He never felt how my soul leaped and how my heartbeat turned into the loudest discordant drums whenever I heard his voice. Contradicting thoughts filled my head whenever his image appeared. I was captured by every detail of his manliness—so witty, so sharp, such a charming man who philosophizes everything he says or hears. “Dear me, what a happy girl I am!” I always exclaimed after hanging up my cell phone with him. “This is the exact type of guy I’ve always dreamed of.” I couldn’t ask for more, though I had never even thought of asking him where he lived. Why should I bother myself to ask? I always supposed—or to tell the truth, I was programmed to expect—that everybody I met in my city was originally Gazan.
“Oh, girl….” I got to know that these were the words he often used whenever he shocked me with a real detail about himself. “Eman, if you just knew where exactly I live, you wouldn’t be stupidly in love with everything related to me.” Hosam kept upsetting my soul and driving me crazy by repeating these annoying words. It was something I couldn’t figure out in that stage of my immaturity—or, maybe, my innocence.
“But why the hell should I care where you live? Aren’t you from Gaza? That is quite enough to keep my hope alive.”
I was too naïve to go deeper into any other details.
“Look, Hosam,” I said. “All I want is a mind and a tongue—a powerful mind to appreciate me, and an expressive, eloquent tongue, to say it.”
“Well, I doubt it. What should a woman do with a man’s mind and tongue if they got married? Did you forget that I’m a lawyer? It’s the core of my profession to talk and manipulate things,” he said, teasingly.
“Ok, let’s not think about it now…I don’t care where you live, and that’s it.” I added, looking at my watch, which said 4:25 in the afternoon, “Oh my God! I have to leave the library right away.” I hung up my cell phone and rushed outside.
“Al-Mina—to the seaport, please,” I told the taxi driver in a hurry.
He drove his car and stopped after a few meters for some university students who were heading to Al-Nasr Street.
“Don’t be angry. I’ll drive as fast as I can to drop them off, and then I’ll take you wherever you wish,” the old, bigmouthed driver said.
“But Al-Nasr is not my way. Why did you take me in the first place?” I asked furiously. And then, to stop the dispute, I added despairingly, “It’s okay. Just drive.”
Praying that my father would not be home when I got back, I just kept looking outside the window, thinking of excuses for my delay. I thought of how careless I was in doing the same thing every day, spending two or three hours in the central library, looking for Ghada Al-Samman, Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab, Nazik Al-Mala’ika, and other Arab poets and writers whom I recently became extremely fond of. I never expected to reach that point: not attending my lectures and sitting alone in the back when I attend, alienating myself between the pages of Gibran Khalil Gibran, Khalil Mutran, Michael Naimeh, and all those sorts of writers. That was the biggest sin, yet the most precious favor, any man has ever done for me. Hosam’s talks about these writers always made me envious and in quest of more and more reading. I fell in love with everything he liked.
I woke up from my deep thoughts quite abruptly to find myself in a very remote area which I’d never been to.
“What is this place? You said you were going to take the girls to Al-Nasr Street, right? Where am I?” I questioned in a panic. “I’m sorry, but I was obliged to go further. The car is running out of fuel, and the petroleum station is here. I’ll be back soon.” Getting out of the car, he added, “Do you want me to turn on some music? I have several songs for Mustafa Kamel; he is very good, you know. Do you want me to change the song? Tell me, what is your favorite song of his?”
I kept silent and didn’t utter a word, lest he should go further. Anxious and scared of staying in the car, I looked outside to make sure that the man was busy. I ran out of the taxi, and then went on walking in streets I had never passed before.
“O my goodness! It’s nearly five o’clock. How can I find another taxi in these narrow streets?” I nearly cried. I wondered how I got lost in this little space.
I went on walking, heading toward the west. A group of school boys fighting attracted my attention. I could not help stopping and asking them.
“What is the name of this place, little boys?”
“Mo’askaaar Al-Shati. Mesh ’arfaah?”–Al-Shati Refugee Camp. Don’t you know it?—shouted the chubby boy.
“Okay, why are you angry?”
“Hada al-kalb,” pointing at another boy, “sarag nossi!”–Because this dog stole my half shekel—he yelled.
“It’s mine. Ummy—my mother—gave it to me,” replied the smaller one.
Their accent brought a smile on my face. For me it is “Mama,” always “Mama.”
“Here’s a shekel instead,” I said to the angry boy. “Just don’t fight, okay?” I added, trying to imitate his tone. I failed.
“Hehehe! Shayef jazat elli bysrig? Hay shekel badal alnos!”—See how God punishes those who steal? I have a shekel now instead of a half one!—the boy teased his friend, laughing out loud, not believing that he got a whole shekel.
I had always heard about the dire circumstances of the Palestinian refugees, but I had never taken the time to visit any of the places they lived. Al-Shati camp is not so far from Al-Mina area, but I was always made to believe that these places were way too remote.
All these thoughts came into my mind while I was going deeper into the unpaved, narrow roads of the camp; no taxis were there to pick me up and take me back home. Lines of squalid semi-houses were lying along the two sides of the roads. The biggest of them was about one hundred square meters. They looked like boxes—not shaped beautifully, nor painted, and nearly crumbling. Most of their windows were broken, allowing Gaza’s summer heat to radiate inside, and not preventing the winter’s cold and rainwater from bothering their inhabitants. A stream of water was like an anaconda halving the alley into two parts. The fetid smell was overwhelming.
Soon I saw that wretched view of sewage, which was almost going inside one of the houses. The roofs of most of them were made of meager pieces of metal or wood, which seemed to allow water to go through. If two juxtaposed houses were separated by a mere meter and a half, then the two of them were blessed enough not to hear their neighbors snoring at night. I wondered what degree of privacy any of them could have. Then I figured that privacy was the last concern for people who were so deprived of their basic needs as human beings. It seemed to me that privacy was a luxury those people did not afford. If it had not been for those rugs dangling behind or in front of the doors, I would have seen inside the houses just by walking past them.
Walking further, I came across two old men sitting under a huge old ziziphus tree, which stood there alone between a pair of houses. They were sitting on small wooden chairs. I wanted to ask them for directions, but then decided to listen to their conversation. I walked as slowly as I could.
“I swear that a cluster of grapes in our village, Yibna, was a hundred times better than ten kilos of these grapes, ya zalama—man,” said one of the men while eating some black grapes.
“Wallah—I swear to God—you’re right. May God’s mercy engulf us and take us back there before we die,” the other man said.
“Look at your white beard, old man!”
“Allah is all powerful. I’m going to see my village insha’Allah—God willing. And even if I die before then, I’ll ask Allah to give me some of its grapes in heaven.”
Their voices faded away as I proceeded further toward the western part of Gaza.
I was shocked when I soon reached the coastal road, where my family lived. I realized how close to the refugee camp my neighborhood was. For the first time, I did not feel any safer seeing the familiar faces and familiar buildings and shops. I realized then the difference between them—and us. I stopped to contemplate the houses and buildings that I was used to passing every day, without giving them a mere glance. Two-story houses. Three-story houses. Four-story houses. All with marble walls. All with glass covering huge parts of their facades. The streets in our neighborhood were wide, so wide. The shadow of seven or eight fifteen-story buildings as the sun leaned further toward the sea must have extended to engulf those abysmal rooms in the camp.
The magnificence of these constructions was not the thing that engrossed me, but it was the radical difference that existed. The thorough division between that clean, well-structured place, which is not even a hundred meters away from the camp, is the tragedy that distressed me. Dozens of well-dressed men and women were going into Aldeira Hotel, where four or five thousand dollars would be paid just to hold a wedding party with an open buffet. It was more than enough to build a new room for a refugee family. How on earth was this chasm created when only a couple of decades ago we lived almost equally?
The glorious scene of twilight indicated that the maghrib prayer would be called within a few minutes. I breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing that my father’s car was not parked outside the house. I rushed inside and went upstairs on my tiptoes, looking around and becoming nervous at any sound I heard.
“Why should I scold you every day for the same thing? I swear that your feelings are so cold, that’s if you have any sort of feelings! When are you going to grow up and be responsible?” Mama burst into her usual lectures. “Your father is not home now, but imagine, just imagine, that he saw you come home at five-thirty! This is the last time for you to come home late. Next time, I’ll tell him. And you know what’s going to happen…” she continued with the same high-pitched voice.
My dear mother has always scolded me in that same way, threatening me every time that she would tell my father. She never did; instead, she would forget the whole thing in an hour, just because I gave her a hand in washing the dishes or some other household task. I always asked her if all the mothers of the world have the same motherhood gene that makes them forget all the bad things their children did. She would only answer me by saying, “You won’t know that unless you have a baby.”
I locked myself inside the room and started flashing back to all the scenes I observed. I needed to call Hosam at that very moment.
“Could he be…?” Not daring to keep on imagining that idea, I dialed his number in order to get some relief. And while his cell phone was ringing, I told myself that if he really was from the camp, then I would definitely excuse him for not telling me where he lived.
“Did your father beat the hell out of you?” said Hosam, mockingly.
“Well, you know that I would not be here to talk to you if he had done that. Mama, as usual, saved my life,” I replied.
“‘Mama’? You’re a university student and you still say ‘mama,’” he mocked again. “It’s ummy,” he added.
It all added up now. This time his voice sounded like those of the people I had just met. “Oh my God, how didn’t I notice that before? Some of your words are like the accent of those who live in the camps.”
“What are you trying to say?” he asked. “Have you reached any new detail about my residence during your daily Googling for my identity?”
“You’re a refugee. And that’s why you kept it a secret from me. Hosam, I don’t think it’s a shameful thing for you to be a refugee. Just tell me; I’m ready to accept any reality.”
“Oh, really? Ready? Are you trying to tell me that accepting me as I am is a concession from your majesty? You, Gazan!”
“I’ve already accepted everything about you. I only want you to love who you are. Don’t conceal yourself.”
He breathed a deep sigh and started talking. “Yes, my lady. I am a refugee. I swear by every part and every tree of this camp. I swear by the sky and the air of this camp, that I’m a refugee. I live in Al-Nusseirat refugee camp….”
“Yeah, I studied that in geography. Is that near Khan Yunus and Deir Al-Balah?” I asked innocently, interrupting his touching speech.
“Are you serious? You seem to have never visited this camp. It’s past Al-Zahra City. Khan Yunus is far from here.”
He seemed totally aware of all the places of Gaza Strip, while I felt very reluctant of telling him that, only an hour ago, I was lost in Al-Shati Camp, which is only a few hundred meters away from where I live. So, it was in no way expected from a girl who had never left her immediate surroundings to recognize where exactly Al-Nusseirat camp is.
I tried to appear as calm as I could. Still, imagining the area was torture in itself. A stream of endless questions came to my mind. Would I be doomed to live in a similar place when we get married? Is Al-Nusseirat camp similar to the one I went by?
I hastened towards my computer and wrote the name of that camp on Google Earth. Several images of the place demonstrated that it was a lot better than Al-Shati Camp. “Such a fool I am…. He has never mentioned anything about marriage. Why should I believe that he’s going to be my husband?” I thought.
I dared to ask my mother if my father would accept a refugee suitor to be my husband. She whispered, “Are you dreaming? He’ll want to know the guy’s original town. He should be a Gazan.”
Thrown into despair, I headed to my room, cursing the unfair standards we had to live by.
And now, here I am. Four years later, I am another refugee’s wife. And I still reminisce about Hosam. He never ceased to be an essential part of my growing up, of my initiation from dreams to reality.
A month ago, I checked the e-mail that I had used years ago to communicate with Hosam. An unread message from him was waiting for me. It was sent two months earlier. I burst into tears upon seeing the name.
Dear Eman,
After four years of your marriage, as well as my losing you to another man, whom I hate from the depths of my heart, though I don’t even know anything about him, I could never forget you. Never could I forgive myself for losing you. I’d never expected that four years were enough for a stubborn man to establish himself.
Eman, when I decided to end our relationship, I claimed I was trying to protect you from me and from your Dad and from a harsh world. I guess I was lying. I was too ashamed and cowardly to approach him to ask for your hand. I guess, for the little I have, I felt too arrogant to feel rejected. Only now do I realize that you have been an adventure worthy of anything.
Such a foolish man I was, dear Eman, for not having the courage to knock on your father’s door in order to tell him “I want your daughter.” I thought that a Gazan driving a fifty-thousand dollar Mercedes would just kick me out of his house if I dared to ask him for his daughter’s hand. I couldn’t endure imagining that idea then. Such a fool I am. Such a fool I am.
Hosam