At a height of thirty-seven thousand feet, my brother Majid asked playfully, “This is the first time we’ve all traveled together in one plane. Do you think it could go down with all of us on board — Mounif, Sulafa, Ghassan, Ghada, Ghadeer, and me and ‘Alaa and Talal and ‘Abda and Fathi and all the other passengers?”
Talal responded, “Of course it could. The Good Lord could do it. You don’t know Him!”
Next morning, my mother insisted on going with us to the Takhassusi Hospital to see Mounif.
“I want to see his face.”
She kept repeating her demand and we didn’t know if it would be a good or a bad thing. We went down to the basement where the hospital’s refrigerators were located and our friend Dr. Barakat lifted the covering from his face. A strange feeling of tranquility and comfort came over me on seeing him return from exile and in the days that followed I discovered that everyone had been touched by the same tranquility and comfort, which is something I can’t explain. It seems that news of the death in exile of someone living outside his homeland means basically that his family and those who love him will never see him again, as though he were just a news item, heard but not seen. As though, being no longer physically present anywhere, he was lost to them and they to him. As though he had been transformed from a body into an idea. When I saw his face, I felt I had discovered him over again and recovered him from the unknown. I went and touched him with my fingers, as my mother had done. This was his hair, this his brow, this his nose, and these his lips. This was Mounif with all his facial features, for real. We looked at him for the last time before pictures of him, hung on the walls, took his place in our house. My mother chose one picture and put it on the small table next to her bed and I’d often hear her talking to him in the early mornings—“Good morning, dear” in the mornings and “Happy feast day, dear” on the feasts — and she still talks to him from time to time; indeed, she consults him on decisions she intends to take, apparently genuinely waiting for answers. When I used to take her to her room at the end of the evening to sleep, I’d kiss her, cover her, put out the light, and say “Good night,” leaving the door ajar as she didn’t like it closed completely, and I’d hear her say, “Good night, dear.” At such moments, I wouldn’t know if she was talking to me or to the picture of Mounif.
At the hospital in Jericho, we say hello to the driver and get into the ambulance. Faisal and the doctor get in next to him and the nurse and I get in the back.
A sudden shudder runs through my body and I don’t know where to look to avoid seeing what I just have.
My seat is on the oblong bench fixed to the right-hand wall of the vehicle, which is normally kept for nurses or those accompanying the patient, while the opposite wall is allocated to shelves for medicines and medical equipment. On the floor between the vehicle’s closely spaced walls lies an old woman, her eyes opened to their widest, looking at me, and seemingly staring right into my eyes — mine and no one else’s. Her skin is no more than a blackish coating, tightly stretched and clinging to the bones of the face. Her eyes maintain their stare; indeed, it seems to me that they follow me no matter where I move my head.
Minutes pass before I notice the medical tubes connected to this very thin, very long, body, which fills the entire length of the vehicle up to the back door.
The nurse sits down next to me, monitoring lines and numbers on the instruments fixed to the opposite wall. So she’s alive. Why doesn’t she lower her eyes? Why doesn’t she make some movement to show that she’s alive, and why won’t she change the direction of that gaze of hers that keeps following me?
This time I am to enter Ramallah in the company of death.
As if death, like a creature of legend, were both outside and inside, behind the windows and in front of them. It seems impossible to get him out of one’s mind. He’s been in the city throughout the years of the Occupation and he’s close at hand here in this ambulance. The nurse explains: “We have to run an MRI on her in Ramallah. She’s being treated and there’s a chance she’ll get better, God willing. The poor woman contracted the disease while we were under siege. I just hope we find a place for her at Ramallah Hospital. Even the corridors are bursting at the seams with the martyrs and the wounded from this intifada.”
Then he suddenly asks me a question that sends a chill through me: “Did you know Hussein al-Barghouti? He’s from Kobar, but the Barghoutis are all one family so I expect you know him.”
“Of course, God rest his soul.”
It seems he hasn’t heard my answer, because he proceeds to tell me about Hussein.
“God rest his soul — a poet, a university professor, a playwright, and a very nice-looking young man. I used to see him at Ramallah Hospital and took a liking to him. I was upset when he died.”
The face of Hussein, who is gone and not gone, forces itself upon me.
The nurse realizes that I am no longer in the ambulance or following what he’s saying.
Hussein al-Barghouti and I are sitting in the Ziryab Café, next to the elegant fireplace designed by our friend Taysir Barakat, the owner. There are a number of friends with us and Taysir has interrupted his fascinating discourse to welcome another guest or give instructions to his assistants. Others join us until our table looks like an open seminar next to the fireplace, where the wood crackles and the sparks dance as the Ramallah rains drench the city. Hussein smokes with relish as he discusses poetry, the novel, philosophy, and politics without a pause between sentences, as though afraid someone will interrupt him. He reminds me of the charming verse by Mayakovsky that goes,
The words exit my mouth
Like whores from a burning brothel.
That is how he usually was, but this time his manner seems strange — tense, and difficult to read. Taysir joins us and I tell him I like his new woodcarvings with which he’s covered the walls of the café and ask him to give me a tour so that I can look at them more closely. Tasysir draws on wood using colors, carving, and burning; his talent is recognized by specialists and critics and has taken him to arts exhibitions in a number of countries around the world, always with success. He approaches life as though it will last a quarter of an hour, not more, loves to tell jokes, and has a fund of amusing adventures. He hiked from his birthplace of Gaza to Ramallah on a tour aimed at introducing him to the cities and villages of Palestine. As soon as he saw the mountains, he fell in love with them and their colors and contours and decided never to return to Gaza, which is as flat and tightly stretched as an ironed sheet. He picked up his paints and brushes and went around the villages, staying in any house that would take him in or renting a room wherever possible, painting, carving, sculpting, designing, and coloring. He put his artwork in the Ziryab Café in the heart of Ramallah, elevating the idea of café and restaurant to the level of gallery and cultural forum, which also gave him an opportunity to provide jobs for a number of young people. In the evenings, his wife and children join him for their almost daily family get-together. After we have moved away from the table and are on our own, I tell him I’m worried about Hussein, saying he doesn’t seem normal that night and asking him if he knows anything I don’t. As he is about to answer, a waiter comes to him for help with a problem, so I leave him to take care of his business. He turns back, though, and tells me in a low voice, “I’ll explain later.”
On my way back to Hussein’s table, I notice Namiq al-Tijani sitting at a distance and feel an urge to vomit. I leave the place immediately and explain to Hussein from my cell phone that I saw the Namiq, felt disgusted, and left. He laughs and says to me, “That Namiq is going to haunt you. He’ll never leave you alone if you don’t take the decision to expel him from your head.”