‘He ignores entirely that you are already in theory on his side; he demands your total obsession with his cause, a new conversion. He throws statistics at you as if you had caused them yourself. Over two million Christian and Muslim Arabs driven from their homeland and disenfranchised since 1948. Their houses and villages bulldozed – he tells you how many – their land stolen under laws they had no part in making – he recites the number of dunams – one dunam is a thousand square metres. You ask him and he tells you. And when they reach exile, their brother Arabs slaughter them and treat them like scum and the Israelis bomb their camps and shell them because they continue to resist. Because to resist being dispossessed is to be a terrorist, whereas to colonise, and to bomb refugees, to decimate a population – these are unfortunate political necessities. Because ten thousand dead Arabs are not worth one dead Jew. Listen.’ He leaned forward and grasped her wrist. ‘There is not a Western liberal who will hesitate to speak out against the injustices of Chile, South Africa, Poland, Argentina, Cambodia, Iran, Northern Ireland, and other fashionable trouble spots.’ His grasp tightened. ‘Yet who has the simple courage to tell out loud the cruellest joke in history: that thirty years of Israel have turned the Palestinians into the new Jews of the earth? You know how the Zionists described my country before they seized it? “A land without a people for a people without land.” We did not exist! In their minds, the Zionists had already committed genocide; all that remained for them was the fact. And you, the British, were the architects of this great vision. You know how Israel was born? A European power made a present of an Arab territory to a Jewish lobby. And did not consult a single inhabitant of the territory concerned. And that power was Britain. Shall I describe to you how Israel was born? . . . Is it late? You are tired? Must you go home to your hotel?’
As she gave him the answers he wanted, she still found time to marvel inside herself at the paradoxes of a man who could dance with so many of his own conflicting shadows, and still stand up. A candle burned between them. It was jammed in a greasy black bottle and under constant attack by an old drunk moth that Charlie occasionally pushed away with the back of her hand, making the bracelet sparkle. By its glow, as Joseph spun his story round her, she watched his strong, disciplined face alternate with Michel’s like two images overlaid upon a single photographic plate.
‘Listen. Are you listening?’
Jose, I am listening. Michel, I am listening.
‘I was born of a patriarchal family in a village not far from the town of El Khalil, which the Jews call Hebron.’ He paused, his dark eyes vigorously upon her. ‘El Khalil,’ he repeated. ‘Remember the name, it is of great importance to me for many reasons. You remember Khalil? Say it!’
She said it. El Khalil.
‘El Khalil is a great centre for the pure faith of Islam. In Arabic the word means a friend of God. The people of El Khalil or Hebron are the élite of Palestine. And I will tell you a small joke that will make you laugh very much. There is a belief that the only place from which the Jews were never exiled is the Hebron mountain south of the city. It is therefore possible that Jewish blood flows in my veins. Yet I am not ashamed. I am not anti-Semitic, only anti-Zionist. You believe me?’
He did not wait to be assured; he did not need to.
‘I was the youngest of four brothers and two sisters. Everyone worked on the land, my father was the mukhtar, or chief, selected by the wise elders. Our village was famous for its figs and grapes, for its fighters, and for its women, as beautiful and obedient as you are. Most villages are famous for one thing only. Ours was famous for many.’
‘Naturally,’ she murmured. But he was a long, long way from being teased.
‘It was most famous of all, however, for the wise counsels of my father, who believed that Muslims should make a common society with Christians and Jews, exactly as their prophets lived harmoniously together in Heaven under one God. I talk to you a great deal about my father, my family, and my village. Now and later. My father admired the Jews. He had studied their Zionism and he liked to summon them to our village and speak with them. He obliged my elder brothers to learn Hebrew. As a boy, I listened at night to the menfolk singing songs of ancient wars. By day, I took my grandfather’s horse to the water and heard the tales of travellers and pedlars. When I describe to you this paradise, I sound as if I am speaking real poetry to you. I can do that. I have the gift. How in our village square we danced the dabke and listened to the oud, while the old men played backgammon and smoked their narjeels.’
The words meant nothing to her but she was wise enough not to interrupt him.
‘In reality, as I freely admit to you, I remember little of such things. In reality, I am handing on the reminiscences of my elders, for that is how our traditions survive in the exile of the camps. As the generations pass, we must live our homeland more and more through the memory of our elders. The Zionists will tell you we had no culture, that we did not exist. They will tell you we were degenerate and lived in mud huts and went about in stinking rags. They will tell you word for word the things that were formerly said of the Jews by the anti-Semites of Europe. The truth, in both cases, is the same: we were a noble people.’
A nod of the dark head suggested that his two identities had agreed upon this point of fact.
‘I describe our peasant life to you, and the many intricate systems by which the communality of our village was maintained. The wine harvest, how the whole village went out together to the grapefields on the orders of the mukhtar, my father. How my elder brothers began their education in a school which you British founded in the Mandate. You will laugh, but my father believed in the British also. How the coffee in our village guest house was kept hot all hours of the day in order that nobody could ever say of us, “This village is too poor, these people are inhospitable to strangers.” You want to know what happened to my grandfather’s horse? He sold it for a gun, so that he could shoot the Zionists when they attacked our village. The Zionists shot my grandfather instead. They made my father stand beside them while they did it. My father, who had believed in them.’
‘Is that true too?’
‘Of course.’
But she could not tell whether Joseph or Michel was replying, and she knew he did not mean her to.
‘I refer to the war of ’48 as “the Catastrophe”. Never the war – the Catastrophe. In the Catastrophe of ’48, I tell you, the fatal weaknesses of a peaceable society were revealed. We had no organisation, we could not defend ourselves against the armed aggressor. Our culture was tended in small communities, each one complete in itself, our economy also. But like the Jews of Europe before their Holocaust we lacked political unity, and this was our downfall, and too often our communities fought each other, which is the curse of Arabs everywhere and perhaps of Jews. Do you know what they did to my village, those Zionists? Because we would not flee like our neighbours?’
She knew, she did not know. It did not matter because he paid her no heed.
‘They made barrel bombs filled with petrol and explosives, and rolled them down the hill, setting fire to our women and children. I could talk to you for a week, just of the tortures of my people. Hands cut off. Women raped and burned. Children blinded.’
Once again she tested him, trying to discover whether he believed himself; but he would give her no clue beyond an intense solemnity of expression, which could have suited any of his natures.
‘I whisper the words “Deir Yasseen” to you. Have you ever heard them before? You know what they mean?’
No, Michel, I have not heard them before.
He seemed pleased. ‘Then ask me now, “What is Deir Yasseen?”’
She did. Please, sir, what is Deir Yasseen?
‘Once more I answer as if I saw it happen yesterday with my own eyes. In the small Arab village of Deir Yasseen on April 9, 1948, two hundred and fifty-four villagers – old men, women, and children – were butchered by Zionist terror squads while the young men were working in the fields
. Pregnant women had their unborn children killed in their bellies. Most of the bodies were thrown down a well. Within days, nearly half a million Palestinians had fled their country. My father’s village was an exception. “We will stay,” he said. “If we go into exile, the Zionists will never let us come back.” He even believed you British would return to save us. He did not understand that your imperialist ambitions required an obedient Western ally to be implanted in the heart of the Middle East.’
She felt his glance and wondered whether he was aware of her inner withdrawal, or whether he was determined to ignore it. Only afterwards did it occur to her that he was deliberately encouraging her away from himself, and into the opposing camp.
‘For almost twenty years after the Catastrophe, my father clung to what was left of our village. Some called him stubborn, some foolish. Outside Palestine, his compatriots called him a collaborator. They knew nothing. They had not felt the Zionist boot on their necks. All round us in the neighbouring regions, the people were driven away, beaten, arrested. The Zionists confiscated their land, flattened their houses with bulldozers, and built new settlements on top of them in which no Arab was allowed to live. But my father was a man of peace and wisdom, and for a time he kept the Zionists from our doors.’
Again she wanted to ask him, Is this true? But again she was too late.
‘But in the war of ’67, as the tanks approached our village, we too fled across the Jordan. With tears in his eyes, my father called us together and told us to assemble our possessions. “The pogroms are about to begin,” he said. I asked him – I, the smallest, who knew nothing – “Father, what is pogrom?” He replied, “What the Westerners did to the Jews, so the Zionists now do to us. They have won a great victory and they could afford to be generous. But their virtue is not to be found in their politics.” Until my death I shall never forget watching my proud father enter the miserable hut that was now our home. For a long time he stood at the threshold, waiting for the strength to cross. He did not weep, but for days he sat on a box full of his books and ate nothing. I think he grew twenty years older in those days. “I have entered my grave,” he said. “This hut is my tomb.” From the moment of our arrival in Jordan we had become stateless citizens, without papers, rights, future, or work. My school? It is a tin shed crammed to the roof with fat flies and undernourished children. The Fatah teaches me. There is much to learn. How to shoot. How to fight the Zionist aggressor.’
He paused, and at first she thought he was smiling at her, but there was no mirth in his expression.
‘“I fight, therefore I exist,”’ he announced quietly. ‘You know who said these words, Charlie? A Zionist. A peace-loving, patriotic, idealistic Zionist, who has killed many British and many Palestinians by terrorist methods, but because he is a Zionist he is not a terrorist but a hero and a patriot. You know who he was when he spoke these words, this peace-loving, civilised Zionist? He was the Prime Minister of a country they call Israel. You know where he comes from, this terrorist Zionist Prime Minister? From Poland. Can you tell me, please – you an educated Englishwoman, me a simple stateless peasant – can you tell me how it happened, please, that a Pole came to be the ruler of my country, Palestine, a Pole who exists only because he fights? Can you explain to me, please, by what principle of English justice, of English impartiality and fair play, this man rules over my country? And calls us terrorists?’
The question slipped from her before she had time to censor it. She had not meant it as a challenge. It emerged by itself, from the chaos he was sowing in her: ‘Well, can you?’
He did not answer, yet he did not avoid her question. He received it. She had a momentary impression he was expecting it. Then he laughed, not very nicely, reached for his glass, and raised it to her.
‘Make a toast to me,’ he ordered. ‘Come. Lift your glass. History belongs to the winners. Have you forgotten that simple fact? Drink with me!’
Doubtfully she raised her own glass to him.
‘To tiny, gallant Israel,’ he said. ‘To her amazing survival, thanks to an American subsidy of seven million dollars a day, and the entire might of the Pentagon dancing to her tune.’ Without drinking, he put his glass down again. She did the same. With the gesture, to her relief, the melodrama seemed temporarily over. ‘And you, Charlie, you listen. Overawed. Amazed. By his romanticism, his beauty, his fanaticism. He has no reticence. No Western inhibitions. Does it play – or does the tissue of your imagination reject the disturbing transplant?’
Taking his hand, she began exploring the palm with the tip of her finger. ‘And his English is up to all this, is it?’ she asked, buying time.
‘He has a jargon-ridden vocabulary and an impressive store of rhetorical phrases, questionable statistics, and tortuous quotations. Despite this, he communicates the excitement of a young and passionate mind, and an expanding one.’
‘And what’s Charlie doing all this time? I’m just stuck there, am I, with egg on my face, hanging on his every word? Do I encourage him? What am I doing?’
‘According to the script, your performance is practically irrelevant. Michel is half hypnotising you across the candle. That is how you describe it to him later in one of your letters. “As long as I live, I will never forget your lovely face across the candlelight on that first night we were together.” Is that too lurid for you, too kitschy?’
She gave him back his hand. ‘What letters? Where are we getting letters from all the time?’
‘For the moment, let us agree only that you will later write to him. Let me ask you again, does it play? Or shall we shoot the writer and go home?’
She took a drink of wine. Then another. ‘It plays. So far it plays.’
‘And the letter – not too much – you can live with it?’
‘If you can’t let it all hang out in a love-letter, where can you?’
‘Excellent. Then that is how you write to him, and that is how the fiction runs so far. Except for one small point. This is not your first meeting with Michel.’
Not stagily at all, she put down her glass with a snap.
A new excitement had taken hold of him: ‘Listen to me,’ he said, leaning forward, and the candlelight struck his bronzed temple like sunlight on a helmet. ‘Listen to me,’ he repeated. ‘You are listening?’
Again, he did not bother to wait for her answer.
‘A quotation. A French philosopher. “The greatest crime is to do nothing because we fear we can only do a little.” Does it ring a bell with you?’
‘Oh Jesus,’ said Charlie softly, and on an impulse folded her arms across her breast in self-protection.
‘Shall I go on?’ He went on anyway. ‘Does this not remind you of someone? “There is only one class war and it is between the colonialists and the colonised, the capitalists and the exploited. Our task is to bring the war home to those who make it. To the racist millionaires, who see the Third World as their private farm. To the corrupt oil-rich sheikhs who have sold the Arab birthright.”’ He paused, observing how her head had slipped between her hands.
‘Jose, stop,’ she muttered. ‘It’s too much. Go home.’
‘“To the imperalist warmongers, who arm the Zionist aggressors. To the mindless Western bourgeoisie who are themselves the unconscious slaves and perpetuators of their own system.”’ He was barely whispering, yet his voice was all the more penetrating on account of it. ‘“The world tells us we should not attack innocent women and children. But I tell you there is no such thing as innocence any more. For every child who dies of hunger in the Third World, there is a child in the West who has stolen his food –”’
‘Stop it,’ she repeated through her fingers, now all too certain of her ground. ‘I’ve had enough. I surrender.’
But he continued his recitation. ‘“When I was six, I was driven from our land. When I was eight, I joined the Ashbal.” “What is Ashbal, please?” Come, Charlie. That was your question. Was it not you who asked me – you who put up your hand – “What is Ash
bal, please?” How did I reply?’
‘Children’s militia,’ she said, her head between her hands. ‘I’m going to be sick, Jose. Now.’
‘“When I was ten, I crouched in a homemade shelter while the Syrians poured rockets into our camp. When I was fifteen, my mother and my sister were killed in a Zionist air raid.” Go on, please, Charlie. Complete my life story for me.’
She had grasped his hand again, this time with both of hers, and was gently beating it against the table in reproof.
‘“If children can be bombed, they can also fight,”’ he reminded her. ‘And if they colonise? What then? Go on!’
‘They must be killed,’ she muttered unwillingly.
‘And if their mothers feed them, and teach them to steal our homes and bomb our people in their exile?’
‘Then their mothers are in the front line with their husbands. Jose –’
‘So what do we do about them?’
‘They must be killed also. But I didn’t believe him then, and I don’t now.’
He ignored her protests. He was making his protestations of eternal love. ‘Listen. Through the eyeholes of my black balaclava helmet, while I was inspiring you with my message at the forum, I observed your enraptured face upon me. Your red hair. Your strong, revolutionary features. Is it not ironic that on the first occasion that we met, it was I who was on stage, and you who were among the audience?’
The Little Drummer Girl Page 26