The Homeland

by Hamida Na'na

  My failure and frustration drags me into the cafés of Arum and Ayntab where the intellectuals gather. Through the smoke and whisky fumes, our voices talk revolution. The words are carried up in the smoke. The dreams fall back into our glasses. Our brave cries are lost in verses of nonsense poetry. The fire in our bodies is extinguished. At the end of the night we all pour out onto the streets singing about the pain of separation in the sentimental Iraqi love-song, “Firagik sa’b, ya Hawaya.”

  We were waiting for war, but we were never actually expecting it to happen. Then in June, 1967 …

  I search for a gun, for fire, for a knife, for anything which might repulse them at the gates of Arum.

  There was no gun. No fire. No knife.

  The defeat comes. I am out in the open while aeroplanes hurl down their bombs onto men, women and children, onto the streets, into our very hearts. A knife was buried deep in our breasts. The blood was black this time. Once again my father was proven a liar. How could he have thought that blood was the colour of happiness?

  1967. The year of defeat. I am torn to pieces. I am just one of the multitude whose bodies had been weakened by being stabbed over and over again. I am just a poet, one of the coffee-house intelligentsia, who is staring her defeat in the face and who is unable to do anything to stop it. The noise of aircraft rips through the silence of our days. I can see the world in its entirety. Everything has changed. Aeroplanes rain fire down on Arum. All the maps and charts become merged together in my mind and I see a single front-line which has been overrun by the enemy. Another wave of immigrants arrives. We call them ‘immigrants’ – who am I to disagree with what it says in the dictionary?

  I go to my comrades in the party and I try to make them remember. What is the use of memory though? What is the use of tears? Everything will be consumed in our wounds. Words die in the lines of poems, poetry itself dies in the pits of despair. Heroes fall from their heroic deeds. The masks are torn away. We are all displayed under the fire of defeat, helpless and enchained. The days pass and our wounds heal, but we shall never forget.

  I remember 1967. Lying there, ripped to shreds, one of the vanquished millions, a coffee-house intellectual, the stifled cries of protest in my throat. An artists’ and writers’ conference was convened in Cairo, a self-styled ‘Conference of Resistance.’ They could hardly have come up with a less appropriate title.

  I remember it well. A hall at the Faculty of Arts ringing with our empty phrases. We consumed the words as fast as they were consuming us. Our poetry now looked like an old woman’s face stripped of her make-up. Our different political affiliations were a picture of the crisis which faced our nation. Injustice was stamped on the brow of every one of the true fighters. The prisons had torn through the hearts of many people for many years.

  Meetings and speeches. Meetings and poetry recitals. Meetings where we curse the political organisations. But in the face of each person there, you can see those very politicians and those very organizations. You can see both the killer and the victim. We are seen for what we really are. Our dream leads us only to nothingness. The official writers are all there, the pet writers of the organisations, still with their villas and their fat salaries. They are unaffected by the failures and they do not seem to be feeling the slightest embarrassment. Sometimes Ifeel so disgusted that I have to leave the hall. I head towards an old bar near the University. I sit there with a glass in my hand. Drink was the only hero after the Fifth of June. The Arabs’ only saviours were alcohol, hashish and the haunting strains of Um Kalthum. Everything else was lost.

  How often I thought of taking my own life!

  I looked everywhere for a gun, but I could not get hold of one. There were some firearms that I knew of, but they were all kept under lock and key at the party headquarters, and I could never bring myself to ask for one. Even death was only obtainable after getting official approval and written permission in triplicate from the correct authorities! In life and death we were governed by people who build castles in the air and who yawn with the boredom of the days.

  1967. After the war.

  The morning session of the Conference of Resistance came to an end and we left the assembly hall with our heads like empty boxes now filled with all the rubbish that had been spoken inside. We could have gone on speechifying and reciting poems until defeat had been turned into victory.

  I bombard my friends with questions, and they reply with questions of their own. I try to find a moment of security in embraces with the men among them. Each of us is trembling with fear and cold. Each of us imagines the endless waves of fighter-bombers dropping their load of explosives and contempt down on our bodies. I feel like an old woman, bereft of support, holding up a lamp to the darkness in the search for her lost youth. I could not bring myself to recite my poetry. I could not bring myself to listen to the poetry of others. Most of the time I was with other writers, and we had to be careful not to let our eyes meet. I thought perhaps we could go back into ourselves one day and look for the primitive apes which are within us. I dragged myself to my room at the hotel and tried to sleep in order to forget the pantomime. But sleep does not come easily and the heat of Cairo burns my solitude. The walls of my room seem to be closing in on me. The map of the Arab world looks like a prison. I hear the chains and shackles being put around me. But when I explore my body I find I am still alive.

  The phone rings. I ignore it. It will only be one of them. One of those idiots who made me sick during the morning, with their talk about the masses and the great battle ahead. The phone does not stop ringing. Realizing that the person on the other end is not going to give up, I lift the receiver, putting a stop to the hollowness of hesitation, and I hear a man’s voice. I do not recognise it at first:

  “You weren’t asleep were you? What about the afternoon session?”

  I feel like telling him what he can do with his afternoon session. We play the role of audience, plays and the stage itself. To hell with their conference and their speeches and their celebrations.

  The voice went on:

  “It’s Issam Hatim here. I wanted to have a word with you about something. And don’t worry, it hasn’t got anything to do with the conference.”

  Issam Hatim. I remember him from my time at University. His thin frame, his pained expression, his eyes which used to have a far-away look in them as though he had fallen out of the sky and was still looking for his star up there in the night. We used to talk about the need for change in the Arab world. Most of all I remember his being a dedicated Palestinian who was willing to give up everything for the cause. I remember the miserable days when we were in Arum. Issam would come to us in the café over the road from the Military Museum, carrying his papers and his poems. He would read us his latest qasida and then look around at our faces to see what we thought.

  Sometimes we would fall out over our differences. We both belonged to progressive parties, but while my party operated out in the open, his believed in covert action. His face on the night of the Fifth of June, with the knives of defeat raining down upon us relentlessly; it wore a look which I shall never forget.

  I tell him that I will be right down. Why am I so keen to see him? Is it pleasure in seeing someone even worse off than myself that drives me on, or the chance to wound or to settle old scores? These thoughts evaporate as I go down the stairs. What desire to wound? Who is right and who is wrong, anyway? Neither his party nor mine, neither their politicians nor ours could do a thing to put right what had happened.

  We embrace like old friends, and we talk about the past for a few moments, before jumping back to the present. I ask him how life has been treating him since we left the classroom. His hollow eyes sparkle and without any preliminaries he asks me:

  “Are you still in the party?”

  I smile bitterly.

  “I left it. Or rather, I was distanced from it. My comrades found that I was unsuitable for the struggle. Bullets and poems are not good partners it seems.” Then I add: “I
was just a petite-bourgeoise intellectual in a revolutionary party.”

  We smile at each other and look in one another’s faces for the marks which time has left there. The passage of time leaves traces on everything. I ask Issam:

  “What about you?”

  “I left as well. It seems that there are hardly any differences between the political parties any more.”

  “You were at the conference, weren’t you?”

  He saw the irony of my words.

  “You haven’t changed a bit. Just the same as always. Yes, I went to some of the sessions.”

  “Did you recite any of your poetry?”

  “Oh, I delivered a few rousing odes!”

  “Aren’t they ashamed of themselves? Imagine! Yusuf still insists on banging on with his grand words.”

  “Why should they be ashamed of themselves? Impertinence is everywhere.”

  The silence engulfs us. Oh, for those moments when we return to the depths of ourselves after a long absence and see ourselves as we really are. I look at his face, and at my own face when, long ago, I used to talk about victory, when I still felt able to recite my poetry and repeat slogans, when I still believed in what I was taught at school.

  I say to him:

  “What are you doing these days? It’s been a while since we met. Have you left Arum.”

  “Left Arum? You know that I couldn’t ever do that … At the moment some comrades and I are setting up an armed Palestinian resistance organization. It’s our conviction that the only way to turn around all these losses is with the gun.”

  I was hearing a new voice speaking to me over the symphony of defeat, a voice coming from tomorrow, a voice of repudiation and rejection, a voice which transcended our surrender and our neverending failures. They had picked up guns, but not to commit suicide, as I had wanted to do: they were going to fight back.

  We carried on talking for a long time and we discussed many things. We talked about the theoretical paths which had led us to where we were. We talked about our major concerns at that stage and the possibility of laying down alternatives to the existing political structures standing over the Arab world.

  And he asked me if I would like to join their organization.

  My body trembles. Should I agree? What else could I do? I couldn’t keep on writing poetry, reciting it to assemblies of bored men trying to get away from their wives, having women repeating it to their lovers. My audiences all end up talking about something else anyway: the weather and what the neighbours have been getting up to. What alternative did I have?

  I say to Issam:

  “I’ll join. Do you have a place for me?”

  “There’s a place for everyone.”

  The following day I leave Cairo bound for Arum. I go to my boss at the newspaper where I work and throw my resignation in his face. For a moment he looks at me like an idiot and then has the nerve to ask me out to dinner that night. I walk out, leaving behind me my co-workers all dreaming of how much they will get in their next pay rise, leaving the piles of words which they will continue to churn out. I leave my old face behind, the face disfigured by war. I go out into the streets of Arum feeling like a new woman. I am free of the submission which is built into my humanity, free of my own weakness, free of the myth of mourning which had become ingrained in my blood.

  Free.

  I head for the town by the sea, where my parents are waiting. I tell my father of my plans. He gets angry and goes around the house, shouting and breaking things. Finally he falls helplessly into his chair. I do not move. I stare at the floor and keep silent.

  “What if you are killed?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll come back.”

  I go to my room and begin to gather a few things together. When he has regained some of his composure, he follows me to my room.

  “And what if you don’t come back?”

  “Then my life will have ended just as if it had ended in some stupid, meaningless car accident.”

  At least he had the decency not to mention family honour and my virginity this time.

  He doesn’t say a word, but looks at me without expression. Then he goes out and closes the door. I confront the silence. It is broken only by my mother’s voice raised in prayer at the other end of the big house. For a long time now she had not left her bed. She just lies there, writing me letters, praying for me, mourning the loss of the rich husband who slipped through my fingers. I kiss her goodbye, without telling her about my trip, and I leave her to her prayers.

  I take my leave of the town and the sea and the jujube trees. I look at the faces of people as if I am seeing them for the first time. The faces which are familiar to me fade away as the car moves in the direction of Arum. I reach there just before dawn. The humidity of September envelops the trees and the pavements and the windows of the coffeehouses. I head towards my house and find it drenched in tedium, in dresses, in perfume. I open the clothes cupboard and take out a few things for my journey. I put them in a small hold-all and I think to myself that this is the first time I have left home without taking my perfume and my poetry with me … without my papers and my camera. I shall go and encounter the earth. I shall meet the men who have found a way that leads to Jerusalem.

  I arrive in Harran. Issam meets me at the door of the headquarters. He holds out his arms and I throw myself into his embrace. War has brought us together again. He accompanies me to the house of Um Abed, one of the women members of the Organization. She was in her fifties and you might say that she was the consummate woman of the Palestinian revolution. Whenever I think of her now, her memory inspires the tenderest of feelings in my heart. The Organization would use her to spread word of the struggle among the people in the refugee camps around Harran, as well as in other towns. She would move through the streets carrying our important documents and our publications, and then she would come back in the evening with medicine, clothes and money. Um Abed was braver than bravery itself. Many of the members of our women’s organization would refuse to accompany her on the missions she undertook. She showed me the meaning of perseverance and taught me to speak plainly. She also told me about the history of the Palestinian exodus which brought them here to the groves of exile.

  “I can’t sleep, Um Abed. I am filled with anxiety.”

  “You must sleep, Nadia. Tomorrow is going to be a tiring day.”

  I try to fall asleep but I can’t – sleep cheated me during my nights in Harran – so I hug my pillow and ask Um Abed to tell me about her life for a while.

  “Jerusalem was surrounded and it fell into enemy hands. I was on a visit to my aunt near the al-Aqsa Mosque. We heard that the last section of the city had now come under enemy occupation which meant that I couldn’t get back to my family any more for seven years. I didn’t know what had happened to them, until one day I was listening to the radio and I heard my mother reading out a message to the members of her family who were under enemy occupation. She said that all my brothers and sisters had got away safely. At the end of the message she broke down in tears and the announcer finished off the message for her in the traditional way, saying “Be comforted and give comfort to others.”

  “What made you join this organization? Are you a Marxist?”

  Without knowing it, this simple woman could sum up the whole of Marxist ideology to me in two sentences:

  “The rich fight because they want to hang onto their possessions. The poor fight because they have nothing to lose. I chose this group because they speak on behalf of the poor.”

  Um Abed had no idea about the world of politics. She appeared among us as one who was living an adventure which pleased her. She was completely convinced of the rectitude of Palestinian resistance and if the ways and means of the various groups were different, in the end they all shared the same aim, to liberate our land.

  “They’re all Palestinians, Nadia. They all share the same goal.”

  It was to Um Abed with her pure heart that I turned with all my worries and prob
lems and she taught me how to bear everything with fortitude. I would come to her after a long day in the camps, and she would do all she could to help me relax and to prepare the ideological leaflets which we issued. I would complain to her about the crises which we faced and she would open up new horizons for me. There was one night when our comrades were surrounded by another armed Palestinian Fedeyeen group at Beit Ibrahim. There had been a quarrel at one of the bases. I came running over to Um Abed to tell her the news. She picked up a pistol and went out to Beit Ibrahim alone. I followed her and grabbed her by the arm.

  “Um Abed, you can’t go by yourself. There are at least fifteen of them and they’re armed.”

  She took no notice of my entreaties and continued on her way. Within half an hour she had returned. The two parties had been separated without a single shot being fired.

  The day I was parted from Um Abed was one of the saddest days of my life. I was to go up to one of the military encampments in the North. I was in great pain when I finally said goodbye to her. She waved and then was lost in the gloom. The only time I ever saw her again was when she came to me at the house where they kept me after the Geneva operation. She kissed me on both cheeks and handed me a bag of za‘tar, the special Palestinian thyme which she knew I was very fond of. When I got back to Ayntab I found out that Um Abed had been killed in action that September. Her body had been found at the door of the Organization offices. It was riddled with bullets. I do not know where they buried her, but every time I think of her in my loneliness, I wish that I were lying at her side.

  Midnight. Fifth of September 1977. I am still here, glued to my seat in this café, thinking about a face in a far-off land. The night of exile. Your chest which embraces the shattered remnants of my body. The remains of defeat and sorrow. You. The man in whose body I tried to forget my past, but who made it flare up inside me. The man in whose eyes I tried to find a homeland to which I could flee, but who sent me back to my homeland instead. Frank. Exile. This exile that we share together. You and I are a past which is still alive, alive in our heads. You and I are the screams of our comrades contained by prison walls and tombs. We spend our days talking about a way of forgetting their eyes at the moment that they were forcibly taken from us.