A Map of Absence Page 13
It seemed to me then that however small birds are they have expressions and we can understand how they feel from their appearance. Movement is a sign of happiness. I put down some seeds and water for him and at night I felt pleased because he was in a safe place. He did not move the next day either, but a few seeds were missing from the handful that I had put in the dish.
I had to wait, listening to the Israeli loudspeakers circulating with the Jeeps for three more days until they announced the lifting of the curfew. During that time Robin did not move and he did not make a sound. There was nothing to indicate that he was getting better except his closed eye, which began to open little by little, although it remained smaller than his main, healthy eye.
I asked our neighbour, the bird breeder, whether I should keep him or release him. He assured me that Robin was a wild bird and could not endure captivity if he lived in a cage inside the house and that the best thing was definitely to return him to the wild as soon as possible before he became depressed and stopped eating and drinking.
I tossed and turned for a long time in bed, lying, as I did every night, in an impromptu position, in fear of the thundering clashes during the night. I battled unsuccessfully that premature, early-morning wakefulness that embitters my day, like the punishment of prisons. For no matter how securely the windows are closed, the reverberation of the loudspeakers penetrates the walls bringing us the voice of the Israeli officer, who in his poor, grammatically incorrect Arabic, filled with linguistic errors, orders us to stay in our houses that day, or informs us of the required time we must return home in the event that the curfew is lifted for a few hours.
It was an unpleasant morning, its disquiet relieved only by my preparations for the pleasing idea of returning Robin to his original habitat, to that spot where we had walked on that radiant day.
I did not have enough time because the curfew would soon be lifted and I had to return him to his original place, then go to stand in the long queue at the bakery, and afterwards scour the few shops for some vegetables.
My friend and I went by car to the western side of the city. In my hands was the metal sieve, which covered the dish in which Robin stood. The place was not beautiful, as we had thought it last time. There was a housing development occupying its edges turning it into a pit with newly built flats multiplying in it, lined up in haphazard, random rows, with scrap metal, piles of earth and building materials in front of them.
We looked for a tree near where we had found him but were unsuccessful. We found only a small pine tree that had been accidentally left behind, far from the excavations of the building sites. We walked over the small rocks, and the snatching thorns, and homes of wild brambles, their thorns tugging at our clothes, until we reached that tree, standing at almost the highest point among the hills.
The tree did not look like a safe refuge but there was no alternative except the low thorns entwined around the rocks. Robin would surely know how to handle himself because a few days in the house would not be enough to eliminate his wild instinct. I approached the tree and placed him on one of its short branches. To my great surprise, he fell to the ground and did not hold onto the branch. I rushed to him, picked him up, and placed him on another branch of the tree. It seemed as if there was some impediment to his attachment to the place, because he was falling off the tree immediately. Perhaps he was still suffering from dizziness and loss of balance!
Nevertheless, there was no alternative. So I ran after him when he flew at a low altitude, immediately afterwards falling near a smooth rock, and I picked him up again so as to put him back on the tree branch. He restrained himself a little this time but it was not long before he lost his balance and fell once more.
There was no possibility of giving up, and time was running out. I had to return with my friend before it became dangerously late. He showed a little improvement at keeping his balance, trying to fly again each time. I could not take him back with me, and he had to hurry up and fly before he was finished off by the cats in the neighbouring residential district.
The seventh time he flew several metres horizontally then fell.
And the eighth … and after more than ten attempts, he flew.
He flew.
Not high enough, but enough to take him away from that place and towards another.
He flew! And he disappeared!
And I have not seen him again since that moment.
Not long after his departure, at the end of that spring, I was again walking in that area when I noticed something that I had always seen before but that had not entered my field of vision. One of the birds of prey was circling high above like a helicopter. Staring, searching for prey, that might be a small bird like Robin. After that I began to realise that that bird was spending his days constantly circling there above the high mountain, directly above that small tree.
A high mountain, under a blue sky looking down on hills and ancient olive trees, and mountains overlooking a captivating sea, invaded by colonising settlements advancing from the histories of ancient wars. Vines still encircle the ruins of the farmers’ stone huts of long ago, and beside the sea nestle cities, whose inhabitants have left and others have taken over, after wars that have continued for decades.
All that under one sky!
Is that why Robin flew far away and I have not seen him again since that moment?
Translated by Becki Maddock
RABA’I AL-MADHOUN
Excerpt from The Lady from Tel Aviv
My seatmate goes on talking as if we come from the same country. As if we share the same fears, the same constellations of film stars. As she recounts stories about the festival, my mind recalls televised scenes of the war – the live coverage of American attacks that sowed democracy across Iraq. The tonnes of ordnance that went into ploughing deep furrows across the burning old fields of despotism.
I let her talk and wander off in my mind to Asqalan, where her boyfriend plays basketball. Majdal Asqalan is where the protagonist of my novel is from. His whole family is from there. If he, Adel El-Bashity, could hear what she is saying, he would shout: ‘If only our conflict took place in stadiums! If only the shots fired were at goals, not on people, we would have already founded a Democratic State of Football that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, and there would be enough room for all footballers to live there in peace and harmony!’ Sometimes Adel’s optimism seems ridiculous to me, and it makes me chuckle to imagine that even football could peacefully coexist between the two sides in the foreseeable future. It would be more like El Salvador and Honduras in the 1969 World Cup qualifiers – when football led to war.
She stops talking, and I don’t want to interrupt the silence. But she turns to me though realising only now that she has gone on too long or shared too much. Coyly, she asks, ‘I’m sorry – where did you say you were from?’
The question surprises me. From the moment I sat down in my seat until the moment she asks the question, it has been bothering me. At first I am nervous, too unsettled to choose an answer. I could say, for instance, that I am Greek or Cypriot or Lebanese, or anything. I could pick any other nationality – anything but Palestinian. I am afraid someone might overhear and shout out: ‘Palestinian! This man’s a Palestinian!’ What if someone got up and made a public announcement, ‘Ladies and gentlemen: please be advised that there is a Palestinian on board!’
If this had been my seatmate’s first question, I might not have answered it. But now, after getting to know each other, I am not in a position to ignore her. Whatever apprehensions I may have, they belong to the past. Still, I decide to play dumb. ‘Where am I from? You never asked. You never asked.’
‘No, I’ve asked you twice now.’ And then wryly, she repeats it again.
‘I am Palestinian. I have British citizenship, but I am Palestinian.’
‘Aha. A Palestinian, huh?’ she says. It is as if I had tried to put one over on her, or my answer is not good enough. She plays with a strand of he
r hair. Under the faint overhead light, it has lost most of its golden sheen.
Flatly, even coldly now, she asks, ‘Are you taking a tour of Israel?’
‘No, I am visiting family in Gaza.’
‘Gaza?’ She actually gasps as she says it.
‘Yes. Gaza.’
She stops playing with her hair and turns toward the window to hide her reaction. She rests her chin on her hand and stares out. The window has now turned into a small black mirror that casts shadows over things we may think but cannot see. All around us the jet engines hum in a din so constant it sounds like nothing.
My seatmate turns away from her mirror and asks in a trembling voice: ‘Do you often visit Gaza?’
‘Not at all. This will be my first trip in thirty-eight years. The truth is that I haven’t seen my mother in that long.’
She blots upright in her seat. ‘My God! Thirty-eight years! How have you managed to stay away from your mother and family all these years? You’re not a negligent son, are you? You don’t look cruel, but … I’m sorry for your mother.’
‘The occupation is what’s cruel. Not me …’
She does not comment. I begin to rattle on as my bitterness gets the better of me, ‘I haven’t been able to go back since 1967. I was not allowed to go back.’
‘Of course, of course. I hadn’t thought of that. I am really sorry. It hadn’t occurred to me that you were unable to visit … Gaza, huh?’
‘Yes. I’m going there with my new British passport. I just got it. Without it, I couldn’t go via Tel Aviv.’
For some unknown reason, I begin to tell her my life story. She listens with interest and curiosity. She watches me without interrupting or saying a word, her head propped in the gap between our seats. She studies me as if I were spinning a fantastic yarn.
‘I was born in 1948, in Asdud. In the place you now call Ashdod. My family left during the war, went to Gaza, along with so many others from southern Palestine. We fled there and settled. I spent my childhood and youth in the camps of Khan Yunis. I was educated in Gaza all through secondary school. When I finished, I went to study at Cairo University. After graduating, I wandered the world, a refugee standing on his own two feet – though one was made of exodus without end, and the other a journey without destination. I collected my exiles one by one, I labelled them according to the numbers of years I lived in each. I watch history in our part of the world and notice that it weighs our existence on a broken scale. For every Jewish immigrant to Israel, a dozen Palestinians are driven out.’ Then I add: ‘If it seems lopsided, it’s because the scale that measures us has never been balanced.’
My seatmate takes refuge in silence. She does not put up any resistance to my last attack, which, in any case, was not one I had planned to make. Instead, she sends whatever anxiety she is feeling out into the night sky. She studies herself in the blank mirror. At the same time, her hand creeps over and gently clasps mine.
Returning from her distant musings, she twists to face me. Her fingers send warmth across my hand. ‘I hope you have no delays in seeing your mother and that you have a good time together. I hope that there can be peace between us and the Palestinians. We’re tired of the situation, all of us. The problem is not the people, it’s the politicians. Our politicians and yours. Sharon doesn’t want peace, nor does Arafat.’ As she speaks, she retracts her hand and shifts her weight onto the forearm that rests between our seats.
The extremists on your side and the extremists on ours. They always say that when they want to parse the crime and reapportion blame for the shedding of Palestinian blood. Your extremists and our extremists. Fine. I’d love to answer her with a simple quote from Mahmoud Darwish: get out. Leave our lands. Evacuate our territories and quit our sea. Get out of our wheat, our salt, our wounds. Leave the vocabulary of our memory. Then – and only then – can you take care of your extremists while we take care of ours.
I say none of this to her. What is the use of dredging up the entire Middle Eastern conflict in a fleeting meeting between two strangers sitting next to each on a flight? When I do talk, I say something else entirely: I tell her that I hope Palestinians and Israelis might leave the battlefield behind them and learn to share a life together. I hope that one day she and I might walk together a long a long road with no checkpoints between us. No assassinations and no suicide bombers, no soldiers and no militants, no Zionism and no Palestinian national liberation, no Intifadas and no settlements, no Sharons and no Arafats, no Abu Mazens and no Shaul Mofazes, no warlords, no settlers, no Apache helicopters, no F-16s and no car bombs. I hope that we could be just two regular passengers passing the night on any flight …
Translated by Elliott Colla
SELMA DABBAGH
Excerpt from Out of It
It did not take long for the newspaper to upset him. He had read the Sheikh A bin B meets Sheikh B bin A to discuss bilateral relations bit, skimmed the runaway housemaids and discontented manual labourers section, sought and found some hidden nuggets of adultery charges and rogue sexual activity and (oh joy!) he even found a piece about further evidence of lesbian activity in school bathrooms. Jibril chuckled happily. Un-Islamic behaviour tickled him to the core.
He braced himself as he turned over the page to the International Section, his eye automatically finding the news from home. The same images seemed to have been repeating themselves for years now, the perpetual cycle of violence and diplomatic grins, dead child – stone-throwing youths – exploded car – crying woman outside a demolished house – grinning leadership – dead child again. ‘The worse the loss, the more we grin,’ Jibril said, staring at a particularly despicable picture of the leaders standing on a golf course in Texas.
‘They treat their dogs better than us,’ said the young man behind the counter, gazing at the sprightly labrador at the President’s feet, ‘A dog’s life would be a blessing compared to what some of us have to live through,’ he nodded, this time to the picture of a mother crying over her dead child.
‘Where are you from?’ Jibril had been having problems reconciling the boy’s face and Arabic with his badge, ‘Hi!’ it said, ‘I am ERNESTO. Welcome to Starbright®. I am happy to serve you.’ If he had to guess, he would have said the boy was the same as he was, only brought up in Jordan, ‘Mr Ernesto?’
‘Oh no, that’s only my work name,’ the boy said turning to Jibril from the milk steamer that was hawking and spitting behind him, ‘HQ designates our names and market research has found that Spanish names are more amenable to the clientele. My true name is Abu Wazir, Salem Abu Wazir.’
‘Abu Wazir? You are from? You are from my village?’ Jibril named his village, to which the manager raised his eyebrows.
‘You know the Abu Wazirs? You know my family?’ The café was filling out. A woman with prawn skin was leaning down close to Jibril’s legs tapping over a chocolate cake with a fingernail, her cleavage a gathering of creases and sunspots.
‘Know your family? Know your family?’ Jibril exclaimed, ‘I practically am your family! I am Jibril Mujahed, the Mujaheds and the Abu Wazirs have married each other for years. Centuries in fact, since the time of the crusades.’ The boy laid out a piece of cake on a plate for his customer and looked up, bemused.
‘I’ve heard of you, uncle. You were with the Outside Leadership, were you not?’ The boy was a bit spotty. His pimples had white tips and clustered together around his nostrils. Other than that, he would be a fairly good-looking chap if he calmed down on the hair cream a bit.
‘I was with the Organisation. Yes. Not anymore though. Left it years ago. And you’re? A manager here?’
‘I manage all the airport branches. We had two outlets when I started, now we have fourteen. It’s a growth industry.’
‘A franchise, I suppose?’
‘Of course;’ the boy, Salem Abu Wazir (Abu Wazir, eh?) turned back to his staff. A queue was forming of servicemen, businessmen and backpackers. All pushed up behind Jibril to see into the counter. Jibril tho
ught of trying to recreate their village using the salt and pepper pots to show this boy where the Abu Wazir house had been compared to the Mujahed’s, but it would be difficult as the village had been built on the slopes of two hills and the houses had been like cubes stacked up the sides.
Jibril could quite clearly see and feel himself as a child in Palestine. When he was there he wore shorts and a dangly belt, always (the outfit had been frozen in a photograph). Behind him, the village was a series of blocks and arches, rough stone straddling from one building to another in semi-circles, arched windows, domes smoothed over with sand and outdoor staircases. There were days where the smell of his village would come and sit on his nose like a flirtatious djinn. He would wake from a dream and feel himself boyish, a spirit running through alleyways, over roofs, in the olive groves, leaping in the sun, a sun that was always bright but never harsh. And then at other times (it was there in him), when he had maybe drunk a bit too much, or been talking to someone who knew his village, or a similar village, he would suddenly feel like saying, ‘Yes, that place! How about it? How about we go back and see how that place is doing?’ as though he had just gone around a corner and if he were to turn back quickly enough it would be there. But it would take less time than the words took to get to his mouth for him to realise that it was absurd. He could never go back to that place, it had been sealed off to him forever, blown to the sky with explosives then flattened to the ground with bulldozers, built over with tarmac, lived on top of by other people. People of a faith he didn’t have.