by Hamida Na'na
I smile. The myths come out again!
“A princess? I don’t know … my father was the one who took care of our family tree. You’d better ask him about that … To me that sort of thing is about as interesting as the population figures of Djakarta.”
My days in the hospital made me feel a closeness with that calm, self-assured face … His company during the hours which he had off from his clinic made me feel an emotion which was something like the desire for life itself. I had known death, and now I desired life, and he came to me carrying life in his hands. A few days after I left the hospital, Khalid and I got married and I moved to live with him in one of the villas close to the entrance to Ayntab.
That day, the comrades discussed the reasons for my marriage and came to the conclusion that I was escaping from the difficulties which we were faced with on the Ayntab front. I tried not to let my marriage get in the way of my duties. I used to spend the whole day in one of the refugee camps, keeping up with the news, receiving cyphers and letters, re-drafting political reports which I would send to the leadership in Harran, receiving reports and foreign visitors, taking visitors around the military encampments. In the evenings I would go back to my home where I would play my wifely role with calm and composure. A woman … a woman cooking meals for her family and fretting over the minor details of life. We would sit together in the evening, reading and listening to Wagner. I was a great lover of Wagner. I did not feel that there was any inconsistency in my life … I played my role calmly and confidently. I don’t know where these qualities came from, but I seemed to have acquired them in the whirlwind of anxiety which lives in the field of battle.
For the first time, after an absence of two years from my family, my mother came to Ayntab and settled down with me in the big house, a few days later my father followed. I was deliriously happy to see them again. After a year and a half of living the life of a fugitive, I was able to enjoy the pleasures of family life once more.
“Did you love your husband?”
“I was with him, but I was waiting for Abu Mashour.”
You look at my face in surprise and ask me:
“Who is this Abu Mashour?”
I remember that it is not right for me to talk about him:
“Oh, just an old friend.”
“Why did you get married then?”
“Please, no more questions. Just leave me in peace.”
He tried very hard to get me to lead a more ‘normal’ life – that’s what he used to call it. A normal life for him meant the house, dinner parties, invitations, holidays. He couldn’t see that that sort of thing was not normal for me any more. In spite of this, the first few months passed without any big problems or disagreements.
One day I was on my way back home from my office at the camp, when I suddenly felt dizzy. It made me think that my period was five days late that month. He was by my side but I did not tell him because I knew how much he wanted to have a child. As far as I was concerned the time had not yet come for me to take a decision of that kind.
In the evening, I told my mother the news and real joy appeared on her face. She said to me:
“You must have the baby. Don’t forget that you are twenty-eight now and your husband is in his forties.”
I remained silent. This was something I had to think about. What did it mean for me to be a mother? Could I give him a child while living this life of mine?
After a long period of hesitation, I told him and he reacted with love and enthusiasm. When the news had sunk in, he paused for a moment and asked me to lighten my workload at the Organization’s information office and to give myself a little time to relax.
I was taken completely by surprise. Everything that I had forgotten in my life, was brought back to me then. Did I have to change my life and become an expectant mother? What about my work in the Organization? What about my role as a fighter and the part I played in the lives of my comrades? Wasn’t that enough to make me a woman?
A few days later, Khalid, who had never come to see me at work before, visited me at my office. He found me among the piles of papers and stencilling machines, the ink and the noise from the radio receivers. He asked me whether I could take a break from work and cut down the two hours of military training which I took every day. The training was because I didn’t want to allow myself to get rusty. A guerrilla fighter – and you know this as well as anyone, Frank – is like his weapon. If either of them is allowed to fall into misuse, the rust sets in quickly and the mechanism is ruined. My feelings of failure, frustration and confusion overtake me. My husband’s face looks like the face of a stranger to me. Oh God. What made me want to put myself into the lottery of everyday life?
I am not my own woman any more!
This expression echoed in my head and I stared hard into his face. For the first time I experienced alienation from my husband. Like strangers on a train – the first stop and we shall part.
Before him, in other words before marriage, home and pregnancy, I thought that coming home at night to a man would restore my equilibrium and would enable me to follow my path with greater clarity and certainty.
Before this my life had been a wonderful, if taxing, adventure. It never occurred to me, as I was searching for revolution in the airports of Europe, that the day would come when I had to choose between my natural, ‘normal’ role and my real life. Little by little, I gave in to an easier way of living. I tried to shorten the hours which I spent training, limiting myself to one hour a day. Soon I was down to half an hour a day, but then came Black September.
The battle flared up suddenly in Harran. On the Northern Plains. In all the fields of combat which I had abandoned. One by one, my comrades started to arrive in Ayntab. The Arab cities were in flames.
My workload at the information bureau increased and events began to follow one another with alarming speed. I had to cut myself off from home so that I could devote myself to work in the bureau. I slept there and wrote my papers there. I kept an eye on the news and the foreign agency news wires. I also studied the few reports which were issued by the Leadership. As usual they told us about the valour of our fighters and what a strong position we were in. As the days went by, their bodies were piling up on the roadsides of Harran, and the world looked on without saying a word. I completely forgot about the embryo which was growing in my womb. I forgot that I was a wife, with a house and a husband and a family. I forgot that I belonged to the normal, everyday life of the Ayntab streets. I lived in my office and doubled the hours of my military training. I was terrified by the prospect of sparks from Harran igniting a conflict in Ayntab. A miasma of killing and expulsion. The contagion of silence about everything that came to pass.
Khalid would ring me up every morning and ask me whether I was going to have supper at home with him in the evening. Home! How could he talk about home amidst all this killing and blood-letting?
No love. No husband. The knife which was June became the bullets and bombs of September. It was no longer possible to remain silent. Life was not possible any more. International reports and official institutions cry out all their vapidities when faced with innocent children who have been caught in the flames.
Things happened quickly. Harran was surrounded. The encampments to the north were surrounded. The comrades were run to ground. The smell of corpses came to me on the breeze and in the words of those who had fled. The battle survivors returned to us bearing their wounds and their failure, and went into hiding. All the time I was waiting for the miracle which would deliver those who were still out there. But my hopes were drowned in blood and I had to come to terms with the harshness of living in our age.
After a fortnight of the battle, I received a telex from the Leadership requesting that I begin preparations to receive and provide shelter for some members of the political bureau who were planning to retreat to Ayntab. This was a most difficult request because the host country was already having grave doubts about our presence. A few days earlier the mat
ter had been discussed in the parliament. In the evening I telephoned my father-in-law who was still in the south and requested his help in finding hide-outs for the comrades. He hesitated for a long time before suggesting that they be moved to one of the villages in the south, close to the border, where they could be looked after in case of an outbreak of hostilities in Ayntab. I agreed with the idea and went off in my car to a place near the battle zone. I waited for them to arrive. After an hour, Saleh and Muhammad appeared, but Issam was not with them. I started the car and we set off towards Ayntab. My hands were trembling on the steering-wheel as we crossed the Beka‘a Valley. I looked at their tired faces and their straggly beards.
I could smell the sweat on their bodies along with cordite and earth. I remembered with grief and despondency that I was planning to become a mother, to have a child in this world of killing and expulsion and homelessness. It now seemed like madness to be bringing another refugee into the Arab world. Suddenly I did not want that foetus in my body any more, dishonouring my womb. I had to be free of it. Trying to fulfil my natural role in this atmosphere was absurd. How could I be an honest and effective mother now? How could I meekly bridge the gap between my husband and his sons and never speak about why I chose that shameful moment to conceive a child?
I had not had any contact with them since that day when I left them in Harran, but Saleh knew everything:
“How is married life? We heard you are pregnant. We’ll all be so pleased when you have the baby.”
Awave of profound shame swept over me when I thought of Saleh bidding farewell to his children in Palestine, never to set eyes on them again. I made a great effort to appear natural and calm without letting them realise the pit of despair that I was in and the contradiction that Iwas living. I wanted to dispel this loathsome moment, so I turned to Saleh and said:
“Yes, I have agreed to become a mother, finally.”
The route to Ayntab was winding and passed through the mountains. My hands clung to the wheel. My face was submerged in the gloom of the future. What did the future hold for me?
In the light of the street lamps, I saw a swelling around Saleh’s right eye. I stopped the car and turned in my seat to look at the wound, the blue ring around his eye.
I reached out my hand and touched the blue ring around his eye. I asked him if he wanted me to take him to my house where my husband could make a quick examination of the wound. It was only then that I saw that Muhammad had lost an arm and had been hiding it from me by putting his combat jacket over his shoulder. The two comrades saw my shock and bravely tried to lessen the impact by joking with me:
“Nadia, you’re looking older. Don’t tell me that married life doesn’t agree with you!”
I could not cope with their light-heartedness. What could I say? I looked to my courage to save me. I tried to grant myself life and I remembered that no one can have life if they do not ultimately accept death. Death had ceased to frighten me and I considered it an ordinary matter which could spring up on you at any time. A car crash. Crossing the road. A stray bullet. There was no doubt that the battle was going to be long and I still had a lot of time.
When we arrived in Ayntab, I took them straight home, passing through the district of well-heated villas, their lights beaming out into the dark. I thought about the criminals and murderers who inhabited these buildings, their whisky and their perfumes, their rich pickings from the crumbs under oil-rich tables in Arabia. At my side were the faces of the real fighters, those who had chosen repudiation and death in order to gain life. I stopped in front of our house and got out of the car. We crossed the garden to the front door. My feet felt as though they could hardly support my body. Khalid saw me from the window and hurried down to meet me. He took me in his arms and I put my head on his shoulder.
I wanted to cry. I was home after fifteen days away, fifteen days since the fighting broke out in Harran.
We went through to the hall which my husband had furnished in the most beautiful and luxurious fashion. But everything appeared to be trivial and beneath contempt. The richness looked more like putrefaction. I looked at their faces. That was where my homeland was. Why should I look elsewhere? I did not dare ask them how many fighters we had lost. I felt that they were hiding something from me. I did not ask them about Issam and Naif. I had read in the newspaper that they were surrounded in a house in Harran three days before and that they were still fighting.
We were as silent as corpses in the grave. Khalid was looking at me before turning to my comrades. My mother came in with coffee for everyone. I got up to help her. She kissed me and then burst into tears.
“It’s alright, I’m here. Why are you crying? What’s the matter?”
She left me and went back to her bedroom. Silence descended on the four of us.
At the dinner table Saleh told me about the fierce fighting in Harran. Then he paused for a moment before telling me that Um Abed was also among the dead. She had been gunned down outside the Organization headquarters. I stopped eating and looked at his face icily. I saw her in front of me, her round face and full figure. I could hear her loud voice telling me about their flight from Jerusalem and her dream of reunifying Palestine. Had all that really finished? I remembered her valour and her simplicity. I fought back the tears. I arranged to meet the comrades the following day and they left. I found myself alone to face my husband and my parents. I found myself submitting to ‘normal’, daily life once more, in the realms of luxury and ease. They did not ask me anything. They remained silent. I looked at each of them and prayed that someone would say something, anything. I addressed my husband:
“Khalid, was it wrong for me to bring them here?”
He said nothing.
“Why don’t you answer? Did you know that Issam and Naif are still cut off?”
Again, nothing.
“Why don’t you say something?”
He held out his hand and helped me to my feet. He led me to the bedroom.
For the first time in a fortnight, I felt clean sheets against my skin and a sense of comfort. I tried to explain to my husband how important it was for me to support my comrades in Harran, how I wanted to stop the bullets from tearing into their bodies. My husband did not speak. I felt that the walls of alienation, which I had lived with all my life, were now being raised between us. There was no longer any point in us living the moments when things were falling apart. I decided to discuss our future together. But then I felt a pain in my stomach and a burning sensation in my head. I tried to fight against it but it was too great. I had been unaware of how my body had swollen over the last days. Seconds passed and suddenly everything was bathed in blood. I passed out.
I spent three days lying in a bed in the American University Hospital wrestling with life and death after the doctors had aborted the foetus that was inside me. There was nothing they could do. It had been dead for days.
When I opened my eyes there was his face. And the faces of my parents. I could not cry. I could not feel any pain. Joy had left my body. The past was the present in my memory, while the future slept under a curtain of fear and the expectation of death.
I stayed in hospital for ten days, before going back home in a state of utter dejection. I threw myself into the bed of peace and wealth like an old rag, trying to bring back the memory of those last days in the refugee camp. I felt an enigmatic, temporary, peace, like the calm which inhabits the souls of those condemned to be hanged in a few short minutes. No doubt there are many victims stretched out on the pavements of Harran, some of them still suffering, the spirit not yet having left the body. There were no ambulances, no doctors, no clean hospital beds. How had Um Abed met her death? Was she killed outright in a hail of bullets? Or had she lain wounded for days before drawing her last breath? Had anyone been able to get close to her or had they not dared to risk the snipers’ bullets? Had Naif managed to escape, or was he still imprisoned there? There were no answers to my questions so I would get out of bed and wander through th
e rooms searching for my mother. When I found her in the sitting-room with her eyes fixed on the heavens, I would put my head on her breast and sob like a child. I would then get up again and go from room to room in a state of bewilderment. I saw the eyes of children in the walls. They were being suffocated in a shower of burning ashes. I heard their anguished cries as they pleaded for help. Sometimes I would run over to the wall and hold out my hand to touch them. But only cold plaster met my fingers. As my daily journeys around the house got more frequent, my mother’s concerns about my sanity increased. She told my husband about my condition. One evening he came to me with some books and a bunch of flowers which he put into a vase in my room. I do not know why but the books turned into corpses in my hands and their putrefying stench stuck in my nostrils so that I could no longer draw breath.
I was scared. In an attempt to defend myself I shouted in his face:
“Get them out of here. Take them away, those corpses!”
He pretended not to have heard me. He left the room. I looked around. There was Neruda’s bleeding body. Heavily-armed soldiers danced in a circle around him. Gypsy bands lit fires under the body of Lorca. The eyes of my old friends – the coffee-house intelligentsia, I mean – are scattered around like bullets. They are planted motionlessly in every lifeless corner. I try to put my hand into the fire. It touches something hard and sticky. I draw it back to make sure I have not wounded or burnt myself and I see the eye of Nietzsche resting in my palm. It seemed to be crying from the pain and I could hear its sad lament. I felt a surge of hatred for those who were still able to cry. They had that curious comfort of being able to pour out their tears.
I told my husband what I had seen. He replied:
“Sleep … Try to get some sleep.”
Had he forgotten that sleep to me was just an eery silence? It was out of the question on the field of an undeclared battle.
Little by little, I tried to forget. I even found some peace of mind, thanks to the double doses of Valium which I was receiving. Once again I was pushed back into ‘normal’ life – that’s what they call it – and I began to read – should I say ‘devour’ – the cadavers of authors and their verses. I received my comrades when they called round to see how I was. I helped my mother with the cooking. When I saw she was sad, I would make fun of her, saying: