I think this over and say to myself that it is our ‘moderate’ leaders, who fear victory and make no preparations for it, who give Israel the impression that it will never know anything but victory while we will never know anything but defeat. Those whom the West describes as ‘moderate Arabs’ are the type of politicians who prefer to spend their lives waiting for a smile from the Israeli Occupation’s tank. They are out of luck because the tank never smiles. The tank, you wise and clever realists, doesn’t know how to smile.
Some years later, I will enter Ramallah in an ambulance though neither injured nor suffering a medical emergency. On the bridge and at the numerous checkpoints, I will see numerous faces, situations, oddities, and tragedies. This time, though, my feelings are more complex and mixed. My anxiety is as painful as if I were being beaten over and over without a chance to hit back. ‘Painful’ is the right word. Has anxiety ever made you feel pain? The anxiety is all the more painful because I have to conceal it, have to pretend the opposite and appear supremely confident and at ease, for now, this specific time, I shall be crossing the bridge with Tamim.
This is his day.
A day he and we — Radwa and I — have been waiting for since I applied for an entry permit for him two years ago. Now his entry permit is in my pocket. I would have liked us to enter some time in summer so that he wouldn’t be forced to leave his studies at the university, where he’s in his fourth, crucial, graduation year, but it’s beyond our control. It’s always beyond our control. Otherwise, what would be the meaning of the Occupation?
Radwa showed no sign of the agitation that ought to accompany her farewell to her only child before a journey such as this. Or did she, I wonder, conceal her agitation precisely because he was setting off to repossess the personal, tangible Palestine that she had raised him to be aware belonged to him, as he to it, with all that that implies?
This wasn’t what moved me when she hugged him with exceptional warmth at Cairo Airport. What moved me was her silent care not to appear the party ‘sacrificing’ its peace of mind for the sake of a step before which inconvenience must seem trivial and for which difficulties must be borne.
On the plane heading for Amman I think about Radwa.
I read my first poems to her on the steps of the Cairo University library when we were not yet twenty. We took part together in literary gatherings at the Faculty without it occurring to us that a personal interest had developed, or was developing, between us. We were students and limited our conversation to ‘professional’ matters such as our studies and never went beyond these into any intimate topic. She would tell me, “You will become a poet,” and I would reply, “And what if I fail at that?” I’d tell her, “You will become a great novelist” and she’d give the same answer and we’d laugh. This ‘fraternal’ language and collegial spirit continued between us until the four years of study were over and I went to work in Kuwait. I used to write regular letters about my new life in Kuwait to her and to Amina Sabri and Amira Fahmi, our best friends throughout our studies, with whom we’d made something like a small family. I realized, however, that my letters to Radwa contained nothing of my news or the events of my life and concerned themselves only with my unspoken feelings about that life.
When I saw her on my first visit to Cairo during the summer holidays, we found ourselves talking like a mother and a father, and sometimes like a grandmother and a grandfather. We talked like a family of two that had been together for ages.
It was out of the question to talk about ‘steps’ we ought to be taking.
It was as though we’d walked all the steps already and got to here.
Talking of our future relationship had become a part of our past relationship, whose precise moment of beginning we never tried to establish. We never engaged in flirting or courtship or questions or arrangements or promises. When I left Cairo and returned to resume my work in Kuwait, I found that I was writing to her as a husband and she was writing to me as a wife.
I often questioned the wisdom of this marriage when I had no land to bear me and no clear plan for our geographical, economic, or social future. Her family naturally stood against it and they were right not to allow their only daughter to marry a non-Egyptian youth whose future was tied to that of the Palestinian issue, which nations and generations had failed to resolve. I didn’t blame them for an instant. But she too never thought for one instant of abandoning her decision. This is how I learned courage and clarity of will, from a girl two years younger than I who knew what she wanted and went after it with her eyes open — consciously, calmly, passionately.
Tamim thinks I’m taking a short nap but I hear the flight attendant inviting the passengers to fasten their seat belts in preparation for the descent to Amman Airport.
We spend three days with my mother in Amman. She couldn’t let us leave before she’d cooked Tamim his favorite dishes, such as musakhan and chicken with thyme, and listened to him playing the oud and singing her his satirical songs in Egyptian dialect poking fun at his teachers at his secondary school in Cairo. And I couldn’t leave her before I’d talked to her about everything that was on my mind and we’d caught up and told one another all about what had and hadn’t happened since our last meeting.
This time my friend Damin takes us in his car to the bridge at eight a.m. The time passes without our noticing because he never stops making us laugh with his constantly updated store of jokes and stories.
We present our papers. The Jordanian officer stamps them without delay. We get into a car after paying eighty dollars to the facilitating company and set off immediately instead of waiting for the bus, which doesn’t move until it has filled its forty-plus seats — a process that takes an hour at the least. I will do anything in my power to save time. I’ve told myself that the Israelis can delay us as long as they like when we get to the Israeli side, that’s not under my control, but I don’t want us to wait on both sides of the border; one is enough.
I want Tamim to enter Palestine before sunset so that he can see it in daylight and I don’t want any surprises.
His papers are all in order now. His entry permit is still fresh, with all the seals, stamps, and signatures in Hebrew. Yes, in Hebrew, or else what would be the meaning of the Occupation?
After all the peace agreements, the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority, the propagation, with Israel’s consent, of Palestinian flags in its sky and offices, and the talk everywhere of Palestinian independence, no one, whatever his nationality and whatever his origin, can pass through any crossing point into or out of Palestine, by land, sea, or air, without an Israeli entry permit, Israeli stamps, an Israeli security search, and the checking of his or her name against an Israeli blacklist. Interrogation, being sent back to where one came from, arrest and imprisonment in an Israeli jail are all real possibilities. Neither the president of the Authority nor its ministers, officers, judges, security forces, or the members of its ‘parliament’ are exempt. If the database in the Israeli computer at the crossing point or barrier doesn’t like you, no permits, stamps, or visas from before will help you.
Later, Israel will arrest eight Palestinian ministers and twenty-eight elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, including ‘Aziz al-Duweik, the council’s speaker, just because they are members of Hamas. Israel’s response to condemnations of this crime is a single sentence, one that has been reused dozens of times, after each abrogation of international law and norms: “No one has immunity here.”