“On the third night, the old woman disappeared.
“I woke up and didn’t find her with us under the blankets. I looked everywhere, but she’d disappeared.
“The Stone came back to tell us that we had to go to Kafar Yasif in the night, everything was arranged. Al-Birwa had been completely demolished, and the Jews had built the settlement of Achihud on top of it. Kafar Yasif was the only solution.
“I told him about his mother’s disappearance.
“‘She’s over there,’ he said. ‘I know her. I’ll go and get her, and don’t you move from here.’
“I wanted to tell him not to go, but I didn’t dare. How can you tell someone to abandon his mother? I begged him to wait for night to fall, but he didn’t answer. He left and didn’t return until sunset. He said he’d seen her and that she’d refused to come back with him. She was sitting alone on top of the ruins.
“A ruined village, and a woman sitting on top of the remains of her house, and a man trying to persuade her to go with him, and her stubborn silence. He talked, and she remained silent. He’d ask her to come with him, but she’d pay no attention.
“He said he’d told her about Kafar Yasif, that he’d found a house and that everything would be all right. She continued to refuse.
“He slept with us that night, got up at dawn and brought her back. He brought her back like a prisoner and said, ‘Let’s go to Kafar Yasif.’ I started getting ready. I folded the blankets and was checking around the huge olive tree among whose roots we’d been sleeping when I heard the old woman say, ‘No.’ She picked you up and started walking in the direction of Lebanon.”
Nuha said her grandmother had told her about three young men who’d approached her and how they’d pelted her with stones. She’d told them she was so-and-so, the daughter of so-and-so and that this was her house, so they pelted her with stones.
“‘I told them I was staying.’
“‘I told them this was my house, why did you destroy my house?’
“‘I told them they were stupid because they’d cut down so many olive trees.’
“‘I told them these were Roman olive trees. How could anyone dare cut down Christ’s olive trees? These were Father Jebran’s olive trees.’
“‘I told them lots of things.’
“She said she told them she didn’t care — ‘You took the land — take it. You took the fields and the olives and everything else — take them. But I want to live here. I’ll put up a tent and live here. It’s better than the camp. The air is clean here. Take everything and leave me the air.’
“The three young men backed away and started throwing stones at her.
“‘They were afraid,’ she said.
“The stones started raining down on her and piled up around her and she became a bundle of wounds.
“She said they spoke Arabic to her. They spoke like the Yemeni headman she’d met in ’47 when she wandered into the Jewish settlement near Tiberias by mistake.
“‘At first they came over to me and seemed kind. They weren’t aggressive. But when I told them I was so-and-so, daughter of so-and-so, they began inching away. They drew back one step for every one of my words. Then suddenly they all bent over as if they’d received some kind of signal and the stones started raining down.’
“The old woman sat under the olive tree and my mother went to get a rag and a flask of water so she could clean her wounds. At the same time the Stone was telling them about Kafar Yasif and the house Sa’ad’s son had found and the job in his workshop. He said, ‘We’re here now and we can’t go back to Lebanon.’ He said, ‘We’ll live in Kafar Yasif, then we’ll see.’ He talked and talked and talked; the old woman sat on the ground looking into the distance. She didn’t tell them what had happened to her. She didn’t say she’d tried to talk to the Yemenis. She didn’t say she’d talked about a tent she was going to put up in the ruins of al-Birwa. She was like a tree with its branches broken. Suddenly she got up, picked up two-year-old Nuha, and set off in the direction of Lebanon.”
Nuha’s mother said she’d caught up with her mother-in-law. “I took your brother by the hand and we started running after her. The Stone stood like a stone. And we found ourselves in the camp.”
What do you make of Nuha’s story?
Naturally, Nuha didn’t describe her grandmother as looking like a tree with its branches broken. I added that detail to describe the old woman, both her psychological state and her bleeding wounds. Nuha wasn’t that troubled by the story; she just told it to me in passing when she was explaining her own situation. She doesn’t believe in the possibility of our returning to Palestine. “If we go back, we won’t find Palestine, we’ll find another country. Why are we fighting and dying? Should we be fighting for something only to find ourselves somewhere else? It would be better to marry and emigrate elsewhere.”
She cried a lot when her grandmother died. She told me how her father started to speak after his son was martyred in the battle of al-Karameh. She said that even though he didn’t talk, he didn’t stop fathering children.
“Wouldn’t you agree that the man was a bit strange — not talking to his wife but sleeping with her every night?” I tried to ask Nuha about her grandmother’s story, but she said she didn’t know and didn’t care. Nuha loved Egyptian soap operas and said she had to get out of this cesspit — that’s what she called the camp. Her father, whom I met numerous times at their house, was very nice to me. He was a strange man, eyes hanging vacantly in his face, always clicking his prayer beads and talking about everything. He knew a lot about agriculture, medicine, politics, and Palestinian history. He talked to me a lot about my father, about how his death had been his first calamity in the camp.
In fact I wanted to marry Nuha, but then I don’t know what happened. I started to feel stifled when I was with her. We couldn’t find anything to talk about. She’d tell me about her soap operas and their heroes and I’d get bored. Even my desire for those little stolen pecks started to fade.
I never told you the story of Nuha and her grandmother before because I thought it wouldn’t interest you. You didn’t talk much about the past except incidentally; the past would come up in the form of illustrative examples, not as lived reality. Then you were transformed into the unique symbol in the stories of the camp people, the symbol of those who kept slipping back there. You know you weren’t the only man who’d go over there and come back. Thousands went, and maybe some of them are still going over now. I know of at least three cases of married men whose stories are like yours. They go over, leave their women pregnant and come back to the camp. The story of Hamad intrigued me. I’ll tell it to you later; I’m tired now, and the woman of al-Birwa has wrung out my heart.
The first time I heard the story from Nuha, it made no impression on me. I was absorbed by the story of the Stone and paid no attention to the grandmother. Now it occurs to me that this woman (who was called Khadijeh) was remarkable. I wish I’d known her better. I only saw her once, when she was sick. A woman I saw only once but whom I found more beautiful than her granddaughter who tried to seduce me into marriage.
I forgot to mention that Nuha was white, whiter than any woman I’ve ever seen. Her skin was so white, the whiteness almost seemed to be bursting out from inside her. She thought she was beautiful just because she was so white. She was a bit short and plump, but her whiteness made up for everything.
I was taken by her whiteness, I won’t deny it, but I never discovered beauty until I met Shams. I discovered then the secret of the color of wheat. Brown tinged with yellow is the highest color because its nuances are infinite. Nuha’s whiteness, on the other hand, blocked my spirit — no, I’m talking through my hat, saying anything that comes into my head. Please don’t believe all that. . I have nothing against white, but I did suddenly stop loving her. All my feelings evaporated, and when I looked at her I could no longer see her. I only felt something for her at the stadium, when I stood there with hundreds of fedayeen waiting for the Greek ships that were to take them from Beirut into their new exile. I searched for her but couldn’t find her. Do you know what that feels like — to leave when there’s no one to bid you farewell? I searched for her and didn’t leave. I went back home, not because she didn’t come and not because I wanted her; I went back because I felt the utter nonsense of it all. Everything had become absurd, so I couldn’t bring myself to go away with everyone else; a journey has to be more than just a journey, and I noticed, after the siege and the defeat, that I wasn’t capable of such things, so I went home and never saw Nuha again. I forgot her. I forgot what that girl I’d loved looked like. Now, when I try to recall her, I see her as a blurred image, a shapeless woman. I see her white face, and I see her lips quivering on the verge of tears, and I see her grandmother Khadijeh.