped me ascertain the number. Yes, 125. I suggest you meet them, I mean the seven who were far from the building when the planes shelled it. They all lost their families. You must meet Ahmad Shams al-Din; he lost his wife and four children and his sister and her five children. I’m not sure if he can participate in the suit; maybe he can be a witness. I haven’t seen him for a while, maybe he’s regained some of his balance. He couldn’t believe he had lost them all; for weeks or maybe months he would look for them in the hospitals, asking and repeating their names and descriptions. He would go up to the
Israeli soldiers barricaded here and there and ask them, while they were sitting on their tanks eating oranges or standing at the barriers brandishing their arms. He would go to their headquarters and ask them to look for his children. Then he got a permit from them and went to Nahariya, over there; they had taken some Lebanese there for treatment. He went around the Nahariya hospitals. Maybe he’s regained some of his balance now, God help him. You must meet him.

“‘There’s another man, who isn’t in a position to share in bringing suit or to be a witness. He completely lost his mind. But it would be useful to see him and record his name, and for his condition to be included. He was outside the building when it was shelled, and when he returned and saw what he saw, he began to walk the streets completely naked. He didn’t go either here or there, he didn’t approach the Israelis. Whenever some good person would help him and give him something to cover his body with, we would find him walking naked in the streets.’”

Abed meets with the residents daily, with the officials and the others, listening to them. He says, “We have plenty of witnesses, we have documents, we have reports that were published at the time in the Arab and foreign newspapers, and we have books documenting what happened. We’re going to sue.

58

Across Barbed Wire

I called Maryam and the boys. “The day after tomorrow,” I said, “I’m going with Karima’s sisters,” I said. Abed and Maryam said, “You’re lucky. I wish we had known about that possibility when we were in Sidon.” Sadiq said, “If you had told me two days ago, I would have made arrangements and gone with you.” Hasan asked, “Where exactly? At what location, at what time?”

At six in the morning on the appointed day, I was in Ain al-Helwa. I knocked on Karima’s family’s door, I drank coffee with them, and then we went to the collection point. Seven large buses will take us there. The women of the camp have dressed up as if it were the morning of Eid, and the boys and girls as well. Everyone has bathed and put on the best clothes he owns; the women are carrying things, as if they were going on a picnic. I thought, they will put down mats and their woolen wraps and sit with their children, having lunch and drinking coffee and tea. It’s a strange trip. I imagined young men standing near the wire, smoking and maybe thinking about tomorrow and what will happen. I imagined elders in their white head cloths, looking out at the land spread below
them and contemplating what was, and what might be. I was anticipating the day in my imagination, but my imagination fell short.

The buses took us over the hills of the south. If only my uncle Abu Amin were with me, he knows the land in the south as if it were Palestine. He knows the roads and the names and the hill here and the one there, the river and the stream, the villages and the little towns, and for each one he has a story or a memory. God have mercy on you, Uncle Abu Amin. If my father had seen the future, would he have said, “You’ve left my back exposed,” and been so angry with him and shouted at him? He did not leave him exposed, he covered him: he left him two and took care of the other five.

I become aware of the sound of ahazij singing; young men were standing in the bus leading the singing, and everyone joined in, the elders, men, and women, and the girls, and the boys. The bus driver honked, not because of something on the road; the songs seem to have delighted him, so he joined the passengers in the celebration. He sounds the horn in a regular rhythm, speeding up and slowing down according to the mood. He passes the bus in front of us or lets another bus pass us, and everyone waves to everyone, everyone laughs together. An elderly woman suddenly sprang from her seat and cried, “God protect al-Sayyid Hasan, if it wasn’t for him and for the resistance we wouldn’t be able to set foot on any of this land. Twenty-three years of occupation, and they’re gone for good.” Voices rose praying for al-Sayyid: “God protect him, God keep him for us, he’s brought us good luck, God grant the same for Palestine.” One of the young men standing at the front of the bus cut in: “Our leader is Abu Ammar, pray for Abu Ammar, people.” A moment of tension, that seemed as if it would go on; then it was suddenly broken by the voice of an old woman wearing a long peasant dress. She stood up and let loose a long
aweeeha
, as if she were in a wedding, followed by trills of joy. Trills rose in the bus and harmony was restored with more songs, dal‘una, ataba, aliyadi, and zarif al-tul.

It wasn’t yet eight-thirty in the morning when the buses stopped with us; they lined up beside each other and we got off. The young
men in charge said, “The road is here, follow us.” We went behind them on a climbing dirt road. “There’s Palestine!” shouted a woman who was a little ahead of me. Two steps later I saw what she had seen, the land spreading out beneath us, red in color, with houses like blocks scattered at a little distance from the barbed wire. They looked more like pre-fabricated chalets in tourist resorts, painted white with blue wooden shutters at the windows. Was it a settlement or only a military post? On the other side of the barbed wire were a number of Israeli conscripts, arms on their shoulders and iron helmets on their heads.

One of the young men said, “Rest a little, they will come.”

“Who will come?”

“Our relatives from inside. Also we’ll be joined by some buses coming from Tyre.”

After less than half an hour seven other buses arrived from Tyre. We saw them line up and the passengers get off, carrying signs and flags. In the flash of an eye it was as if the barbed wire had disappeared from view, covered by the bodies of the residents on both sides. They were greeting each other, shyly at first, and then speaking easily. People were meeting each other:

“We are from Haifa …”

“We came from Ain al-Helwa; originally we’re from Saffurya. From al-Zeeb. From Amqa. From Safsaf. From al-Tira. From …”

“We’re from Umm al-Fahm …”

“We came from the Mieh Mieh Camp …”

“We’re from Shafa Amr …”

“We came from the Rashidiya Camp …”

“We’re from Acre …”

“We came from the Burj al-Shamali Camp …”

“We’re from Arraba …”

“We came from al-Bass Camp …”

“We’re from Nazareth …”

“We came from Sidon …”

“We’re from al-Bi‘na …”

“We came from Tyre …”

“We’re from Jaffa …”

“We came from Jezzin …”

“We’re from Sekhnin …”

“We came from Ghaziya …”

“We’re from Lid …”

“We’re from Deir al-Qasi …”

“We came from al-Bazuriya …”

“We’re from al-Jdayda. We’re from al-Rama. We’re from …”

“And the lady is …?”

“From Tantoura.”

A young man shouted at the top of his voice: “Here’s a lady from Tantoura. Is there anyone from Tantoura?”

A girl of maybe ten jumped up. She slipped through the rows and climbed on a rock, and extended her hand to me across the barbed wire: “I’m from Tantoura.”