The young man hadn’t meant anything by the gesture. It was his custom to reach out to other people’s clothes and fasten an undone button or pluck off an unwanted thread. He liked everything to look proper. He couldn’t bear to do nothing about a twisted collar or allow a badly tied necktie to pass. Sometimes, when he caught sight of a small leaf sticking to the hair of the man he was talking to, he would even, whoever it might be, reach out an arm, pull his head toward him, and set to searching through his hair with his fingers until he could pick out the offending leaf and fling it away. Then, and only then, he would sigh contentedly and ask his interlocutor with the greatest politeness, “What were you saying, my dear sir?”
That was the way the young man was. He couldn’t imagine that the removal of a silly thread could possibly upset anyone. And in fact Mr. Gouda didn’t display any appreciable annoyance in front of the young man. Later, however, when waiting ages for the bus, when he raised his daily paper to shield his bald head from the sun, when he managed (with a skill born of practice) to leap onto and stuff his fat body inside the crammed vehicle, he felt an oppressive sensation bearing down on his chest and, one by one, Mr. Gouda’s cares welled up, overflowed, and violently burst their banks. He was forty-five years old. An employee in the Monitoring Department at the Ministry of Planning. His main job was to stamp papers—numerous papers which, the years had taught him, possessed neither use nor significance.
Often, Mr. Gouda would catch sight of companions from his school days riding in luxury cars or read about their doings in the press, and when he encountered these glittering successes he’d always hope in his heart that one of them would treat him with arrogance and scorn, that one of them would mock him or scoff at his poverty and failure, that one of them, in a word, would give him a reasonable excuse to vent his spleen against him, but it never happened. They treated him with excessive kindness and politeness. They put him at his ease when talking to him, laughed long at his witticisms, and listened to him with interest, exactly like the good-hearted sultan who halts his mighty procession and, seized by pity, hurries over to a weeping child or poor widow. This would cause Mr. Gouda’s anxieties to overwhelm him completely.
Now, I have to stress that the story of the cigarette kiosk was an odd one and that Mr. Gouda was used to telling it in the café to make his friends laugh. They all loved the story and often asked him to repeat it, at which moment he would feel true ecstasy and, taking a deep drag on his cigarette, would tell it over again, each repetition adding to his skillfulness in the telling, as he focused like a master on the funniest parts, so that his friends’ enjoyment became intense, their laughter raucous. And Mr. Gouda always laughed along with them.
This time, however, Mr. Gouda recalled the story of the cigarette kiosk and found nothing in it to laugh about. On the contrary, embarrassment and distress swept over him as he thought back over the day when his wife had convinced him that most millionaires had started by selling cigarettes and candy. He remembered how he had struggled, and gone on struggling, until he’d acquired a cigarette kiosk in a Cairo suburb, how he’d used to leave work and go and stand in the kiosk surrounded by the cartons of cigarettes and packets of cookies, and how the kiosk, which was built of metal, would grow hotter and hotter in the heat of the sun until it was burning like a furnace, with Mr. Gouda inside it, waiting for customers and wealth.
And finally Mr. Gouda remembered how he’d discovered, after three whole months, that they’d tricked him and that the area had no customers. By the time his memories had carried him along to that point, he’d reached the house.
No one at home noticed any sign of dejection on his face. He took off his street clothes as soon as he entered the house and joked around with the kids, as usual, picking up Sherif, the youngest, by his little feet and raising him until his hands touched the ceiling, and he went on doing this until the little fellow broke out into rapid and continuous fits of laughter. Then he went into the kitchen, asked for the food to be brought in a hurry and joked a lot with his wife, even pinching her more than once. He was entirely normal.
Mr. Gouda did only one thing that was strange. It occurred after lunch, when he and Busayna sought their bed for a little rest. It was stiflingly hot, and Mr. Gouda and his wife were dripping with sweat, despite which, and despite the fact that it was not his habit to have relations with her in the middle of the day, he asked for her and, very naturally, she refused, saying, “I’m tired, Gouda, and it’s hot.” Mr. Gouda, however, kept insisting until in the end she gave in and he flung himself onto her in a hot, violent encounter, wallowing and losing himself and producing a strong and copious performance. Busayna knew him. He was never like that unless he was very happy or very sad.
When Mr. Gouda had finished, he collapsed on his side, exhausted, and soon he covered his head with the pillow. He didn’t go to sleep, though, and some minutes of silence passed. By the time that he let out a heart-felt sigh, Busayna had decided to intervene.
“What’s worrying you, Gouda?”
There were so many things he would have liked to talk about that he said nothing.
“You don’t want to tell me? Come on, you don’t really think I’m going to go to sleep and leave you all upset like this, do you?”
“It’s the way I look, Busayna. I don’t look right at all any more, Busayna.”
At first, she didn’t hear, and when he repeated the same sentence, she didn’t understand a thing.
“To be honest, I don’t understand,” she said.
“I’m telling you, it’s my clothes. My clothes have got really awful. Especially the shirts. The shirt I was wearing today was a disaster.”
He expected her to answer him with any old thing that might come to her mind, but he never expected her to laugh. But Busayna did laugh. She went on laughing until the bed rocked beneath her. Mr. Gouda’s surprise turned to extreme annoyance and he shouted, “What are you laughing at? I’m telling you I don’t have any clothes to wear.”
“I’m laughing so that you’ll know just what a treasure your Bussy is.”
Mr. Gouda didn’t understand. Her voice continued, with new strength: “You’re a lucky devil to have married a woman like me.”
“Meaning what?”
“My dear good Mr. Gouda, I’ve known for ages that you don’t have any shirts, and so I joined a savings co-op. And Thursday next, God willing, we’re going to take a trip to Port Said and buy everything you need.* Now do you understand?”
From that Thursday to the next the days were all color and excitement, but Mr. Gouda was a sensible man. He dreamed, it’s true, of the coming Thursday and a tender, naughty smile would, it’s true, leap, despite his best efforts, to his lips whenever he pictured himself roaming the department’s corridors in his smart new shirt. At the same time, however, he understood very well that he’d have to go on paying into the co-op for a whole year, during which he would have to deduct a part of his salary to pay the price of that day. Mr. Gouda therefore thought everything over carefully and left nothing to chance. What would he buy from Port Said? Where exactly would he go? How would he deal with the officer at Customs? Which pocket, indeed, would he put his money in while he was on the outward journey? Dozens of minute details engaged Mr. Gouda’s attention and were studied exhaustively by him, until in the end he had everything ready in his mind and the time to act had arrived.
On the morning of the Wednesday before, Mr. Gouda announced to his colleagues at the Monitoring Department that he wouldn’t be coming in the following day. When they asked him why not, he started leafing through the file that was in front of him on his desk and then said, out of the corner of his mouth and as though it had nothing to do with him, “Oh, it’s nothing really. I was just thinking of going to Port Said tomorrow, you know.”
Within less than half an hour, the news of Mr. Gouda’s trip to Port Said had spread among the employees and he was inundated with requests of every description—shirts, socks, beauty products. Mr. Gouda knew
full well that he wouldn’t buy any of them but he refused no one nevertheless. He would listen and then say, with that air of importance of which he had felt so long deprived, “God willing. I’ll do my very best to remember.”
How happy he was too when he entered the office of Mr. Allouba, the department’s director, and asked him if there was anything he’d like from Port Said.
Mr. Gouda’s pleasure increased further when his boss responded, in a pleasant and gentle voice, “Before all else, your safe return, of course, Gouda. Though, actually, there is a kind of chocolate that my wife is very fond of. You know how women are, Gouda.” Allouba chuckled, and followed with a loud clearing of his throat to restore his dignity.
That Wednesday, Mr. Gouda was an important personage, but when, at night, he betook himself to bed, he was seized by an obscure feeling, a foolish feeling both illogical and baseless, that inspired in him the notion that he would never get to Port Said. Everything was ready. He had the money and had even familiarized himself with the prices. The next day he would go—what could prevent him? All the same, that darkly seductive voice kept on whispering at him and it was only with the greatest difficulty that Mr. Gouda managed to rid himself of his imaginings and go to sleep.
In the morning, when he woke up, he felt somewhat terrified as he counted his money for the last time, then folded the bundle of notes carefully and put it into his pants pocket, making sure that it had gone all the way down to the bottom. When Mr. Gouda and his wife took their seats on the bus headed for Port Said, Busayna recited the opening chapter of the Qur’an in a low voice, and the moment they arrived in Port Said, Mr. Gouda put his plan into action.
He had written down the things he needed on a small piece of paper. The names of the stores were written on another, separate, piece of paper, which saved Mr. Gouda and his wife a great deal of wandering, so that by the middle of the day they were done with their shopping.
There were some household items for Busayna, while Mr. Gouda had acquired four new shirts, one of them with red and white vertical stripes. This shirt was particularly elegant.
The couple having found a discreet refuge in the lobby of one of the city’s smart apartment buildings, Mr. Gouda took off, for the last time, his old white shirt and exchanged it for one of the new ones, while Busayna succeeded in hiding two more shirts inside the folds of her clothes. This meant that just one shirt was left, which Mr. Gouda carried in his hand. The two were then ready to enter Customs, where they had to stand at the end of a long line of people without cars waiting for the inspector.
When their turn approached, when they were within a few paces of the inspector, Busayna bent toward her husband and whispered in his ear, and Mr. Gouda’s voice, filled with anguish and anxiety, was soon to be heard, uttering the words, “In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,” and then proceeding to recite, in genuine holy dread, new shirt in hand, “And We have put before them a barrier and behind them a barrier; and We have covered their eyes so they do not see…and We have covered their eyes so they do not see…and We have covered their eyes so they do not see….”*
To the Air Conditioning Attendant of the Hall
DEAR MR. AIR CONDITIONING ATTENDANT, pray listen closely as I start my tale.
My tale, my dear Attendant, is a boorish Arab tale that knows not how to behave. The ladies and gentlemen present in the hall will be afflicted by rage when I speak. Fury will ignite in their hearts, and for this reason I must beg you, my dear Air Conditioning Attendant, to turn up the cooling from time to time.
And you, my dear Sound Engineer, when I start to speak, seek to divert the attention of the listeners from me. Give them, my dear Engineer, yet more loud music.
As for you, my dear Acrobat, you must entertain the ones that grow furious. Fall flat on your face or walk on your hands. If necessary, Acrobat, let forth a cry like the braying of a donkey. What matters is that good cheer be unconfined, and anger dispelled.
Ladies and gentlemen,
My story starts with a bit of bad luck, the sort of wretched ill-fortune that brings an innocent child into this world with a disfigured face or body, the sort of unjust fate that bereaves the tender-hearted father of his youthful son and sows cancer in the breast of the up-and-coming man.
Such a black fate it was that made Jenin an Arab city. Had Jenin been located in Switzerland, had its orange groves been covered with the sparkling snows of Europe, had its many mosques been Catholic churches, had the people of Jenin belonged to the superior, white-skinned race, or had Jenin not known—God forbid—the chanting of the Qur’an or the performance of the five daily prayers, what befell it would never have done so. Blind fate, however, created Jenin an Arab city and, not content with this ignominy, made it a Palestinian city to boot. Finally, that no humiliation might be spared, fate chose to set it on the West Bank, right on the border with the respected Jewish State. Yet let God, High and Omnipotent, bear witness—as do the reports of the various intelligence agencies—that not one of the people of Jenin was given to wanton acts of violence. It was both small city and large house, and its people were peaceable.
The good-natured peasants were skilled at the growing of oranges, and that was all they knew. They were careful to say their Friday prayers and they loved to drink arak.
Nor did it ever happen that anyone from Jenin was heard to raise his voice or say a foul word, not even in the days of folly, when black thoughts about Israel ran like poison in the veins of the Arab world and when the Arabs where addicted to talk of the liberation of Palestine, socialism, nationalism, and other such bunkum. Even in those days, Jenin remained the same, and the people of Jenin set off, as they always had done, to the orange groves, knowing nothing else, to cultivate and harvest.
Truth to tell, this good conduct had a considerable impact on the hearts of the Jewish authorities—so much so in fact that they considered a number of times presenting a large reward to their peaceable neighbors, and indeed this almost came to pass, and would have done so, had there not occurred the unfortunate, the most extremely unfortunate, events that Jenin witnessed during the spring of 1967.
Dear Mr. Air Conditioning Attendant, one degree colder, if you please.
I shall relate what happened all at one go.
In May 1967, Jenin decided to enter the war. Picture, good people, the farmers of Jenin bearing weapons and setting off to fight. And to fight whom? The State of Israel. Surely, it is an ironic fate that drives man to seek his demise with his own hand.
Flat on your face, Acrobat!
June 1967 began, and the crisis deepened and dug in its heels and war was on everybody’s lips. On a day as terrible as the sun and as towering as a mountain, the Jordanian army took a deep breath, raised its mighty arm, and entered Jenin.* This was according to plan, because Jenin was on the front line and the Jordanians had to move into it in order to defend it.
Jenin will never forget that day. “Welcome, Heroes of Jordan!” read the broad banners that dangled proudly as they waited and the men assembled in the narrow lanes. Some sat. Others were unable to do so, so great was the yearning, and they went up to the hilltop, returning with exciting news: “In half an hour the heroes will be here! They may already be on the outskirts!” Meanwhile the women had made themselves busy that day as on no other—and how could it not be so, when the heroes would arrive after a hard journey and must find something ready to eat and drink? And that something was produced. Dozens of sandwiches, fried pastries, casseroles, and every other kind of dish were born, along with bottles of arak in long rows, nestled in palm-leaf wrappers.
Even the children in Jenin were looking forward to the arrival of the Jordanian army with the greatest zeal, the children having their own reasons, which included seeing a real army in the flesh, and rifles, for the first time—an army next to which those of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would look like a bunch of outmoded and badly made toys.
What a lovely dance, dear Sound Engineer!
The Jordania
n army arrived at one o’clock in the afternoon and the appearance of the first soldier at the edge of the city and the sight of his green uniform and shining brass badge were the signal, the magic signal, for the release of all the emotions that had been waiting since the morning—all in one outburst and at one time. The ululations of joy, the plaudits, the patriotic songs, and the shouts broke out. Veritable showers of welcoming roses were thrown over heads. The heroes had come to defend Jenin and all Jenin embraced the heroes. Everyone sang and waved and no one felt embarrassed to express their feelings—it was a moment of truth that permitted no standing on ceremony. Even the sheikhs and notables were hurrahing. Every individual in Jenin was careful to make sure that their greeting—their own personal greeting—reached the warriors, and all these greetings seemingly came together into one great greeting. And, truth be told, the Jordanian army, with its awe-inspiring military formations and angry black weapons, merited such enthusiasm. Its men were men, with huge, muscle-bound bodies and Arab mustaches “sturdy enough for a hawk to sit on” (without misgivings). The whole scene spoke of power, and when the first tank appeared it all became too much to bear, and everyone rushed forward to climb the steel walls, and the topknot of a tank opened and a warrior poked his head up, laughing and accepting hugs and kisses.
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