And when lovers are together, it’s impossible to describe. In fact, it may be that none of us lives it and that’s why we invent reasons why it’s kept from us.
It might be that love has no language. It’s like a smell. How can you describe a smell? We describe it in terms of what it’s not, and we don’t give it a name. Love’s the same. It has a name only when it isn’t there.
I don’t mean to belittle the importance of your love for Nahilah. I know that you loved her and that your infatuation was great. I know that she dwelled in your bones. I know that you’re dying today because of her.
But why didn’t you go back, the way Hamad did?
How was it that Hamad went to prison and succeeded in returning to his house and his wife, and such a possibility never occurred to you?
Don’t tell me you sacrificed yourself for the revolution, I don’t believe it’s that.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want to denigrate your history. Your history is my history, and I respect you and honor you and hold you in the highest regard.
But tell me, wasn’t there an element of fear of Nahilah in your decision? Didn’t you prefer — unconsciously perhaps — that she be where she was and you where you were? That way your story could continue and survive across space and time. Every time you went to see her, you put your life in danger. Every time, you purchased your love at the cost of the possibility of your death. Isn’t that extraordinary? Isn’t that a story like no other?
Tell me, when you were walking the roads of the two Galilees, of Palestine and of Lebanon, did you feel that your thorn-lacerated feet bore a love story like no other?
As for me, though, what a letdown!
I know my story doesn’t deserve to be put alongside yours. I’m just a duped lover; that’s what everyone thinks. But no, Shams isn’t so simple; you can’t sum her up by saying she betrayed me. And “betrayed” isn’t accurate. I wasn’t her husband, so why did she come to me? If there hadn’t been love, she wouldn’t have come; if there hadn’t been love, her presence wouldn’t have bewitched me; if there hadn’t been love, I wouldn’t have hidden like a dog in this hospital out of fear of revenge. I confess I was afraid and I believed the rumors about the people of al-Ammour vowing to take revenge on their daughter’s killers. But that time has passed.
If they’d wanted to kill me, they’d have killed me. I live in the hospital because I’ve gotten used to it, that’s all. I could go back home if I wanted to, but my house is near the mosque and I don’t like cemeteries.
None of Shams’ family put in an appearance except Khadijeh, her mother. She came to the Ain al-Hilweh camp, took her daughter’s things, and went back without making contact with anyone here. I heard that nobody visited to pay their respects. She didn’t stay in the camp more than twenty-four hours. She went into her daughter’s house, shut the doors and windows, and came out in the morning carrying a large suitcase. She spoke to no one, and at the Lebanese Army barrier at the camp entrance, the one we still call the Armed Struggle barrier, she turned around, spat, and left.
There’s nothing to fear. The woman came and went, and I’m here not out of fear but out of habit.
Plus, I want to review my life in peace and quiet.
You want the truth, right?
I’ll try to tell you the truth, but don’t ask me, “Why did you accept?” — I didn’t accept. No, I didn’t. And no one consulted me. I found myself in the maelstrom and I almost died, and if Abu Ali Hassan hadn’t been there, they would’ve executed me. That’s right, executed.
No, not Shams’ relatives, the Ain al-Hilweh camp’s militia. They supposed, wrongly of course, that I was the one who instigated her murder to get rid of Sameh and have the woman all to myself. They didn’t believe what everybody was saying — that Shams killed her lover herself. They assumed someone else had been involved, and arrested me.
I was too embarrassed to tell you about my arrest. The only thing about it that sticks in my memory is their insulting references to “horns” and the way they treated me as a nobody. But that was what saved me, and it only happened after Abu Ali’s intervention. Can you believe it? He intervened on my behalf to make sure that I was humilated. There was no other way out — humiliation or execution. Abu Ali saved me; if it hadn’t been for his intervention, they’d have killed me as they killed Shams.
I won’t tell you about the interrogation. A man came and delivered a letter from the Ain al-Hilweh militia inviting me to visit them, and I went. They escorted me directly to the Ain al-Hilweh prison, where they threw me in a dark underground vault, full of damp and the smell of decay, and left me.
I rotted in the vault for ten days, which felt like ten years — time got mixed up in my head, and I lived underground as though I were floating on the entire night of my life.
They took me out for the interrogation. A man came holding the kind of pick we normally use for breaking up blocks of ice and started jabbing it into my chest asking me to confess.
He’d stab me with the pick and ask, “What did you do with Sameh, dog?” and I’d ask him who this Sameh was. He’d repeat his question as if he weren’t expecting an answer from me.
A stupid interrogator, you’ll say.
But no, he was neither an interrogator nor stupid. He was just a criminal. Crime has spread everywhere in our ranks. We’ve watered it with blood and stupidities. We’ve wallowed in error, and error has consumed us.
How is it possible?
They arrest you and throw you into the darkness without asking a single question? They throw you into an underground vault where you live with your waste and the next thing you see is an ice pick in your chest. Then they ask you about someone you don’t know and don’t wait for an answer?
Ten days in nowhere, and if it hadn’t been for Abu Ali, God knows how long I’d have remained there. Abu Ali Hassan was a comrade of mine from the days of the base in al-Khreibeh in 1968. He told me later he saved me because he was certain of my innocence. He believed “the whore” had fooled me.
They escorted me to the interrogation and there contemptuous looks and sarcastic smiles fell upon me, and I understood. Instead of being furious, however, and trying to defend my honor, I was afraid for Shams and possessed by a single idea: how to rescue her from their hands. I could read the decision to execute her in their eyes, and I didn’t want her to die. At the time I didn’t know what life taught me later, that death is the lover’s relief.
Nothing can save you from love but death.
If I’d known that, I’d have killed her myself.
At the interrogation, however, I was possessed by fear for her, and instead of going home and back to work when I was released, I decided to look for her to try to save her. I went to the outskirts of Maghdousheh, east of Tyre, where the fighters had established bases. I knew she commanded a military detachment there that carried her name and that she refused to accept orders from the military command in the south because they were directly under the command of Tunis. That’s what she’d told me and I didn’t believe her, but when I went to Maghdousheh I found out that this time she hadn’t lied. There really was an armed detachment known as “Shams’ group,” but it wasn’t at Maghdousheh. I was told they had withdrawn toward Majdalyoun.
I went to Majdalyoun but didn’t find her.
I was like a blind man, wandering the roads of the south, searching for her but not finding her. Everywhere I went I was assailed by the same strange looks, as though everyone knew the story.
I searched and found nothing. I crossed Majdalyoun, went to the house they told me was the headquarters of Shams’ unit and found it empty — a five-room house surrounded by a garden with fruit trees. I went in and found blankets on the floor, plastic bags, pans, and the odor of rotten food. It looked as though they’d evacuated the place in a hurry without time to organize their departure. I lay down on a blanket and felt like crying. I was besieged with tears, yet I found myself without tears, without emotion, without feeling. Nothing. I existed in the nothing and in tears, and I knew she was lost.