A Map of Absence Page 10

  The hyena’s eyes glow, evil oozes from them. The hyena moved, its panting sounds like snorts and turning into what sounds like wails.

  He was devoured by fear and felt the fangs of terror ravaging him. He imagined the hyena would eat him without him being able to resist. The hyena advanced and lifted its tail with caution, then charged him instantly. It struck with its tail like an adder, whipping him with it.

  The man felt the whip burn his face, and the hyena’s urine flowing down his chin. The man had become a hyena, and lost consciousness. Then, the hyena walked through the tunnel with the man after it as he becomes immersed in imaginary water and called out in a dry and wounded voice: ‘Father … father … wait for me.’

  The man awoke from his sleep with panic painted on his face. His hand reached out searching and switched on the lights, bathing the room in dazzling brightness. He squinted his eyes and shook the woman sleeping next to him. The woman stirred. Disturbed by the light, she told him to switch it off as she buried her head in the blanket. He shook her violently feeling something trembling in his depths.

  She opened her eyes. As her gaze fell upon his tired features, she shook her head and said, ‘Was it the same dream?’ He buried his face between his hands and continued burying it until it appeared to her as though he were whimpering. She reached for a box of cigarettes, lighting one for him and lifting his head as she fondled his cheeks. Then she planted the cigarette between his lips.

  The cigarette quivered as the rings of smoke spread out. Their child cried in his room, so the wife got up and out of bed and walked towards the door. In the camp, their sounds were piercing, and various slogans were chanted in the area.

  The beads of sweat accumulated on your brow, and the placards appeared and the angry grimacing faces. What’s happening? And how?

  The microphone is in your hand. Your throat is sore, as though the blade of a knife were touching it. There’s an old lady chanting and chanting. What do they want? They all reject what you’re saying. Your lips move. The microphone crackles and in your head a wobbly fan rotates. You look like a factory owner confronting a strike. Your lips move. The microphone crackles, the faces are red and their blood is boiling, anger overwhelms you, it spreads like fire. There’s a confrontation. You turn around, and then suddenly, there’s a deluge.

  He anxiously stubbed out the cigarette and once again buried his face in his hands.

  ‘There must be a reckoning.’

  ‘We must crush them.’

  ‘They’re a mob.’

  He was the only honest one, that brave boy who was injured in his leg at the Cola roundabout in the May battles. He said with agitation: ‘When we raise a slogan that divides the masses, then that slogan must be untrue.’ (You couldn’t control yourself, you yelled at him, so he turned around and left).

  The wife returned and told him that she covered the child well. Then she said some other things, and then she stretched and yawned and descended into a deep sleep.

  He closed his eyes.

  The hyena began to run across the flat earth. And the hyena-man runs and pants, and occasionally he’d call as loudly as he could: ‘Wait for me ... wait for me ... father ... father ...’ His throat had become dry and he could only swallow with difficulty.

  Amidst the darkness and haze, he could see the hyena as a black heap rolling around up high. The flat ground ended, and the hyena started scaling an incline. The man climbs behind it as small rocks fall below his feet. From time to time the hyena stops briefly, but as soon as the man nears, it continues climbing.

  Finally, the hyena reaches its cave with its low door. It stands at the door. Its breath is hot, its fangs protruding. Its eyes are glowing red coals being blown by the fierce winds. The man nears as he calls with a wounded voice ‘father ... father ... wait.’ Like a spooked horse he charges towards the cave, hitting his forehead against its ceiling.

  The man awoke from his sleep screaming. He threw the blankets off himself and turned on the lights. He saw the wardrobe and his sleeping wife and the picture hanging on the wall. The child cried in the next room. His wife awoke from her sleep and rubbed her eyes, then looked at the man and gasped in horror. A line of blood was trickling down his forehead.

  Translated by Joseph R. Farag

  IBRAHIM NASRALLAH

  Excerpt from Street Olives

  All we had left was the night.

  ‘With a little daring you could say she was one of the most imposing people I ever saw in my life, and I’m not saying that just because I’m Salwa.’

  She was talking about her friend Zeinab.

  ‘She was so impressive – her simplicity, her physique and her accent, which was dotted with elements of Palestinian dialect. There was that sparkle in her eyes and her confidence that she had the right to ask difficult questions that were painful to answer, and that maybe didn’t have answers.

  ‘She used to say, “I sometimes wonder if I might have been less homesick among my own people. Sometimes I ask myself what it was that I lost there in Palestine that meant that I feel like a refugee living here, a few hours away from my homeland and my family? Sometimes I think I can go back to them, and to my childhood memories, that I can relive those memories and live other memories that I didn’t live. But I feel that something was snatched away from me there in Palestine. Could I call it my life? Could I call it a spiritual choice to be the person I wanted to be and as every cell inside me wanted?”’

  * * *

  I’m Zeinab. I look at myself now and it never occurs to me, not for a moment, that I took a wrong turn. I look at the people around me trying to draw conclusions about me, as if they were deciding my fate.

  Whenever you became part of your idea, they said you were about to go mad, but when you become that idea, you’re madness itself! Isn’t that right? It’s as if there’s a margin of safety between you and yourself and if you cross it you lose everything.

  Anyway, there I was, stuffing my belongings into a small bag, crying and laughing at the same time, though I still couldn’t see the real reason for either crying or laughing.

  And when I told Alaeddin I had to take the books he said, ‘I can’t say no to that.’

  He came into the room behind me, and when I started taking the books down off the shelf, he laughed and said, ‘We have this book at home, and this one, and this one’.

  I couldn’t believe that two libraries – one here in the Sabaa Bahrat district of Damascus and the other near Acre – could be twins in this way.

  ‘You’re joking,’ I told him.

  ‘No, I’m not joking, I swear.’

  The truth was simple but beautiful: it was just that these books were part of a widely sold series, but I saw the discovery as a good omen.

  * * *

  The local people were fretful. Alaeddin was late. Had something bad happened to him, God forbid? Had they caught him on the road? Should we send someone to look for him?

  They knew where to obtain weapons, and Hajj Abdel Hamid, an old friend of the revolution, had often fought with them. ‘Hajj, you take a rest, your age isn’t working in your favour,’ they begged him.

  And he would embarrass them, saying: ‘Admit it, you’re fed up with me. I’m now a burden on you.’

  ‘No, really. Go home, fetch your family and come, then go into town the way you want and choose whichever house you like.’

  ‘Listen, I still have some strength in me and it would be a shame to waste it somewhere else, on another mission less noble than this one.’

  But he finally admitted he was too old. That was when he was unable to pull out of a skirmish and some of the young fighters had to stay with him.

  ‘You pull back. I’ll stay,’ he said.

  ‘No way.’

  British weapons were constantly pouring into the hands of the Zionists, and it looked like the whole situation was moving in a different direction from the direction it had been moving in the long term. The battles were fiercer, even the small one
s.

  They were surrounded for a whole day and saw death roaming the hills, its dark shadow closing in on them, but they kept fighting. They felt that every bullet they fired was a part of their souls, that with every bullet death took a step towards them, since they were so short of bullets.

  * * *

  ‘You’ll be in charge of obtaining weapons for us in Damascus,’ they told him.

  * * *

  I loved him as soon as I saw him. I went out to open the gate, and that day all the doors in my heart were opened.

  ‘Say to your father, “He’s coming, and the palm tree’s coming with him!”’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The palm tree.’

  There weren’t any palm trees with him, either in front of him, behind him or on either side.

  ‘I don’t understand!’ I said.

  ‘As I said, tell the hajj, “He’s coming and the palm tree’s coming with him.”’

  Maybe he’s the palm tree, I thought. He was tall and handsome in his black suit and his red fez.

  ‘Who is it, Zeinab?’ my father said from across the courtyard as I stood hesitant at the gate.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked again.

  In confusion, I said, ‘He’s coming, and the palm tree’s coming with him.’

  ‘Let it in. Let him in quickly,’ he said impatiently.

  Then I realised what a mistake I had made when I kept him waiting there at the gate.

  My father stared at him and shouted with joy like a child: ‘Alaeddin? My God, now you’re a man.’

  * * *

  ‘Where’s Zeinab in this?’ Salwa shouted in Abdel Rahman’s face.

  ‘Where is she?’ she added, tapping the manuscript with her fist.

  ‘All I can see here is her ghost. We all turned into ghosts when you wrote about us. We were human beings. Do you know what it means to be human beings? Of flesh and blood and soul?’

  * * *

  We had spent long nights together, me and Zeinab, enough for us to go over our stories thousands of times. We didn’t really have anything but those nights.

  * * *

  Abdel Hamid told me later that he had a special affection for this young man because he was the smartest little devil he’d seen in his life and had shown exceptional daring when he had managed to smuggle two pistols and a bomb to the revolutionaries in Acre jail, which enabled them to escape after they threatened the guards with them. That was Alaeddin, Zeinab.

  ‘And I loved him more,’ Zeinab told me. ‘And I would have loved him even more if Palestine hadn’t turned into a piece of meat, chewed over by everyone who had teeth, as is happening now. Palestine used to be an intrinsic part of people’s honour. You know what, Salwa? Mankind has been given long enough to prove it has a conscience on the question of Palestine, but unfortunately so far it’s proved that it doesn’t have a conscience.

  ‘As for me, I’ve kept wondering whether I really loved him or whether I was answering a mysterious call from that country that he comes from. At the time no one thought twice when they heard the call – “Your brothers are on such-and-such hill, surrounded and seeking help,” for example. People would throw down whatever they were holding and set off without looking back. The call for freedom was stronger than the call for bread, more beautiful than children, wives, jobs or the warmth of home.’

  * * *

  ‘Is there anything else you want to take with you, Alaeddin?’ my father asked.

  Alaeddin didn’t know what to say. He always took his time.

  ‘We can get the guns ready tomorrow or the day after. I also want to see your city,’ he said.

  And yet he wouldn’t leave our house!

  ‘How can you see our city when you’re stuck between four walls? You’ve left it too late. You have to get ready to go back tomorrow,’ said Abdel Hamid.

  ‘But, uncle, I haven’t seen it yet.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll see it often.’

  Alaeddin didn’t have anything else to say.

  ‘Zeinab,’ said Abdel Hamid.

  ‘Yes, father.’

  ‘Get ready to go with Alaeddin tomorrow, and tonight we’ll sign the engagement agreement.’

  ‘Father!’ I jumped for joy.

  ‘I’m your guardian too and I can marry you off too, at my whim!’ he said to Alaeddin.

  ‘Uncle!’

  ‘Try another one. We knew those tricks before you were born. Have you forgotten that I was a young man too once?’ said Abdel Hamid.

  * * *

  I cried when I said goodbye to my mother, my father and my sisters. I didn’t know why I cried. Was it because I was happy to be going with him, or because I was happy I would finally see Palestine – a country I had never thought was far enough away for me to say that going there meant being apart from my family.

  ‘My mother called me Alaeddin because she loved the stories about him in the Thousand and One Nights,’ he told me on the way.

  * * *

  ‘They completely ignored their anxieties. When they saw me with him they forgot they had sent him to fetch guns, and the whole town gathered around me.’

  ‘Alaeddin, what’s the story?’ they asked him.

  ‘She’s my wife,’ he said, pointing at me.

  There was a stunned silence.

  ‘Zeinab, Hajj Abdel Hamid’s daughter,’ he added.

  ‘Hajj Abdel Hamid’s daughter!’ they said.

  I hadn’t realised till then how much they respected my father. Dozens of people jostled to kiss me, incessantly and incredulously. ‘Hajj Abdel Hamid’s daughter, welcome!’ they intoned.

  I’ve never been as loved as I was at that moment. Even Alaeddin’s love didn’t compare with that love. I thought that meeting him was the most beautiful moment in my life. No, it was the most beautiful moment in my life until Ayman appeared in the world. Then I looked back and saw all my time there and whispered in Ayman’s ear: ‘You’re my hope.’ Ayman that I almost lost on that fateful night when I crawled across the terrain looking for Alaeddin.

  * * *

  At sunset that day Alaeddin’s horse turned up, alone and sad. It lingered at the door before neighing. It stamped on the evening with its hoofs and fretted.

  I knew what it meant: it was the only creature that dared bring me the news. It kept neighing and crying in anguish until I climbed on its back.

  ‘Where to, Zeinab?’

  Two streams of tears on the horse’s face, and two more on Zeinab’s face.

  It galloped and galloped into the darkness in front of it, away from the darkness behind it. And suddenly it stopped.

  ‘Who goes there?’ I heard the men shouting, and dismounted.

  ‘It’s Zeinab.’

  ‘What brings you here?’

  They were angry.

  ‘Where’s Alaeddin?’ I asked.

  They didn’t say anything.

  For three days the country had been following the battle of the bridge. Sometimes the local men would win it back, sometimes the Stern Gang would hold it. Neither side wanted to destroy it because they both had an interest in leaving it standing.

  After three days the bridge stood in the middle, not in the hands of this side or that side. The local Palestinians had been forced to retreat and had left Alaeddin under the bridge.

  ‘I’ll fetch him,’ I told them.

  ‘What are you talking about? If we make any movement tonight, they could easily hear it on the other side. That’s why they’re watching him. Wait till the morning and you’ll see with your own eyes. If we could get to him we wouldn’t have left him there.’

  They never forgot that I was Hajj Abdel Hamid’s daughter. When they were talking with me, I felt they were talking with him, because there was part of him in me.

  ‘The horse gave us the slip. It set off in that direction at a gallop,’ one of them said.

  ‘Suddenly the gates of hell opened and bullets lit up the hills. Shells exploded, with flashes of fire in the black of the nig
ht. Then the silhouette of a prancing horse emerged from the darkness. And then we saw the horse going back.’

  ‘Did it reach him?’ I asked.

  ‘We don’t know, but the horse looked even more agitated when it came past us and disappeared into the night behind us.’

  * * *

  Under a sad sun, between two hills of burnt rock, naked to the barrels of the rifles, stood the bridge.

  Zeinab stayed far back, behind the hill, and stayed there in silence with the horse until night fell again. Then she took the horse by the halter, tied it to a bramble bush and sneaked forward alone.

  She felt around on the ground for a long time, looking for his body, looking for his face, for the eyes through which he had looked at her, for his hands.

  Suddenly she found him right in front of her, just a dead body.

  ‘I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. They would have killed him again and I was stunned, as if I’d never seen death in battle before. I started dragging his body away from the bridge but then the gates of hell opened up over my head.

  ‘I had to scream, and I started to scream, not out of fear but because I wanted to scream. The bullets died down and I calmed down. I was surprised to find myself lying on top of his body, protecting him from the bullets – the bullets that will keep echoing in my ears for the rest of my life.

  ‘Then I went back to dragging him until we reached the bush. I put him on his horse and brought him back. The sun was rising, so far behind me that I thought it would never reach me. I thought it would never reach the middle of the sky. And when they set about taking him down off the horse, I was in another world. But something inside me brought me to my senses again and I screamed and cried as if he had been killed a second time.

  ‘One of his hands had been cut off at the wrist, and now it was missing.’

  * * *

  ‘We’re going to bury him,’ one of them said.

  ‘No,’ I shouted. ‘We’re not going to bury him till I find his hand. I’m not going to bury him.’

  ‘Be reasonable, Zeinab.’

  ‘I won’t bury him,’ I said.

  I fainted close to him, and when I came round I found my hands gripping his arm.