lonely. She will never forget my father, Muhammad ‘Ali Shagara, that kind, down-to-earth man. He married her when she was fourteen and patiently lived with her for twenty years until she became pregnant with me.
“You should name him,” she said.
“Shagara,” he said. She laughed, but he went on saying: “Shagara Muhammad ‘Ali. I planted him ages ago. He will live as long as an olive tree, and will be as tall as a palm.” He also said that his grandfather had been given that name, because he was born under a sweet-smelling camphor tree. Then he laughed and cried. He had become a father after waiting for twenty years.
I grew up with amazing speed at our old house in the Baladiyya housing project at Kum al-Shuqafa. My mother stopped telling me the story of my name and I stopped asking her about it, but continued to defend it in front of the other children, who teased me. I never complained. I was growing taller than all the others, and I used to think that when I grew up, I would be a real tree, that I would grow branches and leaves, that birds would land on me, and kids would throw pebbles at them. That thought both scared me and made me laugh. Suddenly, I became taller than my father, and became embarrassed of walking with him or with my mother, but he would always look at me and say, “Just as I had hoped.”
I used to play in the alleys between the huge brick buildings, which stood in the middle of a large vacant lot surrounded by fields of bright green grass, with asphalt roads running between them all. No strangers came to our neighborhood, and no cars passed there. Mothers felt safe letting their children go out to play. What charm God had sent to this spot. He must have created it for Himself, and so filled it with peace and quiet. And He must have liked us, and so left it for us. It was always flooded with sunlight, in both summer and winter. Even though there was a hospital for pulmonary diseases nearby, we only saw the trees surrounding it and were not afraid. The days passed, as peaceful as a mother’s pats on the head of her child. My father’s small salary from his job as supervisor in the town workshop was enough for everything we wanted.
Bab al-Muluk was the commercial street. My mother and her neighbors bought leftover pieces of cloth from the Clock Square in Karmuz for themselves and their husbands and bought new clothes for us children. They would make joyous trips to Bayyasa to buy meat and seafood. We used to eat the shrimp like peanuts. Sardines were salted in the summer for the winter. We children enjoyed teasing the crabs with little wooden sticks.
On the day of ‘Eid al-Adha, the men used to go to the nearby sheep market in the Tubgiyya hills to buy lambs and goats. The women dressed in black and went to visit the dead at the ‘Amud al-Sawari cemetery. I can still smell the narrow alleys that we used to cross to get to Bab al-Muluk, the soapy water dumped from the windows onto the streets, and the sheep in the hills. I can still hear the gossip of the one-eyed broker. My father once said that, every morning before going to the market, the broker swore never to tell the truth all day. “This is how all brokers are, my son. Their only pledge is to lie!” my father said. I can still see the crowds at Bayyasa laughing and arguing, the women giggling obscenely as the mutton sellers pointed the sheep’s balls at them.
But one day the whole place changed. The vacant lot became a field for soldiers training to use artillery. Barricades and anti-aircraft guns were everywhere. I came home one afternoon and said happily, “They gave us a holiday, because of Eden.”
“Damn Eden, and these bad times,” said my mother.
Later that day, my mother caught me with Kawthar, Hani’s sister. I was not a little boy anymore. I was ten and was kissing Kawthar behind one of the doors. Kawthar always smelled nice and her blond hair hung loosely over her shoulders. She often came to visit our apartment. All the children were welcome in any of the apartments at any time. The doors were usually open, and stray cats went in and out as well. I was especially welcome in the neighbors’ apartments because I was dark and my parents were both very white. That day I found myself moving closer to smell Kawthar’s scent, and I didn’t leave it at that. My mother slapped me for the first and last time that I can remember. I was her only son. She kicked me out of the house, so I went down to watch the soldiers who were standing by the anti-aircraft guns, constantly watching for any airplanes that might appear among the clouds.
As soon as the lot became vacant again, we went back to playing in it, with new memories. We played brave young soldiers firing anti-aircraft guns at airplanes that shone like distant stars. We had been brave during the actual war, and generous as well. We regularly offered food to the soldiers.
But things had changed. The grass was no longer soft and green. It was withered and patchy. The asphalt roads had lost their luster. The years went by in a dull monotony, and we soon became too old for games in the alley. My father started coughing.
“I have often found myself looking in the direction of the hospital,” he said. “Now I know why.”
My mother clapped her hand on her breast to show her shock.
“I can’t help it,” he said.
She crouched in a corner and wept. I realized that the hospital was more than tall trees, and that it had a door.
“How much have we saved?” he asked her.
I saw her pull out a small rolled-up cloth purse from inside the frame of their copper bed, and I noticed him looking at me. Twice I had had a strange fever strike me right before the final high-school exams and not pass until the exams were over. I was not a bad student, despite my occasional trips to the cinema with Hani and Rashid. Now Hani was in the military academy, Rashid in the school of medicine, while I was studying the same lessons for the third time, and fearful of another attack of the fever.
During the next week, my father bought a one-hundred meter-square plot of land. He talked about Dikhayla and the hills where people bought cheap land. “If I die, you will have to leave this apartment,” he said one day as a final statement on the matter. I had heard about Dikhayla before then, but had never seen it. I used to go halfway there, to the youth camp where high-school students went every year to practice shooting firearms.
The day after my father bought the land, exams were postponed, and a heat wave swept over the city together with strong Khamasin winds. Our neighborhood had already changed. Small piles of garbage had appeared everywhere, the garden seats were broken, and many of them disappeared. The trees around the hospital had lost most of their leaves and many of their branches, so that we could now see its windows and the patients who gazed out of them with lost expressions.
It seemed as though a gigantic black fist were gripping our world by the neck. Screams were heard on the streets. Women slapped their faces until they broke their teeth, and children huddled in corners to cry. President Gamal ‘Abd al-Nassir had resigned, and the Israelis had entered the country.
We listened sadly to the stories of soldiers in ragged uniforms and bare feet who had taken to the streets, running away from death, from the Canal cities, where death was everywhere. We heard stories about the bodies being buried at ‘Amud al-Sawari, coming from faraway hospitals. It seemed as if people had come to hate each other. They closed their doors at sunset, and darkness ruled the earth and skies.
I actually passed my high-school exams that year, but my grades were not good enough for me to go to college. I wasn’t upset. I had no desire to learn anymore. I found a job in a new shipyard. I told my father that I would finish building our new house. He must have hated the hills after we moved there, because he didn’t stay long. I hated the whole area, but where could I go? I learned that time was the best cure. The days passed meaninglessly. The area became more crowded, and children started playing in the dirty alleys around us. I learned that our desire for beauty is an acquired habit, and that we can become completely indifferent to our surroundings. I no longer hated the hills but came to feel indifferent toward them. I was even indifferent to the youth camp, which I used to notice on my way to work every day and remember how I had first learned to shoot, and how I used to stick a kerchief under my shirt to absorb the recoil of the Mauser gun. Even this camp lost its ability to attract my attention. I stopped looking at it. Only yesterday, I looked at it again to discover that the sign on its entrance had been replaced by another that said “Central Police Camp.”
I