Authors: Selma Dabbagh
‘Anyway, I thought your brother and your dad were in the mainstream party, the Leader’s party. So what did they see in the guy?’
Rashid started, stopped, and then threw his hand in the air as though signalling to an invisible attendant to take it (whatever it was) away. The day was heating up; a low urban glaze had overtaken the dawn’s harsh side lighting. No. Fuck it. He was not going to do it now. He was off duty.
‘I’ve got to go, Ian. Got an appointment with my supervisor.’
‘Oh, OK, sure. Love the way you said my name just then, IYUN. Like a Rasta.’ Ian urged the glowing cherry to fall off the end of the joint before putting out the edges against the side of the bin and placing its bent, stunted body back into his matchbox. ‘Any chance you could pick up an eighth for me later? Your guy’s stuff is much better than mine.’
Rashid’s bag was ready, but he was trying to remember what he had forgotten. He had not really planned to go back there. He had made a deal with himself. No Moroccan snooker bar. No dope. There was no Gaza any more. He was out and therefore there was no need now, was there?
‘Yes, OK, but not tonight, I’m going out. But when I next go there, yes, OK. Tomorrow or something.’
‘Cheers. Catch you later, all right?’ Ian almost sung out at Rashid as he ambled down the corridor on his gangling big-footed legs.
Rashid found two empty spaces next to each other at the end of the tube carriage. Opposite him, a hunched woman in flip-flops sat alone. Her pink T-shirt stopped well above her knees. Her legs were strange, knotted together like ropes of rind. Rashid took out Sabri’s email. The woman tested the air twice with her nose as though trying to detect prey and looked up and down the carriage.
Rashid looked at what she was looking at. It had to be the otherness of the passengers that was disturbing her. Their darkness, for they all were, without exception, washed up there like him.
I could be from here,
he thought,
in the same way that they are not from here.
But what of their national duties? What of his? Pulling him out of any comfort zone presented to him, pushing him out into a conflicted world where he had no place. And here was Sabri’s message to remind him that he could never relax, never be part of anything or anywhere unless it was part of a push for change, for resolution. But such a long message from Sabri, even on that subject was rare and curious.
Brother Rashid,
It was good to hear your news. I trust you are studying hard and doing well and that you found my comments on the 1948 expulsion policy to be of benefit to your essay. You are indeed honoured to be able to conduct your research under Professor Myres. I would have greatly enjoyed having the pleasure of meeting him myself, having perused so many of his books and articles, and I am confident that he would be interested in the findings of my own research.
I appreciate receiving the articles and the links for the information on the village evacuations and massacres of 1948 that Prof Myres passed on to you. As you are aware, these will enhance my research on the subject. I think it is only a matter of time before more of these violations come to the fore and our cousins across the border will be forced to acknowledge their history and relations with us and we will be able to move ahead. They cannot continue to pretend that we were nomads from outside who rushed in to feed off the growing Jewish state. It is preposterous and has no basis in fact. This should become clearer with time and accurate research, making the future of our two peoples possible.
With the arrival of the New Year and the opening of old records, there is some additional research I shall want you to conduct on my behalf. You will find this research to be of great interest and importance, not just to my book but also in terms of adding to your understanding of our history as a people as well
as our own particular history as a family
.
Your Mama and I are in agreement that the time has come for there to be greater knowledge of our own circumstances and the roots of the divide
.
Rashid read this paragraph several times over. Italics and underlining were used sparsely by Sabri, who had once described them as vulgar. They now screamed out of the page as though they were in capitals. These lines were about as clear to him as some of the political communiqués his brother put before him to test him with (‘Can you see why the authors of this one here say
People’s Committees
not
Popular Committees
, Rashid? Can you get that at least?’). When Rashid looked up he realised that he had missed his stop and had to wait for another train to take him back in the opposite direction.
We have been very busy and have not had the opportunity to explain the situation at home. Mama and I are well, but things in the house have changed.
Abu Omar’s family left only a few days after you and Iman. It became apparent that Abu Omar was fairly high up in the ranks, if collaborators can be considered to have ranks, and must have provided some extremely useful information to the enemy about
very important resistance leaders on our side . . .
Why had Sabri underlined this? Was Sabri hinting that these were leaders that they knew? He didn’t know any leaders. The man who looked like him, Ziyyad Ayyoubi, the man who had arrested Abu Omar, was a leader; could he have been targeted by Abu Omar in the past? Was Abu Omar’s arrest connected to that, was it a revenge arrest? The obliqueness was annoying as hell and just so typical of Sabri.
. . . because his family were taken out of Gaza to a camp in Israel for the families of people of his ‘stature’. We have been given to understand (his wife, Umm Omar, told Mama) that he has been working in the service of our enemies for over fifteen years. You know how these things start. First they asked him for petty information about student elections in exchange for a permit that was required for him to take his mother to a Jerusalem hospital. Apparently, or so the man claims, Abu Omar’s brother in the States urged him to provide the information to our enemies for the sake of his mother. Of course, once he had provided this information there was no way back. The man chose his family over his people and for that he is now paying the price.
Before she left, Umm Omar paid us a visit and gave Mama the key for their apartment (they have no other relatives in Gaza, you understand), asking her to look after it and saying that we should live in it while they were away. I always thought Umm Omar had a good heart, God only knows what life lies ahead of her and her family. They should not be cursed for the sins of Abu Omar, but of course it seems unlikely that they will ever be able to escape them. Needless to say, Umm Omar’s family have benefitted considerably and materially for years, which should be a factor we bear in mind before we displace too much pity in their direction.
Mama and I decided that it would be best to move downstairs and have brought all of our belongings with us. Mama is, of course, far more excited than she will allow anyone to see. She has dug up half that ring of soil around the tiles already and planted tomatoes, thyme, potatoes and mint.
I say that Abu Omar’s family left, but one of them chose not to. The middle grandson, Wael, apparently refused to leave and says that this is his place and he will not set foot on enemy territory. We have therefore decided to take the boy under our wing and to treat him as one of the family.
Wasn’t Wael that lanky teenager with the large nostrils and the bum fluff for a moustache, the one with the greenish skin around his mouth? Was Sabri telling him that they had decided to adopt that devious little shit? No, worse, that that devious little shit was so noble as to choose country over both self and family?
In the circumstances, we couldn’t just leave our flat empty upstairs. Mama and I decided it best to arrange a rota for our neighbours who are still in tents to get a roof over their heads. We can’t house all of them so we have arranged for stays in two-week shifts per family per room and have formed a small residents’ committee to supervise this. It’s working fine at the moment. I just hope that as the weather gets colder, tempers don’t rise when we have to ask people to leave at the end of their two-week sojourn.
Politically, you will have seen the news, it’s not as bad as it has been, but the signs are not good.
Wishing you the best, Rashid. I trust that this year will help you in your quest to find your own role in our struggle for justice and understanding in the world.
Your brother,
Sabri Jibril Mujahed
When Professor Myres opened a book he would automatically open his mouth at the same time. His tongue would widen across the base of his mouth, loll out, and then the tip would touch his upper lip as he found the point he was looking for.
‘Yes, yes that’s it. That’s the one.’
Myres soothed the book, verbally patting it for its loyal delivery of information. The apartment smelt of wet dog. The coffee was wet dog. Rashid’s essays came back after supervision as though they had been rolled upon by wet dog. Rashid drew himself closer to the geraniums. Their dried-out odour reminded him of a relative’s courtyard he’d been in as a child – Amman or Damascus, perhaps? Or that aunt in Alexandria?
‘Yes, yes, these accounts, you see, show how some of these early Jewish immigrants to Palestine were absolutely shocked. There they were, just escaped from the jaws of hell in Nazi Germany or elsewhere in Europe. They’ve arrived in Palestine, this Holy Sacred Land, this place of new beginnings, where they soon find themselves witnessing the same tactics being used by their people against the Arabs – the Palestinians – as had been used against them. Just three years. It’s nothing in an adult’s life. Some of them left Germany as late as 1945 and by 1948 they are being asked to join people – their fellow Jews – who are blindfolding men, bundling them into trucks and dumping them across borders. These accounts are important. There aren’t many of them, but they are the ones that interest me, not the ones where the Jews complain about their own treatment by the British, but the ones where they consider how they are treating the ‘Other’ the Arabs. Many of them chose not to see them at all. They still don’t.’
Professor Myres’ mouth widened again, the tongue drawn back waiting for its next find. Unsuccessful, it fell back into place on the floor of his mouth. Eyebrows raised, Myres looked over at Rashid. ‘Not pretty, discrimination, bad treatment. Always makes people rather vicious, doesn’t it? Vicious and ugly. That old adage about the repressed of yesterday and what not.’
Rashid thought of the accounts of their Authority using Israeli torture methods against their own people. ‘It’s made us ugly, too.’ Rashid conceded national flaws easily to Professor Myres. He would not have done so with Ian.
‘Ah, yes. Ah, yes, but everything can be changed, everything. Nothing ugly about you, at any rate. Fine-looking young man. Shall I make us some coffee?’ Myres marked the book with a strip of paper covered in intricate pencilled script. The book joined the others on the pile prepared for Rashid, forming a rustling cascade of scrawly paper tongues.
‘You’ve always worked on Palestine?’ Rashid asked. He wondered what he would have done if Palestine had played no part in his life. Film, he thought, or music. The only time he had heard the word ‘talent’ being used in connection with him was when he had had piano lessons. He had been about twelve. That was in Beirut and then they had moved to Paris, and couldn’t start them again because Paris was only ‘temporary’ (everywhere was temporary but Paris, for some reason, had been known to be temporary from the day they arrived; for the next two years, they had only unpacked two boxes to show quite how fleeting it all was). They had just decided to unpack the rest of them when one of their representatives was shot and Baba was asked to replace him. This, of course, led to another move and the piano lessons had not been as important as anything else that was going on, and by then he hadn’t had any for at least two years so what was the urgency?
‘Always Palestine,’ Myres said with a sigh. ‘I do often think, though, that I could have done it differently.’ He was speaking from the kitchen and Rashid stood by the narrow door to hear him.
‘Oh really?’ Rashid said, as Myres seemed to have lost the thread of his speech together with the coffee lid that had slipped off the sideboard and on to the floor. Myres looked down at it, bereft, as though it was stranded at the bottom of a deep pool. Rashid dipped down to pick it up and pass it back to Myres. The professor did not acknowledge the gesture and went back to stooping over the kettle, concentrating on getting the tremulous fairtrade coffee granules to make it into the two half-clean mugs with brown oval motifs.
Myres’ tongue touched base on his lip. ‘Take the Kurds,’ he said to his raised teaspoon.
‘The Kurds?’ asked Rashid, who had by now also lost where Myres had been going.
‘As an example. I do ask myself, why did I choose one group of destitute and abandoned people rather than another?’ Rashid did not feel like being thought of as either destitute or abandoned but did not say so. ‘It would have been quite different had I chosen the Kurds.’
‘Why did you choose us, then?’
‘Well, that’s just it, you see. I have gone through this with myself again and again and I feel that, well, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, I just
did not have a choice
. It’s a funny thing this idea of decisions being made for you, of how one becomes involved in an intractable dilemma you can’t find a way out of. It doesn’t happen often. I know people say they met this or that woman and they knew she was their destiny. Not that that happened to me, mind. Fine woman that I married, but it was not that feeling. No, no. Not at all, but with Palestine it was like that.’