One Night in the Dark

Illustration by: Bissan Rafe Alhussien (Qasrawi)

I always believed to write is to “make less the dept of grief.” But it’s been long since I wrote down anything, and indeed I spent long and hard time attempting to convince myself that this latest recurring experience of mine isn’t any different and, like many other episodes in my life, can be recorded well.

There is no phrase in regard to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that I hate as much as that of “the suffering of both peoples”, “the fear both peoples have to go through”, “the trauma both peoples experience” and the like, usually made in places like the U.N. general assembly’s podiums, the International Court’s or even in the White House. Not that I care whether those neatly-suited, shiny-black-shoed politicians are neutral or one-sided— meaning pro-Israel because there are definitely no such politicians who are on the side of the Palestinians—  or whether they have the sort of genuine interest needed to solve this seemingly insoluble conflict. But considering the fact that I sometimes tend to be a little bit selfish, I hate that my personal suffering, let alone the suffering of 1.6 million Palestinians living in Gaza, be seriously sabotaged by such phrases once analogized, and hence diminished, to the state of fear felt by a few Israelis in the aftermath of firing often-homemade missiles onto Israel, occasionally not mistaking their target and falling into a huge deserted land in Israel and, once fallen, absolutely resulting in no casualties whatsoever except on very rare occasions.

However, the other day I was sitting in the heart of my pitch dark room, immersed in sweat and hemmed in by the wild hems of a few frenzied generators drifting through space and time and forcing their way into my head to crowd themselves into some little unengaged space of my racked brains meant to absorb the words neatly seated before my eyes onto the pages of The Diary of Anne Frank. I wiped sweat off my brows and continued reading. The unnerving hems of the generators swarmed into my brain like the throngs of mostly pale-faced short-tempered passengers with whom I was packed the other day in some little stuffy room, some puffing on their cigarettes, some fanning themselves with their official documents, all of us, however, waiting for our names to be called out to get a stamped ticket. Not that we were crossing into Egypt on that day but rather we were trying to ensure that, at least two months from that date, the time when our travelling has been scheduled, when we  go to travel through the Rafah crossing, we won’t be turned back, having already reserved a place to travel two months in advance. Anyway, my pains paid off, and I got my ticket. That experience is past.

In my room, meanwhile, I was engaged in my life-time struggle against the unforgiving oppression I had always failed to familiarize myself with. I was being normally punished for a misdemeanor I have never committed in the first place.

It seemed then all the suffering in the world combined into one I was bound to endure. I was the center of the world’s unfortunate beings. The Wretched of the Earth. I was a starving child in Somalia, a Syrian demonstrator shot in the neck in the streets of Hama, a pregnant mother dying at a checkpoint in Palestine, a besieged Palestinian schoolboy in Gaza helplessly sinking into the depths of despair. “But I can’t be that selfish,” I would think, “here is a guiltless Anne Frank in a wardrobe hiding from her imminent death at the hands of a Nazi officer. And she wouldn’t complain!”

But while Anna hid in her wardrobe, and Iona confided in his mare, I had neither a wardrobe nor a mare. Darkness is the only place where one can hide from the dark. I had nowhere to hide, and I had no one “to whom I can tell my grief”.

I always told myself, “had it not been for these eight cursed hours when power was cut off, I would have never complained.” But now my wrath had grown so immense to be curbed. My chest is now brimming with pent-up ages-old anger the causes for which, unlike their united implications on me, vary disparagingly. I was stifled. I was half-way through my desperate endeavors to stop myself from cursing the place where I have grown and become a man whose tongue can strikingly respond to the most abominable of curses— having already learned them in the aisles of the camp and furnished myself with a remarkable arsenal of phrases and swear words.

I picked up the candle and looked at the clock as it ticked time away. 10:15 pm. I guessed, “I still have two more hours ahead before the power is turned back on,”

I had to think of some way to while away these two hours. “I can do anything but leave myself to my besetting thoughts,” I murmured trying to break the had-it-not-been-for-the-generators silence. I knew if I did, I would be eventually be left with nothing but a pathetic state of gloom and hopelessness. I couldn’t afford a new strike of despair; it would take me ages to recover from it. Not even the beautifully resuscitating spectacle of our neon bulbs flickering back into life would relieve me this time.

I wanted to escape this gruesomely fiendish place. I was exhausted. My breaths grew fast and short. Sweat started to flood down my body. I didn’t want to think anymore. I desperately attempted to shut the omnipresent scene of the dark out of my mind. One more moment contemplation of the flowing endless succession of the generators’ revs would cast me straight into an abysmal void where all I could do then is but scream at the top of my lungs.

Putting out the candlelight, I groped my way through the dark as fast as my feet could carry me, straight and out of the room, rushing down the stairs until I was out in the street. I leaned against a wall, drew a deep breath, and uttered a vile curse.

In a display of utter disregard to the generators all around me, I walked on and on curiously exploring the street lamps and flashing car lights. My thoughts immediately wandered to the several “foreigners” I had met and their naive remarks  on living in Gaza. I thought wryly, “They don’t know a god damn thing about living in Gaza! Gaza is such an awful place to live in!”

No sooner had this thought crossed my mind than I ducked at the sound of a missile being fired from a neighboring area. I instantly cursed. I needed to get back home as quickly as I could, for I had no doubt what would follow. And in no time, possibly before the fired missile had even reached its target, a deafeningly F-16 bomb hit the area and shook the ground from below my feet. My heart skipped a beat; I cursed and longed for home.

Back home, still teetering on the edge of despair, I lied on my bed, and, indifferent to the dark, the generators’ noise, the clock’s ticking and the Apache’s hovering, I kept on cursing knowing that somehow I would eventually fall asleep and that this misery of mine will come to an end. Somehow.

My friend has a story…

"Montasiba al Qama" by Samih al Qasim; Photo by Salman al-Msjen

This isn’t my story. But it could have been, and it can be the story of any young Palestinian living in this small besieged part of the world. Only that it bears much more painful profundity being the story of that particular man who chose to be nicknamed “Awsaj”—the Arabic equivalent for Lycium which is “a thorny shrub bearing red berries, some kinds of which are used for hedging.”

Awsaj is my new friend whom I met only twice, the first meeting lasting for no more than a quarter of an hour at a mutual friend’s, and the second born out  of my initiative to venture out southward to the far eastern areas of Khan Yunis near “the green line.” He is an intelligent human being. Young, enthusiastic, and bright. Awsaj embraces such a variety of contradictions which, though can be seen almost everywhere in Gaza, would make this man’s description but a figment of an eccentric writer’s imagination. To be painstakingly interested in perfumes, to hold a degree in IT, and to voraciously read such a fussy amalgam of Jubran Khalil Jibran, Edward Said, and Karl Marx, these are all signs of a human being with a specially sophisticated interest. However, to work, besides this, as a farmer absolutely adds up to your  unparalleled elegance.

We arrived at Awsaj’s farmland where, in a farmer-like style, he was diligently plowing the land with a shovel, and as we hailed him from a distance, he looked up, waved back to us, and wiping the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, he placed the shovel aside with the other, and walked in our direction to welcome us. “He can’t be a famer, he’s trying to look like one,” I said to myself.

As soon as he was chopping small pieces of wood and adding them to the small fire he had just started to make us some black coffee, I had already had considerable admiration for Awsaj and started feeling jealous of his exhaustive knowledge, his avidity for reading, his ardent passionate talk and angry criticism of almost everything. We shared several subjects of our criticisms together. We were particularly sarcastic of “our” buffoon politicians. He was unorthodoxly harshly critical of parents as fosterers of hypocrisy, mental impotency, personal insecurity. Though at some point,  a fiery debate erupted between us over his undue criticism of how people’s relationships are no more governed by affection, care and  mutual respect for the other, but rather largely dominated by private interests where, in the normal state of affairs, it should be presumed that hate is pre-existing to any human communication, our personalities were explicitly largely drawn to each other, and Awsaj could make such a favorable impression on all of us.

To be equipped with a critical mindset and insatiable desire to learn and read is enough, at least in my and my two mates’ eyes, to make you worth being held in high esteem by your interlocutors. But that’s no that case. To have these things, however—or to pretend that you do—and display in addition some interest in Israel-Palestinian conflict, to always talk of peace as the solution—as though peace were not an impasse in itself—to ending this conflict, to have also the Kuffiyeh worn over your head from time to time, and to stress to your interlocutors the fact that you run a blog, never mind how less frequent you update it or the sort of stuff you have on there, you are then the very guy who is likely to be indentified as a peace (and potential human rights?) champion by roughly everyone working in the field here, particularly by a bunch of foreign journalists with whom you engage in seldom profound, political discussions and who you might win over, but by no means can your knowledge about Palestine, Israel and politics match theirs.

Awsaj is of the first kind. There is still something much more characteristically appealing about him, i.e.,  (what he boastfully dubbed) his wide-ranging experience and “history of struggle”, and out of this history, there is one specific experience which Awsaj found himself narrating to his guests and, upon listening to, we agreed it must be uniquely underlying to this man’s personality, and which I insisted it would not go unrecorded.

Almost every Palestinian must have been in direct contact with Israelis, and by “Israelis” I mean Israel’s atrocities; and every Palestinian, therefore, must have been a direct victim of Israeli crimes—there is no such thing as indirect victim within the context of Israeli-Palestinian conflict being essentially a conflict between a state (i.e. Israel), on the one hand, and individuals (i.e. Palestinians) on the other. So it’s no big deal when I am told this man had spent twenty years in Israeli prisons, or that little boy’s parents were killed during Israel’s last offensive against Gaza and so on…

The weighty significance of Awsaj’s experience, I believe, resides in the fact that, it encloses within its narrative several Israeli actualities. Whereas most of the endless Palestinian encounters with Israel lose an extremely large share of their actual significance once the real encounter is over and is narrated time and again as a past experience, Awsaj’s experience seemed to have acquired validity and renewed reality each time he narrated it since, during his narrative, Israel would borrow such a physical existence that it was no more an abstract but became embodied in the Israeli soldier, the Israeli jeep, and the female officer’s broken Arabic phrases, the Bedouin  collaborator, the scars across my friend’s back…The reason? It definitely lies somewhere around Awsaj’s human passion and dramatic eloquence.

The sun having sunk, we headed toward our friend’s home, having already chatted for what seemed to be ages. Straight backed, we walked and chatted, leaving behind neatly-queued, graceful thyme saplings, four scattered coffee-soiled plastic cups, and several untold stories.

A scenario that didn’t happen: Jawaher Abu Rahma

The tragic death of the Palestinian protester Jawaher Abu Rahma in Bil’in grieved all of us very deeply as we sat helpless leafing through the news that reported the story of her sad death. That, in fact, was not an extraordinary incident to me, but rather a new episode in the long series of the Palestinians’ embodiment of the essence of what a sacrifice means. As one sleeps, another wakes up. As one dies, a whole generation is born.

(The sun is about to set behind the horizon; the trees stand on the two sides of the gritty road; nothing is heard in the background but the demonstrators marching amongst whom is Jawaher, her heart beating really hard. The demonstrators carry the Palestine flags, red flags, and yellow ones. Some are busy taking photos. A sudden stream of thoughts invades Jawaher’s mind as few Israeli soldiers into the distance come within her range of vision.)

“Here we go,” Jawaher says to herself, still marching ahead. “here is 1, 2…3” Jawaher turns her head a little bit to the right, “4, 5, hmm” and as a new soldier, his gun diagonally overturned across his chest, comes into view from behind a hill (supposedly there is one) she continues “and here is 6” Jawaher lowers her head to the ground as she marches ahead.

(The protesters start whispering to each other, some hastening their steps to catch up with others and pointing with their hands in different directions. A middle-aged protester with shabby hair, putting on sun glasses, and grotesquely wearing green stroked Bermudas hastens his steps so that he becomes by the side of Jawaher, and pointing with his eyes straight ahead slightly to the left.)

“There are another two,” he says to Jawaher intermittently.

(Only then a whole troop of soldiers appear from behind the hill. Barely visible, four soldiers in the lead followed by a dozen behind them who show up gradually in pairs, all helmeted and carrying their guns haughtily.)

On Page “184″

Sweet. Provoking. Sometimes the two attributes reconcilably fuse together into one where I stand unguarded against the impulsive temptations for cursing the holiness of the vacancy of the place. Around the bend I stood, waiting for a cap so as to escape the impervious darkness of our house except on rare occasions when the feeble beam of a candlelight can reach and dimly lit a tiny spot here or there, blown by the maddeningly raving winds of mid December, my growing wrath which had now cumulated itself in my chest which was already brimming with pent-up ages-old anger the causes for which, unlike their united implications on me, vary disparagingly, stifled; and engaged in my desperate endeavors to stop myself from cursing the place where I have grown and become a man whose tongue can strikingly respond to the most abominable of curses having learned in the aisles of the camp and furnished myself with a remarkable arsenal of phrases and swear words accompanied with the most influential way, pitch and facial expressions of communicating them to my opponent (once he dares to set himself up as one) sharply and in a matter of a few seconds in order to leave him perplexed and wordless. I sank my hands into my pretty warmer pockets, and furtively searched the place with my looks for any sign of a coming light. In vain.

I thought how warmer it would have been had I said “No” to my friend’s invitation to go out for a walk, only to be struck with the charm and loveliness of the scene of our home when I left it. My father would be reading all alone now, having the whole light of the candle, the whole small-sized wooden table with its four dwarfish legs he made with his bare hands and which we used for reading, the whole cup of coffee,  and all the time in the world, only for himself, without me who would usually share him and bask in such pleasures, the flavor of which is still distinct to me. “I should have stayed.” I thought.

Me and My Israeli Cousin

In the early 1980s my father was illegally crossing the borders as he stamped his passport with forged seals of the countries he wished to visit, from Libya to Syria, from Syria to Amman, from Amman to Yemen, and from Yemen to Saudi Arabia, and there he settled for 16 years, though he did not remain in one place for long and carried on his habit, moving from Al-Riyadh to Jidda, and from Jidda to Tabook— where I was born, and lastly coming back home. His brother, meanwhile, had already settled himself in a land far more handsome and graceful, mild and sunny, all along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea than the baking wilderness of the Arabian Peninsula. He had already gained a wide reputation that recommended him the best T.V. technician in the Galilee. By then, he had his own shop, and diligently worked so as to preserve his place in that heaven; he feared nothing as the prospect of going back to a flaming Gaza. I care not how low, inconsiderate, and void of principles this man might be regarded, nor do I care how discreet and realistic his attitude toward life was. He married an Arab-Israeli girl of fifteen from Kofor Kana, who as she crossed our doorstep in Beit Lahya thirteen years ago had already brought him three sons and two daughters, who added up to the overall lot of the loosely connected extended family to which I belong.

That was the sole time I met my uncle’s family, and I hadn’t a clue I ever had an uncle from Israel! I was nine years in those days. “Israel” was something completely unlike the “Israel” I know, hear, meet and think of at the present. All I knew about Israelis— or “Jews” for I used the two words synonymously back then, and they are still thus used amongst the Palestinians, especially little children like me at that time who knew nothing of the huge disparity between the two terms, grannies, and illiterate people; all I knew about “Israel” is that they were the most hated enemy to me, the worst enemy I could ever think of.

Peering Through the Fence

Holding their green passports in their hands, people were hustling there and back while, making weird gestures on their faces, others were nervously shouting over their phones. From afar, a baby was crying out load as his mother, lulling him, patted him on the back so as to hush him. She restlessly trotted to an officer in a blue uniform seated on a chair at the gate. The wretched mother talked to the officer who politely replied to her making signs which I construed as I-can-not-help-you. She pleaded with him, and he repeated the same gestures. The officer was a good man, and it seemed he really couldn’t help her. On the right side of the road leading to the gateway, two cafes crowded with customers who were none other than the very passengers who had gathered in one of these two cafés so as to protect themselves from the burning sun of July in this morning. The customers, or the passengers, were having breakfast. Some were drinking coffee and puffing at their cigarettes. Others were clutching their hookah hoses as they waited for their names to be called out. There was no space left to me inside the café, and I had to wait outside, just behind the fence.

I wasn’t a passenger, however. And I didn’t wait for my name to be called out. I waited for my brother who had been away from home for three years and a half and would be home in a little while. My brother studies medicine at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. He decided to pay his family in Gaza a short visit, one month at the utmost; for, as he said, he couldn’t tolerate staying away from home anymore.

However, it was immensely distressing just to think of visiting the Rafah Crossing at that time: at a time when those who were strictly stifled for four long years were eventually granted a tiny vent hole by their neighboring merciful Egyptian authorities to take a short breath before they are stifled again. Every one wanted to breathe, and for that reason, the two cafes on the right side of the gateway were packed with passengers for the first time in ages unknowingly stifling each other with their breath and smoking. In all cases, it wasn’t my choice, and it was just improper to be enjoying a good sleep at the very moment my brother would be going through all sorts of humiliating suffering since he would be crossing into Gaza with an expired passport, not to mention an expired residency card. What one can do? He couldn’t tolerate it anymore…

Al-Sammuni

Al-Sammuni

Some of Al-Sammuni survivors carrying the dead bodies of their children

It all started on January, 5th 2009, around two in the morning, the eighth day of a ferocious war the ‘Israeli Defense Forces’ waged against heavy-populated Gaza strip of more than one and a half million Palestinians packed in three-hundred-and-sixty square kilometers of the coastal area, south-east of Palestine— now, known as ‘The Palestinian Territories’— and it claimed the lives of more than fourteen hundreds of civilian residents. This was but another brutal episode in the long series of a well-performed twenty-two episodes of a tragic, really tragic, play spitefully called ‘Operation Cast Lead’. Its heroes, or anti-heroes in a time when utter confusion prevailed, are the Palestinian children, women, elderly people, and resistance members while its anti-heroes are three: two men and a woman; they nodded the tragedy in the first place and then nodded off, not even questioned in the least.

We headed toward Al-Zaitoon Camp, east of the Gaza Strip to listen to Helmi Al-Sammuni, twenty-seven narrating what apparently has turned out to be nothing but a sad story to be recalled with all its minute details each time some foreigner or Arab journalist, seeking some word-press or other world-wide award, comes over to take pictures at one of the richest areas across the region in terms of photography. This sad story we also, not so differently, came to refresh in the memory of a bereaved Helmi who, in the wake of this tragedy, lost his father, his mother, his wife, and his only five-month-old son.

We arrived. It was around three in the afternoon of an unexpectedly-hot sunny day of February 14th. Helmi, alongside with Abu Taleb, forty-four, was working on a new small tent to erect right opposite what he described as ‘the crime scene’. “This spot is where twenty-nine of my relatives were killed, the same day, the same hour, the same spot,” said Helmi in a journalist-like style, pointing at an approximately twenty-square-meter open piece of land.

Will I Ever Get Out

Will I Ever Get Out
by: Nour Al Sousi
translated by: Mohammed Rabah Suliman

And now, caught, here I am. The battery indicator of my cell phone refers to a half-empty battery. Hopeless is my case, for the network will never respond to my persistent attempts to call one of them.

This very cell phone was my gift for passing my secondary school with excellence: it was my father’s way of expressing his overwhelming joyfulness on that day. And I do remember when he reminded me of my future dream as he said: “Oh, at last! I’ll see you that doctor I always dreamed of, Said. At last, I’ll do”

I was, then, expected to pursue my university studies abroad, but it seemed that fate wanted it another way. The mere idea of me leaving this country and never coming back again was out of question for my parents. They wanted me to stay. And I, therefore, had no choice but to join the Faculty of Medicine here, in Gaza. To tell the truth, it was not bad as I had expected. Not at all. All that which had muddled our life and made it intolerable, then, was nothing other than those regular power failures, the food price crisis, the continuing closure of the borders that kept my uncle from traveling abroad, and the transportation crisis. Only this and nothing more.

Oh, how happy those days seem to be when compared to these days!

Never mind, it won’t take longer than one hour.

A year has passed. Our home has been shelled. Most of our home hasn’t been damaged; one room has. My father happened to be inside that room.

A year has passed, and I still keep myself away from that room. Since then, I feel myself as if I can smell it.

Even here— in my confined room— I smell it. I smell burnt meat!

My agony was great, greater than to be relieved in tears. And, I didn’t cry over the death of my father.

All of a sudden, I have become the sole provider for my family. It wasn’t necessary to go on looking of some work here or there, for I had been doing so for long until somebody hissed in my ears: “come and work with me, Said, you’ll never find a better job than working in digging up the tunnels!”

A low-battery indicator never stops irking me.

Raising her blessed hands in prayer, my mother prayed for me. She prayed for me not knowing what sort of work I was doing. After all, she couldn’t tolerate the view of her children going to bed with empty stomachs. She could not.

We have begun digging. And so have the sands begun falling from the sky— from the dark sky of the dark tunnel. Although masked as I am, the sands could feel their way through the mask into my mouth, and drinking some water has worsened the situation. My mates laughed, unmasked: “You’ll get used to this, soon.”

I got my mind off them. I mused over the sea where I used to spend most of my time diving— this was one of my hobbies— one cold drop of sweat awakened me; it tore its way down on my back. Even this little drop was contaminated with the sands.

My cell phone is moaning. It stands rebellious, and dies, rebellious.

I am just wondering for how much time I have been stuck here in the bosom of this tunnel. My mates have gone out and left me alone. My mother’s prayers have done me no good. The tunnel collapsed over the gate before I could make it out.

They will come to save me out of here, for sure.

I feel the bitter cold piercing at my bones. And I feel the warmth of the earth from under my feet as though it were batting me to sleep. In the horizon, there seems to be a light coming. From far. I feel as if I will touch it.

A hymn. I can hear a hymn now. My mother’s prayer. My sister’s empty-stomach. The smell of burned meat. And the flavour of the sea water.

A Catastrophic We-Shall-Return

A Catastrophic We-Shall-Return

Abu Ibrahim dragged his feet along as his weak body struggled with the heavy luggage upon his shoulders. His body staggered and his feet tirelessly tried to carry him as far as they could, and though they failed to keep his body stable, he didn’t fall. Abu Ibrahim wasn’t alone, however, for he had a long line of followers; they were his family. He was accompanied by his two wives and a dozen of children aged from five to twenty-two years. Abu Ibrahim was leaving, but he didn’t know where he was going. There were thousands of people around him, and everybody was doing the same. Everybody was leaving. And all of them didn’t know where they were going. There was Abu Ahmed with his two married sons walking on either side of him, another two unmarried, his wife, and four daughters, followed by a line no lesser than that which was following Abu Ibrahim. They were leaving, too. There was Abu Naser and his kin who made some twenty people in number following him in one line. Restless with the load they had to carry, all of them were leaving. To where, they didn’t know.

Amidst the growing thick of dust that rose from the shuffling feet of the leavers and which strove to keep their owners standing upright, nothing audible thereabout but the chaotic sounds of the shoes scrapped with the rough rocky sands and each once in a while mistakenly kicking a stone, dozens and dozens of people were roaming around, all of them stooping down with the burden on their shoulders and backs; and, not knowing where they were going, they walked and walked on. The only thing they knew it was a black day, for someone had come and made them leave their homes, farms and olive trees, and as they said “No”, a gun was pointed at their faces to make them leave, so they left in the hope that they will come back again.

It was the Nakba. The sun had just fallen when Abu Ibrahim, Abu Ahmed, and Abu Naser gathered around a small fire where their families, discussing their hazy destiny and gusted with the gentle breeze of a summer night, sat peacefully under the wide starry sky everywhere they looked above. The chaotic trudging had vanished as the sun fell. It was replaced with the dreadful sound of silence. It wasn’t silence, in fact; for the fire crackled, and the wind occasionally whistled: the wind which, as it blew, the crackling of the fire grew more dreadful, and the laughs of the little children who, as their mother tickled their ambits, squirming, forced a laugh out of their chests. Abu Ibrahim aptly struck a conversation with a deep sight that might have been confused with a moan of an Arabian mare, alone in the bosom of night, crying over the sudden death of her little steed. Indeed, it was a moan of a prideful Arab, whose father had taught him how to be as proud as the sun even before he could write down his own name, and whose pride had but been scratched—for it was still scratched back then.

“Be’een Allah ya Abu Ibrahim” – God’s gonna help us, Abu Ibrahim – that was Abu Naser immediate reply to his neighbour’s distressed sigh as he aimlessly drew circles in the sand before silence fell again.

“God will help us,” there came the voice of Abu Ahmed who skillfully tickled his rosary. “I think the Arabs and Egyptian government won’t keep silent,” he said. “they will do something to get us back to our homes.”

“Yes,” his counterpart nodded approvingly.

“And don’t forget there are our brothers: the Saudis,” Abu Ahmed, noticing the approving nods of Abu Naser, and meeting his boosting looks, gradually raised his tone as he went on, ” and the Kuwaitis, and the Jordanians, the Lybians, and the Iraqis, and the Algerians and all our Arab brothers. All of them will rush to our help and fight these brutes out of our country”

“Yes, they will!” plucking up his courage and feeling the enthusiasm of his neighbour’s tone, Abu Naser ceased nodding only to take part in this passionate speech. “Theeey will crush these animals and kick them ouuut of here!”

While Abu Naser delivered his portion of this powerful, morale-boosting, and confident speech, Abu Ahmed, all out of a sudden, looked sullen again as though he had changed his mind of the Arabs within this very short period of time. The case being so, he, to Abu Naser’s disappointment (or was it to his embarrassment) didn’t say anything when he should have said as Abu Naser, losing his breath, made a pause. He waited and waited, but Abu Ahmed said nothing.

It all ended here, and silence reined the fire-lighted session again.

After this brief break of silence, Abu Ahmed started again, however this time, in a voice so calm, low, and hesitant, his looks fixed on the scribbles his straw drew in the sands and never meeting the others’, “Yes, maybe they will, but we don’t know how much that is gonna take,” he looked as though he talked to himself rather to his fellows, “it might take one week, two, one month, two months, and even half a year, who knows?”

“Fal Allah wala falak ya zalame,” – God forbid – Suddenly, Abu Ibrahim spoke out. “what are you saying? Half a year? Do you think we’ll stay in these tents for half a year? No, no, no I don’t think so,” Abu Ibrahim continued, widening his eyes in furious amazement as he spoke.

At this moment, both Abu Naser and Abu Ahmed wanted to say something. They exchanged looks for a while as each of them waited the other to say what they wanted to say. Each opened his mouth, started, hesitated, paused, and, at the end—both— remained silent. No one spoke up. No one had enough courage to say what they realised it would later be a matter of fact: to tell Abu Ibrahim—or rather to remind him— that it might take a little while longer than half a year before they could return to their homes, lands, farms, and olive trees. And it all ended here.

Meanwhile, settling a head-chopped pottery jug of water on her right hand which rested over her shoulder and slanted towards behind her head, Um Ibrahim in her popular embroidered black dress, decorated with raised intense red pattern, her child, bare-footed, hurrying after her, came up jogging to her husband, and said: “Ayzeen Amalko Shay” – do you wanna drink some tea? –

“Yes, make some tea, why not?” Abu Ibrahim replied. He had now joined up with his two neighbours drawing circles in the sand.

The three men kept quiet as they carried on their relieving activity. It was relieving, indeed, for the straws, tightly pressed in the farmers’ fists, had now been fully implanted in the sands. It must have relieved them to implant a straw in the sands. Only then, Abu Ibrahim felt his growing uneasiness as silence extended before him, and, feeling inclined to break this silence, he started hymning: “Rajeen ya blade” – We shall return, Home – only to be joined by Abu Ahmed who sang along with Ibrahim in a slightly higher tone.

The song was perfect, and the rhythm was astonishingly fine as both men sang keeping the same rhythm and the same tone, and, Abu Naser, feeling the rising passionate tone of this song, couldn’t help but raise his voice and take part, singing.

“We shall return, Home, we shall return, one day,”

Now, it being all three of them singing, the song went awkwardly. No harmony maintained just as everyone sang on his own; and, each willing to maintain his own rhythm and dominate over the other’s, it looked as though each was cutting in the other rather than singing together.

“Oh w badeen ya jama’a” – Ok what then? – Abu Ibrahim started angrily. “Are you gonna keep bleating like this?”

“Ok, let’s start all over again,” Abu Ahmed replied.

“Mashi” Abu Naser said.

“One rhythm, one tone, don’t forget” Abu Ibrahim reminded them. “Wahad tneeeeen talata” – one, two, threee –

“Rajeenlek ya bladee, rajeenlek rajeen” they started altogether, keeping the same rhythm and the same tone they had wished for.

Hardly had a few moments passed when Abu Ibrahim was indignantly rebuking his two neighbours for failing again to sing in harmony.

“Let’s try again,” he said.

The three men carried on their efforts trying to sing in harmony, but they failed to maintain it for more than a few moments each time they tried. They tried time and again until they reached their sixty-second attempt, and yet never did they succeed in uniting their voice. They were truly bleating! And at a very long last, exhausted with the long distance he had crossed, and seeing the futility of his painstaking efforts to keep up with the other two men, Abu Naser just fell asleep, and not very long later, he was followed by Abu Ahmed and Abu Ibrahim. It was the mid-night of mid-May. The fire had died, and, every now and then, a cold gentle breeze blew over the half-standing tents. Every one had fallen asleep. It was their first night away from home.

In the morning, the three men, Abu Ibrahim, Abu Ahmed, and Abu Naser stooped down as they walked on, struggling with the burden over their shoulders and followed by their sons, daughters, wives, and thousands of people here and there, all doing the same thing— all were leaving.

Mohammed Rabah Suliman
18th May

One War Day

As habitually, Hamza leaned back against the dark white-painted wall recently-spotted with the hands of his little nephews, nieces, and little cousins and whereon crevices of various lengths laid bleakly; he fought off all nudging thoughts which overrun him every now and then as if they conspired with the blasts hereabouts to preoccupy his mind when it looked peaceful for him to proceed on his reading. Theses thoughts, as he assumed, were of his own creation; they were figments of his own imagination; and therefore, they haunted no one but himself; they wanted to prevent him from going on reading his book. The candlelight flickered , and thus his shadow on the wall, while gentle cold breeze wafted through the slightly opened windows: His mother, a moderate lady in her late forties with a mole on the nose, made sure to open them slightly before everyone falls asleep and that in case a blast takes place nearby, the windows will not be smashed into pieces. Hamza, the book lying open onto his warm hands, persevered in reading his tattered book: the book which his father used to be obsessed with; he read it time and again and perhaps that was what made it badly tattered. Hamza read on: ‘”Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live… at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our Freedom” Hardly had Hamza closed his lips on, softly, pronouncing the ‘m’, a huge deafening blast struck the area and turned the once-seemed never-ending prevailing silence into an ear-shattering thunder. Hamza, unconsciously tightening his grip of the book, his heart pounding as though it were ripping his chest from inside, immediately jerked his head back. Pitch darkness savagely lied there. He focused his looks ahead, straining to fathom something of what he saw; but the deeper he focused his looks, the more his grip tightened around the book, and the pitcher the darkness seemed around him.

None could ever understand what made him smile in his sleep. No one could ever simply conjecture that, only when he is asleep, he could have the objects that would grant him relief and happiness. He could own what he was always dispossessed of when not sleeping. He was encircled by his hissing nephews, nieces, and cousins— they were staying at their home along with their families during the war— who were competing who would come near that sleeping body and touch his bristling beard. Hamza lightly opened his eyes while clear mirthful faces, guiltless of wakening him up, were purely grinning to him. Yawning, he outstretched his arms, his book next to his head, half-covered under the pillow, and smiled back at the kids before he bade them leave the room. “C’mon, buddies, go play away.” quietly said Hamza, pulling the blanket up onto his face. The sun was flowing into the room through the widely-opened windows. This was the first thing his mother used to do when she woke up; she inherited this propensity from her mother not knowing what exactly it meant to do it before all else: perhaps to breathe a new life into their dull faces, or perhaps the windows were the first object to meet their eyes, so, desiring to release themselves from a smell that was not commendable in the least, they opened them. The light made the spots on the white-painted wall distinctly visible, and brightened the heaped up waxy pieces on the tarnished candlestick. Meanwhile, a little heavenly-like girl stealthily drew near the sleeping-again Hamza, whose smile had not vanished from his lips yet; she advanced on tiptoe, her eyes beaming, and concealing her smile with the back of her hands, she placed herself by her uncle’s head. The little ones on the other direction were no more hissing. They started to lose control of their sniggers which were little by little turning into uncomfortable chuckles. Hamza fidgeted, while the girl who was blocking the sun from his face, extended her hands to touch his beard. Dreadful silence prevailed in the place while the little ones finally ceased sniggering, carefully watching their playmate triumph over her uncle’s beard. The little girl fixed her eyes unflinchingly on her target while her hands were steadily nearing Hamza’s face. A sudden huge piercing blast hit the nearby area. The girl shuddered, pulling her hands promptly. She pushed her red under-lip out, and, contorting, she cried. Hamza, who had gotten up panicky, dashed to the windows while the hovering fainted away. It was shortly then, he had collected himself again and patted his preferable little niece to stop crying. He was harshly rebuking himself for failing once again as the would-be-familiar blasts aroused him from his sleep another time.

Hamza assured himself he would not have the least trouble, in case of, one day, becoming a father, his children ask him to tell them a story. He was standing by the window and reflecting on the past few days. “One week! Oh time goes by so slow” Hamza muttered, resting his head in his hands which were leaning against the windowsill. He looked at the vacant street below recalling how lively it used to be, and, feeling queasy, he raised his head. The view of the blue sky spotted with a few light clouds roaming overhead amused him; it revived his normal-low spirits. “At least, you’ve got some life.” He muttered again lowering his head. The street was not vacant, however; two dogs trotted along lolling their tongues and wagging their tails. Hamza, delighted, opened his mouth to call the dogs; he wanted to say something; he wanted to hail them, and, for moments, he had that sincere desire to yelp. But his desire had not lasted for long when he raised his head again as the hovering overhead was irresistibly to be ignored. He focused his eyes on the two choppers tearing their way through the clouds while the two dogs below had centered the street. Hamza was mindful enough to discern the message of both the still-hovering choppers above and the wagging-tailed dogs below. He was pondering on his unchanging status, and exasperated at grasping the discrepancy between his own status, and the other of the sky and earth. He had unequalled capability to dig deeply into the happenings around him, and little unimportant incidents which were insignificant to others, profoundly inspired him, though he thoroughly failed to notice his mother calling out for him over lunch.

It grew darker, and thus harder to read, as the sun, peacefully, sank to bestow a new life on a new people. And it seemed peaceful about while Hamza, sinking into darkness which nothing other than the same sun provided him with, goggled his eyes and struggled to read the grim lines lying lifelessly before him. It dawned on him earlier as long we seek it, we can give it, and there always must be life so close to us— closer than we imagine. He had some life to live among darkness, therefore; and Hamza had not failed to see it lying before him. “Everybody had fallen asleep” he thought, relaxing his eyes. “That’s another thing to be proud of,” looking down the page; he kept on in his thoughts. Meanwhile, the irregular creaks coming from the farthest door on the other side could not break him in the least from his prolonged muse. “Well, I’ve got a lot to be proud of” He replied to himself, conceitedly. Then, suddenly, “Hey, you’re still awake!” Came the soft low voice of his brother Jihad— He was Hamza’s only brother, seven years younger than him. Collecting himself, Hamza kept calm for moments, then replied in an undertone: “Yeah, just reading a few pages before go to sleep,” He smiled at his brother as he uttered his words. “Oh yeah I know” Jihad replied whisperingly. He moved closer, his blanket over his shoulder dragged on the floor, and seated himself next to Hamza. Hamza commenced perusing his book; his legs lying half-bare as the folds of his slacks piled up randomly at his knees. Little Jihad, noting this, drew the blanket to shield his brother’s legs; he could feel they were menaced, and covering them would help him, at the very least, muster his concentration on reading; however, he did not define precisely what menace he wanted to protect them from. In good tranquil times, Jihad was afraid of darkness; he seriously hated silence and never liked being cold; that is, he escaped the three conditions when alone, although in the presence of Hamza, he dared to insult darkness by his laughs. He turned his face, gazed at Hamza, and anxiously observed his eyes were fixed. Cold air wafted their faces while Jihad felt a great desire to break the horrifying silence, so, confidently, he interrupted his brother’s feigned reading, in fact he tore him away from his deep muse, and stated in a clear high tone: “I won’t go to school when war’s over,” He grinned. Hamza, immediately, turned his face, and lowered his looks to meet his brother’s “You won’t?” Widening his eyes in astonishment, he questioned whisperingly. “Yeah they say it’s goin’ to be an open-week” Cunningly, Little Jihad justified. “And I know what they’re goin’ to tell us, so I’ll just stay home.” Raising his voice, Jihad continued, his eyes beaming through darkness. Hamza was not surprised by his little brother’s clear and confident statement, as he justified it, yet he had but to praise him another time: “Oh yeah I see; you don’ need to,” He said. “But you won’t blow that week playfully, will you? I’ll bring you another two stories, how does that seem?” Hamza went on, admiringly, his smile broadened as he said this. Jihad exchanged looks with him for moments, and, neglecting the cold darkness, he said cheerfully: “Yeah I’ll read whatever you bring me.” He, then, feeling secure, sank under his blanket and, at short notice, fell asleep while, besides him, Hamza resumed reading his book encompassed by silent cold darkness.

Hamza whiled the night, his book in his lab, and his hands flipping the pages one following the other; he had not known he would have such persistence like that of a night spent with no company encircling him except that company of coldness, darkness, an amusing wheezing of his little sleeping brother: a persistence that empowered him to satiate his hunger lavishly devouring the words mercilessly. He breathed a thoroughly new life into himself.

Hamza strove to open his eyes a few hours later. He failed, but, persistent, he had to fight. He failed again, expectedly. His smile never vanished from his lips while sleeping; this time, however, it was a smile of that kind, ironically, he used to shoot others when they attempted to test his will. Hamza opened his eyes. But all he could see was blurry figures floundering before his eyes: rampantly swinging figures: higher and lower, lower and higher, right to left, and left to right. Shortly afterwards, the rampant figures cooled, and the picture settled down, and Hamza could make out some non-familiar figures around him; he focused his eyes and attempted to take a close look: masked surgeons were encircling him, and, on both sides, he could see needles, surgical blades, scalpels, handles and some scattered tablets. He knew this was a surgery room, and he needed not to seek further inquiring to realize what kind of rooms it was and who these people standing before him, curious gazes in their eyes, were. He needed but to know he had to be a little submissive sometimes. Hamza, obstinate as he was, insisted to ask, but scarcely had his lips separated, huge pains swelled through his chest and the back of his head, and now he had to be entirely submissive. His eyes slightly closed, He started to recall back the last moments he had lived before. “Right here, c’mon, c’mon, here I found another one.” The words resonated in his ears. Hamza, then, amid the hubbub, felt himself being heaved from under the rubble, his face hanging backwards, and the pebbles harshly scratching his dangling hands. The ambulance sirens were his great disturbance, and he could feel cold air bitterly blow his face while the hands of those carrying him on each side unconsciously nudged him in the ribs as they rushed to one of the ambulances. Meanwhile, through a gap in the ruins, Hamza was looking backward at the little body of Jihad laying peacefully, his burned hand extended motionlessly on his tattered book.

Mohammed Rabah Suliman
14th December 2009