by Hamida Na'na
The day when we first met?
Oh yes, I remember that. The lecture hall filled with students from Third World countries. You talking about Palestine, Central America and Africa. I have come to listen to you. I have come to see you, now that you are out of prison and back in the land of milk and honey. My friend tells me that you have finally given in to your bourgeois background and that you are content with the memory of your former comrades. You have come back to France to write stories about them and how they met their deaths. The beautiful scented ladies received you as a hero, and your name is proclaimed from their temples.
They needed a myth, so they fashioned one out of your life and gave it to a country which no longer has any legends of its own. You became a star. They put you on a pedestal like an idol to worship.
Expert on revolution. Consultant on the affairs of ‘the Dark Continent’ … which now lies in flames.
What they did not know was that they were actually killing you, that they were pushing you into an obscure corner where memory and oblivion could rot together.
I level my gaze at you. In the middle of your analysis of the inconsistencies of revolution in the Arab states, I interrupt you and say:
“Don’t talk about Palestine until you know what you are talking about.”
You are stung by my words. You want to say something but the words die as you try to speak them. Our eyes met as if in a mirror. You follow me to a café next to the University.
“Who are you?”
I do not reply, but you don’t give up. I can see the determination in your eyes. It is the determination of a man who is dying of pain. I give you a little smile and say:
“I see you are trying with all your strength to forget about your past.”
“The past has gone. It is all over. Now I am here in France, where I was born. I write so that I can live with myself. I have children so that I can live through them. Here I can struggle against the reactionary elements of my class.”
I remain silent. I know all about your dilemma between allegiance to your former comrades and the temptation to return to your bourgeois roots. But I also know that you have already made your decision. Iknow that you have chosen ease and resignation. I know that you live between your three houses. I know how hard you find it to smile these days.
“You are playing right into the hands of the bourgeoisie. You’ll end up as Minister of Culture if you’re not careful!”
“Only when the Left wins in France. I didn’t betray my comrades. You just have to remember that every country is different.”
I say nothing. Why do I accuse you? Why do I impale you on the blade of my own doubt and weakness? I, too, have turned into a fortress withstanding the onslaught of past memories. I, too, am looking for excuses for my escape, and am seeking to justify my life here, far away from Ayntab.
Frank! Why am I remembering all this. The night is nearly over, Frank, and the wind is beating on the city. Here I am, sitting at a corner table in a Parisian café, waiting for some kind of redemption. I can see the face of Um Abed in the reflection of the café windows. I can hear her voice as I was leaving Harran to go to the training camps.
“Nadia, you are the first of the women guerrillas. It is vital that you don’t throw your life away.”
Well, I did not throw my life away. I survived to roam the pavements of exile. But my life was taken away. In much the same way, you survived and your mentor died in the jungle. We are two sides of the same coin. How irksome this silence between us is. How banal are the days in which we live.
One day I say to Issam:
“I want to take military training. I want to do active service.”
The military council meets to take its decision on my joining up with one of the military bases. Their discussion takes a long time. How could a woman possibly live among fighting-men? However, I was adamant, and in the end they gave in: “Her experience will be a good way of encouraging other women to take up our cause. Why shouldn’t we give it a try?”
That is how Issam wound up the discussion which sent me off to a new life. I moved to a world of canvas and weapons. All the wrangling and petty arguing that went on between the political parties was behind me now, along with all the old comrades who were still rotting in jail cells, with no one in their respective parties prepared to make a stand that would actually bring them back into an effective sphere of the struggle. Every night I read your books and I light up my soul with the words you have written. I read things by al-Munsif, your comrade too. I look again at the history of revolutions and the men who made that history. Vietnam. Cuba. Bolivia. In their footsteps we look for guidance in our own struggle. I tell my comrades how our struggle is special and how the difficulties that we are facing have not been encountered by any other revolutionary group. The sound of our voices sees in the new day, and daylight passes with the search for our roots which tie us to the earth.
Today is the Fifth of September and where is the struggle now? Has it been stifled? Ayntab is not the end of the world and there is enough room in historical memory to encompass other towns and other martyrs and refugees. I breathe in the warmth of the café and I listen to the voices of the drinkers. I think about going to one of my friends for help and sharing something of the torment which I am going through. Maybe that way I can stop it galloping through the carefully guarded vaults of calm and surrender within me.
But my friends have all left Paris. Where is al-Bahi, who could bury me according to his own special ceremony? Where is Muhammad, the Ambassador of Hate, who rails against all things? Where are the Sa’alik? Why can’t they all come to me now and release me from memory and help me to forget the face of him who has gone away.
The commander of the military camp was not able hide his surprise when he first saw me: “You’re here at last … But, when I heard you were coming, I expected you to be … I mean, what makes a young and beautiful girl like you chose a life of danger?”
This makes me laugh. I answer all his questions. He asks me whether I would like to start organizing our work.
On the southern borders of an Arab country near to the field of battle, our camp consists of a group of fighters whose faces were coloured by the sun. They wait for each night with joy in their hearts. Their talk is of liberation and martyrdom. We would meet and talk in small groups. Farhan would tell us stories about his days in the refugee camps. Sa‘id would make us all laugh with his silly jokes. We would listen to recitations of the poems of Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim. We would re-read the memoirs of Che Guevara on the eve of the famous blockade. After midnight, when the stars were in the last portion of the sky, the group would pick up their arms and spread out over the plains. We monitored the enemy’s movements on the other side of the border, keeping away from the lights. It was cold and we had to blow on our hands to keep them warm. The first days were difficult. The sun was our enemy. I search for dreams of revolution. I search for the colourful images of guerrilla fighters that used to fire my imagination: men who did not need to eat or sleep, men who shunned the love of women, men who could leap high walls and land on the other side unscathed. But those I meet are all ordinary men who laugh, and eat, and who sometimes are afraid. I try to reconcile the differences between what I dreamt and what I saw.
I begin weapons training for real. I hold a rifle in my hand for the first time. I become familiar with the different kinds of weapons and telescopic sights, including an old French service rifle which had a kick on it that I can still feel to this day. I liked the Czech rifles most of all. In the first two months after my arrival I used everything from small pistols to heavy machine guns, including M-16s, Thompsons, Carlos and Kalashnikov Ak-47s.
Three months go by. Four months. I can hardly stand it any more. I no longer have the patience required for this seemingly endless training. What’s more, they seem not to have confidence in me. I am a woman and I do not really speak the same language as them. I talk about ideology their preferred topic of conver
sation is the towns in the Arab world where they have lived, and their grasp of ideological discourse is almost non-existent. I see it as my job to do something about their political naïvety. What I need to do is to find a way of closing the linguistic gap which is keeping us apart. That is the hardest thing as far as I am concerned. Che Guevara comes to mind during the moments that I am alone and unoccupied. It is he who makes me remember that I must find the bridges that link them and me. I stare at the face of Che Guevara which accompanies me wherever I go. My comrades look like heroes as they wait in the early hours of the morning for the moment of action.
Some days pass quickly. Others seem to drag on forever. The camp commandant is replaced by a new fighter. His name is Abu Mashour and he is younger than most of us and his awesome courage is displayed as we get to know each other during the course of time. He has devoted his whole life to the Palestinian cause and Palestine has taken complete possession of his being. To me he is the perfect man. Today, when I am frightened by the unlit streets and the cold rooms in the frozen continent of Europe, or when I see people giving up on their revolutionary ideals, I think bitterly of Abu Mashour. He gave me many a lesson in organization and taught me how to obey orders without uttering a single word of dissent.
Abu Mashour talks to me about al-Teera, the village where he was born. And where is al-Teera?
“Where do you think, Nadia! It’s where Palestine is. It could only be in Palestine. That’s where the old man passed away.”
The old man?
“My father. When he died, only three people could make it to the funeral: the Shaykh of the mosque, my brother and the grave digger. They buried him with the explosions of 1948 ringing in their ears. And he left us in this world.”
At other times we talk about the life in the camps and the role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Who do they suppose they are relieving? The world of flesh and blood was silent. Abu Mashour was silent. The waves of brown ether awaken in those hours of the night of the southern plains of one of the Arab countries. Midnight strikes. I am filled with joy at being one of them. I love Abu Mashour’s stories. I feel there is a mysterious ring in them, like a stifled lament, a hidden intonation which causes the syllables to disintegrate. The clock strikes. We go back to the camp. Death stares at us from the other side. Our weapons are in our hands and we wait.
The days I spend under the sun and the nights I spend listening to the stories of Abu Mashour. I become emancipated in my own destiny as a woman. I become like a tree, a sacred woman-tree, my branches growing outwards as I take control of my own body and soul. I am a woman who holds her own death in her hands. The myth of summer ends and night begins to creep along the paths like a sharp wind blowing through our bones. When shall we enter the field of battle? Abu Mashour laughs:
“You look like you are ready to jump out of your skin, Nadia. Don’t worry. The time is coming and the battle will be long.”
We throw bundles of wild foliage under our bodies and we embrace the earth. We smell the rain and what the days ahead hold in store for us. The city is nothing but a dim and distant memory. For months we have not breathed the city air, nor have we smelt our bodies in the luxurious comfort of urban life. We resist and we revolt against temptation, blocking it out of our minds, keeping it from swaying our will. But far be it for us to change the sophisticated world of urban existence. We keep our faces and our expressions to ourselves. Only our smiles show how much our bodies are yearning and the smiles go quickly in the memory of the moment.
One day Issam arrives at the camp. He takes me to one side and tells me that my life is about to change. I ask him what he means by that. He tells me to prepare myself to leave immediately. I go and get my things. In the struggle, even the slightest hesitation or lack of cooperation is not tolerated. I look at the face of Abu Mashour as we sit side by side in the jeep on our way to the South. The camp lies behind us with its simple lights burning like the fires of expectation. I whisper into my comrade’s ear to ask him if he knows where we are heading. He shakes his head. Issam remains silent. The driver smokes his cigarette calmly. The winds of the southern plains flow into our bodies and we shiver with the cold. The jeep continues on its way and no one says a word. We reach the border of Harran. We are stopped at a checkpoint. With an air of boredom – “More guerrilla fighters going to and fro!” – the officer in charge asks to see our ID cards. He looks them over and sniffs contemptuously, saying that he wants to see our real ID’s next time. Abu Mashour smiles. I smile. What can he mean? Those are the only ID’s we have. In fact we have come to the only real stage of our lives. Before this we had nothing. No identity papers. No reality. We continue on our way towards the south. We leave the main road, and sail through olive groves and holm forests. The jeep stops and the three of us get out. We are close to a hill over which we can see a halo of lights coming from a military encampment behind. Issam goes ahead of us. His long strides seem to be part of the night. We follow him. A voice in the distance asks for the password. I hear Issam reply: “Geneva.”
The word surprises me. I thought he might be pulling our legs, just like he used to do in days of the café over the road from the military museum. We pass inside a small tent which is lit by a gas lamp. We come face to face with two men who were inside the tent waiting for us. Issam introduces us: Saleh and Farhan, Nadia and Abu Mashour. These are faces which have been with me many times in operations that I have carried out since that meeting. We settle down on the earth inside the tent and there is silence for a moment. It had to be something important for an emergency meeting to be called like this. Issam spoke first:
“Comrade Nadia used to be in charge of publicity at the Husaini camp. She’s a revolutionary poet and speaks English fluently.
“Comrade Abu Mashour is one of our best fighters. He’s been trained in urban guerrilla warfare in Cuba.
“Comrade Saleh used to be an army officer in another of the Arab countries. He flies Mig XVII fighters.
“Comrade Farhan is an explosives expert. He used to be a chemical scientist.”
We look around at each other’s faces, trying to see further than the information that we have just been given. Then we look at Issam and wait for him to tell us the circumstances which have brought us to this place.
“Central command has decided to broaden the scope of our struggle. It is our intention to make sure the whole world knows about the Palestinian cause and we will show them that we are here fighting for the return of our land.”
The silence which followed was like a nocturnal bird coming to rest upon us. The others were clearly in the same position as me as far as not being informed about the reason for this sudden gathering. Issam paused for a moment and then began speaking again.
“Central command has been looking at the feasibility of our carrying out operations externally, outside the Arab arena.”
“What do you mean exactly?” I interrupted.
“America and Western Europe.”
My mind is immediately filled with thoughts about the bloody attacks made by various Latin American revolutionary groups in Europe … the settling of old scores … the struggle western intelligence services had in dealing with the last vestiges of Nazism … the hunt for Trotsky which ended with his assassination. I was afraid that my comrades were going to trigger off a chain of events which might lead to a similar conclusion.
“What kind of operations do you have in mind?”
“Hijacking airliners, planting bombs on the premises of companies which supply arms to Israel, targeting American companies in the Middle East.”
No one moved or spoke. The seconds passed slowly. All eyes were turned on me, waiting for me to take the initiative. My mind was racing. To me the idea seemed like madness in view of the fact that the struggle was not even properly established in the Arab theatre. Up until then, our organization could barely muster enough support to carry out operations in the Occupied Land itself.
Abu Mashour asks Issa
m:
“What are the strategic goals of operations like these?”
“To tell the world that we are here. We all know that reactionary governments can do away with us any time it suits them to do so. Furthermore, it is our intention to stop this current wave of colonization which is occurring in the Occupied Land.”
Abu Mashour’s face is filled with doubt and questions.
“I don’t think you are going about this in the right way, comrade. The struggle must have its feet placed firmly here in the Arab arena. You can’t win the battle with publicity.”
Issam asks me my opinion. He waits. I hesitate a moment so that the woman-tree can stretch out her branches and free herself from her fear and her mortality.
“There is nothing wrong with extending the scope of our struggle in this way, but external operations must be backed up by action in the Occupied Land itself. That said, I have never been against external operations.”
The discussion goes on until morning and we finish up accepting the decision of the military command. We are to go to Geneva to carry out the first operation there.
Abu Mashour’s face is filled with despondency. His eyes move to the gas lamp and he stares at the flickering yellow flame. He takes up a twig in his hand, and then, like a highly-strung colt, he begins to scratch the ground in front of him.
The orders are clear. The night’s discussion determines that we are to change the mode of our lives and the style of our training. We move to a special camp and begin an onerous course of training in urban guerrilla tactics. The first hours of the day we spend doing close target practice. We concentrate on using our reflex capabilities. We start memorising the map of Europe: its airports, its cities, the climatic conditions, everything. In the evening, I return to my tent and brush up on my English.