Where the Line is Drawn

by Raja Shehadeh

  In the middle of all the dereliction, I saw a small house on top of Rabieh, the hill that overlooks the sea. Next to it was a jasmine tree, in bloom, which caught my eye, and I swear it was the same jasmine tree from when I was a young man. I decided to walk up to the house and knock on the door. As I approached, I noticed the tree’s stems close to the ground. They looked ancient, but they seemed to sustain the growth of the delicate branches higher up. These were covered with white flowers like a small constellation of stars.

  Except for that house with the blossoming jasmine tree, the sense of desolation in the city troubled me. I went in search of things I remembered from when I was young, trying to reconstruct the city from memory. I found many reminders of that time. The roads formed the same grid as I remember. Very few new roads had been added. Many of the old buildings were still standing, but they were in a bad state. Some buildings had been demolished.

  I was fifteen when we left. I was preparing for my final exams. Leaving was so painful to me that I decided to put the city out of my mind, to look forward, not back. I went to work in Saudi Arabia at a time when the offices still didn’t have air conditioning. I worked hard in difficult conditions. I had to tolerate being described as a refugee, a man without a country, like some sort of bastard. But I never allowed myself to feel self-pity. I told myself: the world is my country. First I was a Saudi citizen, then a British citizen. That opened up many lucrative financial opportunities and I made the most of them. I became a millionaire and bought a summer house in Monaco, another in Paris and a third in the mountains of Lebanon. I lived well and forgot all about the city of my youth until I retired. It was then that the memories began to come back. Then I had a strong urge to visit the city and find out what had become of it.

  It was not an easy decision. It took courage. I knew that it would bring back all sorts of memories. Just the sight of my family’s house would open old wounds. To prepare myself I tried to imagine myself standing in front of our old veranda with its white tiles edged in black. After leaving Jaffa, I had abandoned so much. I had brought to an end one way of life, a life with a family in a closely knit community with a predictable future. Instead, I pursued a more solitary life. In Jeddah, I lived alone until I married one of the foreign secretaries at the company where I was working. I had very little contact with the rest of my family, especially after the death of my parents. I had a certain freedom. I was the master of my own life. But now that I was back in Jaffa, walking up the familiar streets, I felt as though I was back in the grid I had extricated myself from. I realised how much I’d missed my old self.

  As I saw more of the town, I began to be obsessed by a single question: why did we leave? The few bombs that had been thrown at the Manshieh quarter seemed like nothing compared to what Beirut had experienced in 1982. The Lebanese had not abandoned their city en masse. Why had we? Why did we leave everything and just go? What sort of people were we to have taken off, leaving everything behind?

  The particulars of that moment began to come back: how my father, always a stubborn man, refused to go and my mother pleaded with him to leave. My father then fell silent. In their exile he and my mother became estranged, as though he blamed her for tricking him into leaving. This was harder for me than anything I had gone through until then. I lost not only Jaffa but my parents as well.

  In retrospect I wonder what it would have been like if we had stayed. It was true that my parents were older and might not have been able to endure the hardship of staying. But I could have. Why didn’t I insist on remaining in our house and taking care of our property? What could the Israelis have done to me? Impose a curfew? Restrict my movements? I’ve experienced all this, and worse, in the war in Lebanon – for three months I was trapped in Beirut and couldn’t leave. If I had stayed in Jaffa I might not have been able to afford expensive houses around the world, but the whole world would have meant little to me if I’d had my Jaffa.

  I went to Rabieh, the highest place in the city, and looked out to sea. No other sea was as beautiful or as blue. The memories began to flood back. I could almost see myself, still slim and muscular, in my bathing trunks, swimming far out into the sea.

  I had to rest. I was feeling out of breath. I found a low wall and leaned against it. Across the wall I saw the cemetery where so many of my father’s friends who had died before 1948 were buried. My whole life seemed a waste. I concentrated on the sea and tried to follow the movements of my young self from our house down the hill into the sea. In every place I’ve been, what I had was what I could afford to buy. I looked for the best and bought it. But this place has a meaning to me that no amount of money could buy. All the money I had amassed could not buy me the feeling of being home. This was the home that I would never be able to replace with any other.

  When I walked up to the door of that house I did not know what to expect. It was just a whim. I remembered that the Khaders and their two daughters had lived here. I used to like walking by this house after school in the hope that I would see them standing there in the garden. The house looked inhabited and I was curious to find out who was now living in it.

  I knocked. Leila, one of the two daughters, opened the door. Her sister, Nadia, appeared at her side. They had always been on the plump side but now they were practically round. I introduced myself. When they heard my name they jumped with joy and asked me in.

  As I sat in their living room with the handsome floor-length window and had a view of the sea, I could hardly believe I was there. Their house had the aura of an old Jaffa house. It was as though nothing had changed.

  ‘Lemonade?’ they asked me. They seemed to speak in unison.

  Leila disappeared and returned with a tall glass of freshly squeezed lemonade, made from the lemons growing on a tree in their backyard. She had added a few leaves of mint. A white crocheted napkin was carefully folded underneath the glass.

  They asked me about my life. I told them. As I spoke I was aware that I was speaking about exile to those who had refused to be exiled. All the time I continued to think how fortunate they were. I both admired and envied them. How trite and empty my life must seem to them. They had never left their beautiful house on Rabieh, overlooking the sea. All the time I spoke they listened to me with unwavering interest.

  I asked them about their life.

  Leila said, and there was sadness in her voice, ‘As you can see, we never left. Mother was ill at the time and we did not want to disturb her. Father thought nothing could be worse for us than to leave our house. If need be we would die here. We lost both our parents in 1960 and ever since we have been living on our own. Not a day passes when we don’t ask each other, why didn’t we leave? Most of the people who left have done so well for themselves. We stayed here alone, in a dead and empty city. There used to be 70,000 people living here, now there are only around 2,500 of the original Jaffa people. None of our friends stayed. As you see, we are still single. We have no friends. We have kept our house, but we have also lost our community, our life.’

  Hearing this account made me think how often Palestinians living abroad failed to appreciate what life was like for us who continued to live under Israeli rule, whether in the State of Israel or in the Occupied Territories. It is true that we were spared exile, but it took so much effort to hold on to our identity as Palestinians, to forge a life under regimes that tried to drive us out.

  When I went to spend that night in Jaffa I was conscious that, unlike my parents, I came unburdened by memories of Jaffa before the Nakba. But I tried to imagine that life from everything I had heard and read. My first visit to the city was with them, so I was attentive to their feelings and attitudes. This time I had come on my own to explore my reactions to the place I had heard so much about.

  My first reaction, though, was simply to sweat. The place was just too humid for me. I’m used to the dry weather of Ramallah.

  David and Sarah were hospitable and offered me dinner as soon as I arrived. Sarah put out some bread and some hu
mmus (she pronounced it ‘khumus’), over which she had poured a strange-coloured oil. I wondered whether it was actually olive oil but did not want to embarrass her by asking. Unlike an Arab hostess, Sarah did not fuss over her guests. I found this refreshing. We sat in a relaxed way on cushions around a low table, chatting, eating and sipping red wine. I felt good in this house. I still couldn’t help wondering what sort of life had been lived here by its former Palestinian owners, but I did not want to follow that train of thought. I was aware that by choosing to sleep here for the night I was a bit player in this tragedy of dispossession. But I reasoned with myself that I was here to cure myself of the longing I felt for Jaffa, which I had inherited from my parents and grandparents.

  We talked about what it was like to live in the Occupied Territories. I was curious to know more about Sarah as an artist and asked her about herself. There was much that she wanted to tell me. Her husband, who must have heard it all before, went to bed, leaving us alone.

  Sarah told me about her parents’ escape from Poland. They had found refuge in Israel but remained Poles to their dying day; their Hebrew was basic. Sarah wondered about the Poland of her parents. Her parents had never spoken about it, and much of their past remained mysterious. They were wrenched out of one life and thrown into another – in the country in which she was born, the only country she knew, the country where she still felt foreign. Perhaps this feeling of foreignness came from her parents’ inability to adjust to the ways of the new country. Or perhaps this was the lot of artists and writers.

  She had felt more at one with Israeli society before the war of 1967, when there was much to do. She felt she was part of a common struggle for survival and she had no recollection of feeling different from everyone else then. She still felt that way when the time came for her to do her military service. She tried her best to participate and submerge herself in the collective self of the group, but it was with disastrous results. Just three months after being drafted, she was discharged having been deemed unfit for military service. The military psychologist who signed her discharge order prescribed a long period of rest. Nevertheless, Sarah did not feel alienated from those around her. That would come later, after 1967.

  The anguish Sarah experienced in the months leading to the war ended with Israel’s victory. Now she was sure it was time for peace. What use was winning the war if Israel would not use its power to make peace? But that was not how people around her felt. Victory seemed only to cloud their minds, unleashing a wave of hysterical nationalism, and it caused Sarah to break with her immediate social circle and go in search of new friends. These were leftists whom she, in turn, then alienated by moving to Jaffa.

  As she talked I looked around the room. The organisation of space in the house was unconventional. It was so unlike our house in Ramallah, where our living quarters are distinct from the room where we welcome guests. That room has our best furniture and our best ceramic pieces. This house in Jaffa had an improvised feel to it that was nothing like our guest room, with its large sofas. The furniture here had a temporary look as if it had just come from the flea market, where much of the property stolen from Arab homes ended up. Each sofa was different, there was no uniformity, as there would have been in a middle-class Arab home. There was a low table and we reclined on variously coloured cushions around it. It wasn’t cosy. There was something unfinished about it, just like Sarah. But I liked the freedom from convention.

  Sarah told me, ‘When I first moved to Jaffa, many of my friends were deeply disappointed. They could not understand how a lefty like me could move into an Arab house. I can’t explain it. I just felt a strong attraction to the old city. What is this self-righteousness, this condemnation? I don’t understand it. These very same people teach at Tel Aviv University, which is built over the ruins of an Arab village. Why is that all right but it’s not all right to live in a beautiful old Arab house?’

  ‘Then you must understand how Palestinian refugees like my own family feel. They yearn to return to their homes,’ I said.

  Sarah’s tone changed abruptly. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘in the Second World War there were so many displaced communities. So many borders changed, so many people were uprooted. Europe is brimming with displaced communities. But wherever they ended up, they all picked up and continued with their lives. They didn’t languish in refugee camps living off aid like the Palestinians, living in shacks, for God’s sake, dependent on handouts. What is this holding on to the past? It’s despicable. Why don’t you get on with your life? It’s pathetic. Look at us, how well we’ve managed. To survive on charity, for God’s sake, for three decades.’

  ‘You mean UNRWA food rations.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, raising her voice. ‘Yes, UNRWA.’

  ‘I have my issues with this organisation too, but I suspect for different reasons from yours,’ I said, but Sarah didn’t ask me to explain.

  I was shocked to hear what she had to say and how she failed to appreciate that for us Palestinians it was not only a question of material losses but the denial of our very existence as a nation. But I decided not to challenge her. I had come to listen, not to argue. I listened without anger or rancour. I just wanted to understand. I was, after all, a guest in her house. I didn’t want a confrontation.

  She cannot have noticed how her words struck me, for she went on, ‘I’m an artist. There is nothing else that I can do in my life. This used to worry my parents, who wanted me to pursue what they called a proper career. I cannot say their nagging hasn’t rubbed off. It left me feeling anxious. It’s worse during the long days when I’m alone in my studio after David leaves. All alone with only my cat, trying to give abstract expression to my thoughts and feelings. It’s a lonely business being an artist. How can one ever be sure whether all the hours spent pursuing intractable thoughts and emotions are well spent? It’s impossible. When it gets bad and I feel I’ve tied myself in knots I take off, leave the studio and my house and go out. Everyone I meet in the street has something to do. They’re all involved in something, the baker in his bakery (what a wonderful thing to be producing bread – hot, fragrant, round pittas), the carpenter, the blacksmith. None of them wastes time in reflection over what they’re doing. They just do it. As for me, the world would go on spinning whether or not I produced my art. What, then, is my work worth? What is it for?’

  ‘What are you working on now?’ I asked.

  ‘An installation.’

  I had never heard this word before in relation to art.

  ‘I hang things together to represent an idea. I’m not sure yet where it’s going. I can show it to you tomorrow and you can tell me what you think. Now, let me show you your room. But first let’s clear up.’

  When I got up the next morning, David had already left. Sarah was in the kitchen. The cat had climbed into the kitchen sink and was prowling around the crockery, sniffing the leftover hummus. My mother would never have tolerated this. Sarah asked me if I wanted to eat breakfast at Abu Hasan’s, ‘which makes good khumus’. I was relieved not to have to eat from pots the cat had walked over and so we strolled out together through the old streets of Jaffa. It was late autumn and the air was very humid.

  Sarah cut a strange figure here. She wore a grey drop-waist flannel dress with large, low green-coloured pockets. On her feet were brick-coloured moccasins, which came up to her ankles and were fastened with string. She had tied a lock of her auburn hair on top of her head, while the rest of it dangled at the sides like dog’s ears. She was tall and lanky, and as she pulled herself up the hill ahead of me I looked at the way she held herself. She did not move gracefully. She walked as though the rest of her body was following her head. First her neck went forward, then came the shoulders, then the swinging arms and finally the feet, which seemed to drag behind. I was curious how the Palestinians we met saw her.

  ‘These are the streets I walk through every time I reach an impasse in my work,’ she told me. ‘They’re always full of Arab children playing in the fi
lth because they have nowhere else to play. Sometimes I stop and talk to them. Hasna, she’s a teenager who lives in that house over there. She has become a friend and I often sit with her on her parents’ porch and hear about her life. Such a beautiful girl and yet what a dark future she has ahead of her. I would like to help her but I don’t know how. He parents are poor. Her brother has taken to trafficking drugs. The poor girl doesn’t have much of a future.’

  I looked at the names of the streets. They had been struck out and replaced by numbers. Where was Bistress-Iskandar Awad or Jamal Basha or Nuzha Street? Gone, all gone.

  Through Hasna, Sarah got to know other Arab girls. Slowly she was coming to understand their problems, not only with their families but also with the municipal and state authorities. Throughout her neighbourhood, the Arab families received no grants and no services. Every attempt was made to make their life so unbearable that they would leave.

  ‘It’s my dream to buy one of these old Arab houses before it’s demolished,’ Sarah said, pointing out where a beautiful Arab house had once stood but had now been reduced to rubble.

  When we entered Abu Hasan’s, the restaurant was full of Israelis who, Sarah whispered to me, were leftists. They flattered themselves into thinking that by coming to eat hummus here they were getting close to the Arabs. They were tourists too.

  After breakfast we continued walking along the narrow winding streets. Many of the old Arab houses were still standing, waiting, untouched except by the corrosive salty wind, which pockmarked the walls and rusted the ironwork. As we climbed further up, Sarah stopped before one palatial house and announced that we should go in. The door was open and we just walked through.

  Sarah explained, ‘You see how these houses are built facing the sea. The plan was very sensible. It allows the wind to pass through the entire house to keep it cool. It’s not like the houses in Tel Aviv, which are built with their backs to the sea by people from the interior. Look at the round window up on the wall that faces the sea. You see, there’s another window at the same height, also round, on the opposite wall. It was designed to help the air circulate in the house. And look at that delicate cornice all around the top there. How elegant and tasteful. It’s my dream to buy one of these houses, renovate it and live in it.’