The escape route was laid out in advance. After eating, they washed their hands in the Karak bathroom, slung their weapons, and left by the kitchen door into the sheltered hawsh courtyard. With a silver flash, an upper window opened along the stretched arm of a young girl. She peered down as Jamil and Basil slipped into the tunnel beneath the house, where a door on the corner stood purposefully ajar. The owner, waiting in the vestibule, bowed as they darted through his living room. Basil led them up a rear staircase. At the head of the stairs, through an open window, they heard the clamour of a police patrol. Basil hugged the wall, but Jamil slid his weapon off his shoulder and went to look. Three vehicles rolled by, reflecting blades of sunlight.
“They’re going in the wrong direction,” he said.
“You can leave those here,” came a woman’s voice.
Jamil jumped round. A veiled figure was standing in the doorway.
“Under the bed,” she added.
Basil unslung his rifle and Jamil held out both guns by their barrels. “Thank you, Khalto.”
“We’ll collect them this evening,” said Basil.
“Inshallah,” said the woman wearily, a rifle in each hand.
The external staircase took them into a back alley, darkened by high stone. At the intersection, Basil gripped Jamil’s neck. Then he turned, hunched, in the direction of his brother’s house.
Jamil took the fastest route from the old city and was soon on the mountain, unarmed but for a small old dagger in his waistcoat. His alertness began to ebb. He thought of the first man, that shadow, featureless until the moment of death, when his body had blossomed forth and his hands slipped into view. He forced himself to conjure a portrait of him. A hackneyed image of an officer with a brutal moustache, alive, death-marked. Then the simple pleasure of the act returned: aiming, firing, seeing the hand fall. He bristled. It was an excellent shot.
His mother’s living room smelled strongly of burnt sage.
“Ah habibi.” She rose from the couch. “Khalto, weinek?”
“Ah mama,” said Um Taher, stepping from the bedroom, straightening the lapels of her gown over the steep hill of her breasts. “Ah khalti, ah he’s here. Yalla habibi we need to talk. Abu Jamil?”
“He’s sleeping. Leave him.” Um Jamil dusted her hand, meaning: he wouldn’t help us anyway. She faced her son with a hungry expression.
Jamil dropped onto the sofa. He was his family’s conduit to the struggle, and though he knew his duty was to help them by explaining, the task wearied him. Sometimes he considered the contrast between his duties outside the house, which, though larger, he undertook without complaint, and those smaller ones at home that he resisted, as if a muscle in his mind had only one direction in which to move when faced with his mother, and that direction was against.
“We need to talk,” said Um Taher again, sitting opposite.
“Mashi,” said Jamil.
“About Midhat,” said his mother.
“I,” said Um Taher, and putting her hands on her knees she let out a gust of air, “I went to see him in the hospital.”
“Mm,” said Jamil.
“And I didn’t like it,” said Um Taher. “I don’t like it at all. Habibi, will you help us? We need to take him out.”
“I don’t see how I can help.”
“We need, ya‘ni, more people.” His great-aunt began to move in a manner familiar to him, her white eyebrows tensed and her fingers grasping after her words: the manner of someone constructing a plot. “The more family who come to help, the more we can make them feel, ya‘ni—we’re going to go there in two cars, Fatima is coming, your father—we need everybody we can get. Men, especially. We need you.”
“That’s not how it works with these places, Khalti,” said Jamil. “If they think he’s dangerous they won’t release him.”
“But we’re going to try,” said his mother, nodding vigorously.
“You shouldn’t have put him there in the first place,” said Jamil. “You should have left him with the Ebal Girls.”
“That’s what I said,” said Um Jamil. “We could have got a sheikh, we could have tried another way. It’s the mixture of things, I heard, it’s the mixture that makes you mad, that draws in the jinn.” She made a fist and swerved her extended thumb from side to side: “Love plus sorrow. Love plus grief. Grief plus fright. It’s mathematical. One man can take only so much. This fire at the shop came at a bad time—grief plus …”
“We’re not getting a sheikh.” Um Taher looked irritated. “He’s not possessed.”
Jamil nearly smiled. Um Taher had always been the superstitious one in the family, but his mother appeared to have overtaken her. Perhaps it was a stage women passed through in their journey towards obsolescence, a phase of murmuring born of panic, grappling at trinkets and ancient tricks, from which they finally emerged white-haired, rational, and resigned.
“I know, Jamil,” said Um Taher, “that this is not the time for this. You have other things to think about. But think. He’s your cousin. He’s your brother. And he is suffering in there.” Her mouth melted open. She cupped a hand to her face and swallowed her next words.
“Listen,” said Jamil heavily, though he did not know what he was going to say.
“We will take him out,” said his mother, “and when he is well he will become a fighter.”
“Mama, Midhat will never be a fighter.” The telephone was ringing. “Give me a moment.”
“Basil Murad for Jamil Kamal,” said the operator.
“Jamil is with you.”
“Ah habibi,” said Basil. “We need to go, the road between Anabta and Nur Shams. Are you ready? Abd al-Rahim al-Haj Muhammad is leading. Munir has gone to collect the rifles.”
Jamil glanced over at his mother and great-aunt, who were watching him. “Do you have that thing we were talking about?”
“Yes. The English called for help—that’s where the patrols were going.”
“Anabta exactly?”
“Just before.”
“I’ll see you at your brother’s.” He replaced the telephone.
“You’re not going,” said his mother.
“Going where?”
“Battle. You are not going.”
“Mama. Relax.”
“He wants to fight, let him fight,” said Um Taher.
“He’s my son!”
“Look, what time is it now—eleven o’clock. I’ll be back for dinner. I promise. Mashi?”
His mother released a moan, and kneaded the knuckles of one hand into the other palm. “God keep you safe. God keep you, God keep you.”
Jamil pulled on his jacket and left the house.
In general, he avoided thinking about Midhat as much as possible. The day he found his cousin trembling on the floor of Wasfi’s study, he had wept briefly in front of Hani. But he did not visit Midhat in the Nablus hospital where he was all winter, nor in the Bethlehem one where he was moved last month. Nor had he made plans to.
Over the past decade, their contact had been minimal. News of his cousin was mostly mediated by Um Jamil and Um Taher, and by Adel Jawhari and other activists who knew him, and sometimes by those in town who did not know Midhat well but imitated his gestures and referred to him as “the Parisian” with an affection that slid into derision. “I’m going to the banque,” was something still said among Jamil’s colleagues, with a flipping of the non-firing hand. But Jamil always had the impression, even from afar, that Midhat exaggerated this image for the fun of it. So he was not exactly the dupe of these jokes, but rather, with one further remove might be extracted from “the Parisian” entirely, which was not him precisely but some other person whom he took the liberty to play. Still, as the years passed Jamil felt shame and irritation when his cousin’s name was mentioned. Respectful affection in Nablus had shaded into malice once the Syrians rose up against the French Mandate. Everyone knew France was a cancer of imperial force, leaching life from Arab households. To be a Parisian in Nablus was to be
out of step with the times, locked in an old colonial formula where subjects imitated masters as if in the seams of their old garments they hoped to find some dust of power left trapped. This was not precisely the case with Midhat, who seemed rather blind to the deep meaning of his costumes, and was certainly not striving for power or superiority when he meticulously crimped a mouchoir in his pocket and said, “Voulez vous?” Blinking when they talked of politics, agreeing mildly and continuing on his way, so literally in love with the pattern on a scarf that he would spend great fortunes behind his wife’s back in order to import it from Europe.
When Midhat had first returned from Paris after the war, Jamil remembered him full of quick energy, with a varnished way of formulating his ideas. France had turned him into a man quite different from the shy schoolboy of their childhood. Many in Nablus even speculated that Midhat might go into politics, given how naturally he discussed Faisal and the Syrian question. Midhat, a politician! Within a year of his return he became so self-absorbed that he jumped when you spoke to him, and between the pair of them a constriction commenced that neither tried to ease. For a while Jamil went on craving the lost affinity of their youth, until it was clear that this quality of sympathy would be impossible to revive. Divided from his cousin in the crowd, Jamil’s resentment decayed into scorn.
In the full sunlight he began to sweat. In a way, it made sense that Midhat was now in a hospital for mad people while Nablus was in revolt. How else would al-Barisi have coped with wearing patched trousers? Where would be that man’s fortitude, confronted with the scrawny limbs of his nieces and nephews, the hunger and tiredness in the eyes of everyone? Anger was making Jamil walk too fast: he cooled his final thought. Not everyone could be a fighter. When Midhat returned from hospital he would probably manage as well as most.
He ducked into the old city and shrank against the wall. The most dangerous rage of all was the rage against impurity. Condemnation of strikebreakers had lately reached the pitch of fever: last week, a group of youths between eight and fourteen had badly wounded a vegetable merchant by stoning him, after giving him a black eye and pouring a bucket of muck over his head. The man’s crime? Suspicion of wanting to break the strike. The Committee were setting up a system of rebel courts allowing witnesses to testify before an audience. They hoped this theatre of persuasion would induce the accused to ratify his or her allegiance to the cause—but mostly they meant to placate the accusers, and conjoin everyone in a spirit of common struggle. Unless they handled it properly, this kind of rage would be the death of them.
Jamil turned the corner to Munir Murad’s house, and in his mind saw Midhat on the floor, holding a letter. He saw his cousin’s devastated stare. He felt the return of that ancient fundamental love that had shoved up inside him and turned his own eyes wet with surprise. Munir opened the door.
“Ta‘al,” called Basil from another room.
On the dining table lay a flaccid canvas bag with leather straps and a small wooden box lashed to two cylinders with copper wire.
“I didn’t pack it yet,” said Basil.
Jamil raised the bomb with both his hands. An expert from Damascus had helped them assemble it in the cinema last week with supplies smuggled in on the back of a vegetable cart. Basil held up the flap of the bag, and Jamil slid the box inside and levered the bag onto his back. Though it would not explode until the fuse was lit, at the weight his stomach lifted with apprehension. Basil passed over a rifle and a cloth bag of ammunition.
“You collected these in daylight?” Jamil checked the chamber and slipped in three bullets.
“They’ve all gone to the mountains,” said Basil. “Honestly, if we weren’t needed—I’d say we should take the Sports Club.”
“Munir, are you coming?”
“Next time, boys. Next time.”
They reached Zawata in half an hour. On the parched street, four fighters ran to catch up, wishing them peace. Two were young and beardless. One slim older man carried only a stick. After the greetings, no one spoke. The pale rumble of machine guns echoed from the distance, where a grey balloon of smoke was rising.
“I’ll take the bag for a while,” said Basil, and the younger heads turned. “Don’t wait for us.”
By the time Basil was digging his thumbs under the straps and their boots were thudding softly again on the dirt road, those four figures had shrunk where the road twisted to the main square of the village, halfway to the hillside of the battle. Two warriors vaulted past on whinnying horses, and as the hooves contracted into silence the gunfire thickened. At the edge of the village, peasant women were filling jars from a well. Three bowed and joined them, jugs sloshing on their shoulders, and they travelled the road in a silent line between the villages, and the shallow basin that preceded the wadi, stepping ably over the rocks. The rumble resolved into shots and human shouts. They held their rifles and began the climb.
Partway up, Basil slipped and gasped, seizing at a bush. Jamil lunged for his arm, careful not to touch the pack, heart high in his neck, and as Basil found his footing there was a racket of displaced branches ahead. A man in Turkish uniform complete with medals skidded down towards them. His arms flew up and a woman cried, “Ya Allah!” Blood was flowing down his face: his ear had been blown off. They swung apart to let him by. Guns snapped from the other side of the hill.
They had reached the summit. Prone rebels shielded by boulders were firing down the steep valley wall; some were throwing rocks. Jamil dived for shelter into a small ditch fringed with bushes, and pressed his face low to the earth to see.
Beneath the veils of gun smoke, some ten metres below, the convoy was stopped in the valley behind a roadblock of stones. The Lewis gun mounted in the foremost car was silent, presumably out of ammunition—or perhaps the gunman was down; but the car windows were alternating fire up at them. Behind three military vehicles stood the few civilian cars under their protection, but the rear of the convoy wound out of sight where the valley turned. Beneath Jamil’s courage, fear glowed. He broke the dry spray of a bush with his hands to make room for his body, and shifted his gun into the cleft beneath a boulder at the top of the ditch. He aimed at the windows of the second car. He worked the bolt back and forth, fired. Worked the bolt, fired. He had no idea if his shots were landing. There was a scream from further off. Someone ran past his left and a rock hurtled down onto one of the car roofs. The man fled the return fire, and stumbled, bellowing in sudden pain.
Jamil refilled his chamber and aimed at another window. On the opposite side of the valley, the snout of a machine gun was rising. The body of the tank came crawling into view. At once, it commenced its continuous shuddering stream, turning up squalls of dust all over their summit. Jamil spun round and made himself as small as possible in his ditch. He could not see Basil anywhere. Others were tucking their legs up and hugging the ground. The red of fresh blood adorned the rocks and wet-blacked the earth. Nearby, one with a wounded thigh continued shooting; beside him lay a dead man, and another dying further down. A young bareheaded woman scrambled up and grabbed the dead man’s feet, pulling him after her down the slope. The man still alive cried: “Me! Me!”
A military plane appeared and disappeared, and as the bomb thundered Jamil swivelled onto his front over the shuddering earth. His head knocked on the rock and pain cascaded down his skull. He saw Basil. The rifle was limp in Basil’s hands; the backpack was on the ground beside him. The lenses of his spectacles were opaque with dirt and his lips were moving in prayer.
“Go over there!” Jamil screamed, pointing at an unoccupied cluster of rocks. “Use the gun! And the bomb—careful—”
Someone in the valley had spotted them: gunfire increased in their direction and Jamil dug his feet for purchase into the soil, trying to narrow his body while arranging himself to shoot. His rage blazed, and he was glad. The power increased in his hands. Another bomb, further away, sent debris stinging onto his face. He stopped to wipe his eyes with his fingers, and then with his shirt.
More rebels were coming up from the rear, clean and vigorous.
“Khalto, drink!” said a voice.
He turned his head carefully. Among the trees, a woman of about his mother’s age was holding out a jug of water.
“Get back!”
“Courage!” she shouted.
“Get back!”
A bearded fighter appeared behind her, dressed ambitiously in three bullet bandoliers and a cartridge belt. He shrank into a firm crouch a few feet off and began firing down with great speed and refilling the chamber of his carbine.
Jamil rearranged his knee on the ground, toes behind him flexed on a stone, the other leg crouched, the rifle butt in his shoulder. He aligned the sights on the windscreen of another military car mounted with a machine gun and squeezed the trigger. His bullet glanced off the steel; he shot the bolt, fired again, shot the bolt, fired. An older man passed by bearing a sword and ran down the slope towards his death, brandishing the blade over his head like a believer on the Prophet’s birthday. Jamil whispered a dua at the sight of him, his heart slipping in pity. He reached into his bag for bullets. Two left.
The Parisian Page 55