The Homeland

by Hamida Na'na

  “Nadia, what are you doing up at this hour? We normally only see you when the night is drawing to a close.”

  I do not answer. I remain silent. He follows me to the street corner.

  “What’s the matter with you, Nadia?”

  He takes hold of my arm and we cross at the traffic-lights. He takes me into a café which is thronging with labourers. I sit down on an old wooden seat. I hear Paris breathing in my chest. Factory smoke and petrol fires. The waiter comes over. He asks for my order.

  “A glass of cognac, please.”

  Ahmad looks at me with surprise.

  “Since when have you started drinking at this time of the morning? You haven’t turned into an old drunk like me, have you?”

  Oh, if Ahmad only knew that I had actually turned into a bullet, but a bullet which is incapable of action. If only he knew that now I held everything in my hand: the world, my homeland, my own body; but all I can do is kill them. I have lost. It is all over.

  I lift my glass and cry out:

  “Your health, Ahmad. Let’s kill our old pal Karl Marx. Let’s do it our way.”

  Do you know Ahmad? I think you met him once at my place. He was getting drunk and talking about Hegel. About Che Guevara. About Frankfurt. He started talking about the Palestinians, and Beirut, and his struggle. Then he dived into a glass of whisky and never came back. You must remember him. Ahmad is like all the disasters of the Arabs rolled into one. I remember, after we had spent an evening together with him, you told me that he was a complete scoundrel. You said he would keep talking and talking and end up never writing anything. To write you need to have silence, you said. Yes, indeed, Frank. To write you need conspiracy, and for conspiracy you need silence. Ahmad has capacity for neither conspiracy or silence. He is like a child who plays about with the stars, arranging them according to his wishes. We laughed at Ahmad when he swore on the heads of all who were present that he would bring Europe to ruin with nothing more than a feather. We laughed and whispered stupid jokes into one another’s ears. Iremember my friend Muhammad saying to me that night:

  “Tell me, is there any space left on this earth for the bodies of all the philosophers and thinkers whom this man has just slain?”

  Now I look at his face and recall my loss and my frustration. I feel the need to avenge myself. In spite of the indignation I felt about it, I came to believe that revolution was the act of civilized mankind. And we’re only Arabs, who chew qat and smoke hashish – nothing will come from us. Only you can do it. The day that I first slept with you, Idid not embrace flesh and blood. You were made of steel, lead and timber. The day we kissed, it was not lips but books and ideologies. I was naïve at the time. I loved books.

  “Your health, Ahmad, and here’s to everything you’ll write about dear Mr Hegel. Tonight we shall toast your victory over Marx.”

  Ahmad’s face betrays his sadness. He puts his glass down and asks:

  “How is Frank? Is he still in Paris? I saw that he’d left his wife for you. It’s been all over the papers.”

  Did he want to pay me back for what I had just said? I certainly did not mean to hurt him. Did Ahmad think that when I was attacking all of your gods, that I was attacking him? Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, all the way down the list of those strange names. Not at all. That wasn’t what I meant.

  “Ahmad, please don’t talk to me about Frank. Why don’t we talk about, I don’t know, agricultural development in Abu Dhabi?”

  Ahmad’s face is filled with questions and more questions:

  “What’s got into you, Nadia? You’ve changed.”

  “Oh, Ahmad. Stop it. Look, do you still believe in the possibility of revolution in terrorist countries?”

  He tried to keep up with my mania but he was not able to.

  “You’re acting very strangely this morning, Nadia.”

  I cry out. My howling voice mixes with the waiter’s who has come to collect the bill.

  “Ahmad. Do you still believe in the struggle?”

  He replies with surprise:

  “My convictions have not changed. Death is necessary for us to liberate the … ”

  I watch him spew up the lies of principle and revolution. I look in his face for an edge of truth which I can lean on. There is nothing there. Nothing. I say to him with the self-possession which accompanies the last gasps of a dying man.

  “Do you want to know something? I actually killed Frank this morning.”

  He was amazed that I said it so calmly.

  “You killed him! What do you mean you killed him? Are you mad?”

  I shall never tell him. What is the difference whether I kill you or whether I bury you alive? There is silence between us. I feel a strange kind of ease. I have freed myself of you. Ahmad takes my hand and leads me to a taxi. He pushes me inside and sits down beside me. He tells the driver our destination. I hear the address of my prison as though for the first time. In the past it was instinct that took me home. It was instinct that made me sleep. I ate, drank, felt affection and made love all as a result of natural impulses. But why is there this sudden return to consciousness in my blood? We both climb the wooden steps. I search for the key. There it is like a child’s body in an abandoned tomb. I go in … we go in together. He helps me off with my coat and lays me out on the bed.

  “Tell me why you killed him.”

  I find that I am enjoying this play-acting. The text and the stage mingle together. I remain silent. The telephone starts ringing again. It is very loud. Who could be calling at this hour? Ahmad picks up the receiver. It is you, asking whether I am there and if you can have a word with me.

  I take your call with the animation of a corpse. Your anger explodes down the line. I let out a hollow laugh. You still know how to get angry then, do you? You want to know why I did what I did. Why did I do it? Why did I tear up your picture. Why did I stab the heart of my poor friend, the old man of the sea? Why did I let my madness erupt in that living-dead flat of yours? Why indeed? It is difficult to explain to you. It’s difficult to tell you:

  “You… . ”

  But why should I say anything? You don’t care enough any more to understand.

  “Frank, I’m dying. I have announced it. Please leave me to meet death alone.”

  We both put down the receiver. I feel the moment of this meeting with death. I look at the face of my friend which was questioning once again. I feel cold. I shiver. It is as if the water is fleeing from my body. I see myself as a water-well becoming limpid in its sorrow. Suddenly I am aware of a noise in the room. It is a strange, unfamiliar sound which comes from behind the radiator. It comes from low down on the wall where I chose to put my distant homeland. Next to the map hang my mother’s and father’s portraits, along with a couple of pictures of you. I go over towards the radiator, pretending that I am fiddling with its controls. I look behind it and I see a large black insect that is eating into the wall. Questions race into my mind. How long has that been there? How long has it been in my room, eating into my wall? For how long have I been going back into myself?

  The wall is old. It is made of old wood. The insect will probably reach the map of my homeland quite quickly. It will probably bring the wall down. I shrug my shoulders and say to myself: It’s an old wall; I didn’t build it, so who cares?

  I head for the kitchen and pour out two whiskies, one for myself and I bring back the other for Ahmad. I sit down on the edge of the bed and raise my glass.

  “To you, to the Sa’alik and to vagabonds like us, wherever they may be.”

  Something greater than fear is trembling inside me. Ahmad knows all about the fleeting moment of lucidity that always comes before the anaesthetic of oblivion. Am I one of those people who is given heightened consciousness by alcohol. Each time I am immersed in a new glass, I awaken for a hundred years while ordinary, stupid, humdrum, daily life is my most powerful narcotic, killing my humanity.

  We talk about Lebanon and we get drunk. We talk about Palestine and we get drun
k, or rather, we wake up. We talk about plague-ridden revolutions and we are practically slain by the intoxication which that engenders. At no point do I talk about you. You were already buried and I was at peace. I thought that I had finished with you. I believed the moment. I thought that the fleeting moment of joy, which I felt when I climbed out of the well, was something that would last for ever. We continue to drink and slowly the day withdraws from the ashes and from us and from the world. Day is forever treading towards night, never even stopping to tell us where it is going. The noise of the cars reaches us from the Rue Générale Le Clerc and disperses our solitude. We are alone in that moment, with neither a home town nor ahomeland, without revolutions or revolutionary examples, without a past, without heroic exploits which we never carried out, or which we carried out only to kill our boredom. I tried to pluck out from inside me, and to throw you at the noise – it’s getting louder and louder all the time, coming to me from behind the radiator to conspire against my tranquillity.

  Suddenly, I stand up, feeling a bit dizzy after all the Scotch which I have drunk, and I deliver a stirring speech:

  “There is no revolution and there are no revolutionaries. There are just ordinary people who live out their lives in silence. It takes courage to live a humdrum life. Take my father, he was a hero to bring nine children into this world and provide for them. Well, he didn’t exactly decide to, we came of our own accord… . ”

  Ahmad scoffed at my great discoveries and walked out of my flat.

  I locked the door behind him and closed all the windows. I got undressed. I stood naked in front of the mirror and studied my face and body. I was greatly alarmed by the effects of time which could be seen creeping across them. It was worst around my eyes. I heard the sound of the insect mocking me. It seemed to be saying:

  “Beautiful lady, you’re going to die. You’re going to die and you’ll never find your homeland.”

  Screaming wildly I lunged at the mirror and smashed it. I felt like the member of a devastated race … the remains of ashes.

  The silence carried on howling and the mirror became a thousand mirrors. In the past I used to love mirrors and the peace that those who have given up the struggle make with their souls. In the past I used to feel at ease with the reflection of my face in the mirror. In other people’s eyes. In your face. But that moment made me hate myself, and mirrors, and you.

  There was a light knock on the door. I leave my life behind me, a hostage to the pieces of glass and the walls and the messages the insect sends me. In a daze, I go over to the door and I open it. You appear before me shrouded in the mists and ashes of oblivion.

  “What happened? Why did you do that?”

  I do not reply. I head towards my bed and throw my carcass down on it. I hear the voice of Abu Mashour intermingled with yours, and the sound of the insect. My homeland on the wall quivers and you are nailed to the corner. Two conflicting desires pull me. The first one says: You coward! You have run away enough. Where do you think you are going? Do you think that you can escape from your skin? The other voice tells me to stop prevaricating, to go over to you and to bury myself in your arms and try to forget all my heightened consciousness. The revolutionary action which was once so integral to my life, I replaced with you, a revolutionary who has given up the fight.

  Ayntab leaves the heart of the Mediterranean and seeks my heart. It kisses me with its lips. It enters into the hollow of my body. It whispers to me: Why are you running from me? Where are you going?

  I fear my head is going to explode. The wall shakes. What if the insect arrives at my homeland and devours it … I am afraid to run over to the desk and take out the revolver which has been gathering dust in there ever since I was an affectionate lover … The revolver which went with me wherever I travelled, like an icon. I had almost forgotten that it was there during my bouts of oblivion. I had almost forgotten the five rounds of ammunition which lay in the chambers, a way for me to find a release. Release from a slow death. I think about opening the drawer but I see your ice-cold hand covering mine. I look at you. You pull me towards the bed and together we set off on another of those journeys of the flesh which take us to oblivion.

  When we tried to be together, or rather when I tried to be with you, I forgot everything. In a matter of seconds, I would become like a pussy-cat who nurses its wounds in the heart of the forest. Forgotten is the noise of the insect, forgotten the face of Abu Mashour, forgotten Ahmad and his massacres. Christ has emerged from his sepulchre. He has come down from the Cross. I adorned you with his shroud and we were both lifted to the crest of a tumultuous wave and then hurled down again onto the bed-clothes amid the pleasant moisture of the ocean. I held on to you with all my strength. I felt as though I was clinging to a rock or a tree-root lest I fall into the terrible dark depths of the Ocean. I have forgotten … forgotten … forgotten.

  The night pours into the room. Our bodies are like two corpses spinning through time in search of a sea of tranquillity. My eyes are fixed on the ceiling, I switch on the light. I am surprised when it is your face I see in front of me. I stroke your chest with my hand and say:

  “Why did you come?”

  You stop me talking by giving me a kiss. Then you ask:

  “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to sleep?”

  I stay silent. I turn over. Ever since I left my comrades I have been a hostage to sleepless nights. I wake up. I grope my way around the cold, dark streets until tiredness gets the better of me. I come back, exhausted, cram some food into my mouth and then run away to my job. The shafts of light fall on our bodies. My face is turned towards the wall so as not to have to look in your eyes, so as not to have to answer your questions. I am naked. I have forgotten that I should never be completely naked in front of anyone else. That is what the doctor said after he operated on my shoulder to extract the bullet that had been put there by an Israeli agent’s gun. Your eyes fall on the place where the bullet went in. I hear both sympathy and surprise in your voice, as you say:

  “What’s that mark on your right shoulder?”

  There is a moment of silence and I think to myself: breathe slowly. Keep control of yourself. I try to take hold of the net of lies which is my life. The woman-guerrilla, with all her stealth and cunning, is awakened inside me:

  “Oh, that. It’s nothing. Just an old scar. It’s from an operation which I had when I fell off my horse as a girl.”

  “You used to ride, then?”

  My eyes are still facing towards the wall. I am afraid of turning towards you and meeting your gaze. I do not do it because I know that it is not possible for one fighter to conceal his face from another. You cannot cover the mark made by a bullet. Not from a doctor, nor from a fighter. I am sure you did not believe what I said. Not that it mattered … At least, that is what I pretended to myself at that moment. I hear you breathing. I feel your breath caressing my shoulder where the bullet went in. I feel the strong desire to cry, or to shout, or to sing, to do anything. I turn around and remember what I was going to say to you.

  “Frank, why can’t you be more like my homeland?”

  You look at me with amazement. Why did I blurt these things out in moments of love and intimacy? Why must I always disturb your state of surrender with pictures of palm-trees and jungles and my homeland?

  “Try to sleep, Nadia. Why don’t you think of some of the stories your mother used to tell you. You’re tired. We need to get out of Paris for a few days. Maybe then you can relax.”

  It seems that you have not grasped the full extent of my tragedy. It is something that I carry inside me wherever I go. It does not make any difference whether I am in one place or another. I could go and live on a mountain or in a forest. It would always be there. It would always be part of me.

  I think of my dear little insect. Yes, it’s true. I have grown quite fond of her. She is the only one who calls out to me with complete sincerity.

  “Frank, when you were in your cell, did you ever find
an insect or something like that?”

  You smile and your face is lit up with the past.

  “When I was in prison? Oh, I used to think to myself how good the world outside was. I used to have a few ritual pleasures, though. I would think of the beauty of Simone Signoret’s eyes. I would dream that … ”

  “Why don’t you go back to the Third World, Frank? What is it that keeps you tied to France?”

  “Go to sleep. You’re very tired … France is my country. I have so much to do here.”

  “You have your comfort and safety here. You’ve got your beautiful flat in Ile de la Cité. You’ve got … ”

  You interrupt:

  “Everything. That’s what is here. My name. My books. The working class whose rights I fight for.”

  “Oh yes. The right to have a second steak, for instance. The right to have two deserts. Over there they’re fighting to stay alive. Why did you come back from the Dark Continent?”

  You stay silent. You turn your face to the other wall and go to sleep.

  Since that night the insect has accompanied me wherever I go. I try to forget or to escape from it, but in vain. I try to avoid it by doing things which take me out of the house. I go to see my old friends and I tell them about that night. I write. I go to your place. But the insect is always behind me. In front of me. At my side. Everywhere.

  I go to my friend al-Bahi and I tell him all about it. We sit down and work out a plan to get rid of it. We go to the Café Saint Claude. We take out sheets of paper. We draft maps of our campaign against the insect. We look at the likelihood of our coming out of the battle victorious. We consider the possibility of failure. We study the feasibility of our moving it to another location. We think what would happen if my army, my whole life in fact, was set free from it. I could send it abroad to one of the embassies where it could represent me, or rather it could represent the Kingdom of the Sa’alik. In the end we can think of no acceptable method. One day, after we had been treated to a rich dinner at Maxime’s by one of the ‘revolutionary’ oil sheikhs, al-Bahi says to me: