a sense Malas began this project at exactly the right time. When he embarked on it in 1980, as a Syrian he had to work hard to convince the different parties of the authenticity of his intentions. Between 1980 and 1981, he interviewed and filmed approximately four hundred people. Following the traumatic events of Sabra and Shatila in 1982, he completely halted the project. It was only after the success of “Dreams of the City” that he was able to return to it. The closing chapter of the book describes his return to Shatila in 1987, after a two-year siege had been lifted, and after a copy of the finished film was smuggled into the camp and viewed by its inhabitants. Completed six years after Malas began the project, the film was edited down to twenty-three dreams with a total of forty-five minutes of screen time. Both diary and film present their subjects somewhere between the past and present, preserved in word, magnetic tape, and now digital code. Umm Hatem, Abu Turki, Umm Yousef, Abu Adnan, Umm Alaa, Intisar, Elham, Ibrahim, and many others who may have perished come to life each time we read these words or see and hear them in the film.
In the end we are left with the sense that the cinema, as magical as its powers may be, is a limited art form, far surpassed by the power of our imagination and feelings. It is this place of imagination, feeling, and authenticity, this transcendent realm, that Malas is always trying to reach. In reaching for the transcendent, this book is ultimately a work of poetry that functions as a requiem for the cinema. Malas closes his text with a special emphasis on the word ‘cinema,’ turning the second syllable of the word into ma’, the Arabic word for ‘water,’ connoting the capacity of both water and cinema to reflect the images and dreams of the human protagonist, so easily disrupted by the waves of other bodies in motion. The diary and the film both present the question unanswered, the problem unsolved, of when will there be justice for the Palestinians.
We have strived to preserve the essential qualities and character of the original Arabic text in this translation, in order to provide English-speaking readers with access to this valuable encounter with the voices and faces of the people it portrays. While neither book nor film endows their subjects with agency, they offer readers and viewers a form of mediated contact with the affective experience of Palestinian refugees who lived in the camps in Lebanon in 1980–81. More than thirty years later their existential crisis is far from over.
This book is dedicated to the novel
The White Masks by Elias Khoury
The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
Matthew 6:22–23
I never understood how or why the idea for the film I was about to make took root inside me. It was supposed to be about a Palestinian family, and I was on my way to Beirut.
I vividly recall that moment in the car when the memory of Tel al-Zaatar appeared before me, out of nowhere, like a dream.
Drifting between bitter memory and the merciless collapse of an idea for a film that I was on route to Beirut to make, I shrank behind the windshield and soaked in the warm morning sun. When I reached al-Watani Street,1 or ‘the Last Street,’ as members of the Resistance in Beirut called it, this street seemed to me like a parenthetical aside inserted into a dream.
I went down the street alone, trying to grasp the images and motions—the balconies, people’s clothing and uniforms, their guns, the loudspeakers, bookshops, women . . . I contemplated the lives lived in the twists and turns of this ‘Last Street’ and was filled with dreams of making a film.
When I talked to an official at the media center about finding a Palestinian family in one of the camps to film,2 I realized I was discussing an idea that had already died. The old idea was evaporating while a new one rapidly metastasized inside me.
At the time, fresh posters about historic Palestine were being printed, coming off the presses like hot delicious bread. Preparations for Land Day celebrations had begun, and Israeli warplanes hovered in the sky above.
Nothing changes on al-Watani Street, this last street that eats its daily bread with one hand, closing with its other the brackets of that parenthetical aside.
Friday, March 28, 1980
According to Ibn Sireen, it was the prophet Adam who experienced the first vision on earth. God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, then from him created Eve in a similar shape, revealing this to Adam in a dream. When Adam awoke Eve was sitting near his head. Then God said, “Adam, who is this sitting near your head?” Adam said, “She is the vision you revealed to me in my dream, God.”
A pharaoh dreamed that a fire came out of the Levant and raged until it reached Egypt. It left nothing untouched, burning all of Egypt’s houses, cities, and fortresses. The pharaoh awoke, horrified.
I feel like my work has begun.
The day’s warmth mingled with the warmth of Jihad’s accent—Jihad was the guide who would accompany me. He had recently come from Gaza to work for the Palestinian Film Association.
On the office staircases are women cleaners dressed in black, tranquility, fresh air, and open windows. A man who had gone in to his office early was drinking coffee and smoking his seventh or eighth Rothman cigarette. This is the office that provides escorts to foreign visitors who want to tour the Palestinian camps.
A stream of foreign women comes out. Languages and questions overlap with the ringing of the phone and a general curiosity about, or attempt to flee from, the different delegations.
Then a voice snaps at me, “Do you have a car?”
We get in the escort’s car and start out for the camp.
Shatila
The escort knocks on a zinc door and calls out:3 “Abu Tareq! Abu Tareq!” The door is low, the wall is low, the alley narrow. The windows are at eye-level. Behind the door is a tall green tree, the rattling of a stove, the clatter of pans and dishes, and a voice coming from below bellowing, “Abu Tareq isn’t here. He’s still at the Committee. Come in.”
The room was green and dimly lit. In it we saw a narrow bed had been laid out, on which lay the young man who had invited us in. He explained straightaway that he had undergone an operation on his nose yesterday, and then resumed lying down.
On the wall was a photograph of a martyr, one of the Resistance leaders, framed in such a way that suggests a personal relationship to the man. I got the sense that the escort had knocked on this first door in order to get rid of us. The house seemed to be one of the first in Shatila; its location and the age of the tree suggested this.
I understood from the conversation that Abu Tareq is one of the camp’s dignitaries and a People’s Committee official.4 The escort fidgeted and complained, and then decided his job was done. He withdrew, leaving us free to continue the tour. At two in the afternoon Abu Tareq was ready for us. He started speaking animatedly about the People’s Committee.
“Water and electricity, paving roads, eliminating pot-holes, emptying sewers, cementing alleys, settling disputes . . . .”
We walk toward the People’s Committee headquarters. The camp’s buildings sit snugly against each other, staircases growing around their waists. It is as if this place is the site of first refuge, the way to the heart of the camp.
I have the sense that I am inside a single yard. Television antennae intersect with each other at eye-level like a swarm of insects.
The People’s Committee headquarters is striking.
The public water reservoir towers above the street. The Committee’s room was built beneath it; a staircase had been installed on each