Gate of the Sun (14 page)

A naïve plan, you'll say.

It wasn't even a plan, I'll answer, but I'm not interested at the moment in a critique of our military experiences, which I've never understood much about. I wanted to inform you that the rest was not “the way it usually is.”

Abu Ma'rouf was a grown man.

In those days, before we reached the age of twenty, we wondered at the way these men would come and fight with us. We thought they must be brave, if only because they were what we imagined men should be like. Abu Ma'rouf was in his forties. A thick black moustache covered his upper lip and curled into his mouth. He would take hold of the Degtyaref machine gun, wrap the ammunition belt around his neck and waist, and sit in silence. I gathered that he was from the village of Saffouri, that his wife and children lived in the Ain al-Hilweh camp, that he had fought in '48, and that he didn't believe Palestine would ever exist again.

I never asked him why, in that case, he was fighting. In those days I believed that the “people's war” (that's what we called it, inspired by the Chinese model) would liberate Palestine. These days, the issue's become more complicated, even though I do believe that Palestine will return, in some form.

Abu Ma'rouf, that silent man from whose lips I would have to wrest words almost by force, told me a story similar to yours.

You'll be surprised, since you never met Abu Ma'rouf al-Abid, and Ain al-Zaitoun isn't near Saffouri. All the same, this man made me understand your generation's stories about women, which can be summed up in the one about the cotton swab. Yes, the cotton swab. Don't tell me I'm making this story up to upset you. I swear I'm not making up a word of it. But I finally understood.

It was four in the morning. We'd gone more than two days without sleep,
dumped in the trench under the November drizzle, with the cold stealing into our bones.

He said he was going to warm himself up by talking about women, since nothing warmed a man's bones like a woman's body. He told the story of his first night with his wife from Saffouri. At the time, I didn't ask him any questions, and that may be why he got going. He said that women would warm us up – what was I to say? Then I got scared. I thought maybe he was one of
those
and would eventually make his move. The man wanted me to keep quiet so he could talk, so I listened, but I didn't believe him. Now I know that I should have believed him, because the story of Abu Ma'rouf and his first wife, who died in Saffouri, could well be your story, too.

Abu Ma'rouf said his first wife died during the Israeli bombing of Saffouri on July 15, 1948, and that it was Abu Mahmoud's fault, the village's commander in the sacred jihad: “After the fall of Shafa Amar and the displacement of more than three thousand of its inhabitants to our village, he should have realized that the battle was over, but he insisted on staying put. We gathered in the square in front of the mosque, and he said we could hang on for a week and then the Arab Liberation Army, which was based at Nazareth, would come. But we didn't hang on. In fact, I can't remember if we even fought. The planes came. Three of them circled above the village, dropped barrels filled with fire and gunpowder, and the houses started to collapse.”

He said he watched how the houses would blast open, the doors and windows would fly out, and then the flames would rise. He said his wife and three children died in their house: “I was at the roadblock at the entrance to the village, and when I heard the bombing, I ran toward the house. They said I got scared, but no, I wasn't scared for myself, I was afraid for her and the children. I ran to the village carrying my English rifle, and when I got to the house, the flames were everywhere. I didn't even have time to bury them. I was driven, with the rest of those who escaped, from Saffouri to al-Ramah, from al-Ramah to al-Bqei'a, from al-Bqei'a to Sahmatah to Deir al-Qasi, and finally, to Bint Jbeil in Lebanon.

“We spent three days in the fields around al-Ramah, where we had nothing
and almost died of hunger. My mother asked me to go back to her house in the village to get a little flour and cracked wheat. I found the village empty and didn't see any Jews. I met three old men and a woman with a crooked back. They said they'd given up, they didn't know where to go. One of them was a relative of mine, Ahmad al-Abid. I was stunned that his son hadn't taken him with him and asked if he wanted to come with me. He raised his head to say no, and then I realized he'd stayed behind because he was sick; he was spitting and coughing, and his eyes were running. I went to my mother's house. The door was open and everything was in its place, untouched. I grabbed a bag of flour and left. On the way back, they fired at me, and I left the bag in the field. Later we found out that the three old men and the woman had been killed. We were in the fields near al-Ramah when we heard the news. It seems Ahmad's son went back to look for his father and found the four bodies lying in the road.

“We never fought. Now we say we fought and that Palestine was lost because the Arab countries betrayed us. That's not true. Palestine was lost because we didn't fight. We were like idiots; we would take our rifles and wait for them in our villages, and when they came with their motorized units and their heavy machine guns and their airplanes, we were beaten without a fight.”

Later, he remarried in Lebanon and had seven children. He'd named the first three after his children who'd died there, but his first wife was still in his bones. “She was like fire,” he said. “She would ignite me whenever she came near me.”

She had been fourteen and he fifteen.

“Impossible! At that age!”

He started laughing, the tears pouring from his eyes from the cold. Then he told me about the cotton swab.

How to tell you the story, Father? Abu Ma'rouf said incredible things, but I believed them – perhaps because we were alone in that trench, perhaps because of the dawn, the changing colors of first light, perhaps because my bones were cold. I don't know.

He said, “After the wedding party was over – and as you know, a wedding,
my friend, is no joke – we went inside. You know, I swear I had no idea. Well, no, of course, I used to practice the secret habit and I'd played around with my buddies and everything, but getting married is different. As soon as I entered the bedroom, I saw her. She was young, seated on the edge of the bed all wrapped up in her clothes, and crying. I sat down beside her, my body feeling icy all over. She told me she liked sewing and embroidery and that she'd made all her wedding clothes. Then she started to yawn. She lay back on the bed, and I stretched out beside her. She didn't take her clothes off, and I didn't take mine off either. I went to sleep. Or no, before I dropped off I got on top of her, and as soon as I was on top of her it happened. I came and got it all over my trousers. Then I lay down next to her. I think we must have dropped off quickly because I woke up to a loud knocking on the door. I opened it and found my mother asking for the sheet. Then she rushed into the room, pulled out the sheet from under the girl and ran out. We heard the trills of joy. My mother told me later she'd wiped the sheet with chicken blood and that she'd wished the earth would have opened up and swallowed her.”

Abu Ma'rouf said that two days later he went into his bedroom and found the girl naked, and everything went fine.

“Do you know what my mother did, two days later? She took the poor girl into the bathroom, stripped off her clothes and started inspecting her body minutely, touching her everywhere. The girl didn't know what to do – laugh at the tickling or scream at the pain of my mother's pinches. Then my mother scrubbed her with scented soap, poured water over her, and dried her off. She brought a cotton swab and asked her to open her thighs; then she placed the swab there and told her, ‘Tonight take off your clothes and wait for him in bed. Take hold of his member and insert it here where the cotton is. Put a pillow under your behind and lift up your legs.'

“When I got into bed and lifted the coverlet so I could lie down, I found her naked. She gestured to me to take off my robe, so I took it off, the sweat dripping off my face and eyes, and I stretched out beside her and did nothing. She stretched out her hand, took hold of my thing and pulled me
toward her, and I found myself on top of her, with her holding onto it with both hands and tugging. I was bathed in sweat and fear. She stretched her hand to the place where the swab was and placed it there, and I found myself getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Then I was inside her, and I got bigger inside her and learned the secret of life. She put her hands on my shoulders and screamed. That was the night I really came for the first time. Before that it wasn't the same. That night my whole being was there, inside her.

“When I rolled off of her, I saw that blood had stained the sheet, and that she was searching for something like a madwoman. She searched the whole bed, afraid the swab was lost. I looked with her for a bit, then dropped off, so exhausted I didn't hear her questions. The next morning she said she'd found the swab but I don't think she had. I think my mother had just reassured her it wouldn't do her any harm.”

Abu Ma'rouf said he'd never forget the taste of her.

“And your second wife?” I asked him.

“At first I didn't want to get married again; Umm Ma'rouf had been part of my flesh. But my mother, God rest her soul, knew better than I. She knew a man shouldn't remain alone or he'd mate with the devil, so she convinced me to marry the second Umm Ma'rouf, a refugee girl from Sha'ab, like us. I married her in Ain al-Hilweh, and she bore me seven children.”

“And what happened,” I asked.

“Shame on you – you can't ask things like that. With the second one, I knew what to do, and everything went fine from the first night.”

“Did you tell her about the piece of cotton?”

“Of course not. You don't understand women. You must never tell a woman about the others. If a woman doesn't think she's the center of your life, she'll become miserable and make your life miserable, too.”

Abu Ma'rouf's story amazed me. I thought it wasn't possible, and then forgot all about it.

But now I see it could be true. I see you before me, and I see Nahilah, I see everything. I can see you, a child, going into the bedroom, playing
around with the young girl, then falling asleep beside her. I won't say you were innocent, but you just didn't know how. Your mother arrives. She takes the girl to the bathroom. She soaps her and pours water over her, then puts the cotton in her – and you discover the secret of life through a little piece of white cotton.

I know you won't like this story, you'll think it's a slur on your manhood. You prefer to talk about grapes and tears of arak and the dance of a girl adorned in candles before her groom, and you'd rather not admit that you didn't know what to do.

Would you like to deny the whole thing?

Fine. I'll agree with you. I won't say you lay down beside her in your clothes like Abu Ma'rouf did. Maybe you took off your clothes and made the poor girl take hers off, too, and you didn't know how to do it and your mother had to make do with a little drop of blood from her finger on the sheet. Then she waited seven nights for you two and finally was forced to put the cotton swab inside the girl to guide you to the place.

“It's not true,” you'll say.

Okay. So where is the truth? Tell me, since I'm still confused about the dates. Did Ibrahim die in 1951 at three, meaning he was born in 1948? What was going on between 1943, when you got married, and 1948, the year your first child was born?

Didn't your wife get pregnant?

Would you put up with a wife that couldn't get pregnant? Why didn't you divorce her? Your mother used to say she was still a child and would get pregnant when she matured. So Nahilah didn't mature until 1948?

Did you love her?

No, you didn't. You yourself said you only learned to love her a long while after you married her, when your visits to her came to be your whole life.

So what was it?

You'll tell me it was the war, and you paid no attention. You're confusing me – I don't understand a thing, I swear to you. Your story seems
muddled and mysterious. And my presence in this hospital seems like a dream, but I know I'm not dreaming because I can't sleep anymore.

Say something, Father – I've had enough of all this. Say something, just one word, then die if you want, or do whatever you please, or you could tell me if you need something.

Okay, okay, fine. It wasn't thanks to a piece of cotton that your marriage was consummated, and it never crossed your mind to divorce your wife for not having children right away, you didn't experience terror facing the Jewish settlement, you didn't kill Ahmad Ibn Mahmoud, and you didn't cry when you had toothaches . . .

Happy now?

Satisfied and sound asleep? I swear you're a lucky man. What have you got to worry about? You sleep like a baby beside death – death doesn't dare touch you.

Death is afraid of you, you'll say, or you used to say.

But me, right now I'm not in the mood to listen to heroics. Do as you like – die or don't die, dream or don't dream, it's up to you.

^*
Koran, Surah XXIV, 35.