officials, the American government, the Zionists, the British, the Arab states, and everybody else who lived outside the camps with their backs to us.
The trees looked so incongruous in the midst of our misery and destitution. So Awlad Falasteen attacked the trees, uprooted them, and burned them. We danced around the fire, singing lines of doggerel then common among Palestinians: Who am I/Who are ye?/I am the returnee/I am the returnee.
And always the police came to the camps. And always Captain Constantine was in a jeep, accompanied by three or four of his gendarmes. Nobody was afraid of us in those days.
He climbed up on a box, in the manner of a man about to pontificate, and waited for the people of the camp to come and listen to his abuse. If they did not, he sent his men to drag them out of their homes. He talked as if we were children.
“I don’t want to see any more Palestinians peddling in the streets without a permit,” he hollered with a hint of contempt in his voice. “I don’t want to see any more Palestinian sons of whores going across the border to Syria without a travel permit, or working ‘whether paid or unpaid’ without a permit.” If someone asked him a question he raised his voice contemptuously as he replied. He even slapped men across the face in front of their sons. “Uppity Palestinians,” he screamed, and went on to do the same thing at other camps.
At the café, a man complained, “The son of a whore doesn’t even wear a moustache.”
One day someone killed Constantine, with a dagger, as he was coming out of his house in the Mazra’a district. Immediately everybody began to speculate whether it was the Nasserites, or the Arab Nationalists, or the Communists, or the Baathists who did it. Shopkeepers gave out free candy to the children.
Then Squad 10, police who were the terror of both Palestinians and poor Lebanese, came to the camps. They arrested an eighteen-year-old boy called Hatem Arabi. He was never seen again.
Three middle-aged, very American-looking evangelical ladies come to our school to distribute toys. They are patting kids on the head and speaking deliberate, enunciated English to them when a boy of eleven or twelve walks up to one of the ladies, and ever so gently, pats her behind. “Your buttocks are so beautiful,” he says innocently.
The three evangelists want to know why the older pupils outside the school gate are making such a din. We are going to join yet another demonstration organized by the Arab Nationalist Movement in support of the Algerian struggle against French colonialism. Everybody is already shouting slogans. The girls are in the front, standing three abreast, holding Palestinian, Lebanese, and Algerian flags. The boys are arguing among themselves about which route to take to reach the Makassed school, where we will join its detachment of demonstrators.
“Tahya el thawra el Jazairia,” someone shouts. And we all shout back, Victory to the Algerian Revolution. “Fi el thawra tahreer Falasteen,” another shouts. And the slogan is repeated en masse. In struggle shall Palestine be liberated.
As we move on, dirty versions of political doggerel, old ones from previous demonstrations or new ones coined for the occasion, echo across the streets. The slogans condemn American imperialism, the British government, the French colonists in Algeria, Arab reactionaries, the “lackeys” of the West and Zionism in the Arab world, and virtually all established Arab leaders, with the Hashemites in Jordan and Iraq heading the list. When we get to the Makassed school, Ibrahim runs back and forth to confer with the leaders of its detachment of demonstrators. He is sweating profusely, with his shirt clinging to his small body.
“The sons of whores say we can’t go for a while,” he says loudly, contemptuously, “because the stupid Baathists are at it again with their rigid instructions to their followers. For God’s sake, these people are so dumb and irritating!”
He talks as if his whole life depends on the success of the event, gesticulating wildly, pleading with everybody to stay in place and not disperse.
We ultimately get moving and pick up more people on the way, heading to the American University of Beirut (AUB) to combine with its own students demonstrating there. From the AUB we are all going to march down to the Borj, the main square in the center of downtown Beirut, to the Lebanese Foreign Ministry.
On the way, the shopkeepers throw flowers and rosewater at us. Some shout slogans such as “Down with colonialism” and “God is with those who seek to be free.” Others, more religiously oriented, shout Koranic phrases. By the time we reach the Borj, our numbers have swelled immensely. We stand all bunched up together, surrounded by a large number of gendarmes. The demonstration today, unlike many others before and after it, is legal. The Algerian Revolution in the late 1950s, like the Palestinian Revolution in the late 1960s, was too popular for the government to ban.
Outside the Foreign Ministry building the various groups from different schools or different parties or different ages mingle together. Ibrahim and I hold the wooden poles supporting a banner that says “Western imperialists, colonists, and occupiers in our homeland—the Arab world shall become your graveyard.” Salim Solh, the prime minister of Lebanon, steps onto his third floor balcony to address the crowd. Ibrahim and I are directly below, standing near the steps leading into the lobby of the building. For about ten minutes Solh dwells on the sympathy that the Lebanese and other Arab peoples have for the Algerian struggle for independence. But then he says the Lebanese people have always sought friendship and cooperation with the French and the Lebanese government does not want to endanger this special relationship. Ibrahim begins muttering loudly under his breath. Then suddenly, as if he has gone mad, he screams “La, la, ya Solh, la solh ma’a el istimar?”—No, no, O Solh, no peace with colonialism. Ibrahim is punning on the name “Solh,” which in our language means “peace.” He keeps screaming the line over and over again, at the top of his voice. Full of uncontrolled fury, he lets go of his side of the banner to wave his fists at Solh. Then he climbs up on the steps and proceeds to give a counter-speech.
For God’s sake. Ibrahim Adel. The sixteen-year-old boy with whom I grew up at the camps. Who has a lyrical name like Abraham the Just and a nickname like “the library.” Who shined shoes around the Corniche with me. Ibrahim, the boy with the shaved head who had tried to kiss a zaim’s foot not so long ago, is now giving a counter-speech to the one that the foreign minister of Lebanon is giving to a crowd of ten thousand demonstrators.
What is happening to us, the first generation of Palestinians growing up in exile? It is as if we are growing up challenged to talk about and deal with more than we knew. Each question we ask to which we find no answer becomes a blow, merciless and brutal.
Ibrahim is, of course, picked up by the police and taken into custody. In those days, when you were arrested the police did not bother to file charges, release you on bail, or enable you to inform your next of kin. Very simply, you were beaten senseless, made to sit in a cell for a day or two, a week or two, a month or two, or when necessary, a year or two. Till the emergence of the Palestinian Revolution in 1967, it was illegal for Palestinians to engage in any kind of political activity. In Lebanon, Palestinians were considered aliens.
When we went to visit Ibrahim at the police station the day after his arrest, laden with bread, black olives, and yogurt, he seemed in incredibly good humor, despite his swollen face and bruises. He even joked with us about what the police had threatened.
“To deport me,” he said mock-seriously, “if they caught me in a demonstration again.”
“Deport you,” we all asked in unison. “Where? Where could they deport you?”
“That’s the joke, don’t you see?”
Ibrahim was soon released because Abu Ibrahim (like everybody else) knew someone, who knew someone, who knew someone in the Lebanese Parliament who, for a bribe, did favors for the families of prisoners. Under the then existing system, someone who could come up with the appropriate amount of money could literally get away with murder.
In Palestinian society, when someone is released from jail for a political offense, everybody in the neighborhood, and even outlying neighborhoods, visits to offer “congratulations.” The visitors may be total strangers,