The Homeland

by Hamida Na'na

  How noble for a human being to live for a cause. Only by risking his life can he fulfil his goals. I used to spend my days hiding behind books, behind my family, behind the ideological positions of my party, my friends, my daily contacts and activities. I felt secure hiding behind education and intellect, the comforting resonances of history. I used to be afraid of death because I was afraid of life, but now death doesn’t seem like death any more. It is like a beautiful risk, eternal and unaffected, a risk which could end in failure but without which there can be no victory. I am like a tree which can extend her branches to the heavens, carrying in its shade joy and sorrow with every movement. I smell the scent of Swiss pine everywhere. I am drowning in a sea of pine. I am free of my fear, of my past, free of death itself. I laugh out loud. Abu Mashour clasps my hand:

  “What is it? You haven’t gone back to being a poet have you?” I try to tell him about the thunderbolt which sometimes hits me, like a flash of inspiration which allows me to give a true account of myself. That night I had decided to tell the truth about myself.

  We get up. Outside the restaurant we cross the street, walking calmly under the light rain. We talk about everything but the operation. The plan requires that we do not mention it until our mission is fully realised. Clearly our comrades in the leadership were wary of the psychological effects which might result from discussions of that nature.

  We arrive at the hotel. The comrade from Germany walks with us to the lift and then bids us goodnight and goes off to his hotel.

  In the lift, my face meets Abu Mashour’s. I see olive groves in his eyes. I see a nobility in them which belies his living a life of exile. I put my head on his shoulder and feel a strong urge inside me to say something. He strokes my hair and leans down to kiss it, saying:

  “Well, my temporary wife, shall we be lovers?”

  I hear his voice coming to me clearly as if for the first time. It has the clarity of a song sung by the human voice alone, without any musical accompaniment. A mournful psalm, but one expressing much hope, and, if it were ever used to serenade a woman, it would have the same force as all the love letters ever written, putting into the shade the feeble poems composed by men who spend lazy days under the sun with rich food in their bellies.

  We get to our room. The bridal suite for two young people coming from America to spend their honeymoon in Europe. We try to restrict our conversation to the inane yet all-embracing subject matter of the newly-wed. That is how it was planned. There were fears that the room might be bugged or that we were being watched. We try to sleep. The sounds of silence are dispersed in our room like a muffled weeping. I search for sleep. I search for calm. I try to think back to all the stories which my mother used to tell me, and I go over them one by one in my mind. Faces come to me in the darkness. I do not want to close my eyes for fear of losing these moments. Abu Mashour turns over in the bed and faces me. He looks at me through the gloom, which is broken only by the light from the street coming in through the curtains.

  “Are you still awake, Nadia?”

  We both light cigarettes and smoke them in the dark without talking.

  When morning comes we are still in bed. The light streams in. I get out of bed and go towards the window. When I pull back the curtains I see Geneva sleeping in the first hours of daylight. Red roofs slanting towards the lake. The waters of the lake flowing down to the sea, wherever that may be. All things on this planet are going somewhere. And us? There is a knock on the door. The hotel employee comes in with morning coffee and the day’s newspapers. I look at the face of the Arab world scowling out at us from the pages of newsprint. Geneva’s local paper talks about the likelihood of the US Secretary of State making a visit to one of the front-line Arab states. The Herald Tribune goes on about oil price rises. I turn the pages over and look into the face of haggard, old Europe and her problems. Local elections in France. Health insurance in Italy. The women’s movement in Britain.

  Abu Mashour watches the expression on my face as I read the item about the Secretary of State over again.

  “Well, do you think it will be our heads this time?”

  I feel a strange contempt for this universe. Why not hijack planes? Why not bomb them in their companies and corporations? The White House itself. We have to implement these things when facing the illegality which characterises their dealings with us.

  Frank …

  Why am I telling you about all this now? I listen to the drunks. They are singing Le Temps des Cerises.

  Oh, if the time of cherries returned.

  I look at the white pages lying before me like the shrouds of a corpse. I am still here, stuck to my seat in the corner of the café. I want to ask the waiter the name of the café. I call him over and order another glass of cognac. He brings it to me, singing to himself as he comes.

  Oh, if the time of cherries returned. If you were here this evening, we could sit on the right bank, close to the Palais de Justice, where the Sa‘alik of today, Paris’s down-and-outs are sleeping, with nothing but their bottles of wine and their cigarettes. How great to be a Su‘luk these days.

  If you were here this evening, I could tell you about Abu Mashour, and about Geneva and Ayntab. I could have asked you to go back there with me so that you could cleanse yourself of your pursuit of oblivion. I too would be cleansed, cleansed of my cowardice and my inability to expose my real face to this world. Both of us would become Sa‘alik of the revolution, each in his own way. But you’ve never even heard of ‘Urwa bin al-Ward, their leader.

  If you were here this evening, we could have both gone there and I would have turned you into a thunderbolt, into the Pole Star. You have to leave these dead pavements behind you, the inertia of this life, traffic jams, rampant capitalism, elections which they use as chips on the gaming tables, this watery sun, your diet of Wagner.

  If only you were here this evening! Frank! Please! I need you. I need your arms. I need your chest. I need your eyes. I need you, otherwise I cannot leave Paris. Every one of her streets we used as a rendezvous and every paving-stone has memories for us. I don’t want to leave Paris like this. Alone. In the rain. I can’t bear it that no one is here to bid me farewell. How harsh it is to be alone in a city.

  My mind races into the future. I miss you Frank, but I don’t want you back. You fire my intellect, but only the memory of my former comrades causes my heart to palpitate. I try to see into the future. Into the past. Back to the days when I was with them. Why the past and the future always? It’s now, at this very moment, that I am here. The night revolts against my sorrow. And the day.

  The People. The Cause. The Dream. War. They have all become lost words.

  Come back quickly before the woman inside once more surrenders herself to the current which has been carrying her away over the last four years, taking her far away from her homeland. She has lapsed into idiocy, neither loving nor loved, neither a guerrilla nor a veteran. One foot in the Gulf of Alexandretta and the other in Europe.

  You are far away from me. Between us lie seas and continents. Ayntab is over there burning in the heart of the sea. The night is long and you are far away. The thought of returning home frightens me. The cold walls. Solitude. My bed. The map of my homeland hanging on the opposite wall like a corpse. Yes, the decomposing corpse of my homeland has been there for some time now. Every day, I open the wooden casket and take a look at the body. Every time I get that instant of joy and elation when I see that it has not completely rotted away yet. My homeland may be dead, but it has not rotted yet. If I can just bury it in your heart I will be able to relax. But there is not enough room in your heart and it will not go anywhere but my eyes. I put it back there and close the lids.

  And ever since that day… .

  Why do we go back to that day. Well, in any case, since that day, if I awake in the morning and cannot find my homeland … They tell me that it mounted a horse and rode away, far away … I asked after it everywhere. I looked in your body. I looked in the eyes of Raoul. I
n Ahmad’s songs which came from the depths of Upper Egypt. Layali wa ya layali, wa ah! In the cup of Adnan which he carries far away to where he buried the names – even the names of the gods. In the Quranic verses and poems which al-Bahi memorised and recited at every opportunity. My homeland is far away. It has mounted a charger and has ridden to heaven knows where.

  Suddenly, I call out its name. The rulers’ bully-boys heard me and they came and plucked out my eyes. Through the blood which was washing down my body, I saw my homeland fall between my tears, and disappear.

  Ever since that day …

  I have been afraid of going home. The four walls frighten me. I am awakened and the woman-tree is awakened. I say:

  “I want to forget. Yesterday they came for my blood from afar. They came from the cities which I have fled from. There they are now, over-running everything. Oh, if the time of cherries returned.

  Geneva. Everything is covered in snow. A small grey cat crouches in the corner of our room at the Ritz Hotel. The hotel employee had brought it to the room that morning, a gift from Mme Roseline, the woman who runs the Casino. She saw how fond I was of cats when I played with her Persian during dinner. I was very kind and well behaved with him, just as a civilized young lady coming from America would be. She started a long conversation with me about cats, asking how long I had been interested in them, whether I was attracted to one particular breed more than others, whether I was thinking about having children. At the last question, she winked at me so that Abu Mashour would not see and she whispered:

  “You’d better not have children if you really are fond of cats. They get very jealous sometimes, you know.”

  I reassured Mme Roseline that the cats of the world were completely safe if the matter was in my hands.

  I get up and start to put on my clothes. The phone rings and, as I lunge towards it, there is a voice inside me telling me that this might be something to unsettle us in the run-up to the operation – there was only one day to go now. I lift the receiver. It is Saleh, telling me that he and Farhan have arrived in Geneva from Frankfurt an hour before. We decide to meet at the Restaurant Edward VII near the monument to the Unknown Soldier. I finish dressing and run down to the hotel lobby. I find Abu Mashour in one corner having a cup of coffee. His face is filled with consternation. He has not stopped asking questions since we arrived in Geneva. What good would this kind of action do us? Why this war in the sky which can’t ever be justified?

  The doubts in Abu Mashour’s mind caused me to consider whether or not to take him off the team. Maybe I should get another comrade to take his place. But how? We were on the eve of the operation and every discussion we begin always reaches the same conclusion. He was one of the best of guerrilla fighters we had and the bravest of them all, but he did not know how to conduct a political campaign. At university he dropped out in the first year in order to join the military camps.

  I go up to him. He carries on staring vacantly at the white blanket of snow on the other side of the glass.

  I say to him:

  “Saleh and Farhan have arrived from Frankfurt and they’re waiting for us at the Edward VII.”

  He acknowledges what I say and gets up from his place. I look through the thick medical spectacles which he was asked to wear as a disguise during the operation. I do my best to make light of the situation:

  “Did you write a will before you left Harran?”

  “My only request is that you musn’t marry anyone else after my death!”

  “What a marvellous feudal lord you would have made. Still not over desire for possession, eh?”

  I see a smile illuminating the dark features. Behind his thick glasses his eyes look like those of a Greek god. Yet strangely there is still doubt in them, doubt about everything. I do not know why guerrilla fighters always have doubt in their eyes. Your eyes, Frank, are like two eternal springs of doubt.

  Before we cross the street to the overheated restaurant, I say to Abu Mashour:

  “You’re still not sure about this operation, are you?”

  “It’s not this operation particularly, it’s action outside the Occupied Land in general. I’m sorry but our opinions on this are totally different.” “Well, you better not let Saleh and Farhan see what you’re thinking. If you really don’t want to go with us, we could do it without you, you know.”

  Signs of sadness and dismay appeared on Abu Mashour’s face. I had misunderstood his apparent hesitation. He explains to me:

  “Nadia, I wouldn’t ever let my personal views stand in the way. Of course I’m going with you, and I’ll see this task through to the very end. However, I retain the right to disagree with you about how useful the operation will be and what benefits it will bring. The way I see it, what we are doing is indulging in individual heroics to the detriment of the heroism of our whole people. Tomorrow, all the papers will write about Nadia and Abu Mashour and your photograph will probably fill three or four columns on every front page. You’ll be a heroine. But while all this is happening, the real heroes, the ones living and dying on the Northern Plains, and in Harran and Ayntab, will not even get a mention.”

  “But we need the publicity, Abu Mashour. Can’t you see? We are surrounded by Western Europe.”

  “In ten years in Vietnam … ”

  I do not let him finish:

  “Don’t give me that stuff about Vietnam and Cuba and all the rest of them. Every revolution has its own special circumstances. Our circumstance is that we are fighting without a country, without a legal system, outside the law.”

  “What about Bolivia?”

  “Totally different. As you know, the rebels were slaughtered before anybody came to help them.”

  “You’ll make a great terrorist, you know, Nadia. Have you thought at all about the hundreds of innocent people who are going to be on board that aeroplane?”

  His remark gave me a sharp pain in my insides. Ever since Issam had broken the news to me that my life was going to change, I had spent a long time studying various aspects of the operation, and the most difficult thing for me was the passengers. I had lost a lot of sleep, thinking about how we were involving them in our actions. In the end Imade a promise to myself that I would do everything in my power to make sure they were spared. And anyway, why shouldn’t they be plucked from their dull lives for a while, from their spoilt pets and their capitalist rat-race.

  “Abu Mashour, no one has a God-given right to live on this planet in complete safety all the time, particularly when there are millions of others out there dying in conditions of terror and violence. If you want to say what we’re doing is terrorism, then by all means, call me a terrorist, one of the best!”

  Our discussion is not over by the time we get to the restaurant. We go over to our comrades and greet them with hugs and questions. Then we sit down and have lunch in silence, broken only by the odd remark made by one or other of us. I told them that we were still waiting for two of our comrades whom we were expecting from Hamburg; a Palestinian doctor and an Algerian, the latter being the one who was supposed to be directing the operation until we board the aeroplane. Once on board, command of the operation was to be handed over to me. We finish our meal and head back to the hotel for coffee. When I am outside in the snow and the wind, I feel as if the fog of the previous night has still not been cleared from my breast. I feel a strange kind of delirium. I run to the opposite side of the road without heeding cars coming from left and right which only just miss me. I raise my head and look up to the sky, welcoming the spots of rain as they fall into my eyes. I think of my days in Arum. The chill of autumn. The wilted almond blossoms still clinging to the mother-tree.

  The telephonist at the hotel greeted me and told me that a telephone call had come for me from Hamburg a few minutes before. It seemed that the comrades needed to speak to us urgently. I left the group in the lobby and ran out towards the railway station. After buying some bars of chocolate, I asked the shopkeeper where the nearest phone booth was. She pointed to
the right without breaking off from her conversation with a customer about the weather and the price of meat. I turned around and looked carefully to see whether anyone had been following me or watching me. When I was certain that the coast was clear, I went over to the booth and closed the door firmly behind me. I dialled the operator and asked for a Hamburg number. Since the beginning of my training for this operation, I had stopped carrying around pieces of paper or note-books with names, addresses or telephone numbers on them. I committed every name and number to memory. Man can do most things when he puts his mind to it.

  I hear the voice of my Algerian comrade coming on at the other end:

  “Have you had a lot of snow in Geneva?”

  “It’s been raining since yesterday, actually.”

  “Is it very cold?”

  “Yes, but it would still be very nice to do the trip around the lake. When can you make it here?”

  Our conversation is in English. He tells me that the two of them will be arriving in the evening. I terminate the conversation and replace the receiver. There is a momentary feeling of dizziness in my head. The time is nearly upon us. I hurry back to the hotel, stopping at a newspaper vendor to get the morning papers. When I get to the hotel I do not find my comrades in the lobby. I go to the room where Abu Mashour was doing some exercises.

  “Where have Saleh and Farhan gone?”

  “They went back to their hotel. They said they were feeling a bit tired.”

  “The other two are going to be here tonight.”

  Abu Mashour realises from this information that the final date and time of the operation have been decided upon. We are to go the following day.

  We sit on the side of the bed and study our charts. We look at the route the flight will take, as well as the altitude and the possible air conditions that we will encounter along the way. I expected some turbulence over Italy. If the weather conditions got too bad we might have to make an emergency landing at Rome Airport. But landing would be risky, especially if we were going to take control of the flight immediately after leaving Geneva Airport. Abu Mashour reminded me that the plane could fly at a lower altitude if the weather conditions demanded it, but I preferred to leave matters of that nature to the afternoon, when Saleh could take the final decision. He had been apilot, after all, and his knowledge of such things was much wider than ours.