35

I expected Rabie to tell me about my mother and her alleged love for the hero, the leader. I wanted to know how he had learned about this story, and how and when he surprised her kissing his hand while he was asleep, but he did not. Every day I returned home I found him in a different mood. One day he would be energetic, joyful, optimistic, and full of hope, and another day he would be frowning, his eyes swollen because of his insomnia and his inability to fall asleep before dawn or even early morning. There were days when he was cheerful, ate with a ravenous appetite, and declared that we had provided history with the greatest example of sacrifice and heroism. Then there were days when he sulked with a frowning face and no appetite for food, lighting one cigarette after another, saying that we were the worst people in the world and we deserved what had happened to us, while pointing to things around him, the occupation, the siege, and the catastrophes.

Once, as the confinement went on with no end in sight, and we were becoming concerned about food shortages, I was surprised to hear him say mockingly, “Do you know that one day we surrounded them? We surrounded a hundred thousand Jews in settlements around Jerusalem. They almost died of hunger, thirst, and fear. We truly surrounded them, we really did. We interrupted their water, electricity, provisions, and the convoys. We did it!”

I did not believe him, but he described how they dynamited the water pipes and placed explosives in the electric power stations. They attacked the supply caravans, destroying and burning them in Bab al-Wad, which was the main road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It was surrounded by Arab villages located on the higher grounds; there were many villages, such as al-Qastal, Deir Yassin, Ezariya, Esawiya, and Latrun. The revolutionaries used to hide out there and on top of the mountains, to attack the caravans and throw explosives at the tanks at the front, which disrupted the progress of the whole convoy. They would attack the Jews and the British from all sides, causing them to run away like birds, leaving behind their tanks, their dead, and their supplies.

He would continue his conversation, absentminded and frowning; then his features would relax, and he would keep talking, having forgotten the story he had started telling, especially my main question concerning my mother, Widad, and the leader. Sometimes I got the impression that he was becoming senile, and I thought that the physical confinement had created, as far as he was concerned, a state of mental siege. Whenever I asked him about my mother, he would talk about the hospital, the association, Lisa and Amin, and about the women’s movement and the nationalist movement. He would then shift to the leader, focusing on his actions and his accomplishments, so much so that I began wondering whether he was the one who was in love with the leader, not my mother.

I would prepare coffee and turn on the radio or prepare some eggs in order to make him feel that we were starting a new day and dealing with a new event. I usually made fried eggs sunny-side-up or omelets with cheese, or onions and parsley, or with tomatoes and onions. He would look at the eggs with tomatoes and they reminded him of the day they ate this same dish in this village, on that mountain, on such-and-such a day. As for the eggs with onions and parsley, we ate them in this village, after this or that battle, on such-and-such a day.” He then shifted to the story of the eggs in the Jewish communities during the closure, and would say suddenly, “When we surrounded the settlements, eggs would cost three piasters apiece, whereas in our villages, you could get them almost for nothing.” Then he would move on to saying that one bullet was equal to the price of an egg in the Jewish settlements. “For us the bullet cost three piasters and for them one egg was worth three piasters. The piaster at that time was like the dinar now, which means that an egg cost three dinars and so did the bullet.” He would then stare at me and ask me like a crazy person, “Which was more important, one egg for three dinars or a bullet for three dinars?” I would not answer because I was confused, I really was. If we’d had bullets instead of eggs at that time, would we have endured this blockade? Was this blockade very different from that blockade? Were we going to remain in this blockade until we got stronger than them and surrounded them? If we did, how would we know that they would not become stronger than us and return us to another blockade? In other words, the blockade was like a yoyo: a children’s game, but a dangerous one. Were we going to continue to be like children?

He would go back to his hallucinations, then say absentmindedly, “They made us suffer, damn them! We, too, gave them a hard time; even without money and without weapons we did it. What would we have done if we’d had as many weapons as we had eggs? What is the use of a machine gun without bullets? What good are weapons without bullets? The leader was always carrying guns and his salahlek, his ammunition belt. He had a machine gun—a Bren, a fast-firing weapon—but sometimes there were no bullets. The leader excelled in the preparation of mines. In every house where we stayed, he would set up a laboratory where he conducted experiments to make the explosives for mines.”

I would ask him, curious, “Does this mean that you know how to plant mines?”

He would stare at me suspiciously, thinking that I was making fun of his narrative; then he would say rudely, “You want me, at my age and in this time, to learn to make explosives? Nowadays, explosives are made by computer, with a remote control.”

I would ask nicely, to avoid seeing him explode in my face like a water sprayer, “Do you know how to use that kind of computer?”

“Me? Know how to use the computer?” he replied angrily. “I trade in computers. My children know how to use a computer, but I learned to use a computer at an advanced age and have only basic knowledge. The computer is for this generation, the young generation. For the young men, like Yasmine’s friend. Ask him about the computer, and he will recite by heart all he knows—the way we used to know how to make explosives. The leader taught us then, but nowadays, what do we know? We know nothing in this world. Everything is imported from America and Europe and China. China will swallow us; it will swallow America, Europe, and the whole world.”

“Will it swallow us, too?”

“Let it swallow us. We are naturally swallowed. Let it swallow us and in return swallow them, so that we can rejoice at their misfortune.”

“Will it swallow Canada as well?”

“Canada, Canada. . . . What do you want with Canada? It is a beautiful country. I felt like a king in Canada. By God, Canada is a paradise!”

“But Canada does not support us.”

“Who supports us? Tell me, my lady, who supports us?”

I did not reply, but I felt sad.

The following day he repeated the story of the events that took place when the leader launched the battle of Bani Naim. He told me the story three times. Every time he would add a new detail he had forgotten or that his memory had erased.

I would tell him, “But you told me about this two days ago, don’t you remember?”

He would smile, dejected, and shake his head, apologizing: “Age, age, damn my age! We forget names and numbers, faces, and even stories, but it is the old stories alone that stay with us, and also the old names, even history. Did I tell you what happened in the battle of Beit Hatekfa?”

He did not wait for my answer and began relating the story from beginning to end: how the leader had tugged at his shoulder and pushed him behind the rock and shouted at him, “Are you crazy?”

He would look for a long time from behind his bifocals, and I would see his pale green eyes, murky and divided like his face, his eyes divided by the bifocals, his face divided by the beard, while his mind was divided between the past and the present—between this blockade and that history.

Yasmine would say with sorrow, “He was so wonderful! What happened to him?”

I did not reply, but in my heart I remembered the way Rabie was, and I felt sad. In order to entertain him and lighten the atmosphere, I asked, “Shall I tell you the story of the pot of oil?”

He stared at me angrily and said, “Are you trying to say that I am becoming senile?”

I laughed and said, “I am like you. But whether you have become senile or not, do you want me to tell you what happened to the pot of oil?”

He fell silent and did not reply, but I said angrily, “Whether you reply or not, do you want me to tell you what happened to the pot of oil?”

He laughed and said mockingly, “What happened to us?”

I repeated once more in order to upset him the way he was upsetting me: “Whatever happened to us or did not happen, shall I tell you the story of the pot of oil?”

He got off the kitchen chair and said, laughing, “Leave me alone. As if I need another siege put on me!”

He returned to my uncle Amin’s memoirs and dove more deeply in his own memory. I, on the other hand, returned to the fridge to check if we had enough meat and vegetables in the freezer. I then went to the storage room, to make sure we had enough lentils and beans—all the dry supplies and bread I kept for emergencies. I would then plan the meal for the following day: beans, onions, and tomatoes, cooked in oil, which meant without meat, in order to save what we had in the freezer. We would eat pasta with cheese, then mfarka with eggs, potatoes, and basterma, then lentils—a must in this blockade, exactly like in Majida El Roumi’s songs and the story of the pot of oil.