The Homeland

by Hamida Na'na

  “It is not as simple as that. The way I see it, the only way to solve the problems of the Middle East is revolution.”

  “What do you mean, ‘revolution’?”

  “It’s what you used to talk about all those years ago, Frank. Sowing the seeds of revolt around the world.”

  “But can’t you see. That’s just not possible any more. Look at the map of the world. I used to be a dreamer, but now I’ve realized that although humanity can live by its dreams it can also die from them.”

  We were driving along Rue Beaunier towards the University Campus. Suddenly we decided to turn around and head out of Paris. We were beset by a feeling of claustrophobia and so we drove out to your house in the country. Dusk was falling as we crossed the fertile Normandy plains.

  We were getting close to Honfleur. It was getting dark over the Channel and we could see the sailing boats returning to the harbour. The fragrant night air entered the car. Your hands were beginning to loosen their grip on the steering wheel. I put my head on your shoulder and for a few minutes I felt at ease. I heard you speaking in the distance. There seemed to be a slight constriction in your throat which made your voice sound like church bells sounding a death knell.

  “One evening the commandant came to see me and told me to get my things ready. I was going to be moved to another prison. I had spent two years in that prison. In solitary confinement. I was not allowed to associate with the other prisoners. My right to receive visits from the outside had long since been withdrawn. My body was just beginning to get back some of its vigour after they had finished having their fun with it. I kept telling myself that I was going to be executed. Each time I was transferred to another prison, I would sit in the office of the head of general intelligence with his assistants and the American ‘advisers’ and the interrogations would start all over again: How did you enter the country? Who was your contact? Who was there with you the day they advanced on the capital? Every time my answers were recorded afresh. All attempts to have me released made by the French Embassy had failed. The public campaign calling for my freedom failed too. I had been pronounced guilty and I was sentenced to life imprisonment. I began to see how good the world outside looked from behind the bars of a prison cell. The simple pleasures of walking along the Quai des Orfèvres, the sad face of my girlfriend, the voice of Abile, my mentor. I realised that I did not want to rot away behind the walls of a cell, and I wanted to go back to living my life so that I could see them all again.

  “I had got quite used to the guard’s face outside my cell, coming towards me out of the darkness. I would miss that if I was moved on. We’d just begun to see eye to eye with one another over the last few weeks. The new military regime had started to open up to progressive forces outside the country and this had meant that I received a bit more contact with people. I had become used to the faces of my guards and executioners, the walls of my room and the ink-stained wooden table. The guard would talk to me about the drought which had swept through the country, and how it made life difficult and had caused an economic crisis. From time to time I would have the luxury of reading a page or two from the local newspapers which he managed to smuggle in for me. I was not looking forward to the prospect of giving up this relative comfort and going to a new cell and a new executioner.

  “He said to me, while he was helping me to put my books into a bag:

  “‘Well, Monsieur Frank, I hope they set you free this time. I think you’ve had enough of all this.’

  “They blindfolded me and put me in a jeep. Several hours later the blindfold was taken off and I found myself in the office of the intelligence chief. There he was. He hadn’t changed a bit. The only difference was that he was by himself this time, without his American advisers.

  “‘We are going to set you free today. I hope that we never see your face again in our land.’

  “I had nothing to say to them. Although I have decided not to go back to that country, I shall fight against fascism wherever I find it. I remembered the words of Abile, as he was saying goodbye to me before I left them in the jungle which hemmed in the capital city:

  “‘Go home and tell them about our struggle, Frank. There are plenty of people to fight for our cause here. Go back to where the people know who you are and aren’t wondering what you are doing among them. Go back to where the only thing you’ll get asked is where you come from and what your family name is.’

  “In the darkness of that morning I was driven through the streets of the capital in an army truck. The French military attaché was allowed to go with me to the airport. He was there to discuss where it would be best for me to go onto from there. Without hesitating I told him that I wanted to go to Paris.”

  I look at you. The sweat is pouring down your forehead. In the light of the street lamps, spread out on each side of the road leading to Honfleur, your eyes wander like two pools of mercury.

  As I listened I tried to treat you with quiet tenderness. I did not want to ask you too many questions. Prisoners do not like to be reminded of their experiences. I tried to escape from the memory of my own past in my homeland and the period of my life when I travelled from city to city searching for justice for a people who live out their exile in despair.

  You stopped the car at your garden gate and we both got out. My mind was far away from you; far from the Channel far, from Honfleur, town of the Impressionists. I was slipping back to the east, to my days of hardship. I was trying to understand your past and your current desire to distance yourself from areas of danger, and to choose your safety.

  Light streamed in to us from the lamps in the garden. I lay down and sprawled on the wooden floor of the sitting-room. I stared at the ceiling and listened to the noise of the sea which was raging outside. It was louder than the wind which tore through the silence of the trees outside. I did not know what the time was. I tried to search a little in my memory for something other than the present time which we were living, but all I could think of was the company of my comrades and my days in the east, in Ayntab which was ablaze. The lights of Ayntab were mingled in my memory with the sound of the waves breaking on the shore. You were sitting at a table in the corner writing something. Every now and then you looked at me with your wandering eyes.

  My body was weak and my mind filled with questions ever since Ihad heard the dreadful news of Mary-Rose. She had been shot crossing a checkpoint in Ayntab three days previously. But why? And who had done it? I ask you if you know anything about it, and you say: “Mary-Rose? Who’s Mary-Rose? The world is full of Mary-Roses.”

  She had been my comrade-in-arms in the last European operation and now she was lying dead in Ayntab. Well, maybe she wasn’t dead yet, but she soon would be.

  “Was she a Palestinian?”

  “She was a Palestine-Lebanese, but she came from Syria.”

  “No, I mean was she with the Palestinians?”

  “Why else do you think they seized her? Because she was whistling after dark?”

  “And you? Do you know her? What’s made you think of her now?”

  “Yes, I knew her. We were together … ”

  Immediately after I said that, I remembered that I was not meant to talk about my past life. I have made a promise never to do so. A cloud of sorrow filled my head. Mary-Rose dead. My contempt for Europe was reawakened and I longed to be back there.

  You raise your head from your books and papers, your world of words. You escape for a while from the monotonous strings of letters, the monotony of the moment itself:

  “Tell me, is it true what they say about the Palestinian leaders?”

  “What about them particularly?”

  “Oh you know, their links with certain reactionary organisations, the fantastic wealth they have accumulated, the way they stand in the face of national unity… . ”

  The great tragedy is laughing, spitting out blood. I don’t know what to say to you.

  “I really don’t want to get into that sort of thing right now, if you don’t
mind.”

  You do not stray from your work for too long. You are drawn back into the world of words and phrases and fictions, those things that have replaced real action for you. You immerse yourself in your papers again. I go on with my inner struggle. Why don’t you ask me about my life? Why doesn’t suspicion and certainty drive you to pierce through the layers of deceit, to look further than the face of the woman you love and to see the woman-tree behind the mask? The time passes as I lie on the wooden floor looking up at the sky coming in from the window. I see my life with you as a temporary stop-over on my way back to the East. I see Mary-Rose’s blood over your books and papers, over the windows of your bedroom. Rose-red blood stopping joy and history moving forward through time. Where am I? What am I doing here? Let me go back a little. Let me go back to my previous life.

  Who am I? A voice assails me every minute of every day. It eats away at my complacency and my ease. It makes me think back to a small town by the sea where I was born. My father was once an officer in the occupying French army. A veil of pride crosses his countenance at the mention of his Kurdish origins. I feel suffocated by this veil and sometimes I want to cry out:

  “Look, I speak Arabic. I was born here. I don’t know anything else.” From there, with the sea lying silently to one side and the mountains waiting close by on the other, I learn to draw the map of the world, starting at the Gulf of Alexandretta. It is a world without boundaries. I learn at school that Palestine is close and that it only takes a short trip by boat to get there. As I grow up, however, I begin to learn the whole truth … The way to Palestine passes through the heart of all the towns of the Arab World. My father takes pride in his ancestors who liberated Jerusalem. He takes pride in his lineage to Salah ad-Din and the noble Kurdish dynasties. He is always reminding me of my elevated origins:

  “You’re a princess. Your blood is not like anyone else’s. You must hold your head up, even when your face is in the dust. You’re a princess and you must never forget it.”

  My imagination is set alight and in my dreams I ride a white stallion over foaming salt waters which seem to go on for ever. But I am approaching the point where the line is drawn between the sea and the land.

  On the Isle of Arwad the King of Egypt did bathe with his mistress. Time passes, bringing wind and rain to the town by the sea. The pasture and the pine trees awaken. In my fifteenth year I meet a teacher who has come to us from Arum. Her language is filled with words like ‘Freedom’ and ‘the People.’ She talks to me about ‘justice’. She tells me about a political party whose aim it is to redraw the plan of those Arab towns. One day she says to me:

  “You can join us if you like.” I was young when I joined them. I was young when I learnt that I had comrades everywhere on the map of the Arab lands and that they were fighting against a bitter reality and, they like me, dreamt of the sweeter time which was coming … I was young when I made Palestine my dream and when I learnt about the massacres of Deir Yasin and Jerusalem.

  What sadness for that fourteen-year-old girl now that she knows what has happened since those days! The years have gone by. Time has not stood still. Freedom and Palestine are still nothing more than distant dreams.

  I remember my weekly meetings with my comrades. we would turn the words into shining stars. With our hands trembling by our sides we would repeat the slogans and doctrines of the party to one another over and over again. I did not tell my father or mother about these meetings and so I began to live a life of furtiveness and secrecy. I was living with a strange feeling which I made sure would never see the light of day. By night I would secretly read the party literature, and assimilate and memorise what I had read. Then, in the early hours, under the cover of darkness I would go out into the streets and distribute the pamphlets to the houses of my comrades. In all weathers, at all times of day or night and in all seasons, I would be going from house to house and from street to street around the town. The country was living under tyranny during that period and if I had been caught, I would have been in serious trouble. The eyes of the police were everywhere, but I was living my adventure.

  One day the teacher tells me: “You must be careful. If your family were to find out it would be a disaster. And if the authorities get wind of what you’re doing, you’ll be put in prison.”

  I was not frightened by either my family or the police. I was with my comrades and we were waiting for tomorrow. I have been waiting since I was fourteen, and tomorrow has still not come. My journey has been a long one, passing through the cities of the north and the poems of Sulaiman al-‘Issa, the music which gave life to his words. I make my first attempts at writing down my poetry. Words, words which lead to the colour of snow and the days to come.

  With my father again. The names of his ancestors, their pictures on the walls. His blue blood. The princes who sired him and placed him on this earth. With my father again, speaking about the homeland of his people and their dignity. He spoke about the mountain range which was their home and those members of the family who were still living there. Not a word of all that interests me now. What did they know about the poems of Sulaiman al-‘Issa or the Baghdad Uprising?

  Little by little I grow up. I turn my face to the town and my eyes reflect its bright lights. My mother tells me about a wealthy man who is desirous of marrying me. She promises me riches, spacious mansions, countless trips to Europe. She tells me about an overheated house and the smell of a man gorged on wealth. I think of my three sisters, each of whom has ended up in a big house with a man whose features are just like those of my father. I remember them being turned into beautiful, silky-skinned, baby factories. I refused. I said no. I clung to my books and my studies to save me from this approaching stranger. My mother could not believe it:

  “What is wrong with you? You won’t have to lift a finger. He’ll just shower you with money.”

  On summer evenings I close my windows, and write down words which I have been carrying in my head the whole day and which have become so heavy that I can hardly bear them any more. Love poetry. Poems about Palestine. Plans for a new homeland, a new party. I breathe life into men. The words become too small to hold the dream. I fall into the dream and wait.

  “One day you will be a great poet.”

  So the teacher had said when I showed her some of my work. My mother scoffs at the teacher’s words:

  “Poetry is folly. You’re much too sensible for that sort of thing. You’re a princess and you should never forget that. Now you’ll be the wife of the richest man in town and the mother of his children.”

  From that day I felt only disgust for the rulers, lords and princes. I search for a path which is as far away as possible from them and I find it in the Sa‘alik poets, the vagabonds of pre-Islam, whose blood was shed with impunity by the Arab tribes. I am one of them. I belong to the kingdom of the Sa‘alik, and one day my blood will be free to spill. I reject them all: the rulers, the lords and the princes.

  The rich stranger comes to our house and promises me joy, happiness and wealth. I watch the words being belched up from his stomach and dispersed around the room like the lies they are. “No one owns tomorrow! All the money in the world wouldn’t induce me to marry you and have your children.”

  The rich stranger takes his leave. My mother is distraught and tears come to her eyes. My father rages at me:

  “What do you think you are doing? Do you want to drag our faces in the mud? You are going to get married and that is that.”

  A storm passes through the big house surrounded by palm trees.

  My brothers start shouting:

  “She’s mad! It’ll be a scandal on the whole family.”

  One of them grabs my long hair and starts to hit my head against the wall. The blood flows past my eyes. It is a pure, red colour. So my father was lying the day he said it was blue. I fall ill. My body will not tolerate this treatment. I wait days, months, a whole year. I leave home. I go to Arum to complete my higher education. At last I am out of their clutc
hes. I remember Arum, the party which I created in my mind, in stark contrast with the unfamiliar faces of my new comrades in the party of which I am a member. I devote my life to long hours of reading and learning about the past, about philosophy and history. I see myself throughout the passing of the years and I live my daily life in expectation for the time to come.

  I get letters from my mother which are full of reprimands and exhortations. My father’s letters mainly contain pleas for me to steer clear of men and preserve my virginity until I come back home. My brothers come and visit me – to make certain their honour is not being compromised, no doubt. University life is all about failure and disappointment, about brave revolutionary words, about tomorrow. About poetry too.

  Arum makes a poet of me, screaming with the injustices done to me through the years, and the repression which has afflicted my nation. It makes a woman of me, a woman who loves her man and waits for him. I meet comrades in the party and I talk to them about the truth which is our people. I say to them: “You are just a bunch of future tyrants dreaming about the high-ranking positions which you’ll get, and the fast cars you’ll drive.” I tell them: “The party which we created in our hearts and minds bears no relation to you lot. Don’t talk to me about the masses. What do you know about the masses?” They sneer and turn their backs on me. More proclamations are issued. More of their lies clutter up the walls of the town. I see the mouth of the abyss getting wider, preparing to swallow us all up. I write about their isolation, about the doubts which they have about the masses, about the mistakes which they make on a daily basis. The walls go up between them and me. They end up not being able to stand my presence, while I cannot bear to be with them.

  At night I search for the dreams which populated my life in the town by the sea. I search for my intellectual fathers. I search for the vast poems which I used to live for and which once pierced the veil of rain and mist, the veil of night and dictatorship. However, it becomes clear to me that while the dream is one thing, reality is a different thing altogether.