Later, after thirteen years of residence in Budapest and after my return to Cairo, I will come to realize, from Radwa and from Tamim, as well as from what I deduce without either saying anything, that Radwa has had to put up not only with my absence and the burdens of raising Tamim, as a baby, a child, and an only boy, and protecting him from harm, she has also had to put up with his insistence on going to Budapest. Budapest was associated in his mind with our being together as a family and with the holidays and fun and a sense of security and freedom. Cairo, on the other hand, was associated with homework and discipline and getting up early and exams. Not to mention that Cairo had expelled his father.

The worst moments for Tamim were when he boarded the Malev plane at Budapest Airport on his way back to Cairo. They were so bad that once he said to his mother and me as we were on our way there, “I hope the plane crashes.” The most beautiful moments in his life were when he boarded the Malev plane at Cairo Airport to go to Budapest. His school holidays began before those of the university where Radwa works and he refused to wait until they could travel together to Budapest. Instead he’d insist on going to me on his own, immediately, while Radwa had to wait for her holidays to begin and then catch up with him. He was less than five years old when he boarded the plane on his own for the first time. She had arranged for the airline to take care of him on the plane and to hand him over to me at Budapest Airport, and at the airport they allowed me to wait for him at the foot of the steps leading down from the plane. No sooner did the plane open its doors than I saw him, flanked by two flight attendants, one holding his right hand, the other his left, a red tape across the stairway in front of them. I went up the steps at a run. They removed the tape and the way he hugged me made it unnecessary for them to demand proof that he was mine. One of the flight attendants told me as I thanked them, “He’s a wonderful boy. He speaks Hungarian like a Hungarian. God protect him.”

The first thing he did was to take off an elegant necklace that hung down to his chest, carrying a card with his and my names on it, my address and my telephone numbers at home and at work.

I told him that I’d been on a plane for the first time when I went to university at the age of nineteen. Then I asked him, “Who hung this card on your chest?”

“The flight attendant told me, ‘This is your identity. It has to stay hung on your chest till you meet up with your father.’”

In Abu Saji’s office in the Muqata‘a, I take the identity card from him, look at it, and hand it back to him.

We thank Abu Saji for getting it done in time to prevent Tamim from being late for university.

We go to a special office where we obtain a permit for departure via the bridge. This departure permit, required for travel to any place outside Palestine, complements the identity card, and has to be shown to the Israeli officer at the bridge.

Tamim’s papers are complete. We can leave any time we want. He won’t be away from his university for long.

Now that he has his identity card in his hand, I ask him, “When do you want to go back to Cairo?”

“Can we stay here a few days?”

“What about university?”

…

“I propose that we go back to Amman tomorrow morning, spend two days with your grandmother Umm Mounif, and then go back to Cairo.”

“Okay. But not tomorrow. The day after.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Anything.”

“Uncle Hikmat wants us to go with him to his house in Jenin.”

“Great. I’ll see a new city.”

“Then we’re agreed.”

Next day we go to Jenin. We spend a whole day there. It’s my first visit too. The conversation revolves around the building of the American University in Jenin and the replanning of the city, and everyone is reassured by the return of normal life to the city. It astonishes me that Jenin is able to offer medical services to our people who remained in their country in 1948 and became Israeli citizens and that Jews also come from there in search of cheaper treatment, especially in dentistry. As a result, Jenin has brought together a large concentration of Palestinian dentists and with each new closure that prevents people from crossing the Green Line they lose money. This was in the years of the high hopes that followed immediately on the Oslo Agreement. The checkpoints, closures, invasions, hunger, detentions, and massacres will come later. The hopes, dreams, relief, convenience of life, education, commerce, and promise of independence will all be destroyed, at first by degrees and then at one go.

Years later, in 2002, the Israeli army will storm the city of Jenin, impose a siege on its refugee camp, and prevent any type of media and any ambulances from getting close. The people of the camp will show great courage in defending it with the few resources they have and the army will manage to enter only after pulling it down over the heads of its inhabitants, house by house, using tanks and bulldozers and withdrawing only after the massacre is over.

We have been subjected to massacres at intervals throughout our lives. Thus we find ourselves competing in a race between quickly realized mass death and the ordinary life that we dream of every day. One day, I will write a poem called “It’s Also Fine”:

It’s also fine to die in our beds

on a clean pillow

and among our friends.

It’s fine to die, once,

our hands crossed on our chests

empty and pale

with no scratches, no chains, no banners,

and no petitions.

It’s fine to have an undusty death,

no holes in our shirts,

and no evidence in our ribs.

It’s fine to die

with a white pillow, not the pavement, under our cheeks,

our hands resting in those of our loved ones,

surrounded by desperate doctors and nurses,

with nothing left but a graceful farewell,

paying no attention to history,

leaving this world as it is,

hoping that, someday, someone else

will change it.

We return from Jenin before dinner to meet with Marwan al-Barghouti, who tells us he wants to register for a PhD at the College of Economics and Political Sciences at Cairo University and asks Tamim about the requirements for admission and the faculty from whom he might choose a supervisor. We agree that he’ll visit us in Cairo and that Tamim will follow up on it once Marwan has decided on the timing.

Marwan does indeed visit us in Cairo, where Radwa and Tamim receive him, and we do in fact begin the admission process for the doctoral program.

When Marwan returns, Ariel Sharon will be preparing to throw out Ehud Barak and quietly taking the first steps to that end.

One year later, Sharon will take one thousand Israeli soldiers with him on a visit that both he and Barak know is a provocation but on which he insists. The general, set on making the leap to leader of the government, will stroll conceitedly, protected by all those soldiers, through the courtyard of the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque as a way of asserting that it is part of the ‘Land of Israel.’ He knows very well what he’s doing. The general wants a collision; when the collision leads to bloodshed, Sharon will be the solution for the Israelis. They will call on him to lead them.