with grief over the land, his eyes bulging and full of tears. I am not sure why, but for me this man is the eyes of the film. I’m considering using the three-meter distance he crosses between the house and the store. I wonder if it’s possible to film the moment he returns from the store at night and lies down on his bed as one shot. What can one do with these two or three meters of space?
Monday, March 31
Burj al-Barajneh
The atmosphere has been tense since morning; perhaps a few clashes have occurred. We’re trying to obtain a written permit to scout in Burj al-Barajneh camp. Jihad and I are waiting downstairs at the entrance to the building; the official hasn’t arrived yet. The employees of the PLO institutions file in gradually, one after the other. It’s a warm day. The sun is shining. There still isn’t much activity but there is an underlying sense of tension in the air that I don’t understand. I hadn’t listened to the radio last night or this morning, hadn’t read the papers. Tired. A little worried. I feel the scouting is being taken over by formalities. I’m not mixing with the people. I’m watching, not scouting. Sometimes I’m engrossed in watching. I don’t have many questions, sometimes none at all, and other times I’m reluctant to ask the questions I have. Time is passing quickly; the results are limited. I don’t know how to find a way to access the present moment of these people. People are afraid of the present. Maybe it’s a feeling of insecurity or maybe it’s the yearning for the past and the shared memory of tragedy, typical of Arabs. I feel that the Palestinian issue is intertwined and entangled with this yearning. Palestinians are cautious, and the idea of the film being about a family is dwindling more and more. I’m becoming more attracted to the idea of people’s dreams and how they narrate them. I’m not at all drawn to how they feel about their dreams, and many of the people I talk to don’t conceal their resentment and surprise when I ask about dreams in this turbulent and tense atmosphere.
We obtained the permit at around ten in the morning, and took a local bus to the Burj. I have never visited this camp. Whenever I’ve passed it, which has happened many times at sporadic intervals in the past few years, I have felt a strong sense of affection for its resonant name and its location in the middle of Beirut. But I always worried about it; to me it looked like a place held tightly by a fist. Today I am happy to have come, because I was here to visit a friend.
In the Armed Struggle Headquarters a young man was assigned to accompany us. He held his weapon and started walking, saying, “Follow me.” We followed him on foot, entering the camp’s alleys. He didn’t ask any questions—I think he thought we wanted to see the camp. I tried to explain the film to him on the way, in case he could introduce us to people. He nodded that he understood. He was a smart and nice young man, and it was clear from his first steps in the camp that the people there knew him and felt warmly toward him. However, honestly, I was quite uneasy scouting while accompanied by a Kalashnikov.
Abu Hatem
Abu Hatem was standing in the alley supervising a construction worker. He had apparently decided to tear out part of the house’s courtyard to convert it into a store. The store was now in the process of being severed from the house.
We greeted him, and he responded with a natural, if confused, warmth then led us to the only remaining room in the house. As soon as our armed escort explained the reason for our visit, Abu Hatem started speaking freely and told us his life story. At first I didn’t manage to place the recorder in front of him, and after he started talking I didn’t want to interrupt his flow. How I regretted that!
“Twenty-five years in the Ghandour factory. They gave me 10,000 Lira in compensation, which I’m using to build a new store.” He is forty-seven now, from Acre Province. He’d moved from Palestine to Anjar, then to Burj-al-Shamali, then to Burj al-Barajneh. “When I came from Palestine, I visited my folks there every single holiday. I used to go alone, secretly. I walked from here, and as soon as the sun set I’d stay hidden in the trees. Then when it got dark, I’d keep walking. One time as I reached our home a man from the village saw me. Later, while I was in the house, the Jews came. They knocked on the door. My father was eighty at that time. They knocked. My father hid me, but they entered and took me. Where did they take me? To Acre Province.” His scorched voice has a special depth. “They interrogated me. The superintendent—known as Abu Khader, an Arab-Jew—interrogated me. He had a Bedouin accent. In those days the Jews used to dump a busload of Arabs at the borders every Saturday. Abu Khader said the government refused to let me stay: ‘We have to deport you, but this time we’ll take you to Abu Tbeekh’s.’ I said, ‘Who is Abu Abu Tbeekh?’ He turned out to be King Abdullah, and I really was deported to Jordan. After he deported me, I went back, fled to my folks for one night and snuck back to Lebanon.” He is married without kids. He reminds me very much of the pessoptimist.
“I once dreamed that I was dead on a bed in a green room. Somebody knocked on the door. I said, ‘Who is it?’ A voice replied, ‘Open the door.’ ‘Who is it?’ ‘It’s a guest.’ I said, ‘The guest of God the Merciful is most welcome.’ I got up, opened the door. It turned out to be my father with two mashayikh. My father was dressed in white. His hatta, ‘aqal, and qumbaz were all white, and his jacket was white too. The mashayikh were wearing green turbans. They came and stood next to me by the bed. I said to my father, ‘What’s the matter? No one told me you died.’ He said, ‘I am dead but alive. Come with me.’ I said to him, ‘Whatever you want. I’m at your command. If you want me to go, I’ll go. If you want me to stay, I’ll stay.’ He said, ‘No, stay. Not yet. Your time will come later. May God make you happy.’ A dream is a merciful thing.
I never dreamed of my mother, but one of my relatives from our village, who is living here now, came to me once and said he saw my mother in a dream. He said, ‘I saw your mother dressed in white. I thought, that must be a good sign. May God grant her a place in paradise.’
“One time I dreamed I was going back to the village. I arrived at the village to find that the house had been blown up—that the house in the village was blown up. And as a matter of fact, in 1936 the British,6 not the Jews, blew up this house. At that time, its owner built a house next to it,7 not in its place. I thought, ‘How long has it been like this?’ We went to Lebanon, and when I returned to Palestine the man still hadn’t rebuilt his house. I continued on, there was a mosque and a holy man’s shrine further up. I read the Fatiha and said to him, ‘Master, you are one of God’s holy men. Deliver us from this plight.’ I turned around and saw myself surrounded by emptiness. I walked back toward the house but woke up before I arrived.
“I’ve never dreamed about the factory owner, but I did dream about his son once.
“Before he died, the factory owner’s son used to speak to me very rudely. In the dream I said to him, ‘Listen, Nizar. I worked with your brother for sixteen years and never heard him say such things. You’ve been here for three years, and you’ve been out of line three times. Look, two mountains may never meet, but human beings do.’ This is what I told him in the dream, after he died.”
What am I doing? Am I buying people’s dreams? What will I do with them? Serve up a handful of their souls and leave? I forgot to write down that he told me he didn’t participate in the Ghandour factory workers’ strike because he is Palestinian.8
Abu Khalid—the vendor
He asks us to produce an informative cinema. “The Revolution subsided, and so did we. For us to sustain our enthusiasm, we must have films that excite us.
“The film should be the pain of the Palestinian people. I want to feel pain and fury at the same time. I, as a storekeeper, can be of great use to you. For example, I can show you what people buy here in the camp.”
The bastard wants an informative cinema and suggests a magnificent documentary idea. Let me elaborate: as we buy people’s dreams, let’s see what people buy for themselves . . .
“We have a miserable situation here. Prices have soared. Some people don’t have money to buy food. There are no jobs. Some people turn to the Revolutionary Council for food. Two hundred grams of meat costs eight liras. Nobody lends money any more; there are no loans.