Free Beirut Blues by Hanan al-Shaykh Page B

free, so did your mind. You’d never allow yourself to be a prey for those entering Beirut, the Israelis or anybody else. Israel would enter Beirut. What was happening was the reality. She would not only take airports and ports and establish her bases; she would enter houses, offices, nightclubs, subterranean passageways, the crevices between thoughts written and unwritten, and the whites of people’s eyes. Was it conceivable that Israeli soldiers would be in the streets and alleys where people lived, see washing spread out to dry, bunches of onions and garlic bulbs hanging on balcony walls, and witness the changes, from the pots of roses and basil dead from lack of water to the mountains of rubbish which had become such a familiar feature? Would they sit in chairs where we used to sit, around the same café tables, walk where we used to walk? Would they notice the gates of the universities and admire their spacious gardens and quadrangles, where we used to criticize them in the ’67 war?
    Being evacuated in a civilian ship, standing in front of a soldier who barks out “Name? Age? Country of origin?” snatched away the last remaining vestiges of spirit. You compared yourself to a mad bull removed because the matadors were unable to kill it. But you really saw yourself as a young ewe or nanny goat bleating at the sight of the butcher, stamp in hand, coming forward to brand a number on you. You had never envisaged this withdrawal, especially in the early intoxicating days of the resistance when you started going to the camps and searching among the trees and names andcamouflage uniforms for Salim, your neighbor’s son. He had disappeared and it was said he had joined the resistance. You didn’t know why you volunteered to travel to Syria and Jordan to ask about him, but the enthusiasm with which you left your engineering office and your drawing board took you by surprise. For the first time you forgot the buzzing in your ears which had become chronic after you’d worked digging the roads in Kuwait.
    Why this enthusiasm? Was it because Salim’s family was so anxious, and automatically assumed their son had been snatched away from them, seduced by the soft words and harshness, the promises and dreams known as the Palestinian resistance? Or was it because you didn’t want to believe that you would never see your uncle’s house in Arab Jerusalem and you had to do something to stand up to a person who built a wall around the West Bank, locked its door, and put the key in his pocket? You thought you wanted to work for the resistance, but in a different form, although boys like Salim were the focus of your interest. You would never carry a rifle or a revolver or join up with others; you’d work alone outside the official circles. If you preserved the individuality of your thinking, you’d be able to open doors which they hadn’t even thought of trying. But what lay on the other side might be dangerous, and there was your profession, your family. You hesitated, mulling over the complications, but seeing the tub of flowers on the threshold, reflected that you ought not to let the situation influence you adversely, that in fact you should turn it to your advantage. You could go on being an engineer and working for the resistance. Then without being asked, you told the official in the camp in Jordanthat most of your family had stayed in Palestine, and your mother and father had only followed you out in ’48 because they had missed you so much.
    Seeing you for the first time in three years, I hadn’t expected our conversation to take this turn. When I stopped my car in a backstreet and asked for directions to the building where your office was, I was surprised to find sandbags concealing the entrance. Inside, the guard painstakingly took names, asked to see identity cards, examined the contents of tote bags and handbags. When I gave him your name, he said, “First floor on the right.”
    And I hadn’t expected to see you