59

I return now to my own surroundings and a patient sleeping in my bed. It is nighttime, it is cold and windy, and I can hear the sound of bullets being fired. We have now passed the year 2000 but we still live in the era of siege. It was them yesterday, and it is us today. The world turns and does not stop, but the circle is empty, and time is of the essence. There aren’t many years left for me to live and I no longer have family members in this house, except a woman who is getting close to her seventies. If that man had not died, if al-Qastal had not fallen, would my mother have abandoned me? Would my uncle have died a martyr in Deir Yassin? Would Amin have left Jerusalem to go to Lebanon and to Saadeh for Lisa’s sake and the liberation of Jerusalem? He did not find Lisa or Saadeh, and he did not liberate Jerusalem or Palestine. He lived alone in a foreign country as I did, and I might die the way he died—without Jerusalem, without a homeland, without love and happiness. The house, the family home, would remain without an heir and without a trace of the Qahtan family.

My uncle’s papers reminded me of what had happened to us, and the paintings of my youth took me back to a time past and one in whose twists I am still living. This old man is that youth, and the delicate love that existed before the years of exile and the dust of the soul. The fire is extinguished, and we have been stifled. Who will light our fire after this lassitude? I hadn’t known that man; he was like a flame, ahead of his time, and my mother liked him—I am sure of that. I feel my heart is restless and bursting with love. Is it possible for anyone to imagine what we do not have, and what we are not part of? I didn’t live during that period and I did not know that man or befriend him, but my heart amazes me; it is moaning as if due to the separation and the loss of the beloved! That man—it is as if he is alive in my memory, as if I was the one who fell in love and not my mother. Isn’t it strange that we can experience things we have only imagined, as if they were a part of us, of our present, of our past? As if they were totally within us? Isn’t it strange that we remember what is not ours? Isn’t it strange that we feel love for those who left and returned to us as papers and photos?

He moved in bed and mumbled as if he were hallucinating and dreaming, “Nidal.”

I mumbled back, just enough for him to know that I was by his side and I hadn’t moved.

He stretched out his hand and took my hand and brought it close to his mouth and kissed it. Then he whispered, “What time is it?”

“Ten past three.”

“In the afternoon?”

“After dawn.”

“Did you sleep in my room?”

I did not reply. I knew what he was aiming at. He wanted to draw me out, to get me to confess, and I will not confess. I am in al-Qastal, I am still there, and my feelings are confused and my heart is melting, but for someone else, for a man who died before his time, before blowing out his candles, a beloved man with whom my mother had fallen in love, as had all the women of Jerusalem. I yearn and I remember what we had and what we do not have anymore, at this hour. I feel a passion and a sense of exile, and my heart melts and sighs, as if I were a young woman of twenty. I am baffled—what is all this passion? What is this yearning? Isn’t love but a delusion, a dream? A mirage and imagination?

He asked, “Are you still here?”

“I am in al-Qastal.”

“Did you find your mother?”

“I found the hero.”

“Was I with him?”

“Of course. And so was my mother.”

“What about your uncle Wahid?”

“In Deir Yassin.”

“What about you and me?”

“What about Hasna?”

“What does he say? That Hasna died in Deir Yassin?”

“No, my dear, Hasna did not die in Deir Yassin. Hasna left with those who went to march in the funeral of the hero. She came to Jerusalem while Wahid went to Deir Yassin. Hasna did not die in that siege. She died in this siege.”

“Does this mean that he died, and she lived?”

“Is there life except in death?”

The sentence shocked me; I remembered that the leader had said it to my uncle Amin before he died. Here I am repairing the house, renewing things, making them more attractive, and placing wheat on my window to attract the goldfinch. Then what? If I were young, I would have married this man, had children with him, and filled the house with my children. But now I am approaching seventy, and this patient, this feverish man, is old like me but he fights it. Does he fear aging? Does he fear loneliness? Does he fear the weakness of the body, while it is a reality? Or is he like all men, afraid of impotence, the prostate, and all that can happen?

I smiled in the dark as I remembered what he had told me, about how experienced he was. Thank God he is sleeping, and that it is dark so he won’t see me smiling to myself. But I must have laughed aloud.

He said, surprised, “Why are you laughing?”

I repressed my laughter and said, smiling, “Nothing, nothing. I remembered that I am late going to Yasmine and she will be suspicious about us.”

He laughed and said, “I wish! I wish!”

Didn’t I say that he was still trying?