“Neither Abu Mazen nor anyone else will achieve anything because you’ll never give him anything.”

“How come?”

“Sometimes it seems to me you won’t be happy till we appoint a Zionist as leader of the Palestinian people.”

He smiles, then frowns.

“Who are you going to rely on in your obstinacy? If we expel you all to Egypt or Jordan, do you think Mubarak or Abdullah will care?”

The second interrogator re-enters.

“Where have you got to?”

“We’ve got to the threat of Transfer,” I answer.

He gives a smirk so I go on with what I was saying: “Your colleague is threatening to throw the Palestinians into the sea.”

“Transfer, my friend? The sea? The desert? Take me with you if they throw you out. It’d be better than going on the way we are now.”

He looks at the glass of tea, notices that it remains untouched, but makes no comment. Then he surprises me by saying, “Anyway, you can go.”

“That’s it?”

“Goodbye.”

Years after this interrogation session, the same thing will take place twice more. Since then, they’ve stopped calling me in, though I don’t know how long this will last.

This time we don’t have to wait long.

They don’t take long to stamp my papers and I’m not called in for interrogation.

I’ve never needed good luck so much as I do today, having Tamim with me. I say to myself this is such good luck I can hardly believe it. It’s difficult for a Palestinian to believe that he’s having luck. It’s my easiest entry to Palestine since I gained the right to do so two years earlier and has remained so for ten years. As to what may come later, who can be sure?

I leave the line, take Tamim’s hand, and we enter the baggage claim area together happily, then exit onto the street. I hug him and he hugs me in a new embrace on soil he’s standing on for the first time since Radwa gave birth to him twenty-one years ago.

Tamim’s in Palestine.

3. The Yasmin Building

We reach the hill. We enter the Yasmin Building. The elevator takes us to the fifth floor. We go in, open the windows, and take from the chairs and couches the covers put there to protect them from the dust that gathers in Rafif’s absence. I pick up the receiver of the ancient black telephone, make sure it’s working, dial Cairo, and give the receiver to Tamim so he can speak to Radwa before I do. We pass the receiver back and forth. Our conversation seems to be made up of incomplete phrases and sentences. Radwa asks about our journey, we try to convey the details, and Tamim keeps saying, “Mama, I’m in Palestine.”

Among other things I tell her, “Radwa, I want to say ‘Thank you.’”

When I went to register his birth at the Ministry of Health in Egypt and have his birth certificate issued, I’d meant to write ‘Jordanian’ in the space for Father’s Nationality, as in my passport. The only document I possess is one that proves that I’m a Jordanian; I didn’t have one to present to the relevant official that proved I was Palestinian. Here Radwa intervened decisively: “Write ‘Palestinian.’”

I wrote ‘Palestinian.’

The official questioned it and I explained to him the history of the relationship between Palestine and Jordan, and that there was no such thing as a Palestinian passport now. He didn’t ask too many questions, either because he was too good-hearted or because he didn’t want to appear ill-informed. He accepted it and issued the certificate.

(Later, the word ‘Palestinian’ on this certificate will stand in the way of Tamim’s right to obtain Egyptian nationality on the same basis as other children of Egyptian women married to non-Egyptians; for some unknown reason, Palestinians are excluded from that right.)

We call my mother in Amman and tell her of our safe arrival.

I turn on the water heater. We have to wait a while before we can bathe and change out of our traveling clothes.

I phone Husam to tell him we’ve arrived at the Yasmin apartment and he says, “I’m coming right over.”

This is the second time I’ve spent a few days in elegant Rafif’s elegant apartment, which contains her late grandfather, ‘Omar al-Salih al-Barghouti’s, furniture and a fragment of his library. She has added indoor plants and a modern kitchen, which leads straight out of the main room without a partition. Rafif lives in the apartment for a few days each year when she comes from Amman and has always insisted on giving me the keys when I come to Ramallah; she was especially insistent this time, so that Tamim and I could be comfortable.

Later, some years after this visit, Rafif will depart this life suddenly in Amman. She was starting her day at the offices of the magazine she edited when she collapsed. She never regained consciousness. I will receive the news by telephone in Cairo and travel to Amman immediately to be with my friend, her husband Dr. Muhammad Barakat. When he saw me, Muhammad’s first words were, “She completed everything she set out to do, calmly and elegantly. She restored the family home in Deir Ghassanah, she furnished the apartment in the Yasmin Building in Ramallah, she edited and published her grandfather’s memoirs, held the finished book in her hands … and died.”

Rafif al-Barghouti, who studied philosophy at the American University in Beirut, was one of the family’s most elegant women, in language, dress, and conduct. She designed the décor of her house herself with a talent that made the simplest object stand out in its carefully chosen spot. Unspoken mutual respect united us, as did a love of houseplants; she made the balcony of her house in Amman a perfect garden, which she tried to reproduce in the Yasmin Building even though she didn’t live there, leaving the key with Abu Hazim so that he could look after the plants. The first thing I do at Rafif’s house is to water these, which are neglected even though Abu Hazim waters them whenever he can gather the enthusiasm to walk here from his house in the Sharafa district.

I look for a piece of cloth, wet it, and clean the leaves of the plants one by one, even the awkward fern. Then I go out onto the south-facing balcony that is attached to the living room and water the plants there too.

I call to Tamim to join me on the balcony but he doesn’t answer. I go into the living room and find him absorbed in reading a handwritten poem hung on the wall in an old wooden frame to the right of the front door as you enter the apartment.

“Do you like it?”

“I’m still reading it.”

“Leave it now and come with me. I want to show you something.”

I take him out onto the balcony and ask him, “Do you see that arc of buildings on the horizon?”

“What is it?”

“It’s Jerusalem.”

“Amazing. You could get to it on foot.”

“You can get to it, my dear Mr. Tamim, with an Israeli permit only.”

…

“When I was in the country two years ago, I refused to go there as an infiltrator. This time you and I will infiltrate.”

“You have a plan?”

“We’ll see.”

“We have to.”

We return to the living room and he starts reading over again, out loud:

You achieved, O ‘Omar, all things in which men take pride,

So choose for your garb what exaltedness you may.

As for the land, its honor you defended

When evil men had led that honor astray.

I tell him, “I memorized it the last time I was here.”

“What’s the story behind it?”

“Ma‘rouf al-Rusafi is praising ‘Omar al-Salih al-Barghouti, Rafif’s grandfather, after the British Mandate authority pardoned him and he returned from banishment.”

“Which year?”

“1920.”

“What did he do?”

“He took part in a demonstration in Jerusalem against Jewish immigration and the British Mandate, so the British banished him to Acre.”