“We were in the square of al-Ba’neh and there was the sun, and the man said, ‘They’ll give us a sunbath before they kill us.’ I didn’t understand what he meant until they killed us.

“We were a vast mass of humanity writhing under the sun and waiting for death. Later we discovered that we were to spend the rest of our lives in such a sunbath. What do you call the refugee camp? Now you see houses, but early on the camp consisted of a group of tents. Then later, after we’d built huts, they allowed us to put roofs over them. It was said that if we put actual roofs on our houses, we’d forget Palestine, so we put up zinc sheets. Do you know what zinc sheets do to you under the Beirut sun? Do you know what it means to be under zinc at night, after it’s absorbed the sun all day?

“In the square of al-Ba’neh — Deir al-Asad they left us to bathe in the sun all day long after they’d separated out the women. They ordered the women to go to Lebanon and left us out to burn.

“Two men I didn’t know asked permission to fetch water, and the officer told them to follow him. They walked toward the spring. We heard the sound of two bullets. The officer returned, and the men didn’t. After that no one dared to say he was thirsty.

“After more than an hour an old man stood up and asked for water. The officer looked at him with contempt, pulled out his revolver, brought the barrel close to the man’s forehead, placed it between his eyes but didn’t fire. The old man started to tremble. I was sure he was going to kill him, but he didn’t. The officer put his revolver in his belt, and the man went on trembling for a long, long time.

“Then they searched us and stole everything — money, watches, and rings. Then the soldiers pulled back, and we saw the officer’s hand rise and fall. The soldiers were dragging away the men tapped by the officer’s hand. The hand fell on more than two hundred men, who were loaded onto trucks that took them in the direction of al-Ramah. To this day we don’t know what happened to them. Soon after, they ordered us to go to Lebanon. The shooting started. We found ourselves in the fields with our wives and our children, and we walked for endless hours. We walked until we got to the village of Sajour, where we slept in the fields; we continued our journey in the morning to Beit Jann. There the Druze gave us food. We walked for more than two days before we got to Lebanon.

“My son, Hamed, was ten and had been hit in his right knee. I wrapped his knee and carried him on my shoulders, but eventually I became exhausted and put him down — he had to walk. By the time we reached Lebanon, he was crippled.

“Sahirah, the daughter of Ibrahim al-Hajj Hassan, gave birth to a girl in the fields of Sajour. God knows what had happened to her; she pulled out a little girl from under her skirt and began dancing — saying that she would name her Sahirah.

“Ibrahim al-Hajj Hassan tried to calm his daughter, but the woman didn’t care. She danced like she was at a wedding party and said she could hear drums beating in her ears. She said she wouldn’t stop dancing until her husband came back. Alas! How was he going to come back after they’d taken him to al-Ramah?

“Sahirah kept dancing until we reached Lebanon, where they said she’d gone crazy, though only God knows the truth.

“Do you understand, my son, why I don’t want to stay home? I’m an old man who fights because I prefer death to a sunbath. They gave me a sun-bath in al-Ba’neh in ’48, and they gave me another in Ansar in ’82, and now I’ve had enough — I’d rather die than face another.”

You are dying, Abd al-Mu’ti.

Your rigid body slackens. Your features return to you; your face clears, the wrinkles are wiped from your broad brow, and the cloud over your eyes parts.

I STAND.

What am I to say to this man I call my father but is not my father?

I open his eyes, put “tears” in them, but he doesn’t weep.

Abd al-Mu’ti dies, and you don’t weep. You’re dying, and you don’t weep.

I bring you news and tell you stories and you don’t hear. Tell me, Abd al-Mu’ti, what to do. Take me with you on your journey, for I yearn to see all of you. I live among you and I yearn for you, and you are somewhere else.

Weep a little, Father. Just one sob and everything will be over. One sob and you’ll live. But you don’t want to, or you no longer want to, or you’ve lost your will. And I’m with you and not with you. I’m busy, I have to check on the other patients; that’s what Dr. Amjad has decided. Don’t be scared, I won’t leave you for long. I’ll just slip over, check on them and come back to your side.

And afterward what?

Indeed, will there be an afterward?

For three months I’ve been telling you stories, some of which I know and some of which I don’t. And you’re incapable of correcting my errors, so I make mistakes once in a while. Freedom, Father, is being able to make mistakes. Now I feel free because with you I can make as many mistakes as I like and retract my mistakes whenever I like, and tell story after story.

My throat’s dry from so much talking. I’m dried up, I’ve become desiccated.

I feel water coming out with my words and spotting the ground around me. I feel I’m drowning in my own water. Do you want me to drown? Reach out your hand, I beg you, reach out your hand and rescue me from the pool of storytelling in whose waters I’m drowning. I’m a prisoner who possesses nothing but the stories he makes up about his freedom. I’m a prisoner of the hospital and a prisoner of the story. I’m drowning. Water surrounds me. I swallow water and swallow words and tell the story.

What do you want from me?

I’ve told you all your stories, of the past and of the present, yet you remain unreachable.

Now you know the whole story, but I don’t. Can you believe that? I’ve told you a story I don’t know. I understand nothing; things are collapsing inside my head. I’ve almost forgotten all of your names, I mix them all together.

You know everything, but I don’t.

I don’t know, but I have to know so I can tell. But I don’t know the story; I’ll have to go back to the beginning to look for it. What do you think?

You want the beginning? This time, though, I’ll tell it the way I like; I won’t subject it to your distorted memory or to the phantoms that hover above your closed eyes. I’ll tell you everything, but not now. I have to go now. I’ll turn on the radio so you can listen to Fairouz. Her voice calms the nerves and spreads its lilac shade over the eyes. I’ll leave you in the shade of lilacs and go.

^* Striking force of the Haganah, consisting of nine assault companies throughout Galilee and Jerusalem. Palmach leaders included Yigal Allon, Moshe Dayan, and Yitchak Rabin.

^* Koran, Surah XXXI, verse 34.

^* Schools managed by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

^* Literally: Home for the Elderly.

^* Literally: Catastrophe. Massive expulsion and exodus in 1948 of approximately 750,000 Palestinians.

^* Toward Mecca.

^* Jewish terrorist organization formed in ’39.

^* Literally: Mother of Stone.

^* Great reception hall.

Part Two: Nahilah’s Death

I WANT to apologize.

I know that nothing can excuse my leaving you on your own these past two weeks. Forgive me, please, and try to understand. I don’t want you to think for a moment that I’m like them — certainly not, Father. I despise positions of responsibility, and my new one is of no importance. I don’t know what came over me the other night. After leaving you, I went to my room to sleep. And when I was in bed, I began to suffocate — all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. I lay down on my bed, and, without realizing what I was doing, started searching for the oxygen bottle I’d put in your room in case of an emergency. While I was sleeping, everything became constricted. I woke up, my heart was racing, I was bathed in sweat, and the air. . the air wasn’t sufficient anymore. I started breathing heavily, gasping for air, but there was no air. I felt a tingling sensation in my head, in my left hand, my belly, and my back. I tried to get up. I raised my head, managed to sit up, and tried to turn on the light, but there was no electricity. I supported my head with my hand. There was the dark. A thick darkness was drawing closer. I raised my hand to push it away, but my right hand was completely paralyzed. Everything was murky, and there was no oxygen. I thought, “I’m going to die.” But instead of lying on my back and waiting for the angel of death, I leapt out of bed like a madman, ran toward the window, threw my head out and started gulping down the air. I ate all the air in the world, but the world’s air wasn’t enough. I dressed quickly and left my room. I walked down the corridor and down the stairs to the ground floor and then climbed back up. It was what one might call the Night of the Stairs. I jogged up them and down them, panting and running, as though I wanted to prove to myself that I was still alive. Imagine the scene: a man on his own in the darkness running and panting and gasping, running up and down the stairs dozens of times so he wouldn’t die. And it was just at that moment when my decision came to me. I went back to my room and lay down on the bed.