Part 3
It’s always the darkest before dawn.
Karim halted his pace every few steps, crying from the pain of detritus and sharp rocks and scattered shrapnel. But we made it, with me carrying the boy on my back the last mile of the way. Doing so made me think of Yazan, and what he could possibly be doing now. Something heroic I bet. Now he was Falasteeni. Grew up all his life in a refugee camp bordering the Gaza city port. His grandfather was the sole provider of his female-filled household. Although in conditions like a camp the whole neighborhood becomes your family. I did live here for a good portion of my life too, I had memories but the time I spent here wasn’t memorable. I can’t reflect back on anything other than the process of moving away from here to the greener pastures of Denmark.
He worked hard and graduated at Al Azhar university (which was one of the first schools the army desecrated in November), against his grandfather's advices and reservations about documenting life in Gaza- having faced the brutality of what telling the truth gets you when he was a small town poet himself. Yazan was Able bodied but sharp with his mind and even more agile in his reporting. He was a journalist turned hero, in fact none of us were journalists- not anymore. We were changed some way or the other. Some were heroes but most were martyrs. I didn’t know what I was yet but I was about to find out.
In spite of everything, in spite of war being the first sound I hear when the morning comes and the last thing I see when the night falls, I really did think that when I came here I could reach people everywhere by reaching out to people here. And when we were freed, and we were going to be free someday, I could come back home and reach inside myself, to find out who I was as an artist. If I felt Palestinian or if I simply felt numb in the end. But I had to put a cloth on the canvas, forever because this right now was changing me beyond recognition, much like what was left of my country.
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We never actually went through the main entrance of the building and instead entered via an open supplies closet. The reception was all the way around the hostel block and Mona’s legs gave out halfway, and when I offered to carry her she refused.
I shut the door behind me, which had apparently been used as aim practice-letting in bead sized rays of pale light. Mona already had her fingers wrapped around the handle of a door behind the cupboards overflowing with extra caps, gowns and hand painted dioramas. The door must lead to the auditorium where students were meant to graduate this fall. A pang of pity struck me and I pulled Mona’s hand off the door, unsure of what lies on the other side. Mona, however eager she was to find one last, decent resting place seemed to realise this also and hung her head low, flicking dust off her stained dress.
I was halfway through dusting a much too big graduation gown to cloak Mona when I heard the sounds of arguing in Arabic through the door. All three of us crouched down to listen carefully at the words they were saying, trying to make out if they were friend or foe. Someone opened the auditorium entrance with a cry while 15 or so other people hushed him. I got between Mona and Karim and placed my eye at the keyhole where I could see what was going on.
‘Ya 'Adhra!’
‘Abu Hanan! Haddi halak.’ A stone faced man in a black, soot stained NYC shirt replied. ‘Shu sar?’
(oh virgin mary!)
(father of hanan! collect yourself, what happened?)
‘Ween el-awlad?’ the middle aged man sobbed with a gravelly voice.
‘humm maskeen Bashir fi al-hudood w kabbaluh,wittahmuh-’
‘khāli Bashir!’ Mona burst, I brought my finger over my mouth and shushed, listening to the man finish his sentence after a few preparatory breaths taken.
‘wittahmuh bitahreeb hamas!’
(where are the children? They kept Bashir at the border, they handcuffed him)
(Uncle Bashir!)
( they accused him of smuggling hamas)
I cracked the door open a sliver and looked out into the colossal conference hall where thousands of students stood on that very stage and accepted their diplomas. Now the grand room, once filled with promising young men and women, doctors, so many doctors, scientists, lawyers and artists was burnt to ash. So many joyful memories were scorched beyond recognition, like the structure of the whole place which just looked like scaffolds cast in powdery Grey now. Skeletal chairs still remained in their rows, frozen in time by a shower of bombs. The pleated red curtain that was on the left of the stage was now torn down and hoisted on two poles behind the almost entirely broken through wall. Nobody sat on the chairs and everyone was either pacing, lying on the floor, or squatting, ready to leap into action.
I saw the man whom I assumed was the children's other uncle at the far end of the gap that ran between the seats. His hair, dark like the children's, went back past his eyebrows and by the looks of his muddied shirt he looked manhandled. His speech slowed when the names Mona and Karim broke out from his cries.
‘tarakthum fis sayara ashan yakunu mahmiyin, bas lama rajaʿt-sayara wal-awlad mish mawjudeen!’
(I left them in the car so they would be safe, but when I came back both the car and the children were gone!)
I let go of the handle, subsequently letting the children rush out and latch themselves at Abu Hanan’s hip, he nearly toppled backwards from the force of their embrace and began to sob, in happiness this time at the sight of his living niece and nephew.
I followed the children slowly, feeling painfully out of place in my utterly useless journalist gear. I explained myself to Abu Hanan and explained the palm shaped burn on Mona’s face. The man did not care whatsoever as he thanked me for safekeeping his only surviving family, besides his brother Bashir; who’s name brought a sweat of worry back to his tensed up face.
The hard faced man came nose to nose with me after the children’s uncle released me from his bear hug. He looked at me with an expression of urgency, and hooked his finger under the strap of my vest.
‘Are you a news broadcaster?’
I nodded to which he immediately asked "Do you know where they are now?”
It felt pathetic to admit that I was as helpless as them. My live updates stopped coming in at around 3:00 am when I took to the streets, which meant the Israeli government had been disrupting our signals, on a technological level and a physical level with the strikes to radio stations and areas with higher densities of internet traffic. They wanted to leave us in the dark both figuratively and literally.
‘No, I don’t know anything…’ I said apologetically which only worsened his frustration. He began succumbing to hysterics. He widened the distance between us and looked at the uncle over his shoulder.
‘Ya Abu Hanan!’ he exclaimed. “kan mumkin nkun ahsan law fiʿlan kunt bitharrib Hamas!”
(we might have had a chance if you were actually smuggling hamas)
Abu Hanan pressed the children closer to him saying ‘Haddi Halak!’ mirroring the man’s words back to himself. He shifted his gaze to a darkened corner of the room where a youngster stood, hands crossed with his back to the wall. He wore a black ski mask and had his chequered red keffiyeh loose around his neck.
‘wa inti!’ the other man pointed in an accusatory way and then in Arabic proceeded to ask him ‘Why are you here? Where is the rest of your faction?’
The late teen, covered in camo just stared into the man's grey eyes, his deep ones not revealing a fraction of an answer. He was young for a resistance fighter, but old enough to have lived through the fourth war in middle school. Most children stopped their education there, in middle school.
It makes you wonder, how many members of the resistance did they create, In their futile attempts to shut it down? I remember being in a drought for details at the time, my family and I tried our best to call our relatives here but there was always something obstructing us from staying connected. I recalled that we lost a neighboring family with whom we shared a lot of laughs with when we lived on a stretch by the sea. We lost a cousin and his old father too and a couple of family friends. After coming here It was getting harder and harder to remember just how much I had lost, and I now recall the small span of time I spent separated from the tragedies here as distant and strange. Was I really living like that the May of three years ago?
When this May I was drowning in those details I missed back then.
The kid himself looked as though he was drowning in his own thoughts, like he himself didn’t know where they left him. He pulled the mask off his head, revealing his youthful features. Two shocks of dark eyebrows decorated his face and he had the powerful nose of a Jerusalem native, but he still looked as frightful as ever behind his apathetic posture.
‘wesh a'amel?’ He explained that the rest of the unit was fighting the enemy on the eastern outskirts of Rafah, a particularly faithful and defensive woman rocking in a chair in the corner added that they were doing a good job of it too, using the example of the resistance felling the highest ranking officer in Zeitoun.
‘shu a'amel?’ he repeated, this time loud enough for the 20 something people scattered in the draughty performance hall to hear. They showed him silence in response. He scoffed and began to tie his keffiyeh over his head and face, withdrawing the vulnerability he showed us.
(what am I to do? What am I to do?)
The woman went back to anxiously rocking her body in the squeaky chair, chanting to herself that it was going to be okay and that she would be returned to her parents and get married. I thought about how, in this room alone there were such drastically different ways to cope between people.
The silence kept on when another boy, of the same age but with lighter hair, with caring eyes that were observant and a little more spring in his wobbly, broken step, came by in front of the man at arms, both physically and mentally it seemed. He ushered him to the other side of the room and pressed him down into a chair while adjusting shattered spectacles.
The kid protested, insisting that he was the only trained one in the room and that he should stand ready when the army broke in. Instead, the young man sat down with him, placing a comforting hand on the boy's emergent bicep. As he lowered himself to the chair beside, he rubbed his own lower back, undoubtedly the region that caused the limp I noticed.
I myself went to sit two rows behind them, and feigned looking at my shoes like I had done so many times in this hall yet again. I was listening though, listening to what the light haired kid could possibly say to soothe the weeping warrior. But he didn’t say anything of encouragement, rather, he asked something unexpected.
‘Min ay 'eela inta?’
(whose family are you from)
‘Haniyeh. Leish ma sa'alt 'an ismi?’ he replied and checked in a flash, perplexed. The boy with loose golden curls, frizzed by bitter air chuckled and put his hands up behind his head.
(the haniyeh family. why didn’t you ask my name?)
‘I knew you wouldn’t answer. You would just tell me you are part of the liberation effort.’
The Haniyeh boy exhaled with his eyes open and brows furrowed as he stared into the eyes of a young fellow, who ideally should have been his peer, chatting him up in a lively classroom instead of a dead performance hall with rickety chairs. He pulled the keffiyeh tied around his neck higher up his chin, attempting to hide his expression but his eyes were telling of the fact that another boy with an apparent heightened clairvoyance cracked him like glass. Saw through him like glass.
‘Tayyib, la ttla' ʿalayya heik! Rah tquli ismak halla?’ he conceded, letting a smile dig dimples in his cheeks. The “interviewee" simply chuckled behind his keffiyeh looking up at the bare ceiling tiled with pipes and exhaust fans. ‘Like you said, I’m part of the liberation’ the nameless guy deflected, as per prediction to which the outdoorsy new companion of his tsked in frustration at.
(okay, don’t look at me like that! are you going to tell me your name now?)
‘This is what you guys do, you hide away your names and your identities for a joint glory. It’s very admirable what you do I say, but it doesn’t help the world that already thinks of us as mere numbers. I really like numbers I do, but I like them on a chalkboard in an equation. 'We aren’t numbers are we Haniyeh?’ he spoke in faltered tongue, dumbfounding Haniyeh before he too let his name be known.
‘Khalas! Khalas, el ism illi btedawar ʿalayh huwwe Amir, ya ustaz kalam kbeer.’ he exclaimed feigning desperation for stopping the other mans ‘kalam kbeer’ or ‘wordy talk’, when really what he wanted most in this hectic, pathetic excuse for a life was to sit down together and talk about the issues the knowledgeable young man referred to over hot black tea steeped with sage and sweetened with Yemeni honey. I relapsed back into lamenting my old life again before I put on my journalist ears again, and listened to the very conversation of that nature which was blooming in front of me.
(enough!enough, my name is amir mr. wordy talk)
The wisecracker laughed with Amir, alerting the sombre people around and Karim who was shuffling through rubble to find a tangerine that fell from the merchant’s cart. He laughed before abruptly stopping and turning to him with curiosity,
‘Ustaaz kalam kbeer?’
(mr. big words?)
‘Sah, wala lazim anadik ya ustaz kalam mish mratab?’
(yes, or should I call you mr. sloppy words?)
“Bas lazim tnadini Hashim,” he argued, sharing his own name.
(you should just call me hashim)
“I see”, Amir replied, this time in English to Hashim’s amusement. “Waw, enta btaʿrif tiḥki Ingleezi?”
(wow, you can speak english?)
“Shway shway” said Amir, shifting forward in his chair. He then said, assuming really, in a shway quieter voice, “Akid mish qaddak.”
(a little bit)
(not as much as you)
Hashim’s freckled skin flushed, I remembered how easily mine did the same after growing accustomed to chill European pastures. I was probably redder than a bride on the day of her nikaat in this human oven.
My eyes went to the lone bride in the corner of the room, pulling her ring on, and off and on her finger before they refocused on the boys.
Hashim was saying how he was as Palestinian as they come and Amir grinned, denying ever robbing him of his ethnicity and clarifying what he meant, which was that Hashim appeared more well read and certainly better preserved adornments wise in the middle of a siege . Hashim explained with confidence and in good faith how he was studying in the U.S, and that he begged his parents to let him come back one last time to the homeland for the winter holidays.
It’s now the start of the summer break I realized, and so did Amir. He scratched at the knit of the ski cap in his lap and uncharacteristically apologized, for the money Hashim was probably spending on the education he wasn’t getting anymore, trapped in his hometown by blockades. While I agree the feeling of being trapped in your own home is like none other in Gaza, I fail to understand why exactly he took the liberty of apologizing, it wasn’t like any of us had a choice, it was either preserve our nation or be preserved, in history books. The kid, understanding this, denied any apology and leaned back liberally in his rickety chair.
‘La yumkinuka wad' sa'ra 'ala al-hurriya.’
(you can’t put a price on freedom)
Hashim started toying with the broken zipper of his jacket like he felt guilty for having it when Amir slapped his friend’s back eliciting a cough and a gasp from him and said, ‘you may be educated and wise, but your Arabic needs more work’.
I sighed in my seat, sore from sitting even though I had been running for the past 3 days. When I got up I was met with the friendly belly of a scruffly bearded man with a strained yet curious face. I stumbled a few steps back as my nose accidentally grazed his shirt, he had no reaction. His glad gaze was fixed on the boys.
‘Jamila, mish helweh? How children forget their suffering in good company?’ I nodded silently, I wasn’t feeling chattery yet.
(beautiful, isn’t it?)
I could barely tell the children what I needed from them in the car, or in the alleyway. My brain buzzed from the un-processed memory of lugging the body and dropping it as delicately as I could into the car, trying to preserve the main points of recognition for his burial, which could only commence if some passerby with time to spare climbed over the car to retrieve the corpse before it decayed.
‘Alo?’ The man was tapping my shoulder as I got a hold of myself. These flashbacks were beginning to become episodes and these episodes were becoming unbearable. I snapped out of it and said sorry to him, and that seemed to communicate all the words I hadn’t said.
‘It’ll be alright ya sahbi, one day the nightmares will end and the relief will come. We just have to wait and watch if liberation brings it, or death.’
I was somewhat appalled, maybe I had just been apart from this too long, maybe this was how the people talked here. I saw glimpses of the pessimism and the acerbic comments people made, to cope I would assume. It still seemed strange to me, death presented itself before my eyes a countless amount of times but the word still burned on my tongue, rarely uttered but constantly thought about. ‘How could you say that?’ I asked, something between aghastment and understanding blurring my rationality.
‘Because it is true, that is our reality isn’t it?’
I’d no idea what to say as I reached my hand for the camera suspended at my hip, thinking of all the photos and videos immortalized on there while the people in them were only memories of mine now. My fingers ran along the stitches of the protective satchel as my vision stilled and unfocused like the camera inside of it. Then I felt someone unzipping the bag and I quickly cupped my hand to keep the camera from falling, the camera I hung on to this long.
‘Aha- sorry, do you mind?’ the man asked, full cheeks turning a hue of rose. I nodded my head again and let him look at the camera, the logo was covered by a sticker of spider man hanging upside down on a web, it was given to me by a young boy I met in Nuseirat. I never knew what became of him before I had to leave again, he was at the age where he wasn’t even fascinated by sports yet- he still wanted to be a superhero.
The man, introducing himself as Roshdi as he fished the camera out of the satchel, asked ‘what camera is this?’ upon seeing the brand name hidden behind the sticker.
‘Canon, EOS.’ I said plainly, watching him pop open the cracked lens cover and blow over the dust frosted glass, I hadn’t used it in a while, my profession went from watching to living and trying to come out alive somewhere in between.
‘This is a good one, I also had an EOS.’ he said with undertones of mourning as he held it up to his eye and pretend filmed. I switched it on for him to humour the man, if I could distract even one person from the disaster that swallowed us all around that would be enough.
‘but I had a 5D. See I’m not a reporter but I am in some way.’ he said in a way that would prompt questions from the reporter side of me. ‘What happened to it..?’ I asked, already half knowing but wanting to hear it from this Roshdi. He shrugged as he filmed the network of pipes on the ceiling,
"It was destroyed, all my equipment was broken when my studio fell.’
‘Studio?’ My eyes travelled down to his multicoloured t shirt and puffer jacket, sleeves ripped to survive the heat. A bottle cap badge with the abbreviation for the Palestinian Filmmakers Association was safety pinned to it.
‘Sahih ya Samir, I used to make short films about our Gaza, and its beauty. I think that’s like journalism, no?’
‘Yes it is.’ I wholeheartedly agreed.
He began taking a video of Hashim and Amir, still talking passionately.
‘Al-waldain alladhīn yaqfān hūnāka they remind me of the films I took. lahazat raqeeqa ya Samir.’
(those two boys there)
(tender moments, samir)
He filmed them teasing one another by playfully jabbing each other's shoulders as they went on talking.
‘In November when my studio was not yet under the bombs, I went to the sea and took video of a family celebrating their eldest daughter’s birthday, while airstrikes were going off in the background.’ He laughed, reminiscing that moment of pure Palestinian resistance, the willingness to smile and sing in the most dismal situations,
‘We sang happy birthday loudly, to forget the sounds of sirens and bombs. Then finally, when my throat was sore they fed me watermelon and cake.’ A tear emerged from his waterline.
‘They did not know who I was, I was from the other end of the city but they fed me cake, and watermelons.’ he repeated, putting the camera down and flexing his hand, clenching the finger into a fist. He looked back at me with tear stained eyes, taking me back to that hospital of children with white phosphorus burns streaking their once supple cheeks.
‘We both are two sides of the same coin you know, we capture two sides of the same story.’
‘And I’m the edge of the medallion!’ boomed an earthy voice from the diaphragm of a man who was well groomed despite everything, he wore a suit and looked like he had just come back from work (or more accurately, was expelled from it) to greet his family. His brown suit charred by more soot was torn at his knee and he wasn’t wearing a blazer but an untucked white shirt, loose threads trailing behind as he came to us, as attention grabbing as ever with a voice similar to the likeness of a Nelson Mandela. He shook my hand and the hand of Roshdi with whom he seemed to be acquainted already. He introduced himself firstly, as a poet, and then he told us his name.
I racked my brain for a Saleem Al Nasser amongst the archive of poets I researched when I was reporting on Gaza from Denmark. The article I did research for compiled and collated the names of creatives killed or imprisoned by the occupation. I squinted my eyes at the man trying to recall where I had seen his cloud of grey hair and intelligent eyes. Then I fished out something from the twilight zone of my mind. A poem.
Knives might eat what remains of my ribs,
machines might smash what remains of stones,but life..
I couldn’t recall the last two bits, but I knew he had to be the one who wrote it. Granted the prominent hooked nose bridge that served as a landmark for his face was obscured by unshaven facial hair but I was sure it was the same man, just a little more broken by Nakba.
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