The Homeland

by Hamida Na'na

  We had been waiting in Geneva for the beginning of the operation for ten days now. On the third day I had sent Issam a telegram which had said:

  “Everything is okay. Surgery has had to be postponed three days.” What this meant was that we were going to begin the operation three days later than previously planned.

  Two days later I sent another telegram. This time it read:

  “The doctor has advised the commencement of planned treatment. E.C.T. begins on … ” and here I specified the exact time and date of the operation. I finished the telegram with the usual words: “We are well. Love to you all.”

  I looked at the word ‘well’ on the page. It looked like a decomposing corpse. I tried to believe it myself: We are well. I thought about how, without realising it, we are governed by clichés and linguistic formulae, making us slaves to the word although the word has little to do with the conditions and events of our lives. I handed the telegram over to the blonde girl who was behind the post office counter and left quickly.

  How cold I feel tonight.

  Where are you, Frank?

  Why is my homeland attacking me with such force tonight? Why am I weighed down by my conscience, my exile, my desire for life? What made me take on the life of a guerrilla fighter living in the realms of covert action, my hand on my gun, the night sheltering me in her dark corners? I try to convince myself that I had no choice. I think back to my political activities before I joined the Organization, I see that all I did was talk.

  The night of the Fifth of June again. Endless talk about workers’ rights and the fellaheen. Speeches and empty threats from our leaders. War raining down on Arum and Ayntab. All my peers, my intellectual guides, my leaders, all as helpless as myself to separate themselves from the calamity. Coming back from the military hospital, the sight of civilian victims of a napalm attack fresh in my memory, the smell of their burning flesh still lingering in my nostrils. I can find no way of putting them out of my mind and restoring myself to my usual calm, the eerie calm of the swamps. I go to our exalted leader who never errs. I knock on his door. His beautiful wife opens it for me, looking like she has just emerged from the sweet land of her dreams. I tell her I want to see him.

  “He’s busy. He didn’t get any sleep last night.”

  I push my way through and find him in his office. I scream at him: “I’ve got a score to settle with you. Let’s talk! Let’s talk about you.

  Let’s talk about where you stand at this moment. Tell me, for instance, how you expected us to drive them back from the gates of Arum when you hadn’t given us anything to fight with?”

  He looks at me in his condescending way, full of pity and compassion, like a father regarding his wayward child. He says to me, with the wan smile never leaving his lips:

  “Nadia, you may be a good poetess but you’ve got a lot to learn about politics. What you don’t realise is, the current situation can be looked at in a positive light. The war has put paid to single party rule. For years the petit-bourgeois Arab governments have been telling us that democratic and social progress cannot be allowed to go ahead until the patriotic battle against Israel has been won. This war has shown up their fundamental inability to achieve that victory and now those idiots will have to accept that they can’t stay in power all by themselves… .”

  At this point I lose all restraint and I scream at him: “I can’t take any more of this. I can’t stand any more of this ideological clap-trap. Are you seriously asking me to accept the occupation of half my land to prove the validity of some party-political argument? Arum is almost in the hands of our enemy!”

  He did not expect an answer like that and I could see the blood draining from his face. I doubt that anyone had ever before contradicted our exalted leader. Never in the history of the party had the finger been pointed at him like that. We were meant to listen to what he said and repeat it verbatim.

  I felt lost when I went back out onto the streets. They seemed to stretch away forever. Arum is worn out. Her face is old and tired. I get close to the corner of the fortifications. I see someone I know and I run towards him.

  “Ali. What’s going to happen, do you think?”

  He smiles and asks me:

  “How’s your poetry going?”

  Sometimes the monster inside us rises up. At that moment I felt my blood turn into a storm of hatred. The cobblestones on the road made me think of the number of skulls which had fallen to bring Arum into being, and Arum is now threatened with occupation, or, worse, total obliteration.

  Tomorrow Arum will be penetrated by an occupying army. The soldiers will penetrate me and my sisters and my friends and they will sow the seeds of occupation in our wombs. Then the nausea will come and we’ll be spewing up our slogans every morning.

  I run towards the broadcasting building. I go straight past the guards and soldiers without even looking at them. Breathlessly I climb the three flights of stairs to the door of Bahiya’s office. She is a comrade of ours, who comes from one of the Gulf countries. She sees the pallor of my face and the fear in my eyes, and she asks me to come in. She takes a jar of Valium tablets out of her desk and gives one to me:

  “Try to calm yourself, Nadia. We’ve just heard the news. They’re on the outskirts of Arum.”

  I stare at the ground. I felt like going into the studio and speaking to the Arab peoples, those whose hearts were tied to Arum. I would say to them: “Oh mountains of dough and pleasure, here we are harvesting the results of your oil, your mistresses and your great wealth.” I would tell them to pray to their saviour to protect them. Pray. Pray hard. Pray to Him for your bodies to be burned and for real men to emerge from your ashes. I wanted …

  It is raining hard in Paris. The road is narrow. The walk back home frightens me.

  Everything is floating in the distance. When you are exiled from your homeland, your whole life drifts away from you. Even you, my love, who is far away, even you are a knife which cuts deep into my flesh and uncovers all the agonies of my past.

  My homeland is far away. The homeland in my eyes. Lebanon in June. A black mark on our foreheads that will be there for eternity.

  Geneva, once again.

  I approach the inspection point at the airport, trying not to let my face show anything that is going on inside my head. I pray that they don’t choose this moment to get over-efficient and security conscious. I look at Abu Mashour as he moves ahead in front of me. He looks calm and natural. Saleh and Farhan are behind us standing in a different queue. The plan required that Saleh takes his case and exchanges it with another which had been left in a locker in the dutyfree area by an accomplice who worked at the airport. I thought for a moment about our European comrade whom we did not know, the safe houses, the expenses which were met and how crucial the support of such people was to the outcome of our plans.

  Abu Mashour passes the inspection point. He is posing as a Mexican and the security official has no cause to think that anything is amiss, previously there has been no threat like us … He passes through to the other side and I breathe a sigh of relief. My turn is coming. I have my American passport at the ready. I am also carrying abundle of English language newspapers which I made sure I had bought that morning. I can hear a tumultuous noise coming from within me and it makes me think of the end of the world. I am afraid that the official might see my homeland written across my face. The besieged and banished homeland that is in my eyes, wherever I go in this world. I am worried that he will notice my dark complexion and ask me where I come from. In the event, however, he merely nods his head when he sees my US passport and waves me through without bothering to put a stamp on my papers. I see that Saleh and Farhan have gone through before me. Walking separately, we head towards the gate and board the aeroplane. Abu Mashour and I sit in adjacent seats. I open my handbag and take out a cigarette. I turn to my comrade and ask him:

  “How are you feeling? Are you confident?”

  He nods his head and we both breathe out our smoke into the
air of the cabin. I look around. It’s certainly a beautifully fitted-out plane. Over the entrance to the first-class cabin there is a sign saying ‘No Smoking’ in English and in Hebrew. On the side panels are pictures of the towns in the Occupied Land. The minutes pass. A hostess comes along the aisle and requests that we extinguish our cigarettes and fasten our safety-belts. The plane takes off. The city appears below us cradled in last night’s snow, looking like a bride lost in her dreams. Many brightly coloured flowers are planted around the town and this makes the bride look like a body whose wounds pour out their blood and hatred.

  I seek the succour of the cities I love. I look to Arum the Beautiful, who taught me how to breathe and how to live, and how to fight and kill in order to survive. Her beautiful face in the gloom of the morning on which I left her for Harran. There is none more beautiful than she as she pulls back the veil from her face at dawn and smiles at me. Geneva’s face disappears in the mist, like the face of a loved one on a station platform. Ten minutes pass. I see clouds, only clouds.

  The hostess comes round with drinks, and the fog which I was holding onto slips through my fingers and my lips. I try to stop it, but I fail. I take a glass and rest my head against Abu Mashour’s shoulder. The passenger behind us watches and gives a little smile. Perhaps he thinks to himself: “Ah, what a sweet young couple.”

  The first quarter of an hour passes and I hear the voice of the air hostess welcoming us on board on behalf of the pilot. She informs us that we have passed into Italian airspace and that the aircraft is currently flying at nine thousand feet. Our time has come.

  I put my hand down to feel the revolver. A shiver runs down my spine. I take my handbag and get up to go to the toilet. I move along the aisle clutching my tummy, pretending to be suffering from a sudden stomach ache. Abu Mashour goes with me trying to help me. One of the passengers says:

  “She should have a hot drink and lie still for a while.”

  Together we move from the second-class to the first-class cabin. Abu Mashour presses my hand firmly to indicate that I am to go straight to the cockpit. Terrible moments of silence throw their shadow over us while we wait for Farhan and Saleh to reach us. The hostess tries to stop them, saying:

  “Please wait a moment, gentlemen. There’s a lady through there who is not feeling very well.”

  They pay no attention to what she says and they continue on their way. When they join us in first-class cabin, I run towards the front of the plane, taking out my revolver with my right hand, I kick open the door of the cockpit, and take out the explosive device with my left hand, priming it to go off once the timer is set. I speak my prepared statement to the crew.

  “We are fighters for … ” Here I say the name of our organization. “This aircraft is now under our control. It will fly to Arum passing over the Occupied Land. The route will be set by us. Any deviation from that course and any false move made by you will oblige us to blow up the aeroplane.”

  The pilot looked on helplessly, his face like wax. Behind me a struggle broke out between Saleh, Farhan and a couple of passengers. Perhaps they were members of the Israeli security forces. The co-pilot also attempted to put up some resistance, but Abu Mashour took care of him and tied him to his seat. We heard a gunshot and one of the Israelis fell to the ground, Saleh overpowered the other one and tied him up. Farhan told the passengers to stay in their seats, then read out the text of our statement and told them:

  “We mean you no harm. We do not want to have to resort to violence. All we want is for the whole world to know about our cause.” After that they gave a brief outline of the history of Palestine and the Palestinian question to the passengers.

  I sit glancing at the radar screen every once in a while, keeping the barrel of my gun pointed at the pilot’s head. A distant desire for life tugs at my consciousness. We must not blow up this plane if we can help it. We must conserve the lives of the passengers if at all possible.

  I give our demands clearly to the captain.

  “Condition One: – the release of a woman freedom fighter who is being tortured in Nablus.

  “Condition Two: – the release of four of our comrades captured during an operation on the Northern Plains.

  “Condition Three: – the release of five people recently arrested during a demonstration in Jerusalem.

  “These demands must be met or we will have little choice … we will blow up the plane and all the passengers on it.”

  The pilot nodded his head in silence. After some minutes he asked me whether I wanted him to tell the air traffic control at Rome Airport about our demands. I nodded in agreement but added:

  “As long as you don’t try anything.”

  Over Rome, which was sunk in the arms of its hills, I noticed that the plane had lost altitude. I looked at the altimeter and it was clear that we were now flying much too near to the ground. I saw the game the pilot was playing and I brought the gun closer to his head.

  “Listen to me. We’re not children. Just tell them our conditions and that we have changed our direction. Don’t forget, I won’t hesitate to kill you if necessary. I have a comrade on board who is capable of flying this aircraft to its destination.”

  He nodded emphatically and relayed the instructions to the control tower with a plea to his government to accept our conditions. I felt a shiver running through my body. My eyes were fixed on the instrument panel, without looking away for one moment. We were a whisker away from death, and I was thinking how much I wished the war could be over. I wanted time to stand still. I wanted to open my eyes and find myself under one of the green olive trees on the outskirts of the seaside town where I was born. I wanted to stretch out on the ground and stare up into the blue sky. I looked at the calm face of my comrade, who had remained silent all the time, and I saw the resolve in his eyes.

  The plane circled the skies above Rome Airport for nearly a quarter of an hour. We were waiting for an answer from the control tower at the airport. I had given them a time limit of twenty minutes to come back to us with their reply. After a quarter of an hour, a cypher was received, their answer that they were not able to get a reply from the embassy did not convince me and I took this to mean that they had rejected our demands. I ordered the pilot to head for Athens and not to tell the control tower at Rome where we were going. I did, however, tell him to leave them in no doubt that regardless of where we ended up our conditions were not going to change.

  Time passed slowly. Each second seemed a lifetime. Each minute an epoch. Complete silence prevailed in the aircraft. It seemed as though we were in a moment of humility before God, as though we were all about to die. It is hard to be the killer, and humiliating to be the one killed. Why do we fight wars? Why do we manufacture weapons? Why do we cause death?

  I didn’t go far with my questions. I thought of the million-and-ahalf refugees at risk from death, not from war, but of hunger. A million-and-a-half people sitting shivering under canvas on rain-swept nights. Women who give birth out of their fear for extinction. I thought about what it means to be Palestinian and to live the Palestinian dilemma which says you either live the harsh life of an exile or you learn how to kill.

  I took a deep breath and felt my hand on the explosive device. It was as though my comrades and I were on board a ship which could not find a place to dock, with a crew which had no hope. The souls of one hundred and fifty passengers rest on my shoulders and conserving their lives was a concern to me, but I also had to think of my displaced people.

  At that moment Abu Mashour puts his face close to mine and says:

  “If we get out of this alive, I’ll always love you, you know.”

  The distances are erased and I feel time like a black spot eating up my memory.

  I replied:

  “I’ll always love you too.”

  How terrible it is that we are lovers at the very moment of death. Our lives in those awful seconds were hostages to any mistake which we, or the pilot, or the passengers might make. Where were
all the ‘Fathers’, the leaders and the theorists. They should stop making their resounding speeches for a while and be made to live through terrible moments like these. Oh my forefathers … our present leaders call themselves ‘Abu this’ and ‘Abu that’ but they are only fathers of sterility and impotence. I tell myself that it is not death we seek, but it feels like death when death is so close to you. I looked at the pilot’s face at that instant. He was in his mid-forties and his face was a typical Middle Eastern face. He had the same haughtiness which seems to be there in our features and which, under the hot sun, turns us all into people lost in our dreams. I felt a desire to talk to him:

  “You know what, I think you were born in Palestine and I bet your father was a Palestinian Jew.”

  Cultivated in Palestine, his offspring born on its soil, and there he had known nights of hunger and thirst just as we did.

  Before we got to Greek airspace, the captain turned to me and stared at me for some time, examining my face. Finally he said to me in Arabic:

  “We’re nearly over Greece now. Shall I transmit your conditions to Athens Airport?”

  I hesitated for a moment. I thought that landing in Nicosia – if we were pushed – would be easier because of the smaller number of security men there.

  “Nicosia. You will fly directly to Nicosia.”

  The aircraft continued on its course.

  Before our descent at Nicosia Airport, Saleh came up to me in the cockpit and told me that one of the female passengers was feeling airsick. I told him to give her one of the pills which were in a bottle in my bag. He took the bottle and went out of the cockpit without saying a word.