The Homeland

by Hamida Na'na

  A few days into training, and I have reached proficiency in firing at long and short distances. My comrades were surprised by my fast progress, after they had seen the initial difficulty I had in handling the weapons. That’s how I am, though. I tend to reject everything that is new, but after a while I always get the hang of it.

  Do you remember, Frank.

  Once, I found a 6 mm revolver in a drawer at your place. I picked it up and checked the safety catch. I put it back and turned around to find that you had been watching me in silence. You had seen the way my hands had moved around the weapon and there was a look of strange curiosity on your face. I knew that there was the germ of an idea in your head at that moment. I smiled as I said to you:

  “You know, I’m scared by the sight of weapons.”

  Without smiling back, you said:

  “That’s not the impression I got. I could tell by the way you picked up that revolver that you have been properly trained in how to use it.”

  I did not make any comment on what you had said. I was afraid of suddenly throwing away my false papers and producing my real passport, the one which gives my mother’s and father’s real names, and to seek refuge in the Nadia whom I used to be. It is not easy for a fighter to hide his or her real identity from another fighter. We bow to the same set of rules. Those rules follow us wherever we go, in the way we talk and the way we think, even in the way we move.

  Yes, Frank. I know how to use a gun. I learnt under the hot sun of the East at a camp which has been wiped off the face of this earth.

  They told me there that my gun was my most precious possession. If I lost it, I would lose my life.

  They told me there the pistol is the most important of all the different types of weapons used in urban warfare: it’s light and can be easily concealed.

  I told them how much I hated the thought of killing someone in the cold light of day. I can’t stand to see death or to live by it. War out in the open, in the desert or in the fields, is much more humane and bearable. In the urban environment, you stand face to face with your enemy. There are those that are frightened and those who play God. We fire off rounds at a range of between one and three metres, and the principle is very simple: you either kill or you get killed. Out in the open, you get a good chance of not having to stare death in the face, one way or the other.

  Back in the camp. October and November are like terrifying jinn. The rains wash the oaktrees. Winter has begun and the operation will start in a matter of days. Abu Mashour and I spend a lot of time together. At six in the morning we wake up and do our exercises. We do route marches. We mow the grass around the entrances to the camp. We strip down and reassemble our weapons. All the time we are doing these things, he and I talk about many different subjects.

  He tells me he does not believe that the operation we are about to undertake will serve any useful purpose. I reply by telling him:

  “You must think beyond that. We have to get publicity for our cause.”

  He goes on to tell me about his father, and how he was gunned down before his eyes in the village of al-Teera. He tells me about his brother who lost an eye in 1948, and about the days he spent in the refugee camps. I, on the other hand, had little to tell him. My father was still alive. What did I know about homelessness or life in the camps? My childhood resounded with long speeches about my blue blood. Yellow blood. Red blood.

  If I had told Abu Mashour about my father’s speeches he would have found it hilarious and made fun of me for months afterwards. If I had breathed a word about my rich suitor whose departure had caused my mother so much grief, Abu Mashour would have probably thought it the funniest thing he’d ever heard and from then on he would have called me something like ‘Fortune’s widow.’ I did not say a word about my past life. Anyway, I thought he probably suspected what kind of life I had led.

  We talk a lot about the land. We talk a lot about the past. We talk a lot about the present and the future. It is hard for a Palestinian to talk about land without talking about the past as well. In the same way, he is scarcely able to talk about the future without his land. One evening, Abu Mashour comes to me with a copy of Regis Debray’s Revolution in the Revolution. We spend the whole night reading it together, stopping at places where Debray defines the duty of revolutionary focus. I disagree with his making Cuba the basis for his observations. It is hard to extrapolate generalizations from what was a unique event.

  Abu Mashour takes up my point, his eyes gleaming in the darkness.

  “Debray’s mistake is that he gives too much prominence to the intellectual élite. I agree with him over the minor role of the decadent political parties, but I think he gives too little significance to the role played by those in alliance with the intellectual élite.

  “I suppose he thought that way because he was one of the intelligentsia himself. He found it difficult to get along with the revolutionaries and they spurned him for a long time.”

  I remain silent for a moment. I am reminded of the sterile debates which used to go on in university and at the writers’ union. I say to my friend:

  “You know that I don’t particularly trust the intellectual élite either, but it is hard for me to understand the language of the down-to-earth fighting men. That is something that I’ve found out here in the camp. Before, I used to dream about living this kind of life while I was at university and at the writers’ union. Back then I hated anyone like me. I couldn’t stand my peers. I couldn’t stand the aura of smug satisfaction which hung around them, the lack of awareness, the disbelief in the absolute power of imagination. The moment I joined this group, and took up the struggle with them, I discovered what it meant to have an appetite for life.”

  “When you lose touch with your roots it’s hard to put down new roots in a different piece of ground. You’ll always be an outsider. We are a different kind of person altogether. We have our good points and our bad points. Our worst characteristic is our lack of interest in things which do not directly serve the cause and which do not play a part in the struggle. Therefore, because things like music, sex, gazing into the eyes of a lover, the smell of jasmine, dreams, because none of these have any bearing on the struggle, we become strangers to them and to ourselves, and it is not something that we can ever change.”

  Abu Mashour has put his finger on the wound.

  “But you are my brothers and you always will be. I have no family other than you. I have become used to your daily routine and I have stood up to everything that has been thrown at me. The pain is bearable because of the laughter, and laughter like this is not possible without faith in something out there beyond life and the transience of the moment.”

  The night seeps into our blood. The wind whistles over the southern plains of that Arab country which lies to the north of its neighbours. The wind whistles and the night is reaching its last hours. We are two oaks at the edge of the forest, waiting for the sun and the rain and the wind. While we wait, we stretch out our branches and embrace. Our faces come close together. I say to him:

  “Tomorrow we go to Geneva. Are you prepared?”

  “What do you mean? I trained as much as you did.”

  “That’s not what I meant. What I’m talking about is whether you believe that the operation will do any good. You were opposed to the idea at first.”

  “Well, I’m still not certain what the outcome will be. All I know is that I will carry out the orders issued by the military command, even if I know that some of their orders are ill-advised and that the leaders sometimes make mistakes. I’ll never forget that they have their history and background and I have mine, and you will never get the two to coincide.”

  The night slips silently into our blood and the daylight starts to show in the Eastern skies behind the hill. The night draws itself from my body and the body of the darkness. I look around at the camp and the face of my comrade. Whatever was going to happen in the coming days, I was no longer afraid of dying. It had ceased to matter the moment I discove
red that it wasn’t important for me to be the link between my father and the future generation. The jeep arrives and we get in. There are no personal belongings for someone who is fighting for a cause. Sometimes, there isn’t even love.

  Frank! It is the last part of the night. I am still stuck to my seat in the corner of a café. On my body are the traces of the wind and the bitter cold of this terrible town. You are in my head. The faces of all my comrades. The fires raging in Ayntab. How much I need your hands, your eyes, your chest. How much I need you, with the remnants of your revolt, prison, your struggle against memory. But since yesterday, I have lost my ability to forget. The woman-tree has been re-awakened and the danger has passed. I must stand up. I must resist.

  Snow covers the face of Geneva. Through the window of the plane it looks totally white, featureless. The plane approaches the runway. I remember the moment we arrived at Geneva Airport. The first time my feet were placed on this ancient and icy continent of Europe. At my side, the face of Abu Mashour. His eyes, as I had become used to them by that time, full of unanswered questions. His questions seemed to be like long sentences stretching through time.

  We move through the brightly lit corridors towards the police barriers. We hand over our US Passports and wait. A few minutes later we are in the Customs Hall. Things are over quickly and we have little trouble getting into Switzerland. We can now unburden ourselves of the fear and hesitation which we have been carrying with us. We are on the verge of freedom. After a short while we will have it in our grasp.

  According to the information which I received, we were to go to the Ritz Hotel, at 23, Danfire Rocheroi Street. On arrival there, I was to contact another comrade who was coming from Germany. It was to be his job to take care of things during our stay in Geneva.

  We are soon out of the airport buildings. We hardly look at the faces of the people walking past us. I have none of the usual feelings of pleasure about arriving in a new city. New cities used to mean release and lack of restraint to me, new discoveries and adventures, but in Geneva I found myself counting and recounting the seconds. Abu Mashour lent over to me and whispered in my ear:

  “Don’t forget that we’re meant to be married. You’ve got to play your part properly.”

  I smile. Spots of light rain bathe my hair. We get into one of the taxis waiting at the airport. The driver takes us to the address that we have been given. The Ritz Hotel stands next to Lake Léman on the west side of Geneva, halfway between the monument to the Unknown Soldier and the Lausanne Road. It overlooks the lake, which was frozen in the harsh Swiss winter.

  The car stops in front of the hotel. The driver speaks to us in French, but his accent is either German or Italian … it could have been Maltese, for all I knew.

  “Here’s your hotel. I’ll stop for a moment and help you get your luggage out.”

  I leave Abu Mashour to help the driver and I go through to the hotel lobby. The warmth of the hotel hits me. It gives me a sense of security. The time is about eight-thirty and our appointment with the comrade from Germany is set for nine o’clock. That gives me just half an hour to wash, change clothes, and get some rest. I wait for Abu Mashour to come to the reception. We approach the clerk and ask for the key to the room that was booked for us. He hands it over, along with an envelope which he tells us was left for us just under an hour ago.

  We go to the lift. Another hotel employee follows us, carrying our bags. He does not stop talking. He has probably been talking ever since the lake gave in to the onslaught of the icy wind, and Geneva’s nights lived longer than her days.

  “Oh, there’s been such a lot of snow this winter. What a pity that you’re here when it’s so cold. It’ll be so much nicer when the spring comes. The lake’s been frozen for days. All the wild ducks have flown away. But they’ll be back again soon along with all the pigeons.”

  He is muttering away in French and I try to give him the impression that I am taking part in the conversation. We get to the fifth floor, where our room is situated. We go down the long corridor and arrive at the room. It is a beautiful and spacious room with a window overlooking the lake and a view of the Swiss Alps on the other side, stretching away towards the plains of France. The hotel employee shows us the telephone, the bathroom, the lavatory and the buzzer which calls room service, everything.

  Finally he goes out. I open the envelope which I got with the keys and take out its contents. It is a message from our comrade from Germany telling us that he would not be able to meet us at nine o’clock.

  I feel a pang of anxiety which I try to hide from Abu Mashour. I ask myself whether something has happened which might affect our plans. Igo to the bathroom and try to wash from my face the traces of the tiring journey which we have made from Ayntab to Geneva. The telephone rings and I run over to it. It is the comrade from Germany. He tells me that he can now make it after all at nine-thirty. We get dressed. No words are exchanged between us. We set out for the restaurant which lies no more than three hundred metres away from the hotel. It was an Italian restaurant, I think, and it was lit by candles that evening. For some reason the Swiss love candlelight and, on every possible occasion, they dispense with electricity and light candles instead. We speak to one another in English. The other comrade begins by telling us that the date for the operation has had to be brought forward by a day or two. One of the British airlines was on strike which meant that El-Al were making more journeys to the Middle East than usual.

  The comrade stares right at me. Two sunburned faces staring at each other, two young people, neither of them more than twenty-five years old. Borders and towns and men’s faces are disappearing before my eyes. I have this great desire for the hours to become minutes, for time to be shortened and for the job to be finished as quickly as possible. I remember Issam’s face, his voice right out of the Palestinian refugee camps, his hollow eyes:

  “We have been surrounded and it won’t be long before they come and finish us off. We’ve got to get the message to our people in the camps so that they can keep the enemy at bay just a little longer.”

  I remember the Fifth of June. Defeat. Failure. Speeches. The party which I belonged to. The party which brought me up and which filled my head with those sterile, barren notions: theoretical struggle, the proletariat, justice.

  I remember the day I left them. I was exhausted by my pain and disappointment, so I took flight, like a bird in autumn. The party secretary said to me: “I’m sorry to see you go, Nadia. I thought that we could make something of you in this party. But I see now that I was wrong.”

  I replied with fire burning in my head and my blood and my nerves:

  “I was just an ignorant docile little pet among you, wasn’t I? You lot would need to come out of your mothers’ wombs again before you could see the reality which the war has brought about. The struggle is now a nationalist one, and our enemy is doing its best to wipe us off the face of this earth. We have got to arm ourselves and fight back.”

  I remember that he came up with an argument from Lenin’s ‘lessons from the Moscow movement of 1916’ which said that you should never resort to arms.

  But I told him that Lenin also said in that same publication that you should rely on force in a more serious and vital manner within a framework of greater zeal. You have to explain to the masses the futility of general strikes and the like, and that violent and extreme measures must necessarily be a direct goal of the struggle in the future. “If you ignore that part of what Lenin was saying, you are deceiving yourselves,” I said to him: “Read the book again, comrade, and I’d make sure you read it properly this time. The time has come for us to really speak our minds.”

  I look into the faces of my comrades. Two Palestinian faces, the faces of two members of the people who realised quickly the solution to their problems was the gun. They realised it a few days after the fall of the phoney masks of the political parties, whose days were spent in books, and waiting for the sound of the bells to come from afar to define for them
the purpose of their movements.

  The woman inside me is awakened. The woman wakes up as a girl who shivers in the cold of the nights which are so unlike the warmth of the Mediterranean and the hearts of the mountains close by. I remember the Mediterranean in front of me, and my father… .

  Suddenly I notice that my two comrades are staring at me and they start laughing.

  “Where were you, Nadia? You were miles away just then.”

  “I was thinking how much need there is for revolution in the countries that we have just left behind us.”

  “What else is new!” said Abu Mashour, and he carried on his conversation with the other comrade.

  I think of you. My head is lit up with thoughts of you. I was addicted to reading your books as well as those of your mentor. I tried to find out about my own reality in the light of your experiences in the jungles of those far-off lands. How did you manage to escape to the icy towns of Europe? I think about the snowy night, and the lights around the lakes.

  The restaurant is filled with beautiful women. Warmth exudes from everything. Doubt has turned into certainty in my mind about the benefit of the operation my comrades and I are about to undertake. Why shouldn’t their ease be shaken up a bit, when they’ve given themselves over to such opulence? Why not indeed? Just a little shock to their systems. Let it rain blood down onto their clean streets for a while. Let them see that there are people out there who have nothing to eat and nowhere to live. Everything I see seems to be telling me to get on with the job. And where should we do it? It didn’t really matter.

  That night in Geneva was the last night for a man and woman who had come in search of their identity, to find a place for a people whose yearning burnt in their breasts.

  I put my face close to Abu Mashour’s. My nose touches his. I feel happy and I smile. I am touched by memories of my past. If I had married that fabulously wealthy man, I would have five children by now. If I had married that man of opulence, I could be touring Europe at this moment, his money in my pocket, and his pot-belly and yellow teeth by my side. All I would have on my mind would be which of the boutiques of London and Paris would be the best place to buy my wardrobe for next season.