32

When we entered Yasmine’s house, he started apologizing profusely as if he were doing something shameful. Yet he had not forgotten to pick a flower from my garden; he offered it to the old lady, after he had kissed her hand, the way any modern gentleman would do. As soon as we entered, he smiled at Yasmine in a way that made her melt. She stumbled over her words and kept pushing her curls back every time she made a comment or smiled. The old woman, Yasmine’s mother, regained her strength and began evoking memories of the past and the incidents that had taken place here and there. She remembered my grandmother when she was living in the house, my mother in Damascus, the days of the revolution, Abu Jildeh, the ills of the war, and all the emigration. She lived in Damascus during those years; she saw my mother and the immigrants in Syria, and kept track of the news, which at that time was not as bad as it was today—people had hope. She was young then and did not know that the worst was yet to come; that she would die under the occupation, and so her funeral, like all others, would be without mourners, without escorts, and without a ceremony because everybody feared confrontations, curfews, and closures.

She was talking about her own funeral and she was laughing and cracking jokes, making fun of her old age and her destiny. Her daughter was repeating, with an exaggerated display of affection, as if to attract attention, the familiar expressions: “May death stay away. . . . May I die, not you. . . .
I wish it on your enemies. . . . I would sacrifice my life for
you, Mama.”

He was smiling at her tenderly, revealing his wonderful teeth, which made him look younger, much younger. In comparison to the men of the municipality and Abu Saad, he was neither fat nor flabby; he was hardly even balding. His stomach was firm, his posture straight, and his steps were stable and strong. As for the wrinkles on his face and under his eyes, they were hardly visible; as if he had reduced them with a delicate filter or erased them with the help of the computer, or even had them tightened with surgery. He looked younger than his age, much younger, even younger than me, although he was a few years older. Was it because time did not disfigure men in the same way it did women? But the men of the municipality were bald, with big bellies and flabby bodies. Abu Saad looked like a wilted corner tree, burnt by the sun, its water having dried out, neglected and in need of fertilizer. As for this man, despite the dehydration of his natural water, it was clear that he was well fertilized and did not suffer from neglect and desertification. He looked like a man in his sixties, although he was in his mid-seventies. What was his secret? Was it his connection with the Emirates? Or Canada? Or technology and computers?

I watched him, amazed by his looks, his energy, and his optimism. I was doubly amazed whenever he surprised me with a clever quip or an English expression that he hastened to translate into Arabic, as if apologizing for an irrepressible slip of the tongue. He divided his attention equally between us, as if we were in an administrative council meeting, in an effort to market a product or ideas. In a few words, he was programmed and a programmer, and abandoned his focus only when Saad, Yasmine’s friend, came in, as usual carrying a bunch of grapes and pieces of homemade basbouseh.

Yasmine and her mother welcomed him warmly and joyfully, because he had become like a member of the family. He, too, was full of enthusiasm and warmth and had a sense of humor. He gave us an account of the events that had occurred after the explosion and the exciting clash that took place near the mosque. He described the way people ran away before ending their prayers and how their shoes were mixed up, and no one knew whether he was wearing his own shoes or somebody else’s because they were all the same size. The occupation had reduced all the people to a single size! Yasmine laughed wholeheartedly at the joke and the old woman blessed him and praised him. I asked him how he had managed to sneak in despite the curfew. Wasn’t he afraid? He explained his position, and asked me, while glancing at me and my guest, “What about you two? How did you arrive here?” I told him about the emergency gate in Habs al-Dam and he told me about the walls of the gardens and the front yards that the young men climbed, and the way the soldiers climbed over the same walls with the tanks and the markaba.

My guest remained silent the whole time this conversation was taking place. As we talked about the sneaking around, the stone throwing and the arrests, my guest did not utter a word. He was listening with an uneasy silence and watching us through his glasses. He did not comment, but his eyes moved from the young man to Yasmine to Yasmine’s mother, hardly noticing me, quickly looking away as if he feared my eyes and wanted to avoid remembering. I, too, did not want to remember. Many years had passed without thinking of him. I had remembered him only here, in this house, among the paintings and the family photos, my grandmother’s room and my uncle’s unorganized papers. I could not deny that I had not forgotten, and no one among us had, because it continued to follow us everywhere, even in the dreariness of our exile—be it in Rome, New York, or London. It was a principle, almost a tenet, but not a way of life as it was here in Habs al-Dam. We used to demonstrate sometimes and carry banners with slogans written in languages recognized by Downing Street, before the guards of the White House and the United Nations offices and museums. We used to meet and donate in support of the intifada. We participated in conferences, and sometimes we cried and revealed our pain on television screens. Come the morning, we would take a hot shower, put on clean clothes, pick up our bags, and go to work in streets that were lit with traffic lights, among people who sauntered and window-shopped peacefully and quietly, disturbed only by the noise of the cars, traffic accidents, and pollution. Here, however, there was bloodletting, funerals, high prices, and unemployment. Here, we had suffocation and barriers. This boy, this young man, was the project and the future, but the project was in the realm of the unknown.

Lunch was over but he remained silent; we ate the basbouseh and the kullaj and he did not say a word. We drank coffee with milk, but he did not talk. Yasmine seemed to resent his silence, indifference, and lack of interest, or rather his diminishing interest after his initial gentleness and friendly looks. She asked him whether there was something he wanted. He thanked her, shaking his head, a gesture that gave her the impression that he had a sarcastic smile or that he was mocking her. She was hurt and ignored him, turning her total attention to her young friend who made her laugh and entertained her, asking about her cupboard and the radio. She was laughing and I was laughing, while her mother was eyeing her, slightly annoyed because she felt that her daughter was not serious and posed and laughed at superficial matters like a flighty, crazy person. Yasmine did not care about her mother’s looks and the shaking of her head, and kept on laughing.

Before leaving I whispered in the ear of the old woman that I would be sleeping at their place because I wanted to leave the house for the male guest. She nodded with understanding and approval, because I was doing the right and proper thing. I excused myself for a few hours in order to prepare my uncle’s room for my guest, as it was the only room ready for a guest to use. I would change the sheets and the covers and do whatever was necessary for the guest, then return to their house at nightfall.

This is what happened. We went back through the emergency door, the way we had left, and entered the house at sunset.

He went around the house looking at the repairs and the pipes, the change of the tiles in the kitchen and the bathrooms, while I got busy changing the sheets in my uncle’s room and removed the cases and the paintings so he wouldn’t trip over them. I wanted him to sleep in a clean room free of stuff and dust.

When the room was ready, he was still in the kitchen. I heard the noise and followed it. He was making coffee and setting the cups on the tray. When he saw me, he was putting the sugar and coffee back in their places. I took a hard look at myself and a hard look at him, and I felt I was able to remember that feeling, as if it had sneaked up on me through the clouds. I saw something in his eyes as well, something that revealed a certain reminiscence, an emotion—sad but delicate feelings floating on the surface after having been buried under layers of estrangement, the accumulation of years and desertification.

He asked, saddened, “Do you remember, Nidal?” He did not say, “When we boiled the coffee, half a century or more ago.” He did not say, “When we were young teenagers.” He did not say, “When your uncle was like a father to me and the house was filled with family members, with hope, and with revolutionaries.” He did not say any of that and he did not need to, because I remembered all that, and I remembered him. I remembered him before he came; I remembered him as I saw him in the paintings, in the memories of our youth and the history of the house. I had remembered him ever since I returned to the house and to my belongings. It was as if the house had opened a magic trunk for me and all my trunks. I remembered love, my first love; I remembered my family, my youth, and my story. I remembered the spring and the summer trips to Asira, then to Zawata, and to the quarries, and then Sanour and the gray mare, the foal and the field of lilies. Then came the memory of events that happened quickly like a damaged tape, starting with my grandmother’s death, my mother’s disappearance, and me in the convent with the nuns. My recollections from that convent were pale shadows of young girls who were like me, and my drawings and my exile. I even forgot my life in exile, as if it hid behind a curtain and nothing was left of it in this house but those who were absent and had once lived in it. There was also my life, my youth, and my memory. I returned to them and they returned to me like ghosts, and he came with them. He did return, truly, though I was not that same Nidal and he was not that Rabie. My Rabie? We had reached the edge. He was in his seventies and I was like him, with gray hair and a life full of events, of failures and successes. But were they truly successes? We had come to call them successes, while they were no more than accomplishments. One accomplishment here and another there, but the dream, that dream, the days of the revolution and the heroes, the days of hope, the days of courage and the sense of honor, the days of manhood and vigor, were only snapshots and were reduced to the size of a dwarf, scenes in a short film. It was a long film that got shorter with time, and then it was dwarfed and was scattered like scraps of paper. I won’t say “in the wind” because the wind is still blowing, and it carries us away, blows us, while we are left with the shrapnel, the remains of ghosts, women and men who were once in the flower of their youth, riding the waves without wings and without a port to land in. They were more courageous, much more, and they were loftier, more magnanimous.

We remained silent the whole evening. I left him, after I instructed him on what to do and where to find this or that. I told him that he could call me if he needed something I had forgotten to provide. Then I bid him good night and told him I would see him at breakfast.